Greg, an AI tools expert and design agency founder, walks Sam through five underrated AI tools he’d use to make a million dollars: an AI video deepfake tool (Wan 2.2), an AI-first browser (Perplexity Comet), an AI spreadsheet (TryShortcut.ai), a TikTok content automation platform (Realfarm), and a voice dictation tool (Whisper Flow). They also cover AI Apply, a tool that auto-applies to thousands of jobs. Sam and Greg discuss the productivity gains, ethical tensions, and arbitrage opportunities these tools create for people building from zero.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Greg (guest, AI tools expert, design agency founder)
Introduction: AI Tools for Zero-to-One Builders [00:00:00]
Greg: This podcast is called My First Million. So if someone is trying to get from zero to a million dollars, these are the tools I’m using to make a million bucks.
Greg: So today what I want to talk about is I want to show five or six different apps that I’m using, Sam, that I think you should be using — and we can just go through it — that are underrated hidden gems that you’ve probably never heard of, that will make you more productive and make you more money.
Greg: And the reason why this is fun is because a lot of people in the audience are like me, which is they’re like, “I’m a really good Googler.” That’s like the extent of how good I am on computers. I’m pretty good at ChatGPT. But you are like three steps above me in terms of being technical. And then there’s people that are like ten steps above that, but you’re a good balance of someone who’s on the outer edge of being an early adopter, but you can also relate this to kind of a Neanderthal like me.
Sam: I appreciate that.
Greg: Yeah, I’m just going to try to clearly explain as much as possible. I tried to pick examples of apps that literally anyone could use that are going to make a big difference in their lives.
Greg: By the way, I know people are going to listen to this. Some people are going to be like — because there’s a lot of AI haters out there, Sam.
Sam: Why?
Greg: Because they see stuff like this — and I will show you — an AI-generated Taylor Swift, and they’re like, “You are ruining the world.”
Sam: Okay.
Greg: But this is where technology is going, and this episode is for people who want to use it to their advantage. That’s what we’re here for.
Sam: All right, Greg, fire me up. What do we got? How am I going to look like T-Swift?
Tool 1: AI Video Deepfakes (Wan 2.2) [00:02:00]
Greg: All right, you want to start with that? Friends, listen. What you’re seeing right now is crazy. We are crossing a line in human history where the boundary between reality and fiction is vanishing.
Greg: This is not a Hollywood billion-dollar high-production studio. This is open source. This is from your computer, a click of a button. And most people will not be able to even tell the difference now. So be safe out there. Question what you see. Verify what you believe. Stay ahead of the curve.
Greg: It sounds just like Taylor, and it looks pretty much just like Taylor. And I think the coolest thing about it is look at her mouth movement — looks exactly like this guy on top, my friend. And you can do this not just with Taylor Swift. You can do this with Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, anyone you want. You can kind of deepfake anyone.
Sam: Dude, but this looks — I mean, Taylor Swift is a pretty woman, and this is — she’s got a stronger jawline than normal. So it doesn’t look exactly like her.
Sam: You know what’s interesting? I think you should do a use case for each of these. Do you want to hear a crazy use case I learned for one of these?
Greg: Yeah.
Sam: I had someone I knew — they’re a wealthy person — and someone discovered they were out of town, and a person used one of these deepfakes to call the building and say a handyman will be coming. Please let them up into their apartment. And it was a criminal, and they robbed the apartment. So these deepfakes are very nerve-wracking for these reasons.
Greg: Yeah, and there is a dark side to it for sure. Bad stuff is going to happen, and we need to be aware of it. I’m especially concerned about grandmas and parents getting scammed.
Sam: Dude, I’ve almost been scammed. I get almost scammed weekly. So it’s not just grandmas.
Sam: What’s the service? What’s the app that makes these videos?
Greg: So this is using an open-source model called Wan 2.2. It’s by the Alibaba people.
Sam: So it is a Chinese app.
Greg: Yeah. So, you know, beware. For a lot of people, using open-source technology is kind of difficult. So there are apps like Enhancer.ai that let you just use their SaaS platform — you can just pick it and you don’t need to look at a GitHub. Or there’s another one called Freepik which does the same thing.
Greg: I think it’s worth people playing around with Wan 2.2. Basically, you record a video of yourself talking and you can pick a character. Yeah, you’re right, it doesn’t look exactly like Taylor Swift. It’s more like a Tyler Swift.
Sam: Yeah.
Greg: So if you wanted Tyler Swift, or Matt Zuckerberg — it’s fun to play around with and use as content for your brand, or just having fun with your personal brand as well.
Sam: That’s cool. When do you think this is going to be good enough for me to use in ads or things like that?
Greg: I mean, it’s 100% good enough to use in ads now. I wouldn’t use Tyler Swift in an ad because you might not get approved by Meta, but people are using JFK and Plato, things that are in the public domain, to create ads. And it’s working.
Sam: So I can go to Enhancer.ai — I can film a funny script of what I think JFK would say to promote MFM or something like that, and I can actually use that in an ad because JFK is considered public domain?
Greg: Exactly. I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but from my understanding, yes.
Greg: There’s this guy named PJ Ace. I just had him on my podcast. He’s amazing. He’s like the number one AI video ad guy and he’s literally getting hundreds of millions of views on his AI videos. I’ve seen him work with the largest companies on the planet. So he’s using — look at this — he’s using Sam Altman here.
Sam: Wow. Is there a way — I’m looking at this PJ guy and I’m like, this sounds awesome. I want to use this immediately. What would be the best way for me to do that?
Greg: So first you need to write a script. What I would do is use ChatGPT to come up with a script idea — we won’t have time to go through a tutorial of that today. Then I would create reference frames. I’d use one of the image models like Enhancer or Freepik to create images of what the storyboard of a 22-second or 30-second ad might look like.
Sam: Oh my gosh.
Greg: And then I would animate those frames to create a cohesive story. That’s basically the process: ChatGPT for the script, Enhancer and Freepik for images, and then if you’re pro, you might want to use Final Cut Pro or something like that to finish it.
Sam: Okay. This is awesome. What’s the next one?
Tool 2: Perplexity Comet AI Browser [00:10:00]
Greg: Have you played with the Perplexity browser at all?
Sam: No. I actually used Perplexity the other day because I watched one of your videos on how to use Sora, and I saw that you said Perplexity is good for researching. I used it to research how to make a viral video or something like that, and then I put that into ChatGPT and got a script, and then put it in Sora. Is that right?
Greg: Yeah. So, it’s a hassle to move browsers. Everyone has everything set up on their current browser, maybe Chrome. But having an AI-first browser is an absolute game changer. There’s Perplexity Comet, there’s DIA, there’s Opera, there’s a few others. But for today’s example, we’re going to use Comet because that’s the one I think is the best. And I just want to go through a few workflows so that by the end of this demo, everyone is going to be like, “Yeah, I need an AI browser.”
Sam: So let me clarify — do you use Perplexity Comet instead of Chrome?
Greg: Yes.
Sam: Okay. So this is not just a cool thing. This is ROI. This works.
Greg: Oh, and I can’t go back. Going back — my eyes would bleed. It is too slow to go back. Once you get used to an AI browser, you will not go back. Just like now you use ChatGPT over Google probably 95% of the time.
Sam: Yeah.
Greg: So, I saw this ad for this company called One Bone, which is a clothing brand for big and tall people. I’m actually not big — I’m pretty tall, like 6’3”, 165 lbs. So I’m not that big, but I clicked on it anyway. I thought it looked pretty cool.
Greg: So let’s just say I’m going to add this to cart. I always get to this point — I don’t know if this is just me, Sam — but I always get to the discount code field and I’m like, “There must be a discount code I could use here.” And you know there was a whole thing with Honey, right? Where Coffeezilla did a video saying Honey is basically collecting affiliate fees on your data and your purchases.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. I saw that. That was about six months ago.
Greg: Exactly, it went viral. So here’s an example of how I would use Comet. I would say: “I want to use a discount code. I don’t know any. Can you find one that works and add it to this form?”
Sam: Oh my gosh.
Greg: So what’s cool about Comet is it sees what’s on your screen, and you can see on the right-hand side it’s looking and searching through ten different sources. And it’ll hopefully work. If it doesn’t, you can just keep prompting it. So look — “THRIFT10” is back.
Sam: Save $66 on my two jackets.
Greg: Greg, have you heard of girl math? This is an example of girl math. You just made $60 shopping.
Sam: It’s basically free.
Greg: You just got paid $66.
Sam: I bought a jacket for 350-pound men and I’m 165 pounds. But it’s free. That’s awesome. This is girl math. I love this.
Greg: That’s cool.
Sam: Now back to the episode. So the next thing I’ve been using Comet for is finding exact moments in YouTube videos. So I’ll open up the assistant on the right-hand side and say something like: “Find and play the exact moment Steve Jobs talks about Apple’s intersection of liberal arts and technology.” And then Comet’s agents go figure out where that is.
Sam: Yeah — it basically downloads the transcript and searches it. And look how fast it is.
Greg: Dude, because I do that all the time. If I’m doing copywriting, I’m like, “Oh, I remember a good hook. I watched this video of Steve Jobs once. He made this kind of small off-handed comment, but I don’t remember which talk.” This would save so much time.
Sam: It saves a lot of time. And also you’re in flow state. If you wanted to do this on Chrome, you’d have to open another tab, Google it, find the video, watch it. It pulls you out of your zone.
Greg: Wow.
Sam: How am I able to run five companies that are successful? It’s because I have a lot of tricks like this that help me save time.
Sam: So here it says the quote begins at the 7-second mark. And if I say “play this video,” it should actually play it. Yeah, see — it opened a new tab and it’s literally playing it.
Greg: That’s crazy.
Sam: And then you can go back to the assistant and say, “This is a cool talk. I’m a founder. What are the most interesting takeaways for me? Write it in an essay.”
Sam: I find that YouTube is just such a wealth of information. Literally everything — world leaders are on it, the biggest founders on the planet, podcasts. Learning from YouTube is so amazing. And I just find myself going to videos like this and seeing how amazing this is.
Greg: Man, I wish I would have known about this. I actually just installed the Chrome plugin that gets the transcript from YouTube — it does it a little better than the normal YouTube transcript button — and I did it so I could copy and paste into ChatGPT to ask it these questions.
Sam: Yeah, this is going to make your life a lot easier. You’re going to be way smarter from this. Not that you need to be smarter — you’re a smart guy — but we’ll take any edge we can get. I’m a few brain cells away from just being a talking monkey. I can use anything I can get.
Sam: Okay, so Perplexity Comet. That’s awesome. I like that.
Greg: I’ll do one last one with Perplexity Comet and then we can move on. So you can ask it — one of the hardest things I have to do as a founder is trying to hire good talent. So you can say: “Find and go to the LinkedIn profile of someone who worked on Apple AI and is now at Meta.”
Greg: And it’ll actually go and do that for you.
Sam: Wow.
Greg: It’s free.
Sam: It’s free?
Greg: It just came out a few days ago for free for everyone. And I have no relationship to Perplexity, by the way. I’m just a happy user — it makes my life better.
Sam: I pay about $200 a month for LinkedIn Recruiter.
Greg: Oh yeah.
Sam: And this would have helped as well. Maybe in lieu of that. And for free.
Greg: Well, watch this. So we got this answer: “The LinkedIn profile of Mark Lee matches your criteria. He worked on Apple AI as a research engineer and is now an AI research scientist at Meta.”
Greg: So let’s say, Sam, that you want to hire him for Hampton.
Sam: It would only cost $100 million.
Greg: It would only cost between $100 million and $500 million. But what you can do is say, “Can you craft an email that is going to get this guy to work for me? I’m the CEO of Hampton.”
Sam: What’s the URL?
Greg: Join.com.
Sam: And then what does it say?
Greg: It’s going to say something like, “Good luck, buddy. Get in line, pal.” — just kidding, it says like: “My name is, you know, your name. I’m the CEO of Join Hampton. We’re assembling a team…” And it’s not bad, and you can craft it to make it your own. But what’s really cool about this is —
Sam: Okay, cool.
Greg: — “This looks great. My name is Sam Parr. Can you send this email for me on my Gmail?”
Sam: So what it’ll do is basically create an agent that will send this email for you. You can connect your Gmail.
Greg: Yeah. I’m not going to do it right now because I’m not Sam Parr and I’m not trying to spend $100 million hiring this guy. But you can actually connect your Gmail and start sending emails.
Sam: Man, this is just so nutty.
Tool 3: Whisper Flow (Voice Dictation) [00:22:00]
Sam: And this is — a lot of people watching will mock me here — but for the real nerds: I use Whisper Flow. Is it called Whisper Flow?
Greg: Yeah, it’s Whisper Flow. So I actually just talk to my computer a lot. I have it set up so the little globe button on the bottom left of my screen — I just hold that button and have a conversation with it, and it types for me, because I hate typing. Literally my fingers hurt sometimes. So I just have conversations with my computer. And if I could do that now in Perplexity Comet, that would make life way better.
Sam: Yeah. So speaking to computers — the way you’re doing with Whisper Flow, which is another underrated AI tool — once you do it, you can’t go back.
Greg: Like, a keyboard can only get you to 45 words per minute. Whisper Flow gets you to 220 words per minute.
Sam: It’s too slow to go back to a keyboard after.
Greg: So for those listening: you have to check out Whisper Flow. It’s actually shockingly hard to find if you Google it because they spell “whisper” in a startup way — I think it’s W-I-S-P-E-R.
Greg: The way it works is you have a hot key, you click one button, you talk to it. But sometimes I’ll make a mistake and say, “Oh, whoops, I mean this.” So if I’m texting my wife and say, “Can you pick me up a burger? I mean, I actually want a taco” — it will not say the first thing and instead will say the second thing.
Greg: Or I’ll say: “My opinion on that breaks down into three points. Point one is this, point two is this, point three is this.” And it formats it with a colon, number one, this paragraph, number two, this.
Sam: 100%. Also, I think people could use Whisper Flow for teams — that’s an underrated hack. Using the snippet library they have, you can create snippets like calendar, hours, support, intro, FAQ, so you can just say “calendar” or “hours” and it’ll throw it in.
Greg: Oh my gosh.
Sam: I love Whisper Flow. To me, it’s the same level-up in productivity that you see going from Chrome to an AI browser.
Tool 4: TryShortcut.ai (AI Spreadsheets) [00:26:00]
Sam: What are you more interested in talking about — AI Excel or content automation on TikTok?
Greg: I don’t like TikTok, but I do want to know how to get followers. But I want to know more about the Excel thing because I’ve been trying to find a replacement for Google Sheets — I actually use Google Sheets, not Excel. I saw one company got funded like 12 months ago, but I went and demoed it and it was only fine. I haven’t found a good solution for this.
Sam: So yeah, if you’re anything like me, you hate Excel. I don’t even know what a macro is, honestly.
Greg: Yeah. I don’t know what that word means either, but I hear people say it all the time.
Sam: To me, an Excel sheet is almost like terminal. When I’m in the terminal I’m overwhelmed. So I try to avoid Excel as much as possible.
Sam: But there’s this thing called TryShortcut.ai. It’s from this research lab of like ballers — some of the best researchers on the planet created it. And their first product is an AI-first version of Excel. It’s similar to Comet in the sense that on the left it sees your screen, which is a cloud version of Excel, and on the right-hand side you have prompts. You can just use natural language to tell it what to do, and it works.
Sam: For example, literally one minute before this call, I used Comet to find a sheet of financial data I could upload to TryShortcut. I uploaded it — it’s this list of companies, their market caps, their revenue, their gross profit. I said, “Analyze my data for key insights.” And it gives me all the key insights. If I wanted to say, “Build me a DCF analysis,” or “Build me an income statement,” or “Explain me this or that” — you can do it.
Greg: And it works.
Sam: Can you ask it a question right now?
Greg: Sure.
Sam: Which stock would Warren Buffett pick based on this data? The reason I’m asking is I actually bought a book called Warren Buffett on Balance Sheets or something like that, when I was trying to figure out what does he see, what sticks out to him. But the book was really hard to read. These are complicated concepts. This might just do it for me.
Sam: Yeah. And it has all this data that’s on screen, but it’s also sending agents all across the internet to figure out what’s happening. The beauty of this context plus that context — you end up getting really good outcomes. And then you can also say — so Warren Buffett’s pick is Apple — you can now say, “Create a new document based on this that shows the operating cash flow.”
Greg: Yeah. Wow.
Sam: This is a big deal. I just saw that they have this now — an Excel plugin. So even if you don’t want to use their cloud-based solution, you can just download it. Look, it only has 36 ratings. This is how early you are to this.
Greg: I want to be number 37. That’s great.
Greg: Usually what I’ve done is I’ve uploaded my financials — like my P&L, my business’s P&L, or sometimes my personal income statement or personal net worth — and I ask ChatGPT questions based on that data. Would you feel comfortable doing that here on Comet? Not because it’s sensitive — it’s just numbers, not a social security number. But would it give you good advice?
Sam: Yeah, I would feel comfortable. I think I’d feel more comfortable doing it locally on Excel so you’re not uploading your data to the cloud — who knows what could happen. So if it’s really sensitive data, I do recommend just using Excel. Like, why not? You don’t need it on the cloud, and most people use Excel anyway.
Sam: But look what you can do here — it’s not just querying. On ChatGPT you can query the data and be like, “What would you do here?” But you can’t say, “Build me an LBO model” or “Build me a DCF analysis” or a performance statement. This is basically a financial analyst in a box. And it’s pretty cheap.
Greg: Oh, this is magical. And this is free?
Sam: You get a certain amount of credits for free. It’s not that many credits, but —
Greg: This is great.
Sam: Yeah. That might be number two, and Comet might be number one. But it’d be close so far.
Greg: Yeah, I knew you’d like that one. You’re probably going to hate this next one, but I’m telling it to you anyway.
Tool 5: Realfarm (TikTok Content Automation) [00:34:00]
Sam: Okay.
Greg: The reason I’m telling it to you is there’s an arbitrage moment. I’m sure you’ve probably seen these slideshows on TikTok where —
Sam: I actually don’t use TikTok. But you can convince me. Though I think a lot of AI content is just garbage. Like, I’m a purist. I want Mr. Beast.
Greg: I bet you’ve liked and shared AI content but just haven’t realized it. The other day there was one where a guy made a fake potato launcher and shot it at a grandma, and it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
Sam: Yeah. Or like did you see Stephen Hawking on a ramp?
Greg: Yeah. Yeah, it’s great. So I guess I’m kind of being convinced in real time here.
Sam: Yeah. And I think a lot of what I’m showing here — these TikToks like “6 mistakes we made during pool planning and how to avoid them” — you would never think AI created that.
Greg: No, that looks real.
Sam: That looks real. Okay, so how do I fake the world?
Greg: Here’s what I’ll say. A lot of people are vibe coding software right now. But the hardest problem is: how do you get customers to that software? One way is to own a bunch of accounts on TikTok that you can send traffic to. So I believe there’s an arbitrage right now to use AI to create these accounts — basically like meme accounts — and then sell your software through them.
Greg: There’s a piece of software called Realfarm. This thing must do like $10K a month MRR or less — not many people know about it. But it’s a way to automate TikToks to drive traffic to your website.
Sam: Just TikTok, not Instagram?
Greg: I mean, you probably could upload it to Instagram, but from what I’ve seen it does TikTok the best. How it works is you can source images from, let’s say, Pinterest — Pinterest has tons of images. Let’s say you want to do a slideshow: “Top 8 protein sources ranked by bioavailability and cost.” You add a prompt and generate a slideshow. You can see the slideshow over here. These images are super clean. And the cool thing is that TikTok is promoting slideshows right now. You can just schedule and publish it. Within like 30 seconds you have a piece of content in your niche ready to schedule.
Sam: Wow, man. I have a friend that created an app — he helps men do Kegel exercises, which basically helps them not prematurely ejaculate during sex. And I was like, man, this is neat and all, but this is really hard to promote. I wouldn’t want to brag about using this app. And when you go to Realfarm — what is their URL?
Greg: Realfarm.
Sam: Realfarm. I see the companies who use it and I see A16Z and Substack and I’m like, really? You guys use this?
Greg: Yeah. I don’t know if they use it, but I do know that if you want to fight for customers right now and you want audiences, TikTok slideshows are a great way to do it. And why pay an agency thousands of dollars a month when you can just use a product like this?
Sam: You want to know something funny? Do you know who Steven Bartlett is?
Greg: I do.
Sam: Steven used to work for Shaan. He was like Shaan’s intern or something like that. And then he left to start his first business. And apparently Shaan tells this story — it’s public — where he had a bunch of Instagram handles like “things teens say about Georgia” or art history accounts where they just told stories about art history. And he would get all of them popular. Then you would spend money with him and his meme accounts would post your product, and within ten minutes it would go viral or rank highly in the app store. This is kind of the same vein.
Sam: And I’m teasing and making fun of it, but on Realfarm — he’s got this one where he uses old art to make these slideshows, and I watch those all the time. Like if it’s something about the top 10 strangest missing persons cases, I watch all of them.
Greg: Totally. That’s what I’m saying. We’ve watched this. There’s AI slop that’s cringe and looks bad, but some of these slideshows are actually good. And he also has a UGC ad avatar feature on Realfarm that I think is pretty interesting.
Sam: What’s that called?
Greg: It’s the same website, but they have a way where you select a template — let’s say this sleepy-looking guy in a hoodie — and you say, “Okay, I want to create an ad.” You come up with the hook using ChatGPT or Claude, or you can actually be creative yourself. You say, “My top three matcha brands.” You choose the background music, and then it creates it using AI.
Greg: Like, that looks real.
Sam: That looks real. So this guy is fake?
Greg: He’s a fake guy. Then you create the product video — you can use AI to create it, or if you want, you can create it yourself with an iPhone.
Sam: It does look like green paint, not matcha. But I guess because I’m staring at it.
Greg: Sherwin Williams’ new matcha brand.
Sam: That’s what it looks like.
Greg: Yeah, it’s not perfect. But we’re looking at it surgically. The average person just swiping in their brain-rotted frame of mind is probably not thinking, “That looks like paint.”
Sam: Yeah, they’re just mindlessly consuming and thinking, “I want to buy stuff.”
Greg: I want to buy stuff. And what’s an account like this worth if you’re just reviewing matcha brands and you have thousands of followers? That’s probably worth a lot of money.
Sam: This stuff — whenever I see it, the capitalistic side of me thinks this is awesome. And then I slowly start feeling like a socialist. I think, oh my god, we’re just a bunch of people in our homes just watching screens and buying dumb stuff from AI ads. Okay, that’s interesting though. Regardless of making fun of it, I think it’s kind of cool. What’s another cool one?
Tool 6: AI Apply (Auto-Job Applications) [00:44:00]
Greg: Okay, this one you’re also going to hate, I think.
Sam: Sign me up.
Greg: This is not just for you. It’s for people looking for jobs. There’s this thing called AI Apply. And if you go to the website, you can literally apply to thousands of jobs automatically via AI.
Sam: That’s crazy, man.
Greg: This is absolutely crazy. It also has an interview buddy — it helps you with real-time interview help, helps you build a resume, helps you build a cover letter. And obviously the core feature is the auto-apply thing.
Greg: Why I like this is — it’s my feeling that in our little tech bubble, the economy is good and everything. But people are suffering right now and it’s really hard to find a job. Any way you can find an unfair advantage to get in the room, I support. It does suck for the HR managers and the companies getting all these AI applications, I will say that.
Sam: That is insane, man. I hate this. But I get the need. It says it’s loved by 1 million users. So a million people use this?
Greg: A million people have used this. I actually tweeted asking what are some underrated apps, and the CMO replied with this. And some guy was like, “Yeah but if you’re the company getting these, this sucks.” And the CMO responded saying the next version of the product is helping companies filter out AI applications.
Sam: This is like if Nestlé owned the hospital. You know what I mean?
Greg: Yeah, exactly.
Sam: Like, we’re going to fatten you up, then give you medicine to make you skinny, then fatten you up again.
Greg: Yeah. It’s amazing, and it’s probably going to be a great business. And I’m always looking for the arbitrage opportunity.
The Ethics of AI Tools and Who This Is For [00:48:00]
Sam: I get the money-making perspective, and I think if you haven’t made your first dollar and you’re looking to do something, this is the future.
Sam: My business that made me money was a newsletter that had advertising in it. So I am no one to talk about any of this. But sometimes I see this stuff and I do get pretty bummed out. And I think this will always happen — I think older people will always look at younger people and say, “Back in my day we cared about our jobs, we were more craftsmen.”
Sam: So I’ll preface all that with that. But does any of this make you feel bad?
Greg: Yeah. Well, this podcast is called My First Million. So if someone is trying to get from zero to a million dollars, these are the tools anyone could use — there are no capital restrictions. You don’t need to be in Silicon Valley to win.
Greg: I grew up with no connections and not a ton of money and stuff like that. So I have a soft spot for people who are starting out going zero to one. That’s who I’m focusing on. That’s what I’ve dedicated my career to, really — being in the lightbulb business, helping people have lightbulbs so they can actually change the trajectory of their lives.
Greg: Now, I say that with — I don’t want to go on X and Instagram and see AI slop all day long. I love X and I love Instagram. And we have kids now, right? We don’t want our families to be addicted to these products. So I do feel a sense of responsibility. But I do think it’s interesting.
Greg: I think the generation before the internet came around, they probably said the exact same thing.
Sam: They said the same thing.
Greg: I think the generation before the industrial revolution said the exact same thing. Things tend to work themselves out.
Sam: This is the first time in my life that I’m old enough where I’m potentially on the wrong side of the curve. Like, are you getting on or are you getting off? Whereas if you’re a young person, you’re just born on. There was no “are you getting on or getting off” with the internet — I was born into it. That was just how I grew up. But now I’m old enough that I’m not defaulting into it, and I have to consciously learn about it. This is the first time I’ve experienced that.
Greg: Yeah. We are getting older, and we’ve seen some of these shifts. But what’s the difference between brain rotting on TikTok and watching TV for eight hours a day?
Sam: These tools are really cool. How many hours a week are you nerding out and finding all these interesting things?
Greg: One of the reasons I love the design agency is that we work with all the top AI apps to build out this stuff. So sometimes I just sit in meetings and it’s like, “Teach me everything about Character AI, teach me everything about Jasper AI, teach me everything about these tools.”
Sam: How many of them are you proficient in?
Greg: I spend probably ten hours a week playing with new tools every single week. And I’d say I’m proficient — I’m native — in about ten tools.
Closing [00:54:00]
Sam: Well, thank you for filling me in. It’s funny — for years I was the young guy. I was the person my parents would ask how to turn their internet on or plug their TV in because they think I’m a computer geek. But I was never actually that. And now I feel even further away from the AI epicenter. But I’m so happy I have friends like you who can pull me towards it a little bit, show me what’s cool, and not make me feel stupid for not knowing. That’s kind of the value you provided to our audience this episode. I appreciate you doing that.
Greg: It’s literally my pleasure. It’s an honor to do so. And like I said, I’m in the lightbulb business. So if you had one or two or three lightbulbs — even if some of the stuff you saw today was like, “That’s a little cringe, I wouldn’t do that” — there might be a way you can use some of these tools in a way that works for you. And that’s the important takeaway. So Sam, thanks for having me on and letting me share my nerdy stuff. I’ll see you next time.
Sam: All right, that’s it.