Using AI

Last week, power users of AI went hard on getting nice messages from ChatGPT with the following prompt:

“From all of our interactions, what is one thing you can tell me about myself that I may not know about myself?”

ChatGPT gave back answers like this.

Nice, warm and fuzzy, but hardly a method to improve yourself.

Here is how you can prompt ChatGPT to make you better after this first question:

1. Use the prompt - “What are some of my blind spots, and what could I do to prevent them from hurting me in the future?”
   
   You’ll get a list of the following things you need to work on, which will largely contradict the nice things it says about you earlier.

   

2. If you agree with what it says about you, use the following prompt - “ Given the above blind spots, please suggest how I should write my prompts to avoid these in the future.”

   

The suggestions it gave me were, for the most part, good, but some of them were too fluffy.

AI is like any technology; the user needs to gauge the feedback critically and choose what is and isn’t useful for you.

Hiring Code

In 1900, it took over 100,000 people to build a billion-dollar company. Instagram did it with 13.

How? Code. It scales infinitely and can automate almost anything.

It seems crazy now, but as recently as 2018, we weren't automating anything at Compound. Since then, automation has helped us triple our membership base and reduce our head count by half.

Across administration, operations, marketing, and sales, we're now running over 200 individual automations at Compound, completing thousands of actions each month.

Last time I checked, almost 200 hours of work were being handled every week without us lifting a finger—equivalent to over five full-time employees for less than $500 per week.

And I'm constantly looking for more opportunities. Just an hour ago, I set up six automations to improve our members' onboarding experience.

With the rate AI is progressing, maybe the whole operation will run itself one day. Sayonara, Ben. JJ’s.

I'm rambling a bit, but the point is, in 2024, you have to take advantage of automation. Zapier, Cheat Layer, Order Editing, Gorgias—whatever the tool, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you're using them.

They provide a significant advantage over anyone who isn't.

It's simple:

1. Find repetitive tasks.

2. Write down how they're done.

3. Find code that will do them for you.

The 2010s were the decade when small businesses finally got online, and the 2020s must be the time they start putting code to work.