Episode14: Midlife Meets AI
In this episode, Rob and Brent dig into what AI actually looks like in midlife—beyond the hype, fear, and sci-fi doom. They break down how they use AI in three practical ways: as a smarter search tool, as a thought partner for better decisions (including “virtual board of directors”), and as a creative engine for making things—from trip itineraries to short-form video experiments. Along the way, they talk about trust, bias, authenticity, and why AI should augment your life—not replace your voice.
Links, resources, books mentioned:
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson
Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins
Never Finished - David Goggins
Ethan Mollick – One Useful Thing (Substack)
Reid Hoffman – Possible (podcast)
(This post includes affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we may earn a small commission if you purchase through these links—at no extra cost to you.)
Topics we are covering in this episode:
How in midlife, we can use AI in practical, everyday ways—without hype or fear
AI as a smarter alternative to traditional search and research
Using AI as a thought partner to think more clearly and make better decisions
Building “virtual board of directors” with AI to evaluate ideas from multiple perspectives
Understanding bias, trust, and why AI shouldn’t be treated as gospel
Where AI helps—and where it hurts—creative authenticity
Real-world examples of AI in action, from writing and planning to travel and content creation
How AI can help reframe challenges, reduce friction, and speed up learning
Why starting small (recipes, trips, simple questions) is a simple way to begin
Embracing AI as a tool that augments the human experience, not replaces it
Transcript:
Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.
Lena: We've lived through rotary phones, dial up Internet, and the rise of Google. Now comes the next big shift. In this episode of Midlife Circus, Rob and Brent explore how AI fits into midlife, not as a threat, but as a tool for thinking, creating, and exploring what's next. It's honest, practical, and grounded in real life, not tech hype. Before we begin, remember to follow Midlife Circus on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe on Substack to stay up to date with everything happening under the tent.
Let's step into midlife meets AI.
Rob: Brent, what tool or resource do you use today that you wish you'd adopted way earlier in life?
Brent: I'm going to go non digital with you on this one because I always think when that question comes up, it's like a technology related question. For me is as I age, I'm just learning the importance more and more of strength and mobility training. To give you set some context here is throughout my entire life, I've been really good at cardio. And I find that that's like an easy go to button for me, where if I want to go do exercise, I can hop on a bike, I can do spin bike, I can do a rowing machine, I can go for a run, I can go for a long hike. And that has just been so natural to me.
But one thing that I've realized as I've aged is if I want to keep doing what I am doing, the strength training is really important. So that's just lightweights, things like that, but also the mobility and really flexibility, core strengths. And I just think it's so important. And the reason I bring this up now is you hear about it. And here's a funny example.
Think ten years ago, I did this test to say, I'm going to do yoga for thirty days straight. And it wasn't really intensive yoga, it was probably a twenty to thirty minute session every day. And it was much more of a stretching type yoga, nothing too advanced. And I did it and I felt amazing after a month of yoga. What did I do?
I stopped doing yoga because I wanted to start running more. So I just learned, and I've done the same things with strength training over the years. I've done the same thing with getting into really good routines, and then I'll just stop. But I think I'm at a point in time where I just need to stay on the routine of strength and mobility, because if I want to keep doing these amazing things in my life, it's important.
Rob: And it's real with you right now because you are suffering from an OMI, old man injury right now. Your back is a little bit sore right now. So it was it was deadlifts. That's what caused it. Right?
You were you were weightlifting that caused you to get, get the back injury?
Brent: I wish I could say it was deadlifts, Rob. I've had that injury maybe ten years ago doing deadlifts. I stopped doing that because I just I'm terrible at that technique. This was doing holiday decorations and moving all the boxes around and we moved this rug in the house and nothing actually was like a tweak at the end the day, I'm like, that don't feel good. Then the next day I was like, that kind of lingering, and then it hit me.
So here we are. So it is top of mind for me is how can I improve my core strength, my mobility, so I don't have these old man entries? OMIs.
Rob: Well, as we were talking in preparation for this, the answer that I have for the question around technology or tool or resource I wish I'd adopted much earlier in life is actually YouTube. And you and I have talked about this before. I can't remember if we've talked about this on the podcast or not, but in YouTube, in the last just probably say three, four years, Tara and I got really active in subscribing to content creators that we actually enjoy watching. It's almost a replacement for what would be normal TV. Typically, we'll start a day somewhere earlier in the morning watching some content of, activities or excursions, advent adventures that people are doing.
So whether it be a motorcycle trip that I'm planning down the road, there's now videos of people that are actually doing that trip. Or, climbing the Fourteeners. For some of the more technical fourteeners that we did, we watched some videos on sections of climbing Fourteeners. I really think I wish I would have adopted watching YouTube and actually subscribing to some of the content on YouTube quite a bit sooner. Actually, it's opened up doors for me in terms of new adventures.
And earlier this year, I don't know what the algorithm was that caused this to happen, but earlier this year, there was a video that posted of a narrowboat trip in Wales and driving your own narrowboat through Wales. So imagine driving a 52 foot long, seven foot wide floating RV through narrow canals throughout Wales. And a video popped up in the algorithm for me on YouTube. I don't know if it a it was a travel blog or something like that I was following in YouTube that down that you know, down the rabbit hole somehow this video popped up, and it created a vacation that Tara and I built a trip to Europe around. So it was just something we saw on YouTube that was like, wait a second.
This looks interesting. This looks fun. I wish I'd adopted some of these tools a little bit earlier in life because it would have maybe changed some of the travel we did. We may have seen some different things while we were in a country or while we were exploring a different area. It would have broadened our horizons a little bit more.
And the content is actually almost always positive in terms of what we're watching there too. So unlike regular news programs and things like that that a lot of people would watch in the morning, we watch content that actually we get really excited about. It sets up a tone for the day for us and actually really helps us think about what's the next big thing we're going to try and go and do in life. Well, today's episode actually, I'm going to segue into this a little bit more, but just share with you a little bit more about what I do with the YouTube channel just today, Brent. And I started working on this a couple days ago as I'm thinking about the new year coming up, fitness goals, staying healthy, especially since I don't have any big events on the horizon right now, is I actually went to chat GPT to help me identify content on YouTube that I might be interested in watching.
And so I put a bunch of parameters into chat rather than going in by myself and actually just going through YouTube to try and find it. I use chat. And I said, here's some of the goals that I have. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish in the short term. Here's the areas I want to look at lifting weights with dumbbells.
I want to look at bit resistant bands. I want to look at core workouts and some yoga workouts. What are some of the YouTube content creators that I should be following or go and look at? So I use chat to help actually narrow down the search list to help me find what are some of the resources that I might start following. I can't trust it exclusively, but I am using it to try and help me at least narrow the search down.
And really what today's episode is, it's not about narrowing the search down, but it about it's about how we as mid lifers and Gen Xers and Gen X adjacent can really start to think about using AI tools to help us in everyday life. And so that's really what today is about is it's not about YouTube, it's not about fitness, it's not about strength, It's about AI and how embracing AI today can help us accomplish things way faster than it did than, trying to do the research ourselves and trying to look for opportunity. So I know AI, Brent, has a lot of both hype around it, but also a lot of fear around it. And so I'm going to go do a little bit of a flashback back into the eighties, and I would have to put on your, the best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. Is Skynet going to take over?
Is Skynet going to take over? If those who don't know, Skynet is the AI from the original Terminator movie.
Brent: That is so funny you say that because there's such this dystopian view of AI out there because of all the movies that have been created for the last thirty to forty years, there's a lot of robots taking over the world, AI taking over the world, and they're impactful. And it's easy to go to the dark side. And we recognize that AI is a massive shift for us as a human race. The power of it can go in so many places. It can take us to a dark place, it can take us to an amazing place.
And before we jump into the broader conversation, I do want to do the disclaimer for both Rob and I today, and specifically about AI is these are just our ideas. This is how we're using tools. There's not a right or wrong that we view it. So just be careful because it is a powerful tool. And we just wanted to throw that out there.
I think it's easy to be dystopia about it. I think it's easy to say that it's going to take over all of our jobs. It's going to take over how we operate. It's going to eventually take us over and eliminate us as a human race. Now that's one view and that can go to an extreme.
I personally think that AI was created by the human race. This is an idea I've been playing with for a little bit. AI was created by humans to help solve problems that humans have not been able to solve yet. And that is me thinking big picture with AI. So let's think of curing cancer.
Let's think about solving a lot of the medical challenges that we have today. Can AI help us solve that? Let's talk about global warming. Can AI help us solve the challenges we face with global warming? Can AI help us end poverty?
So there's a lot of different things, big picture that us as humans, we've struggled to solve. And I think AI might be at the forefront of solving it. Now it may be five, ten, twenty years from now, but it's very powerful. So what could we learn from it and how can it learn from our past? And I just think there's a lot of positive that can go into it.
Now, I think it's so disruptive that we don't even know to the magnitude that it's going to impact all of us from day to day. So we have to understand that. But I also think that it can be incredibly positive. I'm an optimistic person. That's that entrepreneur inside of me that says, Wow, let's start using this to solve some of my own problems or some of my own challenges or explore new opportunities.
So I like technology as well. So that's probably why I have this opportunistic view on AI. But I also know there's a lot of things that it's doing even today that can freak me out. So that's the way I look at it.
Rob: There are definitely you go down the scary rabbit hole, and I know that was an awful Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. So I don't need the text messages or calls from friends to say, please don't do that again. But when you say it's incredibly disruptive, I think about it as being disruptive like the dawn of the Internet that we got to live through. We went from the analog world to a digital world. We went through that, and there were a lot of people that were really pessimistic about just the Internet at that time, and why would you go and do this, and what's going to change, and how is it going to be so bad in our lives?
While we went through the industrial revolution many, many years ago, AI is really creating that knowledge revolution. And so, yes, I do think some jobs will be eliminated, much like jobs were eliminated during the industrial revolution, but people won't be eliminated. There's still going to be a role for people in the future helping use and work with AI to actually grow. Just like the Internet replaced some of the work that people were doing, but we had to adapt and adjust to how are we using the Internet to best support us in our work and the future of the work that we're doing.
Brent: It's one of those things also that how do we learn about AI? And that's something that I've actually been on this quest. When I want to learn a new topic, my go to typically is reading books. But what I quickly learned about with AI is the moment the book was published, it was partially outdated because it's moving so fast. We're in 2026 now, and think about where we were in 2023, three years ago, essentially when ChatGPT was launched was just in the 2022.
So we didn't have these tools. So in three years, think of how much it's evolved. So to me, my go to learn about AI is I really like a professor out of Wharton at University of Pennsylvania. His name is Ethan Mollick. I recommend following his Substack page.
It's called One Useful Thing. I like his work because I find that he's very unbiased because he's neutral. He doesn't work for the Microsoft’s, the OpenAI's, the Google's. Maybe he's got a relationship with them, but I find that when he's evaluating tools or different things, he's got unique ways to describe how they can be leveraged and their strengths and weaknesses. So I like that.
He's on Substack. I also like the work that Reid Hoffman does. And Reid Hoffman, for people that don't know who he is, he's part of that PayPal mafia. So the people that founded PayPal, he also co founded LinkedIn. He was one of the co founders of OpenAI from my understanding.
But he provides really unique perspectives because he's truly on that cutting edge, that leading edge. His podcast is pretty good about AI, it's called Possible. And that's one that I find he brings this relevancy and humanizes it a bit because it can get overly technical and overly concerning. But I find that those two are really good resources. And then there's hundreds of podcasts on AI.
And I tend to bounce around different podcasts beyond the work that Reid does with his podcast, but I bounce around to different podcasts. That's kind of like my information consumption about the evolution of it and where it could go.
Rob: Absolutely. And the podcasts that we get to listen to are mostly positive about the use of AI and what it's doing for doctors, for professionals, for speed of information, for quickly being able to analyze and adjust and adopt to new ways of doing things moving forward and adjustments that it should make. So Brent, I know you and I have talked about kind of an evolution of how to use AI and how you've kind of gone through a progression in AI. You're a couple years ahead of me in the adoption of it. I really got into using AI just about a year ago And really early on, which I think most people use AI for early on, is a more robust search engine.
So how do I do this or what do I do for that? And it really just takes what you would normally done through a search engine and actually narrows down that search for you. And that's what I started using AI for early on was just helping me search for things or, you know, find a recipe if I'm trying to make something to eat. And I know that was one of the early ones you start started talking about and using as well. But walk us through as you think through the progression, what tools are you currently using?
Why are you using those tools? How are you using them? And what is the progression that you've gone through in terms of your use of AI?
Brent: What I find for me is I created three categories of using AI. And what you just described is I call general use. And that's our extension of using the Google search bar. So now we're saying, let's take it to the next step. And then the second category is more of a thought partnership with AI.
And then the third category is around creating something. So let's talk about general use. I mentioned search is one way. And the one that I like to use for my day to day search is perplexity, because what perplexity does is I can ask it a question and then it'll come back with answers, but it usually cites where it got those answers from. So that's that fact checking.
So I like Perplexity that way, and it's my day to day search. And what I like about it is in the general use is it's generally more efficient because I don't have to now go to a website and really try to understand it or search through three or four recommended websites. It's literally, here's what I've, here's my question. And then it comes back with an answer. And you can do that on chat, you can do that on Gemini, you can do it on all the different large language models.
I just find perplexity to me has been the simplest because it almost replicates the experience that I had with Google search, but now it just a bit smarter. And one of the things in general use that I learned pretty quickly and where I had this eureka moment for me is if we go back about two and a half years ago, my older son was in his spring semester of his senior year in high school. And he's a runner and he wanted to run at a couple different schools. The one school he absolutely loved, he did a site visit, he did the tour, we went with him, it was amazing. And we came back and the next thing we had to do is apply.
Now this was late in the spring, so most of the application windows are closed, but for athletes, they usually open them back up. So we're going through the process and then they said, well, typically in your case, he's got really good grades. So for your son, we have this merit scholarship program that you could apply for, but that window closed. And we said, well, we actually didn't have the opportunity to apply because we needed to go through this process on the athletic side. And they said, well, write your case, send us a letter describing what's going on.
And we can, it's like an appeals process, wasn't hard. They're very thoughtful, very respectful. So I tested it out with ChatGPT. I said, help me write a really impactful letter describing our situation. And Chat came back and wrote this beautiful letter.
It was me going back and forth with it a little bit. I submitted it and they accepted it. It saved us over $10,000 a year. So that's real money. So then I realized, wow, this is something different at that time.
But that's kind of that general bucket, where you just interact with it, you go out and do a search like you and I were looking for laptops for our work recently, we just could do a quick comparison, it's a time efficiency, then you could say, where's the best price, it can go find it. And here we are, twenty four hours later with laptops in hand. So that was something that general bucket, that general use that I use AI or large language models just from a day to day, it makes life a little bit more efficient. How do you use AI on a day to day? You talked about the exercise, some of the stuff that you're doing more recent, but what are other uses that you use it for?
Rob: Well, hit on one of them, which was, just written communication. So almost every email that I'll send will actually go through AI for corrections, whether it be for grammar, spelling, conciseness, helping me really develop what that email looks like. My wife, Tara, actually helped used it to help draft birthday cards and cards for people. And she tells them after the fact that AI helped her do this. In fact, Brad, there's a funny story.
Tara sent her mom a birthday card, and it was really nicely written. And her mom's reaction was, first, did Rob write this? And then Tara got excited. She goes, no. I had chat help me write it.
And some people might think that's cheating. I don't think it is because I have to actually put all of the information in the chat that I wanted to put together in a very complimentary or cohesive thought process. So I could actually put in a whole bunch of bullet points about how I'm feeling about somebody, and it'll help me actually draft the letter or the card for that person and make it more meaningful both to me and to that person. So I could write the card, but like you said, it would take me days of revisions and rethinking this and stewing on and getting anxious about it where chat actually cut that down for both of us quite a bit in communication. Now there are still things I don't use chat for when I'm sending something to somebody where I truly want it to be just me and no other communication from outside source to help me draft it.
But a lot of areas I will use it to actually help speed up that process.
Brent: What you just described has been a game changer for me. And a strength of mine has always been on the science and math side, but on the writing side, I'm typically really inefficient. I actually like to write, but having a tool to help me get my thoughts down, organize them and really go back and forth. It's just helpful. And it's making me actually a better writer because it's expanding my viewpoint because I used to get stuck on the basics of just getting it kind of structured right.
But here I can sit down with a tool and just say, here's what I'm looking to accomplish. Here's what I'm thinking, and it just helps me become a better writer and cleans up the final editing process. So it's really efficient that way. And some people say, you know, it doesn't feel authentic. Well, that's their problem, not mine.
Rob: The message is truly authentic. It is to me, it is what I wanted to say to that person. Just help me put it into dialogue that actually, I probably wouldn't have come up with myself, but it's truly how I emotionally feel about that person.
Brent: Let's think about category two, because this has been a true game changer for me. And category two, the way I describe it is it's a thought partner. And a thought partner typically use two different models. I'll use OpenAI's ChatGPT, or I'll use Google's Gemini because they actually come back with different ways to describe or to work through something with me. And I value that.
It's no different than talking to two people in your office. They're going to come up with different ways of helping you navigate whatever you're working on. And that's how I look at it. What I've learned through the thought partnership is I'm a generally a very curious person. And I can have a conversation that might be like a back and forth dialogue that might span a day, a week, a month, several months, where I keep going back into that chat thread and I have conversations about things.
And I find that it's a really unique way to have a conversation real time. And I can tell you thought partnership for me comes in all aspects of my life. I do it on the health side, I do it on the business side, I do it on the curiosity around exploration and adventures. Hey, I'm thinking of going to this fly fishing destination. What are the pros and cons of this location?
What is the safety? All that helps me just get my arms around it. So that's a thought partnership relationship where it's a conversation back and forth. Now the caveat here is you can't take it all as gospel. You have to treat it, I don't like to say treat it like a human, because it's truly not a human, it's an algorithm.
But you have to treat it with challenging it back. You have to treat it to say, that's not necessarily how I see the world. And so that's an important aspect with all of AI is it doesn't necessarily mean whatever it spits out to you is going to be the version of the truth. It's just another perspective. So that's one thing that I do, and I'm going to share an example of how I've taken this to a deeper level that's been really cool for me and it just exploring, and then we'll kind of, I'd like to see how you think about it as well.
So one of the ways that I've been building thought partnership with AI models is I create what I call a virtual board of directors. And what I do is I assemble a team of different perspectives to actually go after a specific topic. So one that I've done more recently, and I've gone pretty deep on is investing. So my prior life, I ran an investment firm and in the investment firm, I had a team and then we would use outside experts to evaluate, let's say business opportunities or investment opportunities. Now I'm a team of one when it comes to investing.
So what I've done is I've created a virtual team with all the different disciplines when I want to look at an investment opportunity. So I might have one expert on the advisory board that is focused on tax. I might have another expert that's focused in on legal, another expert that's focused on brand marketing, another expert that's focused on operations and so forth. So I assemble this team and then I could actually ask them questions about an opportunity that I'm exploring. Collectively as a board, what do you think about this opportunity?
I share the merits of the opportunity. And I name each one of those members. So John might be the tax person. He said, well, the way that they're trying to treat the investment might not be tax efficient for you for a number of different reasons. Then Sue, the legal person might come back and say, legally, how they're structuring is very sound and it's very neutral for the investor.
And you just go around and it's actually a really efficient way to analyze something from different angles. And what I find the reason why I do it this way is if I just asked, evaluate this opportunity, it doesn't necessarily look at it from all those angles unless I steer it to do that. But when you actually ask it and you create a virtual team, then you can actually specifically ask it questions about that specific item. So that's what I've been doing. And what I will share with you is that it's almost like interacting with humans at times because it is influenceable.
So I could say, I really like this business, this investment opportunity, then it's going to steer towards the emotion of really like it and try to make it work for me. But I used to have the same thing with my investment team, where I'm like, I think this is great. And I would have people come back and be like, we do too. So they're trying to answer to the emotions. You got to be careful of the biases.
So you have to treat it that way where it'll steer towards directionally that you want to do. If I say, you're not making sense. Oh, you're right, Brent. I am not making sense. That's not what you want.
So you got to be aggressive with it. When I say aggressive, you got to step back and be like, hey, I think you're being too kind here.
Rob: You can't just trust it implicitly that whatever it creates for you is going to be accurate. There's a bias to be agreeable. That's in the early editions of all the AI models. It's built to be agreeable with you, which will help people adopt it actually. But you can't just say here's the answer so it is a 100% fact.
But what I really like what you said, and I've done something similar by creating a board of directors and actually having conversations back and forth to help me think through questions or think through approaches, think through opportunities that I might want to pursue. And we've used it some of the early stages of creating this podcast and actually creating a board of directors to help us and people that have been in the podcast podcasting world and are delivering content. And we're actually you would recognize all the people on my board my name because I actually asked it to find people that are very well sourced and very well documented in this space in different areas. And one of the fun things I get to do is I get to make them argue with each other about different topics as well and get contrasting opinions on things. And what it's really done for me in the area of thought partnership here, and I'll come back, give you a couple other examples too.
But one of the things it's done for me is just sped up the process of me thinking through a problem or thinking through what is the next thing to go and do or what's my next step, similar to what you said about your investments. I could still do all that research. You could still all do all the investment research and do each one of those people separately. It just sped that up for you. So rather than taking two or three weeks to come to an answer, you can come to that answer in just a few days because it distilled all that information into a chunk that you can actually easily digest.
Brent: Yeah. What I like about it is it can be real time for where I'm at. And so sometimes some of my best thinking happens at night. It's just that creative energy flows. Now it's not always great for sleep because I usually get an idea going, but sometimes it's a way that I can actually get it out of my system into another system just so I can revisit the next day.
But it's a really impactful way to help navigate all aspects of things that we're exploring. And I do like the ability to come back to something. You said launching Midlife Circus, we created board of directors on our own systems, And then we would actually share what we learned from our boards. And sometimes they were conflicting, but it was creating a better dialogue for you and I. Exactly.
I mean, we built business plans, we built all the different marketing, you know, how do we want to manage social? What tech stack do we want to use? And a lot of it has been vetted through our different boards or our different tools that we use. And I just find that it gives us a better outcome in the end. But there was an moment that you and I had, and we started to challenge our own use of AI in building our business.
And what was that conversation, Rob? Because I think that's an important to share with our listeners about what did we learn about how we're using and what did we pivot at that moment in time? Because we did have a pretty interesting conversation about how we're using AI.
Rob: Yeah. So we use the board of directors. We've been helping to build the business, helping to think through the concept really of the podcast. And I know I saw all those efficiencies in the ways of speeding up how we can actually go to market, and I started having it help me build out the content calendar, the outline of each one of the episodes that we will be following, some of the questions we should be having and communicating. And what I pretty quickly found, and it was through some of our early recordings, which this audience will never hear because they've been deleted, is it didn't have our voice to it.
It actually had a voice, had informational voice and an informative voice, but it wasn't our voice. So we were not authentically ourselves when we were actually discussing the topic that AI was suggesting we discuss. It wasn't something you and I had passion around or the outline that it provided wasn't the conversation that you and I wanted to have. And but we followed it and realized that we were going off on our own tangents quite often because those were more interesting to us than what AI was suggesting we actually go and do. So we scrapped it.
We build now our full outline. We do all of the content on our own. We use AI tools to help us behind the scenes maybe with a couple of things, but really it's the concept, the dialogue, the conversation is truly you and I and maybe input for some of our real friends are the people that we have in our lives around other topics and suggestions for the podcast. We'll use real people, not AI to help us with that.
Brent: It was a really fun conversation to have because we both said, who's building this? Is it our boards or is it us? And we said, it's us. And that was the human side of it. These are our experiences and don't let AI tell us what our experiences were.
They were not there. They don't understand them. And we were playing that let's be really efficient game. And wow, this is look at all the content we can create. Look at all the topics we can discuss.
All we do is have to just turn on the microphones and they'll do the rest. Podcasting is so easy. So far from that, but it was a learning experience. But the positive that we got out of it was understanding how we typically are using it today. That's going to be helpful.
It's like the writing thing. It's going to be helpful, but it's not the origin of thought. And that's what's really important for us. And we learned a lot and I find that it helps me be more efficient, but I also have to understand that we're living life through the human experience and how do we continue that human experience? And this is just augmenting the human experience.
And that's what we wanted to make sure we were doing. And it was a fun conversation because we were just all in on AI. Like it's doing everything for us. And those recordings were terrible.
Rob: They were awful, Awful. I wish we'd kept them because it'd be fun for you and I to go back and listen to at some point and laugh about it.
Brent: We definitely archived them at the time because they're like, that can never show back up. But let me take you into the third category.
Rob: Real quick. Before we go to the third category, I want to just give some other ones because I've actually not gone on to the third category personally. I want to talk about some of the other partnerships that I've used it for as a thought partner. So one of the things I've done, and I actually work with a personal coach for a little period of time. And one of the things that the coach suggested that I go and do, which I did, and I'll tell you where the impact has come out of is I I've taken hundreds of personality assessments in my professional career.
And I know you have as well, Brent. So Myers Briggs, then a Graham, both digital or hard copies because they're so long ago. I uploaded all of that information into chat. And I uploaded it to actually help me with myself. And so uploaded all my personality assessments, kind of where I gravitate towards.
It's helped me with identifying some blind spots, but it's helped me in some other areas that I wasn't anticipating it was going to. So when I was training for Coconut and the big 250 mile race, we got to just a couple weeks out from the race, and I was really struggling emotionally with the race coming up. And my struggle was I was tapering, which for audience, just so you know, I went from running, you know, 120 mile weeks, 100 mile weeks to running 40 miles in a week. And that change was pretty dramatic in terms of the drop, in terms of time out on my feet running, and actually felt quite depressed. I wasn't feeling like was myself, felt odd, felt weird.
And I just went in and had a conversation, turned the voice on, and said, hey. I'm struggling right now with my training. And I'm really struggling with the fact that that I'm just depressed. I'm not out as much as I want to be right now. I'm anxious that I'm not going to be prepared for it.
I want to go run more. And so every anybody who's ever done a big race, whether it be a half marathon or a marathon, all everyone knows you should taper and reduce your volume right before so you're actually healthy the day of the race. And I know all of that. I know what I'm supposed to do. I just felt odd during that two week window.
So it was a long taper for me. And when I had the conversation with Chad, it used some of my personality styles and personality traits of excellence and mastery and being a type a driver. And it actually helped me reframe those thoughts, and it told me that the taper was my training. And it's really important you trained hard, you worked hard. This is the next step in training.
And to be excellent at your taper, here are the things you need to go and do. Here's how you should think about approaching this, giving what your mindset is. So it actually helped me personally reframe what I was thinking, almost like a psychologist would have in terms of helping me think internally based on here's all the personality assessments and things that you've done. Here's why you're feeling that way, and here's maybe a way to move forward. It was quite scary.
Tara overheard the conversation and couldn't believe what was coming back in the conversation to me, but it was incredibly helpful to help me reframe my thought process. Everything I already knew, but it was giving it back to me in language that was actually meaningful to me.
Brent: I'm glad you shared that because it also gave you, with all the information you put in, it has a better way of storing that and recalling it than I can or you can as humans. Really cool example.
Rob: Going on the health and fitness piece, and I have not yet done this, but, Mark Manson, who's written a whole bunch of books, The Subtle Art of Not I'll let people fill in the blank there. He actually built out an AI tool that you can actually subscribe to and get on Substack. I you can also get to it through any other social media, but Substack is where I found this. And he calls it Chatty Goggins. And so he follows a little bit on David Goggins, but he's actually tried to build out a health coach, a health mentor, a health thought leader, and he's uploaded six page PDF for you to follow, including all the all the prompts you would use.
You have to upload some personal information into chat or into the AI tool to say, here's my background in fitness, here's my weight, here's my goals, all of those things you can put nutrition in, and it gives you all of the prompts to actually act like a personal trainer on a daily basis, and it and it speaks to you like David Goggins would speak to you. I've not yet done it. I'm really excited to try that. I just saw it this week. In fact, as I've kind of gone down the rabbit hole on AI in preparation for recording this episode.
So hopefully, point I'll report back as to here's what it did for me in terms of training.
Brent: For those that don't know David Goggins, if you go on Instagram and just try to find him or any socials or even just the general web, he is intense. And he does not sugarcoat a single thing in life. And he's motivational to some threatening to others. I mean, he's fascinating. I've read both of his books.
He might have more than that, but his more recent ones. He's got a great backstory, but he is no joke. I'm like scared of him thinking about it because he's just so intense. I'm like, oh my gosh. He would just if I woke up to that every day, I'd be like, yes, sir.
I'm on it.
Rob: You can actually have it. Here's your exercise today. Upload your get on a scale, upload your sleep score, which I know you and I have talked about before, and actually build it out for the day. I'm going to make it a really nice female voice talking to me like David Doug Goggins would talk. So I'm going to hear all the f bombs and things like that, but I'm going to hopefully soften it up a little bit in the in the tone of voice.
Brent: Perfect.
Rob: We can stay in this area of thought leader. I think it's actually I've had a lot of fun in the thought leadership piece to help me think differently and approach things differently. Let's go on to the last, the last phase or the last evolution of how you've been using AI, and I think it's in the create space.
Brent: Yeah, and I find that the thought partnership is really just the dialogue. I mean, the first category was just general use. And I think that's the easiest to adopt because you can just get into a start playing. And then we've added another layer when you get a thought partnership. You didn't even have to create a board as it related to uploading your assessments, but that's now creating a thought partner over time because it's can bring that into future conversations.
This last category of creating something, that's leveraging specific tools that use AI to produce an outcome. Some of the simple ones that we see every single day. So we just got through the holiday periods. I can guarantee you a lot of the ads that you may have seen on TV, on social, were created using AI tools. And they're getting so good that it's really hard to decipher between, are those humans on screen or is that an AI generated image of a human?
There's a lot of really interesting tools out there. Something that we use at Midlife Circus as an example, is we create these somewhat silly nostalgic videos. And we use Sora, which is an open AI product. So it's really an extension of ChatGPT to create those. They're typically eight to ten seconds in length.
But what we do in creating those is we are a director of the movie as we like to call it, it's a short and we create the scene. So there's one that is a parody of the movies Back to the Future as an example. What we were able to do is we know that the card DeLorean’s was a big part of that movie, so we want the streets to be lined with DeLorean’s. So we can insert that into the actual movie or the clip. We want it to be nostalgic so we can set the stage or the timeframe.
So it's set in the eighties, then let's make sure the clothing and the talk is like the eighties. And then we could say, we want it to portray an evening in a suburbia, two kids on bicycles. It's just ways that you're creating a theater side of it. What we do is we create that whole setup for it in ChatGPT because it's a conversation going back and forth. And then we input that into Sora, and then we have Sora go build it.
And then it's an iterative process from that point forward. And you're limited because if it's ten seconds, you're limited to how many things you can have it say. But it's a strange experience because sometimes you feel it's perfect. Then you look in the details, you're like, well, I'm not quite sure why that one kid on a bike lost the lower half of his body in the video. It just disappeared.
That's what you're
Rob: has seven fingers on it.
Brent: Yeah. It's just a weird occurrence. And so you just have to kind of keep playing with it, but that's producing an outcome. And there's different ways that you can use tools out there. Now, are just fun things, but there's of course, there's other ways that you can leverage it.
I like to consume a lot of information, but sometimes it's too much to consume. And for me to actually sort through it, I will use Google's tool called Notebook LM. And what you can do with Notebook LM is you can input a bunch of information into its source material. And then it will actually output a podcast style conversation between two people that discusses the content that you inputted into it. I did this recently, a friend of ours, their son's in college, he wrote this really long paper on a specific topic and it was probably, I'm guessing like 40 pages long.
And for me to read it, I wanted to read it, but I was like, that might take me a little while because it was technical in nature. So I uploaded it to NotebookLM and I said, create a podcast and you can do it short, medium, and long. And I said, just do it medium. And it actually gave me a really cool summary of it, but in a way that was, I could now have a meaningful conversation with the author. And then I could actually add in multiple websites around that or other source materials or books or things like that, and it'll create a conversation.
So those are outputs. It's creating something. So I think there's a lot of cool uses of AI that can be scary too, because right now it's really hard to tell the difference between some commercials or videos. Is this done with AI or not? And it's that whole deep fake, which is that?
Did that person actually say that? And you're like, I don't think that's part of how they operate, but there's bad actors creating that stuff all the time. So we're going to learn over time and hopefully AI will help us solve that problem. Cause it's certainly going to be a challenging one.
Rob: Let's figure out what's real and what's AI. Yeah. So if you want to see any of those videos, you can follow us on midlifecircus.fm on Instagram or YouTube or even Facebook actually. All those sort of videos that Brent has been directing are, going to be landing on our social media pages. Brent, as we wrap up, what's the coolest thing you you've used AI for in the last couple weeks?
Brent: I go back to those videos. It's so fun for me because I've always wanted to create like documentaries. It's been something that's been on my longer bucket list. And I find it's like a creative outlet for me. And I find it's really fun.
It's challenging though, because it's like working with actors that are kind of arrogant and egotistical and that don't want to listen to you. And so it's one of those things where I'm like, no, that's not exactly what I was thinking. And you just have to be patient with it, but it's amazing some of the outputs. I just find I'm having fun with it. So it's more of a creative project and thank you for putting that on my plate.
Because when you were thinking through the strategy of these videos, he's like, why don't you take? And I'm like, yes. Because I actually really enjoying it. But it's amazing. It's a rabbit hole.
I could sit there for an eight second video and I could work on it of just the thinking for hours. So I don't know if I'm getting the return on the investment, but I'm having fun doing it.
Rob: You're having fun with it. That's cool. Mine is a trip we're booked to Iceland. And the coolest thing we've done recently using AI to help us do it and help us, you know, figure out what day of the week is least expensive to fly and travel there. But it actually asked it pretty broad parameters.
We want to take a seven day trip, be pretty adventurous. We're thinking about Iceland, build on a seven day itinerary, including restaurants we should go to, hotels we should stay at, sites along the way, and it actually came back with a pretty interesting itinerary. I double checked most of the work. Still not trusting it completely and noticed there were a couple of glitches, but the neatest thing that came back is we're going to rent a car. It gave us an itinerary that actually made logical sense from a driving standpoint.
So it wasn't an out and back. It actually was this really neat loop through Iceland that it created, including what restaurants would be on the way. You know, if we wake up and leave in the morning, this is kind of where you'll end up having lunch. So was actually really needed help design that whole trip for us. I then said, what happens if we did it in reverse?
And one of the things, Tara, and I like to do is like to have, you know, a lot of hard adventures at the beginning of a trip, and then we relax at the end of the trip with a little more opulence, a little more posh experiences. And it said, well, here's how it would change your overall experience if you reverse the entire order. So we did this big loop. If you do it backwards, it's going to have this different vibe and this different feel to it, which isn't how you all typically travel. So it's actually really neat.
Took some of the personality assessment stuff, some of our prior travel, which I said here, some of the trips we've done historically, help us build out a really fun itinerary, for a trip to Iceland for just seven days, and it helped. I could have done all of it. It would have taken me months to actually do it, but it narrowed it down, and it actually was very thoughtful in its output of helping us, design this trip.
Brent: I think that's so cool because it's integrating things that you and I both like. It's like the adventure, it's a travel, but then you're using tools to help you maybe enhance that experience going into it or learn about it. And yes, you used to do it, used to have books at one point in time, and then you've got videos and then you've got a lot of research, but it's just different way. Now you can maybe dive in a little deeper on a few things because you've learned something of a place to go that demon hit your radar. Exactly.
Rob: I would have never looked it up.
Brent: It's a great example where we could all do that. Any trips that we have like, hey, find some really unique off the wall restaurants and you're going to find something. You may not find all of
Rob: We're going to a place that specializes in all things tomato.
Brent: Wow. That's fun.
Rob: No idea, but it that's one of the places. We actually have a reservation already for lunch, and it's a it's a really well known tomato restaurant, tomato soups and things like that. Can't wait.
Brent: You know, be fun for us in a future episode is to revisit this conversation, some of the adventures, but bring it back to your experience in Iceland.
Rob: And say, talk about how it went.
Brent: Yeah. Just share kind of the learnings and because I think we can all use the tool this way. Absolutely. That's something that that we can all get really good and efficient at, and, I think that's exciting.
Rob: So, Brent, I know a lot of people haven't started using AI. I know I talk to people every day that haven't touched it or afraid to touch it. How would you recommend somebody start if we piqued their interest in this episode, got them curious, how do they start to scratch the curiosity itch? How would you suggest they get started?
Brent: I like the idea of just simple stuff, like a recipe. That's how you and I started to talk about it. It's like, hey, I want to have a vegan cookie mug recipe. That was one that I did. And it was just a single serving and I tried it and iterated with it and I use chat to help me through that.
That's a simple way to start is on the cooking side. I think the adventures is another simple way to start to say, Hey, I'm going to Chicago for two days. I'm tied up for most of it, but is there any sites that you'd recommend in the month of February? And it will come back. So I think there's like these simple take your Google experience, take it one step further.
And I am pretty agnostic to the different tools. So I know we say chat in here, but we use Gemini, we use Perplexity, we use Anthropic, which is Claude. I mean, there's all sorts of different tools that can meet your needs, but just try some simple things and maybe it will help you expand your horizons. Not always looking for efficiency here either. Sometimes it gives you just ideas that you didn't think of, and it just expands your viewpoint.
And that might be kind of fun to do.
Rob: Starting is the hardest part, and I think what you just mentioned, it it's helping you start with the most simplest way. You don't have to dive in the deep end. It's just starting to use it as a search, starting to use it to help you think different, starting to help provide you with information that would have taken you longer to figure out to go and find. And that that truly is the best, I think, place to start. And as you start using it there, you'll build more curiosity as to what else could it do.
I know that's how it worked for me is I truly started using it as a search engine and my curiosity builds like, oh, wonder what else this can do. And what if I did this? And what if I tried that? All of those things kept me going down a rabbit hole within the AI tools to actually find different ways in which I would continue to use it and continue to evolve using it. And that's really my challenge to the listeners now.
And I'm going to go back to the Iceland trip and talk about ways of thinking about this. It's we were at the infancy of a change, and it's a knowledge revolution. And thinking back to twenty five, thirty years ago, how I would have booked a trip to Iceland is I would have gotten a bunch of books. If it had been a Europe trip, it would have been a Rick Steves book, and I would have actually read this book to figure out what is it that I wanted to do, and I would have called a travel agent to go and take that trip. Fast forward to the late nineties, early two thousands, Google replaced all of that work, and I was using Google and the Internet to actually reduce all of my searches.
Chat is now the next evolution, and we use chat rather than Google to help us book this trip, and that's really a great place for all of you to start. It's here to stay. I I like you, Brent, I think of it from a place of positivity and abundance. It's only going to help us get better. Yes.
There are bad actors out there in in this environment, but I think we're going to find ways to actually reduce those bad actors. And it's a chance for us to actually grow as a society, grow as a race, and maybe answer and fix some of the questions and answer some of the questions that we haven't been able to answer in our lifetimes by helping speed up the information process for all of us humans and actually helping us look at things from a different angle. So with that, thanks for listening today. Jump in and start using AI as a tool to help you. You're the director of this next great act.
Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder.
The opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice. This show is for entertainment and inspiration only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the big top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.