The Man Who Mastered Claude: The Fastest Way To Build Your First AI Agent To Save Time (Live Demo)

1. 0:00 – 2:06

   Intro

   1. CJCalum Johnson0:00

      You said, "Claude is my ecosystem. It's the system through which everything gets done on my computer." You then went on to say, "I touch my keyboard and my mouse as little as possible at this point." And so Matt, my question to you is if someone clicked on this video with this desire to save time and automate tasks using Claude, what will be the value if they stay and listen to us until the end?

   2. MEMatt Ebso0:29

      By the end of this conversation, I would love for people to be able to walk away with the high-level understanding of how they can basically treat Claude like, uh, their intermediary with their computer, like your first hire, uh, if you're growing a business or if you're just trying to find more time in your personal life. I think Claude, even ChatGPT, Hermes, and some of the other ones out there are a great first step into the world of hiring an AI agent who can take on tasks for you in your life.

   3. CJCalum Johnson1:02

      That's so good. Can you do me a favor, Matt, and just take us, like, behind the scenes for a second? Like, if I'm, if I'm at your desk or, like, in your office, what exactly does that even look like? And then what has been the value of that process of touching your keyboard and your mouse as little as possible?

   4. MEMatt Ebso1:20

      Yeah, so you see this mic in front of me? [laughs] This is-- This mic and my screen here are-- have become my, my interface these days. So the-- So Claude has a built-in microphone button where you can transcribe to it. What I try to do is just as much stream of consciousness work as possible. So I think about things, I, I transcribe it to Claude. I might have to hit send myself, that's the little as possible part. Um, but ultimately, I, I try to let Claude do as much of the driving as possible. Well, now we've sort of come to this era where you can keep it really simple. You can just turn on a mic button and talk to your computer, and your computer will figure out the rest. It'll figure out what you're trying to

2. 2:06 – 5:23

   How Claude saved me $20,000

   1. MEMatt Ebso2:06

      say. It'll figure out what you wanna do. Uh, and it just does it for you. And so, yes, Claude is running on my Mac, and my Mac is technically my operating system, but functionally for me, my agent is my operating system. Um, for example, uh, I have a lot of context on this computer. I have a lot of personal files, I have emails, and I've, I've given my agent access to a lot of this stuff. And so, actually, shortly after our last conversation, I, I, uh, sort of dug in deep with how much further can I push this? And, well, let's just put it this way, my agent found a way for me to save $20,000 this year. [laughs] Actually, several ways that kind of combined to make it so that I saved $20,000. It's got access to my email. Uh, it's got access to a year's worth of projects and context. It's got access to bills and conversations with my accountant. So I spent maybe an hour just brain dumping into the computer, just talking at it, telling it, "Here's what I'd love to happen. I need a rockstar personal assistant. Here's the things I would like to happen. I, I can take care of things in my personal life." And that was the whole prompt I ga- gave it, was, "Find things that maybe I'm not thinking about. Dig deep, do research, go, like, find abstract ways to potentially improve my life." The, the, the point is the depth, not, uh, to necessarily just find the easiest thing to do and do it. And after a couple iterations of sort of refining the prompt, getting it to work just right, uh, I woke up one morning and it was like, "Hey Matt, did you know that if you just filed this one tax form, you could save $18,000 this year?" [laughs] What? And it's like, "Oh, and by the way, I've got the, uh, email, uh, all set up in your drafts, ready to just hit send to your accountant to just make sure it's all good to go. Should, uh, should I send it?" It's like, "I don't know. Let me check the email out first." [laughs] So I read it, and I was like, "This all makes sense." I sent it to my accountant. He goes, "Oh yeah, that works." [laughs] So filed the tax form and, well, $18,000, uh, lighter, uh, that, uh, my [laughs] expense records will show this year, which is kind of cool. Next day, it sort of did the same thing. It said, um, "Oh, by the way, did you know you're paying double on your electric bill from what new customers should be getting and able to get?" I said, "No." [laughs] I had no idea. So my AI was going through my email and said, "Huh, that rate looks unusually high. Hey Matt, did you know if you just clicked these few buttons in your portal, you could cut your electricity bill in half going forward?" "Okay. Sure. Why not?" [laughs] So that's what I mean when I say, like, the AI is my operating system. I, I just kind of tell it the outcomes I'm looking for, the depth I'm looking for. I give it plenty of context, and then it goes and just does the work. I don't sit there and manage it. I don't tell it, "Hey,

3. 5:23 – 16:04

   Claude does my work by 10am

   1. MEMatt Ebso5:24

      uh, I'm going to type something at you. Give me a response right now." You can do that, that's fine, but the real magic of all this stuff, uh, happens when you, you treat it like you're making your first hire, your first AI agent hire, where you work through what is the job. You give it plenty of context. You train it. Then you say, "Okay, cool. Here's your schedule. I'd like to show you-- Uh, I'd like you to show up for work at these hours." [laughs] And then you, you treat your role in the whole thing like you're the manager of this new hire. Um, and when the work comes back, you review it and say, "Oh, great. This is what went well. This is what didn't go well. I'd like you to save this for the next time you do it."

   2. CJCalum Johnson6:07

      You know what, Matt? It's like I get Passionate about it because I think about the, the person that's listening that has like a-- they have a, a family, but because of their work and all the commitments that they have, it feels like every hour of their day is just taken up. Like, they're so busy and they're doing these repetitive tasks, and it's like they want that time back so they can spend it with their family. Or even someone that's like, they're really involved in their job, but they've always wanted to start a business, even if it's just on the side. But it's like they never had time to start a business 'cause they spend all day working, and then when they get home, they're, like, exhausted. And I think about how, like, what we're gonna show and go into could save them time. You even mentioned how it's, like, saving you money. And so it's just-- I, I think that, um, it's cool to me everything that's possible. And it's funny because you and I, we were speaking before this, and one of the things that I asked you, I was like, "Given your background and how you started, like, how did you even get into using AI in the first place?" And your-- the answer you gave was very unexpected because you, you mentioned, uh, a book, which honestly, like, I read-- the, the book I-- that you were referring to, I read a few years ago, and that was The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. And so when we talk about saving time and automating tasks and even, like, getting a level of autonomy and freedom back into your life, quickly for people, can you just-- why, why was that book the starting place? Like, what did that book fire off that led to you, like, all of these years now, you're using Claude in the way that you are? Like, just quickly map out that inspiration point for people.

   3. MEMatt Ebso7:52

      Sure. So very high level, if someone hasn't read that book, the sort of core principle that's put forth right in the beginning is this idea that the traditional idea of being rich or wealthy was to have a lot of money, to have a lot of stuff, where now more and more and more, there's this idea of new wealth or new wealthy, and that is defined by your time freedom, your options, how much you can choose to do because you want to. And that whole idea just resonated with me, the idea of I, I, I don't need to have a big balance in my bank account. I just need to have enough going on for income sources that, uh, the things in my life are just handled, and I can live my life the way I want to. I think that's what inspired me. And he gets into a framework, um, delegate, automate, eliminate, or some people go the other way around. But I, I think of it kind of top-down. So you gain back time in your life by taking responsibilities off your plate, [chuckles] basically, the things you're doing that y- like, if you didn't have to do, you wouldn't. Um, and so the first step is you delegate. You ask, "Is there anything in my life that someone else can do?" Start with those things, you know. Get someone else doing them. At the time that book was written, that was very much a human. [chuckles] Um, is there something that somebody else can do? Now, here's the thing. You don't stop there. You should never delegate something that could be automated because that's a better use of your time and money. If it can be automated and a human doesn't have to remember to do it all the time, even better. If it's programmed to just happen, great. Now nobody has to think about it, [chuckles] not even the person you've hired. But then you take it a step further. Is there anything in your life that you can truly just eliminate? And a lot of things should go to die in that category. A lot of us are probably holding onto too much in our life that, you know, we're just carrying around and doing because we feel like we have to. But, honestly, the, the goal is to try to push as much as possible into that eliminate category. And then sort of for the things you can't totally eliminate, all right, let's automate them. And for the things you can't totally automate, all right, we'll delegate to another person. And then if you can try to push as much down that funnel as you can, it frees up a lot of time in your life for whatever you want.

   4. CJCalum Johnson10:19

      You know what, Matt? It's, um-- And it's funny that you mention, um, we spoke about The 4-Hour Workweek, and I've been reading this book at the moment, uh, called 10x Is Easier Than 2X by, uh, Dr. Benjamin Hardy. And one of the things that he mentions in that book, even with The 4-Hour Workweek, you talk about time freedom and, like, having-- being wealthy but in terms of your time, not just your bank balance. And the problem is for a lot of people, and this is when, like, the business stuff comes in, is we spend so much time in the muck. It's like very little time doing the thing that we actually love to do, like the, the unique ability, the thing that lights us up, the, the thing that, like, if we just did that and perfected that, we would get paid a ton of money to do. What I want to do, Matt, is if you share your screen and we just share-- Because I think one of the things that came across when we spoke is just the variety and the sort of tasks that you have automated away back to that, like, the delegate, automate, eliminate. Like, you've automated away using Claude. That would be completely unexpected. You know, I remember you even mentioning, like, your, your haircuts and stuff is now happens on a schedule. If you could share your screen and just show us high level, and we can kind of just jam on it and, um, go from there.

   5. MEMatt Ebso11:38

      Yeah, of course. Here, I'll pull up the screen share now. So for example, in my, in my daily life, sometimes I get so caught up about doing all the stuff that I really like. I love working with AI. Um, with, with my, uh, day job, I work at Metics Media producing software tutorials. I just love to do that and spend all my time doing about that. Uh, and I forget to do some basic self-care things. Like, I gotta look good on camera, right? Um, but sometimes I forget to book a haircut, and then by the time I remember to do it, it's like I needed a haircut two weeks ago, to be honest. And by the time I can actually get into a place that I like, ah, my hair's gonna be even longer. So I had the thought, what if I just didn't have to do that anymore? So you can see my screen here, and I'll, I'll kind of walk you through how I, how I would do this, uh, today. And I'll, I'll even let it know that this is sort of a fictional scenario here because Claude has so much context about my, my life that if I put in a city that I'm not in right now, it's gonna go, "Is this a demo?" [laughs] It knows. Um, so I'll just let it know ahead of time it's a demo. So here's an example. Let's see if I can dictate. Pick a city, any city.

   6. CJCalum Johnson12:49

      London. I have to go with where I'm from.

   7. MEMatt Ebso12:52

      London. Uh, pick a neighborhood. Let's get real specific.

   8. CJCalum Johnson12:53

      Oh, let's say Hackney.

   9. MEMatt Ebso12:56

      Hackney?

   10. CJCalum Johnson12:56

       Yeah.

   11. MEMatt Ebso12:56

       Hackney?

   12. CJCalum Johnson12:56

       Hackney.

   13. MEMatt Ebso12:57

       Hackney, London. All right. All right. So let's do this.

   14. CJCalum Johnson13:01

       Okay, quick break. Claude Code built me this next gen Zap inside of Zapier that completely automated a task that I was doing myself that I hated. And because this automation runs directly on Zapier, it's way cheaper than having an AI agent do it, and it never fails to do it correctly. And so let me show you how I would set this up correctly. And so to give the behind-the-scenes for a second, before every recording that I have with a guest, we will do a pre-call and we'll agree on things like the best day and the location on that call. And then what happens directly after that call is I'll have to write out notes and send my guest booker all of these details so that she can then arrange all of the logistics. And this process, even though it took 10 minutes, it was really frustrating and I just wanted to automate it. And so what I did is that I connected Claude to Zapier, and then I simply described this task and then had it build it as a next gen Zap inside of Zapier. And so after answering a few clarifying questions and going through that process, it built the next gen Zap for me. And so what that means is that once I've done a pre-call, the next gen Zap has automatically written the Slack message and sent it to my guest booker so that she can then arrange all of the logistics. Nothing happens on my side of things. And this is just one example of an automation that is now happening in my business and in my life using Zapier. And so if you wanna try it out and start getting time back and not having to do every single task in your work by yourself, then go to the link in the description and start using Zapier today. I just built an AI avatar of myself with HeyGen, and if you're a solo founder who wants to grow your brand and business with content, you have to see how it works. Hey, Avatar Calum, what are the core principles when it comes to building an audience that buys? Hey, Calum. The first principle is that people buy from people they know and trust, and trust comes from familiarity and giving value. The more often someone sees your face, hears your ideas, and learns from you, the more likely they are to buy from you. But the problem, as you know, is that posting high-quality video content takes a ton of time and effort. That's where I can make things easy for you. Record yourself once, and I can help you stay in the feed without worrying about filming every day. So that's HeyGen. You can just record yourself for 15 seconds, and you've got an avatar that makes videos of you on demand, so you're in the feed daily, getting in front of potential customers without actually having to film daily. And so we talk a lot about finding your competitive advantage on this show, and this is one of the tools that will give you that edge. 30 million people use it, including solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100 right now. And so if you wanna get started using HeyGen, your first three videos are completely free when you go to heygen.com/calum. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N.com/calum, C-A-L-U-M. Thank you to HeyGen for sponsoring this episode. Let's get back to the show.

   15. MEMatt Ebso16:02

       All right, so I'm currently staying

4. 16:04 – 23:04

   [LIVE CLAUDE DEMO STARTS]

   1. MEMatt Ebso16:04

      in Hackney, London, and I wanna make sure that I have a haircut lined up every two months so that I never forget about it. So what I would like for you to do is find me the best barber who works with, uh, fine blonde hair. Uh, make sure that they're experts, uh, based on their reviews. Make sure that they're super easy to book online, and then I want you to figure out a way where you can schedule with them on my behalf every two months. And I don't really care if the barber changes month to month. If you find a different barber one month, uh, because the last one wasn't available, that's totally fine. I just don't wanna have to think about this anymore, and I trust you. You are my rockstar personal assistant, and you can just handle it. I trust you to figure it out. So don't, you don't need to come back to me and ask for my opinion. I want you to just find, if you were a human, who would you have cut your hair? So let's start by go ahead, uh, and identify the process by which you're going to do this, and then when you're done with that, let's go ahead and turn it into a recurring scheduled event. And let's set that first event to happen in, uh, five minutes from now once you're done. How about that? And then the part I have to tell it. And by the way, this is a demo because I'm on The Calum Johnson Show. [laughs] All right, cool. So let's run that. And this is gonna take a while. Right now-

   2. CJCalum Johnson17:37

      You know what, Matt, just as it's going through that, I, I... A few things I just wanna point out and kind of have you elaborate on, 'cause I, I noticed. First of all, to do a lot of this and, and a lot of the stuff that you're gonna show, you're using Cowork, right?

   3. MEMatt Ebso17:50

      Yes. Cowork and, uh, Code, depending on the task, and I can explain the difference for people if that's where you're leading us to.

   4. CJCalum Johnson17:57

      Uh, w- well, I was gonna go there. Before I go there, a couple of parts of the prompt that I just wanted to pull out, and even you can elaborate if there's certain parts that are, like, more important than others, 'cause I know when it comes to this, people are always wondering about the prompt, which I think is why it's so good that we just shared the screen. I thought that when you said to it, um, like, "No need to come back to me for, like, approval," because sometimes when you're... it's doing tasks like this Naturally, it will always ask for permission, which is good. But if you want it to run in an autonomous way, it's, like, actually helpful to have that taken out. And then the second thing I liked is when you said, um, if you were a human or if you were like me and you were deciding, like, which barber to go with, like, kind of use almost that as, like, your way of making the decision. Um, can, can you talk through that line? Like, was that important for you?

   5. MEMatt Ebso18:53

      Yes. So by default, a lot of these AI agents, they don't wanna do anything wrong. You, you'd have to give them permission to take the reins and do their thing. Uh, it's like, imagine if you showed up at a workplace, you knew you were hired, but you really weren't given a job description. Just imagine one day you wake up, you don't know who you are, you don't know what your job is, but you've, you've arrived at this workplace and been told to work [laughs] . Okay, well, what do I work on? Um, book me a haircut. Well, okay, what kind of h- barber do you like? What kind of, uh, what, what's your style? Like, what are you going for? Like, you're gonna ask all these questions, right? And so just, that's kind of how the AI is. People think when they have a conversation with Claude, that Claude is actively keeping track of the conversation, but that's not what happens. When you have a conversation with Claude, every time it's like this super genius who has amnesia wakes up and has to review all the context to understand what it's supposed to do. So when you give it tasks, you, you can't assume it knows anything that you want done. For example, I know if I was just showing up at a workplace and I had amnesia and I had no idea what was going on, someone, and someone said, "Book me a haircut," I'd ask a lot of questions. So I, I just try to think about the things that would, um, keep the AI from asking those questions in the first place, and that's just good delegation and just saying, "You know what? You don't have to come back to me and ask. This is a pretty low-risk task. Just go for it. Figure it out."

   6. CJCalum Johnson20:29

      You know what, Matt? I'm kind of curious, even while this is kind of running in the background, are there any other examples that you have of just, like, how you're using Claude right now to either save time, uh, either in your business or personal life and, like, automate tasks? Um, even things that you've already done, maybe just showing people, like, what's possible.

   7. MEMatt Ebso20:51

      So, [lips smack] uh, my wife and I were living in Bilbao, Spain earlier this year, and before that we were in Barcelona. Globally, it's sort of well-known that Barcelona has a very difficult, uh, housing problem at the moment. It's, it's very challenging to find an apartment. And so we had even considered hiring a personal shopper who could just go and, like, we'd just pay them, like, one or two months' rent or something to figure out how to get us into an apartment, 'cause we'd go on Idealista, the kind of big platform, uh, for Spain for finding housing. And we'd s- we'd find a place, we'd love it, we'd send a message, and we'd realize we're in a queue with quite literally 1 to 2,000 other people who also loved that apartment and wanted to get into it. And we'd never hear back, because why would you? [laughs] Uh, with that many people reaching out. Until eventually we'd get some sort of canned message from the agent saying, "Oh, yeah, that's not available anymore." I kind of figured that. So, um, what we ended up doing was putting together a Claude routine. So it was another one of these brain dumps. We just sort of said, "All right, you know what? I would love to have you just handle this task." I-- It, it seems like it's a full-time job. There are too many apartments that go on the platform and within an hour have 500 inquiries. Not even joking. It's that crazy in Barcelona. Um, and so I just said, "You know what? This is the perfect job for some sort of automated system to try to get us in the door somewhere, to try to get us the first contact," 'cause I imagine the agents are probably not looking at much more than those first 10 messages that come in. And so the goal is, all right, get ahead of those people. Try to get us in contact with an agent, uh, that can actually show us an apartment. [laughs] Uh, and so the brain dump session was basically just talking to Claude, saying, "Here are all the things we're looking for in a place. Here are the kinds of neighborhoods we're in. We're not picky. Here's the price range we're

5. 23:04 – 29:09

   The 3-part prompt for automating anything

   1. MEMatt Ebso23:04

      in. We have two cats. It has to be pet-friendly." And sort of just giving it the context. Uh, it's really important to think about when you are prompting to think of it in three parts: the context, the task, and the format. So the, the brain dump is the context. It's just giving it all the information, trying to take all the stuff that I'm thinking about and recording it somewhere. Now, Claude, here's the task. I would like for you to go on Idealista, on Spotahome, on all the different platforms that are offering housing in the area and search for things that match our criteria. The format, then, is your, your output. How do we want this to come to me? Does it come to me as a message? Does it come to me in some other special format? So the format for this one was a spreadsheet. I said, "I want to see all these listings show up in a spreadsheet," and the first few runs are going to be quite hands-on. Ultimately, what we wanna do is sort of give feedback, create a feedback loop so that the AI learns with every turn what was good as a selection, what was bad as a selection. Uh, and so all these properties would come in, and I actually am gonna zoom out a little bit here. I'll go 150. Can you still see? [laughs]

   2. CJCalum Johnson24:30

      If you just talk me through it, it's fine. Yeah.

   3. MEMatt Ebso24:32

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, basically the idea was here, the list-- it, it pulled in the listing ID, it pulls in the neighborhood, it pulls in the cost, whether or not utilities are included, all the details it possibly can, and does it have AC? Important in a Spanish summer. Um, and it assigned its own fit score. What does it think is a fit compared to our criteria? And then we sort of get to give our feedback on top of that. So we put our own ranking columns in here. My wife, uh, and myself each had our own column where we could say, "You know, this is actually a 3.75 out of five for us. Uh, and then here are the reasons." And I was able to list my notes, and I say, "Here's what interests me about this place. Here's what doesn't." And the instructions for this task were set so that, uh, let's see if I can find it here. Learned preferences. The first thing it was meant to do was go into the spreadsheet and review what feedback we had put in from the last run. Then it takes that new knowledge and records that in learned preferences. And so it has basically its instruction list for things to do better the next time. And so it ran this over and over and over and really got it fine-tuned. And the idea originally was to have it so that when, when we were getting to the point where it was fine-tuned enough to where it knew it had found a place that we were gonna like, it could reach out to the me- the agent on our behalf. It had, like, a canned message that it could sort of adapt based on the actual property. So it's like, "Oh, you know, we're a couple, we have two cats, and we love that this place has, um, you know," whatever it might be. Um, great, uh, natural light, for example [chuckles] . And it could just adapt and then send a message on our behalf without us having to spend a ton of time doing this manually. And the beautiful thing was if we were to do the level of research that this was doing, which in the past I would have done this, I would have fired up an Airtable base and, like, logged a bunch of properties and, like, written a bunch of formulas to compare things and go, "All right, well, this has this many features compared to this one," and I'd spend hours racking my brain. This is how I [chuckles] research all the big decisions in my life, is I always end up in a spreadsheet, whether it's buying a car, moving into an apartment. That's how it works. It, it-- You, you give it context, you give it the task, you give it a format, and then you give it an ability to learn from each run. And now you've got your personal shopper. So you don't have to spend, or I don't have to spend hours a night after I'm already exhausted from doing my work, trying to figure out how to move my life to another city. Instead, this is just working in the background, taking care of that. T- And this is maybe not necessarily something where someone immediately gets the aha moment where they say, "Oh, well, this saves me hours in my life that I'm already, you know, spending." Instead, I can continue living my w- life the way I'm already doing, 'cause I'm quite committed to the things I'm doing. I have things that I have to do every day or want to do every day. And this task is like a puzzle piece that doesn't quite m-match this puzzle. Like, it has to make it in here, but I, I just can't quite make it work. It's better if someone else just handles it, and that someone else can be an agent.

   4. CJCalum Johnson28:02

      Back to that point of, like, doing it in this way, saving you time, but then it also means that you can do the thing that only you can do in the process, which is make the final decision or go and actually see the apartment in, um, in person. But, like, everything else is actually pretty much handled up until that point. And I love that three-part structure of, like, the task, the context, and then what format do you want the output to be in? You know what, Matt? Because we're gonna go deeper in-- I, I especially want to go deeper into how someone can get started, um, in terms of starting to use Claude as an operating system. But before we go there, can you just share some almost, like, just high level and fast, some business kind of examples? Like when it comes to-- I think these have been great in your, like, personal life. Um, but when it comes to, like, your work, can you share some examples of where you're using Claude right now that's having the most value and that you could see having the most value to someone that's listening at home?

   5. MEMatt Ebso29:07

      The, the example I'd like to give

6. 29:09 – 34:20

   How to use Claude to save time in your business

   1. MEMatt Ebso29:09

      is, um, you know, if you have a goat farm, it can't-- Claude can't check on your goats [chuckles] . But it can monitor your, uh, inbox and take care of the feed bill and see when the prices are changing. It can handle booking the vet if something is wrong with your goat. You know, you can just say, "Hey, you know, it's, it's sick. I think we need to get it seen. Book me a vet, a vet appointment." And it can just go do it. And then you can get back to doing what's important and required of you in the physical world, or, you know, maybe what you want to do as opposed to the things you don't want to do. So [clears throat] for my work specifically, I have sort of several different projects I work on, and I'll, I'll, I'll kind of talk a, a little bit about each of them. So for my Metics Media work, uh, where we make software tutorials, I use Claude very, very heavily to do research. Um, I pull information from a lot of the sources that are out there. When I start a project, I want to be armed with the most recent information. And then I also do some work for a, a platform called SoundToggle, which is... Essentially, it's a, it's a portfolio platform for audio engineers.

   2. CJCalum Johnson30:24

      Yeah.

   3. MEMatt Ebso30:24

      So audio, uh, portfolio for audio professionals, essentially. Um, and- It's this space where advertising doesn't really make sense. The, the cost of advertising outweighs the, the, what you can earn from, as a platform for this, the SaaS subscription fees, right? And so what becomes really important is SEO, trying to find, two, ways to get AI agents to talk about what you're doing. Every- I find a lot of people now who find the platform are finding it because they said, "Hey, ChatGPT, I need fill in the blank tool, fill in the blank solution. Go find something for me." And in that case, uh, ChatGPT is basically like a glorified Google. Uh, it goes, it actually uses Google. It does some research. It pulls cite- uh, you know, citations for different, um, platforms, researches and presents you with an answer and says, "Okay, here's what I think you should use." It's a lot of manual work to set up all the stuff to make it so that ChatGPT can actually see your platform, one, talk about it accurately, two, and three, present it in a way where someone actually is going to act on it, uh, the way you want them to act on it. And so it's, it's really hard to do that if you're not an AI. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in the background. And so I have some routines set up to monitor competitor sites, to monitor, uh, the actual website itself and make sure on a regular basis that all the stuff that's there is accurate, that nothing is out of date, and also do some research into trending topics now for articles that we could write to put on the site to help surface the app to more people. So it has access to the GitHub repo, which for non-technical people is basically just where all the code of the app lives. So it can look at the app, it can go on the internet, crawl, find opportunities for marketing, and then come back, draft the article, and all I have to do is say, "Um, yeah, but let's say it this way." And then once it's refined, I can post it, and now it's on the internet, and now there's more opportunity for, for Google to find the platform, for ChatGPT to talk about the platform. And these are things that, uh, are going to be hard for a human to do regularly if it's not your main job to do marketing. Like we said before, for business, right? You... A lot of people start a business because they're interested in the craft of what they're doing, but there's all these other things that pile on that you have to do if you're gonna run a business. So why not say, "Claude, I'm looking for help with this thing," and set up a routine where it acts as that hired help and does that work for you on a regular basis?

   4. CJCalum Johnson33:26

      Mm. You know what? It's like, um, it's a good example. I think it's very similar to something that I found, which is, um, especially c- obviously we both do content, is getting Claude or AI to look into, like, uh, recent trends, what's kind of like, what's working right now, what's hot. Um, so almost like forward-looking. I remember we had, uh, we had Riley Brown, who's like another creator. We had him on the show, um, a couple months ago, and he showed his workflow of how, like, uh, he was using OpenClaude, but you could do exactly the same thing on Claude Cowork or Claude Code, and it would, uh, it would look at YouTube within his niche and tell him, like very much in live time, what are the hot topics, and then he would create around those hot topics. And so I think one of the,

7. 34:20 – 47:26

   The fastest way to build your first AI agent

   1. CJCalum Johnson34:20

      one of the things that's gonna come up for people, even as they start to hear these examples and see what's possible, is like, "Okay, how do I know what Claude can build? How do I know that it can do it? And then how do we kinda think through how to do it in the best way possible?" And so I wanna give people that start of like, okay, here's how you can start to actually build out some of these tasks and have them run on a recurring basis. And one of the things that you said in the lead-up to this conversation, Matt, you said when it comes to doing, like, new things, you will have Claude do an exploratry- exploratory parse and discover the best way to approach a task that could be repeatable, and then it will take its explo- it, it will take its discovery parse and turn it into a repeatable recipe in the form of a skill. And so could you just kinda show people what that process looks like of, like, the exploratory parse, and then once you've kind of figured that part out, then turning that into a skill, and why that's so valuable in terms of saving time?

   2. MEMatt Ebso35:32

      Sure. Sure. So let's do something that might be useful for your podcast. Finding, finding guests to come on the show as an example, huh? Maybe?

   3. CJCalum Johnson35:43

      Yeah, let's do it.

   4. MEMatt Ebso35:44

      Something like that?

   5. CJCalum Johnson35:45

      Yeah.

   6. MEMatt Ebso35:45

      All right, cool. Uh, so let me get, uh, Claude up and running for us here again, and we'll, we'll just kinda walk through it together. I-- This will be very interesting to see how this goes. So before we move on, I, I, I wanna show you how that, uh, haircut thing went. [laughs] So this is, this is the kinda thing that, like, you sorta have to check in on periodically because it sort of rolls as it goes. So it created this schedule. Eventually it ran. It wrote its own instructions. It found some shops that it said it should try to use. Uh, it found some rough prices, and so it has a fallback list. So it goes, "All right, I'm gonna try to book him at Barberette. And if that doesn't work out, E Street Barbers. And then, you know, check the Google Calendar first, then make sure it's available. Uh, if he's available, we'll book him for a time, and it has some hard limits for itself. Never create accounts, enter password, or enter card payment details. So ideally, it's booking a haircut at a place where you don't have to pay ahead of time. Um, it's set to run its first run actually booking me a haircut here in about three minutes, so we're gonna let it work, and we're gonna come back to it when it's done. But I think this gives us a good opportunity to kind of chat through an exploratory path.

   7. CJCalum Johnson36:59

      Yes. Let's do it.

   8. MEMatt Ebso37:02

      So I'm gonna set this to low effort just so that, in general, I like to run things on high effort. But if you set it to low effort for a demo like this, it'll run much quicker, and so we can kind of demo on screen results happening quicker. So I want this to be collaborative. So let's say for example, um, I'll do an initial di- dictation, sort of give my idea for a prompt, and I'd love to, for you to add some context here. Uh, so you can tell me, and I'll, I'll pass it along to, uh, my rockstar assistant here. So we'll say, [clicks] I'm helping out The Calum Johnson Show, and we want to have a routine set up where we can do some guest research, figure out who should be on the show based on the past episodes that have done really well. We wanna try to find more guests who are like that, who are interesting, who could present content in a way that our, our previous listeners would resonate with based on the evidence of how the channel has already performed. So what I would like for you to do is do some research, establish the framework by which you could conduct this research on a regular basis. Ultimately, what we're going to do once you've figured out the framework here, is we're going to put this on a schedule that runs weekly, and the output should be a draft in my email to the top recommended person to invite for the next episode. Uh, I wanna see a draft in my email, all queued up and ready to go, personalized based on their details. Something like that. Uh, what would you add if, uh, if you were [laughs] firing this off?

   9. CJCalum Johnson38:59

      So the, th- there's a couple of things. So one, I love the kind of like the mentality of starting the task and actually asking Claude to help you build a framework, and I guess that's what, uh, we, you said earlier about like it's an exploratory path. It's like a, it's a disco- you're in the discovery phase at first. And so you're actually asking it, like, "Help me come up with the framework so that you can do this routinely to a high level." So I thought that that was really good. In terms of, uh, things that I could add, you just mean like criteria points in t- uh, for-

   10. MEMatt Ebso39:36

       Yeah. If you, if you were launching this, uh, assistant here, what, what would you want it to know? What's the context? This is where we're giving it the context.

   11. CJCalum Johnson39:44

       I think there's, there's a few things that I would, um, add, and this is just based off my experience. And one of the things that even comes a- comes across, 'cause even for people that are listening, I think it's a really easy application if you need to build like CRMs or just any sort of lists of leads. But anyway, for podcasting specifically, one of the things that we'll look at as an example is like what other shows has the guest been on? Like, have they been on other shows? Because they're more likely to be comfortable being on podcasts if they've done other ones before. Um, if they haven't, like, if they haven't been on other shows, what is their-- Do they do content? Like, are they, uh, used to being like on camera and like speaking on these topics? Is that content like short-form, or is it long-form? Because sometimes like short-form creators, they're very used to doing like 30-second clips. That might not translate over to doing an hour, hour and a half interview. But the, the f- kind of the way that I'm thinking, I'm coming u- up with this stuff on the spot, but it's very much I'm like, I'm taking in things that I know work on the show or like have worked well on the show in the past, and we're just giving it back to Claude.

   12. MEMatt Ebso41:03

       Exactly that. So what other things have worked well on the show? [clicks] Try to find... Actually, I'll switch to dictation mode here. [laughs] Try to find opportunities to emulate that, and maybe even one-up it, 10X it. This is, and this is sort of my like lofty, giving it a target, you know. Even, like shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars sort of mentality here. Uh, but with a 10X, we're sort of aiming for Mars maybe even. Uh, I would say like something else that comes to mind for me would be, [clicks] um, the depth of the research is the point. Try to find uncovered opportunities that the channel hasn't already identified for themselves.

   13. CJCalum Johnson42:03

       That's good. That's really good. I, I, I love the i- I love the idea of like using AI, like what's the thing that I'm not thinking about, you know? Like, what's the piece that I've missed? I actually think it's like just like a really good principle for prompting. I think I heard Mark Cuban say that. He was like, "A lot of the times I'll ask AI, like, 'What's the thing that I'm not doing? What's the thing that I'm missing?'" It's actually a really good way of, like, going back and forth with Claude and getting, like, great responses

   14. MEMatt Ebso42:32

       Another one too, like, kind of on the same thing. What's the low-hanging fruit they're not aware of?

   15. CJCalum Johnson42:38

       That's good.

   16. MEMatt Ebso42:39

       All right, let's ru- let's run it. We're gonna send it. It's gonna do its exploratory pass. It's going to figure out how to do this kind of work on a repeatable basis. Here, this is an important part of the process. We're training the-- We're training our employee here. We're training our outreach assistant. So, uh, let's ask... I'll just pass these questions to you, and you get to answer them. So who should the outre- uh, outreach draft be written from, and what tone? We can say from me, Matt, on behalf of the show, from Calum's voice, I'll forward, or from [laughs] Oriana.

   17. CJCalum Johnson43:10

       Let's, let's do, uh, from Calum's, uh, let's do from Calum's voice

   18. MEMatt Ebso43:14

       Okay. From Calum's voice. Any constraints on who qualifies as a guest? No hard constraints, must record in person, or must have an existing audience of 100K plus, or something else?

   19. CJCalum Johnson43:25

       Let's do, uh, must record in person.

   20. MEMatt Ebso43:27

       Must record in person. Make it interesting. Uh, and then wha- and then what... Okay, so in here we have to say other. So we'll say, uh, must record in person in New York.

   21. CJCalum Johnson43:39

       Yeah, New York.

   22. MEMatt Ebso43:39

       Yeah? In New York City. All right. And next we have two more questions. What time should the weekly run land in your inbox? Uh, that's just an easy one. This is... We'll just say, um, 8:00 AM Monday, uh, New York time. That way it's fresh in your inbox, and then you can jump right into it. Do you have access to the channel's, uh, studio analytics? I do not. So we'll go public data only recommended for now. Yeah. All right. So what I love about Cowork is that it shows you its to-do list. It wrote its own to-do list here in the progress section. This is what it's gonna work through. So it's gonna audit the show's catalog, uh, build a guest research framework and scoring rubric, run a first research pass and shortlist candidates, and then create a personalized email draft to the top recommendation. So if all is good to go, you can simply hit send. Now, being able to do that means you should have your Google account connected, right? So you would do that in Cowork by going plus connectors and then manage your connectors. So from here, you can add a lot of different things, and you can work in a lot of different tools. And I don't think a lot of people realize just how broad the tool set is that Claude can work with on your behalf. Um, if you manage your business in something like Asana or Teamed or Slack or Notion or whatever, Microsoft 365, you can connect these tools to Claude, and it can, one, use them as context, and two, do work in those platforms for you. So this is, this is truly like an, uh, an assistant, uh, an employee that you are giving tools. This right here is the training that we're giving them. The let's figure out how to do this task together. Treating them as the expert, saying, "You're-- This is your job. You're going to own this task. Um, you're gonna figure out the best way to do it, and then we're gonna put them on a schedule. Here are the tools that avail- are available to you while you're doing this job."

   23. CJCalum Johnson45:39

       Yeah. You know, Matt, before you even close it, if we just quickly go back to the connectors.

   24. MEMatt Ebso45:43

       Oh, yeah. Yeah, let me pull it back up.

   25. CJCalum Johnson45:45

       If someone is, uh... 'Cause I think about the person that's starting out, and they're even starting to use Claude in this way. Could you give me two perspectives? First of all, someone goes into this connectors tab. What are typically, like, the two or three connectors that for most everyday people you're gonna get the most value from just instantly? Like, simply put, like, you're probably nine out of 10 times, or nine out of 10 people are gonna come in, and these are the connectors that you're gonna wanna start straight away. So that's one. And then two, I'm curious from your standpoint, are there any kind of, like, sneaky connectors that it, it's not like Gmail or like Slack or whatever, but it's, it's something that, you know, most people probably even wouldn't be aware of, but l- you've used it, and it's actually valuable, uh, but it's kind of underrated? It's kind of sneaky. It's easy for it to go under the radar.

   26. MEMatt Ebso46:43

       So, uh, what I'm using is the basic stuff, uh, in Cowork specifically. Uh, I'm using the Google workspace. Uh, I've got, um, my em- email marketing hooked up to it. Uh, I've got some-- I've got QuickBooks connected, which, you know, maybe makes some people nervous. Um, but I can have it, uh, do my books or at least a first pass at reconciling my, my books once a month, and then all I have to do is come in and review and double-check the work. Um, that is one area you could save a lot of time in your life. Maybe bookkeepers don't like that so much, or maybe they'll use it. Who knows? People are often c- confused about which tab to reach for in Claude, right? Um, I think a lot of people treat AI like a vending machine. They go to the chat tab, they

8. 47:26 – 58:36

   The difference between Claude Chat, Cowork and Code

   1. MEMatt Ebso47:26

      walk up, they ask a question, they get an answer, they walk away. That's the end of the interaction.

   2. CJCalum Johnson47:32

      Very transactional, yeah.

   3. MEMatt Ebso47:34

      Very transactional, yeah. And that's where most people are operating. It's a very like, "Hey, I'm coming to the computer. Give me something. Cool, I leave the computer." Um, so chat, the chat tab is like a consultant. It's like somebody... If you're thinking about it in terms of employees you might hire, your chat tab is the consultant you go to ask when you have a question. They give you good answers. They can do some deep research. They'll come back, and they'll give you a report. Sometimes they might even format that report in a fun format like, "Oh, look, here's an HTML file. It looks like a website you can click on. It's interactive, fun." But at the end of the day, what they're doing is they're giving you an answer to a question for the most part. Cowork is more like a project manager. It's more like, uh, somebody sitting next to you. It's a rockstar assistant who can connect to all your tools. To some degree, um, the chat tab can connect to your tools too, but this is where it really shines. You can give it a project folder. You can give it a folder to work in on your computer. So, like, down here, if I were to click add folder- Um, you could give it a specific folder for this particular project, um, where when every time it runs its research, it can create a f- a file that exists in that folder on your system, not on Anthropic's cloud somewhere that you have to log into your account to access. But it, it leaves its work product on your system for you if you ask it to. So we could have that report end up in a folder on the computer where maybe that's the output. You don't even need the draft queued up. You just wanna open the folder on your computer once on Monday and see what's in there, and that's kinda what happened with my, um, my spreadsheet, my Barcelona apartment spreadsheet. Then you have Claude Code, and I think the name Claude Code scares a lot of people.

   4. CJCalum Johnson49:21

      It's intimidating, yeah.

   5. MEMatt Ebso49:22

      'Cause code's in the name, and it's, like, fancy or encrypted or, like, oh, it's only for developers. No, no, no. I wanna, I wanna break that idea right now. Claude Code is not for developers. Claude Code is your developer. If you need something built, something persistent, something that's very technical that runs on your computer or could be built to run on a remote computer somewhere, like a website or an app, Claude Code is your developer that you can go to and ask questions. The cool thing about Claude Code versus something like Cowork is that Cowork can build persistent things that live on your computer, yeah, but Claude Code does the same thing but on an even deeper level. Um, and it just... You can set up loops, so you can set it to do things where, like, I want you to check this every five minutes. Uh, if you find a real example, it might be useful for you. You can say /loop and then build a loop around it. So you say 15 minutes and then say, um, "Check this again." And now every 15 minutes, Claude Code will check on this thing for you, and you can step away, and you don't have to think about it.

   6. CJCalum Johnson50:33

      Mm. Is that a command that comes natively built within it, the, the loop?

   7. MEMatt Ebso50:37

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So... And this is the cool thing about, um, Claude Code II is there's all these other commands that you get access to that you don't in Cowork, and all you have to do is type /, and you can just scroll through here and look at all the commands that are available. Um, you might not know what all of these are right away, uh, and that's okay. You don't have to. Again, use Claude to tell you how to work with it best. You could say, "Hey, here's this thing I'm trying to accomplish. Do you have anything built in that could do this for us?"

   8. CJCalum Johnson51:06

      Exploratory path again, isn't it?

   9. MEMatt Ebso51:08

      Exploratory path. You use Claude to figure out the best way to use Claude. [laughs]

   10. CJCalum Johnson51:14

       Yeah.

   11. MEMatt Ebso51:14

       We've got the audit. It's, it's working in the background, so you can see how long this takes. You asked about the different models, right? Which model to use. When do you use Fable? When do you use Haiku? Um, personally, right now I'm using Fable 5.1 for one very simple reason. They just released it. They reset my weekly limits. My weekly limits normally reset on Friday at 7:00 PM, so I have a two-day span of time to burn through a week's worth of limits, and I am using it. [laughs] Uh, so Fable 5 is my default this particular two-day span of time, but I would not necessarily recommend that all the time. I'd say you wanna reach for the best model for, um, your, your current budget and your current, um, well, time budget but also money budget. The, the higher-powered models are gonna cost you more. So an exploratory path is a good reason to use a high-power model because you want it to go deep. You want it to, you want it to really dig in and use all the intelligence that's available to an AI to understand how to do this in a novel way, and I think the, the higher-power models are more capable of doing novel things. The lower-power models are better for routine things. So once we get the framework established and we have the, the skill sort of set up that tells the recurring job what to do, I'd probably back this off to something like Opus. And if Opus seems, after a few runs even, like it's doing an excellent job, I might experiment with backing off to Sonnet and just, like, reducing the power until it feels like I'm not getting the, the wow results I want anymore. And to be fair, most the time you get the wow results by using the most intelligence available to you. So again, it's, it's hard to give a prescriptive answer to that. You, you really just wanna use... Think about the task. How deep, how intellectual do you need it to go? And sort of scale up which model you're using accordingly. If it's something that's routine, you do it all the time, it just needs to run a process 'cause it has a skill, which is kind of like a recipe, you've handed it the instructions. You're just saying, "Follow this," you can probably use a lower-power model.

   12. CJCalum Johnson53:35

       Those lower-powered models, they just cost less, and you're gonna get less of those messages of, like, you've run out of credits and you, you either need to top up or... So obviously, like, the task is, is incredibly important. Like, what is it doing, and how, like, cognitively intense is that task? But you know what? I wanted to, um, I wanted to go back to something that you had mentioned, which I actually think is, um, it's important, and that is, um, I actually think it's like a mentality switch. Because we're used to using the computer or even, like, our iPhone, and the way that we use it is we have all of these apps, right? We have all of these apps that we click into, uh, like if you're on your iPhone. Even if, uh, you're on your computer, you go into Google, and you have all of these tabs. You might be on Canva. You might be on QuickBooks. You might be on, uh, your Gmail. And when I see people and I speak with guests who are incredibly effective in sa- saving time in automation using AI, they've started to get to the point where you've mentioned, where you say Claude is the operating system. And it's like- Claude is actually the interface, and Claude has access to QuickBooks, has access to Canva, has access to my calendar, has access to Gmail. And so they're actually just spending time speaking with Claude, and then Claude's going, "Oh yeah, I can pull that report from your note taker. I can pull that from, um ... I can pull the transcript from your note taker. I can pull the report from QuickBooks." And so you start getting to a point where you build the system where it's like you're really spending your time with Claude, and Claude is then, you know, maybe you wanna create, uh, like a carousel or a piece of content. Oh, well, it has Canva already kind of like built in, like if you've connected it. Um, and, and so one of the things, and, and I'm kind of in this period now, is actually making that mentality switch where it's like before I used to have to manually go, "Okay, let me go to Canva and then let me start playing around with Canva," or, "Let me go into QuickBooks and like figure out how to download the thing and then export it and then..." Or you just connect it to Claude. Claude is the interface, and that pulls the information. Uh, and then it's exactly, to a differing degree, it's the same on Claude Code. It's like before you'd kind of have to research on the internet and like try and figure out, diagnose what the problem is, and then maybe search some settings in your computer and change it around. Or it's like, oh, no, no, Claude Code is the interface, and it goes and diagnoses the problem and feeds back to you, "This is why it's running slowly. This is what's going on," and gives you like the customized solution and executes it.

   13. MEMatt Ebso56:18

       And I think maybe the, the s- the savings in time and money that maybe are, like, not so obvious to people are to think about, like, what you would have to do to do that task otherwise. I think people look at the cost of these AI services and go, "Oh, I don't know. I don't know if I can afford to spend that." But consider where you... Like, the opportunity cost of, of not using it. You can get access to Claude Code for $20 a month. So think about the opportunity cost of not using Claude Code for that.

   14. CJCalum Johnson56:49

       If we go back to Claude Code for a second, because when you and I spoke before this, one of the things that I got really excited about is actually, uh, one, one thing in particular that you mentioned, which is essentially, like, building these custom tools that actually save you a lot of time. And so you said you can also use Claude Code to build hyper-specific tools that improve things in your life that don't require constantly burning LLM tokens. You then went on to say you can supercharge your life that way. Can you just show some of these, like literally within Claude Code, what are some of these tools? Like, what were you referring to? Okay, so super quick break. 18 months ago, I had a conversation on this show that changed everything. The episode that we recorded with Greg Isenberg was our first AI episode, and when I left the recording, one thing was very clear to me that I didn't know before, and that was that AI is about to change how we build our businesses, our careers, and really how we live our lives. And what I saw when I spoke with people was so much uncertainty and anxiety of what this would mean for them. And so we created New Era. That's our completely free weekly newsletter that's gonna help you win in the new era of AI. And so every single week, directly in your inbox, you get step-by-step guides from our guests, exact prompts that they're using, plus things that our guests have even told me off camera that I think could be really beneficial to you in your business and in your life. If you wanna join over 11,000 people that have already subscribed to New Era, then just go to the link in the description to subscribe to our newsletter. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

   15. MEMatt Ebso58:34

       Yeah, let me find, uh,

9. 58:36 – 1:10:46

   How to build apps that save you time (no coding)

   1. MEMatt Ebso58:36

      the meal planning app. So the meal planning app has been done over and over and over and over, right? So my wife has very specific dietary needs and preferences. She used to love to cook, but the, the, the sort of new restrictions have sort of killed some of that passion for cooking and for baking. And for me, I, I just have never really enjoyed cooking that much. It's just something I do because I need to eat a few times a day. Um, it, it's not something that brings me a lot of joy. It feels more like a chore in my life. My problem was that I don't like to cook. I don't like to... It's, it's not the cooking so much that's bad, it's everything around it. It's going online, trying to find recipes that look interesting. Then once you've found the recipes that look interesting, adapting them to a very specific acceptable and non-acceptable ingredient list. Then making sure, um, that you know where you can go buy those ingredients and put your shopping list together. It takes time to, like, go to all the individual recipes and put those into a shopping list. And then you gotta bring it all home, and then you gotta prep all the ingredients, and then you gotta actually put the meals together, all so you can sit and eat for 10 minutes for breakfast. [laughs] It's a lot of work. If you, if you add it all up, I think we were doing the math, it's, like, 12 to 16 hours a week we spend doing stuff related to putting food on our plates, just the act of preparing food. And so, and, and maybe that's a low number for some people and a high number for others, but for me, s- 12 to 16 hours a week is too much. [laughs] That's, that's real time savings I wanted to get back. But essentially what I've done is I told Claude, I went to my developer, I said, "Claude Code, you are my expert developer. I don't wanna have to think about this problem anymore." And I brain dump. I say, "Here's all the things I'm thinking about. Here are all the different constraints that this, uh, this ingredient list has, like We can't, uh, do anything with lactose, you know, lactose intolerance, for example. And then there's other things, you know? So we, we just, like, there's all these really specific things. You gotta label check. We don't wanna think about that problem anymore. We just want stuff to show up at our door that we can quickly put together. I just want to have recipes picked for me so all I have to do is look at my phone, look at the tab that says, "What are you cooking today?" And it tells you what the recipe is and how to do it. I know it's gonna be about 20 to 30 minutes to make, 'cause that's the most attention span I have. Here we go. So this is, this is the app. It's, um... Th- this normally lives on my phone. So we, we turned it into a PWA, which for the non-initiated, that's okay, it's progressive web app, meaning I didn't have to go through all the hassle of putting together an app that complied to Apple or Android's native app requirements. Instead, this is basically just a website, but you can download it and, uh, not really download it, but you can put an app icon on your phone and use it on your phone like it's an app.

   2. CJCalum Johnson1:01:54

      Oh, that's cool.

   3. MEMatt Ebso1:01:54

      So-

   4. CJCalum Johnson1:01:55

      Nice

   5. MEMatt Ebso1:01:56

      ... yeah, so you don't have to think about all the extra architecture. You're basically just pointing your phone at the website, and it removes all the stuff that you would see on the website if you were in a browser, like the address bar and the bookmarks and all that stuff, and instead just shows you the bare webpage. So that's, that's how this is built. It's not complicated at all. It runs entirely for free on Cloudflare, uh, with some Cloudflare workers doing some calls. Now, there's a tiny bit of AI embedded in it, because the AI has to make decisions about what to feed us. [laughs] But, uh, it's, it's very rule-based. It's handed a list of rules, says, "These are the things. Here's a list of ingredients," or rather, "Here's a list of recipes we like. If there's not enough recipes, 'cause we've already had these recently, go online and find some other recipes like these." And it pulls all that together and in the background spits out a, a JavaScript adjacent file that turns into a meal plan. And so here's the meal plan. This is what we're gonna eat this week. It plans it all out for us, and if, you know, we happen not to like it, we can just say, "Change this," and we can say, "Here's why we didn't like it," and it just goes and finds something else for us. It curates the list of ingredients, and then once we've approved the plan, which automatically fires every Friday at, like, 7:00 PM, you know, end of the week, says, "All right. Here's your shopping," or rather, "Here's your plan, and, uh, the shopping list is all ready to go if, if you're ready." So we just review it, and then when we're ready, it pushes it to the shop tab. I hit a button, and it preloads my Mercadona shopping cart on my app. So this is... You know, Mercadona's a, a big chain store here, um, for groceries, and you can order online. So it pushes all the ingredients that I need for the recipes to my cart on the Mercadona app, and all I have to do is pop into there, review, make sure it actually grabbed the ingredients I like. Occasionally, I swap something and it's like, "I like these tomatoes instead of these ones," that kind of thing, and then I hit buy. And then the groceries in a couple days show up at my door, and all I have to do when I'm like, "Ah, what's for dinner tonight? I don't wanna decide," we go to the today tab, and it gives us exactly what we're making. It says, "Tonight, you're making egg roll in a bowl." And [laughs] you click start cooking. It feeds you the ingredient list, the instructions, and when you're done, you get to rate it and tell the, the app, "Yeah, I liked this," or, "No, I didn't like this." And it learns from that feedback so that next week when it generates its meal plan, it can pick better recipes. So this is a very specific problem from my life, and so I wanted to be clear, my, my recommendation here is not that everyone goes out and starts their own recipe app. [laughs] You can do that, but really the goal here is, like, what is the thing that in your life causes you misery? Because maybe you can't have an AI cook for you, but maybe you could have AI help you with everything around it.

   6. CJCalum Johnson1:04:52

      Yeah. You know what? I think about that, um... Like, we're in the new era of AI, and I think about, what does that mean? But it's like, with Claude Code and, and what you just showed, it's like you can take the specific problems and pain points, and I love what you mentioned of, obviously as we're showing this, there's, like, ideas firing off for people. Think about some of those problems and pain points that you have, and you can actually build hyper-specific tools that addresses just that one single pain point, which previously it would have made no sense for a company to build that app, 'cause there's just not enough people that have that pain point. But now with Claude Code, like, you can do it. And I didn't even know the thing about, uh, you can set it up as an app on your phone, where it's like you could actually click into it, and it's like the experience is basically you're using this personalized app that only makes sense for you.

   7. MEMatt Ebso1:05:49

      It, it's, it's great. Uh, I'll move it to its own, like, page here, um, if I can. Uh, and I'll hold it up for the camera. Uh, it's just this, this food planner app, I don't know how well it's, uh, showing in focus. It even made the icon. I didn't have to, I didn't have to ask it for the icon, and I just tap it. And then there's that same thing, uh, here once it loads. There's my, there's my meal plan for the night.

   8. CJCalum Johnson1:06:16

      Yeah. And, and it's, yeah.

   9. MEMatt Ebso1:06:18

      Egg roll in a bowl.

   10. CJCalum Johnson1:06:19

       Yeah. That's so, that's so good. You know what? I'm so conscious, Matt, and I... We'll, we'll go back to the report in a second. I'm so conscious of the overwhelm of, like, the, the person that's listening who, as I said in the beginning, like, they wanna spend more time with their family or, like, they wanna start a side hustle, but they're working, uh, their 9:00 to 5:00 job all the time, so they don't have enough time. And so they wanna save time. They wanna- automate tasks. Given that you've done this and you've kind of gone through the loop of using, like, Claude Cowork, and now you're building things on Claude Code, in your mind, for someone that's listening at home, what is the right time for someone to start using Claude Code, would you say? Because I know most people start with Cowork and starting to build out things there. At what point in time, like, if someone's listening, is it like, "Okay, I think I might be ready to start using Claude Code"? We are going to record a Q&A for you guys answering all your questions. So I get questions all the time about the show, behind the scenes, what I'm doing in my own business and life with AI, and so I'm gonna answer it all in a special, special episode for you guys. And so what I want you to do is just hit that Google form, which will be linked in the description below, and just ask me anything. We're gonna be picking five to 10 questions, and we'll give you a shout-out directly on the show. Okay, cool, let's get back to the episode.

   11. MEMatt Ebso1:07:44

       Yeah, I think the easiest thing is to think about when would you hire a virtual assistant and when, when would you hire a developer? I, I think it's less so much a, a prescriptive, "Here's when you should feel ready." [laughs] Like, it's, um, like a readiness to retire sort of benchmark or something. Uh, I think it's more about, um, you wanna reach for the right tool for the job. Um, if, if you're looking at a problem in your life and you're realizing, "Man, I wish I had an app for this," Claude Code. "Man, I'm having this problem with my computer," or, "Man, like, I really wish I knew how to build this thing that would organize files on my computer for me automatically that I don't have to go to Claude for. That'd be really nice," Claude Code. A- anything that feels really technical, um, anything that it seems like the potential ideal output is some sort of repeatable process that runs on itself without AI. And so I do wanna distinguish here, there's a lot of automation that I've done that runs entirely in Claude with something like Cowork, or I even run routines in Code depending on what the task is. They're somewhat interchangeable, but it's, like, slightly different expertises, right? Um, the, the perfect use case for Claude Code is when you wanna build something that persists, that works even if you don't have your Claude subscription anymore. So if you have, uh, Claude Code build you, uh, an app that can just work, all you have to do is pull up your phone and you can access it because it does something super specific for you, you don't need Claude Code to run the app anymore. You had it built it. It's kind of like, uh, if you hire a developer to build you an app. That's kind of the same idea if... And, but you're right in that you can get really hyper-specific now. You know, even five years ago, something like this hyper-specific meal planning app, I, I would've had to pay a developer, like, $50,000 probably to, to make something that was suitable. Because the sort of the mindset there is, oh, well, if you're gonna hire a developer, it's because your goal is to build something that scales, that, you know, you are gonna build a business around, and you're gonna sell to people. But if that's not the point, you don't really need to hire a developer. Instead, just go with the most accessible technical, uh, expert you've got. Um, that's what I would say would be the perfect use case. I, I, I think, I would think less in terms of use, uh, or rather, I would think term... Let me get my mouth to work for me here. [laughs] I would think less in terms of when for readiness and more what. If you, if you'd hire an assistant, use Cowork. If you'd hire a developer, Code.

   12. CJCalum Johnson1:10:37

       That's a really good framework. You know what, Matt, before we get out of here, you wanna just switch back to Cowork and see if it's, um-

   13. MEMatt Ebso1:10:44

       I've got the report up here.

10. 1:10:46 – 1:17:46

    Did the AI Agent Matt built for Calum work?

    1. MEMatt Ebso1:10:46

       I, I pulled it up.

    2. CJCalum Johnson1:10:47

       Okay, lovely.

    3. MEMatt Ebso1:10:47

       Yes, I'm excited to present it to you.

    4. CJCalum Johnson1:10:49

       Let's see.

    5. MEMatt Ebso1:10:50

       Um, 'cause maybe we got some opportunities here for you in your show.

    6. CJCalum Johnson1:10:53

       I know. Let's hope so.

    7. MEMatt Ebso1:10:54

       All right, back into Claude. So guest engine for The Calum Johnson Show. What the channel's own numbers say works, a scoring rubric that turns that into a repeatable work weekly search, and the first run, the week's shortlist top pick and the opportunities the show hasn't claimed yet. Oof. So some just quick numbers. It analyt-- uh, it looked, uh, saw the 312,000 YouTube subs, analyzed 198 videos, matched, uh, to 155 podcast feed dates. All right, so it did some analysis, and I'll send this to you after the show so you've got it. But I'll just scan through this very briefly, high level, for those who are watching. Um, it can clearly see that your top episode at the moment is the episode with Allie K. Um, and so the formula that wins is a relatable archetype who mastered named tool, and then a live non-technical screen demo that a specific, with a specific dollar or follower outcome. That's the winning formula. Uh, and it, it ranks them all. Second lane, the gritty story with numbers. Um, so before AI took over the channel, as [laughs] like with this conversation here, it's all-time hits for young, diverse founders telling a from-nothing story with a specific figure in the title. Four Black women went from nothing to wealthy. So you all, you know all this stuff, I'm sure, by looking at your own analytics, but I think the interesting thing we'll s- we'll kind of jump to is the scoring rubric and the results, right? So high level, um, each candidate gets scored on the same seven criteria. Can they demo live for a non-technical viewer? Uh, the archetype fit with a number attached, NYC availability, of course, prior long form track record, as you indicated, uh, audience resonance, which is one of the things that I had said, timing hook, um, so basically does, is there, is this a viral moment, and then the reach they bring. So if they have a big audience size, it might pull some weight. It put together the weekly procedure. It's gonna kind of double-check the channel stats, mine comments from the top three most recent episodes, go through comparable shows for outliers, uh, and generate candidates. So this week's run, it recommended Dan Shipper, the writer who mastered Claude Code, would be the title. [laughs] And so CEO of, uh, Every. Um, [lip smack] 130K reader AI newsletter, five software products, seven-figure revenue, publicly 100% AI-written code, and it goes on. Uh, and then some, some runners up. So, um-

    8. CJCalum Johnson1:13:32

       Some of those names we actually have on-

    9. MEMatt Ebso1:13:33

       Yes

    10. CJCalum Johnson1:13:33

        ... we have on our, uh, lists. Sinead Bowen.

    11. MEMatt Ebso1:13:36

        Oh, for-

    12. CJCalum Johnson1:13:37

        Yeah

    13. MEMatt Ebso1:13:37

        ... to reach out to or to, to get on the show.

    14. CJCalum Johnson1:13:39

        Yeah.

    15. MEMatt Ebso1:13:39

        See? This is, it's... This is good. It shows the lined, um, and it shows the score for each of them here, uh, that it would rank them for the fit. Um, what the channel isn't thinking about, AI and real estate, the most NYC native gap.

    16. CJCalum Johnson1:13:56

        Hmm. That's interesting, yeah.

    17. MEMatt Ebso1:13:57

        I don't know.

    18. CJCalum Johnson1:13:57

        I guess, as we said, New York, yeah.

    19. MEMatt Ebso1:13:58

        Interesting. Yeah, so obviously you get to filter, you get to be the human that goes, "Hmm."

    20. CJCalum Johnson1:14:02

        Yeah, I wouldn't do that.

    21. MEMatt Ebso1:14:03

        You know what?

    22. CJCalum Johnson1:14:03

        I would do this. Yeah.

    23. MEMatt Ebso1:14:04

        I wouldn't do that. No. But, but that's the feedback you give, and so this is the feedback loop. Um, some low-hanging fruit, part two with top performers. I don't know. Maybe. Um, try to connect with Anthropic NYC. And it gives a list of all the sources. So I think the most interesting thing is, of course, anything can go do a run and generate a report, right? Um, but then in the same conversation, here, this is where I would react, and I would do a couple reactions. So I would say, "Um, you know, we're not really into the real estate thing." Turn on the microphone, tell it that. Say, uh, I don't know, what's your reaction to the debate format here? It says a debate format with, um, different AI people, uh, AI, people in the AI space. Reaction.

    24. CJCalum Johnson1:14:58

        Hmm. Actually, we, we've thought about a debate format. We've actually, we've actually done that. We've thought about that.

    25. MEMatt Ebso1:15:03

        Thought about it.

    26. CJCalum Johnson1:15:03

        That's something that-

    27. MEMatt Ebso1:15:04

        Okay

    28. CJCalum Johnson1:15:04

        ... maybe down the, down the line, I think that that's something that we would do.

    29. MEMatt Ebso1:15:08

        So obviously I'm not telling you how to run your show, nor is Claude, but it's suggesting interesting things, and so you get to react to that now. And so that exact reaction you gave me is, "Ah, we've thought about it. Maybe." That's exactly what you can tell it, and then it, it can get sharper, so the next time it runs, it knows exactly that you're thinking, "Eh, maybe, but no real estate." And then here's what you would do once you're happy. You run a few rounds of feedback. You really fine-tune it. Maybe you tell it to record feedback after each run. And honestly, that's one thing I would get in the habit of doing anytime you're working with scheduled runs. Review the run, and give it feedback in the same conversation, and then tell it to persist that feedback somewhere. Tell it to store that feedback somewhere durable so we can look at it the next time this worker with amnesia wakes up.

    30. CJCalum Johnson1:15:59

        Is that, is that the skill, that's the skill part of it, of like creating a skill?
11. 1:17:46 – 1:21:32

    Do this first if you want Claude to save you hours

    1. CJCalum Johnson1:17:46

       someone's listened to this conversation, and maybe they have like a few hours free on like an evening, like a free evening after work this week. Or maybe like going into the weekend, they have like Saturday afternoon or like a Sunday, Sunday evening, uh, they have free, they have a few hours. What would you tell them that they should immediately go and do? Like, the action point, having listened to this conversation that you and I have started, so that they can just get a little bit closer to kind of getting the value and the impact that you're getting from your Claude when it comes to saving time and automating tasks.

    2. MEMatt Ebso1:18:26

       I'd say the biggest thing I want people to walk away with is to identify some opportunities and f- uh, identify the biggest pain points that you're currently experiencing in your life, and then hit the microphone button on a conversation with Claude and just talk through them with it. Start there, and sort of hand some of the decision-making process to Claude. Say, "Here are the biggest challenges I'm facing in my life right now And give it as much context as you can. Really, I'd say, like, all this stuff thrives on context. The more information you can give it, the more specific and magical the results will feel because every single thing is fine-tuned to you. It's not a generic result. You're not saying, "Build me a business plan to make a million dollars." You're saying, "Man, here's all the things in my life that I'm dealing with, that I would like to solve, that I'd like to hand to somebody else. Help me organize it. Help me get organized so that I can hand them off to you." What's-- And then ask Claude, "What is the first thing we should build together? What is the first thing that we could build right now to get me back an hour in my week, two hours in my week?" And for, for many people listening, they probably can identify one thing right now that just feels like a burden. It's probably the thing you're procrastinating right now, the, "Ugh, I should be doing..." Fill in the blank. Whatever follows should be is the thing that you actually probably should not be doing [laughs] . That's the thing that probably somebody else should be doing, in this case, Claude. So yeah, I'd say to sum it all up, hit the microphone button, talk to Claude about the problems you're facing, and let it propose some solutions, and then let it drive. Put it on a schedule, let it run, and give it feedback as it goes.

    3. CJCalum Johnson1:20:25

       Yeah. I think it's so, I think it's so good, and I think the, the, the quote of, "The best way to use Claude to automate your work is have it do an exploratory pass and discover the best way to approach a task that could be repeatable, and then take that discovery pass and turn it into a repeatable recipe in the form of a skill." And I just think that, like, that process added in with what you just mentioned of, like, voice dumping on your, like, your biggest problems and pain points, it's like, it's instantly gonna give you one to two things that if you build it in the right way, in the way that we've just shown, it's gonna save you hours a week. And I just, I think that that's such a... Yeah. I, I think about what people can do with that time back. Um, it's impactful. Thank you so much, Matt. You've been great.

    4. MEMatt Ebso1:21:19

       Yeah, of course. Thank you. It's really been great being on the show.

    5. CJCalum Johnson1:21:22

       So if you enjoyed this conversation and you wanna hear even more stories like this, then just click here. And also, my team is gonna put some more videos that you can watch here. Thank you.

Episode duration: 1:21:33