The Mom Who Mastered Claude: The Fastest Way To Make Your First Million Using AI (3 Step Framework!)

Edwina McKinnon 0:00 This AI revolution was not made for a tech person. It was actually made for the everyday person. For I don't have a tech background. I literally went from $0 to now close to touching a million dollars just by leveraging AI. You can build a one-person team into a million-dollar entity right now, and I don't push people to be an AI expert, neither an AI consultant.

Calum Johnson 0:23 What is the first step that you would have them do?

Edwina McKinnon 0:26 This framework that I'm about to talk about is exactly what I went through. The very first thing is you're gonna-

Calum Johnson 0:35 Before we get into the episode, I have to say that it's pretty surreal to me that I get to do this and record this show for you guys, and so many of you tune in and leave comments and likes on the content. The reason why I do this show and I record every single week is that I want to show that anything is possible. Any dream, any delusion that you have in your mind right now, you can bring it to reality. One of my goals at the moment is that I have this crazy delusional dream that this time next year we'll reach a million subscribers on this channel. And so if you click that subscribe button, the promise that I'll make to you is that we're gonna improve this show every single week, and so I wanna take you on that journey with me. So hit that subscribe button and let's get into the show. I was watching one of your reels, and one of the things that you said, you said, "I help everyday people turn AI into ownership."

Calum Johnson 1:29 And when I was listening, the wording of that felt very intentional to me. And so where I wanted to begin is in practical terms for the person who m- might not be familiar with you or your background, what is it that you do? And then more importantly, who do you do it for?

Edwina McKinnon 1:47 Awesome. So I'm g- I, I'm actually gonna just declare something for your audience, is I do this to be able to birth out millionaires in the AI revolution that has always been overlooked. So I do it for the individuals that didn't come from families that were having these tech discussions around their family tables. That's who I do it for, because this AI revolution was not made for a tech person. It was actually made for the everyday person. And once I figured that out, I became on a mission, and I am literally dedicating the next two decades of my life to not just inspiring, not just motivating people to come to the AI table, but declaring that this is built for them. So that's the movement that I'm on, and that's the mission that I'm on, is that I wanna be able to birth out millionaires from this AI revolution. And it is not something that I say to inspire anyone because, and I'm gonna declare it for your audience right now, is that after they watch this episode, they will have the map, the steps, the money figures to be able to make that happen. The only thing I ask of them is once they hit that millionaire mark, that they come back and they report it back to you.

Calum Johnson 3:06 Yeah. Yeah, re- report it back to us.

Edwina McKinnon 3:07 [laughs]

Calum Johnson 3:08 Um, I think that's like a beautiful intention. And you know what? 'Cause you, you spoke about, um, like birthing millionaires.

Edwina McKinnon 3:16 Yes.

Calum Johnson 3:16 And even in the, the line that I read out, "I help everyday people turn AI into ownership," um, the ownership word felt important and intentional. Why is that? Like, why specifically was ownership such an emphasis for you?

Edwina McKinnon 3:33 I come from a background where I've always worked for someone else, always building somebody else's empire, and I was always trying to figure out, how do I build something that outlasts me? And I always came back to this theory that if I continue to work for somebody else and I continue to build their table, I actually owned nothing at all. So ownership is very important to me because it doesn't just impact me, but it impacts the generations to come. It impacts your lineage, it impacts your bloodline, it impacts that your, your family, your sisters, your brother, your s- your kids. That's the importance of ownership, 'cause I can't pass down somebody else's empire.

Calum Johnson 4:18 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 4:19 If I'm going to-- And I love corporate, right? 'Cause they were my top investors for a very long time. They just didn't know. But I'm pro-corporate, but I'm also pro owning something that I can pass down, and not just pass down for somebody else, but also pass down to myself. So when AI came about and I started leveraging it and using it, I started realizing that I was born in a generation and a time such as this, and I needed other people to experience that as well. So that became super important to me. I have a son, he's 12 years old. Every day I wake up, I'm always thinking, "What can I do to not just impact myself, but to impact his life, give him the things that I wasn't able to experience?" But it even goes back into my bloodline. I come from a family full of entrepreneurs. Like when I think about my home, I always have to go back to my foundation. Waking up in my household, I came from a two-bedroom apartment with about 10 to sometimes 13 of us living in a two bedroom. But every day the message was always the same, especially from my father. He always said that, "I don't wanna work for anyone else. I wanna work for myself." And mind you, this was a long time ago. So back then our mindset didn't really understand that way of thinking. But now that I'm older, I completely understand-- I understood it. Because if you continue to work for somebody else, you actually don't own anything. They could replace you. They own the infrastructure, they own the systems, they own the client list, so that's why it's so easy for them to replace you with somebody else, and I caught wind of that really early. So That's the importance to ownership for me. It's owning something that, uh, has my name on it. It's owning the table. It's ow- owning the building. It's owning the bricks that build the building, right? That's how important it is to me.

Calum Johnson 6:22 Mm. You know, one thing I think that's, um, so interesting about your, your background, 'cause you mention these, like, entrepreneurial influences that you had at an extremely early age, especially from your dad, but you've worked in, uh, sales in corporate for, like, 20 years. Uh, you've been involved with AI for over eight years, and so one of the thing that's interesting that you said, you said, uh, "Once you see the power of ownership, you can't unsee it."

Edwina McKinnon 6:51 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 6:53 And so I'm curious for you to just share it with people that first experience, like, that first powerful, almost like this light bulb moment where you experienced the power of ownership. Like, take us back there.

Edwina McKinnon 7:08 Absolutely. So I think the biggest thing I'll talk about is when I was nine years old, I started my first company called Razzle Dazzle, and I talk about this all the time. And at that time, a lot of the young, uh, l- the young girls loved these beads, and I remember walking into those, to the stores and seeing the young girls trying to try on these beads, which is these bracelets, and they couldn't afford it. So I remember putting together the little money that I had and buying the beads from a warehouse and taking those beads to my two-bedroom a- c- uh, condo and renting out the party room downstairs and inviting these young girls over to buy the beads at a fraction of the cost, and I sold them for 25 cents. Back then, I don't wanna exp- expose my [laughs] age, but back then, that was, like ... Being able to see the exchange of money from their hands to my hands, and then going upstairs and counting the money, that is, that was ownership right there. And I sat back, and at the age of nine years old, I'm like, "My gosh, all I have to do is just sell?" And that's where I got introduced to sales, and that's the first experience that I had to ownership. After that, I became very intentional with what I did, and I remember, you know, leaving college and having that burning desire and then experiencing working for different companies. And there was an opportunity that was presented to me to enter the insurance field, and when I entered it, I had two options. I could work for somebody else, or I can build my own book of business. And mind you, building your own book of business at that time, especially as a woman, but also as a woman of color, was very difficult. So instead of me going to work for customer service or working for a company, I decided to actually build myself into a, a insurance broker. That's what they called them, and I built my book of business, and that's when I started experiencing ownership. Instead of me getting capped at a salary, I had unlimited amount of control over my income. Based off of the input that I put in dictated the output. So like I said, once you see it, you can't unsee it. So my first commission check, I was about twen- 19 or 20 years old, and most individuals at that time were working for a McDonald's or some sort of fast food chain, but I was building my own solid book of business, meaning ownership. My first commission check was $11,000.

Calum Johnson 9:51 Wow.

Edwina McKinnon 9:51 And I got that within 30 days.

Calum Johnson 9:53 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 9:53 You talk about feeling? I remember sitting there and conversing with, with my friends, and they're talking about hundreds of dollars, right, getting $500, but I got $11,000.

Calum Johnson 10:05 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 10:05 And I sat there and I said, "My gosh, this is what ownership looks like, where you have control over the out- the, the output based off of your input." And if you actually do a contrast to that, when you work for a company, it doesn't matter how much you put in. You're still gonna- You're just paying, they're paying you for a seat.

Calum Johnson 10:26 You're capped, yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 10:28 You're 100% capped. So the math started mathing, and I was like, "Wow, I never actually want to put myself in a position where my salary is capped." Um, but I was like, "No, I gotta make this work." So I got obsessed with sales because all I had to do was communicate. I doubled down on it. So when we talk about ownership, like I said, when you see it, you can't unsee it because when I got my first check, I was like, "My g- " I didn't even cash it. I was just in disbelief.

Calum Johnson 11:01 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 11:01 I was like, "Wow, now I can give money to my mom. Now I can buy a new car," which I literally did. I took my funds and I bought myself a new car, and I started, like, really doubling down on learning the skill, but not just learning it, owning the skill, owning that mindset to say, "Okay, this is what I'm good at," right? I actually ignored my weaknesses. I said, "No, I wanna focus on my strengths."

Calum Johnson 11:28 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 11:29 So I doubled down on what I was good at, and the rest became history. Month over month, I became top producer everywhere I went, and I became obsessed with not just the money. It was obsessed with the impact because in my mind, I'm like, "People aren't really buying the product. They're buying me."

Calum Johnson 11:48 Yeah. You know what? You, 'cause you, um, one of the things you talk about, and we even spoke about this before, is, uh, you had this, like, burning desire to be successful, and I think for a lot of people, especially right now, especially people that, like, they're the breadwinner in their family, you know, like, they feel the pressure of that and the responsibility, whether it's for their son, their daughter, their elderly parents. Like, they feel that responsibility. And then I think about what you mentioned with, uh, having control over your income, and we're at a time right now where people feel the opposite of that.

Edwina McKinnon 12:26 Right.

Calum Johnson 12:27 They feel like they're like this moving piece, and especially when we talk about AI, it's like this wave is coming, and I'm gonna either be replaced or out of the job or not as valuable as a result. And so there was something that you said when we spoke before this that I wanted you to elaborate on, which is you said, "What's important is seeing that there's a trillion dollars of this AI pie and making sure that you don't miss out on that wave in the same way that people missed out on the internet wave." Can you just elaborate on that piece and what you're seeing from your vantage point, given the people and the clients that you work with, this trillion dollars of this AI pie? Okay, so my AI agent Johnny recently sent me this beautiful pre-episode outline that I send to guests before we record with them, and he did this without me doing any prompting or even asking him to do it. And when I think about that, that is insane to me. And so a quick behind-the-scenes on the show. Before we record an episode, we do a pre-call with each guest, and then after that pre-call, I'll draft up an episode outline of exactly how I want to structure the episode and will send that to the guest. And usually it takes me anywhere from two to three hours to come up with this outline, and I do all of it in a plain text document. And so I came into the Hyperagent platform here to build an agent that could do this for me because I wanted to get my time back, and I wanted to create beautiful-looking outlines that would impress our guests. And so I clicked Create with Chat here. I gave it some basic information on what I wanted to build, and it just created the whole agent for me. Hyperagent made it really easy. And then after the pre-call that we did, I got this Slack message from my agent Johnny with a link to a finished outline literally 10 minutes after the pre-call. I didn't have to prompt it. I didn't even ask it to do this. It just knows what to do after every pre-call, which is mind-blowing to me. And Johnny's just my first agent that I've created with Hyperagent. And so if you wanna finally create your first AI agent and have it be easy and simple, go to that link in the description to get $500 of free credits with Hyperagent to do exactly that. Okay, so if you're watching this episode, I know you're probably the kind of person who's always looking for the new AI tool that will make your life easier. And so I wanted to show you guys this partnership proposal that I created with Gamma, the sponsor of today's episode, that made my life a lot easier. And so to give the context, I've always wanted to create a presentation like this that we could send to potential sponsors, but I'd never gotten around to it because I'm not a designer, and then number two, I didn't wanna spend a ton of money on a designer, and third, even if I was half good at design, it would've taken me at least a couple of days to create a presentation to this level. But with Gamma, I just had to come in here, I clicked on Create from Template, and Gamma actually has a partnership proposal template built right in here. And then I just come in, and I give it context on exactly what the proposal should do, and then I hit Generate. And in literally under 20 minutes, I have this beautiful-looking presentation. And honestly, the first output didn't look exactly the way that I wanted it to, and so I just open up Gamma's agent right here, and I tell it exactly what I don't like and what I want it to change, and it just did it for me. And so if you're someone that's listening and you want to create presentations like this for yourself, just go to the link in the description to try Gamma today. Thank you to Gamma for sponsoring this episode. Let's get back to the show.

Edwina McKinnon 16:17 Well, there is a tr- there's a trillion dollars on the table, and what's happening right now is AI is being used to cause panic, but AI is actually exposing that the things that we thought were safe is actually s- unsafe. So it's not an AI problem. It's the fact that we're now being exposed to the truth, that actually working for an organization or a company, it was actually never safe at all. So yes, there is a trillion dollars on the table, and the people that are on the sidelines need to get into the game because once they figure out, "Okay, I can leverage AI to multiply what I'm doing to build and scale a business." Like, when I was starting out and building businesses, 'cause I s- started and stopped many businesses, but you would have to have at least 10 to 30, sometimes $50,000 to start a business. And now really all you need is a laptop and $500. So that's why I say there's a trillion dollars on the table, and the issue that I'm seeing is a lot of people are going through life on autopilot. They're doing the same thing, right, expecting different results, not realizing that the economy has actually changed, that you don't need to actually go and work nine to five, and I'm not putting down nine to five, but this is what my message is, is ownership, is that you don't have to run to a company. You can actually sacrifice your time and pour your energy into building something that you can own, and that's why I say there's a trillion dollars on the table because right now you can leverage AI to solve so much problems right now where you can build those problems into a business and actually taking those problems and those solutions that you build and actually approaching those companies that need help. So yes, there is a trillion dollars on the table, and now is not a time to panic. I have more of a mindset of abundance Right? And that's very important to me, is that when I'm looking at the AI table, I'm not looking at it from a panic pos- position, 'cause I've been there. But once you get over the hump of fear and you start strategizing and you have a strategy, things will start playing out. And I literally went from $0 to, you know, now close to touching a million dollars just by leveraging AI. Because we could rewire and become a breadwinner right now. You could make four, five, six figures a month leveraging AI. There was a man that was just announced as a trillionaire, and he has infrastructure in AI. So people are showing you where the money is flowing. So I'm gonna walk towards where the money is flowing, which is AI, and I'm, I want everybody to come with me because there is enough, like trillion dollars. Like you can think about, uh, if everybody was to double down and learn AI, build with AI, they can get a piece of that pie. Not just for themselves, but they can actually take a piece of that pie, retire their mom, retire their dad, give something back to their sisters and brothers, and also then show them how their, they can make their own ownership from it too, right? So it's like impacting your whole family. So that's so important to me.

Calum Johnson 19:41 Yeah. You know, 'cause so we're gonna, uh, we're gonna get into the steps, and it was something that you and I spoke about even before you started recording of like we want this conversation to be so practical on how people can get started-

Edwina McKinnon 19:54 Absolutely

Calum Johnson 19:54 ... and the steps to actually building a business and using AI in your business. Before we do, though, I wanna go back to the, the beginning of your story, specifically with, uh, AI. Because speaking today, you run a consulting business, you help people, uh, build their companies using AI. You're doing $200,000 a month. Uh, but in the beginning, and, and this is what you said, you said, "I became very obsessed with this technology about eight years ago. I then spent about 10,000 hours plus learning about it." And so I think one of the thing that's interesting to me, because a lot of people are getting into this space right now because it's trendy-

Edwina McKinnon 20:38 Right

Calum Johnson 20:38 ... but you've been doing this for eight years.

Edwina McKinnon 20:40 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 20:41 Um, and you've put in the 10,000 hours. It's always like we hear that, right? The 10,000 hours is mastery. And so if you take us back to that origin, what event, what is the trigger point or even like the light bulb moment that makes you as y- in your words, "I became very obsessed about this technology"? Like what prompted that?

Edwina McKinnon 21:06 What prompted it? Wow. I got laid off from my job. That's what prompted it. And it was such a, like I was actually going through a major transition in my personal life as well. So it was like a tipping point where it almost like I didn't have any choice, but I just remember working for a company and supporting them, pouring in like unlimited hours, and then boom, getting an HR. I don't know if anybody's experienced getting laid off, but you get this like HR calendar invite and you're just like, "What is this about?" And, and from my perspective, it was actually, it said team meeting. So I actually showed up thinking it was a team meeting, not realizing it was just me and a couple of individuals in the room in HR. And, uh, they had told me that they were laying off, uh, they were doing layoffs in tiers, and we were the first. And I was actually in C-suite, so I was getting paid like six figures. It was a fantastic run. Um, I was actually working for a firm that was focused on technology as well. Um, but yeah, I showed up to a meeting one day, and there was about seven of us, and they were, they told us that we were getting le- let go. Mind you, I was like the top performer of the whole, like, to be honest, of the whole company. I impacted it, um, yeah, q- in, like, let's talk about profits and revenue. Like, when I would get those Excel sheets compared to what I was getting paid [clears throat] , the math was like 10 times more. Like they were getting paid 2 million a month, and I was getting paid, you know, six figures a year. So when I started looking at the math, I'm like, the impact that I had towards those numbers, it just didn't make sense to me. And I think that allowed me to get really emotional because I was like, you give your all to a company and just for them to turn around and lay you off in the first batch.

Calum Johnson 23:10 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 23:10 That was the tipping point that sparked something with me because when I left the company and I would check in with my old colleagues that were remaining, I actually found out that they were replacing people to technology.

Calum Johnson 23:25 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 23:26 So everything that I was doing was actually becoming, they were monitoring it so they can push it to technology. So I didn't realize that I was actually, um, pushing myself out of the company by giving them as much information as possible, and this was before AI, to be honest.

Calum Johnson 23:43 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 23:43 So that was the tipping point that took place, and I was just at a point where, you know, many people would have bet on stocks, many people would have bet on going back into finding another job, but there was something inside of me that reignited even from when I was a little girl, fast-forward to now, to that tipping point, was that burning desire to be successful. And at that point, I had given about 17 years of my life to other people's empires and dreams, and I remember sitting there just saying, "What am I gonna do?" Even though I got a severance, I was like, "What am I gonna do?" Because I became so engulfed with the title Walking around saying that I was a VP, and you know what I mean? But, and this is like the story of everybody that, you know, you try to rise to C-suite, and I've, I did that. And then being able to go from that to feeling nothing because the title was ripped a- ripped from me, it was devastating. But I have this rule that I live by. We do 60 seconds to vent and cry, but we gotta figure out a solution. So I literally allowed myself to have that moment, but then I wiped my tears away and I said, "I gotta figure this out." And that part of, that part of that emotion comes from my mother. She's a very resilient woman, so it's almost like it didn't matter what she, what- when people told her no, she always found a way. So that side kind of, like, came into me. I was like, "I gotta find a way."

Calum Johnson 25:21 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 25:22 I literally took my severance pay and invested it into learning coding. I took my severance pay and I invested it into certifications. I actually went on a certification run. I have over 25 certifications. I, like, went back to back to back to back learning, and then in one of those certifications, AI popped up.

Calum Johnson 25:47 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 25:47 And that's when I was like, "Wait, what is this?" 'Cause remember, I don't have a tech background. I have a sales background. But, and I was doing something so different, right? I was like, "What is this?" And then literally a couple of months from that, I was then exposed to ChatGPT, and it started to all click. And I took my severance, pushed it into certifications, but then I also pushed it into building my business.

Calum Johnson 26:18 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 26:18 So instead of me just staying where I was, that would've been tragedy. I a- actually took that pain and I said, "I'm gonna make noise, and I'm gonna make my success make the noise." So it was almost like, 'cause people love to get, be revengeful, but for me, my revenge is success. So every day that I woke up in that moment, I kept thinking, "I'm gonna prove them wrong. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna make sure that I could win," right? So that was my mindset. And mind you, as I talk through it, it seems like, okay, well, she just pushed through. Every day was a, was a pressure... I felt like I was in a pressure cooker. Because you're going from a mindset of being a corporate individual getting paid every two weeks, your paycheck is always on time, never missed-

Calum Johnson 27:10 Yeah

Edwina McKinnon 27:10 ... to going from, uh, having to go find who's gonna pay you.

Calum Johnson 27:15 You never know when.

Edwina McKinnon 27:17 You never know when.

Calum Johnson 27:18 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 27:18 You can go months without getting paid and have, like, a big, huge month. So that mind, there was, it was so much rewiring that I had to do. And mind you, I was also going through a huge personal tran- uh, transformation as well, right? I was leaving a, a very long relationship, and this will resonate with people, like, that's going through transitions in their life. It's like people will always say, "Well, life is happening. I'm just gonna just let it happen." No, I decided to leverage every pain, every obstacle as an opportunity for me to be able to win.

Calum Johnson 27:56 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 27:56 And I became a shark. Just as much as I was a shark for other companies, I became a shark, meaning that every day I woke up, I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna make sure that I'm gonna learn as much as possible," but I came up with a strategy that I already knew how to run a successful business because I had 17 years backed of success track record of running other people's empire, right? I was the person that ran a lot of these companies, came up with strategies, came up with blueprints, came up with learning initiatives. I took all of that, and I just built it into my business. We went, like, w- uh, month one, nothing. Month two, nothing. Month three, nothing. And I remember inviting my mom over just telling her, like, "I'm done,"

Edwina McKinnon 28:45 like, "I'm, I'm gonna go back and work for another company." There was actually this big, um, contract that I was waiting for, and I remember my mom was in the living room and I'm like, "I don't know what I'm gonna do. If I don't get this contract, I'm gonna have to figure something out." And lo and behold, it was around 12:00 AM, I got a notification of $14,000 getting transferred into my account. The contract came through.

Calum Johnson 29:09 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 29:09 And my mom was still there on the couch. Mind you, she thought it was $7,000, but for the record it was a $14,000 contract. Um, but I, I remember turning to my mom and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is it. This is ownership. This is what it feels like," being able to... 'Cause I went three months of just... Right? And then all of a sudden, boom, $14,000. And I remember thinking, "I already know what it takes to have a successful business 'cause I've already done it for others."

Calum Johnson 29:43 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 29:43 So I started to just, like, execute, create systems, frameworks, doubling down on AI, learning it as much as possible, and being able to then apply everything into my business to the point where every day now it still feels like a pressure cooker. Though that feeling, I just got used to it, but it's now understanding my worth was never tied to a title. It was always tied to me. I'm the breadwinner. I'm the one that's gonna impact my own paycheck. I al- I will never go back to have somebody control my input to output.

Calum Johnson 30:19 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 30:19 Does that make sense?

Calum Johnson 30:20 Yeah. You know what? There's, um, Edwina, there's like a, there's a power in your story. You know? There's a, there's a power in your story because I think about that, um- We put so much of our identity and almost, like, our sense of worth to an extent in our job. Like, I even think about, you know, living in New York, like, conversations that you'll have meeting someone, and in the first few question is, "What do you do?" You know, it's like it really kind of encapsulates who we are to a certain extent. And so when you go from that and then so abruptly to, like, you don't have that to lean on, like, you, there's nothing that ... You, you can't tell people, "I'm a VP at this," or, "I work here." There's nothing. And for a lot of people, and I've seen it firsthand, it's like that can destroy their confidence.

Edwina McKinnon 31:12 Yes.

Calum Johnson 31:12 Like, people never recover from that moment. And so I think to myself, even as I just listen to your story, of that person sitting at home or that person that's going through that experience right now where it's like, "This happened. I've been laid off, but not just me. Like, my team has been laid off." Like, there's not really ... It almost feels like there's not a value to my skill set at this point. To that human being that is in that experience right now, given what you've achieved and how you turned it around and getting to that first point where you close a $14,000 contract and seeing the value of AI, what would be your advice to that person? What would you have wanted to hear in that moment when you're stepping out of that meeting room and it's like, "I went in as a VP," or, "I went in as a manager, and now there's nothing there"? What would you say to that human being?

Edwina McKinnon 32:14 You were made for the, a time such as this. A lot of time people don't realize that they go through seasons in life, and when you understand the season that you're in, uh, you will go through these seasons, and you will go through a season of disruption. I always think about how a plant even comes to, to fru- fertition, right? It's the soil. The soil has to go through disruption, where you're taking a seed and you're planting the soil, and you're taking the seed and planting it into a soil. I talk in analogies because that's the only way I can connect things, but that's how I felt like I was, I was going through a season of disruption, not realizing that it's necessary so you can see your worth.

Calum Johnson 32:59 Mm-hmm.

Edwina McKinnon 32:59 A lot of the times, like you said, we tie our worth to these titles, and when that title is gone, you feel like you're nothing, 'cause you're right. When you go into your friend group and your circle and people ask, "Well, what do you do?" You, you ... What do you do, right? So if I can give any advice, like I said, it's understanding that seasons take place in your life for a reason, and you were meant for a time such as this. You will go through a whole 180 of relearning who you are. This is not a step down. This is actually a step up because it allows you to see that y- you being tied to the job title was actually limiting your success. It's a, it's a limitation 'cause once the title left me, I felt like I had nothing, but then the, like I said, the next day I'm like, "No, I have everything." I actually co-created and built these billion-dollar companies. I was the one t- saying yes and no, and CEOs would leverage my ability to say, "Should we move? Should we not go?" So I was like, "No, I'm everything." So if I can give somebody advice, it's understanding there's seasons, but understanding that you were built for this, that this is happening for a reason. You've had a burning desire to build something that you could say, "This is mine."

Calum Johnson 34:20 Mm-hmm.

Edwina McKinnon 34:21 And this is your time. We have leverage. We have AI. Like, I've, like, I've never seen it in my whole entire history of being on this earth, a tool, um, a system, a, an AI agent that we can leverage to be able to multiply what we couldn't do before. You can build, and I'm like a walking, uh, witness to this. You can build a one-person team into a million-dollar entity right now.

Calum Johnson 34:49 Mm-hmm.

Edwina McKinnon 34:49 So it's understanding that you're the one.

Calum Johnson 34:52 Yeah. I actually think it's such a great reframe of, um ... Like, there was a reason why the company that you worked at was paying you a salary. Like, you actually have a, you have value. Like, there, there's a reason why they paid you. It's probably because you're creating more value for that company than what they're paying you. Um, you know what, Edwina? Here's where I wanna go because I just wanna make it so real for people. And so I know that there's, like I said, there's thousands of people that reach out to you. You work with a lot of, uh, entrepreneurs and clients, helping them infuse AI into their businesses. Can you speak to and just share some examples of people, whether it's like they've reached out to you or clients that you've worked with, and just share how, share first of all how they're using AI in, like, their business or even how they've gone from that point of, like, they were a professional working in the corporate world to now they're actually running a business, whether it's, like, a service-based business or a product. Can you just share some of those examples and how they're using AI?

Edwina McKinnon 35:59 Absolutely. So right now, um, out of my corner office, meaning my business, we've been able to birth out individuals that can make five to six figures a month. How that is taking place is it's actually my framework that I use. It's, um, and this is actually, this framework that I'm about to talk about is exactly what I went through when I was g- when I got laid off. The very first thing is you're gonna extract your genius. You're gonna figure out what is that skill that the company was actually paying you to do. Not the title. Forget about the title. I'm talking about the actual skill. Right? So when, when we have people coming into... 'Cause we had hundreds and thousands of DMs, and people are like, "I have a burning desire to own something." The very first thing that I do with them is I'm analyzing, "Well, what are you good at?" And a lot of people will be like, "Well, I don't know. Like, you know, my company hires me." Well, we start, we always start there because the company's obviously, like you said, paying you a salary for you to have a seat there because they see value in what you're doing. They are renting your skill, meaning that they're not actually paying you to what they should be paying you. So the very first step is we extract that skill. So what is the company paying you to actually do that's supporting their business and allowing them to see revenue and profits? I don't just deal with any skill sets. I deal with the skill sets that where we focus on revenue and profit. Those are the, like, just 'cause of my sales background, it has to make us money. So we extract those skill sets, and we start there. And, like, that's literally week one of what we're doing with all of the students and individuals within their business. We analyze what they're actually good at, and we take that, and we create a ICP, which is a customer. Mm. Who would value off of that skills set that you have? So we turn that into figuring out which clients would actually need that, right? So if you take somebody, like an individual that's been working with corporate, and let's say they come up with SOPs or they come up with, um, workflows. We would take that skill set and now create it into, okay, which individuals would actually value from that? It can be a dentist office that's has no workflows at all, no processes, no systems. It can be a doctor's office. And we allow them to take it, create that ICP, which is that client, and then from there, very quickly they create an offer. Mm. But I do things very different. So we don't just go and start building a business around the offer. I actually do the opposite. I actually tell them to go and start talk, talking to at least 10 to 30 people about the offer that they're thinking about going to the market with. So we test demand. A lot of people make that mistake. They build something that they think these clients will need, and then you go to the market, and it's like ghost town. Mm. I get them to actually go to the... And this all happens within a period of weeks. So you can literally go from week one to week four closing an, a, a sale because of the strategy right here. So you go to the same ICP of those clients. You figure out, you have those conversations with them. You say to them, "Okay, what are you actually dealing with? What's the actual issues?" And then you take all their feedback, and you put that into the offer. The beauty of it is that we have AI now. So AI actually supports from the very beginning, which I can show your audience step by step. It supports by finding that skill set 'cause sometimes it's very hard. If you're just getting laid off, it is so hard for you to even think clearly. But the beauty is that we have AI, and you can leverage AI to be able to support you going from finding that skill set for you to figuring out who's your customer to then going to the marketplace and supporting you with the messaging to the actual client, taking that feedback, putting it into AI, so it's supporting you even though you're emotional. Mm. It's supporting you along the way, and then you're taking those 10 to 30 conversations, and you're actually going back to those same individuals and saying that, "Well, this is something that I've created just for you." And a lot of the times the individuals that do this, that exact framework is able to close 30% of those clients, so that's like 3 out of 10.

Edwina McKinnon 40:21 Mm. Because... And it's, it does something indirectly too because a lot of individuals are not confident with sales and going out there and having these conversations. So I push these individuals to go out and have these conversations because your first 10K is not gonna come from, uh, from content going viral online. It's gonna come from you actually going and having these conversations with the people in your f- in your phone book. Mm. With the people that you used to work with, with the, with the CEOs that used to trust your judgment. It's not going online and going in front of... 'Cause some people will be like, "No, go and do content." I'm actually the opposite. The way that I hit my first 100K was by just going back to the companies that laid me off, going back to my neighborhood, going on LinkedIn, sending out messages, getting into my group chat, letting people know what I'm doing. Um, there's a quote that I came across, Malcolm X, he said, "Whenever you do things, make some noise." And I remember holding onto that, so and that's things that I push throughout all of my students as well, right? Everybody that comes in my DMs, make some noise. You got laid off? Make some noise. Let people know what you're doing, right? Um, don't stay in an, don't stay in that emotional despair. Look at it as a positive. Turn that, your skill sets into money. So hopefully that's, those steps made sense. Like, we extract the genius, right? We get the skill set. We focus on what is the customer, who is the customer that we're gonna be attracting. We create a temporary offer, but we are leveraging that offer to go have more conversations, so we're testing the market. We're getting people excited. We're actually, um, dropping little nuggets, letting people indirectly know we're coming up with something. We're taking their feedback, and then we're creating a one-page, what I, what I call a one-pager, which is going through the price, the plan, the offer, the delivery, the system, what you're giving them. And then you're then going back to those conversations to let them know that you've been able to create something remarkable that's going to be able to solve a lot of the problems that they're dealing with. Mm. 3 out of 10, 3 people will say yes because you have that rapport. They trust your judgment. You're not going to somebody that doesn't know who you are. You're going to somebody that you've worked with. You're going with some- to somebody that you may have had a relationship with in terms of business. You're going to that real estate broker that helped you find your first house. You're going to people in your network. Like, if you look at your phone, like, you can look at your phone right now. Like, how much contacts do you have? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Calum Johnson 42:55 You know, I actually, um, 'cause this is really good, and I think that, that there's two points that, uh, I heard that I wanna key in on. The first one is, uh, the speed. You know, I think you mentioned that, uh, it's fast. Like, within the process of, like, weeks, you're actually getting to this point where you have a temporary offer. Um, and it felt like that was intentional, like actually doing it with a level of speed. And then the second part, and this is almost, like, counterproductive even with the way that, uh, we've had this conversation, because we've been speaking about AI. And so I think that when you speak about AI, people think machines and, uh, software, and you're, like, just in your house just typing away, like, talking with ChatGPT or Claude, but there's actually this human layer, um, to the process, to, like, that three-step process that you laid out, and I love that of the, even the visual-

Edwina McKinnon 43:52 Right

Calum Johnson 43:52 ... of, like, in your phone right now.

Edwina McKinnon 43:54 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 43:55 Like, the first 100K is like, really it's just in your phone, which is all the contacts, like the people that you know from previous jobs or your LinkedIn or your manager or the real estate broker, is like, those are the people that you should start with. Like, the people that know you, uh, they trust in your reputation and what you're capable of. Um, so, so that jumped out to me straight away, like that human piece. I guess, at what point, at what point in the process does AI come in in a major way? Because I think we're getting to the, the point now, especially with all of, like, the internet hype and content hype, where people believe that AI, and especially, like, AI agents, they can just do anything for you. They can do everything. They can run the business, they can sell, and you see these videos. In your mind, given the people that you've worked with and the work that you've done in your own business, where does AI come in first in a major way?

Edwina McKinnon 44:56 Absolutely. Um, so I'll take a step back first to talk about speed. I'm actually a woman of speed. Very quick, like I said, I'm a shark, so that same mentality goes through every framework that I do. But if you notice that I said, I spoke about the frameworks, I didn't mention one AI tool, did I?

Calum Johnson 45:14 You didn't.

Edwina McKinnon 45:16 A lot of people, especially 'cause you said something, are getting into AI right now not understanding that this is not an AI buzzword thing, it's a business r- business foundation still is, like, is still important.

Calum Johnson 45:29 Yeah, business principles.

Edwina McKinnon 45:32 I don't care what anybody says, AI is not magic. You still need to know the first principles. You still need to understand how business operates. And for me personally, and anybody that I work with, they're like, "Well, what's the AI tool stack?" Well, why would we get to an AI tool stack if you don't know even how to make money yet? So we go through getting those skills, like those, the framework that I said, but you said, where does AI come in? It actually comes in very last, towards the end, which is the delivery. D- AI can actually support with the delivery side of things. So the welcome email when somebody actually becomes a client, you can create a whole welcome, uh, white glove onboarding experience. You can have AI automate that section. You can support it with, like, I have a lady that does market research for schools. She has the AI help her and support her with market research, the thing that used, she used to do manually, she now gets AI to support with the delivery. You can get AI to do 80% of del- delivery now. But the first few steps is not, AI doesn't come in there. Yes, it does support you with leveraging and guiding you, but it doesn't come in there to, uh, automate conversations.

Calum Johnson 46:44 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 46:44 And I know right now people are like, "Yeah, I wanna make money while I sleep," or, "AI can help you do things while you sleep." Like, I mean, but why would you get AI involved if you don't e- if you haven't been able to even figure out how to make money?

Calum Johnson 46:55 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 46:56 So you have to go through those steps for, for sure, and then you get AI to handle the delivery side of things.

Calum Johnson 47:02 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 47:02 Which is creating the workflows, which is supporting your client, uh, communication, which is trying to figure out what could it do to where you don't have to be continuously in the weeds? Those are questions that I always continuously ask, is because if we think about the mindset, a, a worker actually does the work, and we're not workers in, like, in my mindset, I don't want anybody to be a worker. I want them to be an operator, and an operator doesn't think about, "What do I need to do?" It's more or less, "What do I don't do to allow the system to actually work?" So that's my mindset when it comes to where does AI come into play. It is at the very ending, which is the delivery. Because AI, as much as how, like it's really good right now, but it will never replace this.

Calum Johnson 47:54 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 47:55 Building rapport, having a relationship, those things are still key to being able to actually hit your first 100K, even your first million. It is built off of relationships. So for me, I never move with tools first. When people come into my, like, my space, my ecosystem, and they're like, "Well, what's your tool stack?" My tool stack is pretty simple. I just have, like, when I first got started, it was literally a website, a payment link, a calendar link, and that was it, right?

Calum Johnson 48:27 We overcomplicate it.

Edwina McKinnon 48:28 We overcomplicate it. They said the average entrepreneur and the average individual right now has 45 subscriptions on AI.

Calum Johnson 48:34 Wow.

Edwina McKinnon 48:35 Because, like you said, people are coming into this space new, and they're providing incorrect information. It's not about the AI tools. It's a tool.

Calum Johnson 48:47 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 48:47 If you think about it, um, I'm from Canada, so Home Depot, I don't, I don't know if anybody's familiar, but Home Depot-

Calum Johnson 48:54 We have Home Depot here.

Edwina McKinnon 48:55 Do you?

Calum Johnson 48:55 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 48:56 Okay. So you can go into Home Depot- And buy all the tools to build a house, and you can get back to the, the place where you wanna build a house, and the house still is not built.

Calum Johnson 49:08 Mm-hmm.

Edwina McKinnon 49:09 That's the same way AI works. You can have all the tools, but still not have a million-dollar business.

Calum Johnson 49:13 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 49:14 It was never about the tools. It was always about the blueprint. It was always about understanding those frameworks. How do you start a business? Business foundations. You still need to know that, and that is still foundational to how a business is done. AI is not some magic land that's going to automate everything. I mean, what are we automating if you don't even have a s- like, you don't even know how to get a client, right? So I believe that AI comes in at the very end. It's not something that you bring in at the beginning, because that's what causes confusion. That's what causes you to sit there with 45 tools, not creating a synergy, not creating a system. Like, when you think about it, there's four parts to a business, and this is something that I learned very young. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, these are the four pillars that you will come across: content, sales, delivery, and operations. Every business operates in those four pillars. So when you think about AI, AI comes in once you've been able to master your first couple of sale- sales, and then you structure AI around those four pillars.

Calum Johnson 50:21 Mm-hmm. You know, I love the, I love the focus on the foundation and that kind of three-step, really simple process that you map out, which is fast, and, um, which is, one, like, extracting your genius, which is the skill that, uh, you're great at or that you're already being paid for if you're working a job. And then two is developing that ICP, who's like, who's the customer profile. And we do the, we do that for this show, you know? Viewer avatar in our context. Um, and then third is developing the temporary offer based off of that. You know what, one of the areas, 'cause you mentioned how AI can help in delivery, but I also know from, um, speaking with you before this, there's also a certain ... I think the AI almost as like, um, a consultant or like a thought partner is valuable.

Edwina McKinnon 51:14 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 51:15 And so one of the things, I know that you have, uh, a prompt that you kind of use with, uh, people that kinda helps them kinda come up with, uh, what that skill could be. Uh, the resume au- autopsy prompt.

Edwina McKinnon 51:30 Yes.

Calum Johnson 51:31 Could you kinda, could you share your screen? Could you take people through

Calum Johnson 51:36 that?

Edwina McKinnon 51:36 Absolutely. So the importance of this is a lot of people don't know where to start, and when people don't know where to start, they just go back to what they're comfortable with. So I created this because what it's gonna do, it's, number one, it's gonna allow us to extract that genius that we spoke about, because a lot of people cannot disconnect from their job title. So what this does is it will allow you to take any resume, upload the resume, and then the resume autopsy will actually find the skill that is hiding in that job title. So I'm gonna read directly off this prompt, so, and I'll read just a couple of sentences so you can see what it's doing. But it says, "You have my resume below," which is the resume that's attached, and we're attaching this into my favorite tool, which is Claude, and I use Cowork on purpose, okay? It says, "Don't tell me what I did. Tell me what I'm worth. Number one, find every skill hiding under the job titles. No duties, the skills, the things that made money happen."

Calum Johnson 52:40 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 52:41 "Number two, rank the top five by what companies pay outside consultants-

Calum Johnson 52:47 Mm

Edwina McKinnon 52:47 ... for that same work today, and do real market rates." The reason why I add that there is because AI in these tools, again, it doesn't matter what you use, has access to so much data. So why not have AI, which is Claude, the tool that we're using, go and extract all that data and come back to us? And it says, "Pick one skill I could sell as a service in the next 30 days, and tell me why that one." And here we go. "Tell me exactly who buys it, the type of business, the person who signs, and the pain that makes them pay. Don't be polite," 'cause AI has a thing with being nice.

Calum Johnson 53:28 Ag- agreeable.

Edwina McKinnon 53:29 Uh, a- awesome. So we have to actually tell it, "Do not be polite. Be precise," 'cause I don't like fluff, and sometimes the AI tools will bring out all this fluff. So it's like, be precise. "I've been undervalued for 20 years."

Calum Johnson 53:43 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 53:43 "You will not do it again to me."

Calum Johnson 53:45 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 53:46 Very powerful.

Calum Johnson 53:48 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 53:48 So, um, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take that, and what I did was I actually created an example resume to use.

Calum Johnson 53:55 Okay. Awesome.

Edwina McKinnon 53:55 And, uh, really excited about this. So her name is Simone.

Calum Johnson 53:59 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 53:59 Right? It's the same ICP that we're gonna be talking about. Simone actually comes from New York Metro area. She's, she was a senior program manager. She worked for Fortune 500 company. She managed 14 cross-functional programs with a combined budget of $8 million. Okay? She was able to cut vendor onboarding time by 40% by redesigning the intake process end to end. Built the monthly executive reporting package used by three VPs to run the division. And then it goes on and it starts listing out all of her experience going back, 'cause a lot of individuals at this point has about 10, 20, 30, 40 years of, like, worked and lived experience that they don't realize what they impacted. So the resume is what we use to be able to extract that.

Calum Johnson 54:48 Yeah. So you're, so when you're working with people, it sounds like, it's almost like the, the step one, or it, it's almost step zero, is you're making sure the resume is actually up to date, and it sounds like the resume is this key piece of context that you're then putting into Claude.

Edwina McKinnon 55:04 Absolutely, because if you think about the person, like Simone, she possibly may have got let go. Or she possibly has or is still working for the company, meaning that in these two circumstances, the last time that they updated their resume was probably like years and years ago.

Calum Johnson 55:23 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 55:23 So that's the very first thing that we do is we need to make sure that the resume is up to date. And we need to make sure all of the things that they were doing... It's l- it's, it's, it's almost very similar to like a normal, standard resume. The only difference is we don't have any of that fluffy information. We just zoom into what was the job title that you had, and then what was the task that you did within that company. Um, and it's very important too, it's like how do you even get to that point where I recommend doing something called a voice dump.

Calum Johnson 55:54 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 55:54 And a voice dump is where you're just going through... Because I, to be honest, I don't type anymore. I couldn't tell you the last time I actually sat there and typed because we think faster than our hands can type, and I actually believe that humans weren't built to type. I believe we were built to speak, and, um, that's how the cognitive energy works. So I actually go back to how I believe humans should dictate things to AI, which is speaking. So you do the voice dump, and I use a tool, this is where a AI tool comes in called Whisperflow.

Calum Johnson 56:27 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 56:27 Have no connection to them, but it's great because all you do is you press a button and you voice dump everything that you've done. And it becomes emotional almost because you're like, "I didn't realize I did all this."

Calum Johnson 56:40 Yeah. It's like a self-discovery through speaking it out.

Edwina McKinnon 56:43 Absolutely.

Calum Johnson 56:43 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 56:43 'Cause a lot of people that I come across, the very first thing, nine out of 10 they always say, "Well, I don't know what I'm good at. I don't know what I did." Well, yeah, you did. Every time you signed into your company, you actually did task every day that allowed that company to a- po- position you as the engine-

Calum Johnson 57:01 Mm

Edwina McKinnon 57:01 ... for the company. That's why most CEOs could go and play golf because they have you being the engine. So now we're extracting those engine tasks that you used to do, and we're bringing it into a resume. So we made one for Simone Carter, that's her name, and we listed out all of the things that she did, but at the end, what I actually listed out was the education, the certifications that she gained along the way.

Calum Johnson 57:26 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 57:26 'Cause those are also things that a lot of individuals don't realize will allow to build authority in the marketplace, where we have a lot of people coming out. And I don't push people to be an AI, um, expert. That's not something that I push. Neither an AI consultant. I push people to be the, which is the, which is where their genius is, where the last 20, 30 years has been sitting in. If you actually think about the internet, was people walking around saying that they were internet expert?

Calum Johnson 57:55 Mm-mm.

Calum Johnson 57:57 No.

Edwina McKinnon 57:58 No. In the AI economy, the people that win is where they're actually doing this right now. So the audience where... Remember I declared something in the beginning? I said I declare that somebody watching this video today will be able to turn themselves into a millionaire. A millionaire is a fantasy if you don't know what the math is.

Calum Johnson 58:16 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 58:16 So the math to a millionaire, and I want people to zoom in on this, 'cause when you're coming out, it could be 500 clients at $2,000. It can be 84 clients at $12,000. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Calum Johnson 58:31 Unsee it. Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 58:32 That's the math to a million dollars, and that's what we're gonna be building for Simone and for everybody that's watching and building with us right now.

Calum Johnson 58:38 Yeah. Okay, you know what? 'Cause I, I want to, uh, show people and I want to put in Simone's resume with your prompt and put it into Claude. As you're doing that, two things that I actually wanted to follow up with you on. First of all, it's for the purposes of this, and it sounds like in your business as well, you correct me if I'm wrong, you mainly use Claude and Claude Cowork. Um, why is that over, uh, something like ChatGPT or Codex or some of these other tools, or Gemini? Like, why specifically for you do you use Claude?

Edwina McKinnon 59:20 Absolutely. So I do use Claude Code too, um, but the reason why I use Claude is I believe mastery of one. This is why you have people that are... Like, there's two types of people that I come across is squirrels and foxes. Squirrels, it's like every little thing, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch. Oh, new tool out? Oh, gotta go learn this, right? I have a mindset of being a fox, and that's what I encourage people in my ecosystem to be is not a squirrel because there's thousands of AI tools that are being birthed actually on a monthly basis right now.

Calum Johnson 59:53 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 59:53 'Cause anybody can build an AI tool really quick. So I like to leverage things that I like. So I personally like Claude, and I've leveraged ChatGPT, but the winner in my books is Claude because you can truly build a, an, an operating system around those four pillars that I spoke about earlier, which is content, sales, operation, delivery. And I like to just focus on one thing. When I focus on many things, you become a squirrel and you get distracted. And for me, I like to move in urgency and I like to move, like once I figure things out, I like to move very quickly. And you can't move quick when you have all these tools that you're trying to balance. ChatGPT here, Claude here. Um, so that's why I use Claude because it's really easy to leverage. It's very easy to navigate. They're doing updates on a monthly, sometimes daily basis.

Calum Johnson 1:00:49 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:00:49 But they're all things that actually connect back to making us better at business and better at what we do. Mind you, there was something that took place recently where Fable 5, for those that don't know about it, Fable 5 is cutting edge technology that allows you to build at supersonic speed, where the government actually pulled it from the... We had it for like a couple of days and it got pulled.

Calum Johnson 1:01:12 It got banned, yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:01:13 That made me realize that you cannot, and even before I realized this, but it really allowed me to double down that you cannot build your business on one land, meaning one AI tool.

Calum Johnson 1:01:24 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:01:24 So as much as I use Claude as my main focus, I'm still building on ChatGPT, so if they decide... 'Cause we don't know. It's called vanishing access. That's what's happening, and that's what will happen, meaning that we may have the tools today, and the government may wake up tomorrow and say, "Absolutely, the public doesn't even need this type of cutting-edge technology."

Calum Johnson 1:01:44 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:01:45 That's what we just-

Calum Johnson 1:01:46 That's dangerous, yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:01:46 Yes, that's what we just experienced, actually.

Calum Johnson 1:01:49 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:01:49 It was literally a warning sign for the public to say that, "Okay, we don't own these tools." Neither does the company own their own tools because the government has the ability to pull it. So I encourage people to build on many land, but I encourage people to master one AI tool.

Calum Johnson 1:02:07 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:02:08 So that's why I only use, uh, Claude.

Calum Johnson 1:02:10 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:02:10 'Cause I, I wanna master it one. And this is, this is cutting-edge technology.

Calum Johnson 1:02:14 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:02:14 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:02:14 You know what? And, and I think it's, um, it's such a good point of that focus, like the important of having that focus, and, like, learning one and going deep there, and then moving to the next. But I also think to your point of, um, you have to build on, like, multiple pieces of land, it's also the value of your, of that framework of, like, context and constraints. 'Cause it's like once you have that context and that voice dump and, like, uh, the c- the mixture of, like, the resume plus the voice dump with, like, all the context on you, you could easily just take that over to ChatGPT, and then you're using that. Um-

Edwina McKinnon 1:02:53 Yeah. And there's so much, there's actually prompts that you can give it, um, to be able to extract all the information and then bring it to another tool, and those are actually, that's something that I actually do on a monthly basis. So it's a, it's something that you can actually schedule to take place, which is a system that you can own-

Calum Johnson 1:03:11 Mm

Edwina McKinnon 1:03:11 ... where every last Sunday of the month, the AI extracts every new piece of information that's gone into the tool. So you take that document as an MD file-

Calum Johnson 1:03:22 Yeah

Edwina McKinnon 1:03:22 ... and then you bring it over to the other tools. And those are all things that I've been able to just do on autopilot. It's very important because it goes back to my first point is that I like to move in urgency, and I never like to be halted over an issue with, uh, a tool being taken away from me. While everybody was panicking about Claude, you know, Fable 5 being taken away, I already had my systems already pre-built out in other, other land, other AI tools. Um, so that's the importance is I move as a fox.

Calum Johnson 1:03:53 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:03:53 A fox is very cunning, and a fox has strategy. And, um, that's, that's the biggest word in my books is strategy because once you have what you're doing mapped out, the rest becomes history, actually. The rest becomes ownership, moving with insightfulness, moving and saying, "While everybody's talking about these five tools, doesn't matter to me 'cause I'm mastering this one."

Calum Johnson 1:04:17 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:04:17 "And I'll be really good at this one." You ever see, I forgot the movie, where there's a guy, I think it's Coming to America, where the guy has a jacket on the side of the street, and he opens up the jacket, and he says, "What do you want? What do you want?" And he has, like... He's selling watches. He's selling all these things.

Calum Johnson 1:04:34 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:04:34 Um, that, that way, that mindset doesn't work in 2026. What works in 2026 is becoming a mastery of one.

Calum Johnson 1:04:42 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:04:43 And that's how you make your first 100K, your first a million, is when you start doubling down and focusing on one person. Any time I'm dealing with somebody and they're like, "Oh, Edwina, I have a new offer," well, what happened to the first offer?

Calum Johnson 1:04:55 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:04:56 So we only fo- I only focus on one thing, and I talk about this individual. There was a student, um, in my, actually in my institute right now. Um, he just signed a $500,000 contract, and the reason why he did that was 'cause he focused on just one thing.

Calum Johnson 1:05:12 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:05:13 So we have the prompt actually good to go.

Calum Johnson 1:05:16 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:05:16 Uh, so I entered it in with the resume.

Calum Johnson 1:05:19 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:05:19 And we are using Claude Cowork-

Calum Johnson 1:05:21 Oh, yeah

Edwina McKinnon 1:05:21 ... because Cowork is actually really, really, like I said, great cutting-edge technology. Did you want me to-

Calum Johnson 1:05:27 Yeah. Um, I do want you to share it. The, just one thing on what you mentioned with the, 'cause it's, it reminded me of something that Alex Hormozi says, which he says you can get to your first million with one avatar, one offer, and then one marketing channel. And so it's, like, the same thing that you mentioned. It's, like, just one thing. You need one customer avatar, you need one offer, and then one way to reach those customers, which is, like, the channel.

Edwina McKinnon 1:05:51 Absolutely.

Calum Johnson 1:05:52 And that's it.

Edwina McKinnon 1:05:53 And that's it. And that's actually goes back to my framework because people, um, they'll, they're, they, they'll do something, and then five, six months, they're still not making any money. Well, if you look at the framework I gave, we actually test and stress test the market before we even go to the market with an offer.

Calum Johnson 1:06:10 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:06:11 And that's why you get to a point where you start making money really quick within four weeks o- based off my framework, because you, you're testing it. Once you've tested it with individuals, you're taking their feedback, and instead of you guessing, you're now extracting what they just, they gave you, they just gave you the blueprint to being able to be successful.

Calum Johnson 1:06:29 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:06:30 So people will spend their whole lives trying to figure out what to do, but mine is the opposite. Instead of trying to come up with all this, you know, I, I say hocus pocus, you just go right to the ICP, which is the client, and you say, "What's happening in the business? What is you struggling with? What is... If somebody can come in and do something right now, what would it be?" And they take that, and they now create one offer, and it's so irresistible they can't say no.

Calum Johnson 1:06:57 Yeah. Okay, you know what? So I, I'm looking at your, um, I'm looking at the output that Claude's given, and it says, um, basically it's taken the resume, and it says there's six sellable skills. And so if someone, because we'll even share the prompt with people, if they take this prompt with their resume, they get an output, and we'll use Simone as the example. As you're reviewing this output- What is it that you're looking at? What is it that you're paying attention to? Kind of walk us through the behind-the-scenes of how you would take this output and then get towards the genius and the ICP and then the offer from there.

Edwina McKinnon 1:07:38 Very first thing I'm looking at is, I skip throughout the fluff 'cause, like I said, AI has a lot of fluffy stuff happening here. I wanna see what the skills are. So when I'm analyzing this with anybody that I'm working with, I'm looking at the skills. The very first thing that I'm- that's popping out here for me is it says process redesign that produces a number. This one's a big one. Cut vendor onboarding by 40% and cutting processing errors by 30%. Because of my background in business, I understand that business owners, they wanna see ... They don't ... It's not about productivity for them. It's about how much money is it gonna save the business or how much money is it gonna make the business.

Calum Johnson 1:08:17 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:08:18 That is, like, so one, that's, that's actually a gem for those that are watching, is when you're going into those conversations with business owners, they don't wanna hear productivity anymore. They wanna, they wanna know what is that, like, dollar sign. What does the percentage look like? So when I'm analyzing this, I'm actually skipping over, like, it says the institutional knowledge into assets. That's a great one, but I'm looking for the dollar. This, those are my signals. So when I'm looking through this, it says that, that's number one, adoption engineering. Train 200-plus people to 92% adoption. Training is cheap. Adoption is expensive.

Calum Johnson 1:08:54 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:08:54 Right? So that sticks out to me, and then the vendor and spend, uh, management. So I'm literally going through and I'm looking at the numbers, and then in the prompt itself, it does extensive research on what outside consultants are actually billing for their time. So if we look at it, I'm just scrolling down now, it's taking the skill as a service, 'cause now we need to create a offer real quick. So it's creating that skill now. These are the ser- these are the skills that you can literally leverage as a service, and it's giving us, look at that, that market rate today, which is $3,000, $9,000. I'm always thinking, "What's the lowest-hanging fruit here to make the most amount of money?"

Calum Johnson 1:09:36 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:09:37 So at the end it says, "A conservative $200 an hour, the work in her current role bills out around $30,000 a month."

Calum Johnson 1:09:47 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:09:49 If we actually think about, look at this, her salary is the discount.

Calum Johnson 1:09:53 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:09:53 S- that's why I said earlier, I said most of the times people don't realize in corporate they're renting their skills to companies that are making billions of dollars off of their skillsets.

Calum Johnson 1:10:03 Yeah, and you're getting paid a fraction.

Edwina McKinnon 1:10:05 A fraction.

Calum Johnson 1:10:06 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:10:06 So now this is what ownership looks like. We're taking back what we are renting and we're now owning our skills-

Calum Johnson 1:10:13 Yeah

Edwina McKinnon 1:10:13 ... which is so important. And as I go through this, when the audience goes through this, they're gonna have a, an illumination. This is a paradigm shift.

Calum Johnson 1:10:24 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:10:24 Because we're no longer thinking like, uh, uh, "Oh, I'm grateful for what corporate's giving me," or, "I'm making a lot..." That's what always comes out. "Oh, I'm making a lot of money." Well, what's a lot of money? 100K? But when I show them this math, the math is, is, is here.

Calum Johnson 1:10:39 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:10:40 So it says the number one, uh, to sell in the next 30 days, 'cause you can't sell, remember, we can't sell all these as services.

Calum Johnson 1:10:47 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:10:48 So we sell one, and look at it. It says, based off of the market research, it says, "Onboarding and intake process redesign. Sold as a fixed-scope project."

Calum Johnson 1:10:57 Yeah. You know what? Quickly, before we, before we get into that, 'cause I want you to give this context to people, 'cause I think it's gonna be valuable. Which is, first of all, even in those first two sections of the response, the way that you're filtering it is, and in the skills part, is which of these skills will either make business owners, uh, will it either make them money or save them money?

Edwina McKinnon 1:11:20 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:11:20 So that's like your first kind of, like, filtering criteria point. And then the, um, the second part, if you scroll down to the top five, 'cause I, there was a question I wanted to ask you here.

Edwina McKinnon 1:11:30 Absolutely.

Calum Johnson 1:11:30 Because I- this is what... And, uh, transparently, this is probably the mistake that I would make if I was looking at this for the first time, right? And I'm thinking about back to what we were talking about earlier with, like, the speed-

Edwina McKinnon 1:11:43 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:11:43 ... and the speed to making money, and, like, the, even what you said about, uh, low-hanging fruit, but it's also it can make money.

Edwina McKinnon 1:11:50 Yes.

Calum Johnson 1:11:51 And so I think a lot of people are gonna look at this and they're just gonna look at the numbers and see which one is just billing the most, not even really taking into account, I guess, something that they can, uh, reliably deliver or they would even, like, enjoy delivering, if you're gonna be doing it for a lot of time, which is as business owners, that's what we do. We, like, tend to work quite a lot, especially in the beginning. Can you-- I'm curious for you to kind of almost elaborate on the mistakes that you could see people making with interpreting this information and specifically just looking at what's the highest number and then going after that.

Edwina McKinnon 1:12:33 Actually, that's a top mistake that people will make, right? It's, uh, and actually I'm gonna correct this too, because those will, they will go after passion. But this is not a passion project.

Calum Johnson 1:12:45 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:12:45 So I always say go after what is gonna be the most helpful to a business.

Calum Johnson 1:12:51 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:12:51 I have this analogy and this philosophy, is you gotta think of a business like getting a cut. When you get a cut on your skin, what is your instant reaction?

Calum Johnson 1:13:01 Mm. It's, like, stop the bleeding.

Edwina McKinnon 1:13:02 Stop, you wanna stop the bleeding.

Calum Johnson 1:13:04 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:13:05 So when we look at these top skillsets, I wanna see which one is actually causing the, like, the most bleeding in a business. Because when you go in with this offer to a business, it's gonna be so undeniable for them to say no, they don't need help. That's why I say it's not about passion because it's about solving something in a business that's bleeding, and they need urgent care immediately.

Calum Johnson 1:13:33 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:13:33 Because if- you get a cut, your immediate reaction is, like, panicking, but then you're trying to figure out where's a Band-Aid or where's something that can solve it. That's the same philosophy here and the same mindset. When I'm going through these ones, I'm ... I, I... To be honest, to be fair, I'd actually dig a little bit deeper with Claude II.

Calum Johnson 1:13:50 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:13:51 I would push back a bit, right? I would say... 'Cause I actually never accept this first answer from Claude, but for this demonstration, this will actually be very good for your audience, is that they could push back to say, "Well, where did you..." 'Cause, 'cause these tools hallucinate a little bit as well.

Calum Johnson 1:14:06 Mm. They make... They can make up information, actually.

Edwina McKinnon 1:14:08 Exactly.

Calum Johnson 1:14:08 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:14:08 So I always wanna say, "So where's the resource?" And then I'll say, "Do extensive research to tell me where the business is bleeding right now, which would have the most impact." And based off of this prompt, like I said, it would... It was able to actually extract the top one to focus on, but my Claude is set up in a very different way where my, even down to my instructions to it, is that we focus on revenue and profit, 'cause that's how businesses run.

Calum Johnson 1:14:37 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:14:38 Money coming in, money coming out, cash flow.

Calum Johnson 1:14:41 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:14:42 So when you go to a business and they have this, this bleeding issue, and you come up and you show up and say, "All you gotta do is pay me 30K, and we can actually cut on- onboarding by 40%," these are all things that businesses like to hear. So I will, I will make that super clear, is that, yes, you're working long hours, but you gotta put yourself to the side for a little bit and focus on what could actually support the business right now in the season that they're in. Because your first sale is a win for sh- it's a massive win because it doesn't just put money in your pocket. It actually gives you a case study-

Calum Johnson 1:15:23 Mm

Edwina McKinnon 1:15:23 ... and a testimony that no, like, one year of you trying to figure things out could ever replace. This is the, this is why it's so quick and so urgent, 'cause you're literally going to a business and saying, "I can put 40% back into your pocket just by having me as a consultant." So that's the number one mistake that individuals make, is they forget about also their taste.

Calum Johnson 1:15:47 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:15:48 AI doesn't have our taste, meaning our life lived experiences. So for Simone here, she's gone through this rodeo for, like, 20, 30 years.

Calum Johnson 1:15:58 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:15:58 So she can actually sit here, and that's what sometimes people forget. They leverage these tools so much that they forget about their own critical thinking.

Calum Johnson 1:16:06 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:16:08 I don't ever get AI to replace my thinking. I get it to support my understanding.

Calum Johnson 1:16:16 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:16:16 So I ask more questions that I actually... Like, even right now, it's giving us all this information. I will ask more questions before we actually get to the end.

Calum Johnson 1:16:24 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:16:24 So that's another big mistake, too.

Calum Johnson 1:16:26 It's helping you get, it's helping you get clarity.

Edwina McKinnon 1:16:28 Yes.

Calum Johnson 1:16:29 And you know what? It's, um... And I, and I want, because you made this point even when we spoke off camera, and I think it's so important for people, is, um, understanding your framework and then how you're using AI within it, it makes it clear why urgency is so important, and even in all of the language that you're using, it's like, uh, you're trying to find, like, the bleeding problem, like the, what's the urgent problem in a business? And then it even relates to what you were saying earlier about a key part of your process away from AI and away from any technology is conversations with real people, like the ICP or whoever you come up with as the target business or client, actually having conversations because then that gives you the clarity of, like, okay, what's the bleeding problem? Like, what's the big problem that they're facing right now? And then you can move with a certain level of speed to fill that. And so it's actually the, the 30 days is, it's not just, like, a nice number. It's actually important in how you think about it. It's like it should be happening fast if you're doing this right because you're focusing on a problem which is, like, a bleeding problem right now. It's urgent. And then if you can fill it, then you should actually get work pretty quickly.

Edwina McKinnon 1:17:49 Absolutely, right? And, uh, I like to move in urgency too because also, like, if you think about it, Simone, like I said, if we go back to the mindset of Simone, she may have just got laid off, or she may be working for a company where she, she knows that she has that burning desire where she can do more. When you get your first win within 30 days, the confidence that it does for you, 'cause you can go, like, a whole year without making money, but if you lock in real quick and you get your first sale, it creates something called momentum.

Calum Johnson 1:18:27 Mm. Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:18:29 So you're like, "Wow, I got the first one. Let's go get the second one. Let's go get the third one." And once you have that all strapped in, I call it an accelerator. You're accelerating, and now you're able to have four, five, six, 10,000, 100 clients, and what that does is better than AI. It gives you data.

Calum Johnson 1:18:49 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:18:49 So you take all that data now, and you put it back into AI to create a system-

Calum Johnson 1:18:55 Mm

Edwina McKinnon 1:18:55 ... where now you're removing yourself from being the engine. But a lot of people will wanna start with, "Oh, how do I automate this? How do I do that?" No, that's another mistake 'cause n- uh, uh, naturally people are like, "Yeah, I need to automate this," but I don't actually push with automation. I push with, like you said, relationships, conversations, building the business brick by brick, not just dumping automation just so you can say that I, I went to bed and it's working for me, but you're making no money. So we solve urgent Urgent things in businesses because which CEO, CEO or owner is gonna say no to something that's b- actively bleeding in the business?

Calum Johnson 1:19:32 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:19:33 Right? And then, like I said, it's a win for everybody. It's a win for the business owner. It's a win for you 'cause that is also ownership. It shows you that, wow, I gave all these years to a company, which is actually fantastic 'cause you're building your skill set year over year.

Calum Johnson 1:19:52 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:19:52 And now you can have the ability to control the output based off of your input.

Calum Johnson 1:19:57 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:19:58 So it's moving with speed.

Calum Johnson 1:20:00 Yeah. I remember someone said it to me. They said, uh, "Your... The company's paying you to learn." Like, that's how you have to see it, right? Like, you... They're paying you to learn skills, and then it's up to you how you then go and deploy those skills.

Edwina McKinnon 1:20:12 Yeah, and, and just like a side note, uh, this is actually a huge gem. So every company has something called a learning and development budget, where they give either 5 to $10,000 to the employee to go learn something or level up or upskill their s- skill set. When I was working at these companies, like I said, I don't know if anybody caught that in the beginning, they were actually my first investors, but they didn't even know it.

Calum Johnson 1:20:37 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:20:37 So I used to take those fundings, and I used to go, and every year I had this motto where I wasn't finishing the year without a new certification or a new skill set that I'm learning.

Calum Johnson 1:20:48 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:20:48 So it was like a mastermind in itself because now that I'm out of corporate and I'm working for myself, all these certifications that I have, all of these skill sets that I've learned along the way, they were my first investors. And I've been able to now push it into my own business.

Calum Johnson 1:21:05 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:21:05 And that's why I move with urgency, 'cause I, I already know the skill sets that I have. I know the certification. I know what makes it successful, and now that's, uh, how you can move with urgency.

Calum Johnson 1:21:15 Yeah. Is there any ones, especially for beginners that are starting out using AI, like specific certifications that you would recommend if I just wanna get the most value on my time? Uh, and actually, like, even when you were using them or you've seen other people use them, it's like they put the time in, but they got, like, a big result on the other side. Like, the ROI on their time was huge. Which certifications would you recommend?

Edwina McKinnon 1:21:43 Perfect. I made a lot of mistakes along the way.

Calum Johnson 1:21:46 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:21:46 I spent a lot of money, of my own money, in certifications. Uh, so here's actually what I recommend. All of these tools that we're using have free academies on the back end. So Claude has a full academy. OpenAI has a full academy. So I would actually start there because, number one, they're free. It's teaching you how to use their tools and also how to use other tools as well, but that's where I'd actually start, and that's where actually where I did start. Uh, when they first came out with all the, like... OpenAI has a really, um, intensive, uh, academy. Loved it. They have videos. They have, um, text if you're a text learner. Um, if you're an audio learner. It's beautiful. So th- those are the two that I would start with. And believe it or not, you don't have to put up a lot of money 'cause n- now they're offering a lot of these certifications for free.

Calum Johnson 1:22:40 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:22:41 Um, taking it a step forward because now we're in, we're very, it's, we're in an innovation way of learning as well. So I would actually go to Claude or ChatGPT. Again, run with this prompt the same way you're going through it, and then you're gonna say to it, "I wanna master AI to the point where I'm a beginner now. I know nothing about it. I don't know where to start, and I need you to come up with a custom learning path where you literally give me all the links and sources to the certifications that I need based off of what I'm doing."

Calum Johnson 1:23:18 Hmm. That's good.

Edwina McKinnon 1:23:19 If I sit here and tell the audience what I did, this is my journey.

Calum Johnson 1:23:23 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:23:25 They would just be copying and duplicating something for themselves, and that's why people end up saying, "Man, this didn't even work for me."

Calum Johnson 1:23:31 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:23:31 Because everything is custom now, and that's the ability of having intelligence. We went through three eras in life, and I lived through each one. The era of information being scarce, where you would have to go find the information. I don't know if you remember what that looks like, is where you'd have to go to the library-

Calum Johnson 1:23:51 Yeah

Edwina McKinnon 1:23:52 ... open a book [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:23:53 Yeah

Edwina McKinnon 1:23:54 ... just to find one information, right? Then we have the era of information is all around us now, where Google now put information in front of us. Now we're asking a question, we're getting information. Now we're actually in the era of intelligence, where AI can do both now, ed- information and intelligence, where it can synthesize the data to create more customized flows for us. So for the audience, instead of doing what I did, I would actually do the opposite because I actually was duplicating what I thought would... Like, I was doing coding. I was doing this. I was doing that. And now that I look back, I'm like, "Wow." So I would customize it to my journey, building off of where we're at right now, even with this prompt. After you come to the end, you then now say, "Based off of what I'm doing, it's not just an AI thing too."

Calum Johnson 1:24:48 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:24:48 It's give me the books that I need to read to be able to ha- be able to have conversations in this-

Calum Johnson 1:24:55 Yeah

Edwina McKinnon 1:24:55 ... category.

Calum Johnson 1:24:56 So it's helping you the whole way through.

Edwina McKinnon 1:24:57 It is a full... It's, like, placing you as a, a key person of influence.

Calum Johnson 1:25:03 Hmm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:25:03 And when I think about that, I forgot his name. I think it's Mr. Priestley. Dan Pr-

Calum Johnson 1:25:07 Daniel Priestley.

Edwina McKinnon 1:25:08 Thank you.

Calum Johnson 1:25:09 Yeah. Daniel Priestley.

Edwina McKinnon 1:25:10 I read his book, like, many years ago, and this is also a huge gem for the audience. I remembered that book, but I took the, the book, and I uploaded it to Claude, and I said, "Pull out all of the information that I need to become a key person of influence." But taking it a step further, give me the learning path that I need to be able to position myself as an authority figure. I just wanna show you my journey. My journey is actually showcasing how powerful this is. I literally went three years, like three and a half years of being unknown online, 'cause I just came into social media three and a half years ago. Nobody knew ev- in person, I was that woman. I had 20-plus awards. That was in, like, real life, but nobody knew me online. The prompt that I just gave the audience is the same prompt that I gave to myself, and that's why I can sit here today as a key person of influence, as the voice of AI, because I created a custom learning path for me and a custom way to where I am today.

Calum Johnson 1:26:16 Here's where I wanna go next, because when it comes to the first step is extract your genius.

Edwina McKinnon 1:26:21 Yes.

Calum Johnson 1:26:22 And the AI can assist with that in terms of giving you clarity on what that genius is, but then also harnessing that genius to a further extent through the learning and the custom, uh, like, learning plan that you mentioned. When I think about step two of coming up with your, uh, like, ideal customer, that really comes through, like, the conversations, like, this human layer. [lips smack] Um, and, like, learning about them and then taking that information back and really coming up with a clear idea of, like, here's the customer, here are their pain points, here are the bleeding, like, the ble- bleeding problems that they have. Step three, which is coming up with this temporary offer, are you using AI in that process to actually kinda take what you've done in those first two steps and put it all together into, I guess, what Alex Hormozi would call, like, the Grand Slam offer, right?

Edwina McKinnon 1:27:12 Yes.

Calum Johnson 1:27:12 Um, like the undeniable offer. Or are you-- AI's not a part of that process. Like, how are you coming up with that temporary offer?

Edwina McKinnon 1:27:22 The temporary offer is coming up by yourself, right? It's leveraging human connection. It's having these conversations, but then it's also creating AI as a co-founder in what you're doing as well. Because if we think about it, sometimes in our mind it's mushy. We have all these ideas, but it's like, again, coming back to one tool, right? And leveraging it at-- to stress test your ideas to make sure you're going in the right direction. Actually, with the same prompt, it tells you exactly who the buyer is.

Calum Johnson 1:27:54 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:27:55 So then you take that, and you run with it. You go out now to the market. See, I'm not sitting in front of a computer still. I'm going out there now and having those conversations to make sure that, okay, yeah, is, is it correct? Is it correct? Yes, and I'm running in that direction. So AI is supporting you to an extent, but nothing comes down to your own taste, 'cause you have those taste buds to know who is the exact buyer, 'cause you were literally working in that corporate environment for many, many years. So you're not accepting everything AI is giving you, 'cause that would just be-- like, then there's no critical thinking. You're just, like, doing what AI tells you. No, no, no. You actually are the operator. You're controlling the system.

Calum Johnson 1:28:40 Mm.

Edwina McKinnon 1:28:40 Step by step, you're owning the system. You're building the infrastructure now. That's what it means. You're owning things along the way, but AI is just a tool.

Calum Johnson 1:28:51 Yeah. I remember we had, um, [lips smack] Dan Martell on the show, and he said, uh, "We're in the age of directors," um, where it's about, like, uh, you're directing the AI. Maybe you have, like, one or two employees in your business, but you're directing, and the AI is empowering you to, like, deliver this experience or this offer. Um, but it's not necessarily-- we're no longer workers. You're ne- you're not doing all these individual pieces. You're directing the system. Um, you know what, here's where I want to go, [lips smack] and I think about even, um, that intention that we set, like, right in the beginning of this conversation around, like, millionaires will be birthed from this conversation.

Calum Johnson 1:29:37 And, uh, my hope is that we fast-forward a year, and both of us are getting, like, messages of people that, like, the starting point for them was this conversation. Like, it was a turning point. But I think to your point, momentum and, like, taking action is so key. And so I think about the person that's sitting at home who has just listened to this conversation, and maybe they have a couple of hours free this weekend, or, like, they have, like, a, an evening free, and they can open Claude for the first time or start using this for the first time, like the resume autopsy prompt. What would be-- for that human being, what is the first step that you would have them do immediately after listening to this conversation? It's almost like a, like a weekend homework. Like, what would you have them go and do?

Edwina McKinnon 1:30:29 I would have them develop, um, time around a mindset shift first. I think that's the critical-- but it's doing it with AI. So it's doing that voice dump, what their goal are, the go- goals are, what they're passionate about, what their money goal is, what they're-- where they are right now. Because what's gonna happen is the more that AI, which is, I say, these tools, knows about you, the more it can actually direct you, right, in the right way, and it's custom to where you're at right now, right? And then on top of that, which I'm gonna give your audience every single one of these prompts, it is dedicating at least three to six hours going through these prompts one by one by one. 'Cause by the end of it, you will be able to not just have something that you can sell, but you'll have ownership. Ownership over how much money you're gonna make, ownership of your systems, ownership of what you do, and taking back what you used to rent to corporate and owning it now in your own business. So that's where I would start.

Calum Johnson 1:31:35 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:31:35 Three to six hours, just like how we all go to the gym every day. It's the same mindset. I'm gonna dedicate it into AI. Learning it, getting so good with it, commu- knowing how to communicate with it, 'cause that's the, that's what I would do on the weekend. I would do date night with, uh, Claude.

Calum Johnson 1:31:52 Yeah.

Edwina McKinnon 1:31:52 [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:31:53 Yeah. You know, um, it's funny 'cause I, I, uh, I heard you in, in one of your interviews. You were like it's, you're like, "It's like I'm married to AI at this point."

Edwina McKinnon 1:32:01 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:32:02 Um, you know what, Edwina, though? Before we, before we get out of here, I think about, um, I think about the position and the moment you were in when you got laid off from your job, and even that word that we've used, we've used it so many times in this conversation, of, like, ownership, you know? And, uh, even understanding that, like, you have a son and a family, and you're, like, a breadwinner. And so when you share the context that speaking to you today, you're making $200,000 a month in your business, and it's something that you own, can you just talk to people, given where you started and where you were at in that moment where, like, there was an identity crisis, like, there was a season where you had that identity crisis. What does it mean for you on a human level, the fact that for you and I speaking today, you actually have a level of ownership, a level of autonomy, um, being able to build wealth in the way that you are?

Edwina McKinnon 1:33:05 What would I tell them?

Calum Johnson 1:33:06 Yeah. What does it mean to you?

Edwina McKinnon 1:33:08 What does it mean to me? Legacy. Yeah, that's what it means to me. Everything that I do is about legacy. Every decision that I make is about legacy. It is making sure that, um, you know, when I ... I always talk about this with my family. It's like when I get 80 years old, and, um, I'm walking into the family house, and there's a portrait of me on the wall, and my grandkids and my son is looking at that portrait and remembering the legacy, the impact that I had. During a time when people were panicking and didn't know what to do, I was creating a voice of reason, which is the voice of AI.

Calum Johnson 1:33:47 Mm. That's awesome. Edwina McKinnon, thank you so much.

Edwina McKinnon 1:33:52 Awesome. This was good. Thank you.

Calum Johnson 1:33:54 You're welcome.

Edwina McKinnon 1:33:54 Thanks for having me.

Calum Johnson 1:33:55 This was so good. You killed it. 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.