I Asked AI to Find My "Hidden Negative Loops." The Truth Was Brutal

Sean Weisbrot: Joshua Hale is the owner of JH Media and Consulting, an American company that focuses on teaching businesses how to take advantage of AI in order to optimize the way their business runs. In this conversation, we talked about how he views clients, uh, potential for success, what he teaches clients, how he does it. Why he does it and so much more. If you like the idea of using AI in your business, you will learn from this episode, so let's get to it. Why do you spend your time consulting businesses as the thing you focus on?

Joshua Hale: Well, I really see it as one of the most powerful pillars that we could be standing on. Being able to find out, you know, what you're good at, what you can't turn off just as natural ability and coupling that with how to make money. I think creates this foundation that you can be excited about getting up each day and being able to like support your family, not be in a job where you have to sacrifice your values, you know, work in the grind and not living up to your potential.

Sean Weisbrot: I also like consulting because then it's not my business. I don't have to do anything for it. It's just if they take my advice, they take my advice. If they don't, they don't. But either way, I get paid hopefully to take the advice.

Joshua Hale: One of my like super powers that I can't turn off. I love problem solving. If you gimme a blank piece of paper and tell me to, you know, come up with a great idea, I kind of freeze. But if you bring me a bunch of, you know, problems and tell me about your business, my brain just kicks on and, you know, the, the rest is yeah, consulting history.

Sean Weisbrot: So why is it that you wanna focus on AI consulting when it's such a nascent industry and there's so much education that has to happen because of the fact that like. People that are kind of aware, but need education are one of the hardest people to attract.

Joshua Hale: Yes. Thank you for pointing out my work week. Uh, why I think it's the most important is because of the potential. Never before have we had a tool to help people figure out their purpose, figure out how to make money with their purpose, and then. Teach you how to be an entrepreneur. Those three things have just unlocked for the human race, and I think there's just unlimited potential with where we're heading of being able to come up with some great value and put it in front of the marketplace in the shortest in. Time ever that it takes.

Sean Weisbrot: So what are some things that you're doing with AI that can create value in a short period of time to help your clients see what's the potential for them?

Joshua Hale: Well, as you said, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners, they're busy running their business. And if you say, Hey, you know, you should download this app and, and, and check it out, they're gonna, you know, their eyes are gonna roll back in their head. So what I really offer is. Uh, a handholding into the process. I set up my strategy calls with business owners and what used to take my marketing agency, you know, six weeks to do audience research, uh, foundational, um, you know, uh, industry trend reports, and being able to get that competitor mapping deep dive into their audience's, you know, pain points, challenges, obstacles, stopping them from getting to their dream outcome themselves. I just interview them, take their inherent wisdom, what they know about their business, and being able to, uh, take that voice, bring it over to, to, uh, uh, uh, voice to text, and then plug it right into Chacha. Bt they just kick back and, and get interviewed while I get to, in real time use, you know, what I call mega prompts, to take that good data, leverage it with ai, and then produce a living document. That's 50 to a hundred pages of everything about their business. Uh, you know, the deep dive audience research now with Chat GBT Pro, I'm able to use that, you know, deep research button and tell it to go out, get real time market data that used to be reserved for, you know, fortune 500 companies. This information now is able to be, you know, gathered and processed and simplified, uh, for business owners, small business owners, um, and solopreneurs themselves that couldn't afford the 500,000 price tag that, you know, McKinsey, uh, firm charged for their business strategies. All this information can now be consolidated. I call it a living document because once we're done. You know, in a two hour, four hour session, they get this document. All they need to do is then upload it themselves to Chacha, bt, and they can ask it whatever they want. And CHATT has everything it needs to produce really good outcomes.

Sean Weisbrot: It's interesting that you're doing that because I've been using an app called Lovable and I'm using it to develop my software that I mentioned to you previously. That's for expense management and what I realized was. The tools of tomorrow have to all be intelligent. And what that means is you need data and it has to be connected to an AI so that the AI can help you analyze it. And so one of the first things I did with my expense management tool was once I knew people could import data, I. I connected chat GBT four oh to it so that people could then access that data and communicate with it. Because what's the point of managing your expenses if you're just a single human looking at it? But if you have an AI looking at it, they could possibly go much further. And there's the potential for me to develop an agent-based system that could see the things that you need to cut and maybe go and cancel them for you or renegotiate with other vendors, or help you find potential replacement vendors for the people that you're working with now. And that frees you up from having a human or two or three or five humans that are just trying to cut your costs, you know? And AI could do it for a fraction of the price. And by embedding that system into the application, it's a no brainer that this is something that probably doesn't exist in any, any other application out there. Or if it does, you have to pay thousands of dollars a month to get access to it, where I can offer it for quite a much lower price. 'cause I have no cost 'cause it costs me $50 to make this application in, in a week. So I, I agree. AI is a very fascinating thing. I am amazed at how easy it is for someone like myself to build things with it. And by empowering your, uh, your clients, it's an amazing way to help them get a, a leg up on their competitors. So I think it's a really cool business model that you have.

Joshua Hale: Yeah. Once they see the practical use, right. Uh, you can't throw a bunch of data at a business owner and expect them to take action, but once you are able to give them that data and be like, you know, ask it for a email marketing campaign for this upcoming, you know, spring sale. It will then be able to produce that immediately for them, high quality, you know, in integrating their voice. And that's where they get to see the practical application of like, oh, this saves me a lot of time. And yeah, a lot of people that I was paying, you know, quite handsomely to accomplish

Sean Weisbrot: something interesting that I thought of while you're saying that was if you have access to expense data, you could potentially query Chachi PT to go, Hey, based on these expenses and based on the tariffs that are going on. Predict for me how my expenses are going to change based on that, and it could go well. You may see an increase in. $50,000 a month in your expenses and you could see it before it happens and you're like, oh, crap. Now, hey GBT, how do I have to change my expenses to mitigate that increase so that I can stay in business? 'cause the 50 K increase in my expenses with no increase in my revenue is gonna cause me to die immediately. Like there's no, there's no profitability anymore based on that kind of a model. So that's what I'm hoping people will do with it, is like get proactive about managing their expenses because. I think the problem with accounting software in particular is that you have your money coming in and your money going out, and so the accountant just wants to see what's your p and l. But your p and LI think is, is part of the, is is, is a whole where expense management is a part of that whole, and if you can't see the part, then you can't separate it from what's going on. And so it's harder for you to get it, get control over what your profit actually is. Um, so. That's, that's one of the things that I've been really excited about with AI is being able to get financially responsible, trying to understand what's going on.

Joshua Hale: Businesses need to be able to pivot and, you know, adapt to the marketplace and, you know, the tariffs that are going on, uh, those that can, will, you know, come out stronger. Those that can't, that can't, you know, right. The ship fast enough. Uh, they've, yeah, they're dead and, you know, uh, they've kind of been propped up for the last 20 years for outsource sourcing, um, you know, uh, those things to China and they've been, you know, having a higher profit margin for, for making those decisions. So this is now, you know, riding the ship or, you know, making things more compe, uh, co competitive to those that are, that can be innovative. And AI is. A huge tool, as you described, to be able to, you know, keep up. How

Sean Weisbrot: do you determine whether you're gonna take on a client or not? And how do you determine which of your clients will actually use what you, what they've paid for? After they're done working with you?

Joshua Hale: That's a really good question. I have had some where they're like, this is great, and then they get back into the old habit of doing things right and just kind of forget about, you know, what I built them, um, how I'm able to keep it, keep it, uh, uh, relevant and useful in their lives. I offer ongoing, um, retainer and so kind of acting like an accountability coach. You know, they can buy an hour of my time, uh, either each week or buy it by uh, uh, uh, twice every, once every two weeks, and. I basically just show up. We call it a work party. We can, I can get things done really fast with ai, you know, as my, as my sidekick. Uh, and then at the end I give them homework, you know, review this stuff, you know, make some decisions. And then next week we'll come back and we'll build the next step. So a little bit of handholding, right? Keeping them move with that forward moving pro progress, not letting them waste the investment that they just took in me. Um, and then through that process, right? I. It's inevitable that I end up training them to, you know, not need me anymore, which is totally fine because there's plenty of entrepreneurs out there that, you know, need this assistance. So I'm happy to get them up and going and then, you know, uh, they can have access to me in, in my courses and libraries. As needed.

Sean Weisbrot: I think it's an interesting model. I, I love this idea of accountability and ongoing support, because you sell them once on the core service and then if they need you, they just keep paying you. And if they don't need you, that's fine. And, and also the idea of making yourself redundant is hilarious because that's the whole purpose of ai. No matter how much anyone says, AI is not going to be implemented into my business in order to remove humans. Yeah, no, you're wrong or you're lying because everyone. Especially in this kind of a climate is going to fire people and look to replace them with humans, or they're building AI systems that will repeat, that will allow them to fire those humans. So if you say that AI is not going to get rid of people from your, your business, you are lying through your teeth. And if you're not thinking like that, I'm sorry, you're taking the wrong look or you're, you're looking at AI incorrectly because. What is the point of ai? It's to make things easier. It's to make things faster. It's to automate things. And if you're not doing it for that, then that's wrong. But if you, if you take your people and you find ways to put them onto other things, then that's also great because then you are making them do something that's more valuable than the AI can do right now. Or, uh, you know, needs human input or something like that. So the, the, you don't have to fire people, but

Joshua Hale: Well, the, and the oversight, right? You need your expert team to, to oversee what AI's doing, right? And, and so teaching them to manage, you know, multiple agents that are coming, you know, uh, later this year, uh, so that they, you know, are able to, to, you know, control an army of getting things done instead of them actually like doing the work, right? Because we just saw image generation just like. Rock the, the, the, the design industry. And, uh, it was Alex Ozzi actually who like flipped my brain on, uh, you know, teaching clients to basically outgrow you. Uh, I was running a marketing agency and I really deep inside felt. Like unfulfilled and depressed because I would get clients, I'd get them successful, and then they would basically, you know, go in-house and just take what I, you know, built and, and then, and then leave my marketing agency. And I was like, man, why can't I just retain, uh, clients? And Hormoz pointed out, he is like, that's not the job of a marketing agency. Marketing agency is for people to level up. Until they can gain those skills and, and teach it to their team, and then they level up again and teach those skills to their internal team. So once I like understood that, like, oh, I'm just part of that process. I'm not supposed to, you know, have a forever contract with them. Uh, because, you know, everything, especially now with AI can be figured out how to do and, and, you know, teaching your internal team is a lot cheaper than, than, you know, waiting, uh, for, for remote help, what are some things that you're excited about?

Sean Weisbrot: In, in the industry.

Joshua Hale: I have a marketing background. I've picked up skills, you know, for the last 10 years, a little bit of everything. I'm, I'm, I'm pretty dangerous as far as, you know, helping people with their online, uh, presence. Uh, but, you know, graphic design and, you know, copywriting, those are like high level skills that were, you know, not in my skillset. I'm a great construction worker and, you know, uh. Operator to help with the direction of teams. But with this new image generation, you know, I have been waking up at 4:00 AM the, like, multiple times over the last week. So inspired to rebrand my own personal brand. I, I go by the holistic tech wizard, right? And being able to really get what's in my head. And I, uh, to be visually told on my websites, you know, on my social media all the way through the, with this coherent style and story and, you know, experience that is, is just groundbreaking for me. And, uh, yeah, I've been waking up, I'm like redesigning my websites all because of this new image generation that you get to like tell this story and such. Find agree that, you know, was, was very expensive beforehand. Never could really, you know, communicate that to another designer. Now I'm just, you know, cranking out images until, until it hits right.

Sean Weisbrot: Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are. I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work, and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story, and what we do requires so much love so that we can bring you something amazing. And every week we're trying really hard to get better guests. That have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back. So the last time I redid my website for we Live to build. I paid almost $4,000 and then it cost me another five or 600 to get someone to implement the design into the website. Now with Lovable, I can literally give it a prompt and it will generate the website and the content inside the website for me in two minutes for free. So I was able to build a brand new version of my website, and I asked it to pull content from the old page. It's beautiful. I haven't, I haven't pushed it yet because like I'm on WordPress and it hasn't created a WordPress theme and I don't think it can, but it has a lot nicer elements and it's a lot better. The only problem is it doesn't have a blog management system, so I would have to have lovable, create a blog management system for me to be able to do it, which I've, I've gotten it to create a blog page and blog posts, templates, and themes for me. Um. But I haven't gotten it to create a backend blog management system where instead of me telling lovable to add this blog in, I'd actually go and input the information into the management system on the backend of the website. So I've avoided doing that part because it's just adding noise to building an app. But, um. I'm excited by lovable ability to generate websites from scratch. Pretty much.

Joshua Hale: Yeah. Do you also kind of experience the, the AI curse of like instantly getting 80% there and then you're like, all right, just gotta, you know, just make a couple little changes and this thing's. Like, perfect. Uh, and then that last 20% ends up taking like an hour or more just trying to like, fine tune the last, you know, get it over the end zone.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. That's what happened with my Chachi PD integration because it, it gave me everything that I wanted, but then I started to look at the design and I was like, eh. This isn't very professional for the design, I can make it better. So then I started looking at chatt T 'cause I was looking at like a, a bot, like a, a chat integration. So I was looking at chatt T and lovable chat systems, how they looked. And I was like, yeah, I need shadows. I need, you know, the scroll to the bottom. Like it didn't give me a lot of the stuff that those others have. And I was like, okay, well I've gotta add these things and I've gotta center them and all. Okay, well now the button's too high, I've gotta make it lower. And, uh, there's a scroll bar on the page, uh, two hours. But then it was fine. You know, because you have to go, well, I, I need the container to be at the top of the page, so the, the text looks like it's going through the nav bar. Right. So you, you have to get a little technical with, with the, you know, oh. Why is the, the margins are too wide. Change the margins on it. Oh, the. The chat, uh, the text input area, um, is locked to the c the C container, so when the page scrolls, the text input area is going with it. So we've gotta separate them so it has a static position instead of a relative position. So you, you have to get a little more technical with the prompting so that it knows how to fix what you want. But once you get that last 80, the last 20% done, it's gorgeous and it works perf perfectly. You know, so nothing outta the box, but the, the, the, the coding and the functionality is almost perfect outta the box, but it's the, the tweaking that makes it nice and usable.

Joshua Hale: Yeah. I, I tell everybody, you know, think of a formula of 10 80, 10, right? 10% is you and your initial idea and creativity. Then you put it into ai, boom, 80% gets produced. And then there's always that, you know, human touch at the end, be prepared for. Sometimes it expands into, you know, 40%, uh uh, but. Once you like, understand that process and expect it, then, then, you know, you don't get disappointed. You don't get frustrated or think that like it can't do it right. Uh, but you, you just kind of push through it and then it gets better and then you, you know, get to get, get it over the target.

Sean Weisbrot: Uh, so I, I don't know what size companies you're working with, but I'll just share something that I've seen for fun, I guess. That people like myself are building MVPs in days for back, practically free, so that investors are not necessary anymore. And I've seen other startup founders going and telling each other like, like, oh, I wanna raise funds. Like, why do you need funds? Like, why can't you just spend. You're out time to get your customers now that you've built it and then get them to pay you. Like why, why isn't everybody bootstrapping businesses now? Why do we need angels? Why do we need family and friends? Why do we need investors? Are you hearing anything about that? Seeing anything about that? Is that relevant to any of the businesses you're working with?

Joshua Hale: My, my sweet spot is like micro businesses and like solopreneurs. I really like, you know, wellness coaches because. They can build so quick, right? And just get an offer up in front of people. And, and yeah, there is like no investment needed nowadays. Uh, and the time it takes has never been shorter from idea to getting this idea in front of the marketplace to see how it reacts. 'cause that's really, you know, the, the, the cider at the end of the day. So being able to shortcut all these hurdles that used to, you know, require investments and other people, you know, contractors. So like, just to get up and running, to, to, to see if the market is interested is, is gone. And that's why I'm so excited to help people find their purpose, figure out, you know, where they can make money doing this. Uh, this is the time of just hyper niche, right? Where the, the more smaller of a market that you can think of, of, of servicing. The, the easier it is for people to find you and to like be that guy or that lady. So I really love working with people that are, you know, trying to get outta the nine to five grind saying, you know, I really love this and I'm good at this. And then figuring out, you know, I. How to make a business doing it

Sean Weisbrot: because I, I guess I originally thought you were working with companies that are more established and a bit lower legacy that are looking to modernize, but I guess that also makes sense. It, I think it's easier. So as we kind of said at the, the beginning of the interview, it's, it's harder when you have to educate, but if they're younger people than it's easier because they're a little more aware that something's possible. They just don't know how to get started is what I'm guessing

Joshua Hale: that's the most like, exciting to work with because it does take a bit more handholding, but. Once I can train them to, you know, use ai, it can fill out a lot of those blank spots on the entrepreneurial map for them that they can avoid the pain and growth. It took me, you know, 10 years to, to get up and running.

Sean Weisbrot: You gave me an idea to, uh, to teach people. Like one-on-one, how to use lovable to build MVPs.

Joshua Hale: You can sify it too. So, uh, you know, it doesn't have to be, you just use the, the first run through with having a live audience. That's, that's how I like to do it, because you get that direct feedback of, you know, people's questions and being able to build that week by week in front of them, right. And then pivot and adapt with a live audience produces the high quality in the first shot. Then, then, then you got a product you can, you know, just put up there and people can buy that product, you know? 500 bucks, you know, uh, 2000 bucks. Um, I heard this the other day. If, if you charge more than $1,500, you're gonna need a sales team. So by, by, by just charging 1500 bucks, that's, you know, a, a sweet spot that people will be like willing to, uh, take a risk and invest into that without you getting bogged down with, uh, you know, needing to expand into a team.

Sean Weisbrot: I heard 2000, but. I, I'm talking to a LinkedIn coach who has a seven figure business and he coaches seven figure businesses, so they're thinking slightly bigger.

Joshua Hale: I really like to build in public, so. You know, this whole rebranding that I'm doing because of, uh, image generation, right? I'm now going through this process myself, utilizing it and, uh, outlining how to turn this into a course essentially, because why not teach others right through my own, uh, trial and errors. And so getting multiple outcomes with all your actions so that you know, you're not just building an app, but you just showed how to do it, uh, at the same time. And that might end, end up, you know, bringing in more revenue than, you know, whatever it is that

Sean Weisbrot: you're building for you. There's the, the course can be something that's. People who wanna learn but don't have the money to pay for handholding, they'll pay for the course. And then some people will go through the course and then they'll wanna work with you because they're like, okay, I have all this information, but I don't have the, I I I don't wanna do it myself. Um, and so you may have people that just want the service. You have some people that might just want the course. You have someone that gets the course and decides to upgrade into the service. And so there's a lot of value there.

Joshua Hale: DIY, do it with you and then do it for you. They all have different, you know, price points.

Sean Weisbrot: I hadn't really thought of making a course for this. I had an idea for a course for something else. I just decided to drop it after doing some research and talking to founders because I realized that they were broke and they couldn't afford to pay for the course, let alone the service. And I was like, I'm not gonna waste my time on that. Unfortunately, those are the ones that need the most help. But, uh. I, I gotta pay my bills, I gotta feed my family. I can't do that with clients who don't have the money to pay. Um, but something like this could be interesting, especially now that my podcast is starting to grow up.

Joshua Hale: And the course creation process has gotten a lot easier in the last two years. Right. Obviously there's AI that can help with overview, can help with modules, breaking down script for each one. Um, but then the actual recording process, right? Uh, I use Loom. Loom has like a built-in, uh, visual editor. So I just hit record, you know, share my screen, go through the process, and then afterwards it removes fillers. Um, I can you, you know, delete sentences and it automatically UPS updates the video. Uh, so the whole capturing process is incredibly easy. You don't need, you know, uh, to toss it to a video producer and. We now have ai, which is getting pretty good at mimicking voice, pretty good avatars coming around. And so if, if, if there's educational parts that can, you know, just have a talking head and you introduce your new AI sidekick, uh, it can do a lot of the legwork and just produce the content that needs to be said so that you, you know, are on screen even less.

Sean Weisbrot: I don't know how I would do it, but it is interesting. It's definitely something to consider. I don't know how many people are out there promoting lovable in particular. Um, but it's a fantastic app. It's changed my life, so yeah, it's definitely something for me to look at. So tell me what's something that we haven't talked about that I, you feel. People should know.

Joshua Hale: Well, wellness and AI was been a surprising, you know, huge benefit into my life. Uh, you know, I've been able to use ai. I kind of overshare with it. I, I'm testing this stuff out to see where the edges are, you know, seeing its capabilities for my clients and, and, uh, my audience. But being able to, you know. Use it for then helping with communication with, you know, close loved ones and things like that. Uh, I, I'm a big proponent of nonviolent communication, which is, you know, how to frame, uh, words so that it's not coming across as, you know, triggering, right? So I can get into, you know, a, uh, uh, argument with my wife. It builds up, builds up, builds up. I'm like, I need a break. I can go out and I can just swear at my chat GBT and get the frustration out, right? And then it will reflect back to me beautifully, like, Hey man, it sounds like you're, you know, really upset about this. You know, you might be needing this. Um, and it does a really good job to where I get heard, I help, helps with my clarification, and then. Then it'll give me, like, here, go back to your wife and like, you know, tell her this so that it's not coming across as aggressive and, you know, spiking the whole conversation back up. So for communication, for self-discovery and being able to, you know, examine your life and, uh, help find, I call it, uh, this one prompt I did was. Told it to examine my memories and past conversations and find hidden negative loops that it can observe me in and what it put it, what it put out, like shook me up for like two days. It was such a cold, hard, like, blunt truth that I was, was, you know, speechless. And then I went and visited my buddy after that and I like read it to him and he's like, dude. If you spent two years in therapy and got that as a result, that would've been time, time worth, and money worth spent. He said, I, I've known you for like, you know, 15 years, and that was 98% accurate. So being able to use this thing, you know, kind of as a therapist, as like a relationship coach, these things can really help out, you know, the aspects in your life where, you know. The messy parts happen and, you know, some things, my, my wife's great and all, and I do, you know, confide a lot into her. We're also raising a kid, right? She's got her own business. And so having that time that, you know, I can actually, you know, vent and be heard and get, you know, reflection and feedback. Uh, is not always available. So being able to have a little sidekick to be able to, to help with that process, you know, some things you don't wanna, like, talk to other people about, uh, exploring your own vulnerabilities is hard. So having that unbiased look at things has been a, has been a huge game changer for me.