In a rapidly evolving tech landscape, Generative AI stands as one of the most promising innovations of our time. In a recent podcast episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Justin Feinberg, the visionary mind behind Cassidy AI, to explore the vast potential and practical implications of this groundbreaking technology.
The Age of Generative AI
Generative AI is no longer just a buzzword; it’s an emerging field that’s shaping the future of technology and how we interact with it. During our chat, Justin highlighted how Cassidy AI aims to make people’s lives better both personally and professionally by making AI incredibly easy and useful to use.
Staying Ahead of the Tech Curve
How does one stay current in such a fast-paced industry? Justin emphasizes the importance of intentional learning and curiosity-driven exploration. He urged individuals not to pressure themselves with words like “should” but instead play around and see what works. He advises a delicate balance between staying informed through newsletters and avoiding unnecessary noise from social media.
Unleashing Creativity through AI
Combining creativity and technology can lead to incredible innovations. Justin’s insights into content creation, product building, and leveraging AI’s power to enhance our creative pursuits were not only inspiring but practical. He believes that it’s in the hands of content creators and product builders to spread AI’s benefits to the masses.
Mindfulness Practices in a Tech-Driven World
In an unexpected twist, the conversation shifted to personal growth and mindfulness practices. Justin’s unique perspective on how to disconnect from the daily chaos and focus on what truly matters offered valuable takeaways for personal development. Could technology and mindfulness go hand in hand?
A Beginner’s Guide to AI
One of the key highlights of our discussion was Justin’s approachable guide to diving into AI, especially Generative AI. He believes in letting curiosity guide the way and not putting unnecessary pressure on oneself. Are you interested in starting your journey into AI? Justin’s tips could be just what you need!
Stay Connected with Justin
You can learn more about Justin and Cassidy AI by visiting Justinfineberg.com or Cassidyai.com. Subscribe to his newsletter and don’t hesitate to reach out if he can help.
Conclusion
From unlocking creativity to balancing social media’s impact, the conversation with Justin Fineberg was an enlightening exploration of the intersection between technology, personal growth, and the future of AI. The evolving landscape of Generative AI is not only fascinating but offers a glimpse into a future where technology empowers us to live better lives.
Catch the full podcast episode for even more insights and to see where Cassidy AI is heading. You might just find the inspiration you need to embark on your own journey into the thrilling world of AI!
Hosted by: Imteaz Ahamed
Video Transcript
Imteaz: 00:7
Hi everyone. Welcome to Applied Intelligence. Today I have a really cool guest that I’m super excited about. His name is Justin Feinberg. He’s the CEO and founder of Cassidy AI. Now, Justin, I met through TikTok. I follow Justin on TikTok along with over 300,000 other people, where he regularly talks about the applications of generative AI. And Cassidy AI, which he’s the founder of, is helping businesses implement custom AI solutions without actually writing any code. Justin also writes a weekly newsletter which you can sign up to on JustinFindberg.com and I’m going to leave all of the notes on how to follow him, etc. on the digital linear notes as well. But yeah, welcome to the show Justin, glad to have you.
Justin: 00:52
Yeah, excited to be here, man. It is always fun to do these podcasts. I love doing these. And especially with your podcasts, and the amount of awesome people that you’ve had on here already, it’s super cool to be here.
Imteaz: 01:07
Very cool. So I’d love to ask this question at the beginning of my podcast to really get the audience to know who my guest is. So the question is, what’s your story? How did you kind of get here? And if you had to write an autobiography of yourself, of your life so far, and it had five chapter titles, what would the titles of each chapter be and why?
Justin: 01:30
Yeah, totally. Well, I think if I was to write an autobiography or a biography about my life, it would definitely be one of those books that has no chapters. And it’s just like something you continue to read through. And one part connects to the other. And the lines of the chapters just don’t get there. I kind of be a lazy author, I think if I wrote a book, to be honest, about my life. But yeah, I mean, my background, you know, it’s kind of been on a long winding journey. you know, through lots of different places. And I think I talk about this in my content a lot, but, and it all kind of comes together. So I started my kind of career, like actually in the film industry. So, you know, when I was growing up, I wanted to be a writer and a director and make movies. And I started doing that very early on in high school. I had a short film that got into South by Southwest, which is a popular, obviously, film festival. And. It was kind of in that introduction at South by Southwest that I started kind of being introduced to the tech scene early on and it was through that festival and through just the fact that you could create movies and you could create films. It’s actually really compelling to people in tech and people in startups because that is the story of marketing. It’s the story of growth marketing generally. It’s just how well can you convey a story of a company. And so… From that point on, I started getting more interested in the marketing side and using those skill sets around film to actually make different commercials and worked with a bunch of different startups and different brands and actually kind of ventured out to build a growth marketing agency fairly early on. Ran that for a couple of years. That was really my introduction to tech and started working with lots of different startups. It was from that journey, starting to work in there that I realized I needed to learn to code. because if you don’t know how to code and you work in tech, it’s kind of a limit to what impact you kind of have. So I learned to code, started working on different projects with that. I started just building my own projects, got really into AI around that time. So it was right about GPT-3 was coming onto the scene. Some people would get early access. We got early access, we started playing around with it, we were building different products. At that point, I was also working and I got a job in tech as a product manager. worked at a few places, worked at a company called Blade, which is like Uber for helicopters, public company in New York, was a product manager there. And through all that, I think just a continued interest in AI, we started a startup that was essentially a social news platform that kind of used early GPT-3 to help you get these recommendations and was utilizing that in our product. You know, through that about I started making content, you know, I think there was so much interest that people had in how do you use AI? Um, it was a lot smaller amount of interest at that time when I started making content than where it is today. Uh, this was pre-chatGPT. So, um, basically like BCE, uh, pre-chatGPT and, um, and then, you know, chatGPT came out, it came on the scene and there was just so much interest and no one really saw that coming. No one who was building an AI really saw that was going to be that thing that clicked in everyone’s minds. Right off the bat of that, I was getting so much inbound from companies wanting to build custom AI solutions in their products that I teamed up with my co-founder and we decided, hey, let’s go build a company around this and solve this problem. That’s what we did and we are on that journey.
Imteaz: 05:19
So what do you think the pivotal moments in the last, let’s say, three to five years, that’s enabled generative AI to like get to where it is today?
Justin: 05:29
Yeah, I mean, I think if I look at, you know, generative AI, and I think specific look, I think there’s really one pivotal moment that matters. And I think you could back it up. And there’s a lot from like a technological perspective that’s happened over the five years that, you know, made generative AI and the technology to get to the point where it needed to be for it to kind of grab the mass adoption. But I think from where I am interested in and my focus is definitely on the mass adoption. It’s around the education of people and businesses on how they can utilize this technology. And the one pivotal moment, the obvious one, is that you know, release of ChatGPT. You know, even that really early on, I tweeted and I made the point of like, GPT-3 had been out for a while, it had been out for over a year, but it wasn’t until the user experience changed, that it was in this chat interface that unlocked in people’s minds. And I think that when you break that down and you look at that, it just shows really how important the user experience is. And I don’t think anyone was really thinking about that in the world of AI, because pre-chatGPT, the only one who was people who were necessarily interested in AI, were the researchers, were the engineers, were the technical folks. But because the UX changed, we had restaurant managers, we had dentists. We had teachers who were excited about what they could do with AI and generative AI specifically. Um, so yeah, if I have to bring it down to that, like, what is the pivotal moment? It is, it is that, uh, release of chatGPT.
Imteaz: 07:13
And you think back to Steve Jobs launching the iPhone, right? Like there’d been cell phones around for a long, long time before that. Um, but he just made it so easy for everyone to adopt. It just became mainstream. Now, you know, the same thing, it seems like the same thing is going to happen with, uh, Chadjibbity in particular, but also generative AI in the sense that, you know, the kids that are growing up today will, that will be their natural interface to interact with. technology in the future, rather than, you know, first step, go to Google and look for something and hunt for something on five pages of Google and look for it. Right.
Justin: 07:51
Exactly. And, you know, it’s, it’s still in the so early days, right? It’s like the iPhone came out and the reaction to the iPhone was like, all right, who’s buying, who’s going to buy that for, you know, a thousand dollars or whatever it was. Right. You know, and so there is still the adoption curve. And I think what chatGPT has kicked it off. But I think going back to like, you know, crossing the chasm, I don’t think we’re necessarily there yet. I actually saw a statistic where still one third of McKinsey just put out this report that you know, one third of these respondents of businesses, utilizing Gen.ai, say their organizations use it more than one function. And so it’s still less than a third, which is the actually the same number as it was in 2021. And so I still think that goes to show that like, all right, everyone knows what it is now, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being implemented or used, which is so interesting.
Imteaz: 08:49
Yeah, I did a presentation recently where I had to explain a really complicated AI model that we were using to senior executives that have never worked in technology, let alone applying artificial intelligence. And I was just too lazy to do it. So I just used ChachiPT to break down what a multi-ombatted model is and put it into a slide and give me a graphic to describe it through Midjodi as well. So it’s yeah. hard anymore. It’s just very surprising to see that a lot of people are just staying in their own ways and that creates a business opportunity to come in and solve that for companies at scale. Which is a great segue to the next question which is what are the pain points Cassidy AI is solving for your customers?
Justin: 09:40
Yeah, for sure. So I think the biggest thing, right, and I think the way we think about it, I think going back to what you said, right, it’s like, we are still looking at the AI adoption curve. We know this stuff is powerful, we know it’s useful, but there’s still a level of like, it lacks that adoption. And, you know, we really look in and dive into like, why is that? And I think when you look at it, there’s a few different reasons. Number one, I think these models work really well when they have the proper context. Right. And so if you go to chatGPT right now, and you say, you know, write a blog post about our business, you probably don’t have a blog post that’s worth publishing. It’s not that good. You know, now if you take the level and you can prompt it properly and you understand how prompting works, you could probably get it to that place where it’s even more useful. But then even further on is like, what, what would it look like if this model essentially had all the context of your brand guidelines and it was attached to You know, the knowledge base of here’s all of our prices, here’s our products. Here’s all that relevant context about your business. Um, so that when it produces that blog post, not only is it in your writing style and your brain guidelines, but it actually knows who you are on a deep level. It’s connected to your data sources, wherever they are. And so, you know, the pain point for us is really just how can you customize these models and also bring in your own internal knowledge and data. So you can actually get better output easier. Um, and for people who are not necessarily technical or understand what the best way to use AI, making it very intuitive and easy to use. Um, so that’s really kind of what our focus is on, uh, at Cassidy. Also, am I lagging at all?
Imteaz: 11:27
So from them
Justin:
Sorry.
Imteaz:11:31
No, you’re like, it’s, it, even if you’re, you’re not lagging on my end. And even if you are, it’s no issue because the uploaded file is going to get edited. So it’s the audio
Justin: 11:47
Oh, okay.Got it. That’s really cool
Imteaz: 11:52
Um, coming back to custody AI in terms of, you know, having, uh, I understand the technological solution here in terms of, you know, uh, absorbing a company’s brand guidelines, looking at, you know, historical contents, tone of voice, uh, looking at, you know, product pricing, going through PDFs of, uh, FAQs, uh, ingesting customer service. Um, manuals, etc. to kind of answer a lot of the questions from previous users. But what’s, you know, in terms of your secret sauce or in terms of, you know, how you’re really going to push adoption within the companies that you are targeting, you know, how do you ensure that users are going to find that value that you promise?
Justin: 12:44
Yeah, I mean, that is such an interesting challenge. Something I think about a lot is that the user experience of AI has just been default chatbot. ChatGBT came onto the scene, and this is the user experience that worked. It’s what clicked. And it clicked for a lot of people. And for the past six months for the early adopters, it worked really well. But it’s not the best user experience, right? An open-ended chat experience where you might not know what to type or if you type, you don’t know if you’re gonna get the right output or you have to have all this prompting done to the experience. 99% of people shouldn’t have to do that. The people building the products, or the people who are the early adopters, the people who set up the tools can do that stuff and build that experience. But for the 99% of people… Using AI has to be incredibly simple and the results it gets back has to be exactly what they want without having to tinker and play around. And so I think what we’re setting up at Cassidy is really trying to lead adoption across the organization. And so I look at like a product such as retool, you know, if you’re not familiar, which, you know, allows you kind of like a no code to build internal dashboards is really awesome product. And it’s not like every single person in a company. uses and sets up retool or they know how to write the SQL queries in order to properly get the dashboard set up or they know how to structure it and make it easy. No, it’s one person at your company or even you build the product and you release it and 99% of people just interact with that dashboard. And so I think right now when you look at like how you use ChatGPT, it’s basically like everybody’s building their dashboard for themselves. And I think what we’re trying to build at Cassidy is the experience where 99% of people don’t have to get into the weeds. They could use AI. They could get what they want. It’s intuitive, it’s easy to use, it’s simple. And I think that is what’s gonna actually lead that adoption. So, yeah.
Imteaz: 14:53
One of the analogies or one of the similarities I really see is I used to work setting up warehouses for direct to consumer order fulfillment. And the particular warehouse that we were working with had just moved to a pick to light system. So, you know, in a traditional warehouse, a picker will get an order manifest, which is literally a printed piece of paper. And they
Justin: 15:20
Mm-hmm.
Imteaz: 15:22
have to go find. that particular order within the warehouse. Whereas this warehouse, they still had humans, they didn’t move to robots yet, but they literally had a, the manifest was connected to lights within the shelving. So as the picker was walking through the shelving, the lights are turning on and they just pick out of the thing and put it into the box. So that was, you know, user behavior change using technology. But for the picker, it just meant, oh, I don’t have to literally go hunting and searching for it. It just natively happens to me in my existing user experience, in my existing process flow, and I can adopt that very easily. So I think the startups and the companies that, you know, create generative AI companies, if you can augment the existing processes of a company and you can natively just flow into their existing workflows without. fundamentally changing that human experience. So you’re augmenting the human rather than just, you know, fundamentally coming in and saying, we’re replacing you right now. I think that adoption will be significantly faster as well. What do you think to that?
Justin: 16:33
Exactly. It really is. I mean, the core of what, how you drive adoption, how you drive these different things is the user experience. It’s all the UX because the technology is there and the technology has been created and you have to look at the parallels of other technology and other cycles, whether it be the phone or the computer. It’s like the operating system has been built. It’s like, what can you build on term of the operating system so that it makes it really easy for everyone, for my grandma to use a computer, for my grandma to use AI, you know, it’s like kind of the way you have to think about it.
Imteaz: 17:15
So in terms of building up Cassidy AI, what are the key professional experiences that you’ve had and that you’ve kind of reflected on in terms of building out Cassidy AI?
Justin: 17:14
Yeah, I mean, one of the best things and why I think, you know, we have such a unique position to really build a great product is just the extent to which the fact that we started with content and content creation and that we’ve been able to tap in and educate people generally about AI, it’s led me to connect with hundreds of businesses at this point. I see the comments, I get the DMS, I get the emails on a constantly on a daily basis. And so. What we’re able to do with that is we were just so tapped in to how people think about AI outside of tech, outside of the people who are publicly talking about it, but how, how did the teachers, how do the everyday people use AI? And something that I just think about a lot is really my focus is I, I’m so driven by like, how do we make this so easy to adopt? So you see it in my content. And so what Cassidy is, what the product that we’re building is just the extrapolation of. what we can learn from talking to people, really having that human relationship and that connection and understanding and translate that into a product that we know will work for these people. And I think that’s just really an advantage of like any sort of startup that you’re building. You got to talk to your users, you have to understand the problems. And if you could do that at a massive scale, like you can when you produce content online and you’re talking and connected with hundreds of people, you really add a massive advantage to know what product to build. And what are the features that will have the most impact? So that’s how I think about having that advantage and having that experience of starting with the content is really what’s going to let us build a really strong product with Cassidy.
Imteaz: 19:14
Very cool. So if I’m a non-technical founder of a generative AI startup, and let’s say I have a business idea right now, what are the key things you should, outside of focusing, obviously, on content and building a community of people to actually sell your product to, what would you focus on in the immediate term to kind of get started and validate?
Justin: 19:38
Yeah, so if I was non-technical, I was non-technical. My background was in marketing and I took six months and I did a coding bootcamp where I learned to code. There’s no other, I really think there’s really one way to learn to code and it’s like you have to just commit and go into it and do it, right? It’s so interesting right now and I’m so excited and I think bullish basically on people learning to code right now. I think there’s a lot of people who… You know, like, oh, there’s no reason to code anymore because who’s going to need engineers with AI the way I think about it so differently like that you Will there will be a need for software engineers? There will need a need for people to implement and to build these products out And so sure a lot of code is gonna be written by AI But that’s a benefit to people who know how to code because it means it could take a 1x coder and turn them into a 10x coder, right? And so like if you don’t know how to go from 0 to 1 in terms of engineering, then AI is not going to do much from you. But if you have that one, if you’re able to get to that first base, it could take you, AI will take you to infinity. There’s won’t be anything you can’t do or can’t build. And so I actually think right now is a great time to learn to code. So if I was a non-technical founder, I would start there. You really, it’s hard to beat around the bush and I could give the advice, go use certain tools and You know, go build it on bubble, the no code product. And that’s an option and people do that well. But I think like at the end of the day, it’s worth it to take six months to learn this skill. So honestly, that would be my advice.
Imteaz: 21:24
Very interesting. Like, uh, I like your analogy. No, for me, you know, I, I’m a non-technical person. I pretend to be a technical person because I understand how things are connected. Um, but for me, it’s, it’s always been problem definition and customer adoption. Those are the two things that I’m hyper focused on tech for me, technology. And especially new technology. Like I’ve seen.
Justin: 21:25
Do you agree? Do you? What do you think?
Imteaz: 21:53
uh,I like amazing things before, but there’s no customers. There’s no business model. And then you burn through cash so quickly that it fails. And then somebody with the same idea comes up, you know, six months later, but has a ton of customers to go with and then they succeed. So for me, you know, yes, I think what I was reflecting on was I really like how you said if you’re a zero. AI is not going to get you from zero to one, but if you can get above one, then it’s an amazing coding. It’s an amazing tool to help you become extremely good. And that analogy is also true, I think is also going to be true if you’re a content creator, right? Like I personally have been trying to get into content. Oh, sorry. I’ve been trying to put in the time to do content for many, many years. I started in newsletter, I want to say like eight or nine years ago and then just left it because you know. For me, I’m a closer, I’m a finisher, I’m not a starter. So what I use Genite AI for in terms of my content is ideation and just getting me started. And then when I’m in the flow to actually write, because I’ve already got a base or somewhere to start from, I can just crunch it out and not it out very quickly. And I don’t have that, you know, excuse of, oh, I have to ideate all this stuff. And I have to think about all of these. I have to. think about the template or I have to think about all the things that I have to say, because it kind of helps me do that. So yeah, if you want to build a tech startup and you don’t have the vocabulary or the enough insight to know what your technical team is going to be doing, you’re obviously going to be at a loss. So yeah, I agree with you. I think you have to get to at least one and then leave. the heavy lifting or leave a lot of the grant work to the experts. But for sure, if you don’t understand what you’re trying to sell, it’s very, very hard to sell it.
Justin: 23:59
Yeah, I mean, go learn to code and then don’t code. You know, I think it’s totally reasonable, right? You know, with Cassidy, I’ve, you know, my co-founder’s the best engineer I’ve ever worked with. He’s the single best engineer I’ve ever worked with. And you know, what would take me two hours, four hours, five hours to build, he could build in 10 minutes. I honestly don’t even think that’s an exaggeration. And so, you know, like,
Imteaz: 24:28
way to.
Justin: 24:29
but, Exactly. When you work with the right team. But the, but the difference here is that we have such different skill sets. But at the end of the day, he understands what I could do. And I understand what he’s doing. I understand when he says this is what’s going on or what he wants to build or what we want to build, I understand and can resonate with this is the scope. This is how long it’s going to take. I could talk the talk. And I think that really goes a long way in tech. Even if you don’t know how to code, even if you aren’t coding, The fact that you know how to code will give you a level of confidence that you can actually lead a technical team. Um, cause you know, if you go learn to code for six months, should be people who are better coders than you, but there might not necessarily be better coders who are also better leaders or better marketers. And so I think that’s the advantage there.
Imteaz: 25:23
Very cool. Um, so what can a non-tech business professional do today to kind of get started in generative AI? I
Justin: 25:32
Okay.
Imteaz:
know someone with some, you know, good enough proficiency when it comes to technology, they’re on, um, multiple like social media platforms there. They use Excel very well, et cetera. How do you think, um, someone who hasn’t delved into generative AI can really get started?
Justin: 25:54
Um, yeah, I missed the first part of the question just because I was lagging out. Um, you said, how,how can I, how can a person get an generative AI?
Imteaz: 26:00
That’s right.
Imteaz: 26:05
Yes, a non-tech person into generative AI.
Justin: 26:10
The thing about these tools is that if you take the time to play around with them, you’ll find the use cases in whatever your field is, you know, um, it’s so, you know, the, the prompting advice that anyone will give you at prompting 101 is that you start your prompts with, I want you to act as, and then fill in the persona and the fact that you could fill in that persona as literally any persona out there, whether that be a copywriter, whether that be a personal trainer, whether that be a comedian or a math tutor, I think just shows how powerful this is. So when you go and play around and you’re someone who’s non-technical and let’s say you work construction or you… Whatever it is, whatever field you’re in. There is some value that you could be like, wow, this is powerful at this sort of workflow in my, my work, because there, no matter what you do, there’s not a profession out there that couldn’t have a little bit of help and receive some benefits from utilizing a large language model, because it’s in the name. It’s large language model. Is there any job out there that doesn’t use language? You know, I mean, it’s really at the, so it’s such as versatile tool. Um, that I think there’s just, you know, there’s no profession out there that really can’t have the aha moment. Like, wow, it could do that in my field, in my industry. You know, I think that’s really cool.
Imteaz: 27:50
The mantra I love is having the ability to unlearn to relearn. Right. So, uh, if you take the time to just, you know, open up a chatGPT account and get started and, you know, put in some basic prompts, very specific to your own field. It gives you, it opens your eyes to the art of the possible with this stuff. Right. And the more specific you get to your use case. the more blown away you’ll probably be in terms of what it could actually do. So, you know, being set in your own ways or being thinking that this stuff is way too far fetched, way too complex is I think very stupid because it’s so easy to get into. If you want to do more complicated things on, you know, in terms of image generation or video generation, et cetera, those things are getting much easier as well. But from a very basic point of view, just starting on chatGPT, there’s no excuse not to do that. if you’re a business professional anymore. But yeah,
Justin: 28:51
Exactly.
Imteaz: 28:57
cool. So. So moving on more so onto a personal front. You’re a startup founder, you’re a very busy person. What are the habits and productivity hacks that you have in your life that make your life easier?
Justin: 29:10
It’s a great question.
Justin: 29:14
Look, to be totally honest, and I’ve been more transparent about this, I really, I wake up, I work, I go to the gym, I work, I go to sleep. I pretty much just work anytime I’m not in the gym. And when I’m talking about what my habit is, it’s 100% that. The gym, right? It’s exercise, it’s running, it’s sweating. There’s a mantra in my life that I make sure that I sweat every day. At least just one beam of sweat. comes down my forehead at least once a day. And I actually think that is what keeps you sane. If you plan and want to work at a caliber of just a lot of work and you want to handle all that, and there’s a lot of pressure and lots of decisions, there really is no better way than making sure that you’re exercising. On top of that, I really am strict about diet. I think that also plays a really big component. I mean, your physical health is your mental health. And so I’m sort of basic, right? That’s kind of the classic advice, but I think it is, you know, 90% of what you could do in order to ensure that you can work at a great level, that you remain happy, um, and, and that you just can operate at that caliber and that’s, and also, you know, caveat, you know, maybe you don’t, you know, you, you don’t, you don’t live to work, you know, you, you work to live and I think that’s so reasonable. I think everybody’s different. Everybody’s got a reason. But I think no matter what you do, working out, eating healthy, that’s gonna allow you to be at your peak performance through your happiness. Whether that is you work your nine to five and that’s fine. It doesn’t really matter. You’re gonna find what it is for you. But I think for me, when I think about personal habits and the things that made the biggest difference in my life, it’s really just strict exercise and strict diet. So yeah.
Imteaz: 31:09
How do you take the time to learn though, Justin, in terms of like all this stuff is exploding right now, how do you keep on top of all the things that are happening within the generative AI space?
Justin: 31:20
I listen to podcasts like this. It’s really hard generally to stay up on all this stuff. I think really talking and meeting people, really getting out of your comfort zone, talking to as many people as you can, staying updated on social, there’s ways to do it. And I also think don’t put the pressure on yourself that you need to stay updated. You can miss some news. I mean, delete Twitter, get off Twitter for a month, who cares? You know, like, you know, like
Imteaz: 31:54
It’s not Twitter anymore, Justin, it’s X. Come on, man.
Imteaz: 32:03
Yeah
Justin: 32:17
life’s
Justin:
gonna… Oh
Imteaz:
anymore, Justin, it’s X. Come
Justin:
shoot,
Justin:
It’s like, what interests you? You know, if you like let go and you’re just like, oh, I’m curious about this, like you’re gonna get the news, you’re gonna get the information that you need. And I think that’s the way to really treat it is don’t try to force yourself. I gotta stay updated. I need all these newsletters. I need everything. Just like, hey, does that sound interesting? Do you wanna listen to that podcast? Do you wanna, you know, make an intentional effort to stay up to date with this? But. It’s always a challenge to stay up to date, but I don’t think it’s a necessity.
Imteaz: 31:48
For me on this one, it’s unsubscribing, religiously unsubscribing from like stuff that I don’t like and only being attuned to the content that I do like and I find is adding value. Like, especially on social. For me, it’s just, if I open up LinkedIn or TikTok, it’s giving me content that’s relevant to what I’m doing. And I make sure that I’m really subscribed to those people. And then as I randomly, you know, subscribe to some random stuff that’s not necessary anymore. I just make it a very good habit of trying to like get out of that stuff. Otherwise you just go down the rabbit hole and then just lose so
Justin: 33:24
I totally agree. I even added on my newsletter. I have two unsubscribe buttons. I have one unsubscribe button. You’ll never hear from me again. That’s it. But then I have the other one, which is like just unsubscribe from me from the week and I’ll only email you when I really think you need to know something. And I think that’s like a very like transparent, honest thing. I know people’s inboxes are filled. And so if they’re receiving my newsletter, you know, once a week and that’s too much and they don’t want that kind of noise, Well, I want to give them the optionality that like, wait a second. Sometimes like I don’t, there’s something beyond just a week that’s like, Hey, I would definitely recommend knowing this. And I almost think that’s a great option for like anyone with a newsletter is like, give your subscribers an option because there is really, they might want to keep hearing from you every once in a while, but they just can’t handle the once a week or the everyday type of thing. And so giving that option of cadence, um, it also builds a level of like trust. Like I’m not going to email something to that people who have opted out of the week unless I truly, from where I am, want and know that this person needs to know this information. And I think it’s the job as a content creator. It’s like, you wanna provide, you really, I overly index on like, is this a valuable piece of content? Will this be valuable to this audience? Will this be valuable to the people who unsubscribe from the weekly newsletter? Should they know this? And if you really put value at the forefront of like what you’re trying to do. that sets you up really well as a content creator and someone who does spread the AI news and the information. So, yeah.
Imteaz: 33:59
I’m curious to know your process for coming up with new content when it comes to generative AI. How does Justin decide this is the thing I’m going to talk about today?
Justin: 35L12
personal curiosity. I think like we’re all kind of the same, you know, like, and it is even transparent and like when you make a piece of content on TikTok and you post on Instagram and the performance of the video does well in the same exact way, even though it’s a hundred percent of different audience, probably no one who saw it on TikTok rarely would ever see it on Instagram. They’re separate groups, but the fact that they perform well on both platforms for me shows that We’re all kind of, we like the same stuff. We’re all interested in the same stuff. And so if you really are focused on like, I’m gonna make content that I would like, and you put it out there, and you make a video or share educational information, you go, I would have liked to have seen that from someone else, then you know it will be valuable to everyone else. You know, and so like, I really do feel like we are the best judges of the content because you can know if something’s interesting to you, it’s probably interesting to a million other people.
Imteaz:
Super cool. My next question is, what are the books you recommend or gift out the most to friends and family?
Justin: 36:32
Yeah, I think well there’s one book in particular that I gift out the most which is waking up by Sam Harris So going back to the kind of personal front so waking up is basically in Sam Harris wrote this entire book basically on how to meditate and How to be spiritual without having to be religious right and It’s one of the most I was one of the most kind of eye-opening and fascinating experiences when I read it just about how much something like meditation or mindfulness can really impact, you know, who you are, the way you operate. I mean, I’ve gone through periods in my life where I’ve meditated a lot and there’s gone through periods in my life where, you know, I have meditated a little. But I think the through line of it all is just like being able to be mindful and being present and knowing what that means and actually having a deep understanding of what that means that you can’t. become happy, you can only be happy. And so that’s a book that I give to a lot of people because it really breaks down that concept in a very scientific manner. You know, there’s no pseudoscience. I think a lot of people have the connotation of meditation and you know, wow, you know, the pseudoscience and all that stuff, but it really breaks down that science of what’s going on and why it is so powerful.
Imteaz: 37:58
In a similar vein, I love the book, Never Split the Difference, which is about negotiation, but it goes through how, from a negotiation point of view, before going into negotiation, you can do breath work and literally just calm your mind and calm your heart rate down in order to focus more. So like, you know, at the beginning of some meetings, internal theme meetings, I’ve used that. to kind of, when everyone’s just agitated by a situation that’s kind of going on, can’t necessarily take a logical decision, right? So just taking three day breaths as a group sounds weird, looks weird, um, but really changes the tonality of the situation and allows you to really make a very logical decision in a very hyped up state. So
Justin: 38:46
should check that out. I’d be interested in the negotiation. What are your negotiation tips? Do you think you’re good? Like, I mean, maybe read the one book, maybe read a couple others. How do you become a good negotiator?
Imteaz: 39:00
Um, it’s really understanding what the other person is looking for and what, how do you solve that problem for them and really understanding how you’re adding value in that equation and getting them to a yes, uh, by thinking two or three steps ahead of where they actually are. So, um, that’s, that’s the logical side of the equation. The other side of the equation is you’re only going to buy something or you’re only going to interact with someone. that you like, not going to buy something from a douchebag. So on the emotional front, you know, keep your promises, do what you say you’re going to do. Follow up when you say you’re going to follow up and tick all of those boxes. And then on the logical front, it’s kind of like, okay, I’m going to listen to all of the things that you have to say in your business situation, personal situation, et cetera. I will then map out. from my point of view, how I can help you achieve those goals. And through the relationship side, as well as the logical side, present all of that information back to you so it makes like complete logical and emotional sense that you would choose me as the solution to what you wanna do. So for me negotiating, I’ve worked in sales for the first six, seven, eight years of my life. And I wasn’t the… uh, over extrovert type of salesperson. I’m actually quite introverted. I had to be extroverted to kind of do my job and do like public speaking and stuff, but I’m naturally introverted. Um, so for me, it was kind of like taking that step back and really just actively listening to all of those problems that my customer was telling me. And then playing it back in a way that it was like, Oh, okay. This guy kind of has the solution to what I’m really looking for. So I think if you think about negotiating less like, you know, salesmen trying to like a second hand car salesman trying to push something onto you and more like this is a problem this person has, how can I help them through that? And then, hey, if I sell them a product, super great. And then it becomes just really easy to do. So I don’t think it’s that hard. It’s just taking a balance between the emotional side of the equation as well as the logical side. you kind of push it through.
Justin: 41:28
Yeah, I love that. I think that’s great.
Imteaz: 41:32
Super cool. Any other final closing statements from you, Justin, in terms of what people can do to kind of get started in Gen. AI?
Justin: 41:44
Yeah, you know, I think, uh, let your curiosity, let the, let your curiosity guide you. Um, never say the word should, I should use AI. I should, I should, you know, it’s like, you’re putting unnecessary pressure on yourself, like I think if you play around, you try it out, see what works. But I think ultimately it’s in the hands of people like us, content creators, people building products to really get it across to the majority to the masses, how they can really make their lives better using these products and these tools and this technology. And so it’s something I try to do with my content. It’s clearly something you’re trying to do with your podcasts. And it’s something we’re trying to do with Cassidy is really how can we actually make people’s lives better, both personally and professionally, obviously, uh, using AI and, uh, we’re going to make it. incredibly easy and useful to use. That’s, that’s the goal with Cassidy. So, yeah.
Imteaz: 42:50
Justin, pleasure to have you on the podcast. It was a fascinating chat. I’d love to catch up with you, let’s say in a year’s time or so to see the progress of Cassidy and to see where it’s at. How can people reach out to you if they want to learn more about Cassidy AI and learn more about you?
Justin: 43:08
Yeah, they could come to my website, Justinfeinberg.com. They can go to Cassidy’s website, Cassidyai.com or Cassidy.ai. They both go to the same place. I got a newsletter, send out once a week. You could try it. And if you don’t like the weekly newsletter, unsubscribe to the weekly newsletter and I’ll email you when there’s something you need to know about. And reach out if I can help.
Imteaz: 43:38
Thanks so much, man, take care.
Justin: 43:40
Thanks.
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