AI-Powered Networking: Smarter Follow-Up & Stronger Relationships With Michael Whitehouse | 048

Welcome to the Grand Connection Podcast, your

home for grand growth through collaboration. This is your

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in your business, you are in the right place. Listen in, connect

with us, and be part of something grand. Welcome to the

Grand Connection podcast, where we explore how meaningful

relationships, grand giving, and collaboration can help us grow

our businesses and create greater impact. I'm Susan,

co-founder of the Grand Connection, your home for

collaboration. Today, we are exploring what happens when

human connection and artificial intelligence work together. My

guest is Michael Whitehouse, better known as the guy who

knows a guy. And Michael is a connector, community builder,

author, entrepreneur, summit host, and a valued member of the

Grand Connection community. Michael has partnered with us

many times and generously shared his expertise on our grand

connection stages, and I'm excited, Michael, to have you

here on the podcast today.

I'm excited to be here on the podcast today.

Glad we could glad we could make the schedules work.

Yeah, that was perfect, perfect timing. And I

want to also add in that you're the creator of Connectors Edge

and Easy Summits, where you bring people together for

meaningful conversations, learning, and new opportunities.

And I have been inspired by the way you are embracing AI. You're

using it not to replace human relationships, but to support

them. Your AI assistant, and her name is Piper, helps you

organize information, remember important details, identify

opportunities, and follow up more thoughtfully. In many ways,

AI can become the memory we simply do not have the capacity

to maintain on our own. I'm working on this too, and I love

what you're doing. This is something I'm exploring, and I

think that we need to let other listeners know about what's

possible using AI. So, Michael, I'm excited to have you here.

Welcome.

I'm excited to share it. Yeah, if you let me

start going in AI, it's just like opening a fire hose.

I know. I know. We're gonna probably have to

watch the time because we can we could be here all day. So,

you're known as the guy who knows a guy, and I know it's a

guy who also knows a lot of gals. How did you earn that

name, and what changed your approach to networking?

I earned that name the way we all got our

brands. I gave it to myself, but no. So I wrote a book called The

Guy Who Knows a Guy because back in 2014 I moved to Groton,

Connecticut. Didn't know anyone. Didn't know anything, and I

started going networking events because I'm a super extrovert,

and I the only thing I had to offer was connections to other

people I'd met. So I'd meet someone, I'd say, "What are you

looking for?" And they'd say, "I'm looking for this person or

this kind of person." I'd be like, "Oh, you met that person."

Because it's amazing. If you know three people, the

probability that the fourth one needs to know one of the three

is surprisingly high. So I started making connections, and

that got me better and better connections, and within a few

months, I'm meeting CEOs, mayors, bosses, you know the the

big movers and shakers. And after a year or two, I'm

discovering I know I'm making introductions between two people

who have both lived in the area 50 years, people who live five

miles apart and have their entire lives, and I'm connecting

them to each other. I'm like, I'm doing something here. I'm

going to write a book about that. And that was the guy who

knows a guy. My first book, and the local chamber of commerce. I

put my book in the in the raffle. And instead of calling

me the author of the guy who knows a guy, they called me the

guy who knows a guy. And that's how I got that name. And that's

the brand I carried when when 2020 hit, and I went from in

person business to global online business. I'm like, I guess I

have a brand. Let's go because I didn't really like a clear

business concept six years ago. So I'm like, but I got a brand.

I'm a guy who knows a guy. Let's see where it takes me.

Well, it's memorable, and you are now doing

summits that bring people together around shared interests

and ideas. What have you learned about creating experiences where

real conversations and relationships can develop?

So that's actually kind of been a

branching path. The summits I used to run and still

occasionally run are the the awesome virtual interactive

event type summits. That's 10 speakers for six hours. But

what's key is that it's 15 minute speaking spot, 15 minutes

of interaction, because nobody wants to sit and listen to

speaker after speaker after speaker after speaker. Now,

maybe if it's like Tony Robbins followed by Les Brown followed

by Gary Vaynerchuk, I could listen to them back to back. But

if it's random speaker followed by random speaker followed by

random speaker. You lost me 40 minutes in. I'm on Facebook. I'm

wandering out the door. So I built these summits to remain

engaging, and so every 15 minutes, you're going into a

breakout room, or doing a hot seat, or doing something live

and interactive. So about a year ago, somebody invited me to

speak on their audio summit, and as soon as they said audio

summit, this whole concept popped into my head. Not the

concept they had in mind, but a concept popped into my head of

what an audio summit could be, and it would be a month long.

It'd be on demand, and so there's there's two ways that

you can make a summit format valuable enough to be worth

investing the time, which either increase the value or decrease

the investment. So the interactive summit increases the

value, but there's still a challenge of getting people to

invest six hours because I need to convince them. No, no,

really, this summit's not like other summits. This one's

special. The audio

summit summit going on. Yeah,

the audio summit, which eventually came to

be called the Easy Summit. The concept was this summit's easy.

Don't believe me that it's different. Just believe me that

it's easy. I only need 15 minutes of your time sometime

next month. Can you do that? All right, yeah, sign up for that,

and then they get access to these speakers. Really, what a

summit is is a sampler platter. You are, if you're totally new

to something, a summit may have life-changing information. But

if you've heard a couple speakers on a topic, if if you

have if you've been around for a while, very rarely is a summit

talk going to be life-changing or transformative. It might

teach you a new idea or a new way of looking at something, but

what it really is going to deliver is new people you want

to follow, people who may have solutions, people who may be

service providers for you, an agency you might want to hire,

and you don't need 45 minutes or an hour to figure out if you

want to know more about someone. In 15 minutes, often in five

minutes, but in 15 minutes, you know either yes, I want to know

more, I want to join your email list, I want to come to your

event, or yeah, that was good. I'm out. So that's the concept.

These easy summits is that they let you sample experience a

number of speakers, and are these summits allow between 20

and 100 speakers, depending on the summit, but they're only 15

minutes each. So you know, when I eat lunch, I often watch a

YouTube video. Well, instead of a YouTube video, I could listen

to a summit talk. If you take a 15-minute walk every morning,

listen to a summit talk every morning. Go out and walk the

dog. Great time to listen to a talk. 15 minutes on the

treadmill. Listen to a talk. So it fits into your schedule

instead of you building your schedule around it. And the

result is that the audience is more interested, thus it's

easier for the speakers to promote it, and the speakers get

more people listening and more people claiming their gift,

which is leads, which is why speakers speak on summits. So it

ends up being one of the most effective formats for a speaker

to get the results they want, and also most effective format

for the host, who are the people who hire me to run summits for

them, to get the leads they want from that experience. And since

the summit's a month long, that host's name and brand gets in

front of these summit attendees day after day after day after

day. So I kind of optimized on the summit format. Doesn't

create the live human connections that I really love

building that I'm doing with like the Connectors Edge, but it

creates the opportunity to meet a lot of people you might want

to work with, which could lead to live could lead to live

connections, and doesn't take up a bunch of your time to do it,

leaving you plenty of time for more human connections.

Yeah, and 15 minutes is a great time for

going for a walk or going on the treadmill or something like

that, that you can you can consume the audios as a

participant in the summit who signed up for it. I sign up for

lots of people's summits. I don't often get to go to

everything, but when I get the recordings or I pop in for a

little bit, I meet the other speakers. Like that's the

connections that's happening, right? So we're making real

connections with other people, and you get to get little tastes

of them. I podcasts do the same thing, so people will be

listening to you, and they go, "Oh, he sounds interesting. I

should go and check out his Connectors Edge, or I should go

to one of your events and meet you." And you get to learn about

the person at the summit, your Easy Summit, or in a podcast or

wherever, and it's it's nicely consumable, and you actually

create contacts from that. But you need to follow up. Yeah, and

I guess too, like you're going to have with the Easy Summit all

of the speakers' contact information and their gifts and

all that, so you can go into their worlds if you choose to go

into that. Right.

Right. Yeah. Yes. You have their social media

contact. You have the gift you can claim, so there's plenty of

ways that you can follow up with that speaker and and enter their

world. And you know some speakers are better than others

at making the door wide open for that world, but that's up to

them. But yeah, there's plenty of ways you can you can connect

with them and and join their world if you want to.

How many of these are you running a year?

1215, something like that. I'm running

one to two a month most months.

So you provide this as a service for people who

would like to run a summit.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. And generally, some people want to

run a summit. Most people want leads and visibility, and they

don't care how they get it. And they've been told a summit's a

way to get it. But you know, so whether they think of

themselves, so so don't think of it like I don't want to run a

summit. Of course, you don't want to run a summit. Who wants

to run a summit? No, you want leads and you want visibility

and credibility. That's why you run a summit, and that's why

they hire me to run a summit. Because while the hosts get all

the credit for running the summit, and people say, "Oh,

Sandra, you put on such a great summit." Sandra's like, "Yes,

actually, no." Sandra's a bad example. She recruited a zillion

amazing people. She did a lot more work than most of my

client, most of my hosts do. But you know, a lot of my hosts,

people like, "Oh, Bob, you put on a great summit." He's like,

"Yes, it was nothing because it was nothing." He hired me. I did

it. But you know that's the thing. If you hire someone to do

something for you, you know you hire someone to remodel your

kitchen. They say, "Oh, your kitchen looks beautiful." Yes,

thank you. You didn't remodel your kitchen. You hired a guy

who remodeled your kitchen, but you still get credit. Same thing

with the summit. You don't do any work, and I don't take apart

your kitchen. So you know,

and the audio easy summit is the easiest way to go.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the audio is the only form

of easy summit I run.

Yeah. Okay. So that's the easy summit. But you

also will do. Well, people can hire you to run their summit.

Yeah, I can

run live summits as well.

Yeah, your live summit, and then you have your

own live summits as well.

Yes. Yeah. I don't do many of those anymore.

A reason being is that they got to be very hit or miss. Summits

got very saturated, and so it's a much harder, much harder to

convince speakers to participate, and then thus much

harder to get the audiences to participate. So, and if a if a

pre recorded summit doesn't go great and the numbers are low,

nobody's sitting in the Zoom room, trying to soft chew and

keep people entertained in a dead room until the next speaker

comes on. So I will still run live summits, and if there's if

it's around a topic people are going to be engaged about and

excited to get in the room about, then I'll do that. But

live live is not great for business growth or you know

these general concepts. It's great for something very

specific where people actually want to get in the room and

connect. And one of the things I do is is that I anyone who

approaches me and says, "Hey, I'm running a summit. Could you

tell me everything you know to make it successful?" I will

because the more summits, more good summits are out there, the

easier my job is, and the more bad summits are out there. The

harder my job is, and there's definitely more and more bad

summits out there because I'm getting more and more feedback

of pre-recorded summits don't work for me. And I'm like, of

course not. They suck. Most pre-recorded summits are

absolutely awful. They are 45 minute or hour-long recordings,

or even worse, interviews that there's 10 of them in a day, and

you can only listen to them in 24 hour periods. You're supposed

to spend 10 hours listening to these recordings, and and you

know, of course, nobody listened to it. The format is just doomed

to failure from the jump, but it's built around this outdated

bro marketing aggressive funnel model, and so, but of course,

mine because it is recorded gets lumped in. They're like, now

that's a recorded summit. I've done recorded summits. I'm not

going to do your recorded summit. So, yeah. So I I have

some strong feelings about how other people do summits.

Well, the world is changing very very fast, and I

know you're embracing AI completely. Where do you see

this world of of online and digital events? Like, how? What

are the ones that are going to be the most popular?

Ah, well, so again, it's it all comes down to

what the human experience is. People want a human experience,

and it's actually these summits that got me into into AI

heavily. I mean, as soon as I saw AI, I started using it, you

know, the day ChatGPT came out. I'm like, "What's this? Let's

start playing." But I started really discovering its potential

when I had this idea for these summits, and the only tool I had

was Go High Level, which was absolutely the wrong tool to run

what I wanted to run. But it was going to take 50 forms and 100

pages, and it was just gonna be this monstrous thing, and so I

went to AI and said, "Hey, could you build me a page that could

sit in the middle of this and take a bunch of the work out of

it without some variable data?" And it's like, "Yeah, I could do

that, but I could also build you a WordPress plugin that would do

this, this, and this." And I'm like, "You can what?" And so

through trial and error and smacking my head against the

wall and walk in a different direction, I figured out learned

how to what I would later learn was called vibe coding, and

yeah, I just experimented and asked AI questions and tried

this and learned that and and started using ChatGPT Codex in

June, which I think came out somewhat recently before then,

and. And so then I basically started building all my own

software, and to the point where I I haven't touched Go High

Level in almost a year now because I don't need it.

Anything I could do there, I could build build my own tool

faster.

Well, I'm super impressed with what you're doing

with AI, and I am a WordPress developer for for decades. So

early days was Drupal before, and then I decided, oh, Drupal's

not catching up. I'm going to switch over to WordPress. That's

15 years ago, and I love how you're working and creating

plugins to work through WordPress because a lot of us

have a base in WordPress from from our past, and we know how

to use it. We're comfortable with it, and it's solid. So this

is quite an interesting way, and and I'm excited you're going to

be speaking at the Grand AI Group in December. For those who

are listening, if you're, it might be in our library. If

you're listening past December 2026, or if it's before, you can

make sure that you attend the AI Group, the Grand Connection. And

you're going to show us a little bit about what you've been doing

with vibe coding, and what I'm also interested in the ways that

it's helping you connect, create, and collaborate. And for

those who you who are new to the podcast, connect, create,

collaborate is our framework here at the Grand Connection. We

connect to make and meet new connections in our world. We

create trust. We create opportunities. We create ideas,

and then we collaborate together. Once we have built

that trust and we have a relationship with the person

around us, and this grows over time. We were talking about my

framework earlier, and you have an example with Piper. Tell

everybody who Piper is first, and then share with us how that

fits into Connect Create Collaborate.

So Piper is the identity I created for my AI

assistant and Piper came about because I've run 70 something

summits. I think it's 79 now, and so you know, with every

summit, it's about how do I get more speakers on. If someone's

spoken on it before, they're the best one to invite because they

understand what I do. They understand how I'm different.

But I don't have the want to say time. It's attention span. I

don't have the attention span to go back and sift through all the

lists and figure out who I should reach out to and who's

good for which summit. What do they speak on? I'm like, this is

an AI application because it's very simply, you know me, I know

you. You should speak on this summit, right? That does not

require my personal attention. An assistant can handle that. I

don't have a human assistant, so I said, why don't I have AI do

that? I'll generate a separate email address for Piper, and you

can email Piper, Piper at summits. Fun. She'll answer you.

You can be like, hey, I heard you on a podcast. She'll be

like, oh, that's great. And I've actually had people who are

like, are you sure Piper's AI? Like, yeah, I'm sure she's AI.

Does it sounds like a person? Yeah, I know. So I give her own

email address, and she has access to the whole summit

database, so she looks, sees what someone spoke on, and will

invite them to a future summit. And once I did that, then I'm

like, if you can do that, what else can you do? Yeah, you can

invite people to this event. You could invite people for this. I

have someone in the inner circle who's doing an amazing nonprofit

project, a charity project, and I'm like, I'm gonna set Piper on

this. Piper, who do you know who'd be interested in

supporting Mark's project? And so she came up with with six

names. I said, not that one, but the other five, send it. She

wrote a a very nice email that included something personal

about them, so tied it in. You know, I I know you've done this

and this, and I thought you might be interested, Mark, doing

this. So if you'd like an introduction, let me know. So I

also have Piper fill out forms for me now because another thing

I have her do is reach out for speaking gigs. So she does the

research, figures out where there's applications, she fills

out the applications, and and she's you know, because she

knows me well, she's filling out the right applications at the

right places. Not just every summit's getting an application.

It's it is venues that matter. So to to come on this podcast to

speak on the the other Grant Connections things, Susan, you

send me a form and fill it out. And historically, I get a form.

I'm like, oh, it's the same bio I always use, but I don't

remember where I kept it. And this description is basically

what I did last time, but I can't remember where that is.

Now I'm reconstructing everything, and every simple

form is a you know 20 minute project. I said, Piper, fill out

this form, don't submit it. Let me finish it. So she fills out

the form, and you know she fills it out, and I look and I'm like,

hey, it needs this, needs a headshot, needs that sent. So

for this, one of the questions, Susan, that you asked is

something like, give an example of connect, create, collaborate

in your world. And Piper gave an example, which took in I think

three separate pieces of information she had because I

didn't give her this at all, and it was a a story that we did a

speaker meeting for an upcoming summit, where one of the

speakers said, "Do you have closed captions on the

recordings?" And I said, "We don't." And my first thought

was, "We don't, because it's too complicated." And I immediately

realized, "No, it used to be too complicated.".

It's no longer too complicated with the tools we have, and I

said, you know, so you know, I connected with that speaker

through the summit, and then we created the idea with her

saying, "Could you have this?" And then I was talking to Susan

earlier today, and you said, "Well, if you have that,

couldn't use that to make short summaries and descriptions of

the summit of the the talks, and I was like, yes, I could do that

too. So, so you know, it it was this one story. I'm like, this

ties in everything we're talking about using AI to facilitate

something, be able to solve problems, add solutions. Because

this person actually, you know, was hard of hearing, so she

couldn't listen to the audio, and without the captioning,

she'd have to actually download it and run it through something

and turn to a transcript. So you know, created a solution to a

problem, and then Susan, you kind of yes anded that, and

you're like, well, if you're doing that, you can do this. I'm

like, yes, we can. I just pop over into Codex. Hey, we're

doing this now. Boom! Did you do

that already?

It is. It's already in motion. I don't think

it's already tested. To just

add in here that Michael and I were on a call for

an hour and 15 minutes ago. The connections he got from Mark

that was discussed that he needed those connections on that

call. So Piper did all this? He sent out the. You already sent

the email to Mark with the five connections to Mark. So Piper is

being used to help facilitate connections, the right ones. You

reviewed it, and there was also a discussion in there where we

got some ideas. And you've already implemented it. I am

super impressed. How much time a day is Piper saving you,

it's hard to say because I then fill it with

something else. So it's not like, oh, now I'm done. But I

mean, my whole workflow has shifted. So yeah, the question

of what it's saving is is uncertain. But what's happening

is I'm building functional elements of software every few

days. So it used to be, you know, I got ADHD and I'm an

entrepreneur, so I'm sure you know what that life is like.

Ooh, I could teach this class. Ooh, I could write this book.

Ooh, I could do this thing. And most of these things, you're

like, I have an idea for class, and so I create the class, and I

create the landing page, I create the emails, and I spend

five hours setting it all up, and we sell two of them at $47

each, and then it's over and it's dead. Like there is nothing

to show for it. There's no asset I can reuse. It's 10 hours spent

and gone. So now, when I have these ideas, I'm doing them in

collaboration with Codex, which is ChatGPT. It's a ChatGPT

equivalent of Claude Code. So I do it with Codex, and I say,

"Oh, there should be a function on the connector's edge that

does this, and it'll build it." And sometimes I'll build it, and

it'll actually be finished, tested, and working, and then I

won't do anything with it, but it still exists. Sometimes I'll

build it and kind of get it half done, and then forget about it

and wander off. The my task doinator is a tool that that

will hopefully have less of these abandoned tasks working on

that part. But it means each of these random flights of fancy

makes a thing like an actual persistent technology asset. So

I have more things built out. So when I turn back around, it's

not oh yeah, remember those seven classes that I ran, of

which four of them got people. No, no, I don't. It's oh yeah, I

built that community platform that I'm not doing anything

with, but it's still fully functional, tested, and ready to

go. So when three months later I have an idea, I can be like,

"Boom! Plug this together, let's go!" So that's really the

difference. It's not just a matter of time saving; it is a

matter of the time I'm spending is building more persistent

things and mental energy saving. So there's there's what's called

the the task switching tax. That every time you go from one task

to the next, like it drains your energy. Especially when you have

multiple things pending at the same time, and that's just

exhausting. So everything that I can just say, Piper, do that for

me, you know. Take care of this. Upload the book. Fill out the

form. Whatever. That's something that goes from being an

expensive task, taking you know, let's say I can do about six or

seven things a day. It takes one of those slots and makes it a

free task. So if I can say publish the book on KDP and it

just does all the steps to publish it, because most that

requires no judgment. It's like copy paste, reformat. Remember

where the form is. Think about which category I wanted to put

this in. It's like dumb stuff that AI can do. If I can move

that off my plate, the result is the same, but it took no mental

energy from me, which is my most valuable. And precious resource,

and you do get the opportunity to check Piper's

work, right? You always have to go into draft modes, yeah. And

does Piper ever make any mistakes?

I've yet to see Piper make a mistake. She's

there have been a couple things where, like, so again, it's very

much like working with an assistant, except instantaneous.

So you know, assistant, they send you the email. Here's the

draft, and then takes you two hours to see it, and then you

respond, and then they've gone home, and and so the email got

sent two days later. So Piper is certainly. I've seen things

where I've said, ah, this would be a better way to do that, but

I've yet to see something where I looked at and said, oh my god,

right, I caught that. It's more so. So there's some things where

I'll just say just respond to it, tell him this, and she'll do

the best she can. Because that's the thing is I treat her like a

human assistant, and people read it. You know, she says I am

Piper, Michael Whitehouse's assistant. At the bottom, it

says Piper is an AI closely supervised by Michael

Whitehouse. But if she, you know, if your assistant makes a

mistake, you correct it. It's not the end of the world. the

The place where people get in trouble with AI is they try to

not use AI to facilitate human connection, but to replace human

connection. When AI logs in as you on LinkedIn and writes

comments, when AI is sitting in your your LinkedIn DM and sends

out messages, but we before there was AI there was VAs.

We're hiring people overseas who would sit in your DMs and send

out messages. I had someone yesterday who sent me a DM

message that was something like, "We haven't talked in a while,

and you know, I hope you could update me on what you're up to.

We just met last week, and we have a meeting for this this

coming Friday. But this this marketing company was just going

through and DMing everyone. She she had sent me message saying,

"Ignore that. I hired a marketing company." Blah blah

blah blah blah. But to me, that says I can't trust you to

literally be who you say you are. I don't know if I can trust

you as a person, but I can't even trust that it's you saying

what you think you're saying. So, so that that's the problem.

Whether it's AI or an assistant or whatever, when they put your

face on like a mask, that's when you have a problem and it gets

dangerous. As long as it identifies as itself as not you,

people can excuse minor errors because you know if you told me

something and Piper doesn't know it, well, of course she doesn't

know it. She's not me. That's perfectly reasonable that she

wouldn't know that. And then the response she'd get would be

like, "Oh yeah, sorry, I already told Michael this. I'm not going

to be available, but thanks for reaching out."

So does Piper have her own profile on some social

channels? Is she on LinkedIn? Can I connect with her?

She's not on social media. I haven't even

looked into it. I'm, I'm pretty sure LinkedIn's terms of service

say you have to be a human to have LinkedIn account.

Yeah. So

I might see about giving her like a Facebook

account. I did have her

dogs have have accounts on things,

yeah. I'm I'm pretty sure Facebook will

let you get away with a robot. I mean, Boardy has a LinkedIn

account, so Boardy has LinkedIn account. Boardy Boardman, if

you're not familiar, Boardy Boardman is is kind of like

Piper scaled way up, yeah, and fantastic resource by the way.

If you're looking to network, especially with like Silicon

Valley founders, VCs, those kinds of folks, phenomenal

resource for that. But I just realized, yeah, Bordy has an

Boardy has an account, so why can't Piper have a LinkedIn

account?

Well, she's very cute. So you, you know, did she

make up her her look herself, or did you do that?

Uh, so she's based on the original Al

imagery. So when when AI first came about, I created Al as a

character because I decided I was never going to have AI write

an email for me, you know, as me. But before AI was slop

everywhere, people like, "Ooh, AI is cool." So I created this

character named Al because Al looks like AI, and so Al would

send emails, and every Al email had a little robot emoji in the

subject line, so you knew it was Al. And and he would, and I kind

of had this this backstory of like he's an AI who is totally

not playing to take over the world. I mean, he is, but he's

totally not. Don't worry about it. Not taking over the world.

And so he drop in these little things about you know when I

rule the world. I mean not that I'm planning to take over the

world, and so you know he was he was quirky and funny, and I

created that character so there'd be an image of Al doing

something goofy. So he was like this fun, friendly, cartoony AI

character, and back even ChatGPT 3.5, I people say, that's not

AI. You wrote this, and I'm like, no, I really didn't. And

in fact, the first I had I'll do a week of emails, and as an

experiment, I did not edit the emails. I would reprompt them,

so if it didn't say what I wanted, I'd say fix this,

correct that, fix this. And this was back when, if you asked AI.

Fix one thing, it would break two other things. So that was

fun trying to reprompt an email, but for an entire week, seven

straight days, I had Al write the emails, and I did not touch

a letter of them. I just correct if it needed to. And at the end,

I said, "Poll time. Do you guys want all Michael, all Al, or a

mix of both?" I think something like 9% of people said all Al,

and about 15% said all Michael and everyone else was like mix

of both. You're both cool, but

yeah, yeah, and and it also helps you when you.

I know you get Al to write stuff. Maybe it's Piper now

while you're on holidays, right? And it'll say that this is being

written on your email by the AI assistant, so you're letting

people know you're not hiding it, which is really good.

Yeah, yeah, and then and then and also by

creating a character, and of course also makes me look

bigger. Like I'm just one guy. My whole company sits in this

chair.

Yeah,

but when you when you hear from Al and you

hear from Piper and you hear well, you hear about Coach

Jerome. Coach Jerome is my health advisor. I've actually

lost almost 10 pounds in the last seven weeks because I have

AI tracking everything I eat and giving me health advice. My

blood pressure is down from type stage two hypertension to

basically normal, and my weight's down like nine and a

half pounds. And that's Coach Jerome. I

name my nutrition coach, I have it, and and like I

have one in my in ChatGPT. It's a project for nutrition, but

everything goes in there, and it kind of now it knows me really

well. So if something new is a concern, this is well, remember

you had this this you talked about before because it just

brings it all together. And and I've lost 12 pounds, so I'm

feeling really happy with my nutrition. Yeah, so I'm good.

Yeah, yeah. I

gave it a name just so I don't when I'm

talking my wife and not like. So ChatGPT said, "I can say Coach

Jerome said."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna give mine a name. I

got to figure out a good name for that. Maybe I'll do what you

did and ask. What should I call? What would be a good name? See

what she comes up with. And you know, my big tip was more

protein. That was sort of a big basis of it, I realized I wasn't

getting enough protein, and it's so easy now. I could take a

picture of my meal, and it basically gives an estimate of

all the nutrients.

Yeah, yeah. I I never would have dreamed of

using a health tracking app because you got to look it up

and be like, this contains this, and you're typing in all the

names, auto completing and searching, and

yeah, no, I was using Noom a few years ago and

did did fairly well with it, but this was this is way easier

because I can just take these pictures of my meals and it it

knew the calories. And then once you once you kind of have a

general idea and you create the new habits, you don't have to

keep doing all the tracking anymore. But it's good at the

beginning. Yeah,

I I also I like tracking is like almost

gamifies eating. Yeah, and and so I can be like, what else do I

need to eat today? Because it's now tracking everything. For me,

it was potassium. I had a nutrition coach and then my

doctor, and neither of them mentioned that potassium

counteracts sodium for blood pressure. Even my doctor said

your blood pressure is elevated. What can I do? You can eat

better, I guess. Like my doctor was useless. I'm going to find

new one. But Coach Jerome was like, "Yeah, sodium inhibits

proper kidney function, which increases your blood pressure.

Potassium facilitates proper kidney function, which decreases

your blood pressure. For the purpose of blood pressure, this

is, I'm sure, super simplified. Potassium counteracts sodium,

and I had no idea. 46 years old, learned that like three weeks

ago, because it's giving context-specific information.

But even before that, just counting. You know, at your age

and weight, you should be under 2300 calories, and you should be

under 2300 milligrams of sodium. I'm like, okay, count what I eat

and tell me if I'm going above that. And

surprisingly, we generally are eating more things

than we think we are. That's what I learned when I started

tracking the. Oh yes, I was way over on my calorie, and I did

not know that coconut coconut meat was so much because I

always had when I'm down in Mexico, I'd always have these

get a coconut and drink the water and then eat the meat with

some spices and oh my gosh, it's so good! But that was a lot of

calories.

What what what's fascinating though is

when you're tracking everything and you're asking it, you can

fit all kinds of things you wouldn't expect. So I mean, I

could fit like a Whopper. I can go to Burger King and it can

still keep me under for the day as long as I'm looking at the

day holistically, so you know. The other day, I was like, "I

sure, I'm sure I shouldn't eat a donut," and it said, "Actually,

based on what you've eaten today, you could totally eat a

donut as long as you don't eat too much for dinner." And I'm

like, "Okay, I'm gonna eat a donut."

So the other thing, my nutritionist too, is

dealing with the glucose react. Then you got to realize that oh,

you burn, you don't burn calories when you have too much

sugar in your blood, so

yeah,

you know. So then, then it starts saying, "Well,

you might not want to have this sugar here. You could just have

protein or have sugar and go for a walk and stuff like that." So

you start learning. I've learned so much. I mean, I learned from

also we have a wellness group at the Grand Connection, and we had

you know had some talks on metabolism and things like that,

but. It's nice because your own AI can be really specific to you

and your body type and your habits and the things you like

to eat and all the superfoods that agree with you and all that

stuff. So very cool. We've totally digressed from talking

about networking. Well, but the power of AI, right?

Right, and and so so one of the big things

I've done is I created the the task doinator. If you ever watch

Phineas and Ferb, I decided to at one point I was gonna call

all things on my computer inators.

Task

doinator. The task doinator is the only

one where that naming convention survives. But so, but the the

task I I'm coming up with all these ideas and working all

these things, and then now Code I'll prompt Codex, and it'll be

done between 15 minutes and three hours, and then it pops

back up. And now I'm all over the place, so I needed to keep

that track so I could stay under control. But then back to how AI

works for networking is years ago when I first started this

online thing. I was one point meeting 20 to 25 people a week,

80 people a month. I knew I could not follow up with 80

people a month. My solution was create an email list, and then I

would put content on there that was not salesy, pitchy, but was

valuable. So, in other words, content I would share with

people I was networking with, and that kind of worked. You

know, kept me top mind when they needed me; they could remember.

But it's not perfect because it's still very reactive. It's

still they need to read the stuff, takes their time, and

what Piper can do, and what I'm going to have her do once you

know it's ramped up and a few of the back projects are out of the

way, is Piper can actually go through people I've met and say,

"Hi Susan, this is Piper, Michael Whitehouse's assistant.

You guys met a year and a half ago, and it looks like we didn't

follow up. But from the transcript of that meeting, it

looks like there were some good potentials like this and this.

So Michael asked me to follow up and see if you're still working

on that, and if there's anything we might be able to do to be of

service. Is there a connection you need? Is there whatever?

Piper can make introductions herself without my work. I mean,

she still brings everything to me and says, "I got a reply. I'm

going to do this." And I'm like, "Go for it." But you know, if

they say, "Well, yeah, I'm really, I'm, I'm looking to meet

people who are in the, I don't know, wellness space who would

want to speak on my summit," then I'd be like, "Cool, Piper,

go find five people who could speak on their summit. Send an

email, see if they want to meet, and if so, make the

introduction." And I can do that without any effort. And people

care about what I do for them; they don't care about if I'm

doing it. So if my assistants making introductions for you,

you don't care if I personally made the introductions. You care

that I made an introduction happen through my resources, and

so so I can serve in that way, which is basically the concept

behind Boardy. Boardy Boardman is owned by a company that does

something with VC, you know, venture-backed companies, and

runs events that they want those people to come to, so they build

their it builds the relationships by making a bunch

of introductions, and then when there's an event, says, "Hey,

there's an event you might be interested in. It's in San

Francisco in three months. You want to come?" So it's a

marketing tool, and so I can use Piper that same way to provide

value to people, reignite those conversations. Say, are you

still working on that? What's new? What's this? As as I'm

looking for something, I'm like, who do I know who does this

thing? Oh, let me go check everyone you've ever met. Here's

someone you spoke to them two and a half years ago and haven't

talked to them since. Would you like me to reach out for you?

Yes, please go reach out to them. So, it and and it seems

inauthentic. It's like you know, well, you got me an assistant,

do it. But networking used to be you lived in a village of 200

people and you knew everyone. Now we live in a world of 8

billion people and we can talk to all of them. Technology

creates the problem of overwhelm. Technology solves the

problem by sorting.

And you. you figured it out, and that's what

I'm so impressed with. And it's not that hard to do. Can you

kind of explain the how? I mean, this is a database. What you do

it is you're just getting your transcripts from your calls,

you're getting your emails. They're in a database, and now

Piper can access them all, right?

Yes. So the so the the crash course version

of how to do this is I built software that runs on my desktop

that is basically a CRM, so it basically a database, and it has

the ability to link to Gmail, link to email accounts, link to

Fathom, link to anything with an API, and download the data. I

this is when I discovered I have 500,000 emails in my Gmail

account. Most of them are archived, but it's pulling the

whole archive in because it's getting everything going back to

like 2008 when I opened the account, which takes a week and

a half. So my computer's been running day and night

downloading emails for a week. Have, but so I use ChatGPT Codex

to write that software, and but the core is a database because

AI by itself isn't very smart. It needs a place to store its

stuff, otherwise it forgets stuff. It remembers vibes. It

doesn't remember details. So you need a place to store the

details, and that place can be a Google Drive, but it's more

effective. You actually build a specific database built for it

for this purpose. So use Codex, and every time I say Codex, you

can replace it with Claude Code if that's used. Or I think Grok

has something. I think Gemini has something. Use the coding AI

thing you use, you make a desktop application that will

store a database. I like desktop because it's much harder to hack

my desktop than some website, so it's still hackable, but it's

less hackable. Um, and then you make it so that the AI can go in

there. Now, here's the thing: Piper also runs on Codex, so I

am setting it up with MCPs, which an MCP is a link between

software and an AI. But it doesn't strictly need it for

this because Piper can literally go into the code of the database

and change it. The only reason she doesn't is because it's not

her job, so she knows to tell the other chat to make any

changes and not make them herself, but I don't need to

explain how this to this one chat how to interact with it

because they're all in the same little AI ecosystem. But the key

thing is you make software that runs on your computer that

stores all the data, and then you make another chat that you

say you are my assistant. Your identity is this. You're going

to do this. I created a separate email address for her off one of

my domains and plugged that into this software. So, because it's

AI again is not great at plugging directly into an email

account. It's much better if you give it a harness that it can

send emails from, store emails in, read emails. But it's

basically you create a piece of software for it to run in, and

then you create the the AI that runs it. I call it a mech suit,

and apparently other people have used that term as well. It's

basically your little robot puts on a giant mech suit, and that's

how it's able to be powerful. The mistake most people make

making AI software, especially for others, is they they put in

a ChatGPT or Claude or whatever API, and now they're paying

separately for tokens, and so the customers can only use

whatever model has been put into it by the person who made it,

which is usually not the newest model because that's the most

expensive, and they'd rather spend less money. And I use this

concept of BYO AI, bring your own AI. So I'll create the

software, and this is what I do for clients I work with too.

I'll create the software. You can plug your own AI into it.

You don't need my tokens and my system, because also if you're

paying for tokens, you get if like I'm I pay I'm on the $200 a

month plan with ChatGPT, and ChatGPT or OpenAI does not

reveal how many tokens you actually get for that, but some

people have done some analysis and estimated and whatnot.

And from what they have figured out, you get about 2000 times as

many tokens per dollar paying for the $100 or $200 month plan

as you do if you just buy credits directly. So you don't

want to have an API in there where you're paying for tokens.

You want to build a mech suit where the user can just put

their AI in the mech suit and use their system that they

already have. Yeah. So,

so you are you running things on a separate

device in your house than the regular one you work on, like

you have no. A lot of people I hear are putting, like they're

kicking an old old computer, an old laptop, and and doing it on

that so that they keep it separate.

Yeah, that'll probably be a good idea.

But I'm not that smart.

You're your guy. Well, you sound pretty smart to

all of us. Maybe not Piper, but

yeah. Well, where's Boris? I haven't. I I

don't have a need for that currently, and it adds

complexity. Um, like it's not slowing down my computer or

affecting anything else I'm doing. Um, but but yeah, that is

actually, and it that's something I had not thought

about. Is I could bust out my old computer and network them

together and make that the the one that holds the, you know,

holds those functions, and they run there. But

we're going to have a great discussion at the

Grand AI Group because there's a lot of people that are doing

things, and I think that we're going to all get some great

ideas. That's what connection is about. Is yeah, you know, people

think, oh, it's getting me sales or referral partners. Yes,

that's important, but new insights and ideas, and saving

you time in your learning cycle is amazing. With the power of of

brand connections, and you know, having a guy who knows a guy,

right? Yeah, or a guy who knows a tool, or a guy who knows a an

AI agent, or something like that. So

a geek who knows a computer, really. This

is what I am.

Well, I want to just weave back to your

connector's edge. So. So everybody learns a little bit

more about this because this you have built using AI. It's

powerful. It can help us who are listening here and Grand

Connection members find new connections. Tell us how it

works.

So the Connectors Edge is like a dating

site, but for networking. So it's actually part of the

principle is borrowed from the platform that my wife and I met

on, but so so the the matching algorithm is not AI based. It is

based on you answer a series of questions about your

preferences, hobbies, habits, interests, values, what what is

you, and then what your ideal match would answer, and then it

does a bit of relatively simple for computer math, determines a

match rating, and that's roughly the percentage chance that you

will get along well when you meet. So I've seen people 40%

matches get along great, but I've yet to see someone with an

80 or 90% match say that wasn't a good connection. So and then

then it has a quick connect button. You click the button, it

shows you the highest rated person on the platform and says,

"Here's Susan. She's a 92% match with you. Would you like to meet

her?" Yes, and then you could send them a message. So I built

that, and then off of that, I built a community. So there's a

forum attached to it. There's an event platform attached to it

that has an event dashboard, messaging system, a bunch of

other things. But the core concept is just around that

connection matching thing, and I am working on. I apparently this

is one of those things I got 80% done and got distracted on,

which is an organization function, so that a Grand

Connection member can join through the Grand Connections

link and be tagged as being in Grand Connections, and then use

the quick connect feature to just look at other Grand

Connection members, so it is a Grand Connection matching tool,

which I think like three months ago we talked about that. I'm

like, I'm gonna do that, and I went to Codex. I'm like, where

are we in that? It's like you're mostly done, but let me check

it. It failed. You know, it passed 51 out of 80 tests that I

ran. So let me finish that for you. Okay,

so coming soon. Currently working

on it. So by the time this episode goes live,

that feature may be available for Grand Connection members.

Well, at any rate, I will put a link in the show

notes where people can access the Connectors Edge, and it'll

come through the Grand Connection link. I assume

because that's a link I have. So at some point be tagged to our

Grand Connection group within the Connectors Edge. So make

sure you join this, and you can experience it for free, right?

Yes, yeah, it's a it'll always have a free

membership level. Currently, it's still the main features of

the Connectors Edge matching system are all free, unlimited.

I haven't gotten around to adding the premium premium level

yet, so currently you basically get the premium level for free,

and that will continue until I get around changing it.

No reason not to take part in the Connectors

Edge. It's kind of fun to go through the questions at the

beginning too. Yeah, a little. You can

even if you answer all the questions, you

can submit your own.

Oh, I didn't know that. Yes.

Yeah, I only put in the first 4040 questions.

The last 29 were added by members.

So where can people get a hold of you?

They can find me all kinds of places. But

if they want to learn about the summits, summits dot fun is the

place for that because all summits should be dot fun. And

my main site is guy who knows a guy.com. That is the the central

place. And if you Google Michael Whitehouse and you see a horror

novel, that's not me. That's the other Michael Whitehouse. But

any of the other books are mine.

And you're also on LinkedIn.

I am definitely on LinkedIn. There's

only I'm one of like 5000 Michael White House on LinkedIn,

but I'm the best looking one. So

that's great. So, what's one small task that

listeners here today could try delegating to AI this week?

Let's get inspired.

Ah, so I think the first thing to do with

AI is talk to it. Pretend it's an employee you just onboarded,

and you've got some time, and you want to get to know them.

You want them to get to know you, and just chat with it. And

as you're talking, something will pop into your head, and

you'll say, "Can you do this for me?" The most powerful prompt

you'll ever do starts with, "Can you?"

Wow, wow, wow! The future is definitely here,

Michael. Thank you for joining us and for being such a valued

member of the Grand Connection community, your approach

demonstrates that AI does not have to make networking less

human. With clear context, healthy boundaries,

transparency, and some human oversight, it can help us

remember what matters, recognize opportunities to serve and

follow up with greater care. From me, your action step right

now is to choose one relationship-building task that

AI could help you organize, and you might ask it to summarize

your notes from a conversation, help you remember what some. One

is working on identify a next step or recognize a potentially

valuable introduction. Always review what it creates, add your

own voice, and keep the relationship human. If you would

like to meet more heart-centered entrepreneurs and potential

collaboration partners, we invite you to join us at an

upcoming Grand Connection mixer or any of our EduNetworking

group events, you can grab your Grand Guest Pass and Grand

Growth Bundle at GrandConnection.ca/gifts. Please

subscribe to the Grand Connection podcast and share

this episode with someone who wants to use AI to connect and

collaborate with. Until next time, let's keep creating

something grand.