A networking concierge used AI to build custom event software — and it's changing how solopreneurs run virtual summits.
GROWTH PILLAR: AI & Automation
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: How to use AI to build tools you don't know how to code. Why human connection must stay at the centre of your automation strategy. How to run virtual events that actually engage people.
Most people use AI to write captions. Michael Whitehouse used it to build an entire event operating system.
Michael is the Guy Who Knows A Guy — a networking concierge, community builder, and virtual summit host who has run over 65 live online summits. In this episode he walks us through how he accidentally built the GGS Player: a custom AI-powered platform that runs gamified, dynamic virtual summits with personalized speaker recommendations, live point tracking, and automated delivery. No dev team. No agency. Just AI, a $10/month platform, and a bias for action.
This is his third appearance on Knack 4 Business — and his most technical yet.
Here is what gets covered:
— How Michael went from local connector to global virtual event host — Why he used AI to write custom software instead of hiring a developer — How the GGS Player works — gamification, leaderboards, and dynamic recommendations — Why AI should connect people, not replace them — The difference between deterministic software and non-deterministic AI — How to think about AI like a person, not a machine — The real story behind online business losing its human element — Why a bias for action beats months of planning every time — How fear setting keeps him grounded when events go sideways — What he is building next — and why he is finally saying no to more things
Michael is at guywhoknowsaguy.com and you can connect with him on LinkedIn. His podcast lives at guywhoknowsaguy.com/podcast. Find him on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. Want to join his community? The Entrepreneur Village is at guywhoknowsaguy.com/village.
SPONSORS
This episode is supported by three partners worth knowing.
Canada Growth Network — A business community for SMBs and solopreneurs with access to GoHighLevel CRM. Real connections, real tools. $1 CAD first month, $47 CAD/month after. No lock-in.
Web Indexer — The smart chatbot on the Knack 4 Business website. It answers client questions 24/7 and turns your site into a sales assistant that never sleeps.
Make — The automation platform that connects your CRM, inbox, forms, and AI tools. Build the workflow once. Let it run forever.
Got a question or want to connect? Reach us at info@kreativinsight.com
Join Canada Growth Network — $1 CAD first month, $47 CAD/month after.
Search all K4B episodes by topic
Want to be a guest on K4B? Register here
Bernie (00:05)
Question to the audience, how do you stop grinding and finally use AI to create the kind of connections, events and opportunities that actually grow your business? That's exactly what our guest dives into today.
and showing you how custom AI systems, smarter digital events and intentional networking can help you scale without burning out or hiring a huge team. Our guest today is Michael Whitehouse from A Guy Who Knows A Guy. And Michael is a returning guest and he's been on season two and season three and we're really happy to have him back. He's also, he started out in Groton.
Connecticut in 2014, that's where he kind of started over and he quickly became a key connector and turned his networking skills into a successful book, The Guy Who Knows the Guy. In 2020, he expanded his reach globally through virtual networking, organizing one of the largest virtual networking events ever. Now he's back in our season four and continuing to share his expertise. Michael, an absolute pleasure to have you back here, sir.
Is there a favorite quote or saying you want to share?
Michael (01:06)
favorite quote or saying. I mean, the one that pops into my mind is the Henry Ford, whether you believe you can or believe you can't. You're right. And then of course, Zig Ziglar's, you can have everything you want in life. You just help enough other people get what they want.
Bernie (01:21)
That's awesome. So going back into India journey of being the local connector to building one of the largest virtual networks, what pushed you through that? What pushed you from local to, hey, global?
Michael (01:33)
COVID, next question.
Bernie (01:35)
One bad sneeze and we're off to the races. There we go.
Michael (01:38)
Yeah, it wasn't like a push. It was simply an adaptation to the situation. I think too often people get caught up, they get in their head. this is an obstacle to challenge. What am I going to do? I'm used to that. know, things come at me, I deal with them because things keep coming at me. So I keep dealing with them. So, you know, I'm
speaker-1 (01:49)
about.
and
and
Michael (02:03)
I'm an entrepreneur. I'm naturally entrepreneurial, whether I'm working for someone else or not. I look forward to never working for someone else again at this point in my life. But even when I did work for other people, I still thought of myself entrepreneurially. so, you know, things change. I adapt. Things change. I adapt. Things change. I adapt. 2020, I was like, all right, so this is what we're dealing with now. OK, this is the game we're playing. The business I was was doing was relying on in-person networking. That no longer worked. So.
speaker-1 (02:24)
and
Michael (02:32)
I was looking for a solution to that in that I discovered the online networking world, the online business world and said, this is way bigger and way cooler. So let's go out here, see what's here and find what I find. And very much, you know, the jump off the cliff, build the plane on the way down kind of philosophy. And it's come together one way or another.
speaker-1 (02:43)
and
Bernie (02:53)
Well, it almost sounds like the AI component is the other push that's coming in, which is kind of what we're focusing on today. What made you trigger into that space?
Michael (03:05)
Again, I had a problem to solve and didn't have the tools to solve it. So I was invited to speak on an audio summit. so previously I'd only run live summits. I run about 65 or so live online summits because recorded summits never interested me. know, hey, we got 12 videos for you to watch today and they're only available today. Okay, that sounds like a you problem. I'm gonna, if I want to watch it, I'll watch it on YouTube. You know, it's kind of the same content.
speaker-1 (03:07)
Thanks
Michael (03:33)
It's not very accessible. not very interesting. It's not very engaging. And I was invited to an audio summit and I said, audio, audio, interesting. Okay. I see the appeal. You can listen to audio while you're doing other things. You can listen to it, you know, while you're taking a walk or you're, I'm not expecting you to spend your whole day staring at a screen, watching videos. So naturally the way an audio site worked for me would be dripping over time. as it turns out, the, the summit I was invited to was a three day.
speaker-1 (03:52)
And
Michael (04:02)
Here's a whole bunch of audios. But the audio concept got in my head and I said, okay, how would I do it? I'd have 50 speakers over 25 days. It happened to land in Thanksgiving or it happened to land in November. So like November, that's US Thanksgiving. I did have the idea of running it from Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving, but that's about seven and a half weeks and that would be a really long event to run. So.
speaker-1 (04:16)
and
Michael (04:26)
So I this idea that, you know, 25 days, 50 speakers, every day we highlight two of the speakers. But we need some kind of gamification because if I'm going to hold your attention for 25 days, you need a reason to come back. You need a reason to click and listen to the next person besides just the amazing value they may or may not provide because you don't know you haven't listened to them yet. So I knew how to do that with Go High Level. You set up a form, triggering the form gives them the points.
speaker-1 (04:50)
and
Michael (04:54)
And it was clunky, but it would work. Please give us feedback on this talk to get your points.
speaker-1 (04:59)
And.
Michael (04:59)
Then I realized to use GoiLevel to do this with 50 speakers, I would need to create 50 landing pages, 100 forms, 50 automations, 100 custom fields, and there was no way to automate the process of making it. So I'd be like, duplicate, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change. Even if everything went right, it would be an exhausting process.
And then if I miss something or miss click something or something didn't connect right, it was just going to be a mess. And I said, this is silly. Computers are built to do repetitive tasks. Let's see if I can use a computer to do a repetitive task for me. And at first, what I had done in the past, I'd use AI to make little JavaScript.
widgets, I guess you'd call them, that I could stick into a WordPress site. So I made a random excuse generator and I made a leaderboard processor because I was taking the leaderboards from my summits and I had to color code them and sort them. so I made something, did that for me. So like, okay, maybe I can make something that will, you give it the speaker number and it will automatically generate the right page and the right links. And that'll take away, you know, a good third of my work. So I into AI and I said,
So I want to do this, what do we need to do to do it? AI came back and said, well, we could do it that way, but wouldn't you rather do all the points inside the system? And I said, what? You can do that? And he was like, yeah, we can just use WordPress's database functionality, store it there, and everything will be all in one place. And I said, really? All right, let's get to it. So started.
speaker-1 (06:18)
and
Michael (06:41)
Just started building it out piece by piece, discovered something else it could do, discovered something else it could do, added a rating system. So you can rate the speakers one to five and they get a rating. I realized it could recommend the next speaker. So here's a speaker you haven't listened to yet. Would you like it? Here's your current points. And just added it piece by piece, learned about what AI could and could not do, learned about what additional tools were needed to scaffold AI so it could do bigger things.
speaker-1 (07:06)
And within
Michael (07:08)
two and a half, three weeks, I have a really unique event in that when you went to the speaker page, you'd get to listen. It would give you points right away dynamically. And then right there at the bottom, Hey, here's people you haven't listened to yet. I see the people I haven't listened to. You see the people you haven't listened to. Everyone gets a different recommendation based on what they've already done. And I suddenly realized, wait a minute, this tool.
speaker-1 (07:13)
and
and
Michael (07:36)
and do a lot of things.
Bernie (07:38)
Wayne, over to you, I'm most interested because you're, would say, a good example of how to live in the now. The people that are afraid of AI believe my chat bot's going to talk to your chat bot and personalities and people and all that won't even matter. Relationships will cease to exist because all we'll have is
machines. You don't feel that way. Could you unpack that for me?
Michael (08:06)
Yes. So the people who are afraid of AI have watched too much science fiction. Mind you, the people who are not afraid of AI have not watched enough science fiction. So on one level, yes, there is a great deal to fear with technological development and where it is going. Everything from autonomous, anytime you have the word autonomous on something, you should be worried because you are creating a
speaker-1 (08:24)
⁓ from
Michael (08:35)
machine that can do its own thing without anyone controlling it. Whether it's an autonomous trading bot or an autonomous fighter jet, it has the power to do good things and it has the power to do bad things. And we don't completely understand how it decides what to do. So when you take the human out of the loop on AI, that's really, really dangerous. And if you are a CEO of a major company or a military leader, you should take that very seriously.
speaker-1 (09:03)
and
Michael (09:03)
If there's more than four those listening to my voice right now, I'd be real surprised. So for everyone else who is not a major government leader, head of a multimillion dollar corporation or military leader, you're not doing that. You're not building autonomous systems. And if you are, they suck. you know, what AI, people get so hung up on AI as a concept.
is the my summit when I'm selling it as a concept to someone to run a summit for like, Hey, hire me because I have AI built custom software. That's that's that's where the AI hook is. When you come to the summit, it's not an AI based summit. It is a dynamic and engaging summit. It is built on custom software, specifically built for this platform. And as an attendee, you don't care if I used AI or
or people from the Philippines or people from India or people from Mars to make the custom software, you care that the software does something cool and dynamic and engaging no one else is doing. And so that's what makes mine more interesting than the other one that you were on last week. That was boring. So that's the thing with AI. AI is a tool.
speaker-1 (10:06)
that
and
Michael (10:18)
The low hanging fruit, the cheap use of AI is for conversation. And there are some great applications for AI in conversation, but it doesn't solve everything. And you need to understand AI conceptually so you use it in the right places. A Swiss Army knife is a great tool for many things, but not all things. Don't try to build a house with a Swiss Army knife. The house is to fall apart and so is your hand probably.
speaker-1 (10:47)
Bye.
Michael (10:47)
AI is great for slapping together a dynamic custom summit operating system. It is not great for building a social media platform that a million people are going to use. It's not up to that level. AI is great for customer service applications done right. Asterisk italics underlined done right. I would rather talk to a well-trained, well-designed AI chat bot than an offshore
customer service person who's just reading off a screen, taking me through the decision tree on his computer. Basically that human is a worse trained AI than the AI is in that situation. And I think so often we think of these phone trees, these like chat GBT version one things as AI and we're like, I these AI chat. That's not AI. That's a dumb chat bot. There are chat bots that have voice recognition and then use the prompts to send you down the tree. That's not AI. That's garbage.
AI is the thing that you know it's a robot, but don't care because it's actually doing what you want.
speaker-1 (11:48)
and
Michael (11:49)
But you never have a time where my chatbot talks to your chatbot and we don't talk to each other. But we could totally say, hey, Bernie, I'd love to have a call with you. I'm busy. You're busy. I don't have time to look at your calendar. Your calendar doesn't fit mine. Hey, why don't I have my scheduling bot talk to your scheduling bot? Our two bots will communicate and figure out when we have time available on our calendar. Or how about I have my networking bot talk to your networking bot?
speaker-1 (12:02)
under.
and
Michael (12:17)
and figure out what are the three things we should talk about so we can have a super efficient 15 minute conversation about the things that the computer determines we have in common. AI facilitates human connection. AI should not be inhibiting human connection. And if it is, you're using the tool wrong. The claw end of a hammer can work like a screwdriver, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Bernie (12:38)
So speaking of having the right tools. So most people, when you say AI, and you build out a prompt, refine the prompt, and then run it, then other people are saying, listen, run a bot. So are you running bots or are you running prompts? And if you've gone to the next level, because that's the next level is running that bot, how do you craft that? How did you find your way through that one?
Michael (13:01)
I have never created a bot. don't know how if I did, I'd use AI to do it. So there's some technical proficiency in it that I have never bothered to gain. I, know, using AI for me is using that tool through at GBT or Gemini or Claude or through other AI tools like that to do a thing for me. That thing creates static software.
speaker-1 (13:15)
⁓ ciao.
And then
Michael (13:26)
So that's what I find to be useful for my needs. know, bots certainly have their application, just doesn't have an application that I have found necessary for.
speaker-1 (13:30)
⁓
Michael (13:36)
for what I'm doing. But yes, the thing with AI, and one thing I think will help people who are like, I tried it, I don't really see what it's for, or it's unpredictable, I never know what I'm gonna get from it. Here is how you should think of AI. Imagine a very smart person. Super smart. All the knowledge in the world in their head. All the true knowledge, some of the false knowledge.
But a super smart person, they've studied everything, they know everything, biggest geek you know. They don't sleep, they don't get tired, and they really want to help. They're also really lazy and probably stoned. So imagine your little robot friend's got a joint in his hand, but he's super smart.
Bernie (14:17)
Ha!
speaker-1 (14:24)
and...
Michael (14:25)
And you ask this friend, you know, hey, what's the, you know, what's the capital of Ukraine, whatever.
speaker-1 (14:34)
and
Michael (14:35)
And you know, for things like that, tends to happen pretty well. But if you ask it like, hey, how do I fix this automation and go high level? Because I'm trying to do this and it's not working. And it'd be like, oh man, yeah, I know how to do that. You just need to click the three dots on the right side and there'll be a menu. pop down. You say, yeah, I'm looking at that screen. There's no dots. And it says, oh, no dots. All right, yeah. I think they updated it then. Try going to this screen and see if there's this menu.
No, that's not there either. Yeah, no, that was a later update. All right, man. Try going to this menu. Is it in settings? Yes, in settings. Okay, yeah, that's what it is. You want to do that, right? When you think of it as someone who's read the whole internet, but doesn't necessarily remember what's new, what's old, what's right, what's wrong, they tell you off the top of their head, then that framework makes it much more easy to work with AI.
speaker-1 (15:22)
and
Michael (15:30)
because you don't think of it as a computer. With a computer, computers don't get things wrong. They just do a thing. If you use a regular piece of software, if I open up Microsoft Word and I type some words and I hit save and I close it and I open it up again and I do the same thing again, it'll do the same thing. It's called deterministic programming. AI is non-deterministic. You can use it the same way five times and get five different results, kind of like humans who are also non-deterministic.
So when you think of it more like a human, and I think this is actually why I do so well with AI. I spent many decades in the geek world, sci-fi conventions and hanging out with computer programmers and other types of geeks, many of whom are somewhere on the autism spectrum. The model of dealing with those people is very similar to the model of dealing with AI. And so I'm like, yeah, that's just, you treat it like a person, it works great.
speaker-1 (16:14)
and
Michael (16:24)
And the average person on the street who's used to dealing with average people on the street is like, what? AI doesn't behave like anyone I know. To which I say, better friends.
But it also makes sense that AI probably behaves like the people who made it. I bet if you were to meet and hang out with and really get to know the original AI programmers, they probably have a bit of that autism vibe going on, which I don't mean pejoratively at all. It's just, if you know a number of autistic people, you know what I'm talking about. There's a certain way they communicate, a certain way they think. I think.
speaker-1 (16:56)
And.
Michael (16:58)
It's possible that got embedded into AI just because that's how it was originally developed. And so if you know how to work with people like that productively, you can get really good results out of AI.
Bernie (17:08)
I've known you for a while and you are an extrovert and I believe you were probably at your happiest place in a live hotel room with 40 people, schmoozing and how can I help? How can I help? How can I help? Because of the energy and the connection you went to, zoom because you had to eat. I recommend groceries. And then when it ended,
when this pandemic sort of ended and you can come back live, you would become a proponent of Zoom.
For it's fast, it's worst.
What took you back to Zoom when you could actually be in a ballroom?
Michael (17:47)
I could be in a ballroom. There's a ballroom I can go to. Let me know. I'll go right now. Not going to invite you to ballrooms. It's very simple. I've talked to both the entrepreneurs in New London County and neither one wanted to hire me, so I had to go somewhere else. I live in a community of 250,000 people.
speaker-1 (17:50)
⁓
County
Michael (18:08)
Yeah, I live in a state of three and a half million. The opportunities around the world and beyond what I can drive to in 30 minutes greatly outstrip the opportunities I can access. Yeah, the opportunities around the world greatly outstrip what I can drive to in 30 minutes. So that's why I stay on Zoom, because that's where the people, you know, the old joke, you know, people ask Dillinger, why do you rob banks? That's where the money is. Why do I get on Zoom? That's where the people are. Yeah, that's, I...
I can count on one hand the number of real serious contacts I have within a 30 minute drive. Most of the people who are part of my business one way or another are more than an hour away. Many are overseas. Many are a thousand or more miles away or in different countries. So there's just a lot more that we can do that I can do through Zoom than in person. And
Now I'm used to it. So if I'm on Zoom, I can have my notes next to me. I can have my resources next to me. I can run meetings back to back. You know, I can do as many meetings in two hours as I used to be able to do in a day because I don't have to drive 40 minutes. I don't have to wait for them to show up. I don't have to go, you know, get the coffee in the coffee shop and all that. And so, you know, I love live meetings, but they are an undertaking compared to a Zoom meeting. And you can get the same amount of...
of practical conversation done. if it's someone, yeah, there's some people who would totally be worth driving an hour and then spending an hour with and driving an hour back because there's things you do in a live meeting you don't do in a Zoom meeting. You you kind of stick to the point on Zoom. You usually have like, you got 30 minutes, whereas in a live meeting you're like, yeah, and one other thing, or I noticed in your office or I see there's a picture over there. There's a lot more incidental communication that can occur.
but there's a very small group of people for whom that is worth taking the time of four meetings to meet with them in person. That's really the power of what Zoom allows. Plus, you know, it's still a human connection. There's not a great deal of benefit to, you know, going out live. doesn't, no, going to a hotel for three days, that is definitely,
speaker-1 (20:09)
and believe you.
to.
Michael (20:30)
I like that a lot better than being on Zoom for six hours a day. I definitely take that. But at the same time, going to a hotel for three days usually costs over a thousand dollars, sometimes many thousand dollars, and being on Zoom costs no dollars. So, you know, I went to a free event that I was invited to for free in Orlando and it cost me $800. Because I had to get there. So...
And that was staying at my father's house. So I didn't have to pay for the hotel. You know, a lot of these free events can cost you thousands of bucks. Free event on Zoom costs you the time to get on Zoom.
Bernie (21:06)
I'm interested in, and this isn't really a tech question, but there is a move against globalization. That's the new swear word.
And it's usually about tariffs and it's all about, but it's all wrapped about the thems. The thems are the enemy. And I think you're one of the them people I know, but how do you deal in a world that wants to live in their village, not the entrepreneur village? There you go. There's a plug for you, Michael. And just still with pitchforks and torches.
Michael (21:37)
Well, it's the classic wrong them situation. So, you know, this started back in the nineties, eighties and nineties. Well, started in the seventies and eighties, but the nineties was when they started free trade and everything that freed it up. And then the idea was put in people's heads of the Chinese are stealing your jobs. The Vietnamese are stealing your jobs. The Indians are stealing your jobs.
The Chinese aren't stealing your job, so Chinese farmers know over there be like, how can we get the American job? The billionaires took your job and gave it to the Chinese. So the appropriate them is the capitalist class, if you want to be Marxist. It's these companies.
who are focused on profit. And then, you know, if you want to go back a little bit further, the real them is the Reaganites who created this concept of shareholder value as the highest good of business, which did not exist prior to that, and then enshrined it in law that they are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value, which then created a system which forced them to go the cheapest route, even if it wasn't long-term cheapest, as we discovered once we had supply chain disruptions, that
a product having to travel 14,000 miles from the time it started to the time it's on the shelf might not be the most stable system. But that's the them is that whole complex. And the problem, of course, is not one person or one group that does this. It's bad laws were put in place. The bad laws, which are now just there, have created a system that
that shareholders to behave a certain way, that causes boards to behave a certain way.
speaker-1 (23:29)
and.
Michael (23:30)
You know, it's causing these problems. But the solution to this for most people is the thing we're talking about, which is technology and the democratization of technology. was listening to a biography of Karl Marx about a year ago. You know, about the, he talks about the means of production. This is how capitalists have the power. Capitalists own the means of production.
speaker-1 (23:52)
and
Michael (23:58)
So labor not owning the means of production can't generate their own income because they are dependent on the capitalists to give them a job. Otherwise they can't create economic production, which generates money. And I then looked at AI and what it could do even a year ago and said, that's the means of production that you can rent for $15 a month. You can get, know, the tool that I use to build the whole
speaker-1 (24:08)
Great.
and you
Michael (24:28)
GGS player that underlies the Grateful Growth Summit that's going to give me a summit model that I can then run for other people for thousands of dollars is on a platform that cost me $10 a month. $10 a month. Everyone has $10 a month to start a business. They could find it. I don't care if you're-
Bernie (24:49)
Canadian though.
Michael (24:51)
Yep. Michael, that's 7,000 Canadian. But I was actually going say, even you pick one of these countries where $10 is what a person makes in a week, they could still get together with a couple of friends, pitch in, buy the tool, sit down for a month, build something, and sell it to the developed world over the internet, make money. So everyone in the world, if they have internet access, there is an infrastructure issue.
speaker-1 (25:12)
end.
Michael (25:18)
But if they have internet access, which is again becoming more more democratized, they can get into this economy and get into this market. Part of that's because the economy is in such a place where the basic minimal needs of survival can be provided for by as little as like 10 or 15 % of the workforce. know, growing the food, delivering the food, medical care, things like that. And then the rest of the jobs are, you know,
speaker-1 (25:27)
and
Michael (25:47)
cooking the food, walking the food from the counter to your table, marketing it, creating signs that make you want to come to the restaurant to buy the food. But there's a lot of middleman roles which are being automated, but the actual getting it done is more efficient than it's ever been, which means that yes, 70 % of the world, 60%, no, I may be exaggerating, a large portion of the world can shift into these places where they can make a living using technology.
And it is a whole new world that no one was prepared for. And this is the problem. 50 year old man today who spent his whole life working in retail, maybe a bit of construction, a bit of, you know, blue collar type jobs, all of a sudden is in a place where international competition is driving down his wages and his best opportunity is on the internet. And he doesn't even, he owns a flip phone. That's a bad place to be.
speaker-1 (26:45)
and
Michael (26:45)
That is a serious social problem. But in terms of what the opportunities are that are presenting, especially for younger people, we're not going to recognize the economy. Frankly, if you understood the economy today, you wouldn't recognize the economy from what you think it is. So we're totally not going to recognize it 10, 20 years from now because we have all these opportunities, unless people
not understanding it demand that their governments hit it with a hammer. Which is what we are seeing a bit of is, you know, I want more regulations on this. I want more. We see this in California with the employment laws that they put in place to try to regulate Uber and Lyft and the other services like that. Uber and Lyft are fundamentally a marketplace. They are not, you know, if you're an Uber driver, you don't work for Uber. Uber works for you. Uber finds you rides.
manages taking the money from the passengers, manages doing the background check on the passengers, and then gives you most of it. And by most, I mean like 57%, which is still more than half. Gives you most of it, then takes a processing fee, because without Uber, you're not driving anyone around. So Uber is closer to eBay than a taxi company. And when you understand that, a lot of things are different for the drivers, like you run your own business, which means you have to track your own mileage and do your own taxes.
And if you understand that, it's a great opportunity and a great way to make decent money controlling your own schedule on your own time. If you don't understand that, you get hit with a massive tax bill at end of the year and say, my God, this is terrible. And I need new tires and I can't afford them because I wasn't putting money away for car maintenance. It's become a world where after 70 years of get a job and your employer takes care of you, all of a sudden it is dog eat dog, good luck.
speaker-1 (28:22)
And
Michael (28:33)
there's an opportunity, but I'm not going to tell you how to find it. That's where we're seeing a lot of the frustration and anger and fear and disruption that's happening these days.
speaker-1 (28:36)
And that's
Bernie (28:42)
So we've talked about AI, we talked about the fear and frustration and so this is a human element in this whole piece. How do you, a business person, how do you maintain the human element so that it's not totally all my robot will talk to you? It's not like your Roomba is gonna come over and carry you over and bring you a beverage and sort things out for you.
How do you maintain that, human connection then when you're doing a push of communications?
Michael (29:14)
It comes from thinking in a human centric way. have to intentionally open up a model in my brain to think about the opposite way, because I naturally think human centric, but a lot of people in online business don't. And this is not new. This goes back 20 years. Online business used to be almost exclusively this
speaker-1 (29:18)
and
Michael (29:37)
arbitrage space. It was people who said, I will put money into this machine, Facebook, Google ads, whatever it is that will then generate leads, which are numbers. You know, I have 731 leads, not 731 people who signed up for this list. No, I have 731 leads. I'm going to then drive them through a funnel. The funnel will apply a process. The process will extract money from some of them and they will get a, I don't know, a thing. product, right? We should give them a product.
maybe some value or not, whatever, we got their money, who cares? And that's what online business used to be. And it was simply playing numbers. The only one of the few industries worse than that is finance, where it absolutely is shuffling numbers around and like, oh, look, my number got bigger. Oh, my number got a lot smaller. Oh, well, that's a bummer. Oh, did a hundred thousand people lose their homes? What are people? I don't know what you're talking about. That was 2008.
People got so numbers focused, stopped thinking about humans, crashed the economy for the entire world. So when I run my business, it is about people. I am talking to people. I am trying to serve people. And if I serve them, they will give me money to serve them. So when I run an automated on-demand virtual summit,
My thought is how do I get the people listening to get value from listening to the people who are speakers? And how do I get the speakers, people, to get value from engaging with the people in the audience? What I'm thinking about that way that AI and technology is a tool to connect people as opposed to a tool to extract funds.
speaker-1 (31:15)
and
Michael (31:27)
then it naturally keeps it human. And so, you know, if I were to create a bot of some kind, it would be a matter of how does this bot serve people in a way, you know, in a way to bring that message further. it's thinking in old paradigms with new technology. It used to be if you wanted to reach the masses, you wrote a book. In many copies, the book would go out. Then you had radio and then you had television.
speaker-1 (31:51)
and add.
Michael (31:57)
and then you had internet social media. And now we have AI driven internet social media. So it's still about reaching people and thinking of them as a group of humans. And I do often, because there's a reason why technical terms exist, I will often use words like leads, prospects, consumers, customers, because it's useful. But I will also sometimes make a point of
saying, like instead of prospect, saying prospective customers, which I think more implies this is a person who is thinking about buying your thing as opposed to this is a lead. Like I, I like the word lead because it's a good technical term, but I try not to use it all the time because I want to remember that a lead is simply a person who may be served by your product and thus may want to give me money for it as opposed to they are a
a lead separate from a human being. know, this idea of it's just business, all's fair in love and war. That's sociopath talk. That's not like there is no just business. Business is life or death to some people, literally.
Bernie (33:10)
I really love how willing you are to try whether you've worked out 700 scenarios in two years that it might or might not work and then learn from what you try. And if there are crickets, what did I learn and what can I do now? And I was wondering if you could tell the audience,
A spectacular failure that sounded brilliant, that crashed and you learned from.
Michael (33:38)
Let's see a spectacular failure.
Hmm. So...
There have been a lot of fizzles that weren't really spectacular failures. I'm trying to think of an actual like real crash and burn. Cause I've had a number of disappointing summits. Those are not fun because in the week leading up to it, you see it coming, but there's 200 people signed up to cancel it. But you can see on the numbers like this is going to be a pretty weak event. And then it starts and you're like, look, there's four people in the room.
speaker-1 (33:56)
and
Michael (34:11)
Hi guys, can't wait to spend six hours here. Yeah. So I've had that. When I first got started in the online business.
I learned a strategy that was well designed to sell coaching and I was trying to save a local magazine with it. Wasn't well designed for that. But the guy who taught it to me said, why not be a coach? Apparently he had no idea what a coach was. He's like, you seem pretty empathetic. Why not just be a coach? No training, no certification, but you know, I'm good at helping people. So I used it and I signed up eight, 10 clients in a few weeks and I got, I made $5,000 in one month at $500 a month.
And the next month I made a thousand dollars because eight of those clients dropped off after one month. No, none of them asked me for their money back or like said, Hey, you rip me off. But in my mind, I knew I couldn't deliver to them because I didn't, you know, I was like, yeah, sure. I can help you. One guy, he had 20 customers. He wanted 200 in three months. Today. wouldn't take that, but I would approach it like a coach and I'd say, why do you want 200 customers?
What does that mean to you? What is your current strategy? What can we leverage to ramp that up? Why do you think 10Xing in three months makes sense? Questions like that. But at the time I didn't know. So I signed up those as like, sure, yeah, give me your money. Let's figure it out. And what's interesting is I have never been able to use that strategy since. I signed up more than one client a week using this strategy and I've never been able to use it since.
because my subconscious says, nope, that's a strategy to use to rip people off. You're not allowed to use that anymore. So it no longer functions. But yeah, for the most part, haven't had, I've had no like game stopping, crash and burn situations. Part of it's simply because, you know, I don't bet the farm on anything. I don't.
speaker-1 (36:04)
and
Michael (36:11)
go well, yeah, mostly I don't go into debt for things, although by my wife and I, the idea of buying a glow forage, which is a laser laser cutter engraver. And we did take out a $10,000 loan for that. Went through all the $10,000 and I think we made all of $700 in revenue from the thing. So, but you ever need something cutter engrave. We've got this sweet laser cutter engraver.
So that may not have been the best thing, but it wasn't like a full crash and burn. was just a like, huh, well, that's a bummer. You know, we're, paying $232 a month on it until next year, I think. And then it'll be paid off. So kind of a bummer, not a burn. But it's the reason that nothing's been a huge crash is that I'm not done picking up the pieces from the last mess when I start the next one. So.
speaker-1 (36:42)
⁓
Michael (37:04)
Something fails? Cool. What's next? Where people get in trouble is they try something, it doesn't work, and they say, I tried a summit when we had 53 opt-ins and man, I failed, I put so much into it and why does no one love me and should I even be in this business? And why do my speakers hate me? You can't trust anyone these days and business is so hard, it's not fair. And if I have a summit that crashes, I'm like, huh, that sucked.
Remember that summit that sucked? Which one? Oh, the one that was three weeks ago? Yeah, I guess that wasn't very good. Anyway, what's next? You know, I actually had trouble with the like, what are your failures? Because I just don't remember them. I don't remember a lot of my wins either. That's awesome. I don't remember much. I have ADHD. It makes it really easy to move on. Like blank slate every morning. The guy from Memento, if you remember that movie. But that thing, it's about just what's next.
always moving on to the next thing. It's also, that's the advantage of bias for action, ready, fire, aim. So I have an idea, I do it. And if it doesn't work, it's over. The, from idea to that suck, let's stop is sometimes two or three weeks. It's not six months of planning.
speaker-1 (38:02)
and
Michael (38:23)
and then three months of execution and then it fails. And it's like, I spent the last year on this. I've wasted a year of my life. It's, I've wasted three weeks of one quarter of my effort. Which, you know, what have I learned on to the next thing?
Bernie (38:36)
There's a lot of activity where you're going from, I've got something you can slice and dice with light to, there's a learning curve. How do you maintain the humor? The reason that what I'm getting at is, for example, today, for myself, I ran into a tech glitch and I'm going, mother of goodness. And then my co-host is going, for...
the palm to the forehead smack. How do you maintain that relative happiness between these events when it's like, that's not the way it's supposed to fold. Like, know, if you're having four people that are showing up where you're expecting maybe 100, like, oh yeah, how do you take that lemon and make it into honey?
Michael (39:21)
Well, turning lemon into honey's alchemy and that doesn't work, but it is, it comes down to remembering what actually matters. So like, why do I run a business? So I can make money. Why do I make money? So I can pay the bills. Ideally have enough to do nicer things like, you know, buy a Nintendo switch or go on a cruise, but
speaker-1 (39:36)
and
Michael (39:45)
That's what it ultimately comes down to is the money pays the bills so we can have the things. And I don't need a lot of fancy things. I just need, you know, electricity and running water and food and stuff. So with all these things, it's a matter of stopping for a second saying, will this thing make me not eat? Will this thing make us lose the house? Will this thing put someone in physical danger?
Cause you know, what matters is health, health, safety, food, shelter, those things. And money is a means to an end to get that. And the business is a means to an end to get the money to get that. So when, when things go wrong and when you're in the moment, our brains are not built to think in these multiple levels. So when your event, when you're trying to get on a podcast and your technology is not working, you can't get on Zoom. You're like, Oh my God, the thing's not working.
This is clearly important, it's on my schedule and it's not working. everything's ruined. So let's take a step back and be like, wait, what happens if this fails completely? Tim Ferriss teaches a concept called fear setting, which is the opposite of goal setting. And it is, instead of thinking about terrible things could happen, it's like, cool, name them. What could happen? And go crazy.
You know, what happens if you're... If... Yeah, I'm gonna run a summit and something bad could happen. Well, the internet could go down. Okay, that's one possibility. I could trip going down the stairs and break my neck. Okay, that's one possibility. I could say something offensive during the summit that makes someone declare a blood feud against me and hunt me down. Okay, that's one possibility. So, once you have that, then the question is...
How likely is that to happen? What do you do if it happens?
speaker-1 (41:36)
And.
Michael (41:39)
How can you reduce the chance that happens?
And once you go through that process, you're like, all right, I couldn't fall down the stairs and break my neck and die. How likely does that happen? Well, probably not very. And the summit's not going to make it more likely to fall down the stairs than any other time I go into the basement. And how can I make that less likely? I can be more careful on the stairs.
But so, you know, the internet could go out and everyone will be disappointed. Okay. And then what's that going to mean? Well, that would mean I guess we'd have to reschedule the summit.
Or maybe we'd record it and send it out as a pre-recorded summit. Or maybe we just tell everyone, oops, sorry, the internet didn't work. We don't have a summit because nobody actually paid me for it anyway. And once you actually go through it you're like, none of those are catastrophic. Some are annoying. Some are a bummer. Some people might get mad at me. Nobody dies. Nobody loses their home. Nobody gets maimed. And when you realize that all these different ways things go wrong are.
speaker-1 (42:34)
A
Michael (42:43)
That's kind of a bummer. Then it's much easier to not get freaked out about all the things going wrong. And if you find you are getting hung up on things and getting freaked out, even when you're like, this shouldn't be so upsetting. Why am I freaking out? It is probably because you did like I did and forgot to take a day off for 70 days in a row. On Monday, finally took a Sunday and I'm like, I'm taking tomorrow off.
I'm going to do nothing tomorrow morning. think I had one thing I needed to do and now I'm doing nothing. I'm watching TV all day. And that is what I did all day. I watched movies and television. I did not check my email. I did not go to my computer. I did not even look at my phone for like 12 hours in a row. Because I was at that burnout point and I'm like, I need to reset.
because I'm getting really upset about dumb stuff. So, once I did that, then, the end of the day, I'm like, I still feel kind of crappy. And then the next day I'm like, oh, okay, now I feel better. Yeah. Because I'm old enough that if I rest too hard, I get a headache. Yeah, I sitting on the couch. That's not ergonomic at all. But that's the thing, it's just keeping that perspective of what actually matters.
speaker-1 (43:59)
and
Michael (44:00)
what is actually important and why does this matter? Why do you care about this? Why is this a problem?
Bernie (44:08)
So what are your next major projects that are coming up?
Michael (44:11)
So my focus going into the coming year is seeing what this thing can do for me. Because I kind of built the GGS player by accident. I said, hey, I need a thing. And oh, I can do that. Oh, could do that. Oh, I could do that. There's a line from a movie. I think it's Earth AE. Or Titan AE. It might be different one. But there's a character who has a box with a button on it. He says, I was asleep. And I woke up. And I'd made this box. And it has a button on it. And I want to push it. But I don't know what it'll do.
And I feel like that with this technology that I built, like I built the technology that I know could run the summit I'm currently in, but what else could it do? So my focus in the coming year is going to be using this tool and the tool that created this tool that could create other custom software and saying, where can this go? And where can I take this to both run my own better events to run events like it for other people? And then how else can I use it to make technology that
gives us online events that don't feel like it's 1999. Party like it's 1999, don't network like it's 1999. So that's really my focus is doing that, which also means saying no to a lot more things. So I'm going to be focusing on my events. I'm going to be probably getting on speaking on less stages, less podcasts, maybe shutting down a few of my other low cost coaching programs. Because now I have something I can really dial into, or I can say, give me this much money.
I can give you this result and I can do it, you know, deterministically every time put in this much money, get out this result, which is a totally new and exciting thing for me. So that's really my focus is taking this tool and saying, where is this going to take me next?
Bernie (45:53)
I've been watching the transition and the evolution of Michael Whitehouse from the guy who knows a guy, which is, you know, I know a plumber I really trust and you have a broken sink and you found a way to make a living at that. And that's pretty exciting. And then you seem to accidentally commit, created a community and then realize the communities were way more fun. So the two questions is,
What made community building so much fun and how do we get one of Michael's?
Michael (46:24)
So there was no accident creating the community. Some people are very good at maintaining individual relationships and some people are very good at maintaining group relationships. And I am much better at the second than the first. I started with my email list and then on into the entrepreneur village and communities like that. I created them because I was meeting all these people and I wanted to remain engaged. I knew I wasn't going to follow up with all the people I was meeting. That's just not what I do.
speaker-1 (46:34)
⁓
Michael (46:51)
But I could create spaces where those people could hang out like a never ending party and I could circulate through the party and be like, hey Wayne, that's going good. All right, great to see you. All right. Hey Bernie, good to see you again. All right. And then if you need something to be like, oh Michael, Michael, can I talk to you? Sure. Yeah. This is how I built my world as effectively a never ending cocktail party where I can circulate around and if people need me, they can reach out and I can be there for them. So if you would like to hang out in my never ending entrepreneur cocktail party,
of good people because I energetically reject the bad ones apparently, you should join the Entrepreneur Village, which you can find at guywhoknowsaguy.com slash village. Or go on, if you go on the skool platform, you can just search for the Entrepreneur Village and you can find it that way as well.
Bernie (47:40)
Thank you. Michael Whitehouse, I want to say thank you so much for your time today. I know you're a busy soul and you got lots of things on the go and lots of energy. we're recording this on a Friday and you've got that Monday morning, ta-da, I'm here. I'm ready to rock and roll. To my co-host, Wayne Pratt, and you the Knack 4 Business listeners, thank you so much for being here.
Reach out to Michael if you want to understand how to set up an event using AI, leverage his skill sets, go connect it inside that village, be a part of the village. And that'll be a good thing to grow, connect with people. He knows a lot of people, he knows a lot of things. So, it's that one drop, it'll germinate a lot of new opportunities for you.