Episode 80 - The AI Systems Justyn Berkovits Uses to Scale a One-Person Business

Everyone is talking about AI, but very few people are talking about how to use it in a way that actually improves your life. In this episode, I sit down with Justyn Berkovits, entrepreneur, AI educator, and content creator, to explore how artificial intelligence can become an extension of your thinking instead of replacing it. We discuss why AI is changing entrepreneurship forever, how solo founders can build systems that save hours every week, and why authenticity will become even more valuable as AI-generated content becomes more common. Justyn also shares his incredible personal story. After experiencing business failure, losing his job, and carrying significant debt, he rebuilt his life through content creation, entrepreneurship, and relentless consistency. Within a year, he went from uncertainty to buying his family's first home while growing a thriving personal brand. We also dive into mindset, perfectionism, dopamine, content creation, AI agents, Claude, ChatGPT, automation, personal branding, and why the people who embrace learning instead of chasing shortcuts will have the biggest advantage over the next decade.

Stephen and Justyn talked about:

00:00 Welcome and buying a new home while welcoming a second child
09:45 From business failure and debt to entrepreneurship
15:00 Why consistency matters more than talent
24:20 The hidden mental health side of content creation
34:45 Justyn's first experience using AI
38:40 The ChatGPT conversation that changed his life
42:00 Why entrepreneurs should embrace AI now
48:00 How to train Claude and ChatGPT to sound like you
54:30 Building AI systems that save hours every week
58:00 The future of AI, automation, and entrepreneurship

TRANSCRIPT

∎ Teaser / Highlighted Clip

00:00 Justyn Berkovits: What's really interesting about it is there are, I would say there are a few things, there are a few things that you can do in life that you literally cannot think about anything else while you're doing. And that, and jujitsu is one of them. And now you have an AI bot that's really well trained and you can start to dive in a little deeper, but it will not have so much understanding of you and it'll know what to help you on and how.
00:22 Stephen Husted: Amazing. That was perfect. That was the greatest ending right there.

00:26 Justyn Berkovits: You got to put that at the beginning.

00:28 Stephen Husted: You said the best for last.

∎ Podcast Intro:

00:30 Stephen Husted: I'm Stephen Husted, and you're listening to The Breakthrough Podcast, a space designed for clarity, curiosity, and the stories that move us. Here, we step away from the noise and into the moments that define us. the early influences, the hidden struggles, and the breakthroughs that reshape our lives. From personal reinvention to building a life through real estate and entrepreneurship, these conversations remind us that success isn't a straight line. It's a series of honest decisions, brave actions, and small shifts that change everything. This is where those stories live. Let's begin.

∎ Guest Introduction:

01:08 Stephen Husted: Today's guest is Justin Berkovitz, an entrepreneur, content creator, and AI educator who has built a rapidly growing audience by helping business owners understand and apply artificial intelligence in practical ways. Justin's journey hasn't been a straight line. After experiencing business challenges, job loss, and uncertainty about what came next, he began sharing his experiences online and documenting what he was learning about AI, entrepreneurship, and personal growth. What started as a social experiment quickly turned into a thriving platform reaching thousands of people. In this episode, we talk about building an audience from scratch, the realities of content creation, overcoming fear and self-doubt, and how AI is changing the way entrepreneurs work, create, and grow their businesses. If you're interested in entrepreneurship, technology, or building something meaningful online, to enjoy this conversation i hope you enjoy this conversation as much as i did let's get into it

∎ Podcast Proper:

02:17 Stephen Husted: all right we're live

02:21 Justyn Berkovits: excellent love it

02:23 Stephen Husted: the new riverside button has changed so as long as it's live and it's going to record we're going to be we'll be just fine

02:29 Justyn Berkovits: exactly i see the little red timer so looks like we're good to go all right good well

02:35 Stephen Husted: seems like we got a lot of things going on in our lives

02:40 Justyn Berkovits: Yep. That's a good thing. That's like a busy is good. We're

02:44 Stephen Husted:We're staying busy. Things are going. Yeah. So what was going on this morning?

02:49 Justyn Berkovits: So my wife and I are crazy in the best way possible. And we decided to do absolutely everything at once. So our son, our second son was born eight weeks ago today and four days before she gave birth. We bought a house and we close in five days. We move in six days. And yeah, today we just came from a lawyer, but everything all signed up. And this is both of our first purchases. So we're super, super excited.

03:13 Stephen Husted: That's amazing. Amazing. A lot of fun. Congratulations.

03:17 Justyn Berkovits: Thank you. Thank you. It's exciting. Yeah, we're actually so we're in Toronto right now. We both of us were born and raised in Toronto. We're actually moving out of the city. We're moving a couple hours north just to slow things down a little bit. Also allows our dollar to go a little bit farther and to buy a bigger property. So we're very excited.

03:34 Stephen Husted: What'd you get?

03:36 Justyn Berkovits: So our house is a six bedroom house. Lots house is. Yeah, I know. We ended up getting more than we expected. Spending a little more than we expected. I'm sure this is such a common thing that you see all the time. But yeah, so our house is six bedroom. If I'm not mistaken, the lot size is 38 by 160. And it's in a new subdivision in a small town. It's not, it's like a, the best way to describe it is it's like, we don't have good skiing in Ontario. Okay. So we have, it's, we're in basically the best ski town in Ontario, which is Mountain. is a hill. But it's really nice. It's a great little small town. It's quieter, but it's not too quiet. So it's going to be a nice change of pace for us. We're really excited.

04:21 Stephen Husted: And you were where before? Were you in Toronto? In Toronto.

04:24 Justyn Berkovits: Yeah, we're both right in Toronto. We both grew up born and raised in Toronto. Our families are in Toronto. And the real estate prices in the market in Toronto is just absolutely insane. And for what we were looking to buy with two dogs and two kids, we would have grown out of something that we bought. literally the moment we bought it so we started looking outside of the city a little bit and yeah basically decided that even when you start to go a little bit out from Toronto from Toronto proper it's not that much of a savings on in terms of what you're actually getting so we're like why don't we look a little farther and this the city's called Collingwood and she just randomly one day was like what do you think about Collingwood and I was like I love it and we have been watching We've been watching the properties for just to house Sigma and things like that. My dad is our agent. And we finally saw a couple that we liked and things aren't really moving up there. They are actually now. So we kind of purchased at the right time.

05:20 Justyn Berkovits: It was just perfect. Things have not been moving. We actually decided to go up and see two homes. One of them, which was a little smaller, a little, it was like a hundred thousand less. And this is the Saturday before she's giving birth. And that was the one we wanted to see. I know, right? We're crazy. And then we were like, you know what? We're up there. Let's also see this other one, which happens to be on the same street, which is a little bit more house, a little bit higher in price. It's probably not that one, but we're going anyways and let's go see it. That was the one we saw first. We walked in and I just turned to her and I'm like, oh my God, this is it. This is the house. and then we went to see the other one and the irony is the first one that we saw the more expensive one which is the one we purchased like in photographs it looked nice it was okay nice house looks great but nothing crazy special right whereas the other one looked really nice looked a little more unique now again they're all subdivision homes but it just looked like a little bit more us and the other one when we walked into it was just it was lived in it was so lived in that would have taken so much work to just get back to where we wanted it to be So for basically a situation where yes, the one house that we bought was more expensive. They were so close in range that the down payment was basically the same. The monthlies would be basically the same, but then we would drain all of our savings trying to just get this thing to where we want it to be. So we're like, let's just go for it. And there hadn't been an offer in the property in five months. And so we put an offer in on the Sunday and then

06:53 Justyn Berkovits: another offer came in because. And I didn't realize that any other agents that have shown the house get a look at an email notification saying that an offer has been made on the property they've showed. So then it became a little bit of a battle. We ended up coming up in price. I think what ended up winning us the house was that we were just willing to put a bigger deposit down because apparently on paper. Obviously, we don't know the numbers that they were working with, but we basically found out that on paper, we were identical. We were just about to have a kid. They just had a kid, basically the same. And apparently it just came down to us being able to thankfully put down more money in an actual deposit.

07:33 Stephen Husted: That's awesome. That's amazing. And was that something that your dad told you to, he said that was probably a good idea to do?

07:41 Justyn Berkovits: Yeah, it was a combination of things. So what's really interesting is the way that we are in this subdivision, we're on like just a straight normal street, but the street behind us curves a little bit. So each property on our street gets a little bit larger as you go. So ours is the biggest one. What that also means is that we have nine other properties that actually touch our property. So before we went up there, my dad was like... Absolutely not. That's a red flag. Just don't do it. And then we got up there and we saw how big the property actually was. And he's like,

08:10 Justyn Berkovits: you know what I said? He's like, this is actually not that big of a deal. And so when we saw it, we walked through the house. He was like,

08:17 Stephen Husted: yeah. You're getting the vibes.

08:19 Justyn Berkovits: Yeah, this is good. Yeah. And that

08:21 Stephen Husted: was smart to wrap it up in your loan. Have it just move in and start living.

08:27 Justyn Berkovits: Especially with two kids. My older son, Nash, is going to be two in July. archer's eight weeks today we have two dogs the last thing we needed right now is a project we're like we can literally just turn key walk in and i tell everybody the story in the other house that we walked into a house being totally and completely lived in i understand i'm sure you can appreciate this when we walked into the first house which is the one we ended up buying we walked in and we were just immediately wow this is unbelievable and then we went to the other house got the key out of the lock box You walk up to the door to put the key in and the handle of the door is falling off. You know, that's not a great first impression. And then even seeing things like the baseboards, for example, then this must have been DIY projects. But the baseboards all through the basement and some other places were like an inch short. So then there would be like a little wedge nailed in to finish a baseboard poorly.

09:18 Justyn Berkovits: And we're like, oh, geez. Like when we looked at photos, we're like, OK, we're gonna have to rip out some carpets and that'll be it. I would have needed everything. Yeah, yeah.

09:25 Stephen Husted: And it would have snowballed from there.

09:28 Justyn Berkovits: And those were just the things we could see.

09:32 Stephen Husted: Then you're going to switch gears and you'll be making DIY construction content mixed with AI.

09:39 Justyn Berkovits: Exactly. Get Claude Code to rebuild my house.

09:42 Stephen Husted: Claude, help me.

09:44 Justyn Berkovits: Exactly. I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, it's pretty wild, man. It's been a very fun and wild ride, especially to kind of rewind a little bit, which is... It all kind of comes full circle with the home purchasing thing. So I started creating content in April of last year. So April, 2025, just as like a social experiment, essentially, right? A way to force myself out of my comfort zone. At the time I was working for a startup in the city and really, really young startup, less than a year. And I knew that things kind of weren't going great, but I knew that the company probably wasn't going to make it long-term, but we were trying, we were really trying. And come. July, my mortgage broker got us pre-approved. We were super excited, got pre-approved. Finally, we've been going through these ebbs and flows for years. And before we even had a chance to get on the phone with him, the company I was working for shut down. We got on a call with him and I'm like, I'm going to kick off the call by letting you know I don't have a job anymore.

10:45 Stephen Husted: I think we're going to pause this one.

10:47 Justyn Berkovits: Exactly. And then literally a week later or two weeks later, probably a week later, we went to Collingwood to basically stay for a week with an Airbnb to see, is this a place we could see ourselves living? And then a week after that, we came home, we found out Mia was pregnant. So it's really just wild to see like full circle to, and I've even sort of been reflecting on this and to be in a position like a year ago where I was probably like a little bit more than a year ago, like about $50,000 in debt. kind of figuring out like what's going to be the next move for me to now being able to this morning being able to like get a certified check into six figures i'm like it should take a second to like yeah just sit with this yeah

11:27 Stephen Husted: but it's crazy it's really crazy you should because that's probably not your last full circle moment

11:34 Justyn Berkovits: Yeah. And I appreciate that. That's yeah, it's very interesting. I think sometimes we got to stop in smaller roses a little bit and I think it's easy to lose sight of that. But yeah, so it feels very cool. We're very excited. We feel very blessed and we're very just

11:47 Stephen Husted: really. Yeah, I like hearing all this and I see where I was going. I was like, OK, cool. And because I do know some of your backstory as well, I mean, before that. So I've seen some other scenarios come in the mix, too. So it's been pretty awesome. And I do recall remembering. Back when we met, when we were going through Tom's cohort, I remember DMing you and just saying, you're going to blow up. Just watch out right now. Prepare yourself.

12:16 Justyn Berkovits: Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, you messaged me early on, very early on. I really appreciated you. You had very supportive words. And that was probably only a couple months, three, four months into me deciding to, and after that company decided to pull the plug, my wife was super supportive.

12:33 Justyn Berkovits: basically letting me have another stab at entrepreneurship, which had good times and had bad times. And at the time when we were like in Collingwood last year, that was, it was really like, okay, what are we going to do next? And I had a couple of brand deals come in because my TikTok audience had grown. I basically had a couple of brand deals that would come in that were going to allow me to survive for the month and allow our family to survive for the month.

12:53 Justyn Berkovits: And I was like, all right, cool. I've got another month to figure out now what I'm going to do next. And then thankfully things hit pretty quickly.

13:01 Stephen Husted: Yeah, I mean, I knew. Well, I just... I think there's a lot of people that do content that are in it for the wrong reasons, honestly. And it's sometimes an irritating thing to kind of watch go through. But then there's creators that come along that understand how to be vulnerable and just really lay it all out there. And you're one of them. That was really one of the reasons why I DM'd you that. Because what I was trying to do is, you better lean in. buckle up and just this is what you have to do because people want that and you started providing this amazing service which people were learning it just snowballed and it was really cool to learn to learn from you and watch it just blow up it was insane

13:49 Justyn Berkovits: thank you because

13:52 Stephen Husted: it hasn't been what's it it's only been a few how long has it been seems like it's only been a few months

13:57 Justyn Berkovits: Since I started creating content was April 17th of 2025, but I started my Instagram account in August. I started my Instagram account right before I went on that trip with my family that I was mentioning. That's when I started the Instagram account. And funny enough, when you and I met, I had 2,000 followers on Instagram. So between August and November 1st, I had... about 2 000 followers and then by the end of august i don't remember the exact amount i probably have 45 000 or something like that it just i had a couple videos that really just exploded and yeah it's sort of been a wild ride ever since and it's what's really interesting like the content thing that just the content game i know you've been making content for a really long time and you're right i think what's really interesting is even more so than people getting into it for the wrong quote-unquote reasons like if somebody's i want to make content just as a way to make money i don't even think necessarily that's the wrong reason i think it's that people i think the problem is that people have the wrong expectations and then they realize that they don't actually enjoy making content. And because they don't get the results from making content, they're like, this is stupid. I don't want to do this. Right. Which is, and then therefore that makes it the wrong reasons,

15:11 Justyn Berkovits: the wrong expectations, because I really believe that anybody can make content and can be successful at it. Are there some people naturally who are going to be better and see success faster? Of course, that's like anything in life. But I think if you can do something like this, what ultimately the thing that i think will make somebody successful in this space is they need to have a they basically need to be able to be unbelievably consistent they need to be unbelievably consistent and patient and the longer that they can separate themselves from that result and some people case in point for me I couldn't, I was like, I need to take on brand deals because I need to have revenue coming in. And again, thankfully it was working, but the reason why it worked was because I was at least able to be consistent every single day, at least once a day and not even for a long time, but I was really falling in love with what I was doing. That's a key. And if you don't, that's such a key. If you don't have that, if you don't have the enjoyment factor and you don't have that consistency. then you will just fall off at some point. Because if you love it, if you can stay consistent, you'll just be able to do it for such a longer period of time than anybody else that there will be so few people that are in that same bracket as you are. Success will come.

16:32 Stephen Husted: Yeah, and it will come unexpectedly too, for the most part, because you never know. Your content evolves because you evolve. I mean, content in itself, it opens up a lot of different things. It opens up you with everything that you've gone on in your life kind of comes to the surface in a lot of different ways. You have all your backstories that you can start to share. You have to spread it out depending if you're doing short form. You can't tie it all into one. But I do remember you did tie one video. You did a one-minute reel that felt like a 10-minute video.

17:08 Stephen Husted: When you told your backstory about the gym scenario.

17:13 Stephen Husted: That was brilliant. I couldn't believe, and it was amazing how you got it into that one video. And it completely, the whole audience was like, thanks for sharing that. You're vulnerable, and I trust you more now because of that. But those take time to kind of get out there, to tell your story, especially if you have a lot of backstory. You can't just throw it all out there at one time. And you're right. you can spend a lot of time not growing and going through and then play the comparison game to others or some other people are making be more success successful but if you're in it for the right reasons to serve your audience and share your wisdom things start to change and if you really think about it in the long run 10 15 20 years can you imagine 10 15 20 years if you have Content, a book, a podcast. That's like a library of legacy. Your brand, it goes forever. Because people can find you when we're all gone. People can still find you. It's kind of crazy to think about it, especially if it's serving.

18:28 Justyn Berkovits: 100%. I think it's such a cool thing from that respect, right? And I think... As you and I went through programs together, a lot of people feel like they don't have enough things to talk about. But I think the reality is a lot of people are just not comfortable talking about those things, which is totally fine. But you have a different story than I do. We could be in the exact same niche, doing the exact same thing, talking about the exact same content.

18:52 Justyn Berkovits: But everything that we do would still be completely different just because you are a different human being than I am. Absolutely. And there will be people who... resonate more with your story or where your story resonates more with them than mine and that's i think that's one of the really cool things about it is those different stories those things that make you that's the secret sauce it is i think it's very and again it's not easy to share and i think one of the things we both experienced is that you get more comfortable sharing it over time but ripping that band-aid off sucks it can be really tough you always you think back to the first videos that you've ever posted right you're like I don't even post this. Even if it's nothing about you, you're like, oh, I look so awkward. I mean, I tell people all the time, no matter how much effort you put into your first video, you're going to look back in six months and hate it. You can spend six days or literally six minutes making a video, but you're going to look back on that video and you're going to hate it. So just rip the bandaid off.

19:48 Stephen Husted: Your first videos, I'll use an analogy of like your early videos, like looking back. It's like looking back at your old haircuts you had growing up.

20:00 Justyn Berkovits: Totally.

20:01 Stephen Husted: Totally. When you thought you were cool, but you look at you like, I was cool then. Dude, I had a bowl cut and that was a feather mullet. What is going on?

20:09 Justyn Berkovits: Who let me walk out of the house like this? No, it wasn't cool,

20:12 Stephen Husted: which is the funniest part. Yeah, I was thinking about that recently. I was going to start chopping up some old videos, like side by side. Look at this one.

20:24 Justyn Berkovits: it's tough they're tough to watch but it's part of the process again that comes back to the expectations right we always just expect ourselves to be good and you gotta suck a little bit at the beginning you

20:35 Stephen Husted: know what's interesting in the very beginning when i first started i've had this love hate relationship with instagram i was on there in 2012 and back then It was mostly tattoo artists, photographers, models, hairdressers. It was like an artist. It was painter. It was always a, it was more of an art scenario on Instagram.

20:59 Stephen Husted: And I remember, you know, I was in real estate and I had this listing across the street from the salon that I worked at. And we're going on the market and I'm like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to take a photo of my listing. I'm going to put it on Instagram and put open house this weekend. And everybody in my office were like, that's a stupid idea. Stupid.

21:19 Stephen Husted: That's dumb. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to do it in black and white. And I posted it. And you know what's crazy? It's still on my profile. But it was interesting that after time went on, all of a sudden agents caught on and they're putting their flyers on. And next you know, it was every agent posting their just listed flyers. And I was like, oh, this sucks. Nah, I'm off this platform. I'm not doing this. I'm so pissed off. And then fast forward, a video came. And then I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. I can talk through things instead of marketing and feeling like it's just about me. I could make it about them. Show them experience, like what I've gone through or what I went through on this house and just share that information.

22:00 Stephen Husted: And it seemed at first it was cool, but it was honestly, it was. The audience and followers and friends that came in the DMs, nothing to do about real estate, but were like, hey, thank you. You gave me courage to go start this with my small business. Or thank you for what you just said. And that literally is what kept me going. Because then what I realized is it was all about them. And that made me feel way better.

22:29 Justyn Berkovits: Honestly, I love that. I'm sure you've probably heard it a lot over the years through your network. There's a couple of things, right? Yes, we always have to keep up with the technology. And the moment something gets popular, everybody starts to do it. And then something changes. And that's just sort of like the ebbs and flows of what comes along with the technological advancements and the trends and all that stuff. But I think what remains the same is it's what you just mentioned is getting that. It's weird because I don't think validation is even the right word. There's.

23:00 Justyn Berkovits: It's almost just the reassurance to some degree that you're doing the right thing. And I mean that in the sense where a big part of getting into content is probably the biggest thing that most people struggle with is the fear of judgment from others. I totally get it. And you have to be willing to put yourself out there and you have to be vulnerable and you have to honestly not give a shit, right? Because... And it's not even to say that you need a thick skin. I think that's something you develop over time, but you have to just be willing to be like, I'm just going to take this risk. I'm just going to try. But what I think is really cool about the, that reassurance side of things is when people are like, you motivated me to do this. So, right. Cause they see that you were willing to step outside of your comfort zone and do something regardless of what other people think. I think a lot of people wish that they could do that. And myself as well. I still, I still feel that. Even though people tell me the same thing about my content, I just think it's very cool for people to be able to see that. And to even when I get those kinds of messages, it means so much to me, right? I don't feel like I'm doing anything crazy, but when other people see what I've been able to do over the past year, be like, that really motivated me to do X. I'm like, I really appreciate that.

24:15 Stephen Husted: Do you ever get, you know, that was one, but I would say the other feeling that bothered me. is I felt like it was a dopamine roller coaster too. And I don't know if I liked it. That's a weird, and I'm saying like, oh, this video did get, or this person, or that comment. I was like, I've never been patted on the back ever in my life, really. You know what I mean? And I don't, I like it that way.

24:45 Stephen Husted: I like just to be just under the radar on things. And so I was like, I had to reevaluate what that meant. Is this a good thing? I like this feeling. I like this. I like somebody saying, hey, you pushed me to direct. That's cool because let's move people in good directions. That's cool. I can dig that, but I don't like it when it's, I don't know. That part is something that's, and that comes and goes. I can tell you that it's still there. And there is a lot of mental healthy things that go along too with the content part of it. But you

25:16 Justyn Berkovits: have to be aware of those too. I think you're really spot on with that. And I think. I mean, first of all, candidly, it's something that I still struggle with. If I have a video that doesn't perform as well as I want, I'm like, damn it. Right. Or sometimes I find myself trying to chase what the algorithm is wanting, but I need to remind myself to kind of peel that back. But I know that when I first started, when I first started, I was just on TikTok. And, oh man, like when I had my first couple of videos that would hit, I would wake up multiple times through the night to check my phone to be like, how's it doing? How many likes do I have? How many new followers did I get? And I'm like, I loved it. It was like a drug. And I was like, what am I doing? Yeah, what did you feel

25:57 Stephen Husted: like? Did you feel like, do you still have that there? Have you managed that? Because that can come and go. And like, how did you, did it feel real to you?

26:09 Justyn Berkovits: i think what was really interesting about it first of all yes i still deal with it i wouldn't even say struggle it because i to me it doesn't matter as much anymore and i think the only reason for that is because i've now been creating content for over a year so i've seen the ebbs and flows and i know that it's not a straight line up you're gonna have great videos and you're gonna have videos that don't perform it this really is like you said before if you just play the game for long enough

26:35 Justyn Berkovits: you're going to come out on top or at least be in that upper percentile. But yeah, at the beginning, it was really interesting to try and recalibrate with myself. What is it about that sort of dopamine rush? Like, why am I really loving that validation? And I think part of it comes from, I mean, at the end of the day, part of it just comes from the fact that it was a dopamine hit. And I was like, wow, this is so cool. All these people are liking my shit. But I think a big part of it too came from. The reason I started the experiment of posting at least once a day for 30 days on TikTok was for me to rewire the way that I had always, I guess, stepped forward in business, which was try to build the perfect product or do the thing perfectly, really overthink everything.

27:24 Justyn Berkovits: That was just the way that I'm wired. It's still the way that I'm wired. I just have to actively push that aside. And this was an experiment of I'm... barely going to think relatively speaking i'm just going to put things out there and see what the response is and then adjust and act accordingly and i think for me it was like oh it's finally something that's actually clicking and at that point it was still early on so i didn't really even know what was clicking it was literally just oh cool i'm getting likes and follows and all that stuff but i think that was part of what was really validating to me was like well i'm actually doing something that is working i don't know what that is but this it's cool yeah

28:02 Stephen Husted: and there's like we could talk all day long about the whole process of content and what we go through because we both go through totally different things on my side i went through a period where every back when i first started shooting content like 2022 you get tons of views and all of a sudden it just completely dropped next year you're getting 500 views no comp nothing And a lot of people that I knew were just falling off. They're like, it's not working anymore. And I was like, but the interesting thing about content for me, two of my favorite classes in middle school was drafting and TV journalism. And I loved the process of scripting and doing this recording like we were doing a news show type thing. We had to make boards and then record it and edit it. It was cool. I just enjoyed it. so i've always and this is a bad thing at points is i treat the whole thing like a creative project too because i like i love doing it i just love doing it yes it can get you business and you can build a brand from it but i love the whole process of shooting a video editing it caption it like just the whole thing behind it it that part of it's really cool i think that's the the me part of it that i love and

29:20 Justyn Berkovits: that but also that's also the reason why like i said before with that aggressive level of consistency, that's why you will be able to do it for a longer period of time than anybody else. Because even if somebody can, from a discipline standpoint, be as consistent as you are, if they don't love it the way you love it, then it's the likelihood that they can do it as long as you is incredibly low because you just love it, right? It's hard to beat that person. it's a night and day difference because that person will be tied to the result. Whereas you're like, I just love this. And I think for me, a lot of that, I mean, and this is probably more like me actually just actively thinking about it, but it's the same thing. I got my, I've been doing Brazilian jujitsu now for over 10 years and I got my black belt last year. And it was like, I just learned that you need to just go in every day and love it. And some days you're going to hate it, but ideally you would hopefully love it every day. Because if you try and focus on the destination, like it's just, it's too big of a mountain to climb.

30:22 Stephen Husted: It says a lot that you got your black belt in nine years. Like that was a grind. Some dedication there. Yeah. Talk to me through that. Did you, was that your goal to get your black belt from the very beginning or how did this whole process go?

30:36 Justyn Berkovits: Yeah, it actually started as a bit of a dare. I was always a big UFC fan and it started as a bit of a dare. It was like, just try this for a month. see how it goes and I was instantly hooked as somebody who would like I grew up playing hockey and then after that I was just lifting consistently in the gym for years and it was just something new I started boxing and jiu-jitsu at the same time and I fell in love with both after COVID I really went even further on into the jiu-jitsu side but it honestly was just one of those things it was so different what I found really interesting about it was that I was turning so I'm turning 40 this year I was turning 30 when I started

31:12 Justyn Berkovits: And there aren't too many things in life that you start at in your 20s or 30s or later where you don't know anything and it's brand new and you're learning something completely from the ground up, completely brand new. And I think that part of it was really intriguing to me. And I just loved it. I thought it was something so cool, so different than anything I had ever done. And I just sort of got addicted to the whole process of it and really just fell in love with doing it. And yeah, there were some days that were brutal for sure. But it's one of those things like, yes, of course, you always want to get your black belt.

31:45 Justyn Berkovits: But it feels so far away that you're like, it's not actually going to happen. It's not a real thing. But how long does it take?

31:52 Stephen Husted: How long does it typically take? I guess it just all depends. But what is a typical timeline look like?

31:59 Justyn Berkovits: It definitely depends. But on average, it's about 10 years for people.

32:03 Stephen Husted: okay it's about

32:04 Justyn Berkovits: 10 years there of course there are anomalies like there are a few people like who get it in a ridiculously short amount of time like four years this is probably like some of the best but those are guys like bj penn former ufc and i think top top level guys will get it maybe that short but that's probably talking like three four guys ever have done that most people especially when you're talking about somebody who's like a hobbyist doing it as a means to an end for fitness and for mental health. Yeah, probably about 10 years on average.

32:33 Stephen Husted: Do you think it helps with your mental health?

32:35 Justyn Berkovits: Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah, what's really interesting about it is there are, I would say there are a few things, there are a few things that you can do in life that you literally cannot think about anything else while you're doing. And that, and jujitsu is one of them.

32:50 Stephen Husted: I understand that. Cycling and running, very similar. Yeah, you're locked in. Yeah. Anything that can get you distracted from the outside forces is a good thing.

33:01 Justyn Berkovits: It's so nice to be able to just have that total break. Someone's trying to kick my ass or I'm in the process of kicking somebody else's ass. It's hard for me to think about the emails that I didn't respond to or the taxes that I need to get done by the end of the month. It's just in those moments, in those minutes, there's nothing else.

33:16 Stephen Husted: Yeah, that's fantastic. So let's get into this whole AI scenario.

33:22 Justyn Berkovits: Let's do it. Let's do it.

33:24 Stephen Husted: Yeah. So I got a question for you. What was the first thing, if you can recall, you put into AI?

33:33 Justyn Berkovits: Okay, I'll give you two answers to this question. The first answer is, I don't know, but I can probably take a bit of a guess of what it was. I wonder if I could go through my ChatGBT history to actually figure this out. Yeah, that'd be cool. When I was still in the gym and was still doing that as my full time, that was right when ChatGBT came out. I guess it was end of 20.

33:53 Justyn Berkovits: 2022, I believe.

33:55 Stephen Husted: Somewhere in there, yes.

33:56 Justyn Berkovits: Yeah, I always forget if it's 22 or 23. And anyways, I was basically like, oh, this is really interesting. How can I use this to help me write marketing emails? And basically, because my whole realm and domain was all on the sales and marketing side, I was like, how can I use this tool to basically just do a lot of the grunt work of email marketing and lead nurture text messages and that type of thing? Like, how can I just have it help and just write the things for me, right? Nothing complicated. That was probably where I started, like something along those lines, because that was what I was using it for at the time. And I had always built automations and stuff as part of my businesses. So I was pretty deeply ingrained on that side of things as well. But that's where that started. Where things really, I would say, two moments early 2025, where things were like a lot more transformational, was number one, I built my first AI agent for that startup I was working for. not first, but first heavy-duty AI agent. And we built this whole Shopify custom system that connected personal trainers and their clients and us as a vendor on the back end. And it was super complicated and really thorough. And I basically rebuilt the entire structure through an AI agent that would allow all of that system to be on the front end replicated by customers just texting with a phone number and texting with the AI agent. At that point, it was still a lot of manual heavy lifting. You couldn't just be like, hey, Claude, build this for me. Claude was good, but not that good.

35:27 Stephen Husted: Did you even use Claude then? Or was it more ChatGPT?

35:30 Justyn Berkovits: So funny, I have been a Claude paying Statriver longer than I've been paying, longer than I've been a ChatGPT paying Statriver. Interesting.

35:38 Stephen Husted: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

35:39 Justyn Berkovits: That's a little.

35:41 Justyn Berkovits: A little secret information. But then the second thing was shortly after I built that agent, I actually ran a prompt and I posted about this a few times on my social media. And I ran a chat GVT prompt that was basically, it's called the meta coach prompt. I'm happy to share it after. Basically what it does is because it's got the history of you, it's got your conversation history and your memories and all that stuff. It basically is, it basically is what are my blind spots? What are the blind spots? What are the things I'm missing? What am I doing that is not getting me anywhere? So on and so forth, right? I ended up having this deep therapeutic conversation with ChatGPT that was really sort of helping me through that process of the toxic business partnership with my former best friend and realizing that I'm trying to think about how I'm going to build this beautiful life for my son and my family. And it's telling me that... Don't think about the life that you're building because he's already in it. You're already in this life. You need to just continue to foster because he's growing up in it right now. And I'm like, oh my God. And honestly, it was probably, I don't know the exact dates, but it was, I would say like a week later, I started posting.

36:48 Stephen Husted: It's just crazy too, if you think about it. Like something there was no, they come from a therapist.

36:56 Justyn Berkovits: exactly no it was just straight chat gbt and i was like wow this is a lot of the things that because i just the prompt itself was amazing but then i just kept the conversation going with dumping more context into it and it was just like i'm like oh my i literally remember sitting on the bed just talking to my wife being like oh my god look at the things that's telling me talking about how my imposter syndrome is his voice in my head like all of these things where i'm like jesus this is just cutting deep

37:24 Stephen Husted: I had these moments with my wife too and telling her certain things or showing her and she's just thinking I'm crazy.

37:30 Justyn Berkovits: Just like, what are you doing? But sometimes it's the spark, right? It's that catalyst that really just pushes you in the right direction. And it definitely did. And I was like, I don't care anymore. I don't care about what other people think because the family that I'm building, the family that I've got, this is what matters more than anything in the world. So if putting myself out there is a means to an end, absolutely, I'll do it.

37:52 Stephen Husted: And do you feel... Just entrepreneurs in general are really the first to kind of adapt to technologies because they're looking for efficiency. What can they do to buy back time, get something done faster? It seems like because when I first tried it out, I was in line to get a coffee. And I think I did one prompt. And by the time I got up to order the coffee, it was done. And I looked at it and I was like.

38:22 Stephen Husted: That would have taken, that would have taken my assistant three days, three to five days to do. And I just looked at it and I just, I literally walked out and I had that crazy dopamine hit. Brain was moving so quick. I literally called another dude that I follow on Instagram.

38:45 Stephen Husted: You better jump on this. And I think that point, I'm like, I think we can write scripts and content and it's going to do this. And he's just, oh yeah. I'm like, I don't think we're going to need these people moving forward. We're going to work on things, but we're going to work on the most important things. And all the busy work is going to be taken care of from these agents or just AI in general. Anyway, I think it was a little too early to that in that very beginning, but that's what I saw. I was like, oh God, this is going to do a ton of things.

39:17 Stephen Husted: And I don't know if you've gone through this. I'm sure you have. I brought it to some people that it was the wrong person to bring it up to. And they didn't like it. They thought, this is going to ruin the world. It's cheating. And there was a period there where then I was like, oh, and I just kept quiet about it. Stopped talking to people about it. Really just used it on my own. And now the cat's out of the bag and everybody's trying it out and doing their best to understand it.

39:46 Stephen Husted: Do you go through things like that?

39:49 Justyn Berkovits: Totally. Yes, absolutely. And I think there's so many different types of these conversations, but yeah, absolutely. And I think first off what you find that's really interesting is because the majority of my content or the positioning that I try to take is I speak to either solo founders or people who have a really small team. In most cases, they're just a team of one. And I think there's sort of two, and I'm generalizing, but there's two main types of people. There's the people who... probably more like you are like, I got to try this out. I got to learn it. I want to dive in. Amazing. Then there's also other people who maybe want that, but they're also, the pain of doing the things that they're doing right now is not big enough for them to try and take an extra day or whatever it is to actually systematize a process or figure out how they can systematize something. And therefore they just end up spending their time doing that work over and over because there's just, they could spend a few hours and just get this thing. done and built once but that pain is there that friction is a little too much for people and we're in a place now do

40:54 Stephen Husted: you think it's because we're do you think it's because we're just not there yet where okay if you're let's just say a small business on entrepreneur whatever because in the past We would know that something that you had to build out a system to do whatever you needed to do, automation, it was painful. It was going to take a long time, cost a lot of money with a lot of people involved, right? And so a lot of people got to the point where if you just put in 80%, you're going to get a pretty damn good blueprint that you could either tweak out a little bit more, pass it to somebody else that they can polish it off. I don't think we've got to that point yet. for the masses.

41:37 Justyn Berkovits: Would you agree? Yeah. So, well, what's interesting is like you talked about before, right? Like when you first put that, those prompts into ChatGPT, like we definitely weren't in a place then where it was good enough to take everything and really just hand off whatever the task was. Even mentioning the story about how I built that first agent in 2025, where that first big robust agent, that was at a point where with automation builds and agent builds, you need to know all of the pieces to then know how to connect them. That was still a heavy lift, right? Now we're in a place where we can literally just instruct the AI agent what we want and it'll build it all for us. And there are very few limitations on that. But what's really interesting is that, and I think this is the way that we as humans are wired, we are looking for the easiest and simplest path to that. So now what I think is the challenge for people, like before it was honestly, it was a technological barrier where you still needed to be pretty tech savvy in order to get that outcome you wanted. I do still think that exists to some degree, but not even nearly what it was 12 or 18 months ago. What I think now is the challenge and the barrier is, I'll use an example. I could give you a prompt that... for let's say cloud code for example that could build out a whole system so that you could automate the repurposing of this content across all social platforms which includes email marketing it includes blog posts literally everything right i could give you a master prompt that would help you build that out

43:04 Justyn Berkovits: Where I think most people fall off now is if I gave you that prompt or anybody, but I'll use you as an example. If I gave you that prompt, you entered it and you didn't really love the output immediately that it came out with. And it was okay. It was kind of decent. A lot of people, I still think at that point are getting really frustrated and they're like, this AI shit's just not that good yet.

43:24 Justyn Berkovits: But if I gave you that prompt, you didn't really love all of the output that it came out with, but you spent the next. one two six hours two days refining telling you what you did what you didn't like how to tweak something because you like it better that way man that system you're going to have is going to be absolutely dialed but i think the barrier now is that people their expectations are that oh this is just so good i should just be able to give it a prompt and it'll be done and perfect but that's quite not quite there yet

43:58 Stephen Husted: Yeah. And that's the process of AI. I think people are going through. It's almost the same as I remember my mom, she brought up something and I was like, just Google it. Google. Go to Google. And she's, I don't know. I'm like, you're not breaking it. Just go in there and do it. And I think that we're at that point too with AI right now and all these little Claude or ChatGBTs. People are going to have to put some time in to figure that out. But to your point about a prompt that you could give me. You could. And then I would get it, say it was a marketing piece. And then I would start to read it and go, wow, this is amazing.

44:38 Stephen Husted: Boy, that doesn't sound like me. That part doesn't. And that's where now how you build the back end is so crucial. And it just takes some time, the do's and don'ts. These are the words Stephen does not want to use in content. I don't want to hear the hard truth. Here's the truth.

45:03 Stephen Husted: I don't want to use that. Exactly. None of that. And it's interesting. So with Claude, I've found a lot of success in putting everything in projects. Everything is just a labeled project. And I work within projects. And in the projects, I have files, the do's and don'ts, how I talk. And when we start a project, I just whisper flow right into my computer. And I rip for about 20 minutes. And then I have it trained. Now I have Claude trained to then go deeper, ask a bunch of questions. And then we go deeper again. And then it writes. And then we go deeper. And then I have to literally, Claude will do the title. And I'll, nope. And then I put it in there. But you know what's so funny? When I change it and say, no, this is the title. And it goes, oh, that's good. That's for you. I think that's so funny. You know what I mean? It's like I'm talking to Justin on the other side. It's, oh, no, that's, yeah, yours is way better. That's just cool. But that's taken some painful times of we don't want to be at the point. especially as entrepreneurs, if you're doing marketing and all this, you do not want to sit there and just do AI slop. That shit's going to get old. It is old. It's old for me. It's still probably people are okay with it for right now.

46:28 Stephen Husted: You have to get it to that point where it's truly you. And it's just, the tool is just an extension. It's just another couple versions of you, a little smarter. That's your team. It's on your team.

46:41 Justyn Berkovits: 100%. That's where I'm at.

46:43 Justyn Berkovits: Listen, you're absolutely on the right path. And I think, first of all, using Whisperflow or any kind of voice dictation, honestly, even if you use the voice dictation button inside of Claude or inside of ChatGPT and just start riffing. First of all, it's so much easier to just express things like literal, like verbal diarrhea into those apps, because then it can really, first of all, it can take it all and it can form it into whatever. But it also is a good way for you just to go nuts, dump a ton of context out of your brain into it. And like you said, format it through projects or have it understand what it is that you're looking for and what you're not. And it just over time really refines everything. And then even on that same note, like. The AI slop is just everywhere now and it's only going to get worse, right? Like it started, I'm again, being very generalized, but the biggest places where people first mentioned it were, oh my God, everything on LinkedIn is all AI slop, right? And that's all every vibe coded website now all looks the same with the purple and blue gradients and whatever. Right now, it's that everybody's carousels on Instagram are all built by Claude and they're just all sort of blending in, right? Sure, there are some that stand out, but not a lot. But what I'm going to do and to kind of address how you stand out and how you actually make AI like an extension of yourself is, for example, I'm going to take the transcript when we're done this and I'm going to add it to my Claude brain, my Claude second brain, basically, so that it has now more information in context of how I speak. This is how I speak. These are the things that I talk about.

48:18 Justyn Berkovits: So, oh, a new video, a new podcast, a new email. Dump it in. And then it continues to learn, continues to grow, and continues to be able to actually speak and replace me.

48:30 Stephen Husted: And the transcripts are like the new way. It's the new SEO as well. If you upload transcripts in different parts of a podcast onto a website, people are going to find that on Claude or ChatGPT. Why am I always, I could say I'm crazy. I'm always at the coffee shop tweaking out on AI, but I was waiting for my coffee and I was like, oh, I need to get inspired. I want to find some topics. And I wanted it on ADU development.

49:01 Stephen Husted: And I just wanted to see if I can get some information. So it pulled some articles and I'm sitting there reading through some of the articles and it would talk about the article and then it would show where they got that article from. And as I got to the bottom, I started reading another one, and I look, and it says, Stephen Husted.

49:21 Stephen Husted: I was all, what the hell is that? And so I asked Claude, I go, hey, Claude, like, why'd you put my article in? And I said, oh, I know that's what you think, but no, your article ranks high. That's what, and I was like, what? out of all the adu content that i'm ranking on this now and it was just a it was a transcript that we turned into a blog we put it on the website i was smart i was like whoa this is the first thing so i call my team i'm like transcribe every podcast build all that out that's another way that's going to be like search

49:57 Justyn Berkovits: that's crazy right i mean that's exactly that's huge right first of all from like an seo standpoint that's really good Plus, just after every episode you do, you're just using that now as training data so that the AI platform, whichever one you choose, but when it comes to writing, most people will pick Claude. It understands how you speak. It'll start to understand the methodology of how you think and the foundations of that. So that now when you say something like, hey, build me a newsletter where I can recap the conversation that I just had, it's going to write like you.

50:33 Justyn Berkovits: That is given the expectation that it has some previous written examples of yours as well. So now it knows how you write. It knows how you speak. And then it's going to be able to put those all together. And same thing, just like we talked about. You might get something where you're like, I don't love that. Let's tweak it a little bit. And then you just have it update its memory of the things you do and the things you don't. Now you'll notice that in two weeks, you're like, oh, wait a minute. I'm not really even having to correct anything anymore. Now I'm just writing like you want to ask for it.

50:59 Stephen Husted: We've even talked about really what your profile is on Instagram yet.

51:05 Justyn Berkovits: That's okay. Why

51:07 Stephen Husted: don't you explain your profile on Instagram?

51:11 Justyn Berkovits: I am at Justin with a Y, J-U-S-T-Y-N dot A-I. Basically everywhere. youtube instagram tiktok it's a little bit different on youtube i think it's i think i'm actually still at justin ca on instagram because that's what all my platforms were before i changed them and that one i just haven't and yeah all my content is pretty much all focused on all for solo founders who are basically just looking to find ways to free up their time and spend that time doing the things that they love whether it's whether it's spend time with their family whether it's do anything else i'm basically trying to help people who are so overwhelmed with the amount of work that they're doing that they're figuring out how they can use these AI tools for more than hey chat hey Claude write me an email

51:53 Stephen Husted: so here's my hack to everybody who's listening to this episode here's what I do to

52:01 Justyn Berkovits: all

52:02 Stephen Husted: the AI creators that I follow on Instagram I watched the video because these videos move fast. There's a lot of things moving and you're not going to be able to go from point A to B. And I think what happens is a lot of people then take that video and they save it or they share it, whatever the case may be. But that ends up in the black hole. I don't think that I'm going to guess that probably half the people that save videos even follow up with that video. Just the way that short form, you just forget about it. So what I do. Justin's video comes through.

52:36 Stephen Husted: I scan it. I figure out, do I need this right now or do I not need this? If I do need it, I share it. I send it to my team and I say, one word, transcribe. They throw it in an AI tool. It gives me that transcript and then I can calmly look at it and then integrate it. That's how I do all you guys. You, Sabrina, Kat.

53:03 Stephen Husted: I love it. It is

53:07 Justyn Berkovits: tough, right? I love it. I love it. That's great. I love the engagement. Keep the engagement coming. But you're honestly so right. Most people, and I've actually got a couple posts on this. It's their Instagram graveyard, right? Where they save things that they never come back to. So the way that I've done it. The way that I've done it with mine is I just instructed Claude Code to build me something where when I save a post to a certain Instagram folder at 9 p.m. and 9 a.m., it will scrape those folders. It'll pull out the post and it'll save it in a Notion document for me.

53:41 Stephen Husted: Oh, I got to do that. I thought you did a video about that.

53:45 Justyn Berkovits: You did do a video about that. And what's really interesting is of all of the things. that are available via the instagram api which is basically just accessible data for anyone who doesn't know what an api is it's just basically giving me accessible data that i can access from from instagram directly or any other apps that have them that's not something that's actually available so you can't go to any service to tap into their api to get it so i was like cloud code hey this is what i want to build And it's, oh, it doesn't look like we can build it that way. We could do it where you send a link to Slack and we'll process it.

54:18 Justyn Berkovits: And I'm like, no, figure it out. And then figured it out. It found a way. It found a way to make it happen. So that's the power of AI. If I wanted to do that years ago, I would have had to find a way myself. I would have had to build it myself or hire somebody. But now I was just like, no, Claude, you're smart. You're smarter than me. Figure it out. And it did.

54:37 Stephen Husted: How do you go about not burning through your tokens so quick?

54:43 Justyn Berkovits: I'm on the max plans. That's the first thing. That's the first thing. And I think it's, I always tell people start low and only upgrade if you need it. I still think at the end of the day, even if you are paying for either the $100 or $200 a month plans, they are still well worth it, considering what the alternative costs would be for whatever you're using.

55:04 Justyn Berkovits: But start low and only upgrade if you need it. Now, I think there are a few different ways to do it. First of all, Starting, most people just let single chats run on forever, which basically is eating up a ton of context. So the longer the chat goes, the larger amount of context that's being used, which basically just means they're feeding a ton more information back into the AI to then give it context to spit out the answer. The problem is when a chat goes really long, the actual memory that it has, it's not going to remember everything in that conversation. So where I'm going with that. People need to start new chats more frequently.

55:42 Stephen Husted: Copy and paste what you did and throw it in.

55:45 Justyn Berkovits: Or what you can even do. And I like to do this when a conversation gets a little bit longer. And what's nice now is that the memory features are improving. So between chats, it'll remember things a lot better than it ever used to before. But what you can do if you have a really productive chat or a longer one, or it's longer and productive, I'll basically just say, hey, Claude, ChatGPT, let's take this to a new chat because I know this is getting pretty long. write me a prompt based on everything we've done and where we are that I could take to a new chat that I can paste. And then that'll be our new starting point. And then that'll pretty much give you a good start for the next new chat.

56:21 Stephen Husted: Oh, that's cool. So do you think does copying, pasting that thread back into a new chat, does that end up putting you in the same position?

56:31 Justyn Berkovits: If you copy and pasting the prompt?

56:34 Stephen Husted: No, not the prompt. I saw a video that if you're going too long on that thread to copy and paste it, start the new chat and throw that in there and go. Yeah. Isn't that doing the same thing?

56:46 Justyn Berkovits: Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Unless there's, from my understanding, that would basically just copy all of the tokens that are in that single chat and move that into a new chat anyway. So it's kind of the same. Yeah. Yeah.

57:00 Stephen Husted: Sometimes I run out of my tokens on Claude. I'm like, ah. All right, now I'm on chat again.

57:05 Justyn Berkovits: I'm back.

57:07 Stephen Husted: I'm sorry I missed you. I know you're upset at me. You don't even remember who I am now.

57:12 Justyn Berkovits: Remember me? Yeah. Cheater. Some people do. You've probably seen a lot of people talking about this. There's a skill called the caveman skill.

57:22 Justyn Berkovits: Basically, it's a skill you can install into Claude code. You could probably just Google Claude caveman skill. And essentially what it does is instead of Claude being like. instead of clubbing like hey steven great idea that's definitely the way that we should build this blah blah blah it would just be like it would be like good i build now so now instead of having claude's response be very wordy which takes up that context window as well it would be significantly shortened into literally having claude talk like a caveman to you and be like good let's make out so rudimentary So that now, like I said, instead of using all that, instead of using all those tokens, it's just like significantly smaller. That'll allow you now to dump more stuff into it.

58:09 Stephen Husted: Yeah, that's amazing. It's so crazy how far it's come. It's insane. Does it give you, do you get anxiety from it too? Because for me, because I follow you and all these other people, it's like my whole feed is AI or entrepreneurship or this and that. I'm like, ah. Every day it's just so intense. Do you get that? Do you feel like you're always behind?

58:31 Justyn Berkovits: I do. Yeah, to a certain degree, I do. I felt it a lot more. So I, for a long time, was maybe resistant to starting with Claude Code for two main reasons. Number one, I didn't want to pay more a month. I was like, I know the moment I start with Claude Code, I'm going to have to go up and I'm on the $100 plan now. So it's not even that bad. An unjust reservation that I had. The second one was that I just knew the rabbit hole was going to be very deep. And it is. So I was like, I got to be ready for this when I do it. And when I did it, I'm like, I should not have waited. But anyways, I do still feel that. But what you're saying is one of the most common things I hear from people who watch my videos, clients in my community, people that I just talked to as friends. They're so overwhelmed. with all of the stuff right the tools the apps the new models it's challenging and i know content creators like myself handedly we are part of the problem because it is hard to cut through the noise and there is always a tool that can do some i should say there's multiple tools so this analysis paralysis or feeling like you're always behind is is very real and the other thing about it that i will say is that It's also a bit of a problem with just the algorithmic social media scene. Your social media algorithm is always going to feed you content that is slightly above where you currently are.

01:00:04 Stephen Husted: Yeah, that's a great one. Great way to look at it. So as

01:00:07 Justyn Berkovits: you improve, it'll be more advanced stuff because it's just it's knowing that's the type of content that you like. So we're always wired. We're not necessarily wired ourselves, but we're being wired to feel that way.

01:00:19 Stephen Husted: Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, I started finding, what's his name, the Vibe Coder guy? He's like an engineer. I'm following him, and this guy is like so high level. He wants to get to this certain revenue as a one-man show, and he's running this whole thing. And I'm sitting there, I'm going, oh my gosh, this guy's crazy. He knows so much, and I'm like learning things. But then I go talk to my business partner, who is an engineer. PhD, and I'll go, oh, dude, and I'm talking about this and working things. I got to tell you something, dude. More about AI than most engineers. He's like, you got to chill out. You got to chill out. I'm like, but I just tried to take it easy.

01:01:07 Stephen Husted: You know what's happening after this podcast? I'm diving into Fable.

01:01:13 Justyn Berkovits: Exactly. because it's brand new it's the new thing let's go i posted you probably saw the video i posted yesterday that was like three reasons why they just released fable and why it doesn't matter to you right or why it shouldn't matter to you thank you right because it's exactly the problem we get caught up in the hype of everything when we're not even using we're not even using ai to a tenth of the degree that we should or need to be for this model to be to really matter because the models that we already have are amazing but what's What's interesting, I was going to say about the way that social media feeds us the content where we always feel like we're behind, it just really gives us a lost sense of where we actually are with our development related to AI. Most people are significantly farther ahead than they realize, but they feel like they're significantly behind where they are.

01:02:01 Stephen Husted: I agree with that. I definitely agree with that. That can cause mental health issues right there. That's the drawbacks of content. social media. I got another question for you. Are you on Substack yet?

01:02:16 Justyn Berkovits: I'm not. No, I'm not. All right. I know. I know. You're not the first person to ask me that. We'll

01:02:23 Stephen Husted: jump off that. We'll talk about it. I'll give you a call.

01:02:27 Justyn Berkovits: Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. And this, I deal with this too, where people, especially in the content creation side of things, friends who are looking to get started and who really are excited about it. They think about building systems and they're like, okay, well, I want to record a video and then I want to have that video. I want to build an automation or a sequence of some kind where it'll take that video, it'll post it on all platforms, it'll repurpose it so it's unique to each one. And I'm like, why don't you just start by posting the video and then deal with the rest later. I'm over a year in and I still don't even do all of that. Yes, I automatically repurpose, but I don't create unique pieces of content for each platform, which in the grand scheme of having the best deployment, I should, but I don't. And I think a lot of people put the cart in front of the horse there.

01:03:12 Stephen Husted: Well, for you, I think that's worked out good. I think focusing on one or two platforms in the beginning is really a smart thing, especially in the beginning. If you're trying to build out, you got to put a team together to do all that. And now you're spreading yourself thin on all of them. Oh, I got to make you long form YouTube. I got to do this. I got to do that. It really sucks out the time where I think there's a lot to be said to just. starting and focusing on one and just being hyper-focused in that and let it be. And then down the road, you want to shift to other things. Fantastic. You'll know the time is right when it will let you know when the time is right.

01:03:51 Justyn Berkovits: Yeah. And figure out what the problems and the bottlenecks are when they actually exist, not what you theorize that they might be.

01:03:58 Stephen Husted: Yeah. Yeah. It's good. I'm glad I met you. Yeah. We had a good time in Tom's. Such a phenomenal cohort. It honestly was. All the tools, I mean, just the tools and everything else that I got, I'm like, that was worth every penny. Now, is it going to get utilized right this second? No, we're getting close. Takes time. Yeah, it takes time. I underestimated all that,

01:04:24 Justyn Berkovits: honestly.

01:04:26 Stephen Husted: But do you follow that lady that's the yapper?

01:04:30 Justyn Berkovits: Mm-hmm. Oh, my God. She is killing it. Jessie Jean,

01:04:34 Stephen Husted: I believe, was her Instagram handle? Yeah, from Colorado. Did you see the videos that she posted that there's companies, one is in Poland, one's in Canada, that are using AI and cloning her?

01:04:47 Justyn Berkovits: damn i didn't but that's crazy

01:04:49 Stephen Husted: yeah like they're talking about like what do you do with these people they're selling products and different things she's seven years of grinding it out adhd and just all the doubts and all that and all of a sudden six months she blew up with this yapping challenge and then i just randomly saw two videos of her of explaining that these companies are cloning her with ai crazy crazy

01:05:15 Stephen Husted: That's got to be another weird thing to have to look out for.

01:05:19 Justyn Berkovits: Honestly, and I haven't seen her entire journey. She only came across my feed probably like a week or two ago, maybe a little bit before that, but only like actively. And she's just done such an awesome job with how she's turned her content into a full business. And it's been like to be able to have a $1.2 million launch on a low ticket digital product, like $297.

01:05:41 Stephen Husted: $4,500 signed up.

01:05:44 Justyn Berkovits: unbelievable that's so amazing to see and she's just providing a ton of value and she's same thing like we talked about earlier right she's just put herself out there she's been super vulnerable and that's what's made to sales is she good at what she does clearly she's awesome at what she does but the reason why people bought and she even had a she actually even has a video about this right she asked why people bought and all the comments were just like i like you i trust you i want to buy from you i love you like all these things right And that's just, that's a testament to kind of bringing this whole thing full circle. It's a testament to how valuable it is to just share who you are.

01:06:21 Stephen Husted: Really share. Well, yeah, it goes right back to what we said. There's a lot that are in it for the wrong reasons and you can just feel that part. And then there's points where you're just like content, like where is this all going? What am I really getting from this as a consumer? And then all of a sudden someone will come along. that realigns things and go oh it's for this this is the human communicate this is the human connection right here this lady is it's raw she's just yapping away it's fantastic i don't know what she's going to do about those cloners but

01:06:55 Justyn Berkovits: that i know they'll find a way to shut it down because she's got a big enough following but it's such an the pain in the ass that she's got to deal with thankfully i haven't had to deal with anything that annoying i've just dealt with fake accounts of mine that are Clearly, they're basically crypto scams, but I'm like, here's an easy way to tell if it's me or not. I, the real me, I don't know anything about crypto. So if I'm talking about crypto, it's not me.

01:07:20 Stephen Husted: Case in point. Yeah.

01:07:22 Justyn Berkovits: All right.

01:07:24 Stephen Husted: Well, Justin, thanks again for jumping on here today. I really appreciate it. I'm glad we made it happen. I've been thinking about getting you on for a while. So I'm glad it finally happened and we able to talk about life, things that we're going through.

01:07:39 Justyn Berkovits: I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for the invite. Sorry for all the delays, but glad we could finally do this. It's a blast, man. I'm glad every time we get to speak.

01:07:47 Stephen Husted: Yeah. I'm so excited. We got to do something for agents. We need to do like a mixture with AI, like how to build agents. Definitely need it right now.

01:07:57 Justyn Berkovits: Well, there's some cool stuff. I mean, so it's funny. My God is an agent. My brother-in-law is an agent. My best friend is an agent. So I got a lot of real estate around me. And there's some really cool stuff now where you can literally turn just your listing photos into full-on 3D tours of video fly-through. Just some really cool stuff that you can do now. And I know the technology is getting there. There's a lot of companies that are working on this type of stuff. But these are things that anybody can do now, right? It just takes...

01:08:29 Justyn Berkovits: The tough part is that everybody is busy enough in their actual day-to-day job, right? The things that they do for business. So when it comes time to dedicating a little bit of time to try something new or learn something new, that's a little bit limited. But if you have some time, you can do some really cool stuff.

01:08:44 Stephen Husted: I think that's a perfect way to end it. If you want to start to learn about AI, just carve out a little time per week and either go through one of Claude's courses and watch their videos. And do that. And then just try things, just test and try and let your brain get creative and look through your business and put it into Claude, all the things you go through. And it will frame it out in a way that will inspire you then to, okay, let's work on that and just let it go. See where it goes. You're not going to break it.

01:09:20 Justyn Berkovits: My number one piece of advice to anybody who is just looking to get started or who is just getting started is. Pick one, ChatGPT or Claude. I'll answer this in two ways. It doesn't really matter because they will always leapfrog one another. Personally, right this moment, I would recommend to somebody who's just getting started to start with Claude and the reason for that, even though the models are like basically as good as each other, the tools inside of the Claude app I think are better to serve how good the model is. So if you're picking one, pick Claude. Get the subscription, pay the 20 bucks a month, get off the free plan. Because even that $20 a month investment will make you give a shit just enough to actually use it. So, and then of course there's the other benefits of the actual usage limits and all that, but just pay the 20 bucks. It's so worth it. Then go in, start a new conversation, say, Hey Claude, I want you to interview me, ask as many questions as you need. So you have a full understanding of me, who I am, my history, my business, my blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And go on a walk, go outside,

01:10:21 Justyn Berkovits: turn on your voice dictation. In that prompt, say, ask me one question at a time. Turn on your voice dictation. Answer a question. If it takes you 30 seconds to answer a question, great. If it takes you 10 minutes to answer a question, great. Just literally go on a walk and yap into your phone. And at the end of that, say, amazing. Now update all of the memory to reflect all of the things you now know about. And now you have an AI bot that's really well-trained and you can start to dive in a little deeper. But it will now have so much understanding of you and it'll know what to help you on and how.

01:10:54 Stephen Husted: Amazing. That was perfect. That was the greatest ending right there.

01:10:59 Justyn Berkovits: You got to put that at the beginning. You said the best

01:11:01 Stephen Husted: for last. Yeah. You want to watch the podcast, you have to watch all the way through.

01:11:06 Justyn Berkovits: Watch in reverse.

01:11:08 Stephen Husted: That's great. Well, congratulations on the house. That's awesome. Perfect. Well-deserved, that's for sure. And we'll talk later.

01:11:19 Justyn Berkovits: sir. I appreciate it, man.

∎ Podcast Outro:

01:11:21 Stephen Husted: Thank you so much. Take care. Cheers. Thank you for tuning into our show, where we hope you found inspiration and gained valuable insights. If you enjoyed this conversation and want to stay updated on our latest episodes, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and share it with others who might benefit from it. We appreciate your support and look forward to bringing you more candid conversations and breakthrough moments in the future. Until next time, take care and keep exploring new ideas and strategies.