The AI Marketer's Playbook
The AI Marketer's Playbook is an actionable podcast focusing on AI and marketing. Each episode covers AI strategies, tools, and trends that are changing marketing. Listen to interviews with industry experts, analyze case studies, and get practical tips. This podcast is for anyone looking to leverage AI in marketing to improve results.
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The AI Marketer's Playbook
17 | Inside AI Tool Report: Liam Lawson’s Growth Playbook
How do you grow an AI newsletter to 400,000 subscribers? Join Audrey Chia as she talks to Liam Lawson, COO of the AI Tool Report. Liam discusses the evolution of their platform, from consumer-facing tips to enterprise certifications, and the trends shaping the AI industry. Gain practical insights on integrating AI tools in daily operations, the value of community, and navigating the rapid pace of technological innovation.
Don’t miss Liam’s inspiring take on travel, work-life balance, and what it takes to build a purposeful business.
Join my weekly Newsletter: https://lp.closewithcopy.co/welcome
Hello and welcome back to the AI Marketers Playbook, where we cover actionable frameworks to help you leverage AI in your business. I'm Audrey Chia, your host, and today I have with me Liam Lawson, the COO at the AI Tool Report. Now, Liam has been the driving force behind the AI Tool Report and has been instrumental in growing the platform to over 400, 000. 1, 000 subscribers building a thriving professional community of more than a thousand five hundred members now He curates this very popular newsletter bringing in new content and initiators while strategizing for a business scope Beyond AI I know Liam is also an avid traveler having explored 30 over countries in the past 30 months So we are super excited to have you with us Liam
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:I'm stoked to be here. That was, that was like a WWE wrestling introduction there. Like I feel, I feel hyped
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Special, right? Hyped up, like, let's go! That's the way I like to roll. Yeah, Liam, I would love for you to tell us a bit more about yourself, how has your journey been before AI, and how did you even get into this world of AI newsletters?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Yeah, I mean, lots of things to unpack there. in terms of me, like my kind of biggest things are work, self development, and travel, and those have always kind of been like my big focuses, always been very kind of entrepreneurial, had businesses throughout high school and university, trying out different things, travel's always been a huge part as well, so the dream was always can I do something that affords me the ability to go and see the world and try new things, so that was always the goal that I had in mind, and yeah, with that, How I got into AI is a pretty fun story, like I actually quite like it. so,
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Tell us. Can't wait to hear that.
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:well, with it, I remember I was living in Australia at the point, and I was kind of online on Twitter at the point when Twitter was actually good before it got ruined. and I was kind of looking around and I was like, kind of seeing the trends that were just starting at that point. And I seen AI kind of just started to pop off. This was maybe March of 2023, so like a year and a half ago, AI was just beginning to pop off, people were actually using ChatGPT, loads of updates were happening, and at the same point, newsletters were doing the same thing. so I seen that like Beehive was beginning to grow, people were talking a lot about newsletters, the ability to kind of nurture your audience, develop one on one communication. So at that point I decided to start a newsletter at the point called AI Startups Gang. so it was just, a way to collate things that I'm interested in, one being entrepreneurship and the other being AI, because I was just so interested in what was happening and I wanted to be hands on with it. So I ran this newsletter for all of about three weeks to a month, just exploring this intersection of AI and entrepreneurship. And I see this post from this guy called Martin Crowley. And I was like. This is interesting. He says I've just started an AI newsletter. I'm looking for someone to run it and I was like well That's exactly what I'm doing right now. So let me just throw him a DM and so from there I threw Martin a DM on Twitter and I think like less than a day later. We hopped on a call we spoke for Two or three hours and we talked about AI, supplementation and like experimentation with different things and entrepreneurship and NFL and stuff like that and we're on the call for viewers and yeah literally the rest is history. We kind of started working, I started working for him at that point and then we just kind of built up from there but yeah it's all kind of started everything with the ITIL report started from a Twitter DM essentially.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Wow, look at that starting point, right? Who knew a Twitter post could, you know, blow everything up. So, currently, are you working with Martin on the AI2 report?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Yeah, so with it, it's myself, Martin, and our two role, who's also one of the co-founders that kind of run things. in terms of the day to day, it's primarily myself that kind of run things. I'm heading up operations. Martin has kinda less time'cause he has other businesses. so he comes in and helps with big picture stuff and strategy, stuff like that, and points us in the right direction. and then Arturo, he handles mainly the B2B and enterprise side of things, which is kind of a shift that we've seen in our AI space is that we started very much as a direct consumer brand and very much the newsletter stuff like that but we've noticed a big shift in the interest groups with a lot of enterprises and b2b organizations now noticing that they would be left behind without taking and implementing AI and so that's kind of the direction that we've shifted in as from a direct consumer brand into more of a b2b slash enterprise brand.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Yeah, super cool to hear that. I think that's something I've noticed as well. Like, just one year back, a lot of businesses were still on the fence. They were like, I see its potential, but let's see how it goes. And This year, I think they are realizing that it's not going to go away anytime soon. Right? So now they are taking steps to actively figure out how things run and how to integrate AI into their business. What are the like, you know, big shifts have you seen or have you noticed any key trends over the past two years?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Yeah, I mean, I think we started out when we were first in the newsletter, it was like, there was 4, 500 new AI tools that were released every single week. and we noticed that they just kept, it was just Chachapidee and a different rapper calling from a different API. And there was a million tools being released and we're now kind of going through a period of Condensation, that's the wrong word, but, We're I'm trying to think of the word. Solidification? I've got the word in my mind, I've used it a million times,
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:it will, it will pop up again. Yeah.
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:come again, but
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Is that a word?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:is exactly the
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:I read your mind.
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:I'm glad you're here, Audrey. But yeah, so we're going through this period of consolidation where we started off with thousands of tools and we're now coming to the point where we've got some AI tools that are so good at so many things that maybe one tool will hire, will basically cover an entire department. You might have one AI tool that will do all of operations if you look at Asana or you look at SmartSuite and you might have one tool that will handle all of your kind of copy creation and your image creation, which might be. Claude, for example. So we're really entering that kind of area of consolidation. We are seeing less AI tools, but the AI tools that you do see are better, more advanced and cover more topics. So I would say that's the big kind of shift. We're seeing that shift to be, to be an enterprise focus. We're seeing like a lot of institutional investment. Like recently we saw Amazon invest 4 billion in Anthropic just this week. And so a lot of institutional investment, a lot of VC investment. and a big conversation right now that we're seeing from the CEOs of Anthropic, the CEOs of Chachapati and OpenAI is that we're looking at AGI potentially, coming in 2025, which is super, super exciting as well. No one really knows exactly what that means or what that will look like. but that's kind of on the tip of people's tongues that are in the industry and the know is that AGI will potentially come in 2025 as well. So. A lot of shifts happening right now.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Yeah, and the crazy part, it's, it's only happening in just like a short span of time. It's not even, it's not even years, like, it's like months and then something changes, something updates. I think you can see the shift from everything from like the day to day use of ChatGPT, right? So even for a personal use case, I was using ChatGPT for a copy the other day, and I was talking to other copywriters who are also using AI, and I was like, okay. And we all agreed that the chat GPT today is a hundred times more superior in copy than the chat GPT like that was a present yesterday, right? So it's so crazy because in the past I used to be really confident in saying like, you know what, AI is not going to completely replace writers. But right now I can say with confidence that it is good enough to replace a junior writer and even better than that. And that's even without. Super prompting skills. You can get to really good results. and when it comes to that in terms of like people's Perspective of AI or like how how are people responding to it in the job market? Have you seen? Any kinds of insights around it?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:I mean, in general, people who are a little younger are more keen to kind of take on the challenge of AI and understanding that they have more time to experiment. and in the past, that kind of older generation, say someone that's already established in their career, their career, 35 and above, has kind of been met with fear in the past. and that's kind of the feedback we see when we're teaching people on an enterprise or B2B level, is that they're kind of just, they don't know what AI is, they have no idea how chat GPT works, they don't know how to prompt it, they don't know how to work with it. So traditionally, it's been fear. fear, but I think that's now becoming, a turning point because their institutions, the people that work for these institutions, their institutions are saying from a top down level, right, we're going to be implementing AI for the next couple of years. So there have now been that mental shift of, well, should I learn about it? And it's now I have to learn about it. All right, let's be action oriented. and actually kind of tackle this head on. So I'd say in general, it's gone from fear to a little bit more, okay, right, we understand this is coming now, like, let's, let's just get used to how this works essentially.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Yeah, awesome. And since you're building like a newsletter business and it has evolved over time, right? I would also love to know a bit more of that journey, right? So how, how did you guys start? What were some of the key challenges and what is it evolving towards? You know, cause that could be interesting for someone who's building their own business as well.
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Yeah, I mean, luckily the thing about, the thing that's great about a newsletter is you are able to have direct communication with 400, 000 people every single day. So if you ask for feedback, people will give you feedback, which means we can constantly tune in. What appears in the newsletter, what sections are there, do we have a section about jobs, do we have a section about tools, about automation, stuff like that. So it's a constant feedback loop, which is great. When we first started, I mean, it was just a case of, excuse my French here, but throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, right? It was like, we'll just see what happens. We had a job board for a little bit. We had different sections that we tried out, some of them people hated, some of them people loved, so I'd say now the newsletter's advanced to a point where we're pretty tuned in to what people like, and I'd say what kind of sets our newsletter apart from the competition is the practical use cases of it. we really focus in on practical prompting, automations that you can actually use, actual insights that you can apply to your own business, and I'd say that's kind of what sets us apart from the competition is that we're not just a news source. and we're not really talking about memes. It's like, okay, like, are you scared of how to use AI? Like, here's actually practical skills that you can use right now. Here's a prompt you can use. He's a platform and how to use said platform. So I'd say that's how we've adapted over time. Our feedback given to us is that people love those practical AI skills. And then that's what we've kind of tuned in and honed in, in terms of delivering, through the newsletter, through the podcast, through the training, through the consulting, everything.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Got it. I think it's awesome to hear that people are like not just consuming but trying to pick up a new skill set Especially with the knowledge and the immense knowledge that you guys are putting out every day, right? And I know you also mentioned moving more into the enterprise or b2b space. What does that look like for you guys?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Yeah. So. Arturo, our creative director, has been hard at work developing an enterprise certification for the past six months. So, I'm not sure what I can say and what I can't say, but he's been working with Well, I'm just not sure about the names, but I can tell you a little bit more about it. So, he's been working with one of the top US law firms, and a top cyber security firm, as well as his own experience. And to develop basically this AI credential and that will give you a kind of baseline knowledge on like what are the logistics? What laws you need to be aware of as an organization? How do you make sure your organization is? safe with the data it's using, what data you're using, and what platform you're putting it in, as well as just like basic prompting, here's how to work with different models, here's things you need to be aware of, here's how AI actually works as well. So he's been hard at work putting that in place and that should be ready by the start of Q1 2025, and so that's kind of our headline credential, and that'll be going out to B2B organizations. And then furthermore to bolster that, we've run a premium community on school. and what we've done in the past over the past, like six weeks, I basically got six different entrepreneurs. to teach you six different in demand skills over the space of six weeks. So there's names that you'll recognize. Justin Hardy was teaching a class on funnels. Jake was teaching a class on AI agents. Jake George, Justin Hardy, Lou Shulman was teaching one on newsletters, Grant Houshik on automations, the Webforge team on AI Redis reporting, and I'm missing someone and I can't leave them out cause that would be terrible of me. Who am I
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:last secret person on your
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:It's, it's the best person. Charlie Hills was teaching AI in social media.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Yes, definitely can't miss Charlie.
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:can't miss him. I think he was just so special in my head that I couldn't think of him. but yeah, they all taught, like, modules over our school community, and then their courses will actually be getting sold, on an enterprise level as well. So people will be able to learn those kind of in demand AI skills that I mean, the amount of value that was dropped in them, if you actually pay attention to one of those courses and take in that information, you'll be able to do any one of those skill sets. Like Charlie was giving away all these prompts, everything he does in terms of a workflow. He, he literally gave out the blueprint to how you can be an AI social media LinkedIn God. so yeah, that's going to be part of the enterprise certification. and that's how we're moving more into that enterprise space as well.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Wow, super cool. I love to see like, it's a combination of, you know, regulations, like accreditations, but also knowledge and skills. Things you actually need, right, to move forward. And I think that's basically what people need to consider, both the macro and the micro kind of point of view of how you're really going to adopt AI as an organization. And I know you guys have grown massively over the past couple of months or year, right? What do you think has actually led to that growth? Cause I'm a growth marketer myself and I always love to ask this question. How did you grow?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:How did we grow? I mean, good question. I think experimentation is a lot of it. We tried out a bunch of different methodologies, but we've now got our growth engine, especially for the newsletter, really tuned in so that it's very fine tuned. Our automation sequence is great. Our channels that we acquire from are excellent. We've got great partners that we do that. And we've just really thought of the entire business as a funnel, right? So if you imagine at the top, we've got the kind of social media engines, and then they come into the newsletter. From there, they go to the pro community. They might listen to the podcast. At that point, they might purchase a course. And at the very bottom of that funnel, they might actually want some custom consulting done. So it was just loads and loads of experimentation. As I said, throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. and we've just found certain growth channels that work great for us. I think people underestimate the power of a newsletter. the newsletter is just such an amazing, amazing growth channel because you can really nurture that audience. You've got a one on one communication where people read your material Monday to Friday, and from that you can really build trust, and kind of move those people and kind of nurture that trust further by moving them into their pro community and delivering more value and just delivering more value down that chain. So I would just say experimentation and the newsletter has been pivotal because without the newsletter we wouldn't be able to push people into other channels. It's such a great channel for really, really developing a relationship with your audience.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:I think what you said about, like, newsletter being an undervalued or like, you know, underrated channel is, is something that I also see, like, so even when people are building their personal brands, whether on LinkedIn or not, they are relying on the traffic that the platform gives them, but your newsletter is your own traffic. And then that gives you so much more control over who sees it and you, you have like enough data points to understand what types of. Subject lines work, what types of like body copy works and how to get people to take action So I think that in itself is a skill set but a very powerful one to nurture For anyone who is trying to build their own business because to just relying on a social media platform Can be a very risky move, especially when algorithms change which they always do and you don't know when you're gonna be Be able to capture that audience again. And I'm curious to know Liam, like, how are you guys actually using AI, you know, in your day to day, whether it's your ops or like content creation, are there any like workflow or processes that you guys are currently using with the help of AI, of course?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:like different departments, everyone's using AI in a different way. If we talk about Amanda, who's the editor in chief of our newsletter, she obviously uses a workflow through Chachapati and Claude, and different kind of scheduling tools and refinement tools, research tools. We have got a certain prompt database that she uses to be able to find the materials. If we're talking about Kyle, who handles ad sales, he uses. The likes of Smartlead and other AI tools to find and prospect tools, put them into lists, send them through automation sequences and nurture those. Talking about Cassie, she's got social media scheduling tools that she uses. And so on and so on and so on. Right now what we're doing is we're going through a process called an AI readiness report. so one of the skill sprint modules we've done is with team from Webforge and basically their entire business module as they go into a company. They have interviews with every single employee and they basically figure out where are the holes in your system that could be automated or could be using AI. And then let's implement them. So we are currently in the process of going through that AI readiness report. So I'll be able to tell you a lot more in a month. What are the holes that we had in the business? What were we not automating that we could be automating? Where could we be using AI that we're currently not using AI? So our kind of big idea is that we could be running much more efficiently and with much more scale and with much more, roadway for scale, in 2025, and we're just, we're getting an external organization to come in and basically figure out what that is. Cause sometimes you've just got the blinders on, right? And if something works well enough, then you're like, okay, I'll just keep running with this because it's running well and it's making me money and it's, it's doing okay. But you could be doing a lot better if you actually understand what your blind spots are. And that's kind of the process we're going through right
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Wow. And it's a super cool process. I think one thing is like thinking about how you can use AI in your day to day, but it's another thing to look at it from. a machine level, right? Like an organization level, you look at different clocks and like what you said about, your different team members leveraging different tools. I think people often see AI as like 10 different tools, but in fact, they should be seeing as how can it help one department or another department with that specific use case. And I think that's how you really maximize the effectiveness of using AI, right?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:100 percent as you said the word that you remembered and I couldn't remember earlier on, consolidate. How can we consolidate our use of AI tools? And if, if they come in with the readiness report and they're like, okay, we recommend that you use these four AI tools and they'll actually, you'll all be using Fathom as your AI note takers, everything communicates there and it'll all be held under one Zapier dashboard and it'll all be sent to a cloud team account and this will streamline everything. Then that's great. Like we've consolidated a lot. We're paying less than subscriptions. Our data is all in one place It's all recorded through smart suite and so on. So I think That should be the focus of the organization is like how can we consolidate our use of the AI tools? So our data is used more efficiently and the business has room to scale with this as well.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Definitely. And what are, for example, your personal favorite AI tools given that you've seen and tested so many yourself?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:I Mean it's a good question. I love You Fathom. so I've went through using all of the different AI note takers. I've used Fireflies, I've used Otter, I used Zembly back in the day and the one that I found to be the most useful is Fathom. Not only for the excerpts that it gives you, just the way that it enters meeting rooms, and And the summaries it gives you, like, and obviously the, they've got Zapier make integrations that other AI note takers don't have. So for example, one of our partners, Grant Houshek, who specializes in automation. He set up a call to content bot, so basically if you enter a sales call with Fathom in the room, as soon as that's finished, it'll automatically run through a Zapier automation that'll run that through Claude, and you'll come into your dashboard and have automatically generated content just based on your sales call. And it could be not just sales call, it could be your weekly team meeting call, it could be any call that you want. And I'll just run it through this kind of step process so that as soon as you're finished you get social content for an entire week based on one call, you didn't have to lift a finger.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:that is so powerful. That's such a brilliant use case where you're just stringing like the right tools in the right sequence to get optimal results. I love that. I love that. And I'm so curious, Liam, so for yourself, like, do you use AI in your everyday life beyond work? Or is it just, you know, for work and we keep AI in this space?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Yeah, I mean I'll be honest, I work a lot. I'm kind of chronically online. It's obviously, it's just part of being part of a start up that you wear. 20 different hats, and you're doing, yeah exactly, you're doing 20 different jobs. So I'll be honest, as soon as I'm offline, the laptop's shut, I don't want to look at my phone, I don't want to look at my iPad, I'll go to the gym, I'll go and do some MMA, I'll go and do some yoga, I'm doing Spanish classes at the moment, so I don't want to see any technology after I'm logged off. I'm locked in for that, but I like to compartmentalise my life, like I want to go look in the distance, or get some sun, or meet people, or try speak a very bad level of Spanish that I currently have. So, yeah. I'd be lying if I said I use it outside of work. No, no. Mentirosa, no.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:That's me too man, so like I when I try to switch off I try to switch off and like what you said people like us We are building our own businesses. You tend to work a lot I also know that you travel a lot and have traveled to almost 30 over countries, right? So tell us more about you know, that part of your life Like what has your journey so far taught you or any interesting insights or experiences along the way?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Yeah. All right, I'm gonna give you a long answer if that's okay, because I want to, I want to fully flesh this out.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Please
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:so I really fell in love with travelling, I remember it being a very specific point. When I was 18, I went into railing, which is where you get like an unlimited pass to trains throughout Europe. And I remember being on this train from Croatia, from Split up to Venice in Italy, and it was something like an 18 hour train. And I remember I didn't speak any of the local languages in this cabin with people who didn't speak the language. and I just randomly met two Irish people and I was like, can I come have a chat with you? And I remember just out of this random conversation became amazing friends with these two Irish people in this cabin. And I remember we were looking out. of this kind of travel like this window of the train we had our arms out the window and the sun was just setting we're going through these like beautiful mountains the air was kind of like sticky and sweet and we're all just kind of looking out watching the sunset through these beautiful mountains and i just remember having this feeling just in the middle of my chest being like oh shit like this is what i love this is what I want to do. Like this makes me feel whole and complete and like that sense of adventure and not knowing and the ambiguity and just that entire experience of traveling like I just loved it. So that's really what sparked it for me. I traveled a bunch throughout that point, a lot over Europe, kind of between 18 and 22. And then once I graduated uni, I decided I was going to go on a long travel. So I done. Nepal, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Oz, New Zealand, and then went to US, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia. So that was two and a half years that I was away from home.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Wow.
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:so it was, it was a pretty major one. I was away for a very long time, hadn't been home at all during that time. And yeah, I just loved it. I kind of went through this process with the first six months of what I was traveling through, like Southeast Asia, I wasn't working at the point. and I loved it for the first five or six months, but I kind of got to this stage where I was like, all right, like this was, it was fun drinking a lot and partying a lot for the first five months. Can I got to a point where I was like, my brain was not happy if I wasn't actually building something for my longterm. So that point, my mindset kind of shifted. and what now makes me really happy is being in new countries but living in new countries. I don't really like the backpacker circuit or the partying or anything anymore. I like being in a new country, building what we're building online, and working towards this larger goal. But also because I'm living in a new country, I get to speak to locals on the weekends, I get to explore kind of different parts of the city or go on tours to different places. I get to learn a language, I get to try the local food. So that's kind of my favourite method of doing things. I don't think I could go back to doing just travelling for like months and months at a time. I quite like what I've currently got, which is that entire digital nomad, although I hate that phraseology.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:the overused cliche
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:I
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:no. Oh,
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:I feel so cringe when I use it, so let's, let's not say that. I work remotely, so yeah, that's the, that's the stage I love just now, and I've recently went sober from everything, with a plan of doing that for three years as well, so my mindset in terms of what I want out of life is, is massively shifted as well.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Wow. It seems like you've been on quite a journey, like internal, external process of growth. what what do you think was your biggest takeaway, if I may ask?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:God, that's a hard question, I think my biggest takeaway, and I think travel's probably brought this out of me, is I know exactly what I want out of life now. I no longer feel any social pressure to behave in a certain way or do certain things. I know that I hate clubs, no interest in it at all. I've not really any interest in that kind of culture, that side of things. Also if someone says, like, let's go and do this certain thing, and I don't want to do it, I don't feel any pressure to go and do that. Like, I know exactly what I want to do and how I want to conduct my life. and I think that's something that I didn't feel in my university years is like I would go with the crowd or what other people liked or what they enjoyed or whatever was cool, basically. and I've shifted massively away from that. I don't have any social media apart from LinkedIn from work as well, which I think helps with that mindset as well, is that like my thoughts are my own and I like what I like and my thinking is. hopefully original in terms of what I want to do, and it's not for the, the social gratification of being able to show off to anyone. So I'd say travel really helped with developing that mindset because every new place that you go, you can essentially reinvent yourself, right? You can, you can go to a new country and you can pretend to be someone entirely different. So just through the repetitions of having those experiences, you can have. Get to a point where you're like, I don't want to pretend to be anyone I just want to be exactly myself and that helps you hone in on what you really like what you really want in life
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:I think what you said about that, one thing that stood out to me was it seems like now you're very much aligned and very in tune with yourself. Um, which I think is amazing because there are a lot of people who just go through their every day or just, you know, they hustle and they work, but then they lose a part of themselves or they shut off that part of themselves and then it just becomes a comparison game or a red race. it's very easy to get stuck in that bubble. Especially when you don't have that perspective. So it seems like travel gave you a bit of that perspective, right?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:yeah, I think so and I think I just love the idea of being able to like blend into a crowd as well Right I think when you're younger, like say for example, you're walking through a shopping mall when you're 21 or something, you're like self conscious, you're like, oh, what people are looking at me? Like, what clothes am I wearing? Stuff like that. But, I mean, if you walk around and you look at people, you don't give a fuck what anyone else looks like. You don't give a, like, they've got entire lives of their own. They don't care a single part about you. You're always like the most important person in your own mind and realizing that objectively, Objectively, you don't matter, is kind of super gratifying and freeing, I think. And I, I just, I love that as an idea. And in terms of accolades, like, there's millions of successful people that are earning a certain amount or building a certain business or doing a certain thing. And in reality, right, if you were to meet them, and they turned out to be a horrible person, what would you do? You wouldn't give a fuck about how many accolades they've earned or anything like that. So it's also inconsequential. I mean, what really, what truly matters is like the content of someone's character, how they treat you, are they kind, are they empathetic, and how do they conduct themselves, as a person? Are they courageous? Like what are their attributes rather than their accolades?
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:The content of someone's character that is a quote worthy phrase, I love that I
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:think that's stolen to be fair, right? I think that's Martin Luther King, maybe. All right. So. Don't
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:I'm going to pretend I don't know that. I think the DM said something, something smart on the podcast. Yeah, but, but
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:I'm pretty sure that's Martin Luther King. Like I'm pretty certain. All right, so do, do not count that as me.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:But with that, right. thank you so much for sharing your story, but we know what's next for you, like yourself or your business in the longterm. Do you have a long term vision for yourself?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Ah, I mean, it's, it is really hard to see. I, so, I, like, I, I journal a lot and I worked out a three, five, and 10 year plan. And the thing that I noticed is that the longer the time period, the simpler my goals were. And I would need to find my journal entry somewhere, but I'm pretty sure my only two goals for a 10 year plan was to be doing something I love every single day and to be able to support the people I love and care about around me, right? As like the three year plan might have been to make a certain amount of money and build a business to a certain degree and become proficient in MMA and learn Spanish. And then it got simpler in the five year plan and the ten year plan was literally be able to do something I enjoy every day and support the people I care about. That's it. Like it doesn't need to get more complicated than that.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:I love that. Simple is sweet and simple can be beautiful as well. And thanks so much for sharing those insights. So one final thing, Liam. Do you have one tip for listeners who are trying to leverage AI but not sure where to start? What is your best tip for them?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:apart from joining AITO report, you mean?
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Apart from that.
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:I mean, the piece of advice I always give people is just try anything. so, like, if you don't know what to do, like, just go through a period of experimentation. My favourite thing to do when I don't know something is just involve myself in that ecosystem. So, if we were to take an example, let's say you don't know anything about AI, what I would do is I'd create a separate LinkedIn account and a separate Twitter account and a separate YouTube account and only follow people in the AI space, right? And just for a month, for the first month of you not knowing what to do, just consume material on Twitter, consume material on LinkedIn, consume material on YouTube. Familiarize yourself with the major players. Anytime you don't understand a key term, Google that key term. Be like, okay, what's an LLM? what is an AI model? What does it mean by this? What does it mean by that? And just slowly over time you'll kinda start to gain an overall picture of what that is, and then from there you'll be like, this particular area of AI maybe interests me most, maybe I'm most interested in the idea of AGI and how that works. And slowly you just find things that pique your interest, and just work down those rabbit holes, like, don't, don't, don't. Don't give yourself any pressure that you need to do something immediately. Give yourself a month of leeway, let yourself relax and just be like, I'm just gonna consume material for a month and then that'll give you the best direction. Because if you start out on day one being like, oh, I need to have a direction by the end of the day, you're going to end up going in a direction you don't even fucking like, you don't even want. So just consume for a month would be my advice for people that don't know where to start.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:And you should definitely consume from the AI to report
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:There we are.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:to start
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:are. Audrey's in a filly, everyone. Audrey's in a filly. She's a sleeper cell.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:a fan Awesome Liam, so where can people find you? How can they subscribe?
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn, just Liam Lawson. Not to be confused with the F1 driver, if any of you guys are into Formula One. There's a very famous, or he's becoming famous. F1 driver named Liam Lawson, so I'm going to have to somehow beat him on the Google rankings over time, I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do my best, and it doesn't help that he's younger and more handsome than me, so it's, it's, it's healthy competition, let's say that, it is, it's difficult, but yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn, Liam Lawson, you can find our community, school. com forward slash the AI report. and then if you just type in AI tool report, on Google, we should come up as one of the kind of first searches. So, yeah, I tool report. behive. com or just the AI tool report. com. They both work.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Thank you again for joining us. It was such a pleasure hearing your stories, insights and having you on the show. And thank you guys for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and hit the bell for more actionable marketing insights. You'll see you next time. Take care.
riverside_liam_lawson_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0013:Awesome. Thank you, Audrey.
riverside_audrey_chia_raw-audio_claire_farwell podc_0014:Awesome.