This entire business idea and plan came together about 3 weeks ago, when I was contemplating my work/life situation. I had just quit a job where I was getting paid very well. I had a team of developers working inside this project, I was an equity owner with hundreds of thousands of shares. The founder was an expert in his domain, but I wasn't feeling the work.
When I say I wasn't feeling the work, I mean that when I woke up in the morning, the first thing on my mind was how much I was dreading seeing my phone due to the toxic messages that would be waiting for me there. I tried everything to get around it. I put the phone in another room. I made a rule not to check my messages until 9am, even though I nearly always get up and start working at 6am. But it was there, and the only way I can describe it, there's a vibe from the phone that was making me sick.
So, I was driving down for one of my last radiation treatments — whacking out a recurrence of cancer — in the middle of a huge Swiss snowstorm, listening to Wayne Dyer's The Power of Intention. Kind of woo-woo. Brilliant book. But it will make you do crazy things.
I decided on the spot that I would quit. By 8pm that evening, I'd put in my notice. A non-negotiable stepping away from my daily duties that was going to be extremely difficult to unwind. For me, and the founder. But I didn't care.
The next day I took on a 50% co-founder role. That didn't work out either. It was the vibe too. The other co-founder is a fantastic guy. One of the best developers I've ever met and I've told him countless times that if I could harness his talent with my counter-opposing energy, we would crush the AI age that's upon us. I hope that happens. But for the project we were on, I could tell it wouldn't work. So I cut that loose.
I started calling this feeling vibe living. I didn't know what else to call it, because there's no other word that captures exactly what was making me do these crazy things. You'll hear me talk about this a lot because it's how I live my life now. Through a vibe, and that goes for everything. If the vibe is good and pure, I follow it despite how terrified I am or how insane it feels. If the vibe is off, I move away from it or cut it out from my life. If there's a weak vibe, I let it sit until it becomes clear. Move towards it, or away from it.
So How Does This Relate to Building an AI Co-Pilot?
You start with the vibe and you start living it.
Let's design your perfect day, and let's put a loose time frame on it. For me that is 12 months. I love the saying — most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a year.
Then, I tie it with a fantastic book called The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. If you haven't read it, the entire book distills down to a single question that Keller calls the Focusing Question. It's deceptively simple, and it will rewire how you think about priorities if you let it. The question is this:
"What's the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"
You can point that question at any time horizon. Your life. The next five years. This year. This month. Today. The power is in the cascading focus. You answer it for the year, then the month, then the week, then today. Every answer narrows toward the single action that matters most right now.
For me, that started with what I wanted my day to look like. Because if you can't describe the day you want to be living in 12 months, you don't have a target. You have a wish.
My Perfect Day
I'm someone that likes to work. I also know that I probably won't ever stop having projects. But those projects will change. Maybe I'll attack a language, or a musical instrument, or a type of cooking. But for now, I'm not close enough to retirement to stop hustling.
So here it is.
Wake up early. Have morning tea with my wife and just have chill time to chat. I love this time of the day. Then do 4 hours of deep work. This could be writing, prospecting if it's needed, or something that requires deep focus.
That puts me at around 11am and the main and most important part of my day is now done. No matter what, I've done something that has moved me towards my one thing.
The midday is a block where I go outside and enjoy the day. Maybe I surf, or ski, walk the dogs, have a long lunch with a mate, or my wife. By 2 or 3, I go and do some brain candy work. Calls, foundation work, interview a grantee for the Finn Wardman World Explorer Fund.
The other thing I plan out — who do I want to be doing this with? I want a small team of uber-competent people that are all experts in their domain. A 10x developer blasting through AI ops tasks or building custom AI layers for our most important enterprise clients. A 10x designer blowing people away with designs. A 10x ops doer, purely executing on the systems and handling clients, and ideally AI-automating all of our systems. Between the ops person and the dev, we are building our own unbreakable AI automations to handle our clients. All of whom are friends, and we have real relationships with. Pure vibe living. If a client is difficult, follow the vibe and get rid of them. Under no circumstances will we work with lame clients. The ones we like, we develop deeper relationships with and lean in to deliver world class work. Because it feels good helping people that can't do this type of work themselves.
Your Turn
So, that's it. Use any of the AI models — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, whatever you're comfortable with — and figure out what your perfect day looks like in 12 months.
What are you doing?
Who are you doing it with?
How much time are you spending on each section of the day? Break it down.
Then start mapping it out in your AI coach, and make some non-negotiable rules so that you set up a map to get there.
Tomorrow, we'll connect the other pieces that will not only make this possible, it's going to make it inevitable.
Ciao ciao baby.
Revenue: $0 (more on that next week though) | Clients: 0 | Prospects: 5
Day 8 of 365.
This is Part 1 of the AI Co-Pilot Series. Part 2 drops tomorrow.