Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction: How to Clone Yourself with AI
The host introduces the concept of using AI to replicate a founder’s judgment and decision-making to scale a business.

00:01:48 The Founder Mindset Shift
Overcoming the belief that “nobody can do this like me” by documenting the nuanced judgment calls behind your business processes.

00:02:41 The Problem with Normal SOPs
Standard Operating Procedures often fail because they miss the crucial, unarticulated judgment calls and trade-offs made by the founder.

00:03:38 The Lazy Way People Use AI
A warning against simply asking AI to create an SOP, as it lacks the specific context and nuances of your business.

00:04:33 The 10x AI SOP Method Overview
An introduction to the host’s four-step method: record your process, feed transcripts to AI, have AI interrogate you, build SOP.

00:05:33 Step 1: Record the Process
The importance of recording yourself performing a task multiple times over several weeks to capture various scenarios and nuances.

00:07:26 Why Multiple Recordings Are Crucial
Recording a process over time captures seasonality and different business scenarios, creating a more robust and accurate SOP.

00:08:21 How to Record Effective Looms
The key is to vocalize every decision, explain trade-offs in real-time, and record during different business scenarios.

00:09:18 Live Demo Introduction
The host begins a practical demonstration of his AI process for creating an SOP for his product research and development.

00:10:21 Step 1 of the Prompting Process
Explaining the initial prompt that sets up the AI as an expert SOP architect and instructs it on the process.

00:12:09 Steps 2-4: Feeding Transcripts to the AI
How to upload weekly transcripts and use an “SOP memory” to have the AI continuously update its understanding of the process.

00:13:16 Step 5: The First Interrogation
Prompting the AI to ask numerous questions to ensure the SOP captures your full judgment with 95% accuracy.

00:15:06 Step 7: The Second Interrogation
Pushing the AI further by asking it to ask more questions to achieve 99.9% accuracy in the final SOP.

00:15:33 Step 10: Creating a Training Plan
Using the AI to analyze all recorded videos and create a structured onboarding and training plan for new team members.

00:17:24 Live Demo Walkthrough
A screen-share demonstration showing the actual ChatGPT thread, from the initial prompt to the AI’s 240 interrogation questions.

00:21:17 Why This In-Depth Process Matters
Emphasizing that thorough systems are what truly scale a business, preventing the frustration of team members not executing correctly.

00:22:29 The AI-Generated Onboarding Plan
The AI’s final output, which suggests the best order to present training videos to a new hire for maximum clarity.

00:23:31 The Importance of the Loom Training Layer
Leveraging the recorded videos as training assets, using AI to determine the most effective sequence for onboarding new hires.

00:24:32 Key Takeaways
An SOP is complete when someone can make the same decisions as you, which is achieved by using AI interrogation.

Transcript:

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably thought, hey, is there an ability for me to clone myself? Because if I just had 3 or 4 more people on my team that thought the same way I do that, execute the same way I do, and actually have the same work ethic that I do. Man, our business could be ten x bigger than it is today. Well, today I’m going to show you how to utilize AI to clone yourself in the exact process that I’m following to clone myself in my business. Welcome to the Econ Breakthrough Podcast, I’m Josh Hadley. I’ve scaled my own ecommerce brand from 0 to 8 figures, and I’m actively building towards nine figures in sales. This podcast is where I document that journey and share the systems, the strategies, and the lessons learned in real time so that you can learn what actually matters and scale your own business. Who am I? My name is Josh Hadley. First and foremost, I am a man of faith. I’m a husband to a beautiful wife and the father of four children.

Josh Hadley 00:00:49  I have been selling in the e-commerce space for over a decade now, doing over $20 million in annual revenue and selling multi-millionaire on multiple sales channels including Amazon, TikTok, Shop and Shopify. And I am also the host of the E-com Breakthrough podcast, the number one business strategy podcast for eCommerce entrepreneurs. Today, I’m going to be showing you how I use AI to clone myself in my business. And this doesn’t just mean I’m using AI agents to go clone myself. What I’m actually doing is following a system that allows me to replicate my same level of judgment and decision making throughout the team, whether it’s a team member executing tasks for me, or it’s AI executing tasks for me, the most important thing that you need to do truly is to clone the way you think and the judgment calls that you make that is ultimately what you’re looking for. Most people use AI to just kind of do like average work faster, and you’re completely missing the point. What you’re looking for is to clone yourself, your judgment, your decisions, your voice, and your expertise.

Josh Hadley 00:01:48  Today, I’m going to be showing you exactly how to do that. First, we need to experience a founder mindset shift. All too often I hear, and even myself. I’ve said this at times, hey, nobody else can do this process like myself. And there is one thing that I am currently working on, even in my own business, that I’m still hanging on to because I don’t think anybody else can do this as well as me. And right now I’m getting all of that out from my mind onto pen and paper using AI. And that process for me is research and development for brand new products. The actual truth as to why I said, hey, nobody is able to do this as good as I can is because I never sat down to document how I make the decisions that I make. And it’s not just about hey, follow. Step one, follow. Step two go use helium ten. Go use Cerebro, go use data dive. It doesn’t matter what the tools are, it doesn’t matter the sequence or the order of those things.

Josh Hadley 00:02:41  Although yes, they can be important. The important aspect that you’re missing is the judgment calls that you are making and the nuances that sit in between it. So that’s how I created a new process to utilize AI to pull and extract everything out of my mind, to truly clone the way I think and make judgment calls in the business. Let’s talk about the problem with normal SOPs that you might have created in your business and why they’re lacking, and why just having them documented doesn’t mean that somebody is going to be able to be your clone and go replicate the same level of decision making and judgment calls for you in the business, and you’re just going from a place of memory to try to think through, hey, these are the steps. These are the tools that I’m using. And here’s what ends up happening. What do you do when the information is incomplete from one of those tools? Or how do you know when it’s good enough to cover a lot of different nuances? When do you escalate different situations where it’s like, hey, it’s missing different pieces to this puzzle.

Josh Hadley 00:03:38  This is when it would make sense to, hey, go bring in a tap a manager, or go reach out to another party because the data is incomplete. But here are the different nuances that really get skipped in a normal SOP, it comes down to what matters more. There are always trade offs. Is it speed? Do I want cost? Do I want quality? Is it customer experience? Like these are the little nuances that are going on and firing off in your mind when you’re making judgment calls that are not fully articulated in an SOP. So how are we going to use AI to actually use this? Well, here’s the bad news. Number one, most people are using AI in a very lazy manner. And here’s what I see time and time again. So many people say, well, I heard so-and-so has an AI agent executing their their PPC playbook on Amazon. And I say, okay, well, how did they create that? Or what are you doing to create that? And it said, well, I just go to ChatGPT and I asked it to create a SOP for me and wrong.

Josh Hadley 00:04:33  Like that’s where most people are going wrong. They’re thinking that, hey, this tool, this AI tool, the LLM of choice, whether it’s ChatGPT or whether it’s Claude, you think it knows everything in the world. And guess what? It has a lot of context. It has a lot of memory, and it does have a lot of knowledge, but it doesn’t know all the individual nuances of your life and of your business. And that’s where you need to help it build the judgment calls, the decision trees, and the logic that sits behind the magic that has built your business where it is today. All right, so here is the ten x AI sop method that I follow to be able to clone myself in my decision making. So number one, what I’m going to do is I am going to record the work that I am doing for that specific process. So in my situation that I shared with you earlier, it’s all about product research and development. Nobody can make a product as creatively and as uniquely as I can because I understand the market, I understand my brand, I understand the trade offs, the risk and the reward with the capital.

Josh Hadley 00:05:33  It’s my money that’s on the line. Okay, great. All of those things can be true, but I’ve used AI to be able to extract all of that to where this is a replicable process that somebody else can make the judgment calls. So here’s what you have to do. Number one, record the process. This has been me recording the process over and over and over again for the last four months. So every week on a Thursday, what I’m going to do is look at all the different product opportunities that I’ve got on my list and I am documenting. I am hitting the record button on loom. It’s sharing my screen. But most importantly, I am vocalizing everything that I am doing. And I do this every single week. And guess what? Over the course of four plus months, I’ve got a really robust library of just looms and transcripts of how I’ve thought through various different product opportunities, why I said yes to certain ones, why I said no to others, why I was on the fence with with some of the other ones.

Josh Hadley 00:06:31  Those are the nuances that have been really challenging for me to be able to articulate to somebody else. So here’s step number two. You take all of those transcripts and you’re going to feed it to your AI, your LLM of choice, to help you begin building out this SOP. Step number three, I’m going to make the AI and the LLM interrogate me. So yes, it has all of my transcripts now. Now I want it to ask me in-depth questions to really extract everything out of my brain and to force me to actually make true judgment calls and decision making for the specific processes. I’m not able to dance around like, oh, maybe sometimes if this sometimes if that. Right. Like it’s going to kind of put my back up against the wall and call me out there. So that’s step three. Step number four is it’s going to actually build that final SOP. Once I’ve answered all of those questions and I’m done with that interrogation. So let’s dive into this. Why do you need multiple looms to begin with.

Josh Hadley 00:07:26  And again I’m going to emphasize this point because many people are going to take this and they’re going to be like, oh, great, I get it. I’m going to go document this one process. I’m going to record one loom video, and then I’m just going to feed it to an LLM and have it spit out an SOP. And if you do that, yeah, it’s probably better than some of the existing SOPs that you’ve built. However, it’s missing all of the different judgment calls, the nuances that come up week after week after week when you’re facing new situations, new scenarios in the business, that is the most important thing as to why I want to document this process at a minimum four different times. So my kind of golden rule is for different times. And ideally it’s four different times on four different days and even better, four different weeks. So for somebody that’s saying, hey, I want to like train somebody a new team member to do PPC the way I do PPC and maybe even improve the way we do PPC.

Josh Hadley 00:08:21  But I’m looking for somebody that can kind of take that over well, document that process and record the process of you optimizing your PPC campaigns every Thursday, and do that for a series of three to 4 to 5, six months. Okay. When you’ve done that, you’re now going to have a robust library where you’ve hit different seasonality points in the business, right? Where, hey, leading into Q4, I’m actually making these different decisions for PPC or leading up to a holiday weekend. These are the different decisions I’m making for PPC. It’s by doing it over a series of time that you’re going to get the most bang for your buck, so to speak, if you truly want to clone yourself. It’s doing this on repeat over a longer period of time. Next, how to record the looms that actually work? Again, this is the secret sauce. You record the loom and again just use the loom. Chrome browser extension. But when you are doing this, you have to be vocalizing all the decisions that you are making.

Josh Hadley 00:09:18  So number one, you’re talking out loud while you’re doing the task. Number two, you’re explaining the trade offs in real time. You’re saying, hey, I know normally I would do this, but here’s the data I’m seeing or here’s what’s going on behind the scenes that I’m going to make this opposite call than what I made maybe last week or maybe a month ago. Okay. And then record basically in just different scenarios. And the best part is time is your best like scenario provider for you, right? If you were to record this in January and then record it again in September, there’s different seasonality going on in the business. You’re probably in a different cash position in the business. You’ve got different products that you’re focused on in the business. So use it in different scenarios, and that’s where you’re going to be able to truly, like, clone yourself the best. Here’s what I want to do. I’m actually going to provide like a real demo of how I’ve used AI to clone myself in my decision making for the R&D process of when I greenlight products, when I say no to products, and what again? Once upon a time I thought nobody else could do this as good as me.

Josh Hadley 00:10:21  Well, AI helped me realize I was wrong, and I’m going to show you the exact SOP that was created from it. So those of you that are actually watching this on YouTube, there’s a QR code on the screen right now. Go ahead and scan that QR code, and it’s going to give you access to the exact prompts that I’m using to clone my mind and to follow this process. So now that you’ve got this SOP judgment building prompt pulled up in front of you, we’re going to dive into each of these steps. So here’s what I’m going to do. Step number one I’m going to start with this entire prompt. And for those of you just listening, this prompt is nearly two pages. So I’m not going to read this entire prompt, but I’m going to give you kind of the cliff notes version of this. Step. Number one is you need to explain. You’re an expert operations strategist, an SOP architect, and business process interviewer. I’m going to provide you with one transcript at a time for the same reoccurring business process.

Josh Hadley 00:11:14  Here’s the important context. This is only the first transcript. I may upload additional loom transcripts later, possibly days or weeks from now. Do not assume that this first transcript captures the full process. Your job right now is to create the final SOP. All right. So then I’ve got a whole laundry list of hey, your job is to extract the visible process, identify founder judgment, create a rough draft of SOP based only on what’s currently known. Clearly label what is confirmed versus what is still assumed. Ask clarifying questions okay so we’ve got that. And here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to add this prompt into my LLM of choice. It’s going to come back. And at the very end I’m asking it to say hey say okay or confirmed once you’ve actually read this prompt. So it’s going to repeat back okay. Yep I’ve got this. Then step number two I’m actually going to take that transcript from the loom video. Because I was talking out loud the whole time that you’re narrating all of this.

Josh Hadley 00:12:09  Step number three. Now that I’ve uploaded this transcript, it’s now going to just like spit out, hey, in SOP, it’s going to begin asking me questions. But most importantly, what it’s going to spit out at the very end is it’s going to give you an SOP memory. Okay. And here’s what the SOP memory is going to include once you’ve uploaded this transcript. Number one, here’s its understanding of the current task in its form. Number two, it’s going to give you like the confirmed steps that it understands at this point. It’s going to also provide you known decision rules. Any open questions that it has about your process, assumptions that need to be validated, and any training notes about that loom video and transcript that you provided. So step number three is to take that transcript that you just recorded. That’s a week later. And here’s what you’re going to say. Compare this transcript against the prior transcripts and the SOP memory that is in this conversation. and update the working SOP, the decision rules, the quality standards, edge cases, etc. and then I’m going to provide at the SOP memory and then ask it to confirm, okay, it understands what is going on here.

Josh Hadley 00:13:16  So it’s going to reply back okay. And then I’m going to step number four. Upload the transcript again. So guess what I’m doing week after week after week I’m just following this exact same process. So here’s the next step that I take after we’ve done this. So whether you’re just wanting to do this for four different scenarios right over four weeks, or maybe you’ve done this now for a period of 90 days, here’s what you’re going to do. Step number five is after the final transcript is uploaded, I’m going to say this. Ask me as many questions as you need in order to ensure that this SOP captures my full judgment around the following with 95% accuracy. And then it goes down a laundry list of nine things purpose and outcome required inputs. The the step by step process gaps, decision rules, founder judgment calls, quality standards, Edge cases and exceptions. Escalation rules. Common mistakes. Okay, so guess what’s going to happen. It’s going to ask you a lot of questions now like probably in the hundreds of questions it’s going to ask you.

Josh Hadley 00:14:16  And that’s okay. This is where it’s interrogating you. And it’s on purpose because it’s also going to put your back up against the wall to actually make some judgment calls. And it’s going to test you to say, like when this, when it’s this or that. How are you deciding between the two? So what it’s forcing you to do is get better clarity in how you think and operate as a business owner. And so maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve always just kind of been shooting from the hip. Now it’s going to force you to make a judgment call in your business. And that’s where you begin to actually clone yourself. And that’s when you have the ability to either give this to an AI agent to execute for you, or actually give it to a real human being that can go follow this process. So now we have answered all of the questions, but now I’m going to press the AI that much further. So step number seven I’m going to ask it even more. I’m going to say this.

Josh Hadley 00:15:06  Ask me as many questions as you need to ensure that this SOP or document is 99.9% accurate. Guess what? It’s going to spit out a whole other list of questions. Probably not in the hundreds at this point, but it’s going to ask clarifying questions based on everything that you provided answers to previously. Then once you’ve done that, step number nine is, you know, ask it to please create the detailed SOP that you could then give to a team member or an AI agent, and then Bam, you’re going to now get your very detailed SOP. But we’re not quite finished yet. We’re not finished yet because step number ten, I’m going to upload, I’m going to re-upload all of those loom transcripts. And I’ve labeled them loom one, loom two, loom three, loom four, etc.. And then I’m going to then tell it you are the expert training designer, SOP architect and operations leader. I’ve already created the final SOP, as noted above, right. Because it has this context. By the way, I’m doing all of this within one chat window, by the way, and I’ll show you that demo here in a moment.

Josh Hadley 00:16:10  But I’ve already created the final SOP for this reoccurring business process. I’m now uploading the original loom video transcripts again as separate documents labeled loom one, loom two, loom three, loom four, etc., etc. your job is not to rewrite the SOP from scratch. Your job is to evaluate these loom videos as training assets for new team members and then ultimately like the intent and purpose of this because this is again another like two page, actually three page prompt that you’re giving the AI and you are asking it to say which of these loom videos are worthy of me using as like a training video for a new team member versus one of these loom videos is maybe like going to confuse the team member, going to lead them down the wrong path. And maybe not a great example of the process that I want them to be following. And so what this is going to do is it’s going to ultimately turn your mind and your brain that’s going to clone it into that SOP, but then you’re also going to be able to say, hey, I’ve recorded all these loom videos, and I do think they would be helpful as like onboarding processes for a new team member or something like that, but like, which one should I actually share with them and at what time and in what order? Because most often, you know, as entrepreneurs, we want to move 100 million miles an hour.

Josh Hadley 00:17:24  And so we’re just going to say, well, I’ve recorded 12 different loom videos, so I’m just going to drop them all on that new team member and be like, hey, by the way, I’ve recorded this over 12 different weeks. Here’s a bunch of different scenarios and here’s the SOP that goes along with it. Good luck. And you don’t want to do that. You’re trying to use AI to help it set your new team member up for success. So let’s dive into this real quick. And I want to show you an actual demo. So those of you watching this on YouTube, you can see my screen and you can actually see this entire prompt thread of how I’ve used this in ChatGPT to basically clone the way that I think about doing product research and development in my own business. So again, at the very beginning, here’s that really long prompt that we talked about. And it’s going to say, okay, once I’ve read this. So here it goes. And now I’ve just pasted the text from my loom transcript from my first video that I ever recorded.

Josh Hadley 00:18:17  And then here, it’s already breaking it down into an SOP. And it’s telling me, hey, here’s how you’re analyzing shop keywords for your product and long tail keywords versus maybe generic or browse related keywords, okay. And it’s documenting all of these things a go or no go decision okay. So founder judgment that was captured. The product is worth pursuing. Despite concerns margin profile matters heavily. Sales volume from competitors matters more than perfect keyword volume. Cheap competitors are concerning, but not automatically disqualifying. So it’s going through all of these nuances, as you can see here. And then we’re going to go down all the way through here. Look at all the different questions that’s going to be asking us. This is great. But most importantly it’s now created this kind of SOP memory bank that I’m going to use. So here’s the SOP memory for future looms. And I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to copy all of that. And I’m going to copy that. And then here I’m going again. And I say hey here’s transcript number two for the same reoccurring business process.

Josh Hadley 00:19:22  Below is the SOP memory from the last transcript. Say okay once you’ve read it. And again, I want it to just like I’m trying to keep its train of thought in one sequence. Now, if you’re if you have a bunch of loom videos and you’re just following the process all in one fell swoop, then you don’t need to, like, constantly update the SOP memory here. But if you are doing this one week after another, which is what I’ve done is like, hey, I use, you know, the same chat thread right here, and I reopen it every single week. Now, the reason why you want to provide this SOP memory bank is because like eventually, like the context limits are going to get like hit you if you’re using, whether it be Claude or OpenAI and ChatGPT. So that’s why I’m constantly reminding it of that soppy memory bank. But then finally it’s going to spit out, hey, here’s version number two, because I’ve now uploaded my second Lume transcript. And we’re going to do this on repeat over and over again.

Josh Hadley 00:20:17  You’re going to see me for the step number for the third Lume transcript. I’m doing the exact same thing. Here’s transcript number three for the same reoccurring business process. By the way, here’s the SOP memory bank from the last, conversation that we had. Okay. And then it’s going to go on again and again and again. And then ultimately, like I said, we want it to spit out a final sop, but before we want it to spit out a final sop, I’m going to ask it to interrogate me and I’ll show you how many questions this decided to ask me. Ask me as many questions as you need in order to ensure that this SOP captures my full judgment around the following with 95% accuracy. So purpose and outcome required input, step by step process gaps, decision rules, etc. and here it goes. I will show you the final number of questions that ultimately asked me, and the total number was 240. All right. So that is ultimately like what you’re up against. This truly is going to be an interrogation.

Josh Hadley 00:21:17  But I want to bring you back to what we started this episode with, which is do you actually want to clone yourself? Because systems and process scale your business while distraction and lazy systems, frankly, kill your business. And this is why you’re going to stay in this, like perpetual spiral of hey, I hire a new team member. I give them my SOP, they don’t execute it properly, they start making stupid decisions. And now I’m just frustrated. Nobody can do this as well as I can. My question to you is, did you go through as thorough of a process as to what I’m showing you right here on the screen right now? Is it fun to go sit down and answer 240 questions? No, it’s not like it’s not my favorite thing to do, but I know that this if I do this properly the first time, and if I’m willing to sacrifice a few hours to answer these questions, I know that it’s going to provide me massive leverage of being able to have my mind and my judgment calls documented, and sitting with another team member or an AI agent that will then allow me to scale, because if that’s offloaded off my plate, I can go focus on other growth areas inside of my own business.

Josh Hadley 00:22:29  And so ultimately, after I’ve answered all of those questions, I’m then going to upload all of those loom transcripts again, and I’m going to ask it, hey, how should I share these loom transcripts or these loom videos with a new team member that I might be hiring for this role? And here’s what I ultimately came back with. Right. It’s hey, read. If you’re hiring a new team member first, have them read the SOP. Secondly, watch video number three because it’s the cleanest, strong example of a yes. And then step three watch video number four second as the clearest example of like what a no. Like do not move forward with this product looks like. But then say video number two and number one for later because it has more nuanced trade offs. It could confuse a brand new hire. And so it’s documenting all of this, and it’s basically building out the onboarding plan. For me, this is exactly how I am using AI to clone myself in the business. I want to come back and reiterate why that loom training layer is so important.

Josh Hadley 00:23:31  As to you’ve recorded all of these loom videos. There’s a reason why you’re not just documenting the process using Whisper Flow and just talking into it. There’s a reason why you’ve been recording your screen and talking out loud. The importance is that you’re going to be able to utilize these loom videos as training videos, but don’t just drop all the loom videos on there. That’s why these prompts are so important for you to understand. What could the onboarding process look like and what’s the education that they need and in what order. And so leverage AI to make your onboarding experience seamless for that new hire. So here are the key takeaways that I want you to walk away with. The SOP is not done just when the steps are written out. The SOP is done when someone else can make the exact same decisions that you would without you. And that’s why you’re going to use these processes. Use AI to extract your judgment from your mind. Then use AI. Let it interrogate you to where it’s reaching 99.9% accuracy for making the same decisions that you would.

Josh Hadley 00:24:32  And ultimately, you want to build a system that your team can actually use. That’s the key takeaway from all of this is so many people get frustrated with their team, and they’re frustrated that they don’t work as hard or they don’t get it. Quote unquote. The reason why they don’t get it is because you’ve done a poor job as a business owner getting what is in your mind out on paper so that they understand what your judgment calls are. So if you want access to these slides and also the scripts that I shared with you and this SOP. Here’s what I’m going to ask from you. Okay. So systems and focus start here. The best thing that you could do is leave me a review on the podcast platform of your choice, whether it’s on iTunes, whether it’s on Spotify, it doesn’t matter. But if you would be willing to give me a review, that would go a long way. Secondly, share this with an operator who needs to hear it. And last but not least, drop this episode into your a slack channel or a Facebook mastermind group that you’re a part of, and share this with other people.

Josh Hadley 00:25:33  And if you’re willing to do that, here is the access to that AI prompt library that I gave you in addition to these slides, so that you can go give this to your team, let them go execute this the same way. Ideally, as you scale up, you’re going to need to have some of your best team members turn into leaders and managers of other people. What better way than to clone your best people than to let AI clone them for you and have everything documented? So that same level of judgment and execution happens throughout the organization, and that’s how you scale.