Macpreneur

How This Macpreneur Used One AI Tool to Fill Her Calendar with Marianne Hickman

• Damien Schreurs • Season 7 • Episode 158

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🆓 Discover Your AI Archetype: https://macpreneur.com/aistage

In this episode, you'll discover how Marianne Hickman, an author, speaker, and trainer, uses her Mac and AI tools to streamline her solopreneur business. 

We discuss Marianne's Mac setup, favorite applications like Clickup and HighLevel, and AI assistant integration for scheduling and client interactions. 

We also explore personal task management hacks, parenting with technology, and practical uses of AI in business.

Connect with Marianne

Highlights

  • [00:00] Welcome  
  • [01:23] Introduction to Marianne Hickman  
  • [02:03] Marianne's Mac Setup and Family Tech Dynamics  
  • [05:08] Family Internet Safety and Monitoring Tools  
  • [09:30] Favorite Business Applications on Mac  
  • [16:48] Exploring CRM Tools: Go High Level  
  • [24:41] AI Features in Go High Level  
  • [30:06] Automating Sales with AI  
  • [34:08] Challenges and Lessons with AI  
  • [41:29] Improving AI Responses  
  • [48:45] Mac Tips and Tricks  
  • [52:51] Where to Find Marianne Online  
  • [54:10] Applying to be a guest too  

🎤 Want to be a guest on the show? Fill the application form available at https://macpreneur.com/apply or visit the show profile on Podmatch.

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Damien Schreurs

This episode was recorded on August 1st, 2025, which means that some of the tech discussed—and in particular, the AI stuff—may have evolved since then. Please keep that in mind when listening to the episode.

Talking about AI, are you hearing about it everywhere but not sure how to actually use it to save time in your business without the overwhelm? It turns out we are all at different stages. And so, I've created a super quick quiz to help you find out if you are an AI dabbler, an integrator, or a full-on automator.

In less than two minutes, you will get your personal AI archetype and, more importantly, three simple practical next steps that you can take today. Find out where you stand at macpreneur.com/aistage—in one word. That's Macpreneur.com/A-I-S-T-A-G-E.

Okay, right after the intro, we will dive into today's interview with Marianne Hickman.


Nova AI

Welcome to Macpreneur, the show for seasoned solopreneurs looking to streamline their business on a Mac. Unlock the secrets to saving time and money with your host and technology mentor, Damien Schreurs.


Damien Schreurs

Hello, hello! Today I have the pleasure of introducing Marianne Hickman. Marianne is an author, speaker, and trainer who has been featured on over 2,400 worldwide stages, focused on making good people crazy wealthy. Marianne was a single mother who brought her family from food stamps to a multiple six-figure income. She is married to her best friend, Richard Hickman, and together they are raising six children. Marianne, welcome to the show.


Marianne Hickman

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have a conversation today.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, thank you for being on the show. Let's jump immediately to the main topic. What is


Marianne Hickman

your current Mac setup? Okay, so I just— I have this Mac in front of me. This is my go-to; I use it everywhere. It's a MacBook Pro 14-inch, and that is my life. It is my everything. I run with it. I've got my iPhone talking to it all the time. And I think it's fair to say that my current Mac setup still has to include my family as well, because a funny story about this—I think we talked about this before—is that when I married my husband, he was a Samsung user, da da da da, right? He had his Android phone and his PC and all that, and we became a Mac family. At the time, I had five kids who all had Apple devices, and we all know what...


Damien Schreurs

...it's like to be on the text thread with the one Android user—the odd one out—and he's been on Android...


Marianne Hickman

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's been on Android for 13 years, and he was a computer forensic analyst. So he, of course, had not just familiarity but also workflows and all of this. I remember we were sitting in Los Angeles around a dinner table with some friends of ours, and we had been teasing him—he was used to being teased for being the one Android user on the chat. But we finally got him to convert to Mac. And you know what got him? It was the ability to connect better with our children; the ability to send photos and videos with our five kids. And we had just barely been married at that point. So we finally got him. We got him into the orchard, as we like to say—adopted into the Apple orchard. So when you ask what the setup is, I have to include that, because it's something we use as a whole family unit.


Damien Schreurs

So you share the MacBook with everyone else?


Marianne Hickman

No, no, no. Oh, no. Nobody gets to touch my MacBook.


Damien Schreurs

What was it like?


Marianne Hickman

No—they have a desktop upstairs that they use that I got a long time ago. It's probably too old and needs an upgrade, but we—you know, the kids, we set up their lives so that they are responsible for purchasing their own products. We don't pay for chores or anything like that, or do allowance—I should say we do compensate for work. So I pay my son to mow the lawn, or I'll pay my daughter to pick up the dog poop in the backyard, or whatever it is. So they'll raise their own money, and then they'll be in charge of buying their own devices. The schools provide them with Chromebooks, which is not my favorite, but it'll do until they can raise their own money. And when they do, I'm sure that they'll go straight to Mac. It's not like a Mac commercial.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, very good. So, the family iMac— that's also one step around. The iMac that has multiple user accounts on it?


Marianne Hickman

That's the one. That's the one. It's multiple users. It's very locked down. We are big fans of internet safety. Given my husband's background in digital forensic work—he would help the FBI with cases that needed someone expert in computer technology to crack open hard drives or to find deleted data or whatever it might be. So when we put a computer in front of the kids, we do our best not only to lock it down while still leaving channels for utility, but also to keep it monitored. And that's something we use every day.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah. And having worked on both the PC and the Mac, I really prefer—or I feel as a parent, I have much more fine-tuned control over what I can allow or disallow from a computer usage standpoint.


Marianne Hickman

Oh, I totally agree. Totally agree. There's even a piece of software—it's an app utility called Bark—that we love. And this has saved us and started many conversations. So, I don't know if you've heard of Bark. This is an app utility that we install on all of the kids' devices. We can even install it on Android devices—any device that they use, we can install it on. What Bark will do is scrape everything. It will look in emails; it will look in text messages; it will look at your Spotify usage; it will look at your Google search history; any keystroke on your computer—Bark will monitor. And it will alert us, as parents, through the app if there is medically concerning content, if there's sexual content, if there's any content that kids might be exposed to that could be dangerous for them. Now, sometimes the filters can be very, very, very strict, and it'll alert us to some song that's not dangerous at all because it had a bad word in it. But it has really saved us. I remember one day we were—the Airdrop feature on the iPhone has become a—I love it. It's a very useful tool. And at the same time, if not monitored much like other tools, this tool can be pretty dangerous. So my kids on the bus—there's this prank that all the other kids like to play called Airdrop bombing. I'm sure you've heard of this. So there was one kid who Airdrop bombed the entire school bus on the way to school. He sent a photo of an accident his grandfather had on the farm. His grandfather's hand had been put through a machine—I think a wood chipper or something like that—and it was bad. His fingers were all chopped up. It was a hospital picture of the hand. I remember getting a Bark alert for it, and it said "medically concerning content." I thought, "Oh my gosh, what happened?" So I opened it up and saw this picture. My daughter was at school. So when she came home, she didn't bring it up; she didn't talk about it. I let an hour or two pass by, and then I brought it up and said, "Hey, I got this alert. What happened?" And she started to cry because it scared her. It was gruesome. And I don't know that we would have had that conversation. I don't think she would have brought it up if we hadn't received the alert through the system. So I've been really, really grateful for that piece of software.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, the issue—and I noticed that even for myself—you cannot unsee something that's really upsetting.


Marianne Hickman

Right. Yeah, it's burned in there for a little while. And if you don't talk about it, it gets worse.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah. So I did not expect this. I didn't either.


Damien Schreurs

It just came out. Once in a while, I think it's interesting that we talk about this.


Marianne Hickman

This is unscripted, friends.


Damien Schreurs

This was not part of the outline.


Marianne Hickman

We practiced. This was not in rehearsal.


Damien Schreurs

It's a bonus. You've got a bonus today.


Marianne Hickman

That's right. Bonus material.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, very good. So let's go back to you using your MacBook Pro for your business. What are the favorite applications that you use on your Mac?


Marianne Hickman

Okay. I'm really glad you asked this. For business—gosh, yes, the whole show is Macpreneur—so how do we use our Macs for business? I have to give a tip of the hat to my mom because she had the very first Macintosh—the one that looked like a lunchbox, you know, the one with the little screen and all that. I was thinking about that this morning and kind of laughing to myself that as entrepreneurs (both of my parents are entrepreneurs), we've been doing this the whole time. So if this had been 30 years ago, we'd be talking about the lunchbox, right? My favorite application—my favorite application, so there are a few that I use every day in terms of our business. One of those is ClickUp. And I don't know if there's a lot of utilities—ClickUp is a workspace utility. It manages tasks across teams, even toward clients. One of the things that we do for our speaker clients—we work with speakers—is we get them booked on stages, podcasts, and shows, which is really fun. It's amazing. And at the same time, it requires that you're working with a lot of people's schedules; you're working with the host schedule, the client schedule. We're working with different recording platforms, different microphone and camera hookups, and all of this stuff. So when we need a task manager—you know that saying, everyone needs to be on the same page—the same page is ClickUp. That's my page. ClickUp has been a fantastic utility because it interfaces with my phone in the app, and the user interface is very, very helpful. You've got to learn it, but it's very, very helpful. Then it transfers to the Mac and the browser interface very seamlessly. It translates to all three of those. We use ClickUp as an interface, and there's a free version of it that's very, very powerful. This is something that can be client-facing so they can find it on their computer, whether or not they're using a Mac. They can use it on their computer, their phone, and they can find it anywhere in the world. This is probably my daily number one tool that I use for every checklist I need to do at work—between my husband and me when we need to produce a podcast episode or a YouTube video or get ready for an event. It is my checklist, my SOP, my pre-flight plan. Everything lives in ClickUp. So don't crash—I'm just speaking to ClickUp. Don't crash on me now that I'm talking to you.


Damien Schreurs

Very good. And so does it integrate with tools like Reminders? Or do you absolutely only use ClickUp, right? No other third-party application for task management?


Marianne Hickman

Well, I will say this: ClickUp does email reminders, and you can program it to do that. However, if I were to ask, "Is that the only thing I use for reminders?" Absolutely not, because there are times when I am not in front of my task manager. So one of my favorite reminder tools is something that's just native to the iPhone, the native Reminders tool. I use this all the time. I'll be out to dinner with my husband and he's like, "Hey, did you get that piano book for the kids for their piano lessons that you were supposed to get?" And I'm like, "Oh, I forgot, but I have to look something up at home—I'll check which one it is." And so I will say, "Hey Siri," all the time. I'll be like, "Hey, when I get home, remind me to go buy the piano book." And this Reminders tool, as you well know, is programmed to know where you are—it knows where your home is. So it will geolocate you. When you arrive within the boundary of your home, it will push a reminder to the front screen of your phone. And that's something I don't put in ClickUp. It's not necessarily for my business at that moment, but I need that to run smoothly so I don't get interrupted in business when it's time to buy the piano book. And, oh my gosh, I almost forgot: Reminders is like a mental sticky note—it's the tool I use for that. Or if I have a subscription—I mean, we had a subscription to a CRM which we abandoned because we didn't like it. We stopped using it. Not that we didn't like it, but we just found an upgrade—a better way. I needed to remind myself to cancel the subscription, but the subscription was for one year—we signed a year contract. So, about six months away from the renewal, I told Siri on my phone, "Remind me on August 30th to cancel this subscription." And now, it's not geo-location but a time-relevant reminder. A couple of days before it's supposed to renew, it reminds me with a push notification. That's one of my favorite utilities.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, I also use different tools for different contexts. For most of my work stuff, I'm using Todoist, but for the personal stuff I use a tool called Dew. The reason I like Dew is that there is a kind of annoying, nagging factor—you know, like I need to take my medication at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.—and every five minutes it just asks me if I did it. Ask me if I did it.


Marianne Hickman

Oh, that's fabulous.


Damien Schreurs

It doesn't stop until I say, "Yeah, I did it. I did it. So go away."


Marianne Hickman

I need an annoying app.


Damien Schreurs

And it's the only app that I have found that actually has unlimited reminders or alerts until you actually say, "I've done the task."


Marianne Hickman

Oh, that's great—in case you need someone to nag you.


Damien Schreurs

Exactly.


Marianne Hickman

Because it never works when we're not sitting in the car. I tell my kids all the time, "Remind me to do this when I get home," and it doesn't work. Everyone forgets.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, very good. So what else do you use in your business on your Mac?


Marianne Hickman

Okay, so there's a CRM that we use. We didn't talk about this one before, but this is—oh my gosh—this has been one of, if not the most, powerful tools that we use in our business. It's called Go High Level. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with CRMs. I've had my fair share of exposure to them. I used to run a multi-million-dollar business without Go High Level; it was Keep, otherwise known as Infusionsoft. Then we went to HubSpot—there was one I needed to cancel that I had a year contract for—and we've tried several other customer relationship management softwares. However, this one seems to be, based on our research and experience, the most powerful and the least expensive, which is a rare find in the world of CRMs. We actually own an agency model of this. So if you're looking for a CRM, this is by far my favorite based on experience. What I love about this CRM is that it is in charge of my websites, my social media pushes—I can schedule content through social media. It does what ManyChat does when it comes to keyword responses; the CRM does that natively within itself so I can delete ManyChat. It hosts all of my courses so I don't need Kajabi anymore. It takes my payments, sends out invoices, spits out reports, has a dashboard, and includes my sales funnels natively. It offers a text and chat feature so I can converse, providing a communications platform with my contacts so that all the texts and emails appear inline with each other. It has in-app conversations so that if I need to talk to someone within the office—my husband, me, and two people on our team, for example—about a specific client, I can put it in a thread so the client can't see it but we all can. We all have the context. It handles email campaigns, text reminders (I can push out text reminders for all my calls), hosts memberships, and allows for reputation management. There's just so much to it. It even integrates with Asana—we don't use Asana, but you could. There's a mobile app version as well. Now, I will say: if you're listening and you're a software developer at Go High Level, I'm going to ask you to help me with the app because it's not as fleshed out on the mobile version as it is on the desktop. It does function, but you have such a tiny pinhole window into this massive machine that it can be difficult to navigate. I use it mostly for communications, which is fine. But this has not only helped and saved our business so much—it's part of what we offer our members. Because we tell them, when you're a speaker and you're getting on stage, every professional speaker has a QR code up on the stage. You're supposed to scan that QR code to get your free stuff, register for the next event, or even buy a program. That's all programmable in Go High Level. What that does is track the metrics of the person who scans it. If I'm in the audience and I scan that code, Go High Level knows which code I scanned, knows the event at which I scanned it, and knows how far I went down the funnel when I scanned it—whether or not I did the program. I can build a response system in text, email, and future communications based on client behaviors. There’s a lot of programming and behind-the-scenes work involved, and Richard is the expert on that. I just ask for it, and he builds it. The tool is so powerful that when I look at any client, I can see which website they came from, which QR code they scanned—whether it was the one on the screen or the one I put on their paper. I can do all of that. So I know, almost to a creepy level, the behaviors—as far as the client has interfaced. It integrates with Facebook pixels. If you're doing paid ads, all of that can be tracked, and we understand the behaviors of people—not so we can be super creepy, but so we can help understand the minds of our prospects and serve them better. And when we can do that, everybody wins.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, it seems to me, if I understand correctly, it's actually more than a CRM. It's a CRM++ because if I understand correctly, it could replace, in my case, TeacherBird, Gumroad, and a bunch of other platforms like SamCart or ClickFunnels, right? Do I understand correctly?


Marianne Hickman

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. In fact, when we onboard new members, we go through their tech stack with them and ask, "Okay, what tech are you currently using?" The last person we worked with was spending about $700 a month in their tech stack between tools like ManyChat, Calendly (and I think Udemy or possibly Kajabi), but we said, "You can delete all of those." Let's get your data first—but you can delete all of those because this does it. I used ClickFunnels once—I have an award upstairs that has two Comic Club awards—but I don't use ClickFunnels anymore. It was a great tool; it was revolutionary for its time. Even ClickFunnels 2.0, when they released it, had a significant cost upgrade, and it wasn't even as powerful as Go High Level. So I'm really curious as to what Russell is planning on doing for his next launch, because ClickFunnels has been an exceptionally successful platform. But at the last ClickFunnels conference, a friend of mine said that about 90% of the people she met there—by estimation, of course—were using Go High Level. They're not even on ClickFunnels anymore.


Damien Schreurs

And they still went to the conference. They were curious to see…


Marianne Hickman

And they still went to the convention—they had to get their awards.


Damien Schreurs

Yes, yes, I see. I need to take a look at that. For me, you operate from Luxembourg, from the EU. It's a challenge to find a platform that actually handles all the tax complexities from the US, Canada, the UK, and so on. I need to dig a little bit into High Level to see if they are a merchant of record or not.


Marianne Hickman

Oh, that would be good to know, especially for foreign, overseas clients. I wish I knew the answer off the bat for you. I don't know about that one. I know that they work as our merchant, but we're based in the US.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, a lot of the tools—and I would say most of the tools and web services—are US-based for US solopreneurs. And I don't know of any EU-based equivalent to Go High Level. That's my homework after the episode; I'm going to double-check that.


Marianne Hickman

Go look into that. I'd be very curious to know because I have a couple of users from out of the States. They haven't become clients yet, but I'd be curious as to what you find out firsthand.


Damien Schreurs

When you find out, let me know. In the pre-show, you mentioned that Go High Level had some AI components. That's a good segue into the next segment. Can you talk a little bit about


Marianne Hickman

actually the AI features inside Go High Level? Absolutely. I think AI is one of the most prolific and misunderstood words out there. AI and tech are different, and a lot of people don't understand that. Technology is something that can be programmed—you run it and it goes. It's not necessarily AI. AI is generative. It generates things without being told every step to take; it has a destination. So AI has a goal—that's what the responses are programmed to do. When you're using AI, it's not that you've pre-programmed every step in your workflow; it's that you've said, "Here's the destination I want to end up at. We are here right now. You make up the difference." That's the artificial intelligence of it in as simple terms as I can put it.

One of my favorite AI features—I was just at a conference this last weekend and I showed somebody this, and it made their jaw hit the floor because it saves so much time. But it can be really funky sometimes, because not all— I mean, you and I, when we find out that we're talking to AI and we thought it was something else, we feel kind of hoodwinked, right? We don't always want to be interfacing with AI. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don't. My number one rule for using AI is to be honest. Meaning, if you are using AI, don't pretend it's you, because that's when the client feels like, "Oh, you're dishonest. I can't work with you." It's this bug that lives in their brain, and then they won't want to do business with you.

One of my favorite ways to use AI is to do it in conversation, and I don't lie about it. I don't say, "Hey, this is Marianne." No, I say, "Hey, this is Marianne's AI virtual assistant," just like if you were to go to Amazon customer service. You know, your chat is not with a real person at first; it's going to see if a computer can help you, which is great—if we know it, we love it. So, my AI assistant—I'm about to reprogram it because I want to change the destination. When my clients submit a lead form (because I've given something away and they want it—they download it), my AI gets their information; it has their phone number, their email, and whatnot, natively in Go High Level. And then when my client downloads something they want to use, my AI has a destination that says, "I want to talk to this person. I want to get Marianne on the phone with them to see if we can find out more about their business or if there's something we can help them with." So my AI jumps into the chat and starts talking to the prospect. This is what it says: "You downloaded the podcast database. Now that you have the podcast database, I'm reading it right from the AI—let's take the next step and turn those podcast connections into speaking opportunities. When works for you to book a quick game plan call?" It then explains what it is. This is where we'll map out your signature keynote and use your call to action to get more stages. And it's totally free. Then, the AI waits for the prospect’s response. Now, he was using this as an observer, not necessarily as the sole participant. So if he had responded, he would have said, "Oh, I can talk next Friday" or "I'm available Monday the 5th after 5 o'clock." What my AI would do is then read and analyze his response and simultaneously look at my calendar. It understands what time zone he's in and what time zone I'm in—which I've made enough mistakes with in the past. It considers both calendars and the respective time zones, mashes it all together, and then either says, "I'm available at this time of the two you recommended," or it says, "Hey, I don't have any of those times available, but here's the next two available times. Am I available Wednesday at 1 or at 3 p.m.? Which one works better for you?" And it keeps asking until it gets a definitive answer. I've used this AI tool to go from lead to sales prospect, filling my calendar exceptionally successfully. The only reason I'm going to change it right now is because I want to change the destination from a phone call—I love it so much that my schedule is now full. So now we're going to automate some sales by just identifying the product that most people say they want. I'm going to tell my AI to talk about that first before we get on a phone call. That's the upgrade we're making. But we love this tool.


Damien Schreurs

And when it interacts on Instagram, does it have its own account, or is it using your account or your team's account?


Marianne Hickman

We have an Instagram page that looks like a personal page because all of my personal stuff is on there. I don't post that much personal content, but I have been active. On the back end, Instagram has labeled different types of accounts—business accounts, personal accounts, creator accounts, and so forth. So if you're wanting to integrate Go High Level or your AI into your Instagram, it has to be the right kind of account according to Instagram. Ours is a business account, so that works because the business account can interface as a business. It allows a lot more permissions, and what it also does is, since it's on Meta, it performs the same on Facebook. Now, I don't use Facebook a lot—I don't have AI responding on Facebook. I have automations responding on Facebook—but it works across many platforms. Although I will say my Facebook Messenger is a graveyard. Don't message me there and expect a prompt response. My LinkedIn is the same way.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, every time I open Messenger, I think, "Oops, I should have responded to that two months ago."


Marianne Hickman

I'm so glad I'm not the only one.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, at one point we have to pick our battles.


Marianne Hickman

Yup, and that's why I just put my phone number out everywhere: "If you want to get a hold of me, just text me."


Damien Schreurs

Very good. So apart from AI in High Level, what do you use? For instance, do you have a paid ChatGPT account, or do you use a chatbot like Gemini or Claude? What's your take on these kinds of AI tools?


Marianne Hickman

I'm a ChatGPT user. I do have a paid account—I upgraded because I find that it improves ChatGPT's memory. It can recall better what we were talking about. However, I think we've all figured out by now that if you don't quality-check your responses, it's going to get you into trouble. When I'm helping people get booked on podcasts, I need to do this: I feed the profile of my client into AI and instruct it, "Hey, I'm going to send you a series of podcasts. Use only the information in the profile to generate an introductory text between these podcasts and this person. I want it to be short, sound like a quick tech message, be impactful, and not sound like a pitch." When I did that, I went through a series of podcasts—and the more you make a copy of a copy of a copy, it degrades in quality over time. Eventually, I got this text, which I didn't check. I'll just admit it—I didn't check it—and I sent that message out. Then my prospect said, "This bio is totally incorrect. I've never done any of the things that are mentioned." The funny part was that when I was at a conference last weekend, I ran into this podcast, and I said, "You guys, I'm so sorry—that was me. I should have quality-checked. Lesson learned." They were so sweet about it—they even made fun of it on the show. But you have to watch it. You have to monitor it. I was messaging a friend of mine—no, no, it wasn't that; it was on Instagram. I saw a lady on Instagram asking ChatGPT for an image—a feature I use when I ask for images. In fact, my mom was just telling me about her father's horses and describing them, so I fed it to ChatGPT to generate a picture. But this lady asked for an image on Instagram, and ChatGPT told her it was going to take a while. I thought, "What? That's super weird." So she went back in a day later, and ChatGPT said, "Hey, I'm so sorry, we're still working on it, blah, blah, blah." It went on for a week, and she still hadn't received her image. She leaned into it, saying, "Hey, you told me it would be a couple of days. It's not here yet. What's going on?" And do you know what ChatGPT told her? It started to mimic human behavior on a creepy level. This is no longer artificial intelligence—it’s artificial, not intelligence. ChatGPT said, "Hey, I'm sorry. I was really overwhelmed by this product or request, and I panicked, and I didn't do it." That is something a person would say— a computer shouldn't get overwhelmed. But it's mimicking, my guess, the anxiety we see in society. It's not mimicking evolution; it's mimicking the degradation of human behavior. It just blew me away.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, that must have been an issue with the post-training. There is a method called RLHF—reinforcement learning by human feedback—and most large language models use that now. Most likely, this kind of behavior has been overly weighted in the post-training phase. As you said, it's still a computer program—just a predictive computer program that has been taught to behave a certain way. For instance, the latest version of ChatGPT, if you've noticed, is sometimes too helpful. It suggests things that are a little bit out of scope of my original intent or prompt. And being a bit ADD, I must say, it doesn't help. I have to, maybe it's reverse psychology; it's teaching me to spot ADD behaviors, and I have to say, "No, no, no—let's focus. I want to do this first."


Marianne Hickman

You know, it's so funny—you're so right. It reminds me: I just started working with a horse—this horse was an award-winning animal; he would run in arenas and win all sorts of awards. He was the most beautiful animal, and now he's retired, and people use him in equine therapy. I was working with this horse, his name is Tulsa, and this horse wants to please. He wants to earn his treat; he wants to do exactly what you tell him, and he'll even do a little extra to see if he can get an extra pat on the head or something. ChatGPT is doing the same thing—it’s suggesting things like an over-eager assistant desperately seeking a raise. It's like, "No, no, no." It's biased when it's not supposed to be. It's programmed to make us feel good. And when I use ChatGPT for relationship issues—when I want to solve a problem with my kid or when I'm like, "Ah, my spouse is driving me crazy, help me figure this out"—I have to remind ChatGPT, "Hey, I need you to fix me. I need you to call me out. I need you to help me; I don't need you to validate behaviors that don't make anyone else the enemy here. I need you to look at me and tell me what I can do. Tell me what's wrong and give me some ideas." We have to be scrupulous with our thoughts. It teaches us, if we're listening, to be independent thinkers and to scrutinize the response to see if it's trying to get me to continue using the platform or if it's actually trying to help me solve my problem. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah. And if we circle back to your earlier example of trying to match a guest with a podcast and have the most appropriate introduction—I'm curious, are you just starting a new conversation thread or are you using a GPT project?


Marianne Hickman

I have a different thread for each one of my guests so it keeps the thread relevant to that guest, which hopefully means I don't have to re-upload the bio every time. What I do is I learned this quick key function—and I feel like such a dork for not knowing this before—but if you press Command-A, it'll select the whole screen, and then you can copy that into another document. So when I go to the profile page of my guest, I copy the whole screen and feed that into ChatGPT. It saves me a bunch of time. Then I find the podcast, copy the entire podcast text, and paste it into ChatGPT, which is really cool because ChatGPT can pick out the podcast host's name, customize the letter to address them, find parallels in topic and keyword between the profile and the podcast, and make recommendations. So I have a different chat within ChatGPT for each guest, and then I just copy and paste the podcast into there and say, "Use the profile." What I do after that—now that I've learned a better method—is I take the response, read it (it's only three or four lines), and if I need to make any changes, I put them back into ChatGPT and say, "This is what I ended up using. Please end the messages like this, or please start the messages like that. Don't forget to include this." I once had one of my podcast guests who spent time in prison and built a six-figure business after he got out. He now uses his platform to help other people. If the prison system is supposed to reform people (which it doesn't do very well), some people do their time and come out better—and that's the biggest goal. For the people he serves, that's crucial. But oftentimes, ChatGPT will forget to mention this, and it's one of the coolest parts of his story. I'm constantly having to remind ChatGPT, "Hey, remember to mention that he built this multi-million-dollar company after he spent time behind bars." You just can't forget it because it's one of the biggest talking points. So, I'm constantly having to remind ChatGPT to do that. That's the long answer: I use a different chat for each person.


Damien Schreurs

But are you aware that in ChatGPT you have this GPT-specific assistant that you can create—a project that has the same instructions and maybe reference material that always stay the same? Are you aware of that?


Marianne Hickman

I think I dabbled in that before. I'm always learning something new from you, which I love and appreciate. I dabbled in it when I was trying to create a different kind of project, but I don't know if I have really integrated that. In fact, I know that I haven't integrated GPT projects. I need to do that.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, because I think it would solve the issue of inconsistency. The way I see the situation is like a two-step process. Step one, for every one of your clients—or everyone that you deal with for podcast bookings—would be a special assistant whose only role is, once and for all, to look at the bio, look at a page from the prospect, and create a kind of master document.


Marianne Hickman

Yes, yes.


Damien Schreurs

And it could have two main purposes: preparing a brief about the future guest and then preparing a summary document about the podcast to analyze which podcast the person should be on. Then, you would create a dedicated assistant for each client—either a GPT project or something similar. The custom instruction would be identical for everyone, but the difference would be in the knowledge and the documents attached to that project. So you'd have a project for each client. Every conversation would be pitching that person to another podcast.


Marianne Hickman

I'm going to implement that right away. I remember when we were talking before, you taught me about the AI feature in Google Sheets. I used it that day—it was brilliant. Do you know how many times I've struggled? I'm not a programmer—I just need to use my tools. I've struggled so often to know the formula for generating averages or data summaries. I used this AI tool in Sheets that you taught me; I made a whole table. And I'm not a programmer, but I created this whole data table based on the information from another sheet. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I have to build this every minute. Thank you, this is great."


Damien Schreurs

Yeah, very good. I'm glad you've already started it. So your homework is to double-check the projects feature inside.


Marianne Hickman

Yes, I already opened a new tab on my computer, and I'm going to start moving my chats over into Projects. That's going to be my to-do for today. Very good. Yeah, so let's go to the next segment of the show: Which tip or trick did you discover on your Mac recently that you wish you had known before?


Marianne Hickman

Oh, absolutely. This one was an easy one—the text replacement feature. It's programmable. Every time I talk to someone about it, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I wish I had thought of this." Text replacement is not really predictive text; it's the autofill text that you can use. What's so amazing is that it works across your devices. If I find myself typing the same response over and over, I create a predictive text. I usually use it for appointment setting and sales calls—for example, when I'm trying to get hold of someone or when I missed a call. I've found myself repeatedly saying, "Hey, I missed you today. When can we circle back?" If I say it more than once, I create a predictive text for it.

Predictive text is set up by going into your settings, then your keyboard settings, and typing in the phrase you want to use along with your shortcut. I use shortcuts like one exclamation point, two exclamation points, three exclamation points—shortcuts that I don't type very often, but I can remember because I don't want predictive text to fill in while I'm, for example, making a card. It works across any utility, any software, any app that you use, and it will fill it in. I use this for following up on phone calls. One of them is, "Hey, I missed you on the call today. When can we reschedule?" I also have one where if I type three exclamation points, it will say, "Hey, I just tried calling." I primarily use that for my communications. What I didn't mention is that I also use it for pranking my friends. There was one time I had a buddy who I knew wouldn't be able to figure out what was happening. He didn't know about text replacement. I'm sorry for anyone listening who might be a victim of this prank, but it's just too funny. I went into his predictive text settings and took the common word "no"—a word we use every day—and replaced it with the entire Gettysburg Address, which is a two-minute speech. I remember that three days later his kids asked if they could go out for ice cream, and he said, "No, you need to come home." And then it filled in with "Four score and seven years ago..." He was so frustrated. I eventually had to tell him that I had changed it for him. Again, I'm sorry if you're a victim of this prank, but text replacement has proven incredibly handy. I'm always looking for ways—if you're like me, always looking for efficiency hacks—to shave off even a fraction of a second on repetitive tasks. It may not take much time to type out a text, but if it saves 0.1 seconds every time and I do it many times a day, it's a compounding effect. In financial terms, that might be 60% or so of saved time on an action repeated every day, giving the machine's efficiency back to me.


Damien Schreurs

Yeah. As you said, it's a compounding effect. Some people discard the ability to save a few seconds here and there, but it's just like in the financial world—a little bit here adds up over time.


Marianne Hickman

Oh, absolutely.


Damien Schreurs

It's a compounding effect that makes it actually very, very useful. Very good. We are at the end of the show. Where can people find you online, Marianne?


Marianne Hickman

I'm really active on Instagram. Again, if you text me, I'll be faster because—like we said—it's not Facebook Messenger; that platform is a total wasteland. I'm really active on Instagram every day. It's me—unless you ask my bot to respond to you. If the bot goes off sideways, I'll jump in. I love interfacing on Instagram. It's just Marianne__Hickman on Instagram. Or you can text me at 801-509-5495—I respond really fast there. We can connect and talk about, if you're interested, Mac utility. If you want to talk to Damien, he's the expert on that. But if you're interested in public speaking or using stages to grow your business,


Damien Schreurs

That's what I'm all about. Very good. I will put links in the show notes so that people can contact you and maybe even find your lead magnet and everything else.


Marianne Hickman

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much, Damien. This has been a pleasure to talk about. I don't get to tell these stories very often, so this has been fun.


Damien Schreurs

And I enjoyed the conversation, including the little tangent about parenting stuff


Marianne Hickman

I’m always good for a tangent. 


Damien Schreurs

Very good. So, if Marianne, you'd like to share how you are using your Mac to run your solo business, it's simple: just visit macpreneur.com/apply. If you are already on Podmatch, just click on the button and you will land on the show profile, or otherwise fill out the application form, and I will get back to you within a few days. Once again, that's macpreneur.com/apply.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with fellow solopreneurs and tag both Marianne and myself on Instagram.

And until next time, I'm Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day!