The Carnivore Entrepreneur Show

🎙️ Episode 15: AI, Systems, and Staying Sane. A Carnivore Conversation with Chris Poulter

• Grant Hutchby • Season 1 • Episode 15

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This week, Grant sits down with Chris Poulter. Serial entrepreneur, AI systems architect, and founder of Augmented OS. An unfiltered conversation about how entrepreneurs can use AI, systems, and self-awareness to unlock true performance without burnout.

Chris isn’t your average tech guy. He’s spent the last 12 years building and scaling businesses using smart systems (including his own 7-figure company with zero funding), and now helps others do the same with the power of AI-first thinking.

We cover:

  • Why entrepreneurs are mental athletes, and why your brain needs protein
  • How to use AI like a business partner, assistant, and advisor
  • The hidden cost of poor health for ambitious founders
  • Why your energy and clarity are your real competitive edge
  • A simple formula to avoid burnout and build sustainable success
  • How AI can now analyse your entire health data set and give you real feedback
  • The Focus Rule that helped Chris go from chaos to clarity
  • Why most people build the wrong business (and how to build one that fits you)
  • The 3 must-have capabilities to futureproof your business in the age of AI

Whether you’re tech-savvy or not, Chris breaks down the reality of what AI can do right now, and how to use it to get your time, energy, and money back.

This is The Carnivore Entrepreneur Show, and this episode will challenge how you think about work, health, and what’s truly possible when you align your body, mind, and bank account.

🎯 Free Resources to level up your body, mind and bank account

📥 Download links available in the show footer.

👥 Connect with Chris Poulter:
LinkedIn – Chris Poulter

🌐 Connect & Level-Up

🎁 Free Resource Vault

  • 🥩 Performance Plate Framework — Click Here
  • 🏋️‍♂️ One-&-Done Savage Set + 3 Cheat Sheets — Click Here
  • 🧠 Focus & Flow Journal — Click Here
  • 📈 12-Week Results Sprint Plan — Click Here
  • 📆 Weekly PowerSprint Planner — Click Here

Plug these tools into your routine, share the wins with a fellow Carnivore Entrepreneur, and keep building true wealth on your terms, with strength, energy & purpose.

Short Stay Success:

As entrepreneurs, we're essentially mental athletes. You know, if you want to be good at business, then in the same way that an international athlete needs to treat their body in the right way in order to achieve that. As an entrepreneur, you need to treat your body in the right way in order to achieve that as well, most people really struggle to get enough protein, and protein is super important for many, many reasons. And it's not just if you're building muscles, where clearly it is important, but also proteins are incredibly important for your brain and your brain functioning. So if you're not getting enough protein, then actually you're not going to think of clearly. You're not going to concentrate as well, and you're definitely not going to perform mentally as well as you would do if you're getting more protein.

KG SHORT STAY:

Meat is about your nutrition. It's about protein first. Muscles is all about strength and having the the the ability to do the things that that you want to do. And like said, you know, we're mental athletes as entrepreneurs, and that's why our mindsets got to be good. You need money to make things happen, don't you?

Short Stay Success:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even people who, you know, say, Oh, I'm not driven by money when you really drill into what they want, which might be kind of freedom time, the ability to explore things in one way or another, it always comes back to money, because it's money which gives you that freedom to do what you want,

KG SHORT STAY:

basically just focusing on that one thing until it's successful. Then move on to the to the next thing. Focus acronym. Follow one course until successful. You grant. Hello everyone, and welcome to the carnivore Entrepreneur Show. I'm here with Chris Poulter, and as you know, my name is Grant. I am the carnivore entrepreneur, and Chris is kindly given up his time today to talk to us about lots of different things to do with entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence. But I won't take his glory. I'll pass it over to Chris. Chris, you are our fourth guest on the carnivore entrepreneur, so within within the first five so I'll hand it over to you and let you introduce yourself to our audience.

Short Stay Success:

Nice. Glad to see I'm an early adopter as always. Yeah, yeah. So I guess my background, I started off in music, had a lot of fun, enjoyed the kind of creative side of stuff, but quickly realised there wasn't a lot of money there, and that, like, I was going to struggle to get by in life, if that was all I ever did. And interestingly enough, I kind of started my first business, proper business, I guess, around the age of, like, 25 and very quickly learned that it wasn't music that I was in love with. It was creativity. And much as people think that when you work in music, it's a very creative job, actually it's really heavily constrained, because you're working with an artist who wants a particular sound, they've written a song, and you have a little bit of creative input in there, but realistically, not a lot. Whereas as an entrepreneur, you can solve any problem for any customer in any way that you want with any team, etc, etc. And I just found it was an amazing fit for me. And so yeah, the last 15 years or so, I've been kind of, you know, building businesses and kind of finding, finding what works for me and what does it as an entrepreneur?

KG SHORT STAY:

Excellent. Okay, cool. So thanks for the intro, Chris. I ask this question to everyone that comes on the show. So this is the carnivore Entrepreneur Show. It's all about meat muscles, mindset and money. I want to know what qualifies you to be a carnivore entrepreneur.

Short Stay Success:

So, yeah, I think a lot of these things are very important, and they come back to the some of the other things that you talk about as well. You know, body, mind, bank account, because as entrepreneurs, we're essentially mental athletes. And I know that sounds a bit strange to some people when you kind of say it like that, but for me, I think the breakthrough moment in kind of realising that was when I was looking to get a kind of visa for the US so that I could build my startup out there. And I was talking to a migration advisor and talking about the different visas that you can get. Basically, what it came down to is like, Okay, you need an Rwanda. It's like, well, what's that? And they're like, Well, it's a person of extraordinary ability, and it's the kind of thing. They normally give to, like, international athletes, yeah. So it kind of, it kind of resonated with me, like, wow. Like, actually, you know, if you want to be good at business, then in the same way that an international athlete needs to treat their body in the right way. In order to achieve that as an entrepreneur, you need to treat your body in the right way in order to achieve that as well, you know, okay, I'm sure we've both seen a lot of the a lot the struggle, if you like, as an entrepreneur, is in that kind of mental mastery. If we could just write down what business we want. It would be very easy if we could even just write down the steps that we needed to take. It would be very easy. But it's actually going out there and doing those things, when things get tough, when we're tired, when things don't go away, when we get thrown a curveball, that's the real that's that's the real factor

KG SHORT STAY:

behind success. So it sounds like you're a bit of a serial entrepreneur, Chris and and you've been doing it, doing it quite a while. What's, what is your view on the, you know, the meat and the muscles part of of the carnivore entrepreneur?

Short Stay Success:

Again, I think it feeds into health, really. So I mean, most people really struggle to get enough protein, and protein is super important for many, many reasons. And it's not just if you're building muscles where clearly it is important. And yes, I've had my protein way this morning already, so I definitely a believer. But also, proteins are incredibly important for your brain and your brain functioning. And I mean, I don't know a lot about biology and that side of science, I'll be honest, but like whenever I do look at proteins and how they work, it's a pretty incredible thing, and it's essentially one of the kind of building blocks which your body uses. So if you're not getting enough protein, then actually you're not going to think as clearly, you're not going to concentrate as well, and you're definitely not going to perform mentally as well as you would do if you're getting more protein. And you know, like, hey, what? What more of a glorious and enjoyable way of getting protein? Is there than one of those amazing steaks that you cook up?

KG SHORT STAY:

Excellent, yeah. I mean, the whole point is, is that meat is about your nutrition. It's about protein first muscles. Is all about strength and and having the the the ability to do the things that that you want to do. And, like said, you know, we're mental athletes as entrepreneurs, and that's why our mindsets got to be good. And you know, what's the point in having all of that? If you haven't got any money, right, you need money to make things happen, don't you?

Short Stay Success:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even people who you know, say, Oh, I'm not driven by money when, when you drop, when you really drill into what they want, which might be kind of freedom time, the ability to explore things in one way or another, it always comes back to money, because it's money which gives you that freedom to do what you want, and it doesn't make you greedy. To acknowledge that and say that just makes you realistic, right? This is the world we live in. So,

KG SHORT STAY:

yeah, excellent. So on to some of the other questions then. So Chris, we first met back in 2018 when we joined the SA Quick Start, and we've been on a been on a journey since then, and you've been with us ever since, in terms of, you know, different capacities, different levels, and you know, consider you a good friend now. So since then, since back in 2018 where we did the SA Quick Start and first, first met, what it what has changed in a big way with you, since then, over the last few years,

Short Stay Success:

I think, in a word focus, and it's probably one of the most underused words as an entrepreneur, because we talked earlier about kind of creativity, and with creativity comes passion and excitement. But the negative side of that, then, is the kind of entrepreneurs curse, as I call it, which is, you know, always starting something and never finishing. Now, it's interesting. We met around, you know, 2018 because I remember that time pretty clearly. But. Because of some relatively ridiculous things which were going on at the time. Now, I had a bunch of different businesses, and one of my solutions, and I kind of It's so embarrassing to look back at it now that I almost laugh at myself. But like my solution at one point was, well, I'll just have Monday for this business, Tuesday for this business, Wednesday for this business, Thursday for this business. And guess what I did on Friday? So I had five different businesses, which I was doing predominantly, always different people in and around short term rentals, but nonetheless, my focus was all over the place, and when that's where you're at, then you're not giving any of those things the time and attention which they deserve. And this really culminated when COVID hit, because I went into COVID with my business partner, Richie, thinking, hey, you know, we're pretty diversified. We've got, you know, we've got investments, we've got businesses, we've got consulting, we've got all these different kind of revenue streams, and actually will be absolutely fine. And what we quickly realised that was that we were diversified in one way, but in another way. All these things were related to short term rentals, which had just been made illegal overnight. So having been through a lot of self reflection over that period, what I realised was what I did was not actually that important when it comes to success. Yeah, because if I picked Monday's business or Thursday's business, it probably wouldn't have mattered. What would have mattered with giving all that time and attention which it needed to be successful?

KG SHORT STAY:

Yeah, they call it inch wide, mile deep. So basically, just focusing on that one thing until it's successful. Then move on to the to the next thing, the focus. Focus acronym, follow one course until successful. So, yeah. I mean, that's definitely something that I've, I've learned over the years. I think, yeah, it's the entrepreneur's curse, isn't it, of, uh, trying to do too many things.

Short Stay Success:

It is. And again, I'm very well, I'd like to say you can give me feedback. I'm very good at telling other people what to do. I'm not so good at doing it myself, so I probably would have been the first person to tell someone else, well, that's just stupid. You can't spread your focus. You're not going to be successful doing it that way. But you know, it's so much harder to actually apply the kind of thoughts and ideas to yourself, and it is to other people, which is one of the reasons why, you know, mentoring and coaching is, like, really valuable, because you get that external kind of opinion validation mirror, if you like,

Unknown:

excellent. So you're my AI guy.

KG SHORT STAY:

I come to you for everything with AI, you helped me out massively with the book that I've just published, and I think that it would have taken me a heck of a lot longer if I didn't have aI supporting me. You know, using AI as that sort of partner, as opposed to a publishing company, and that was a game changer for me, because it allowed me to get things off the ground really quickly, get answers when I wanted them, and also bring context to things that I might not have spotted. So that's been massively useful. What Where do you think AI's place is with general entrepreneurs right now, and how do you see it developing in the future, because this is definitely what

Short Stay Success:

you're passionate about, definitely. And it's a very good question. So if I go too far off teeth, then please bring me in, in terms of where AI is right now, I It really feels like most of the world hasn't caught up or acknowledged, just some of the capabilities of what we could do. Because if you told me 10 years ago as an entrepreneur that I could type a few words into a box and it could come back to me with a 50 page report on something really important to my business, perfectly tailored, yeah, to with an understanding of what my business does, how it operates, and how these complex topics might relate to us, what we could do, then I'd have thought that was incredible. If you told me 10 years ago that I could upload a couple of CSVs into a chat bot, and it would be able to do a data science, and it would be able to kind of extrapolate relationships and do all kinds of things which I had no idea how to do, let alone knowing that I could pay a human to do it really well. I. Then I'd have been absolutely blown away. And the kind of list of these capabilities is pretty endless. As an entrepreneur, there's just so many more superpowers that we have now, and so much more leverage that we have compared to in the past, where A, you needed to understand that something was possible. B, you need to define and pay someone to go and do it for you. Yeah. So that's that, for me, is kind of where we are, like, right now,

KG SHORT STAY:

yeah, yeah. And, and I think I think AI is not perfect. And I think if you don't know how to prompt the AI, it, it can be quite frustrating for people, and then they don't tend to use it because it, it's not good at reading between the lines yet. So that's, that's what I've found. How do you think that's going to grow and develop over the future?

Short Stay Success:

Well, what we've seen, particularly recently, where the model development has started to escalate very, very rapidly, is that something it's getting a lot better at, and there is a trend where we can start to think about the way that we work with AI in a slightly different way. So I mean, I mentioned one example there, which was doing some data analysis with CSVs, for instance. Now I started doing that about two years ago with chat GPT. When they first launched it, I was very excited. I used to do a lot of data analysis to sales and revenue and pricing, and still do it's just a lot quicker these days. But I would put those CSVs into chat GPT, and I'd need to give it nearly a two page prompt, yeah. In order to get it to do it right, I'd have to go like, first do this, then do that, then do that. Make sure you're careful of these things, check that you've done this after that, and it would be a really long recipe of exactly what I wanted it to do, yeah. Now the change now is that I can basically just tell it, bake me a pizza, and it doesn't need the recipe, it will go and do it, yeah. And the latest models are getting very, very good at that. We can stop thinking, what steps do we need to take, and we can start thinking about, what's the actual outcome, which I want?

KG SHORT STAY:

Okay, interesting, yeah, so getting it to work on an outcome, outcome basis, as opposed to thinking that it, it understands you, you know, the end of the day, it only understands what you tell it, right?

Short Stay Success:

Yeah. And we're starting to see, for instance, with deep research on open AI, if you ask it to go and do something really long, it will generally come back to you as three or four questions, yeah. So clarity, yeah, clarifying questions, they call them. So it's like, Okay, what did you mean by this? Would you like this? Or would you like that? So we're starting to see a lot of the focus being on intent and comprehension. And that's that's kind of getting a lot better. Now this will kind of, again, only accelerate as as we move forward. What's what's really critical, which, again, a lot of people have missed, is that with the latest models from open AI, we've gone from we can just chat to something which can give us some text back, or maybe generate an image or something like that, to actual full blown agents, which, rather than just being able to talk to us, they can go off and search the web. They can write some code, if we've asked them to do a mathematical problem, or we've asked them to do some research which involves numbers, where they might need to do some averaging, or any of those kind of things. And it can come back to us, you know, even a couple of minutes later, with the results of what it's gone and done. Yeah, so the more agency these models are given, and the more different tools, and I'm not just talking about things like searching the web, but the ability to have access to your Gmail or your docs, yeah, or your spreadsheets, or your data, or any of these kind of things, as that becomes normal that these AI models have access to, that we can think more and more about that way of like, what's the actual outcome I want here, rather than the steps to go through it. And I think the great news for everyone who listens to this podcast is that we as entrepreneurs are perfectly positioned to do this, because we have to do this all the time with our teams. Yeah, when you start out, you might be able to do it. Everything in your business, but as you grow, it's just not possible, and so inevitably, as you scale a business, you end up taking on a team, right? But what do you do when you're leveraging your business through a team? Right? You're giving them guidance on what you want to get done. You're helping them understand the best way of doing it, and you're essentially checking their work regularly to make sure that, hey, what they're doing is in line with our expectations. And so actually, if you follow those same processes with AI, then you can be incredibly successful and generate an awful lot of value for your business.

KG SHORT STAY:

Yeah, excellent. Okay, cool. So moving on to the pillar healthy body. First question, AI question, is there anything you do with AI to improve your sort of your body, your nutrition, your exercise, your understanding of how you can be fit and healthy?

Short Stay Success:

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's probably not a surprise to many people when we say that the foundation of AI is data, and when we think about AI and health, the big transformation in future is going to be how we use the data. Yeah, so right now, we are very reactive when it comes to health problems, and it tends to be diagnoses are three, 612, months after the event, by the point that things start getting really bad, and it's actually, you know, that much more expensive to treat, and the outcomes are much, much worse. Now, what's likely to happen in future is that we'll all be tracking so much data about our bodies that we're going to be able to capture things potentially before they've even become a problem. Yeah, and this is exactly the kind of thing that AI is incredible about. It's take ingesting huge amounts of health data and being able to understand Hang on, your blood sugar shouldn't be dropping like this after you've just eaten. That's a warning sign for XYZ. Yeah. So one of the things which I do now is try and track as much data as I can, and I don't go overboard, because there's relatively easy and established tools which are out there. So I mean, the first thing I did is I've got whoop Yeah, and this records all of my kind of body metrics in terms of calories expended every day when I do a workout, I know roughly, because it's not exact. I know roughly what my heart rate was overnight. I'm tracking my sleep, and it will tell me what my resting heart rate was, what my heart rate variability was. And one of the most important kind of health, health metrics, which you can use to track our health is our CO two max. And again, this is something where the works really good, because while it's an approximation, it will give you a trend over time. And for instance, I will, I will both, because I love the data. But I just yesterday, I was looking through the data on my whoop, and I found that my CO two Max had gone from from 40 to 50 in a kind of six month period where I've been, like, working really hard on my kind of general fitness so, like, that's the other amazing thing about data is it kind of gives you a feedback loop to know and understand what's working for you and what isn't. So the other thing that does really well is you kind of give it a daily journal of, for instance, did I have caffeine today? You track your workouts. And it combines all these things to be able to tell you, well, on days you have caffeine, your recovery is 3% lower, yeah. Or, of course, the bugbear of all of us, when you have alcohol, your recovery is 20% lower the next day. Yeah, really, really helped with with that behaviour as well. So between that and tracking food, like just general My Fitness Pal, what you end up with is a whole bank of data being being kind of collected into your Apple Health, all in one place. And one little trick I discovered earlier this week actually is that you can export that data from Apple Health and just chuck it straight into chat, GPT and latest models, oh three, will be able to understand the format of the data, kind of drill into it for you, give you general trends. It will be able to give you, you know, spot things like, okay, yeah, about once every two weeks you have a binge and go about 1500 calories over, normally, because of alcohol, right? You. It can do all of these kind of things. And again, we're just at the verge of starting to see just how valuable that data is going to be.

KG SHORT STAY:

Yeah. So essentially, as long as you've got these smart devices on monitoring your data and putting it into an app, you can export the data, paste it into chat GPT, and it can basically do you a full health assessment.

Short Stay Success:

Yeah, absolutely. And we're not talking like small amounts of data either. I think it was like a 20 megabyte zip file which came out of which came out of Apple Health. So that's actually, if you that's actually a huge amount of data. But again, the llms are getting very good at being able to look at all the stuff which is there and just pull in the bit that they need without being confused, which is something they're very bad at.

KG SHORT STAY:

Excellent, excellent. I do find using multiple llms large learning models or language model? Is it learning or language models? Language, language. So large language models, using different ones is really beneficial as well, because you can do one thing in one and move it over to another one. And it makes it even better. It's almost like it's almost like they're competing against each other, but sometimes one can know what to say to the other one to get a better result. So almost like you could get one to write a prompt for the other one, and then you adjust the prompt and make it better. And take one bit of information, like I did this with my book, where I would sort of do, do something in there and then paste it over to another learning model to analyse it

Short Stay Success:

absolutely and like it's interesting, because different models have different characters and are good at some things and worth others. So you have some which are really good at writing, some which are really good at coding, you have some which are kind of a good mix. And it's interesting because, yeah, in terms of prompt writing, for instance, I almost always use Claude. It just tends to write better, more concise, more clear prompts than than the open AI models do. And the irony is, even if I'm writing for a prompt for an open AI model, I will use short in order to do that. Now, as you know, I do a lot of technical things as well, and use models to write code. And when I do that there, it's all about planning it, right? So saying, like, here's the approach that I want to take, here's the technical things which I plan to do, and again, you start to really see that that come through in a number of different ways. So first of all, I'll take it in one model, and I'll, like, check it with another couple of models and go, Hey, look, look at all the information I've given you. Look at this plan. Does it make sense? Can you see any issues with what we're doing here? Yeah. So usually, if you take something across a few different models, it will pick something else up, which you might not have done otherwise. But the other thing which is really interesting is that they have a bias towards themselves, yeah. So if you pick Gemini content, the Gemini is more likely to say that that was the best one. If you put in if you put in Claude content, then Claude is more likely to say that that's the best one. So they are also biassed towards their own tone, their own outputs, probably in the same way that a human is

KG SHORT STAY:

interesting, cool. So thank you for that. Appreciate how we can all start to use AI a little bit better to actually learn more about ourselves, as long as we can collate the data. And I think that's that's really important, we can get too bogged down with the data, so I think rather than you analyse it, you can get the AI to do it, and it gives you the data that's important, because it analyses trends and patterns and things like that. So yeah, really, really good point. So a little bit off of AI, but what? What daily habits do you have at the moment that helps move your body in the right direction.

Short Stay Success:

I think it's very simple. One really exercise

Unknown:

daily. Yes.

Short Stay Success:

I mean, it's interesting. You use the word habit there, because I think habit is probably the most difficult word in the English language, because it's very easy to say and very hard to do. It's that whole kind of behavioural change is incredibly difficult, and it's something everyone on Earth struggles with. I think I spent many years kind of trying. Trying to fight the way that my brain works, if you like. So I mean, for instance, if I had a weekend off, which doesn't happen that often, but I'd come in on a Monday morning and I just really struggled to kind of get going again and get into work, and I'd be like, Oh, what's wrong with me? I need to try hard, or I need to be more motivated, that kind of thing, whereas eventually I realised, fine, if that's the way that I feel, then that's the way I feel. What's the best way to work with it instead of fight against it? And I realised it's very simple. If I schedule all my weekly calls on a Monday morning, then At first I'll get up, oh, gotta get on calls. By the by the time it's lunchtime, I've forgotten, I'm back in work mode and I'm good, yeah. So for me, the moral of the story is like, don't try and fight like the way that your brain works, just just kind of find the hacks which work for you and make it work. So when I talked about exercise, it's like, it's very simple. I need to get up in the morning and I need to go straight to the gym, because if I don't do that, doesn't happen, and I know it won't happen, no matter how hard I try and convince myself that I will.

KG SHORT STAY:

That's the atomic habits thing. You use one thing that you do to have a knock on effect on the other thing that you do. So like, I'm the same. I actually have one of my things is going to the gym in the morning, but after I've done a load of stuff, so I get up, I brush my teeth. So getting up, brushing my teeth, then I stretch. So each habit knocks on to the other one, and if I miss one, I potentially am going to miss the next one, so as long as I hit each one, like, get up at 430 brush my teeth immediately afterwards, stretch, drink water, go downstairs, take vitamins, then have ice bath, then read book, you know, listen to listen to something for 10 minutes, or journal or whatever that might be, right? And then, and then it's gym after that. You know, your triggers are, get up, get dressed, go gym, right? But if you didn't get up at a certain time and then get dressed, you probably wouldn't go to the gym, right?

Short Stay Success:

Because, yeah, totally knock on effect. Yeah. And atomic habits is a fantastic book. I think habit stacking is really, really valuable, probably for two different reasons. So are you familiar with Dr Stephen Peters the Chimp Paradox? Yes, yes. Yes. So he talks about, kind of having three parts of your brain, right, the human, the chimp, and the computer. Yeah, yes. So, and I use this model for so much, it's probably not perfect, but it's a great way for you to think about yourself. So the reason that I think habit stacking works so well is because it works with both the computer and the chimp. Yeah, and those are probably the two most important things. When the human saying, Here's what I want to do, but it's not working. It's either the human or the chimp getting in the way. So habit stacking works because it programmes your computer to say, I do this, then I do this, and then I do this, but it also programmed through chimp to say, hey, when you do that thing that you don't enjoy, you get the thing that you do. Yeah. So for example, when I was first building the habit of going to the gym in the morning, you kind of have that natural pushback of, can I really be bothered? But because I would always listen to interesting podcasts or watch YouTube videos, and I'd always work out the night before what I wanted to kind of consume at the gym the next day. When I got up in the morning, I would, I would switch the carrot with the stick with the carrot, and I'd be like, Okay, I need to get to the gym so that I can XYZ. And again, that's, that's kind of the power of the habit stacking.

KG SHORT STAY:

Yeah. Okay, so that's going to the gym that's getting your body moving. How? How has your diet and nutrition evolved over the years? Where are you at with it at the moment?

Short Stay Success:

That's, that's a very interesting question. I should probably preface this by saying that when I went to school, I had two different meals. For five years, I either had pizza and two portions of chips I had I had two pizza and one portion of chips. They didn't they didn't believe in nutrition when I went to school and so, you know, again, habits, right? So I started off with a very, very unhealthy diet, and because I'm luckily blessed with a very quiet metabolism, it didn't really make any impact until I started to kind of hit my 30s, and. When it did. But, well, I'd always been, like, skinny, to the point where, like, you could see all of my ribs when I breathed in, and, you know, like, very, very skinny. And that certainly disappeared as I started to head into my 30s. But, but also, it's more than just your body shape, you kind of start to get tired. You have less attention and focus, and like a lot of other things, which, which can impact you really heavily when you're an entrepreneur and your your kind of mind is your tool. And you know, for me, I think it's quite simple. I've never had any real tricks or hacks other than just tracking, yeah, that's the only thing that I'll do, is they'll just track it. So I never say, oh, you know, I won't eat this. So I will eat that. I'm going to do this diet. I'm going to do that. I kind of treat it like meditation. It's like I'm going to observe without judgement. Yeah, and what that means is that I don't need to tell myself, Oh, I shouldn't eat that. Because the fact that I'm looking at it and I know I track every day means that automatically, I'll think, is it worth it or not? And sometimes it is. So the best way I've found of that is just by tracking and being aware of what I'm eating. Because without having to set anything out in stone like I will do this, I won't do that. Then, because I'm aware of the choices that I'm making, I generally make better choices. And actually, if I do decide to indulge in something like a pudding that I really like, then I'll probably actually enjoy it more, because I appreciate the fact that it is a treat and I can't do it every day, whereas before, I might have just had it and not even thought about it.

KG SHORT STAY:

Okay, interesting. So, yeah, it's really, really good point. I think, you know, we can all get, we can all get a bit funny with treating ourselves, tracking every tiny little calorie. But I think, you know, there's an element of tracking that has to go in with it. And if that's what works for you, that's, that's, that's absolutely great. I mean, for someone like me, I just need to control my portions, make sure I eat whole foods. I'm planning a little treat every now and again, so I don't go nuts. So yeah, that's sort of the important stuff. But okay, cool. Sounds like you're on a bit of a journey with with your body and your health and fitness, your so let's move on to the Healthy Mind. So the mindset, what do you do? Any practices that you do to avoid getting too overwhelmed or stressed out. Um,

Short Stay Success:

well, I think that that kind of self awareness piece is just as important with the mind and it is with the body. So knowing and understanding where your stress levels are at is probably one of the most important things as an entrepreneur. And the reason for that is like we need to artificially drive stress in order to get stuff done right, right, whether it's kind of internally to push us to put in the extra hours, we need to do something, whether it's externally to drive other people to push in the same direction that we want, we need a certain amount of stress in order to make that happen. Because if there was no stress, then we just sit there in the morning doing nothing right. But at the same time, if you have too much stress, then it becomes very bad for your mind and your body and your health. So there was someone, someone I listened to speaking once, who I think had the kind of perfect analogy for this, which is the elastic band analogy. Because if you just leave it as it is, nothing's going to happen. If you stretch it just the right amount and let go, it's going to go flying, but if you pull it too far, it's going to snap. So it's having that awareness of exactly where your stress levels are right now. Are they in that optimal zone, you know? Or actually, you're pulling too far to let it loose a little bit so that you're not going to

KG SHORT STAY:

snap? Yeah, that's a really, really good analogy. And I think, you know, it's a simple one that is important to understand sometimes also, when you pull an elastic band too far, it might not snap, but it also doesn't return back to the way that it was before, right? Yeah, like you've almost damaged it permanently.

Short Stay Success:

Yeah, indeed, because I think there's too much focus on stress is bad. Stress is bad. Stress is bad. And I think we need to be realistic and say we need a certain level of stress in our lives to be high achieving, but we need to monitor that carefully.

KG SHORT STAY:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the same is with physical you know, with your body, when you're when you're at the gym, or you do. Doing exercise. You know you have to put yourself under a certain amount of stress to get growth, but if you put yourself under too much stress, you get injuries and pain, right, which isn't where you want to be. You don't want to go to the gym and every single time break your leg or snap something, you want to go to the gym and do enough stress that makes your muscles grow or makes your lungs better, or makes your heart better, but, yeah, absolutely. And I think that analogy can be used across body, mind and and bank account. 100% love that. So do you have any daily practices, morning, evening, whatever that keeps your head clear.

Short Stay Success:

Well, I mean the the old cliche, I guess, but meditation, I think it's probably one of the most powerful, powerful things that there is. I naturally found meditation very difficult at first, the whole having the attention, yes, exactly, exactly. But again, meditation is like building a muscle for the mind as well. You know, it's building that ability to switch off and to kind of ignore the noise without judgement. So I kind of touched on on that earlier a little bit when I said that when I'm tracking categories, I'm observing without judgement, and that's really what meditation is about. Because everyone, even the most prestigious Buddhist monk, when they meditate, they have all these little random things pop into their head. But that's not the point. It's not about stopping those things from happening. It's about stopping the way that you respond, right? So instead of sitting there getting stressed and going, Oh, I can't even sit there and focus on my breathing for five minutes. What's wrong with me and all this kind of stuff instead, it's it's just, you know, being aware, not having judgement and recentering your focus again. And while it sounds like an incredibly simple thing, it like has such a profound impact on every other aspect of your life, because even though it's subconscious, you stop kind of judging things as much, which is a very painful thing to do. You start kind of accepting where they are, but then focus on and what do I need to do to get them back to work, to where it needs to be, which is a much more productive and practical way to deal with an issue than to actually deal with a sense of frustration and emotion, which comes with, you know, well, it's not how it's meant to be, but it is what you're going to do about it. Yeah,

KG SHORT STAY:

yeah. No. Totally agree. Totally agree. So cool. So onto our onto our third pillar, I know you preach very much, build test scale, making sure that you systemize first, then grow. What would be your, you know, advice that you would give any entrepreneur out there that wants to grow their business.

Short Stay Success:

I think the thing which gets overlooked the most is, is it right for you? And I say that because I see a lot of people with great businesses who are really unhappy, and the reason that I'm unhappy is because it was never the right business for them. So it always needs to start with what's right for you. And actually, if you find that magic sweet spot, then you are so much more likely to be successful than if you're not. And you familiar with like a Gantt diagram, where you have these kind of three circles, and then it's the bit in the middle that you're aiming for, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah. So I mean, really, the perfect Gantt diagram for an entrepreneur is that it's something you're good at, something you enjoy, and it's something that people will pay you money for,

KG SHORT STAY:

yeah, you can hit and then the sweet spot is in the middle, yeah,

Short Stay Success:

if you can hit something which kicks all of those boxes, then, like, actually, everything becomes so much easier. The biggest mistake, probably that people make is by doing something that they're good at, and people will pay the money for, but they don't enjoy, because if you don't enjoy what you're doing, you're never going to be successful, even if you make lots of money, because success isn't defined by unhappiness.

KG SHORT STAY:

Okay, I think that's a really, really good point. Is to get that balance. You know, don't do something that you that you hate to be in every day. You know you want to have something that you that you enjoy, and you know it makes you the. Money, and it allows you to serve people at the same time. So another bank account question and incorporating AI, can you share any quick wins or stories where an AI workflow has saved you or a client real money.

Short Stay Success:

I mean, lots. How long do you have? I mean, I'll give you a small and kind of simple example. So I have a software business, and it does lots of, you know, lots of spending on software development, and one tax break in the UK is that you can get R and D tax credits, right? So I've worked with R and D accountants before. They usually charge about 25% of the claim in order to kind of look through what you're doing, work out how much you can claim and present it to HMRC. So this was about 18 months ago as well, and so the technology was nowhere as good as what it was now. But I did a very simple process, and what I did was I went online. Now you could do this all in one font with those three at the amazing but what I did was I went online, I found like the top five kind of PDF type resources from accountants on r, d, tax credits. I put them all into chat, GPT, yeah, I used that to create, like, a GPT so it knew and understood all the knowledge and could answer my questions. And then I gave it my information. I said, Hey, look, here's what I've done. Here's the amount of money that I've spent on these various categories. Can you help me turn this into an R and D tax claim? And in total, it took about half an hour and saved about two and a half 1000 pounds off my tax bill that year. Wow.

KG SHORT STAY:

Blimey. Why me? So, I mean, look like these are, I would say, some amazing stuff that people can do to ensure that they not only are using the right tools to create a wonderful business for themselves, but they're also creating something that they're going to enjoy at the same time. I think that's something that I can pick up from you, is that you know you've probably done some stuff in the past that you didn't enjoy as much, and now you're sort of really leaning into the stuff that you do enjoy, in terms of wrapping wrapping this up. Can you give me some quick fire stuff. So what would be your three top tips on AI for entrepreneurs?

Short Stay Success:

So I think a lot of it is around mindset and how you think about AI. So I used to use it in two ways, and now I use it in three ways, and that will probably really help from a business owner perspective, right? So first of all, I use it as an advisor, yeah. So if there's something that I don't have a lot of knowledge about, or I want to sharpen my knowledge, or I want really specific knowledge, then I will use it for that. So let's say tax implications, like I just talked about before, it could be company law or anything to do with health and safety or legal frameworks, or any of those kind of things. AI is a fantastic way of getting more information, as long as you make sure that it is grounded in truth. And most of the models nowadays will give you a reference so that you can double check if it's super important. Thanks so much for that. So the second way that I use it is more like an assistant. So if you think about a junior member of staff, someone who's keen, eager and enthusiastic, but you need to check their work because they make some mistakes sometimes. Then that's also a great way to think about it, as a business owner that might be asking it to summarise some stuff or write up some documents based on other documents. So the mindset really here is that we're asking someone else to do the task, but we're going to check it very carefully afterwards, just to make sure that it's correct. Now, the third way, which I've started using AI more recently, and it's only possible because it's got so much better, is more like a business partner, if you like, or a coach or a kind of sanity checker. So when I'm doing stuff which I already know that I'm very good at and very capable at, it's still useful to be kind of bouncing off someone else. And a lot of this do this a lot of the time anyway. Is kind of peers or business partners or coaches, but AI can do that really well as well. Where, where you're just kind of going right? Here's here's what I'm doing, here's the process which I'm planning to do. Just sanity check me here, I'm admitting anything. Is there a better way of doing this? Is there something that I haven't really thought of while I'm doing this, yeah, and that can be incredibly powerful, because unlike the other two, where you either know that you need some information or you want to get something done, this can really help check your blind spots, because you know we're talking before about routines, we get into ways of doing things, and just by putting the normal everyday things that we do, we can actually then challenge ourselves to say, Well, why don't you do it that way? It probably take you 10 minutes less each day.

KG SHORT STAY:

Yeah, yeah. No, some really good tips there. And I think, I think if we can, you know, just level up the way that we utilise artificial intelligence within our daily lives. It will grow with it, as opposed to being taken over by it. And I think that's, you know, don't be scared of it. I think is one of my biggest top tips. But I think there's some really good ones for people to get started. So quick fire one. What's your favourite book?

Short Stay Success:

I Let's go with Thinking Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman,

KG SHORT STAY:

cool, okay, cool, new one. Haven't had that one before? Good, okay, and what's your biggest goal over the next 12 months?

Short Stay Success:

Well, I'm currently building some open source software, which is I'm hoping, going to be kind of a foundational layer of business and moving forward. So my objective, really, for 12 months time, would be to build quite a significant user base on that platform. In the meantime, there's lots of other steps, including fundraising and building teams and that kind of thing. But ultimately, it's in pursuit of the goal, which is to kind of create the operating system which businesses need in order to start using AI on the day to day stuff of their business.

KG SHORT STAY:

Excellent. Okay, and last but not least, how would you like people to contact you?

Short Stay Success:

Well, I definitely don't go on Twitter these days. I don't know if you've been there. It's not very fun place. So LinkedIn generally is seems to be having a resurgence. It's a lot more popular nowadays. There's a lot more interesting discussions and debates going on. So just, just find my LinkedIn profile,

KG SHORT STAY:

excellent. Okay, cool. Well, the Your information will be in the show notes, but I'm sure if they just type in your name in LinkedIn, they'll find you look for your face. Nice and easy. So any, any final thoughts, Chris, or comments,

Short Stay Success:

yeah, again, I think in terms of where the world is going and the way things are going to change, it can be really hard and confusing to know what that's going to mean, or even start thinking about what we're going to be doing in five to 10 years time. The thing which has kept me sane through all of this is really thinking about capabilities, above products and services. So for me, it's very simple, three capabilities, which I focus on every day. The first is learning, so just understanding what's going on, the latest things which are coming out, how they're relative to you. The second is building, which is more about being able to use these things in day to day. We're not talking about going out and building software systems here. It's like, you know, can you find a new way of speeding up your process, using chat, GPT, or by using image processing or doing these kind of things? And the third way is the third capability of selling. Because, as an entrepreneur, we're always selling. You're always going to need clients, regardless of what your products or services are. And if you can sell something deeper than just transactional, and start to build relationships with a group of people, generally community, then that's going to send you really well in long steps, as we kind of come into the age of

KG SHORT STAY:

AI, excellent. Okay, cool. Love those final thoughts. I think there's some really good stuff there to take away. I think if we were to improve those three things as entrepreneurs, then we'd definitely be better and probably enjoy it a lot more as well. Because the more you understand something, the better you can sell something, the more enjoyable it is, because you find it easy. Usually we enjoy stuff that we find you know easier and that we're good at as well. So thank you very much, Chris, this has been an amazing interview. I think we've managed to zone in the waffling, because we both have a tendency to waffle on but it was me questioning you, so hopefully we've kept it as straight. Nine, as we possibly can, some really good stuff on AI there, and hopefully our listeners will get something from it, and if they need anything, to get in contact with you. So thank you very much. Chris and I will speak to you soon. Thank you. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. You are a carnivore entrepreneur. Live life how it was supposed to be lived on your terms with strength, energy and purpose. I'll see you on the next episode. You.