328: The Golf Lesson That Changed How I Teach AI

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the podcast. So I want to talk to you about training, AI training specifically. Most of the AI training aimed at lawyers is just shiny object crap that may seem useful in a social media post, but isn't actually that helpful in your day-to-day practice. And that is why none of it sticks.

You've seen the headlines, nine prompts that will change your practice, the ultimate AI playbook for your firm. These prompts may sound good and it may make sense when you read them, but they're abstract and they're not tailored to the real work that's going on in your practice that is important and urgent. So if you try these prompts, you're going to wind up going down a rabbit hole, trying to adapt it to your situation, and then you realize you'd be better off not having used the prompt and just having a basic chat like you've always been doing.

So I want to talk to you about why chasing shiny objects like prompt templates is so detrimental. And to make my point really sink in, I'm going to tell you about my old golf instructor because he helped me learn to avoid shiny objects a long time ago. And yes, he did it with golf instruction. We're going to talk about how this applies to using AI as well.

But first, I want to give thanks to my podcast sponsor, which is Smith AI. They have long been helping lawyers by supplying real human receptionists in a virtual way, affordably, reasonably, and using appropriate technology. Now they can supply AI receptionists too, to supplement human receptionists or as standalone options. So let's be honest.

Okay, a lot of lawyers hear AI receptionists and they cringe. They picture some kind of clunky voice that isn't really human, annoys callers, makes them wait too long, and makes your firm look cheap, right? I felt the same way. I felt like there's no way I would ever use this.

But then I heard what SmithAI's virtual chatbot, virtual receptionist sounds like. And the technology has improved dramatically. And of course, SmithAI is all about using technology appropriately. And so it changed my mind.

I mean, the voice now is natural. There are natural pauses. There's natural intonation. They will ask follow-up questions that make sense, gather details, and then hand the call off to a real person at the appropriate time And so it everything you would want right Most callers these days don even want to talk to a human They just want to get what they need.

And so whatever information is supplied, they're happy with. So that's why this works, okay? And the thing to know is Smith has been offering virtual receptionist services for over 10 years. They've trained their AI more than 20 million real calls, and that's why it doesn't sound like a script.

So if you've been skeptical about letting AI near your phones, I get it. But I think it's worth hearing for yourself what AI can do if it's run by somebody competent like Smith AI. So click the link in the show notes to claim their current best offer if you want to check it out. All right, let's get back to the story about my golf instructor and the lesson I learned that helps me deal with AI.

Now, this golf instructor in New Orleans, His name was Jimmy Self. He's really well known. There were a lot of people that had learned from him, but there were a lot of other instructors out there at the driving range, too. And I just figured, you know, the ones with the video cameras and all this fancy equipment were the ones that I wanted to go to.

So I went to those guys. I didn't get better. One day, a friend of mine told me, like, look, if you if you want your score to drop, you want to go to Jimmy Self. And I said, okay.

And they said, now you got to understand, you know, he's really popular. So you're going to have to like go to him and get on the waiting list. And then when he calls you, he's going to give you a day and time. And whatever that day and time is, you know, you either go or you don't.

If you don't go, he's not going to help you. But once you get in with him, you know, you can adjust around. But so I said, okay, fine. So he called me and said, I've got a time.

It was actually even a time where I had to leave work, believe it or not, to go do it. And I thought, okay, well, I can sneak away for a little while. And I went and I'm glad I did because what happened was I got better and like really fast. And the thing about how Jimmy worked was he was very unusual.

Like he didn't use video. He didn't do any of that crap. What he would do is he would just put the ball down, put your grip on the club in an appropriate way, then stand behind you and grab your body and grab the club. And, you know, it looked kind of weird, to be honest.

But he would grab it and he would just move your body through the swing in the way that it was supposed to go. And as he would go back, he would say, now we're going back, and then we're going forward and back and forth. And he would just say those two words, back and forth, and put you through the swing motion. Then he'd put a ball down in front of you and say, okay, hit it.

And he wouldn't stand behind you, obviously. And then you'd swing, and you'd hit it. And it would go straight. And then you keep doing that He put a ball down you hit it it go straight And then if you made a mistake and didn hit it right he come back around behind you and get back and forth and back and forth So I don know maybe it was part of it was I didn want him to be grabbing me whatever the motivation was.

I just started hitting it straight. And every time, you know, I went to him, you know, my swing got better and better. And I was hitting it straight and it was wonderful. One day, I had to say to him, well, you know, Jimmy, shouldn't I like be putting a draw on the ball?

I want to go right to left, and that supposedly makes it roll farther. Jack Nicklaus talks about that in his book, and I'm sure you've heard about all this. But that's kind of what I was thinking maybe I should be working on. And he just looked at me like I was a complete idiot, and he grabbed the club out of my hand.

He goes, stand over there. And I stood over there, and he put a ball down, and he hit it, and it went straight. He put down another one, he hit it, and he went straight. And he does this a few times, and he turned to me and he goes, see that there?

That's a straight shot. That's what you want. And he handed me the club. And he goes, any more questions?

I said, no. And then I started hitting it straight. And I realized, like, I just wasn't happy. Like, I couldn't deal with success.

I needed to try something else. And then in doing so, I screwed it up. So I was thinking about Jimmy this week because I was helping a lawyer learn how to use Claude. And she came in to me the way a lot of people do with this list, you know, a handful of things she thought she needed to fix.

It was a whole explanation. I listened to her very patiently, you know, thinking about how Jimmy Self was. And I thought, OK, you know, she's trying to do a lot of things. That's a natural instinct.

But, of course, when somebody tries to do too many things, they wind up chasing shiny objects and don't get results. Right. So instead of covering a lot of tools or doing more things, we did the opposite. You know, we didn't add a whole bunch of things.

We just took one AI skill she already had, which was writing emails or, you know, she understood had asked the chat bot to write emails. I said, okay, let's build a skill for that and then we can make it better. So I gave her one of my skills as a starting point, a writing skill, general writing skill. And I said, okay, this is the kind of skill that, you know, where the AI chatbot will ask you before you start writing, who are you writing to?

Is it a close friend? Is it a colleague? Is it somebody professional? So that was the thing I learned as that was useful.

That's not, it's not a, I can't sell it as a great template. It's, you know, anybody can do this. You just tell the AI chat bot, Hey, listen, I want to write, but I want you to ask me who I'm writing to so that you get a sense of how to tailor it. And so she did that She took it and I said now when you have it just keep using it And then if you need to refine it you can work with Claude and say I want to change it And you work with Claude to make those changes and then upload the changes and it be fine And if you come back and you still want to make more changes, we can do that or we can work on something new.

So the fix wasn't a new prompt. It was just one AI skill focused on something she had to do all the time. but with AI backing her up, she could do it better, faster, and feel more ease and satisfaction. That was the whole focus of the session, right?

We focused on making one thing better and me explaining how she could keep refining it in the coming weeks. And I said, the next time we meet, we can refine it if you want some more, or we can pick a new thing to focus on that you can then work on improving again over a series of weeks, right? Because that's how this works. So what's the lesson here?

The lesson, you know, with AI, something that, you know, nobody tells you, which is when you're learning AI, the thing that holds you back the most isn't not trying new things. It's trying to do too much too fast. Right. It might seem hokey to focus on one thing so much, like it seemed hokey to me, that my golf instructor, Jimmy Self, would not talk to me about my golf swing, but rather just force my body into the optimal ocean until it's sunk into my consciousness and become second nature.

But it's not hokey. That's what's affected, right? And that's how you need to work with your favorite AI tool. Focus on one thing.

Do it over and over and over until it becomes muscle memory, as they say. don't feel pressured to keep up with the shiny object chasers and don't listen to the slick gurus with slick marketing offers right be like the tortoise and the famous fable that won the race by being slow and steady while the rabbit ran around like a madman so to sum up don't start hoarding prompts don't use some random dude's special playbook and don't criticize yourself for being slow and steady right that's the formula for winning that's the real formula and it's been the only real formula forever.

So pick one thing you want AI to help you do better, make it work once, and then make it work again and again and again and refine it as you need to. Feel the difference and appreciate it. Let that sink in before you get anxious to try something new. And if you want to learn how to do this with other sensible lawyers, check out my inner circle.

There's a link in the show notes that will enable you to try it out for a special discount that I think will surprise you. All right, that is it for this episode, and I will talk to you again next time.