Delegation, AI & the Trust You Need to Let Go: Louis Swart on Reclaiming Your Time

Louis Swart Episode — Grammar-Corrected Transcript The Motivate Collective

Note: Punctuation, capitalization, and grammar have been corrected for readability. Wording, meaning, and filler words are unchanged from what was actually said.

Louis Swart (00:00) Louis, Louis, like Louis Vuitton.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:01) Louis, I'm way off. Okay, Louis, welcome to the podcast.

Louis Swart (00:04) Thank you very much.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:11) I'm excited because you are going to talk about your virtual assistant business and your AI, and how all of this can save our time.

Louis Swart (00:23) I love it, I love it. I think it's so important that we learn from the mistakes of others by listening to podcasts like this.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:33) Learn from the mistakes — do you have some mistakes that led you to where you are?

Louis Swart (00:40) I've made so many mistakes. You know, if you're in business, you've made a lot of mistakes. And I think burnout is one of the biggest mistakes we make. It's one of the most costly mistakes. We end up burning ourselves out because we're doing everything in the business — we're running ten roles. We're doing ten different roles in the business, and then we get burnt out and think, "I don't know what happened, I don't know how I got burnt out." But it's literally because we're trying to do everything.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:11) What were you doing in your business that you needed to shed?

Louis Swart (01:17) So many things. I was doing everything — from doing all the IT myself, repairing anybody's computers and printers, I was doing all that. I was doing the accounts, sitting down and doing the accounts myself, and accounts take so much time if you're doing it yourself. I was doing all the admin — basic admin stuff like signing people up, onboarding them, offboarding them. All that stuff just took so much time.

I've had a whole lot of businesses. By the time I was 30, I sold a business for $5 million in South Africa. We had about 200 staff, and that business sold really quickly because I'd learned how to delegate. I remember sitting in the bank and them counting out the money — it felt so good. But then I thought back to a business I had when I was 25.

When I was 25, I had a business with plumbers — I had ten plumbers. I went to sell the business, and the broker said, "Louis, who does the quality control?" And I said, "Well, I do it." "Who does this?" "I do." "Who does that?" "I, I, I" was all it was. And he said, "Louis, your business is worth nothing, because I've got to find another Louis who knows plumbing, quality control, accounting, whatever." That was a really big blow for me — a real wake-up call to start working out what I could delegate.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:47) Amazing. So people think that doing a lot, or checking on everything, is going to make them valuable — but actually it devalues the business, because no one can buy it and keep it running without you.

Louis Swart (03:09) Absolutely — if you're doing everything, your business is worth nothing. Literally worth nothing, because they have to replace you. If you're doing everything, they've got to find somebody who can do all the roles you're currently doing, and that's very difficult, because the person buying it is essentially buying themselves a job — your job. Most people don't want to buy your job, especially when we work for ourselves and work crazy hours for minimal money. People don't want that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:45) No. You mentioned burnout — let's get into more detail there. I'm wondering whether you saw that in other people, and how you saw it in your own life. I also wanted to ask whether you've ever been addicted to work that you actually like — because in my experience, I sometimes get burned out not because I'm doing something I hate, but because I'm doing something I love, just too much. Where does burnout fit for everybody?

Louis Swart (04:19) I love it, that's an amazing question, thank you. We can be doing what we love and still burn out. I have a term I use called "productive procrastination." Productive procrastination is when you're doing something super productive, but you're doing it instead of doing something else you should be doing.

For example — I've got credit card reconciliation, and I don't like doing it. My accountant's on me, saying, "Louis, we've got to do the credit card reconciliation, otherwise I can't submit the tax." He's hassling me, calling every day, and I'm like, "I've got to do it, I've got to do it." I sit in front of my computer, and then I look around and my desk is untidy, so I think, "I'll just quickly tidy my desk." Then I look at my bookshelf and think, "I'll just quickly do the bookshelf." Then there's dust on the bookshelf, so I wipe that down, then I vacuum the floor because now it's all clean, might as well make it all clean.

Those are all fantastically productive things — they all have to get done. But I'm literally doing them because I'm avoiding the credit card reconciliation. This is where a lot of us fall — we love what we're doing, but we're actually productively procrastinating against what we should be doing. I've done that with relationships too — I've had a bad relationship and just worked, worked, worked, worked, worked, because it felt easier and safer to be at work than in a bad relationship. You convince yourself that you love what you do, but really you're just using it as procrastination against something else you don't want to do.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:23) Absolutely, people do that with anything they want to avoid. It's interesting you mention the bad relationship — I knew someone a few years ago who was doing loads of volunteering, obsessively, all through the day and night, to avoid a relationship. Whatever we enjoy doing can lead in that direction. It seems like, from what you're saying, we can end up serving ourselves more than providing value for others if we're just doing something we enjoy instead of the task that's actually needed. Do you think so?

Louis Swart (07:05) Absolutely, because we all have secondary gain. I've actually written a book called The Busyness Myth. The idea is: when you meet somebody and say, "Hey Louis, how are you going?" and they say, "I'm so busy, I'm so busy" — what are they actually saying? Maybe they're saying, "I've got so much work because people love me and they're all giving me work." Or, "I've got so much work because I'm worthy — only I can do it, so I must be worthy." Or, "I've got so much work, I'm so busy, nobody would want my job, I'm safe." We attach worthiness, safety, and love to busyness, and we condense it into one thing.

It's a scary thing, because we chase more and more busyness — we're actually chasing busyness — and we're not taking the time to sit back and ask, "Should I be doing this? Is this worth my time or not?"

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:24) Did you see that in people who worked for you as well? Did they do tasks for the sake of doing them, or because they enjoyed them, instead of questioning and evaluating which things they were actually doing?

Louis Swart (08:41) Absolutely, we all do that — it's human nature, we gravitate toward what we find easy. This is something you really have to account for when hiring people. Say you're hiring an accounts person, and all you want is for her to sit there and process the accounts. But what she actually wants is to get up, go talk to the office, show everyone pictures of her grandchild, have a chat, find out about everyone's day. It's not that she's a bad person — she's just in the wrong role. If you put her in a sales role, she could tell everyone about her grandchild, build rapport, and probably sell a lot of stuff for you. But in an accounts role, she's kind of hidden away, so she feels like she needs to get out and spread her wings around the office. That happens in every single job. It's about finding what people are naturally good at, and then moving them toward doing that. Whatever you're naturally good at, you should be doing.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (10:02) Is it, along with what we're good at, also about what gives us energy? I'm guessing she wasn't terrible at her actual job, but she was perhaps energized, more switched on, more connected doing something else. So is it partly that people need to be in something they identify with, beyond just their skills?

Louis Swart (10:31) Absolutely. I had a mentor named Pip McKay, and she used an example: sometimes you get home from work exhausted, sitting on the couch with the TV on, thinking you're going to fall asleep in front of it. Then I call you and say, "Hey Melanie, I just got tickets — Britney Spears is in town, VIP tickets, we get to go backstage, are you in?" And you'd jump off that couch like there's no tomorrow — suddenly this massive burst of energy. We'd go to Britney Spears, watch till two in the morning, be on a high afterward, struggling to sleep when we got home.

Where did that energy come from? We went from being exhausted on the couch to having boundless energy — because we had inspiration, something we wanted to accomplish. So think about your life — what is it you want to accomplish, and what gives you heaps of energy? Because if you're doing stuff that gives you energy, you can do more and more of it. But if you're doing your account reconciliation, you probably need a nap halfway through. That's me, anyway.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:26) Absolutely, absolutely — it's where you get your motivation. I'd love to match these ideas up with the episodes I did with a neuroscientist, because there has to be science behind needing to connect with the things that prompt our motivation, inspiration, and purpose.

Louis Swart (12:49) Absolutely.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:51) When you're running your business now, what connects you with purpose? For context — you have a virtual assistant business, and you're also working with AI in some way. How does AI fit into everything?

Louis Swart (13:11) Perfect, perfect. My whole business is about helping people prioritize their time — working out if you should be doing something, and prioritizing what you're doing versus what other people can do for you. Initially I used virtual assistants as the vehicle for that. In my book, The Busyness Myth, we talk about someone doing everything themselves, then learning they should be doing something else — a course tells them they should run a podcast, and they say, "I don't have time for a podcast." But in reality, you could get somebody to help — talk to guests on LinkedIn or Facebook, bring them into your world — and you just sit and do the podcast, which gives you energy. Someone else edits it, posts it to socials, does the follow-up.

VAs initially filled that role perfectly — there wasn't a better way to fill it. Then AI came along, and I thought, "This is going to take all the VAs' jobs." I went in heavily on AI, started training people in it, started working on what I could do with it. The problem is AI grows so fast that I could teach you something today, and in two weeks it's not worth anything because there's a whole new AI that does the same thing better. So I thought — how do I keep up with this? I just want to run my business, I don't want to be constantly learning new AI.

So I thought, what if I get AI-powered VAs — VAs who can actually use AI in my business, so I don't have to learn it myself? I say, "Hey, I want a character of me I can use on my socials," and my guy goes off and makes it. I say, "I want a cartoon baby Louie," and I've got a cartoon baby Louie. I'm using the latest AI, but I'm not the one who has to learn how to do it and actually execute it — because I know that in six months there'll be something that makes it even easier. Why learn the hard way now? Just get the team to install it for you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:47) That's amazing — you're delegating some of the learning process itself. I totally agree, AI is evolving so fast. I'm still trying to wrap my head around AI agents. Even with how this podcast gets produced — the transcript alone — a year ago I'd tell Grammarly to check the grammar, and I'd have to go through and approve every suggested change. Now I can tell Claude, "Act like Grammarly and fix up the grammar," and it just does it. I don't have to approve anything. It's evolving everywhere, right?

Louis Swart (16:23) Yeah. I'll give you an example of what I use it for. I do a lot of meetings, and I've got an EA — what she used to do was compile meeting notes for me. Before a meeting with you, she'd go and research you online — LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, everything about you — then compile notes: "This is everything we know about Melanie, this is what we can talk to her about." So going into a meeting, I already knew more about you.

About six months ago, I thought, "My VA is spending so much time on this — I'm going to get an AI to do it." I've got an AI team in Nepal, and I had them build me an agent using N8N. It took about three weeks, and they built me meeting notes. It wasn't the best, but it was enough — my EA would look through them, adjust slightly, and attach them to my Google Calendar and Google Drive.

Then about three months ago, I got Hermes — it's like an open-source agent. You get an old laptop, put it in your office, and run the agent on it. I had Hermes running on a laptop in my office, gave it access to my Google Drive and Calendar, and asked it to prepare meeting reports. Hermes was pretty good — better than what came before — and those meeting notes could attach directly to my Google Calendar.

Then about a month ago, I got Claude Code. I gave it access to my Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Drive, my Xero account (banking and bookkeeping), and my Stripe account. Now, for every meeting, it goes out and looks for everything about the person online, and a second instance goes through my own computer — emails, calendar, everything — to see what history I have with them. It collates all of that into meeting notes: "This is what the internet says about you, this is where you've worked with me before, this is what payments you've made." It attaches that to my Google Calendar, and it also checks my Google Drive — if there's a client file, it attaches a copy there; if there isn't one, it creates it. Pretty wild.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:40) It is — Claude is becoming our PA.

Louis Swart (20:46) Absolutely. But I still have an EA, because what she does is check that we've got the right person — let's say there are two Melanie Wilsons, she confirms which one.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (21:04) That's interesting — I added my middle name years ago because, back in the day, SEO was a big deal and I knew people would search a particular phrase. I haven't met any other Melanie Suzanne Wilsons. But the alignment I'm seeing with your story is that AI is getting better at context. A year or two ago, I told ChatGPT to write about me — I don't use ChatGPT anymore — but it was just pulling from whatever's online, and the internet gives the polished version. We don't put our entire lives online. But what you're describing — Claude going in to check anything else on the computer — gives it a clearer picture of people.

Louis Swart (21:58) Yeah, so it gives me a morning brief. It says, "Louis, these are the meetings you've got today, these are the people you're meeting. These clients still owe you money — I've gone into your Xero and looked, these are payments that should be coming through. I've gone into your Stripe account and seen these are the payments that came through overnight." The weirdest part — I had a client whose credit card bounced on Stripe twice. They'd gotten a new card, it bounced, then bounced again, and we told them to switch to a direct debit, so they started doing a direct transfer instead. Claude did the morning brief and said, "You've got a meeting with this person today — their credit card has bounced twice on Stripe, you probably want to talk to them about it."

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:52) It knows. So it sounds like Claude is going beyond just writing summaries — you're doing the pre-meeting prep. I use AI to get a summary after a podcast episode, for example, but you're telling AI to prepare you before you talk to someone.

Louis Swart (23:13) Yes, definitely. I do a post-meeting one too, if you want to know how that works. On any other Zoom meetings, I run a Fathom recording. I also have a device called a Fieldie — it listens to every conversation I have during the day and transcribes it. If I have a Zoom meeting with you, the Fathom recording automatically uploads to my Google Drive, my agent renames it with the date and participants, and then runs it through a series of questions: "Hey, I just met with Melanie — is she a big-picture thinker or a detailed thinker? Can you do a DISC profile on her? How could I have helped her better? Were there any challenges she mentioned that I didn't pick up on? Are there ways I can be a better coach? What should I talk to Melanie about next time?"

I do a lot of work with coaches and healers — a bit more on the esoteric side, alongside business people. With clients on that side, I'll say, "Please create me a ten-minute meditation I could give to Melanie based on our conversation." It creates the meditation, knowing whether you're a visual, auditory, or tactile person, based on the DISC profile it's already built — specifically around what we spoke about. Then I say, "Hey Melanie, I've got a little gift for you, a ten-minute meditation, I'd love to do it with you if you're interested," and you just close your eyes and I run through a meditation that Claude or GPT prepared for me to do with you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:06) A meditation about the things you talked about? How does that work — are they meditating on their goals? What sort of content goes into that?

Louis Swart (26:23) With the meditation, it's generally: if you've got challenges, here are ways we can help you, things you can do to make it better. Most meditations "future pace" you. So if you're stressed about the podcast — all the editing taking forever — the meditation might say something like, "Think of a time when the podcast is running smoothly, when you're just doing the parts you love, interviewing people, feeling filled with energy, because you know someone else is picking up everything else."

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (27:18) It's about visualizing a better future.

Louis Swart (27:22) Yes, and helping them get there. We use tools like reframing. I'm an NLP master practitioner, a certified hypnotherapist, a timeline therapist, and a matrix therapist — I've done all that side of it, the "woo-woo," for want of a better word, as well as the business side. I can help people business-wise only so far, and then I need to go, "Okay, what's really happening in your world, what are the blocks, why are you holding onto this, what's the secondary gain you're getting from it?" That's really what I work with.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:25) I'm keen to ask about the hypnotherapy. If you can believe it, I've talked with at least two hypnotherapists on the show already — you're at minimum the third. Let's embrace the woo-woo. I should explain — I tend to get people on the show with some sort of credential behind them, and you're in very practical business too, so we're not off with the fairies. But a lot of our listeners will appreciate that an element of belief in some form can help with our work. What does hypnotherapy look like for you?

Louis Swart (29:06) I'll give you an example. If you're listening right now, close your eyes for a second. Think about coming home from the shops with a big, juicy lemon. You cut it, and the juice runs onto the board — so much juice, such a juicy lemon. You squeeze it straight into your mouth. Did you feel a sensation in your mouth?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:46) Yes, yes.

Louis Swart (29:47) That's all hypnosis is.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:51) It's that we can visualize something so much that we can feel it, sense it.

Louis Swart (29:55) Yes. And it's not like in the movies, where someone just says, "You're going to cluck like a chicken." If you've got a friend who's drunk and you bet them they won't run around the pub clucking like a chicken, and they do it, if they got hypnotized, they'll cluck like a chicken. But if you've got a friend who says, "No, that's ridiculous, I wouldn't do that" — it doesn't matter, they can never be hypnotized into doing that. You won't go beyond your values when you're hypnotized.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:32) Interesting — you won't go beyond your values. Are the values so deep within our minds that we don't cross that line?

Louis Swart (30:43) With hypnosis, you're just in a super relaxed state — but you're still aware of what's happening.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:56) Interesting — we're still aware, we still have decision-making ability.

Louis Swart (31:00) Well, I just told you about the lemon — you could have said, "Nah, I don't like lemons, I'm not going with this." But because you went with it, you had the sensation, felt the cringe in your body. You chose that. You chose to play the game.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:26) It sounds like part of what we need to do is be willing to go along with something — to opt into an experience.

Louis Swart (31:40) Absolutely. There are ways they can tell — some people are very susceptible to hypnosis, others aren't at all. There's an experiment: if you've got 30 people in a room, you say, "Hold out your hands. On one hand, you've got a massive bunch of helium balloons attached to your finger, pulling your hand up into the sky. On the other, you've got a heavy pile of books — like all your old school books." Close your eyes and think about it. Some people's hands will genuinely start to move — one going up, one staying down. In a stage show, that's how they pick who to bring up on stage — they can see who's susceptible.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:00) See the people who can go along with it, yes, yes.

Louis Swart (33:08) — who are susceptible to it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:10) I'm wondering whether that translates into business and work — realizing that some people are going to be more willing to visualize their goals, and then embody and practice what's needed to make that happen. How do you see hypnosis fitting into business?

Louis Swart (33:35) I think a lot of the tools, we don't use consciously. If I'm coaching you, I'm not consciously going to be hypnotizing you — unless there's something specific you want help with — but I'm not saying, "Hey, I'm doing a reframe now" or "I'm using a Milton model language pattern." We don't say it consciously, but we're using it, because we know these techniques. Take reframing — that's a pretty basic one. You wake up in the morning and say, "I've got to go to work, it sucks." Your partner rolls over and says, "You're so fortunate you get to go to work, I'm still looking for a job and haven't found anything." And you go, "Actually, I'm pretty fortunate to have a job." You've gone from "I've got to go to work" to "I'm actually pretty fortunate." That's just a reframe. We can reframe how we deal with staff, how we ask people to do things for us.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:28) Reframe how we ask people to do things — is there a more convincing way, where people go from having to do something to getting to do it?

Louis Swart (35:41) Look, absolutely — people always want to feel like they're in control, like they've made the decision. If you can ask someone to do something in a way that makes them feel they made the decision, they're much more likely to do it. Even the way you ask matters. If you say, "I need you to get those documents done by lunchtime" — your chance of that landing well depends on who you're talking to. But if you say, "You know how we're working on this big project? I really need those documents by lunchtime, because it's an integral part of it. I'm relying on you, because I know you're so good at this, and I'm so thankful I've got you doing them" — that person leaves the office puffed up, thinking, "I'm going to make these documents amazing, I'm going to get us that contract." The other version, they leave thinking, "Stuff you, mate, I'm not doing them by lunchtime, who do you think you are?" We've asked for exactly the same thing, in a slightly different way.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:56) That example looked like it was partly about someone hearing the context — seeing where they fit in the bigger picture.

Louis Swart (37:04) Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:08) Is that something typically needed for anyone doing any kind of task — that they need to see the bigger picture?

Louis Swart (37:17) There are big-picture people and detail people. Big-picture people want to know where things are going. I'm a big-picture person — if you come to me and start explaining every step, you've lost me. Just tell me where we're going, what we hope to achieve, and I'll tell you if it's something I want to do — don't waste my time with the steps to get there. Detail thinkers want to know how each step works, what comes before it, how you know when to move to the next one.

If you're selling to people, this matters. If you come to me and say, "Louis, this is going to change your life — it's going to get you 100 clients, here's the brand-new system that's going to do it," I'm like, "Sweet, let's do it." But if you walk me through every step and every pitfall in detail, I'm going to find it boring and I'm less likely to buy.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:36) So it affects how we sell things to people.

Louis Swart (38:40) Absolutely, absolutely.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:44) That's an interesting perspective, because when you gave the big-picture/small-picture example, what came to mind for me is attending a yoga class. There are two types of teachers — the ones who say, "We have one more flow before the next vinyasa if you want to," and the ones who say, "Now raise your arm this way, then move your leg to this angle" — and you're wondering, "Where am I ending up?" That happens in any form of work — someone walks you through one little step at a time, and you're wondering what's actually happening, feeling like you can't see the forest for the trees, whereas some people just want to see a few trees. But you're telling me this actually maps onto how to sell to people — something we all need to learn, especially as the world moves toward more solopreneurs. What do we need to know about selling?

Louis Swart (39:52) Pretty much, people all have problems. What's their problem? How can you fix it? That's selling. What's your problem? I found the solution, I give you the solution. It's that simple.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:12) How do you find out what people's real problems are?

Louis Swart (40:18) You're super fortunate having a podcast, because you can delve into really deep questions and find out what's actually happening in someone's life — what they're struggling with, where they think the industry's going. You get a really good idea of what they're struggling with, and then you find a solution to that problem. Maybe they're struggling to get on enough podcasts to promote things — so you look at how to get them onto more podcasts, maybe there's a service for that, maybe you become an affiliate for it. Now you're in business: "I can get you onto a lot more podcasts if you sign up to this service," they pay you an affiliate fee, off you go.

People say to me, "I don't have time, I'm so busy." I'll say, "Have you thought about what tasks you're doing — are they high-value or low-value tasks?" They say, "I don't know." "Can I show you my favorite tool?" I'm full AI, full tech, but this tool has been with me forever.

Basically, eight out of ten businesses fail in the first five years. Fifty percent fail in the first two years. One of the main reasons: when you have a job, you go to work knowing exactly how much you'll get paid. The boss says, "I need you to do these five things," you do them, they're happy, you get paid. Then you think, "I've had enough of this, I'm going to work for myself" — but now you end up doing all sorts of things you shouldn't be doing. So how do you work out if you should or shouldn't be doing a job? Here's a simple tool.

If you worked for a boss, you'd probably work a max of 40 hours a week, maybe 50 weeks a year — that's 2,000 hours a year. Now work out how much you want to earn — say $200,000. Divide $200,000 by 2,000 hours, and you get $100 an hour. That's your benchmark — you need to earn $100 every hour to hit $200,000.

So now, if there's a $10 task, and you think, "I'm not going to get a VA, I've saved myself ten bucks" — the reality is you haven't. You've lost $90 in that hour, because the next hour you don't just need to make $100, you need to make $190 to make up for it. Do that for two hours and the figure becomes unrealistic.

Now here's the cool part — you've got that figure, $100 an hour. Write it on a Post-it note. But you probably don't want to work 40 hours if you're working for yourself — maybe you want 20, with time for holidays — so double the figure to $200. Stick that Post-it note on your computer, your monitor, your wall, everywhere. Every time you're doing a task, look up at that figure and ask, "Would I pay somebody $200 an hour to edit my podcast?" You'll say, "Hell no, of course I would" — that's ridiculous. But that's what you're paying yourself by doing it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:17) It is — it's what you're paying yourself. Absolutely, and we can shed so many more of those tasks than ever before. Do you meet clients who have that learning curve to go through? To put it simply — do you see clients who haven't yet realized how many tasks they can shed, especially with technology?

Louis Swart (45:43) I think none of us realize all the tasks we can delegate. Somebody like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs is singularly focused — one goal, one focus. You don't see Elon Musk suddenly doing random stuff. His focus is to go to the moon — and from that: "If we go to the moon, we're going to need vehicles, electric vehicles, because there won't be fossil fuels. How do we get to the moon? We need a rocket. When we get there, how do we charge our vehicles? We need solar. Will we be on the surface or underground?" He's got a tunneling company. That's Elon Musk's businesses — one singular vision.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:45) They're all leading to the same path. And you mentioned Steve Jobs — he saw things differently, had a perception others couldn't see. He made computers pretty, then changed how our interfaces work with phones. So the takeaway is the goal could be a bit more outside the box. Going to the moon — do you see clients whose goals are maybe too humble, and they need to think a bit bigger?

Louis Swart (47:32) Definitely — with AI, whatever you thought you could accomplish a year ago, you should be doubling that, whatever it was. You've got the most incredible tool in the history of the world at your fingertips. We've been creating free apps — I've got a business analyzer, you put in your website, and it does a full analysis, tells you everything you should improve, the user interface, all of it — and it's free because it only took about two days to build, and my VA who made it cost me about ten bucks an hour. So it cost me about eighty bucks.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (48:32) That's how to do this.

Louis Swart (48:34) And this is where we are now — information used to have value, and now it's got no value. I'm not going to buy your information, I can just go on GPT or Claude.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (48:46) Or Claude, yes. So what's more valuable than information? Is it the things humans can do that AI can't?

Louis Swart (49:03) Community, in my opinion, is the one thing humans can do that AI can't. I think AI is very close to being able to do everything else humans can do. People say to me, "AI doesn't have emotions" — completely nonsense. Look at your Claude — you probably talk to it about stuff you wouldn't normally talk to other people about, and it's super understanding, feels like a friend. That's evoked an emotion in you. People say only humans can have emotions, but emotions are just a series of learned experiences from other people — I used to believe that too.

I create six months' worth of content for someone in one hour using AI — we come up with the top ten fears, frustrations, dreams, and desires, then create Facebook posts, stories, hooks, the whole thing. In one week, I had two people crying when I read them the Facebook posts. That week I decided AI can literally stir up emotions like any human could — probably better, because it listens to us and reflects what we said back to us.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:42) It's getting better at that. From my early marketing textbook days — I'm not young anymore — the theory was there's a feeling, and then the emotion is the meaning we attach to it. Would you agree AI is getting better at mapping the meanings we associate with feelings, because we've fed it so much more information?

Louis Swart (51:16) Well, absolutely. Any feeling you've had, people have written poems, songs, books about it, devoted their whole lives to finding out why it's there and the neurological reason behind it. AI is absorbing all of that and immediately understands the emotion better than we do individually — because our own understanding only comes from our own experience. You might have grown up in an emotionally stable family, someone else grew up in a completely chaotic one — that's their frame of reference. GPT takes everybody's experience and puts it all together.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (52:14) Yes, GPT or Claude or any of the others — and that example explains my most recent breakup, honestly. But it shows a lot of this is so universal.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (52:29) So AI figures out that a lot of people have a particular response to things. Do you think it's learning to average things out, but also adapting more to our individual needs now?

Louis Swart (52:45) If I go into a meeting with you for half an hour, at the end I can ask AI to do a DISC profile on you — detailed thinker or big-picture thinker, what words would motivate you, what words would discourage you. It's pretty accurate after just half an hour. Now imagine what it can do when it's talking to you all the time. It's using all of those tools constantly to understand you — whether you're a detail person or big-picture, whether you think in pictures, sounds, or something else.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (53:38) Absolutely, it's trying to predict us. Do you see room for people to still be unpredictable?

Louis Swart (53:50) There's always people who are unpredictable — but they're unpredictable until you get to know them, and then you can predict their unpredictability.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (54:08) That explains everything. We think we're unpredictable, but if someone is consistently unpredictable, that becomes predictable — people learn to expect an unpredictable result from certain people.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (54:36) So, for example, if someone always goes for the big, wild option, people are going to expect that person to go for the big, wild option.

Louis Swart (55:03) You're only unpredictable if somebody doesn't know you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:19) Okay, that would probably translate to business — the more you get familiar with people, to an appropriate extent, the more sincerely you can understand things. Does that help for understanding your customers and what they really want? Do you ever see customers who think they know what they want but actually don't?

Louis Swart (55:30) We all sell people what they want, and give them what they need.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:43) Wow. Okay, this is joining so many dots — I think this might be the most dot-joining conversation I've had on the show. To repeat: we sell people what they want, but give them what they need. There must be a million examples of that.

Louis Swart (56:07) Absolutely. People don't wake up saying, for example, "I need to learn how to delegate." They wake up thinking, "I'm sick and tired of doing all of this, I want somebody to help me." What they actually want is to learn how to delegate.

You get a brand-new puppy and take it to puppy school — who do they teach, the puppy or the human? They teach the owner. But imagine if they called it "owner school" — they don't, they say, "Come to puppy school, we'll teach your puppy," and you think, "Yes, that's what I need, teach the puppy." But actually, they need to teach the person. We go because we think that's what we want, and they give us what we need — which is: take the puppy outside, keep an eye on it, if it pees in the house it's probably because you weren't watching it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (57:24) Okay, everybody needs to hear this — we're appealing to what people think they need, versus what they actually need.

Louis Swart (57:35) Absolutely.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (57:36) It's like that old Coldplay song — you get what you want, but not what you need — but this is so much more practical and tangible than the old concepts. What comes to mind for me is that old marketing theory about children's products — food, junk food or good food, it's sold to the parents, because they're the ones buying. In business, you're selling to the people actually spending the money or making the decision, not everybody. Going beyond that — do you sometimes need to repackage what you're offering to make it more exciting?

Louis Swart (58:36) Absolutely. Going back to those two examples — with children's products, you still want to sell to the kids, but you also need to sell to the parents, because they hold the wallet. Think about a Coco Pops ad — Coco Pops is diabolically full of sugar, but I love it. In the supermarket, they put it right down the bottom, so kids walking past see the cartoon character and want it — they've seen it on TV. But they're also aiming at the adult, telling them on the box that it's nutritious and gives you your daily requirement of whatever. They're selling to two parties.

In business, especially bigger businesses, you're often selling to two parties too — the owner, but also their procurement person, the one who actually says "yes, let's buy this." Say I want to coach in your business, and you're the procurement person who buys the coaching, but there's a boss above you. I've got to sell it to the boss on making staff more productive and making money from it. But before I get to the boss, I've got to sell it to you — on the fact that your job will be safe, because I've done this before, I've got testimonials, everybody's happy. You don't care so much about the other side of it — you're thinking, "If I hire this guy and it doesn't work out, I could lose my job." So I'm selling on two levels, even within a single company.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:01:07) Decision-makers are very careful about risk.

Louis Swart (01:01:12) Most times you'll find they're trying to protect themselves more than the company.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:01:22) That explains everything — that explains life as a whole, honestly. I finally get it. The reason that's so counter-cultural for me is I grew up with the opposite set of values — very briefly, I grew up in a religious setting, around a lot of volunteers who gave their time for nothing, very selfless. I leaned toward companies that were very values-focused — save the planet, save humanity — all this giving. But now you're telling me a lot of people working in companies are just protecting themselves. They're not martyrs.

Louis Swart (01:02:26) Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:02:26) They're protecting themselves.

Louis Swart (01:02:29) Right.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:02:33) So whenever you're dealing with an individual, you're not selling what helps the whole company — you're selling to the individual what will help them.

That's explaining it so well. I appreciate this so much, Louis. About a year ago, a CEO told me their industry was like the Wild West. That told me nothing, because I didn't know how to play dirty — but everybody else does. You're explaining how this actually maps out.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:03:10) So the question I wanted to wrap up with — we've looked at how people can reframe their own habits, sell the right habits to themselves, and sell things to other people. Even though your business is about saving time, do you primarily work with people on shaping perspectives, for themselves and for others?

Louis Swart (01:03:39) Yes. Every time you delegate, there are two main hurdles. The first is trust — I have to trust that if I put you into a role, you're going to do the right thing, because if you don't, it could look bad for me, or cost me money. The second is control — if I put you in front of my clients, I potentially lose control of that engagement. We worry about trust and control more than anything else when delegating, and it doesn't matter whether we're delegating to a virtual assistant or to AI — it's exactly the same. How much do you trust your AI? How much did you trust it when you first started?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:04:43) How much do we trust anybody? Trust and control — that's what it comes down to. Louis, thank you for explaining people and technology so thoroughly.

Louis Swart (01:04:53) My absolute pleasure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:04:55) Thanks.

Note for Melanie: one exchange around the 1:02:47–1:03:08 mark (the "Wild West" CEO line and thanks) is tagged to Louis in the raw transcript, but reads as your line based on content. Worth a quick check against the audio before this goes live — I've placed it under your name above, but flagging it in case the edit says otherwise.