What if you tried to make yourself completely replaceable, not fired, not demoted, but voluntarily handing over every operational part of your role to AI.

That's exactly what Georgie Holt did in just sixty days.

She built AI tools to take over twenty five hours of work a week, and she says the experiment has changed her leadership forever.

You might not have heard of Georgie, but you will definitely know her work.

She is the co founder and CEO of Flight Story, which she co founded with Stephen Bartlett, and it's the media company that is home to Diary of a Ceo, the second biggest podcast in the world with over one billion streams and over eleven million YouTube subscribers.

By the end of this conversation, you'll know exactly how Georgie got AI to replace huge portions of her role as a CEO.

We go through step by step how she did it, including the AI tools she built herself despite not being a programmer.

So if you've ever wished you could hand over the grant work without losing the magic of what makes you you, this episode is going to change the way you think about your job, your time, and your role, especially if you're a leader.

Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day.

I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber.

I want to start with a quote that I read of yours, which said, I'm trying to kill myself in sixty days and in brackets I'm going to put with AI.

Can I remove myself entirely from the organization and could it run without me?

Is what I'm trying to test.

Georgie, can can you tell me what the last few months have looked like with your experimentation for yourself into AI.

It's been incredible.

I mean, I'm still here, I'm still alive, although maybe this is the robot hologram for myself, and actually it was completely successful.

It's been an extraordinary test.

I think sort of not just from ANAI an experimentation point of view, but almost from a psychological point as well.

I think as leaders, we get.

Sucked into the operational machine.

You get sucked into the scheduling, the timelines, the projects, and some of my most inspiring leaders have really had a strong emotional intelligence and have really worked out the psychology of an organization.

It's the intrinsic motivations of the people within it, the intrinsic motivations of a company itself, like it's purpose, it's vision, it's north star.

And I wanted to test that theory that I could give all of the operational load to at all, like a build gpgpts to help me scaloes out.

I could use other tools like report et cetera to enable me to put the operational expertise into a machine.

It has been honestly revolutionary for me.

I have got so much time back, and I found time that greatest gift of all things, by spending time learning new skills and techniques to improve how I operated as a leader in more.

Of the functional things.

And if I can give myself.

Back time, I believe it's one of the most important things that I can do for the company because I can spend more time on the people in it.

And it's now freed up a huge amount of time for us to focus on twenty thirty.

So we now have this ambition to look at the next four years ahead.

Where will it be by twenty thirty?

And I don't think if I'd have not sort of gone on the project to trying to kill thee myself in the operational side of me, I would have had that time to deliver this vision that we're working on right now.

So it's been amazing.

I've loved it.

Georgie.

I'd love to step through just practically the process that you went through to kill the operational pattern.

So can you take me through, like how did you even identify what were the tasks that you were doing that could be delegated or outsourced or unamented to AI.

It's a great question.

I sat down with my EA Michelle, who's absolutely amazing, and I said, Okay, we're going to kill me.

You're going to kill me.

So let's start with the basics.

Let's look at our schedule.

So I think if anyone in a high impact.

Role or a leadership role, and your sort.

Of operational pain point is often your schedule, Like how do I shot up for everybody?

And I just said, let's start the basics.

Let's just look at my week, Let's look at my schedule.

I looked at my schedule, and hiring was one of the areas that I was spending the most time in, and I was reflecting that quite often in the hiring process, I'm thinking about feedback.

I'm writing feedback down.

I maybe don't pay full attention because I haven't had time to sort of be completely immersed in a candidates experience and background.

And I worked out that I would say sometimes up to fifty percent of my schedule is interviewing people, even whether we you have roles, don't have roles.

I'm just super curious about meeting the best talent in the world.

So I thought, I'm probably spending anything up to like twenty to thirty hours a week in the admin of interviewing.

So I filt out a tool which are called Scout, which has enabled me to, I think, save twenty to twenty five hours a week so I can be completely present in an interview.

So what it does.

I have given all of the context and information about our company, all of the great hires we've made, all of the culture and values we have, I have helped it understand the type of characteristics and traits that I would like to fire in a new candidate.

We are beta testing a tool at the moment called it's a working title just Culture Test, which allows people in the interview process to sort of pre interviewing have a flavor and a taste of what it might be like to work here, and they're given some scenarios, they're given some scoring metrics on sort of how they think about the world and themselves.

And I think it allows them to shut with autonomy and independence before entering into the interview process, and it allows us to understand is this person aligned to this particular role and the values and the traits that we've expect.

It doesn't mean anyone technically passes or fails.

It's an alignment process because I think it's really important for anyone in an interview process to have the visibility and understanding of whether I am a good fit because I having interviewed myself or I think it can be frustrating whether you're sort of in this sort of ambiguity in an interview process.

We've got out a tool called culture Test, which allows people to have a peak under the hood.

It allows us to understand how aligned they are.

So I've let them a lot of the information about culture Test and what kind of traits and characteristics we were.

Looking for in certain roles.

So in the pre interview stage, now.

Essentially I can feed it the candidate CV.

I can feed them, the potential culture test results, any referrals or information we have about that candidate pre interview.

It gives me kind of an.

Overview of what that candidate strengths are, what potential some of the watch points are, and then it gives me four amazing questions to ask the candidate in the interview based on the role requirements.

Then any watch points that I think it needs to be qualified, so I go completely prepared into the interview.

That takes about.

Forty five seconds.

Now, so I can go in completely prepared in forty five seconds.

I can be completely present in the interview as well, because I'm not searching or seeking another question.

I'm trying to qualify answers.

And then I have these four questions that I know what I'm looking for and searching for.

It means I can.

Then drop my feedback into the tool as well, and it gives me a completely consolidated candidate overview of the interview, my feedback, their culture test score and whether they're aligned.

And then I basically debate backwards and forwards with the tool to say whether I actually no, I felt that in the room they were a little bit more excitable or they seemed really passionate and dedicated, so perhaps the read of the feedback isn't correct and we end up with a fantastic summary that we can share with the candidate.

And it allows me to almost remove any bias that I might have as well, because sometimes it will catch me on something be adjusting in real time or sort of saying that you spend longer with this candidate than the other candidate.

Is that something you need to reflect on what time of day it is as well.

I tend to work much better in the afternoons and later.

Stuff I've interviewed someone in the morning, it can say you interviewed them in the morning.

Was there something that we needed to change the time on?

So it's allowed me to build a framework and reduce hours and hours of time and show there's a human in an interview as well, where I'm just in deep curiosity mode, not thinking necessary about I'm going to structure every question, how I'm going to make sure that the feedback is correct.

I can just read their body language.

I can ensure that I'm present and really attuned to what I think that they might bring and what we can offer them as a candidate.

So it saved me dramatic amounts of time every single week.

I love that example.

I want to digg into how you built that, Like is this something that anyone can build, you know, with a tool like report, which is a vibe coding tool for mere mortals who are not programmers.

Or is this something where you built a GPT and chat JPT so or did you have a programmer help you?

What did that look like?

I built it in a GPT.

I sat down and mapped out the process end to end.

I worked with GPT a lot, so it has a understanding of who I am, how I work, or you know, the kind of leader in sort of character I am, and so it sort of understands some of my watch points when I'm interviewing with somebody.

And then I sat down with our data scientists.

I said, look, I think I've got something here, and I would like to spend some time just qualifying whether you think I have to And we asked the GPT to build it.

So we challenged it to build it for us, and I gave it everything that I wanted to achieve.

I spoke to it a lot, so it wasn't just entire I kind of had a conversation with it, explained my pain points, explained what I wanted to create, what I think I wanted it to show, what it needed to do for me, and we went back and forth like a team, and we brainstormed with the GPT and eventually it builds itself.

If you think Georgie's first DAI experiment was wild, wait until you hear what she built next.

In the second half, she opens the door to her AI writer's room, a team of virtual creative spiring partners she calls on to challenge her thinking and sharpen her storytelling.

And the implications for leadership are huge.

So stick around because what she shares next might just spark your own I could automate that moment.

If you're looking for more tips to improve the way you work can live.

I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally.

You can sign up for that at Amantha dot com.

That's Amantha dot com.

That is amazing.

I love to hear a couple of other examples of where AI has completely changed your workflows.

Absolutely.

I have this deep feeling around AI that it is one of our greatest tools.

But my fear is that it will sometimes take away the most important thing that we have, which is our ability to summarize intellectually really important problems and challenges.

Because I think one of the biggest skills that a leader.

Can learn over time is the ability to assimilate and summarize information and then take that information you distribute it into an organization, distribute it into a team, understanding how the sales team might want to receive it, understanding how a data science.

Team wants to receive it.

Because your job as a leader is to take a team on a journey with you.

So I took inspiration from the great writing machines of the world, and I think, and I looked to Hollywood, and I looked to Hollywood Studios, and I looked at the great narrative creators in the world.

I thought, well, what do they have.

They have a writer's room.

So quite often they will have building out narrative or building out scripting.

They will have multiple writers attacking a challenge or a storyline from all different perspectives, and they'll all come together to debate and discuss those different points of view.

And I thought, well, what an interesting thing to try and build Because I don't want chat GPT to write for me, but I want it to challenge what I'm writing.

So I asked it whether I thought it could build out a writer's room for me, and we would have different personas as each writer to anyone from the sort of the format and the function expert, to the disruptor, to the emotional story arc to the person who maybe wrote for sort of more jeopardy and danger like.

So I basically constructed a writers I said, look, what are the eight archetypes of a writer's room.

That you might find in Hollywood?

What are the great script writers?

Do you think we.

Could build out a writer's room or all of those personas exist?

And if I write something and I can call on you, I can literally say, please bring the writer's room to this piece of communication.

And challenge it.

So I now have a writer's room to everything that I create, which I think I have got to a good enough place.

I will then put it into.

The writer's room and they'll challenge it and say the emotional art isn't strong enough.

Or this could be format about that.

Actually, the disrupture will come in and say, you could create such a more compelling narrative if you put in a little bit of jeopardy, so they don't write for me, because I am extremely conscious and I think it's one of our greatest challenges that we are going to lose some of the things that make humans extremely special, and that is storytelling, and that is the ability to summarize and distill information to the world in a way.

That is well understood.

And I think about Google Maps, It's like, when was the last time you really remember the direction to somewhere unless it was somewhere within sort of twenty miles of your home.

So I am concerned that we're.

Going to lose our way, and we're going to lose how to remember how to do things and do things well in the same way we just rely on Google.

That's we leave the house and we hand over the direction of our journey to somebody else.

I would hate to think we were handing over our creativity and our consciousness to something.

That's really cool and sorry, just to give me an idea of like how you've built this, Is this the one GPAT that you've built, or have you built several that each have a different voice that you can call, and what does it look like in practice?

It's a GPT called the writer's room that I'll either I can either go into it specifically and say I've written a piece of comms, or I want to create a narrative memo for the business on the specific topic, and I need to make sure that it's relevant for a sales team, a marketing team, and a social team, but also the data science team.

This is what I've written, and someone will, you know, they will take its particular GPT and challenge that.

Or if I'm writing anywhere in my GPT any chat, I can call on it, like I say, writer's rim, Can you kin'd just come and check this for me?

And sometimes it hallucinates and I have to go, Okay, no, I don't think you've got that quite way to go back out.

So I am super aware that it has sometimes it's limitations, but I think it's an extraordinary ally.

I think AI is an extraordinary ally to women in the boardroom and women in leadership, because I think there is a generalized perception, and I say generalized, and I don't mean specifically that men bring logic and practicality to a boardroom and extremely efficient operationally, and I mean this is a very generalized perspective where women bring high amounts of human intelligence, emotional intelligence, powers.

Of persuasion powers.

Think four dimensionally constantly being sort of playing four D chess.

We make that decision over here, what does it mean for this team over here?

How do I get that team over here to really understand the purpose of what we're trying to do over there when it actually it may impact what they're doing over here in a negative ways.

So they're very good sort of thing that I'd say, the four D image And imagine if you and where the areas have perhapsally felt a little bit less confident, you know, the logic, practicality, operating, and I mean very generalized, you had a superpower in your immediate zone or sort of influence that you can absolutely double down on your superpower with complete confidence that logic, practicality and operations is being taken care of.

Imagine a world where that happens every single day and women realize that suddenly you can save time.

Logic, practicality, operations can be built and used and built elsewhere, which you can then choose to use not to use whenever you need to.

Imagine that space that women could operate in and Suddenly leadership actually becomes the human intelligence in the room, the emotional intelligence in the room, because you're going to be able to hand over practicality, frameworking, strategy to an extent, operations to your copilot in AI, whatever tool that you're using, and the board is completely different.

And that excites me massively because I think, when moving towards in the next decade, who brings a human intelligence to this room, who brings the emotional intelligence to social IQ?

Who are they?

Because they are the leaders of companies, they are the purpose drivers, they are the mission creators.

They're the people that can galvanize a room human beings to go with you on a complex, interesting, intellectually challenging and stimulating journey.

Imagine that.

I think it's going to look entirely different.

In the next five years.

And I am immensely excited about that.

I love that, And it's I think a good segue into understanding, like, you're obviously using AI to augment your work, like with the writer's room, but you're using it to save tens of hours probably more per week.

Can you give me an example or two where you've really consciously used that time that you've won back to applied.

You know what you've just been describing.

I use it predominantly and primarily on people.

And I would say future planning.

But the idea that I can now take process away and spend it on people instead, that twenty minutes that you can spend with a teammate or a team or you know, someone that you work with but maybe not work alongside, is so invaluable.

And I mean, we'll get into first principles, but one of our first principles of our companies were in person first.

I think there is no greater experience in life than working on an audacious goal with a group of ambitious people and achieving it and doing it together and in person.

And I go back to how I learned, how I grew as a leader and as a co worker.

I had the unique experience of doing it in person for twenty years.

I learned pace, urgency, great leadership qualities and characteristics, terrible leadership qualities and characteristics.

So every minute that I have saved, I spend it back with people and on future planning, because if I'm thinking about the future and then spending time with the people working on them now and understanding their vision roadmap, experiences challenges.

I will only plan for.

A better future towards the purpose that we're building for.

So it absolutely goes back to spending time on people and planning, and it is a gift.

And I have extremely strong feelings about leaders who don't spend time with people and teams, because it is a huge loss.

When you look at the definition of a company.

I think Steven speaks about at this a lot, it's a group of people.

That is what a company is.

So if you're not spending time your most precious resource and the thing that matters most, which is the people, then you're never going to succeed as a leader and a company in the way that I would like to see people do it.

What I love most about Georgie's approach isn't just the time that she's saved, it's what she's chosen to do with it.

She's proof that when leaders use AI intentionally, it can clear the clutter and create space for the most human parts of our jobs, like listening, inspiring, and imagining the future.

Now.

As a special bonus this week, I'm releasing a part two of my chat with Georgie because when we spoke, I couldn't help it go extra deep and dive into behind the scenes of working with Stephen Bartlett and making Diary of a CEO, which is one of my favorite podcasts.

So hop back into the podcast speed and click on part two of this interview, where we go behind the curtains of how Diary of a CEO actually gets put together and how they grew it into one of the most downloaded podcasts on the planet.

If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.

How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warringery people, part of the cool And Nation