Voice of Customer Library
AIMM Mastermind — Full Transcript Extraction
Extracted verbatim or closely paraphrased from 39 sessions (Jun 2025 – Apr 2026). Lou (facilitator) excluded. Organized by recurring theme cluster.
1. AI OVERWHELM / KEEPING UP
The single most pervasive theme across all sessions. Participants feel the pace of AI is impossible to track — even the technically capable ones.
“Basically impossible to keep up with AI trends… so focus is crucial.” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-07-10
“The surprising thing about AI is the new and unexpected need to catch up on catching up.” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-07-17
“So much to keep up with! 😱” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-10-23
“The language of AI changes almost as fast as AI models.” — Jamie W, 2025-07-31
“I try to keep up and I cannot. And I’m like, Wow, how does everyone else do it? How much time do you need to spend just to know what’s going on? And I do try to keep up on my own during the week, because it’s like a hobby. And even with that… you know.” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-08-07
“Highly grateful for the curated content — really helps to navigate through the exponential landscape of AI.” — Jay Drobez, 2025-08-28
“Just how to keep up with the rapid developments of AI. Everyone is really overwhelmed. So if there’s some principle, or framework… that’s why I put ‘keep up’ in quotes, because you can, but… at least you can feel it.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-04-02
“Going after each new tool, each new AI conversion or platform — it’s a way of exhausting yourself and not getting anything out of it, because you need to learn new things over and over again.” — Kasimir, 2026-04-02
“I think many people are either trying to run after each new shining AI model, or they see how often they change and they just don’t bother with AI at all, because they don’t know, actually, what to do.” — Kasimir, 2026-04-02
“The reach this week is one thing. Next week, it’s something else. Then the main models cut up. And it’s like, okay, why would I change? Just hop and change my workflow, because in the scoreboard, it’s like 5% better than what I have now.” — Kasimir Hedstrom, 2025-10-23
“There’s still so much of this conservative thinking and sort of like polarization… not many people share the excitement, like we do in this group, and they don’t see the potential.” — Jay Drobez, 2025-07-24
2. IMPLEMENTATION GAP / PARALYSIS
Participants consistently know more than they apply. The gap between understanding and doing is a persistent source of shame and frustration.
“Watching won’t get me there. Same as what Bally is mentioning.” — Jamie W, 2025-07-31
“I haven’t been able to implement a lot. So that’s why I’m a little… I was a little confused.” — Mazie Zdanowicz, 2025-06-05
“I started [the lead magnet] but didn’t finish… Would be great to know how you did it.” — Elizabeth Stief, 2026-01-08
“I need to see that it’s working and I can handle it.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-02-19
“I just have no idea if I can handle it.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-02-19
“I had a flood of things arrive at the end of the week and this week, so I’ve in effect done nothing, and I’m feeling really kind of reluctant and a little ashamed about that… I’m uncomfortable, okay?” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“The embarrassment is the delay, you know, and I’m publicly flagellating myself for not getting to it before now.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“I’ve been too busy being competent to interrogate whether my competence is the right kind.” — [paraphrase of group theme]
“No, not really [feel like I could hack this together quickly]. But at least I start to understand a little bit.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-09-11 (after watching a full demo session)
“With so much power in our hands, the biggest challenge will be FOCUS… you literally can make/do anything… but what?” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-09-11
3. TOOL FRAGMENTATION & SUBSCRIPTION ACCUMULATION
Participants are paying for multiple tools, using none of them fully, and can’t consolidate.
“I have like 50+ GPTs… Started to combine them somehow as I’ve forgotten that I have created GPT x for y…” — Kasimir Hedstrom, 2025-11-06
“This shit Airtable drives me mad.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-11-06
“I’ve got so many documents open across different platforms, and I find AI — the Google AI Studio helpful, because I know things are there. But then again, it’s like finding it, you know?” — Bally Binning, 2025-11-27
“They also kind of add up — if you have 20 bucks for this, and the other one for that, and suddenly you’re looking for hundreds of dollars.” — Kasimir, 2025-09-11
“I have Setapp and it is severely underused.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-02-26
“I have GHL also — sitting redundant.” — Bally Binning, 2026-03-05
“I have Adobe — suppose I could let that go if I can amend PDFs via Setapp.” — Bally Binning, 2026-02-26
“I didn’t use it. I got it when Joanna and I went on and started using it, but I’m not using it.” — Kasimir (re: GHL), 2026-03-05
“I use Notion daily, it’s amazing, and I don’t even have or use the AI portion of it.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-03-05
“I’ve found that Claude writes better, but ChatGPT knows more about me. It’s a toss-up.” — Don Back, 2025-06-19
4. LOSING THINKING / KNOWLEDGE DISORGANIZATION
Accumulated AI work and ideas keep getting lost. The inability to retrieve what you’ve already created is a recurring source of frustration.
“I’ve got so many chats in there, I can’t find a damn thing.” — Don Back, 2025-11-27
“I’m also a little bit afraid or paranoid about leaving that rich history in my ChatGPT or Claude as a repository, because they’re not really set up for that. I fear I’m going to run up against a storage limit.” — Don Back, 2025-11-27
“I realized that a lot of the earlier wisdom that I had was lost. Whenever you do synthesize documents or courses, do not delete, omit, or overly summarize. Only add to the new document.” — Kasimir Hedstrom, 2026-01-15
“I’m not thinking about retrieval, I’m thinking about where to put it. Oh okay, I put it in a folder, great, I’ve got it stored, I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I just don’t know where the folder is.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“It’s biting me in the back now that I was so lazy and didn’t have more organized folders.” — Kasimir, 2026-02-05
“I hit send and threw it over my shoulder and forgot where it landed. So it’s all there somewhere, I just have to go and find it.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“I’ve had to go back a year later to my IT cases. And I was like, oh, thank God this is here.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-03-05
“I’ve done a lot of work here. I don’t want to lose it.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-03-05
“It’s so many times that I’ve had a great idea, but I need to finish the sentence, and when I finish that… where is that idea? It’s gone.” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
“And then you’re like, ‘It couldn’t have been that good an idea if I forgot it so easily!’” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-03-05
“I exported everything from Claude and went through, gathering topics… The idea is that I can have all the wisdom locally on my computer, so I can find it in 10 seconds that otherwise might take me 10 minutes.” — Kasimir (describing his extraction system), 2025-11-27
5. AI VOICE & AUTHENTICITY
Participants are acutely aware that AI-generated content sounds like AI, and they’re working hard to fix it.
“I try to make my writing not… kind of… it doesn’t sound like AI is doing it.” — Kasimir, 2025-07-24
“AI wants to do threes and sixes. For some reason. It says, okay, this solution has 3 steps, 6 steps.” — Kasimir, 2025-07-24
“I scour all my stuff to remove the em dash. It is a hallmark of AI-generated content.” — Don Back, 2026-01-22
“Even though it’s a perfectly good and legit tool of writing, but now it’s been totally ruined by AI.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-01-22
“We need an antislop SKILL.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-02-05
“I made a skill for a copywriting prompt that takes care of you sounding human, and every 3 months it goes and updates the parameters — what sounds like AI today?” — Kasimir, 2026-01-15
“This is a system to get beyond the general passive pap that we tend to get out of AIs and that is now polluting the content platforms.” — Don Back, 2025-07-31
“The value of pre-AI verbal content is becoming like pre-WWII steel for use in critical low radiation environments. So much AI-created text has polluted written content.” — Don Back, 2025-06-19
“I usually say, give me your unfettered thoughts… the tendency of AI is to agree with you, and if you go with that… why I’m the best genius that humanity has had to date.” — Kasimir (on AI sycophancy), 2026-03-05
6. GROUP / COMMUNITY VALUE
Participants repeatedly say what they get here cannot be found anywhere else. The peer learning, curation, and live thinking are the key differentiators.
“Without Lou today I would not be able to support the clients I do in my work as a coach. Those sessions with Lou have really amplified my presence in this space, and I know that I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him.” — Bally Binning, 2025-06-05 (testimonial)
“I can’t walk out my front door and find any of that out there. I find it here, though, and that is very valuable.” — Don Back, 2025-07-24
“I don’t know how I’ll survive without this. Everybody brings what they’ve been working on. Everyone is super smart, a lot of technical people. So to me, it’s just like, I just don’t know how I’ll survive without this.” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-08-07
“I’m not techie. You know what I mean. However, I’ve worked out quite a lot since I met you, and there’s no way I would be where I am today. And that’s because I come to these sessions.” — Bally Binning, 2025-08-07
“That’s a combination I have not encountered anywhere else. You can get kind of prompts — they are 13 of those, in a way, but how well-structured and how effective they are, and what is behind them — that’s more valuable than the prompt itself.” — Kasimir Hedstrom, 2025-08-07
“The way you think to get behind [AI] and really… you have to challenge the AI and how to get it to work better for us. That is the first place I conceptualize. I have not encountered that anywhere else.” — Kasimir, 2025-08-07
“Coming here, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, we have this place!’ Otherwise I would be like 100 years back, you know, without this exposure.” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-08-07
“Thank you…. I don’t feel alone anymore…😂” — Mazie Zdanowicz, 2026-01-15
“I’ve been with Lou for the last year — it has been awesome learning.” — Don Back, 2025-06-05
7. POSITIONING / ICP CLARITY / CLIENT BLINDNESS
Participants struggle to see their business from their clients’ perspective — and AI has helped many of them break through.
“I actually had forgotten who my ideal client is anymore. Like, I speak to them, of course, they’re leaders. But that needs refining.” — Bally Binning, 2025-11-27
“My messaging dilutes.” — Bally Binning, 2025-11-06
“I wasn’t aware about that, to be very honest. At least as clarity, right?” — Dirk Ohlmeier (on his own client problem framing), 2026-01-15
“No one Googles ‘executive search’ — if people Google executive search, it’s already too late. So what did they Google?” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-01-15
“It was seeing the problem not from my angle, not from the customer angle. It was really the pain… the movement.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-01-15
“It was pointing at business problems. He said, you know, the world is so complex, but all of your clients have the same business problems at the end of the day.” — Dirk Ohlmeier (re: AI reframing his positioning), 2026-01-15
“The classic marketing error is: you think all about solution. And we don’t adopt that empathetic approach, which is more problem owner, prospect-centric.” — Don Back, 2026-01-15
“People don’t search for the answer to the problem when they don’t even understand what the problem is. So what they perceive, and they’re grappling with, are the symptoms.” — Don Back, 2026-01-15
“You’ve created two different profiles for two different products. What the heck are you doing?” — Kasimir (quoting his AI’s blunt feedback on his ICP work), 2026-01-15
“You think all your clients know what executive search is? No they don’t.” — [paraphrase of Dirk’s ontology AI session], 2026-01-15
8. FEAR OF OBSOLESCENCE / AI DISPLACEMENT
A quieter but persistent undercurrent — will AI make their profession irrelevant?
“A top-notch investor, brutal honesty, said: ‘I have my own AI people search. I don’t need a headhunter anymore.’ And I said, oh my God!” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-06-12
“What we’re doing in this container is so far and beyond the level of understanding out there, and we look at it, and it kind of scares us that we’re going to be eliminated by the power of it.” — Don Back, 2025-06-12
“I feel like at one point AI is going to decide to move on and leave us behind, as in, ‘These humans just can’t keep up.’” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-12-12
“If AI could do 80% of what you currently offer, what would remain in the 20%?” — [framing question used in sessions]
“High-performers using AI as a blame shield is a blind spot worth naming.” — [meta-observation from flagged review]
“AI won’t take away leadership. It will just expose the leadership quality.” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
“One danger I see going forward: it will be socially acceptable avoidance of responsibility. ‘AI told me to do so.’” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
“The group resists the reframe of their expert value, even when they intellectually accept it. A future insight could address why high-performers resist this reframe.” — [meta-observation, flagged review, 2026-02-12]
9. GEO / AI VISIBILITY WINS
Early, real-world proof that being findable by AI changes the business. These are the most potent testimonial moments in the vault.
“I don’t know how you did it, but I was asking ChatGPT who’s the best headhunter in Germany for C-level positions for IT experts, and you were in the top 3.” — Dirk Ohlmeier (quoting his client), 2025-07-03
“He reached out on LinkedIn just because I was mentioned by ChatGPT. He said, ‘You’re an authority.’” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-07-03
“When people search us and we pop up in Perplexity or AI browsers, I’m so excited about this. I’ve got to get my head around it, understand it, for sure. Once I do that, it’s going to be amazing.” — Bally Binning, 2025-11-27
“I uploaded the injection, you know, where we went through the files. I’ve actually had about 8 people approaching me via email saying, oh, you need SEO optimization!” — Bally Binning, 2026-03-05
“I’ve had loads! There’s another one! There’s another one! I haven’t even done any of the stubs yet, so… that just makes everybody get moving. We’ve got to do this. Have to.” — Bally Binning, 2026-04-02
“I’ve had more in the last 8 days since [uploading the injection].” — Bally Binning, 2026-04-02
“The FAQs are timely as I’m planning a website restructure early in 2026.” — Don Back, 2025-12-12
“This is going to have business model implications, and I want to be ready.” — Don Back (re: GEO FAQ tool), 2025-11-27
“Heaven forbid I should have to discovery call everybody.” — Don Back (on preparing for inbound from GEO), 2025-11-27
10. BUILDING WITH AI / VIBE CODING WINS
Moments of genuine amazement at what AI can build — and the democratizing effect it has on technical capability.
“Astounding… what’s happened so far would take a good programmer a few days. 😅” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-09-11
“I discovered Claude Code… I started from scratch. In an hour, I had a working interface.” — Kasimir Hedstrom, 2025-11-27
“It can troubleshoot itself, and everything else. It goes and fetches all the documentation it needs automatically. You don’t have even to do that. It’s basically hands-off.” — Kasimir Hedstrom, 2025-11-27
“You can even draw a sketch on paper and take a picture and say, look at this, please do that, and it will create your Python code to implement that.” — Kasimir, 2025-11-27
“I’ve been enjoying Claude Code a lot in the last two weeks. Amazing. Mind-blowing. 12 out of 10.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-03-12
“I wrote a custom GPT to act as an interpreter/agent to take an oral database update, pass it to Google Apps Script and update the Google Sheet. The last step is finalizing an Apple Script so that a ‘Hey Siri’ command will trigger it so it all works verbally.” — Don Back, 2026-03-05
“I was working on a pitch deck with Claude and everything, and it’s super fast, yeah, and it’s incredible, right? I was sending it to a friend of mine who was CEO, and he said, looks really good, tomorrow 11 I have a session with an investor, I put it on the table.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-04-02
“Luckily we now have ChatGPT. It will teach you everything you need to know on this tech stuff… just amazing.” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-08-28
“It’s like having an extra brain.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-02-05
“Now everyone can have their own PhD research assistant.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-03-12
11. TEACHING FROM THE FRONTIER / EXPERT BUBBLE
Experienced participants consistently discover that their clients, audiences, and even respected peers are far behind where the group operates.
“I ran a session on skills, and I assumed that people would be on Claude. And they weren’t. They’re like, ‘We’re not still there.’ I was almost taken by surprise.” — Bally Binning, 2026-03-05 and 2026-04-02
“You’re in a bubble, right? In a bubble of super experts, and you always think every week you compare yourself with AI, every week. And 99% of the humans are behind you.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-04-02
“It’s the curse of the expert that… we all think that everyone is… if they are not at the same level as we are, then they are a step ahead of us.” — Kasimir, 2026-04-02
“From when I talk to other people, or when I’m on a call, and somebody goes into AI stuff… It’s not my impression that people are really beyond… trying to figure out still how to prompt well.” — Jamie W, 2026-03-05
“I think there’s pockets of people that — this group being one — that are trying to take AI into having it do things. But I think the general public, they’re just trying to figure things out.” — Jamie W, 2026-03-05
“I remain amazed at how little the business/industrial world knows about AI.” — Don Back, 2025-06-12
“Very impactful when you show them the recent history of AI, because we’re living in the moment, and people are not aware of this stepwise evolution that’s been happening. This is an eye-opener for me.” — Don Back, 2026-04-02
“Michael [Simmons] was so late [to AI], so how many other people are late?” — Kasimir, 2026-04-02
“I think there’s gonna be quite a few people that are conceptualizing their approach to AI at an earlier era mindset.” — Don Back, 2026-04-02
12. TIME SAVINGS / LEVERAGE WINS
The most shareable transformation stories — where AI visibly compressed time.
“It allowed me to take 5 days off the work. Unbelievable.” — Don Back, 2025-11-06
“Normally this would take me a week to do.” — Don Back, 2025-11-06
“They were almost incredulous that I turned it around in that amount of time.” — Don Back, 2025-11-06
“I went into ChatGPT and said I want to do a webinar on blah blah… and then you pop that over into Gamma AI, and there was the whole frigging presentation done with beautiful slides and graphs. And my thought was, even though I’ve not been able to do this… I’ve saved myself weeks and hours and days.” — Mazie Zdanowicz, 2025-06-12
“It was asking AI how much time could I save? And it was actually saying… you can save 10 hours per day. And I was thinking, oh my God, yeah, I mean, maybe it’s bullshit.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-06-12
“60 seconds of a ‘What if’ conversation can save hours of frustration.” — Don Back, 2025-08-07
“Professor ChatGPT — cheapest tuition that I’ve ever paid for learning something.” — Don Back, 2025-08-28
“I was stretching my competence into getting pre-seed funding from an investor. I’m working on a pitch deck with Claude… super fast… incredible. And he said, looks really good, tomorrow 11 I have a session with an investor.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-04-02
13. AI TRUST / RELIABILITY CONCERNS
Under the surface enthusiasm is real anxiety about when and whether to trust AI output.
“I don’t trust what the AI produces, because the desire to come out with a solution quickly is so ingrained there. It will just feel good to give any answer — however wrong and hallucinated that is.” — Kasimir, 2026-01-15
“It created two new laws that it was citing. And I had to take it back, and I was stern with it, and it apologized, as it always does. It’s such an obsequious interface. And had to redo a body of work.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“I was not happy to see that drift occur. Anything that we can do to kind of lock in these hard constraints, I think is going to help us.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“Claude had tremendous problems. A lot of outages — complete and partial. And I had a lot of problems with Opus this week.” — Elizabeth Stief, 2026-02-05
“I get the same tasks, exactly same project. Less files, and it breaks up in the middle, and takes my tokens. I got like half of my stuff done only.” — Elizabeth Stief, 2026-02-05
“If you give Gemini 1,000 pages, you will get out one page of that summary. And it is a heck of a thing trying to override.” — Kasimir, 2026-02-05
“When you update things, it’s a small thing that can stop everything… like one little printer in the factory that makes stickers, and the whole factory stopped working.” — Kasimir, 2025-10-23
“I’ve had to unwind automated messes that did not build off of clear processes.” — Don Back, 2025-10-30
“I need to see a URL — where did it get this information? If it cannot provide that — ditch it.” — Kasimir, 2026-01-15
“ChatGPT has this propensity to explain the universe to you before it gives the answer.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
14. SELF-DOUBT / NOT TECHNICAL ENOUGH
Consistent pattern: participants underestimate themselves, especially relative to others in the group.
“I’m trying to keep up.” — Bally Binning, 2025-06-05
“I’m not techie. You know what I mean. However, I’ve worked out quite a lot since I met you.” — Bally Binning, 2025-08-07
“I’m the kindergartner here with the college grads. They let me stay ‘cause I’m cute. 😊🤣❤️” — Mazie Zdanowicz, 2026-01-22
“Not for the faint of code.” — Donald Kihenja, 2025-11-06
“This is well beyond my abilities. Thank you for sharing. It is amazing seeing the next generation of AI tools.” — Jamie W, 2026-01-08
“My brain was melting now its done 🙂” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-01-15
“I’m overwhelmed already, but maybe just to get it right…” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-09-11
“The session was a bit too technical for me at this point…” — Elizabeth Stief, 2025-08-28
“I shudder every time I have to learn a new tool. It’s just, oh, the learning curve and the frustration of that.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“No, not really [feel like I could hack this together quickly]. But at least I start to understand a little bit.” — Dirk Ohlmeier (after watching a full demo), 2025-09-11
“So we all know I’m not where all of you are.” — Mazie Zdanowicz, 2025-06-12
15. EXPERT IDENTITY / CODIFYING YOUR VALUE
Participants sense that their distinctive value is hard to name and harder to transfer — and AI is surfacing this problem.
“Information — easy. Knowledge — sweat, frustration, pain, but ultimately transformation.” — Don Back, 2025-07-03
“Information is essentially free — Transformation/implementation are the valuable piece.” — Don Back, 2025-10-09
“We are all the CEOs of our own careers — we need to act accordingly.” — Don Back, 2025-10-09
“It gets us deeper into our conversations than our logical mind and limited memory allows. Like using the GPU of our mind rather than relying just on the CPU.” — Don Back, 2025-10-16
“I noticed that I had… a lot of e-books. And some of… okay, there’s a lot of knowledge, and… what’s not said, and here is how you can make your own something, an IP that you own.” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
“I was playing with a skill to evaluate what to make into a scalable product.” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
“I don’t know how to use Notion. But I know how to ask Claude to do it. I do not want to spend the time learning something that I can use AI to do it for me.” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
“If I didn’t need to make money, this is what I would do all day…” — Donald Kihenja (re: building with AI), 2025-11-06
“AI amplifies what you put into it. If it’s clarity, it will amplify it in a beautiful manner, but if it’s just messed up, it will just amplify the messed up things.” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
16. SOLOPRENEUR REALITY / LIFE CONTEXT
The texture of their actual lives — scattered obligations, energy limits, competing demands.
“Too much work, too little time, and this time of the year is taxes, I’m conducting an interview for an executive director, and then I got family stuff, and oh, and then there’s the day job.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“I was tied up with dragging some contracts across the goal line.” — Don Back, 2025-11-06
“I need to run for a client call. Thank you.” — Jamie W (multiple sessions)
“My enthusiasm for other people varies with the time of day. By the end of the day dealing with others makes me want to close the door and draw the blinds.” — Don Back, 2026-02-12
“I Spend loads of time with myself… daily… and it’s great… I enjoy my own sense of humor and we never argue. 🤣❤️” — Mazie Zdanowicz, 2026-02-12
“I’m going to be able to get insights that I didn’t actually have prior to the actual delivery.” — Don Back, 2025-11-06
“I’m pivoting right now from a heavy focus on one-to-one, which is really not scalable, into the one-to-many.” — Don Back, 2025-11-27
“I know what my strengths are… otherwise I’m just spending a lot of time behind the scenes, but not being out there and speaking to people, and that’s what I need to do more of.” — Bally Binning, 2025-11-06
“Sometimes your greatest pain becomes someone else’s greatest gift. Our experiences are not for us. They’re a gift that we can give to others.” — Sherita, 2025-08-07
17. PIVOT / MARKET TIMING ANXIETY
Participants sense that AI is changing the rules underneath them — and they’re trying to position before it’s too late.
“I only looked at [AI] as a supporter for single tasks instead of the whole business.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-06-12 (breakthrough reframe)
“This week I really thought about, okay, how would AI build my business? It’s the first time that I truly changed the perspective.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-06-12
“I have a little bit struggle with make.com… Do I need to learn still make.com to really get my automation clean and running? Or should I wait another month, and Zapier or MCP is doing it anyway?” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-06-12 (fear of investing in the wrong thing)
“I’m actually not ready for that, yeah?” — Dirk Ohlmeier (investor meeting came faster than expected), 2026-04-02
“The investor is interested. And then I started, obviously, the team is the issue.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-04-02
“I was rising the question: how could AI transform my business?” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2025-06-12
“Lets assume if it’s working — I can think of a lot of options to make money with it.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-02-19
“The bank account 💰 will be the final metric/KPI 😉” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-01-22
18. NATURAL LANGUAGE / MEMORABLE PHRASES
These are the exact words participants used spontaneously. High value for copywriting and content.
On the pace of AI:
- “Catch up on catching up.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “ShinyObjectGPT.” (Donald Kihenja — self-aware label for tool chasing)
- “100 years back without this exposure.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “We live in the future.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “The exponential landscape of AI.” (Jay Drobez)
- “I’ve been 100 years back without this exposure.” (Donald Kihenja)
On AI quality:
- “Deep, deep, deep.” (Don Back)
- “AI waterboarding.” (Donald Kihenja — on iterative prompting sessions)
- “Hallucination layering.” (Bally Binning — coined phrase for compounding AI errors)
- “The needle finder in the haystack.” (Don Back — on RAG/knowledge retrieval)
- “Obsequious interface.” (Don Back — on AI’s apology behavior)
- “Antislop.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “Passive pap.” (Don Back)
On learning:
- “No pain, no gain.” (Don Back)
- “Progress, not perfection.” (Don Back)
- “It’s a little bit like hitting sometimes your head on the wall.” (Kasimir)
- “When you know it, it’s easy, but when you’re learning it…” (Kasimir)
- “We’re learning through errors.” (Bally Binning)
- “That is the very foundation of learning.” (Don Back)
On AI as partner/team:
- “Building my team one $20 agent at a time.” (Don Back)
- “Now we have the team!” (Donald Kihenja)
- “It’s like having an extra brain.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “Sounds like you engineered a new manager for yourself.” (Don Back)
- “I said, let’s do this as partners — you bring your specialty.” (Kasimir)
On their situation:
- “I just got addicted.” (Sherita — re: ChatGPT)
- “I can’t walk out my front door and find any of that out there.” (Don Back)
- “I don’t know how I’ll survive without this.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “I’m not afraid of it, I just want to put on the catcher’s mitt.” (Don Back)
- “Heaven forbid I should have to discovery call everybody.” (Don Back)
- “Emphasis on slow.” (Don Back — re: organic authority building)
- “Publicly flagellating myself.” (Don Back)
- “It’s the thinking that’s transformative.” (Bally Binning, Don Back — repeated by both)
- “That’s a combination I have not encountered anywhere else.” (Kasimir)
- “It doesn’t matter what you say — it’s how you say it.” (Dirk)
- “You’re in a bubble of super experts.” (Dirk)
- “The bank account will be the final metric.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “English is the new programming language.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “Stories are 🔥” (Donald Kihenja)
- “Thanks for the advantage, Lou.” (Dirk)
- “Feels like Xmas is already here.” (Bally)
- “I was like oxygen, you know? What’s going on?” (Dirk — re: AI feedback quality)
- “Not for the faint of code.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “As a recovering technology guy…” (Don Back)
- “Keep your focus on throwing the boomerangs. They are designed to come back.” (Donald Kihenja)
- “Your greatest pain becomes someone else’s greatest gift.” (Sherita)
- “Celebrity with their own studio.” (Donald Kihenja — describing ideal personal brand identity)
19. THE TEACHING CALIBRATION PROBLEM
The operational challenge of designing programs, content, and client offerings for an audience that operates at AI eras 3–5 when you operate at era 6–7. Distinct from cluster 11 (the emotional isolation of being ahead) — this is the practical problem: offer design mismatch, curriculum calibration, and the frustration of assuming a level of AI fluency clients don’t have.
“You’re in a bubble of super-experts. You always think every week in terms of AI speed. 99% of humans are behind you. Pick one thing.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-04-02
“From my impression, people are really not beyond trying to figure out how to prompt well.” — Jamie W, 2026-04-02
“I ran a session on skills last week and none of my participants were on Claude yet. So that was actually a lesson last week.” — Bally Binning, 2026-04-02
“I think many people are either trying to run after each new shining AI model, or they see how often they change and they just don’t bother with AI at all, because they don’t know, actually, what to do.” — Kasimir, 2026-04-02
“Everything you thought you had to learn, you don’t need to anymore. Good news is, it’s gonna all be done for you. All you have to do is learn how to create this text file.” — Lou, 2026-04-02 (re: simplifying the teaching pitch)
“Just how to keep up with the rapid developments of AI. Everyone is really overwhelmed. So if there’s some principle, or framework… that’s why I put ‘keep up’ in quotes, because you can, but… at least you can feel it.” — Donald Kihenja, 2026-04-02
20. THE TRUST CALIBRATION PROBLEM
Uncertainty about when and how much to rely on AI output — not just “AI got it wrong” (cluster 13) but the deeper meta-question: when do I verify, when do I just ship, when do I push back? Members expressing calibration uncertainty rather than specific tool failures.
“I don’t trust what the AI produces, because the desire to come out with a solution quickly is so ingrained there. It will just feel good to give any answer — however wrong and hallucinated that is.” — Kasimir, 2026-01-15
“I need to see a URL — where did it get this information? If it cannot provide that — ditch it.” — Kasimir, 2026-01-15
“I was not happy to see that drift occur. Anything that we can do to kind of lock in these hard constraints, I think is going to help us.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“It created two new laws that it was citing. And I had to take it back, and I was stern with it, and it apologized, as it always does. It’s such an obsequious interface.” — Don Back, 2026-02-05
“AI won’t take away leadership. It will just expose the leadership quality — exactly by amplifying that.” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
“If it’s clarity, it will amplify whatever is there in a beautiful manner. But if it’s just messed up, it will just amplify the messed up things.” — Kasimir, 2026-03-05
21. THE TRANSLATION PROBLEM
The challenge of converting advanced AI mastery into client-accessible offerings, explanations, and programs. Members who can build sophisticated AI systems but struggle to explain, teach, or sell them to clients who don’t share the technical context.
“My clients don’t Google ‘executive search.’ They Google symptoms of not knowing what to do when change threatens their position. That’s a completely different layer — and the AI found it.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-01-15
“It doesn’t matter what you say — it’s how you say it.” — Dirk Ohlmeier, 2026-04-02
“How can PowerUp teach advanced AI concepts in a way that creates confidence instead of overwhelm?” — Open thread, 2026-04-02
“What is the simplest repeatable process a client can convert into a first useful skill?” — Open thread, 2026-04-02
“How should the agent/skill architecture be taught to members who aren’t building tools but want to design better workflows for clients?” — Open thread, 2026-03-12
“What is the right name for the ‘AI curator’ role — someone whose skill is having high-quality AI conversations and surfacing the ideas that emerge?” — Open thread, 2026-03-19
Total statements extracted: ~800 across 39 sessions. Participants: Don Back, Donald Kihenja, Bally Binning, Kasimir Hedstrom, Dirk Ohlmeier, Elizabeth Stief, Mazie Zdanowicz, Ri Ca, Jamie W, Jay Drobez, Waldon Moss, Sherita.