AI That Works: How To Build A Youbot

[TL;DR – I’ve created a Natebot with my own personality, but more talent. I’ll show you how to make one of your own so you can have superpowers too. I also build these for clients.]

[FYI – I used AI to help outline and prep this article, so I wanted to disclose that a few snippets of content on this page were copy/pasted from that output where it made sense to do so.]

My Philosophy On Knowledge Sharing

I believe that we are all lifetime learners, or at least we should be. Especially now with so many technological changes happening, we’re all in the same boat, trying to turn and ride the wave before we get knocked over by it.

In both my career and my personal life, I always lean toward sharing information rather than hiding it. I love it when people I hire turn out to be smarter than me and go build their own businesses. I love it when I share writing or coding or photography or community building tips with someone, and they go on to create something that makes my projects look small.

Do you know that the very first business contact I ever met in the real world as a result of my online work was a guy who wanted to pick my brain on how to grow a marketplace business model, because he had seen my digital philanthropy platforms take off so fast (and also because he was a member of my giveback team)? We had lunch together in Milwaukee one day to talk shop and swap notes. Six months later I saw his name floating around online . . . as the first CEO of Uber. He’s a multi-billionaire now. Of course I take full credit for his ascendance 😉

It goes to show that when you jump in to build and learn in a new environment, you never know what you’re going to create, who you’re going to meet, or where your next step will take you. It’s fun, exhilarating, and often a little scary. The good news is that everyone else feels the same way, even if they seem on the outside like they have it all put together. So I believe in helping and sharing, whether you’re an expert or not.

Speaking of experts, we’re in an era where if someone tells you they’re an AI expert, you should give them at least a quarter-eye, if not a full side-eye. This stuff is so new and works so differently than much of what we’ve had before, that I can tell you that even the true experts (yes there are a few out there) are playing guess-and-check more often than not when building things. And that’s okay! But I at least want us to be honest about it.

In the spirit of sharing information and helping us all keep our heads above water, I’m going to tell you in this article exactly how to build a custom AI agent that does almost all the things for you that startups and agencies pay me a lot of money to do for them.

I’m not a fan of hoarding my piece of the pie; I’d rather just make a bigger pie. I mean, of course I’m not going to give you the exact code for my little bits of secret sauce, but if you follow my directions you can absolutely build something of your own that would cost you thousands of dollars, and that will make or save you tens of thousands of dollars over time.

I miss the early days of the internet when we were all building and sharing things, helping the entire ecosystem grow so quickly. These days it feels like most people want to hold out for instant monetization on anything they come up with, even though it rarely turns out to be profitable for them. But we’re in the wild west of AI right now, so let’s put on some throwback 90s tracks and get into some old school collaborating 🙂

Welp, Here We Are

AI will probably change the world completely at some point, and probably sooner than later.

It may take your job. It may give you a job.

AI might even fulfill sci-fi prophecy and become our evil robot overlords at some point.

But we’re nowhere near that point at the moment, so let’s not worry about it just yet. For now, I see AI as a way to enhance what we already do. It’s a tool to help us get faster and more efficient at the things we’re already good at, as well as give us some competency in areas where we might struggle. AI can make us more capable and more confident in any area we choose, and that’s the way I think it should be used today.

So let’s focus on that – how we can use AI to help us level up in our work, our hobbies, and our personal lives without feeling like we’re handing the reins over to the machines. (And we’ll grab some more time back while we’re at it.)

Building Natebot and Davebot

A few months ago, I started creating custom AI agents to help me with the multiple projects I was working on. They all had different specialties, but I built one agent very specifically to follow the creative thinking framework I had developed over the years, so I would have a brainstorming partner to work with that understood my process. I was happy to see that it was indeed capable of generating the same kind of creative ideation and strategy work that I do, except on a much faster and more extensive scale. I called this guy Natebot.

Natebot worked so well that I began incorporating it as a foundational creative thinking process inside of my other, larger custom GPT builds. Those builds were powerful enough on their own, but now they could also tap into some advanced ideation processes, giving them extra bonus power.

Natebot eventually evolved into a specialty agent focused only on creative thinking, which I renamed the Talemaiker Ideation Engine so I could install it on all my builds under that brand, to supercharge their worldbuilding capabilities.

I made the Ideation Engine available to a few family and friends so they could test it out (btw, it’s now out of beta and free for anyone to use), which brings us to my brother Dave. He has a regular day job, but for the past 18 years he’s been on the Milwaukee Bucks Rim Rockers trampoline dunk team, one of the highest-rated halftime shows in the NBA. Because of that he’s traveled all over the world for the NBA, performed at a couple of All-Star games, and does a lot of national and some international shows and competitions. This is him (gestures generally downward)

@davidst.pierre

Vibe check! #fyp #funny #fouryou #4upage #ballspins #basketball #ballspinchallenge #ballspin #wardrobechallenge #cool #dirty #clean #foryoupage #😊

♬ Bippity boppity boo – Megan Young

A couple weeks ago Dave said that the ideation engine had been helping him with some social media content ideas, but he’d been out of the game for a while and was considering actually working on building up his personal entertainment brand for real now that he has some other stuff cooking.

This conversation led us to the idea that I would build him a much more personalized and powerful agent that could help him get to that next level.

I built it and tested it. He used it and loved it. After we debriefed, he referred me to one of his influencer contacts who could use something similar, and now I’m building a Youbot for a creator with millions of followers, helping them ideate and produce content, engagement, and partnership opportunities at a much larger level. My tools will be helping the next generation of creators to harness AI and have it work for them, instead of them working against it. Everyone in the space will need to adapt or fall behind.

What originally started as an experiment has turned into a powerful way to get more done, faster, and with a higher quality of creativity and output. And, as we’ve seen, they can be customized to anyone, for any purpose. So now I build custom agents that I’m calling Youbots.

Defining a Youbot

So, what exactly is a Youbot?

At its core, a Youbot is a personalized AI assistant that functions as a supercharged extension of yourself.

It’s built to understand your background, your goals, and your needs already in context, so you don’t have to explain everything every time you need help. Youbots are designed to work with the same kind of background information that anyone close to you would already know, but they bring that information into the conversation instantly, and at a much larger scale.

If you already use public-facing AI tools in your daily life, you’ll notice a substantial difference in the speed and quality of output if you switch from vanilla ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini over to a custom Youbot. Not only that, but it’ll continuously evolve with you as you grow.

Think of Natebot – it’s my creative brainstorming partner. When I need to explore new ideas or flesh out stories or strategies, Natebot knows my thinking framework and gets right to work, generating ideas that align with my vision.

Similarly, Davebot is customized for my brother, helping him with content creation around trampoline dunking, pulling in his personal style, goals, and assets to deliver useful suggestions instantly.

The real magic of Youbots lies in how they are tailored to each person’s unique needs, priorities, and workflows. Whether it’s helping you brainstorm ideas, manage social media, or enhance your creative process, a Youbot becomes a digital extension of yourself, understanding the nuances of your life and work to make everything flow better and faster. You can build it to be a either a partner to you or a duplicate of you, depending on your needs.

Oh, and also you get to name it, which is awesome. “Youbot” becomes “Francisbot,” which . . . actually which kinda sucks. Maybe name it something better than that. Sorry, Francis.

Real-Life Example: Davebot In Action

If my brother were to use a public AI tool to try to come up with unique ideas to create a memorable performance collaboration with another basketball creator in the space, he would

A) get very generic, subpar results because the public tool doesn’t know anything about him, which would lead him to…

B) waste an absolute ton of time trying to give the public tool all the background info it would need in order to be more effective

Contrast that frustrating process with the ease of using the Davebot I built for him. Here’s Dave creating awesome collab ideas in seconds.

Notice that his entire interaction with the agent consisted of one question: “go online to see who Tristan Jass is, and then, using the ideation engine, brainstorm ways that he and I can create some awesome content in my gym together for our audiences” and two follow-up notes, simply asking for more output: “i like these 5. please generate 5 more unique ideas | use ideation engine to twist these.”

Davebot already knew the context he was working from. It knew what “my gym” meant, that my brother has a private gym with trampoline and dunking equipment, rims, mounted cameras to capture tricks, etc. It knew that he wants to incorporate his 3-year-old son where appropriate and feasible. It knew the entire trick dunk ecosystem and how that interplays with other basketball creators.

What all this means is that Dave spent literally 42 seconds interacting with his Youbot and came back with 5 pages of output, containing 30 perfectly customized ideas for collab content with a potential partner. Not only that, but he can then work with Davebot to expand any idea into a fully formed action plan, complete with timeline, budget, assets needed, communication drafts, etc etc etc.

We’re living in the future, guys. Agencies pay people like me a ton of money to come up with ideas like this, and now I’ve built a Youbot that will do it for you instantly, better, and for free every time.

How This Helps You(bot)

[Sorry for that section header pun – I promised Jay I would put a dad joke in here somewhere. But don’t worry, you can’t possibly be more disappointed in me than I am.]

Okay, so how can a Youbot help you?

Something to understand from the beginning is that my tools lean toward personal, internal use, designed to make you better and faster at the things that matter in your life. A lot of AI developers out there right now are talking about paying them to help you automate the systems in your life with AI, which is a valid route to go. However, that also means that you’ll be paying for someone to touch every one of the dozens of systems you interact with every day. I’m taking the opposite approach, which is using AI to upgrade your personal mental horsepower, so even if your systems aren’t all AI-optimized, your personal processing power is, so you get close to the same effect for a fraction of the cost. It’s upgrading the one skill that will make all your other actions more impactful.

I know that one of the examples I used involved a social media star, but of course we’re not all influencers with millions of followers. Most of us are regular people with jobs, families, and hobbies, and a Youbot can make all of those things easier. This tech is just a tool to help you get the most out of your life, quietly working in the background to give you more time, more efficiency, and a better ability to handle the stuff you care about.

The easiest way this tool can help everyone is at work. In the Natebot example, nearly half of the time spent at any of my jobs required me to think strategically and creatively in a certain way, so I had my Youbot do exactly that. That’s the whole reason I created it.

So my question to you is: “Does your job require you to think creatively or strategically in any capacity?” If so, then a Youbot works for you.

The beauty of tools like these are that you can completely customize them for any function you need, in any way you want to work with them. Want a digital copy of yourself to brainstorm with? Fun! Want to build the marketing director for the client who can’t afford it, so you have someone to help you execute creative ideas for them? Even better!

Let’s do a few more examples from the “Work” category:

Strategy: Whether you’re a solopreneur managing your own business, or leading a team at a big company, a Youbot trained as a strategist will help you maximize output and profit for any of your areas of responsibility. It’s like working with a version of yourself with the MBA you forgot you had.

Content Production: AI use cases for content production are well known by now, but creating a Youbot specifically trained for your business or client means you can produce a week’s worth of customized, targeted content in hours instead of days, without needing to explain context.

Business Development: When the Youbot already knows your business goals and operating guidelines, all you have to do is tell it who you want to work with, and it’ll produce detailed and viable partnership options for specific partners, along with compelling proposals, communication templates, and action plans.

And it’s the same with any other area of your life.

Let’s try a few examples from the “Personal” category:

Goal Setting: Help you set personal goals and break them down into actionable steps, providing reminders and progress updates.

Time Management: Help you schedule your days and your weeks, making sure you allocate time for work, family, exercise, and hobbies in a balanced way.

Home Maintenance: Track home maintenance schedules, from HVAC checks to cleaning, and suggest home improvement projects based on time and budget.

A Youbot isn’t supposed to do everything for you – its job is to streamline and amplify what you’re already doing, making your output better and faster. It becomes a seamless part of your daily routine, giving you the superpowers you need to tackle everything that comes your way.

Advanced Users: Youbot Teams

[Feel free to skip this section if it doesn’t apply to you.] This is for people running more complex operations: solopreneurs, influencers, business owners, etc. You folks may want more than just a single Youbot to help streamline your life, which is where building a team of Youbots comes in. This is how I manage all the projects I’m working on simultaneously.

Here’s how it works: Instead of just one Youbot handling everything, you have a Lead Youbot (the digital version of yourself) managing multiple specialized agents. Think of the Lead Youbot as the brain, while Manager Youbots handle major categories, like strategy, content, or operations. Beneath them, you have Specialist Youbots for more focused tasks, like content creation, research, or scheduling.

For example, if you’re an influencer, your Lead Youbot might oversee a Content Manager Youbot to handle content ideation and development, while a Partnership Manager Youbot seeks out potential collaborations. Each of these bots works in concert, amplifying what you’re already capable of doing – except now you’ve got a small swarm working in perfect sync to help you scale faster than ever.

Here’s the best part: you’re still the human in charge. Your Youbots are built to work under your direction, empowering you to do more while keeping your vision intact. In practice, it’s like having two or three versions of yourself working simultaneously, allowing you to accomplish more in a week than you ever thought possible.

With this team structure, you can scale your work, expand your brand, and automate the production work, all while maintaining full control over the creative and strategic direction of your business.

How To Build A Youbot

I promised I would tell you exactly how to make one of these for yourself, and here it is.

The secret is, there is no secret. You have to do the work.

It takes time, understanding, and experimentation to create an AI that truly functions like you do. But if you’re willing to put in some work, you can create a Youbot that’s a powerful, personalized assistant.

Here’s the step-by-step process for creating your own Youbot:

1. Learn the Basics of AI Development

Before you even think about building a Youbot, you need to understand how AI works. Start by spending time with various AI models – I primarily use the big three: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini – and experiment with different tasks. Try asking questions in different ways, playing with prompts, and testing the models’ limitations. The goal here is to get a holistic understanding of what AI is good at and, just as importantly, what it struggles with.

It’s essential to work with multiple types of AI projects (from creative writing to problem-solving) to grasp how versatile these tools can be when prompted correctly.

2. Upgrade to Professional Versions

Once you’re familiar with AI models, it’s time to get serious. Sign up for professional versions of ChatGPT or Claude. This will give you access to the tools you need to create and program custom agents. These pro versions unlock advanced features and the ability to fine-tune your Youbot for specific use cases.

Investing in the right tools is key if you want to move beyond general-purpose AI and into highly personalized, custom agents that understand you.

3. Conduct a Deep Self-Interview

This step is crucial. The power of a Youbot comes from its deep understanding of who you are and what you want to get out of it. Conduct an in-depth interview of yourself, covering areas like:

• Personality: What drives you? How do you think? What are your quirks?
• Life Philosophy: How do you approach work, family, or personal projects? What’s most important to you?
• Personal Background: Your past experiences, skills, and expertise.
• Work History: What specific jobs or roles have shaped how you work?
• Goals: What do you want your Youbot to help you achieve? Be as specific as possible.
• Scenarios: What specific tasks or situations will this Youbot handle? Think daily tasks, decision-making, creative projects, or long-term planning.

Create a document that captures all of this information. The more detailed, the better – this will form the core of the Youbot’s knowledge base.

4. Create Informational Documents for Context

If your Youbot will be working within a specific environment, like your profession or hobby, you’ll need to feed it that context. For example, when I built Davebot, I created a detailed PDF outlining the trampoline dunking ecosystem. This document included information on the sport, key players, event types, and how the industry operates.

For your Youbot, think about the environments it will need to navigate. Will it handle industry-specific tasks? Personal projects? Include all the background it needs to operate effectively in those worlds.

5. Personalize with Operating Instructions

Every Youbot is unique. While you’ve given it background knowledge and goals, you’ll need to add more specific operating instructions to guide how it interacts with you. For example, when I create Youbots, I integrate my own creative ideation engine, which massively improves its brainstorming capabilities. You might want to include instructions that tailor its tone, how it generates ideas, or how it responds to certain questions.

And don’t be afraid to add your own secret sauce – little tweaks or custom elements that make the Youbot work just the way you like it.

6. Build Your Custom Agent

Now it’s time to get technical. Use ChatGPT or Claude’s custom agent tools to build your Youbot. This step involves uploading your knowledge base, setting custom instructions, and testing its behavior in various tasks. This is where your groundwork starts coming to life.

Make sure to integrate all the personality traits, background information, and goals you’ve outlined. You want your Youbot to feel like an extension of yourself, so be thorough in setting it up.

7. Test and Tweak

Once your Youbot is up and running, test it out in real-world tasks. Give it a variety of scenarios to see how it performs. Does it think and respond the way you want it to? Are the results useful?

Tweak the back-end custom instructions until you’re satisfied. This phase might take time, but it’s worth refining the bot until it delivers consistently high-quality results in the format and style you need.

8. Name and Organize

Once you’re happy with how it functions, name your Youbot (remember, never “Francis”). Make sure all the associated documents, instructions, and backup files are organized properly so that everything is easy to access. Also make sure to create organized, versioned backup files so you don’t lose all your work if something goes wrong.

9. Repeat for Additional Youbots

If you want to create more specialized Youbots – like Manager or Specialist agents under a Lead – just repeat this process. Each additional Youbot will focus on specific areas (strategy, content creation, planning, etc.), but you’ll follow the same core steps. Once you have your team, you can use them separately but in tandem by copy/pasting output from one to the other, which is kind of a pain but easier than it sounds. ChatGPT handles it the best right now, because it lets you reference tools from within tools, so you can easily call a sub-bot to handle a specific response from within whatever bot you’re currently working in.

10. Start Using Your Youbot in the Real World

Now that your Youbot is built, tested, and personalized, it’s time to put it to work! Start using it in your daily life, and make sure that when it does something that frustrates you, or performs unexpectedly, you go back and tweak the custom instructions to get it where you want it to be.

And there you go – you’ve built your first Youbot and given yourself superpowers!

Work With Me (If You Want)

I’ve just laid out exactly how to build your own Youbot, and I hope it helps you get started. AI developers looking for a profitable business model, you’re welcome – I’ll expect my royalty checks in the mail 😉

The reason I take the time to write these long articles and share detailed information on how this stuff works is because I love the exploration and discovery process at the beginning of new technology, and sharing it with others is a way to help everyone level up quickly. This is the fun part of my job!

But obviously we all know that building today’s Youbot example the right way is a ton of work. It takes time, effort, and a fair amount of trial and error. If that sounds like more than you want to take on, I’ll be happy to build one for you.

I’m not sure exactly how much to charge yet, but I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, you can get on my calendar to chat with me about what you want to achieve, and I can give you a custom quote based on our conversation (choose the “Custom Quote Call” option): Nate’s Calendar

Other than that, keep building, keep learning, and maybe our Youbots will grab a beer together someday.

Super Bonus Content

While I was looking for a video clip of Dave, I randomly found this vid I shot of him and our uncle Joe, which made me smile 🙂

@davidst.pierre

That HAD to hurt!! #fullsend #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #4u #ouch #trampoline #trust #epic #dive

♬ ROCKSTAR – DaBaby, Roddy Ricch