0:00

Welcome to the Prompt Engineering Podcast,

0:00

where we teach you the art of writing

0:04

effective prompts for AI systems like

0:04

Chat, G P T, mid Journey Dolly, and More.

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Each week we explore prompting techniques,

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interviews with experts and newbies,

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and tips on selling your prompts. Here's your host, Greg Schwartz.

0:19

Welcome to the Prompt Engineering Podcast.

0:21

I'm your host, Greg Schwartz. So we have a guest with us today.

0:27

Go ahead and introduce yourself. Hi everyone.

0:30

My name is Sean Ridley. I'm the founder of M S P SEO Synergy.

0:35

I am a SEO expert at heart, and

0:35

recently I've gotten more involved

0:41

into AI marketing and trying to

0:41

learn how those intersections

0:46

work, not only with automations,

0:46

but also with content, and ideally

0:51

with trying to run better business. Awesome.

0:57

So here at the Prompt Engineering Podcast,

0:57

what we're about is helping you learn

1:02

how to do better prompt engineering,

1:02

how to sell it, if that's relevant

1:06

to you, or to use it in your day job. And that's what we're

1:08

gonna be doing today. So first off, how did you start?

1:12

learning about prompt engineering? I learned about prompt

1:14

engineering through Twitter.

1:16

Just following the news with chat G p

1:16

T, just trying to understand how it's

1:21

been evolving over these last few weeks. And then, I I've met you through

1:23

the Discord for Hustle, G P T,

1:27

so I followed that challenge. I was actually one of the first official

1:29

50 businesses that had started from it.

1:34

And my goal was to, instead of try to

1:34

start a new side hustle, but instead take

1:39

my freelancing from my S C O skills and

1:39

try to turn them into a full-time agency.

1:44

So a lot of my prompts, I've been focused.

1:47

Trying to build the business plan,

1:47

trying to develop the website

1:51

copy, and then also, just trying to

1:51

figure out, Hey, how should I speak

1:55

about this business on Twitter? How should I even, talk to people

1:57

in general because shy person.

2:00

So you know it's been a great

2:00

experience trying to just get

2:03

that energy and confidence from a. I totally relate to that for me.

2:09

Marketing copy and really just like

2:09

copy in general that is not for an

2:14

interface is really challenging.

2:16

So I know exactly what you mean in terms

2:16

of asking the robot to give me some advice

2:21

and really help me figure out the right

2:21

way to talk and write about all of this.

2:25

So that makes sense. So I'm curious, you listed

2:28

a few you're doing for this.

2:31

Are you also doing any other prompts, yeah, for fun I'm always trying

2:33

out new things with mid journey.

2:37

Just being able to just see how people

2:37

are able to put in prompts that

2:43

generate such realistic results, as

2:43

well as people that are able to put

2:46

in just abstract ideas and concepts.

2:50

Just gimme something whimsical, gimme

2:50

something dreamy, gimme something

2:53

that I've never seen before. And then being able to

2:55

imagine such things from that.

2:57

As a side I'm always fascinated

2:57

from that and playing with it.

3:01

As a, as part of my day job, as

3:01

I mentioned before, I'm using

3:04

it for almost everything now.

3:06

Just being able to, like I said earlier,

3:06

put together the copy for the website,

3:11

the meta descriptions for it, being able

3:11

to have posts on Twitter and LinkedIn.

3:17

It's been honestly, it's been ridiculous,

3:17

the things that I've been able to do.

3:21

I had no idea that it'd be

3:21

this powerful with ChatGPT-4.

3:25

That's awesome. I'm feeling similar.

3:28

So it sounds for work. You're doing mostly text

3:30

generation prompts.

3:32

And then for fun it's more

3:32

of the image prompting.

3:34

Is that right? Yes. And then even for our website, I

3:36

was able to use Mid Journey recently

3:40

just to get some ideas for different

3:40

layouts for the website itself.

3:45

And so I was able just to type in, design a professional marketing

3:46

agency website style is modern

3:50

and clean, simple white background

3:50

with purple accents, version five.

3:57

And so mostly for that prompt it was

3:57

able to give me, a header of the website.

4:02

It doesn't necessarily, gimme

4:02

anything you know, underneath or

4:06

what the different sections should

4:06

look like or what the contact forms

4:09

should look like or anything else. But it, is able to provide

4:10

you a big, vibrant header and

4:13

understand that's important. It understands that you need to

4:15

have a button for a call to action.

4:19

It understands that you'll probably

4:19

have a navigation bar at the top of your

4:23

website, and so all of that's able to be

4:23

put together, but not necessarily all the

4:27

rest of the, meat and potatoes of it yet. That totally makes sense.

4:31

Once you're able to get an idea, you're

4:31

able to put the rest of it together.

4:35

That at least allows you some branding

4:35

and then, ideally you can add whatever

4:39

personalized touch you need for it. The original prompt that I had

4:41

was a website for an SEO agency,

4:46

cartoon style white background,

4:46

purple highlights, version 4.

4:51

So again, nothing too complicated

4:51

and it's able to, immediately give

4:54

me four different versions of it. And I do have those on Twitter.

4:59

Interesting. Okay. That's good to hear because I actually

5:00

I'm building a tool, which I'll

5:03

probably cover at some point, but,

5:03

I was trying to use Mid Journey to

5:09

get some, themes and mockups and

5:09

stuff and was really not succeeding.

5:14

So I'd be curious tell us a

5:14

little more about what were the

5:17

prompts you were using for that? Do you remember the specific language?

5:20

For the website, honestly I, I

5:20

tried to keep it very simple.

5:24

I watched a YouTube video from, I think

5:24

an agency, I think it's Pay Digital.

5:29

They made a smaller Discord group

5:29

for Mid Journey because if just

5:34

have, if you're on the regular mid

5:34

journey discord, it's overwhelming.

5:37

There's something people. Posting prompts, constantly

5:38

getting results constantly.

5:41

So they made their own separate smaller

5:41

discord and it's mostly focused on

5:46

web design, it's focused on, different

5:46

logos and things of that nature.

5:50

Just general, just images and

5:50

designs, more than anything else.

5:54

And so I was able to see how other people

5:54

were putting together website prompts,

5:58

and then I was just mostly able to copy. That's awesome.

6:03

Yeah. We will put a link to

6:03

that in the description.

6:06

So that you, the listener can actually go

6:06

watch it and frankly, I will probably be

6:10

going to watch it cuz I'm still looking

6:10

for some ideas for my website design.

6:15

Definitely and that Discord

6:15

specifically has a ton of them.

6:19

It's just people who are professionals

6:19

that are just trying out new things.

6:22

And I think that's probably what's

6:22

been most interesting about this

6:25

entire process is nobody is an expert.

6:27

Nobody knows what to do yet. We're all just learning from each other.

6:30

I think. One of the other mid journey prompts

6:31

with Viral was somebody who did.

6:35

The father with the daughter,

6:35

they're reading a book.

6:38

I've been trying to replicate that

6:38

as best as I can recently, just

6:41

trying to put in, different inputs,

6:41

different, descriptors so that I

6:46

can just see what comes out of it. And I think just the learning through the

6:47

socialization through the community has

6:53

been probably the most over, informative,

6:53

overwhelming, and probably the most

6:58

powerful thing that's come out of all of. Yes, informative and overwhelming is

7:01

exactly how I would describe all of

7:05

this, so that totally resonates with me.

7:09

Yes. I feel like every day I'm learning

7:09

different ways to put things

7:12

together, different ways that,

7:12

people are using the technology.

7:15

You're talking about different

7:15

extensions and things and so I'm just

7:19

excited to almost sit in the sidelines

7:19

and just see some of the things that

7:21

pop out over the next few weeks. Definitely.

7:27

So with that process of trying to,

7:27

get mid journey to give you some of

7:31

these things you're looking for, can

7:31

you tell us a little bit about how

7:35

you've been iterating on the prompt. What you've been doing

7:37

of oh, that didn't work. Let me try going this way

7:38

or however you're doing it.

7:40

Yeah, I with Mid Journey it gives

7:40

you about four different options

7:43

for anything that you have. And so from that I was able

7:44

to pick a one specific version

7:48

of the mockup that it gave me. I was able to tell it I don't

7:50

want it to be as cartoony.

7:53

Let's get, maybe have something

7:53

that's more high resolution.

7:56

That's something that's

7:56

maybe more professional.

7:59

And so I was able to just try. I honestly, I made a complete 180 from

8:00

my original prompt, but I wanted to

8:04

be able to see, okay, how fast can

8:04

I come up with completely different

8:08

designs that are still based within

8:08

the same ideas of the first one?

8:12

And it was amazing what I was able to. That's awesome.

8:16

Instead of a cartoonish version, I

8:16

would like something more professional.

8:20

I like the color designs, but I would

8:20

like for it to be something that's

8:23

more realistic and something that

8:23

would work for a more corporate image

8:28

or a more corporate tone, and it's

8:28

able to provide that very similar

8:31

to, how it works with chat, G P T. You're able to iterate

8:33

based off of your design. You can say imagine prompt, and then

8:35

you can say the things that you had

8:39

before and then just change them a bit. That's what I've been able

8:41

to do the best for myself. Awesome.

8:44

Okay. Being able to be a little bit more

8:45

specific, a little bit more detailed,

8:48

and the things that I'm looking

8:48

for, just the overall design, color

8:52

tone, branding, all of those things.

8:56

Got it. Okay. That makes sense. In terms of the text generation,

8:58

what kind of ways have you

9:03

been iterating on the props? Have you been using like role playing

9:04

or purpose, context constraint?

9:09

I as I mentioned before, I started a

9:09

lot of this because of the hustle G P

9:14

T challenge, and so I think that would

9:14

probably, fall under a role playing.

9:18

Framework for putting

9:18

together the prompts.

9:20

You have the, the AI

9:20

position as the entrepreneur.

9:25

Its goal is to try to make

9:25

as much money as possible.

9:29

Drew a human liaison who is,

9:29

acting within the physical world.

9:33

And again, I mentioned that

9:33

I'd already given it a knee.

9:36

SHI had already said that I had certain

9:36

background and experience, and so I

9:40

asked it to develop a business plan or an

9:40

outline for a business based off of those.

9:46

Gotcha. So role playing is a big one.

9:49

Yes. Yes. And then, I recently saw another video

9:50

where, they kept it pretty simple.

9:54

They were able to say, who, what,

9:54

where, when, why, . And so from

9:57

that, I try not to overthink the.

10:00

Way that I'm addressing the prompt.

10:02

I'm always trying to think about

10:02

the output, and I want something

10:07

that's going to be natural for me. I want something that's gonna

10:08

come off that's going to be human

10:11

sounding, at least to some degree. So persuasive still, marketing involved,

10:13

and so from that I'm not necessarily

10:18

thinking about what the, framework

10:18

for the prompts are, but rather what

10:22

results I'm trying to get outta. Nice.

10:26

Are there any prompts that you can think

10:26

of that you've just gotten stuck on?

10:31

You've iterated and it just

10:31

didn't go where you wanted,

10:33

honestly, a lot of different prompts

10:33

I've tried out and just didn't

10:37

get the results that I wanted. As I mentioned before, I've, tried

10:39

it for different blog posts and I've

10:44

found, unfortunately that, because

10:44

it's not connected to the internet

10:47

because it's only gonna give you,

10:47

generalized information, it's not

10:51

gonna necessarily gonna gimme the

10:51

things that I think are going to

10:54

convert into a full-time business.

10:56

And so I've had to go. Added them to myself, add in

10:58

my own research, double check

11:02

whatever research that it does try

11:02

to give me, because I have tried,

11:05

I need a more professional tone. I need a more academic or corporate tone.

11:09

I need more research with

11:09

these, within this article.

11:12

And it still doesn't necessarily

11:12

gimme the things that I need.

11:15

It may gimme a statistic that may be

11:15

relevant, but not necessarily from

11:19

the right source that I'm looking for.

11:22

Or it may, just as I mentioned

11:22

before, just give me a generalized tip

11:25

that you can, find almost anywhere. And and you.

11:29

It. Trying to get things that are more

11:29

unique, more, brand personalized.

11:33

I don't necessarily get that, and so I

11:33

have to be able to add that in myself,

11:37

and I think that's even slowly, as a

11:37

problem going away because I know that

11:41

people are using machine learning with

11:41

their prompts so that they can teach

11:45

it, Hey, this is what our brand tone

11:45

is, this is how that, how we expect

11:50

to respond to certain questions. This is how, we want to tweet out

11:52

certain things so they're able to.

11:55

Standard operating procedures that they're

11:55

teaching their ai, and then going from

11:59

there it's ridiculous how it all works.

12:03

Yeah, definitely. Have you sold any prompts?

12:08

No, you're actually the first

12:08

person that told me about that.

12:11

I, you told me about Prompt Base

12:11

and so I, was able to go there.

12:15

I did, fill out an accountant,

12:15

but honestly, there's just an

12:19

overwhelming amount of prompts already.

12:21

It's hard to figure out,

12:21

how can I best fit in?

12:24

I think the. Most interesting prompt that I may put

12:25

together is one for notion dashboards,

12:32

because I was able to get my, my g

12:32

my hustle, G P T, AI, to, this is the

12:38

dashboard that I need, here are the

12:38

certain pages that we need, and it gave

12:41

me the details, how to put it together,

12:41

which pages should interact in different

12:46

ways j And so from that I haven't

12:46

necessarily started selling prompts, but

12:51

I'm definitely getting some ideas for. That's awesome.

12:54

You and the listeners are both welcome

12:54

to go download the analysis that I did.

13:00

I basically ran through all of the

13:00

prompts on prompt base for G P T prompts,

13:05

for text output prompts, and then

13:05

analyze them in terms of the category.

13:09

Analyze that in terms of what categories

13:09

like sell and what don't, and which

13:13

ones are overrun with scripts sorry

13:13

prompts and which ones are not.

13:17

So it gives you a breakdown of here

13:17

areas that have a lot of potential

13:21

in high revenue versus here areas

13:21

that there's maybe less potential.

13:24

And I think that a, again, the evolution

13:24

of that, being able to understand market

13:29

analysis just in, in a single click

13:29

is gonna save people so much time.

13:34

It's gonna make people, so much more excited. And energized to be able to jump into

13:37

certain activities because they can see,

13:40

Hey, there are opportunities for me here.

13:43

It's not as overwhelming as

13:43

I first thought it could be.

13:45

There are certain prompts that I could

13:45

sell and make money from, so why not?

13:50

Yeah, absolutely. So are there any problems.

13:55

That you wish you could solve with

13:55

generative ai, whether that's Mid

13:59

journey or chat, G P T or something

13:59

else entirely, but you haven't been

14:03

able to figure out how to solve it. Just personally, I can't think of

14:04

any problems that, you know, or any

14:10

major projects that I'm working on. I'm caught up in what I have going on

14:11

right now, but, I'm always interested

14:15

in questions of access to information

14:15

technology, or, I even funding.

14:20

And I think that with chat G p T

14:20

especially, as it's starting to connect

14:25

to the internet, it's going to be

14:25

able to do things for people that

14:28

they couldn't even imagine before. They're going to be able to.

14:31

Understand that they can get whole

14:31

backgrounds in business and MBAs.

14:36

They're going to be able to have access to

14:36

lawyers to be able to have consultations

14:42

for, whatever could be happening them

14:42

when they're real in their real lives.

14:46

And so I'm just excited to be able to

14:46

not only see where this is going, but

14:49

also to help promote it and collaborate

14:49

with other people because there's so

14:53

many different people from different

14:53

backgrounds that are just able to.

14:56

Hey, let me type in a prompt. Let me try to see what's going on

14:58

and let me try to build something

15:01

that, I'm trying to network as

15:01

with as many of them as possible.

15:05

Absolutely. That's a nice point to plug the podcast.

15:08

If you are working on anything in this

15:08

space, I would love to hear from you.

15:12

Email [email protected]

15:12

cuz I haven't even bothered

15:16

setting up a website for this yet. But yeah, send me an email

15:18

or, contact me on Discord.

15:22

Going back to tools for iterating

15:22

on prompts, have you used any

15:27

of the prompt building prompts

15:27

as repetitive as that sounds?

15:31

Chat g p t. Ask me what the prompt should do.

15:33

Ask me what the context is. Ask me anything else you need to

15:35

know, and then give me a prompt.

15:37

Have you used anything like that? Yes. I originally, when I was trying

15:39

to put together my logo for the

15:43

business, Hey, let me tap in the chat.

15:45

G p t give me a prompt for Dolly

15:45

and That was a complete fail.

15:51

Honestly, I probably should have

15:51

mentioned that earlier when you were

15:53

talking about just complete roadblocks.

15:56

My wife is an artist and so she has Canva,

15:56

and I found that way faster than trying

16:02

to use the ai the promt that it gave me

16:02

was something like professional logo for

16:06

business, for marketing company we need

16:06

some sort of image that shows unity and

16:13

synergy and it was just a complete fail.

16:16

I don't even know what it gave me. And then, with Dolly, it gives you just.

16:20

Almost, just just squiggly

16:20

lines almost for words.

16:23

It's, just all mu like, just muddled. And so from that it was it was a mess.

16:27

It was nothing that I could actually put together. I'm honestly also very impressed by

16:29

anybody who would just take those and

16:33

then move them into something like

16:33

Photoshop and then get a relevant idea

16:37

from it, because that didn't work for. But outside of that, no.

16:42

I haven't tried to create

16:42

any other side prompts.

16:45

I've seen that new companies are

16:45

sprouting up that are, using your

16:50

original AI to create certain,

16:50

personas underneath your business.

16:55

And so you can use them for

16:55

different roles such as, your

16:58

marketing person obviously, your

16:58

accountant, your sales team.

17:03

And then you can work through all of that. And you have an initial boss, AI that's

17:04

giving prompts to all of the other ones.

17:09

And then somehow, I guess it'd be some

17:09

automation, some sort of integration.

17:13

You have all of them working with

17:13

each other, giving you back ideas.

17:16

You could have those ideas

17:16

bounced off of each other and

17:19

prompted back to each other. It's just, A lot going on.

17:24

But no, I haven't necessarily tried it,

17:24

but I've definitely seen a lot of, ways

17:27

that people are putting it together. And again, I'm excited for, how

17:28

that's gonna happen as well.

17:32

Very nice. Yeah, that sounds like a

17:33

very interesting concept.

17:35

A multi AI office, almost

17:39

Yeah, yeah. I just signed up for it. I think it's called Role Play ai.

17:44

Cool. We will put a link to that

17:45

in the podcast description.

17:48

Last question is is there any recent

17:48

news that has you particularly excited?

17:52

Yeah, I I've thought about

17:52

this as as you gave me all the

17:55

questions and everything earlier. I think probably the biggest

17:56

news that has me excited is.

18:00

Once chat, G p T and other forms

18:00

of AI are able to integrate with

18:05

the internet and connect with it

18:05

I've already seen that people are

18:08

getting the api, early access to it.

18:11

They're able to use certain apps like

18:11

Instacart so that, let's say you're in

18:16

a situation or a disability or something

18:16

like that and you can literally.

18:20

Hey, I need food. I need you to know, go out and get that.

18:22

Have those supplies for me. If you're in emergency situation,

18:24

that's just an amazing thing

18:27

that could happen for you. Also, with Zapier, you're able

18:28

to make it so that you're.

18:31

You're creating automations and

18:31

integrations within your business.

18:35

And so as I mentioned before I use

18:35

notion for a lot of things and so

18:39

I'm would be able to, at least in

18:39

that world, have it so that the AI

18:43

is, pulling down customer information

18:43

and leads, putting it into my notion.

18:48

It could then create cold emails

18:48

from those and then send it out.

18:54

I could tell it, Hey, this is our

18:54

marketing information and what's happened,

18:57

here's the result of those emails.

19:00

And honestly, I, it wouldn't even need me.

19:03

It could just pull that information

19:03

itself from different sources and then

19:06

go, Hey, this isn't necessarily working.

19:08

Let me, iterate on it. Let me create different versions

19:09

of it, and it could have its

19:12

own metrics versus success. And then you.

19:15

Make its own money. I think once you turn it on, it can

19:16

just do all of these things for us.

19:20

I feel almost I'm in my AI's way, I

19:20

didn't necessarily, get too sleep last

19:24

night, and so I kinda started off slow.

19:27

I had different things going on

19:27

with my wife, and so I was like,

19:30

Hey, I'm sorry, a, I'm busy here.

19:33

It wouldn't need me for any of those. And it, and I think that's probably

19:34

what makes me most excited is

19:38

that it could take whatever small

19:38

human idea and scale it beyond

19:43

whatever that person could imagine. And and there's people you know on Twitter

19:44

at, Definitely wanna shout out somebody.

19:48

People like Lauren Marie. She definitely has been posting

19:49

a lot of, really majestic and

19:53

beautiful prompts on Mid Journey.

19:56

That, have definitely inspired me

19:56

because I had no idea that, as I

20:00

mentioned before, you can just put in

20:00

something, generalized and abstract.

20:04

You don't have to be as

20:04

scientific and technical about it.

20:07

You can just have a thought

20:07

that's Hey, this would be cool.

20:09

I just wanna see that. And you can just see

20:10

where the act goes with. And most of the time it's amazing.

20:15

To hear more about what you're

20:15

working on, where should people go?

20:19

Yeah, so you can check me out at

20:19

my website, msp seo synergy.com.

20:24

You can also find me on Twitter at

20:24

MSP SEO synergy, and then also at

20:29

LinkedIn under my name Sean Ridley.

20:32

I'm honestly excited to try to collaborate

20:32

with anyone else in the community.

20:36

I'm always, trying to learn

20:36

more about prompt writing.

20:39

Thanks to you Greg. I'm definitely gonna try to sell some

20:40

prompts here in the near future, and

20:44

so anybody who wants to reach out to me

20:44

or try to do any more interviews or any

20:48

guest spots like this, I'd love to do it. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

20:53

Thanks for coming to the Prompt

20:53

Engineering podcast, the podcast

20:56

dedicated to helping you learn how to

20:56

be a better prompt engineer, how to sell

21:00

your prompts if that's something you're

21:00

into, or just use them in your day job.

21:04

See you soon.