Voicenotes: The Fluency Hack You're Not Using Yet | The Fluent Edge Ep. 4

Sean : so welcome to the Fluent Edge Podcast. The podcast for advanced English learners who want to polish their language, tweak their tone, and level up their communication in high performance, often multicultural environments.

Dr Howie Jacobson: .I am Howie Jacobson. I'm an executive coach, author, mindset strategist. If you want to lead with clarity, build resilience, and communicate with authenticity,

this podcast will help you think and act at a higher level.

Sean : And I am Sean Watson, your business English strategist. Each week I'll help you sharpen your voice, refine your English, and lead with confidence whether you're negotiating, managing, or presenting. So in today's episode, we're unpacking a couple of things. First, we're going to talk about prompting and prompt engineering.

And, for most of you, I'm sure you have played around with chat, GPT or Claude, or one of the other language models, and I think one of the big, Problems with prompt engineering now is that everybody tends to enter in the same prompt and, we're all accessing the same language models. And so more and more we are experiencing, generic, outputs.

so some of the terms that come up for that now, one of them is called output convergence. Any idea where that is Howie?

Dr Howie Jacobson: Well, uh, convergence means to come together. So it's that all these different people are putting in their own thoughts and ideas, but what's coming out all starts to sound the same. Am I close?

Sean : That's absolutely right. Yeah. So we're all converging, we're all kind of using the same prompts. .

So we don't want a situation where, AI starts to cannibalize information in the world where it just starts to eat itself. So we need something fresh to come into that. so another term is prompt fatigue, eeg.

And then the third problem is what we call prompt collapse. So that's basically when the language model is updated sometimes your magic prompt that you've been using suddenly doesn't work anymore. and then finally, idea flattening. What, would you think that would mean?

Dr Howie Jacobson: I'm thinking that these large learning models aggregate, untold terabytes of data and in a way make it sort of average. so if you come in with something completely new and different and off the wall and you put it into the machine, it might think it's, taking off the rough edges, but it's making it less interesting.

Sean : Exactly. So your, your bold idea or what you thought was a great idea can often become generic and boring and repetitive. And while I love ai, I love what it can do. As it becomes more sophisticated, we have to find ways to keep it human, and also to find ways to add our own voice, which is why I'll eventually jump into voice notes.

for prompting, when we first try to use prompts, it feels personalized. It feels like, wow, we found this, you know, personalized take on one of our ideas. But if you think about all of the thousands of people who might be trying to do the same thing, then it becomes, what some people call mass production in disguise.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Hmm.

Sean : Right. So we're getting all the same results, but everybody thinks it's it's original and unique. so that's why I think, introducing a better strategy, one that brings your original thinking, your original voice back into the process.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Yeah, I think, I think that can help for a bunch of reasons. And I'm suddenly remembering back to a lecture I had in college in sociology class where the professor asked us, do we think that children watching television is a good thing or not? all of us, you know, Ivy League graduates. Highly intellectual.

We all said, no, watching television is terrible. They shouldn't be doing that. And then he said, well, what about the kids who come from families where English isn't spoken, where there's very little education where the parents are working full time, where there's only one parent and there's not a lot of interaction?

There are many cases where television. Is better than not having television. so I think for me, when I think about using ai, I want to use it in areas where it's better than me, it can gather data faster than I can, where it can synthesize huge amounts of data. Like if I have two different reports that I've written and I want to combine them into one.

It can do that better than I can, but I don't want to the areas where I am better than it, where I have, uh, deeper insights where I am more curious. I want to make sure that my input, doesn't get lost and that my advantages don't end up being averaged into what it's doing. So the idea of me. Speaking in my own voice without having to craft the right words. And, the nice thing about writing. Especially for language learners is you can do it without pressure. You can get it wrong 20 times, but when I'm in a conversation and I use the wrong word, or I'm worried, the real time actually creates a kind of nervous energy. I think we can use that to our advantage when we're speaking because we're not so polished, we're not censoring ourselves, you know, we are being more authentic, even though we may be messier.

Sean : Right. Well said. Yeah. So the tool we've both been using and recommending is voice notes. for me it's become part of my daily creative flow. and the cool thing about it, I'll. switch to screen sharing shortly and we can look at it. Um, but there are many ways to, to record.

For example, I have it on my watch, so if I'm walking and something suddenly occurs to me, I don't have to dig into my pocket for my smartphone. I can simply, put in my idea just on my wrist like that, which I think is. Fabulous. And maybe this will be included everywhere in the future, but I think voice notes, as we'll soon see, probably has the easiest and cleanest interface, that I've seen out there and Howie, I believe you have used it bit as well, right? The, the voice notes.

Dr Howie Jacobson: me about it. I got excited. I bought the year subscription. I've used it five times. And then because it

Sean : Okay.

Dr Howie Jacobson: of my daily routine, I haven't been using it. And I keep telling myself after this conversation, Sean will have. Inspired me and I'm gonna start using it and get my money's worth, so I am here for it.

Sean : Right. yeah. So first of all, it is an award-winning AI note taker.

So as you can see here, it's available, on your phone. It's available as a standalone desktop. App and also as a watch and also on the web, which is quite a cool feature. I've only used it a little bit, but for example, if you're watching a video online, you can use voice notes to record the video.

It could be on YouTube or Vimeo or another platform. And then of course, you can do whatever you want with that video. You could turn it into a course, you could turn it into a blog post, rephrased, of course. Or to have the summary of, of the YouTube video.

Now, I think YouTube does or is about to offer something similar on their platform. But again, if you're just searching around on the internet and maybe you just want to give yourself. A quick note, about something that you're looking at, this is a great tool as well.

Some people use it for Google meets or Zoom calls or, or Microsoft teams meetings. And this could be a great feature. For teams, I think, this is actually one of the things that Voice Notes offers, is that you can, share, AI summaries with your team

Dr Howie Jacobson: a question about

Sean : I.

Dr Howie Jacobson: does it integrate with Zoom or Google Meet or do you have your phone and you just push record and just hold it there

Sean : That's a great question. so far, I don't believe that it's integrated completely, , into, , all of these, video conferencing apps. I might be wrong. And, even, if, it hasn't been integrated, I would imagine that if this app is successful, it could be like other competitors like Otter AI for example, which I think does have integration, doesn't it?

Do you know if Otter.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Yes.

Sean : Yeah. So that might be something coming up, in the future. yeah, so the beautiful thing is here that, whatever information you are uploading or recording, you could quickly translate it into another language. You could create a to-do list, a meeting, report, an email.

you can even create a custom prompt. So if you wanted to, create an ebook, or you wanted to create a short podcast. You could basically do anything. and with the Ask AI function, it really acts like a second brain. So you can ask it, what did I say in that, Q1 meeting last year about our sales figures, for example, and it, it will bring that back up.

So it really does act like a second brain for you,.

Dr Howie Jacobson: One of the things I like about that, I love when AI works with a limited data set. Because, you know, I've been reading that the more power, like I've been using chat GBT like oh three, is incredibly powerful and apparently it's hallucinating more than ever. but if I say like, when did I do this?

Or what did we say in that meeting? And it knows to just look at a particular data set. It's much less likely, I think, to make things up. And I'm much more likely to notice if it does.

good point. and in terms of privacy, it does claim that all data is encrypted. .

Sean : So I think what I'll do here is just jump in and give you a quick example of something we could do with this. so I'm just going to record and then we can see how it transcribes. So I'll start recording.

Okay, just wrapped up with the sales team. Um, good energy overall, but I think we need to circle back on pricing flexibility. Um, they're feeling stuck when the client pushes back. Also, note to self, uh, we probably need to update the onboarding materials. I think Maria flagged something in the call about confusion over AI limits.

So here it's transcribing and it shouldn't take that long. Okay, so we've already got the rough copy. Here. and now I can create, for example, a meeting report out of this. So it usually just takes a few seconds and I'll have a nicely, formatted meeting report here.

Sales team wrapped up, meeting with good energy. Me too, revisit pricing flexibility. So I think something like this could be super useful, both for native English speakers and also non-native English speakers. it also takes out all of the ums. As well automatically, and all of the silences. So it, produces something that's ready to go.

and here if I wanted to create something else, like if we wanted to do just a, a basic summary instead of a meeting report, I. Um, yeah, so this is quite short. The sales team meeting concluded with good energy, but there is a need to revisit pricing, flexibility, et cetera. so I think that's pretty cool.

And then the other thing here, I'll just look at this quickly, but these are the, the newer features. So here for teams, you could record something, or you could have people contributing and have something that, teams could access with a shared link.

For example, I guess it could help to speed up the process if you just want to, you know, put in your 2 cents into, uh, a team meeting or, if you wanted to throw in some sales figures, this would organize everything so that everybody could quickly, reference it without having to worry about editing.

the other cool feature is importing, so you can import any audio files. Those will become part of the second brain of voice notes, so they don't pop up, as soon as you upload them. But they do become part of the second brain. So you could use lots of other audio recordings. and then the other cool thing is pages, and this is a relatively new feature as well, and it's a little bit like a mini podcast.

So you can create a page where, for example, if you were coaching with a client and you wanted to send them a, like a daily, prompt, or you wanted to send them like daily encouragement, you could create, a small mini podcast page with a unique link and people could hear what you have to say.

For example, for me, when I'm working with, advanced English speakers, maybe they would want to upload, reading something that I could give them feedback on for pronunciation. And then finally WhatsApp as well. This is a new integration, so if you're using WhatsApp, um, voice notes is now compatible with it.

So you can simply record directly into, WhatsApp and that will transcribe everything beautifully into. voice notes as well. So that's basically it.

Dr Howie Jacobson: first question is, I saw that there was a list of prompts, right?

Sean : Mm-hmm.

Dr Howie Jacobson: meeting, or can you write your own prompt? Could you say, for example, based on this, can you create an agenda for the next meeting?

Absolutely. so here if I can find it. oh, the other thing I forgot to mention too is tags so you can tag everything, which makes it easier to find stuff. So to answer your question, yes. So here, I dunno if you can see it down at the bottom, you've got a custom prompt. So, uh, what was, what did you want to say again?

Sean : What was the, uh.

Dr Howie Jacobson: agenda for the next meeting.

Sean : Right, exactly. So here, create an agenda for the next meeting, for example. I have no idea what it's going to create based on the very short, recording that I made, we can see how this looks. There you go. So there, you've got your agenda for the next meeting. Recap of previous meeting outcomes.

Overview of today's agenda. Yeah. So you can basically prompt it to output any type of format you need.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Uhhuh, could you could, now I'm gotta go. Could you ask it to start with an icebreaker? Like is it, is

Sean : Oh, interesting. I've

Dr Howie Jacobson: AI capabilities? Like could this be your basic AI helper?

Sean : if I say, I need to, create, an icebreaker, for our meeting, I have no idea what we'll get. so what did they say? Yeah. Considering the recent observations from the sales team meeting where the team felt a bit stuck regarding pricing flexibility.

An ideal icebreaker could revolve Yeah. it's really quite creative and intuitive. and, they've got a very, lively, and vibrant Reddit group as well. And the, developer, answers questions every day in the Reddit group .

I'm impressed.

Sean : So for people who are interested, we've provided a link in the, description and in the show notes where you can go and try it for free. I think right now they're offering something like $79 US per year, which I think is fairly reasonable.

and I think it takes a, little bit of time to figure out ways to integrate this into your daily workflow and into your life. I think for creatives too, for people who are writing short stories or, ad copy or, ideas for songs, I think it could be really, really helpful

Dr Howie Jacobson: Yeah, and I,

The back end of this is systematized, right? So that everything is not only, captured, but it's searchable and usable. And once you start coming up with practices and formats, you can keep doing it. So I can see now how this can become a habit.

Sean : Yes, I can too. it's just, it's adding another tool to our tool set. and I know it's, easy to get overwhelmed by everything that's available, but again, what I love about this is how you can use your own voice, your own ideas, to create something rather than just using a prompt So I think in that sense it's really, really useful. So I guess we're kind of running out of time here. I just wanted to mention too that, uh. maybe as a fluent edge hack. before you write your next email or presentation or AI, prompt record yourself. Try this out and record yourself and then refine it.

And I think for English learners, this is amazing. but of course, if you want to record something in your native language, I it works with more than 100 languages . I have no idea what the accuracy is like, but I think even for pronunciation, this could really help English learners even advance people to, perfect their pronunciation skills as well, because the AI might not always understand if a person isn't speaking clearly.

Dr Howie Jacobson: I noticed one thing, which is when you your original voice note, you sa used, the words wrapped up. I. re-wrapped up the meeting with good energy and the voice note translated it to conclude it. So I think it, it may be an an interesting way to look at different ways, especially because English has so many root sources, So many different influences. There's so many different ways to say things that I think it could be, it could be fun and interesting. To look at how formalized right wrapped up is less formal than concluded. And a way to sort of, increase vocabulary and sort of your sensitivity about which words to use in which contexts.

Sean : Absolutely. That's a really, really good point. I think it could easily be used as a language tool in that way to see alternative ways of, saying the same thing. Like wrap up and conclude. so again, if, people want to try it, I would suggest, even trying it for a few days, record a few ideas and, it could be business reflections or team updates.

And that way you can sort of build the muscle of speaking with clarity before you write. .

All right.

Dr Howie Jacobson: We're linking in the description to coaching options. If you would like help from

Sean : Yes.

Dr Howie Jacobson: and fine tuning your English or for me in enhancing your leadership capability or for either or both of us around clarity of expression.

Sean : So until next time, we invite everybody to subscribe, share and check the description for your downloads and tools, and for coaching links for Howie and for myself

Dr Howie Jacobson: Until next time, keep thinking clearly, communicating boldly and leading with your voice.

Sean : stay sharp, stay human, and stay fluent.