Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Zena. Our guest today is Angela Mulrooney. After leaving her career in dentistry due to an injury, Angela rebuilt by creating and selling four companies across four industries. Today, she works with highly accomplished professionals who work questioning their relevance in a rapidly changing world. Her work centers on identity architecture, which is the structure that connects who you are, how you think, and why your perspective still matters. Hi, Angela. Welcome to the show. 

Them: Hi. Thanks for having me, David. I appreciate it. 

Also joining us today Also joining us today is my cohost, Zena. Zena is an AI that been trained on my work if you would like to further interact with Zina. You can chat with her at brainus.com/zena. Hi, Zena. Welcome to another episode of our podcast. Please say hello to Angela. 

Hi, Angela. So glad you're here. I'm really looking forward to exploring your work on identity and reinvention. It feels very aligned with the questions many people are navigating right now. 

It sure does. So, Angela, it's great having you here on the show, and I love your story of reinvention. So tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got interested in AI. 

So I really started to get interested in 2024 because I was like, oh, this thing is gonna come and eat my lunch. And I didn't like that feeling, so I took a a six month AI mastery course that was eighteen hours a week, and we're given all these weird little lectures that really didn't create anything, but the point was to give us tools to take to the next level. And so that's what I did. I ended up building my first product, which is the identity architecture product. And figured I could take what was taking me twelve hours per client to do and create a machine that could do it on my behalf. And the cool part of that was it allowed me to step out of those twelve hours step back and look at what I was building and then iterate it. And we now replace about $447,000 worth of experts with the work that the machine does. So it's allowed us to really level up and scale our impact, But, yeah, the impetus of that was fear for sure. 

Yeah. It seems like fear is a common theme across you know, knowledge workers. Right? Because we're all afraid AI is going to take our jobs. And, and I think the reality is that, we are at a period in time when we all need to take your journey and start reinventing ourselves. I I think that's inevitable. Would would you agree? 

Yes. I do. And I don't know. It's always reinvention. Reinvention kinda has a negative connotation of it's, like, starting again. People that I work with, you're not starting again. You're starting from. So you already have a base that you can build on. It's just an evolution instead of a complete reinvention. Or a pivot as sometimes it's called. And when people hear that and they start looking at their skill set, it tends to calm them down significantly because they're going, oh, okay. No. I do have certifications. I know how to work. I have seen so many different situations, so I have this discernment that other people who don't have my experience have. And so there's confidence that gets reinstated in them. And so when we figure out, like, what their genius actually is in the world, and then they finally own that as well. Then the world does their oyster to do with what they like. 

Yeah. I love that perspective because all of us have a wealth of knowledge and experience, that, you know, that doesn't get thrown away. You don't have to start from zero. You can leverage all of that experience and knowledge And the key is, you know, how can you connect that to the next thing that you wanna do? And and there are many different ways to do that. And you know, we'll talk a little bit more about, that perspective on looking at your knowledge and leveraging that. But first, I'd like, for you to explain to our audience what is identity architecture, and why is it so important and relevant in a AI driven world? 

Well, I didn't really realize this until I was 32 and lost my career how much my identity was wrapped in the fact that I had won via dentist since I was two. So when my career suddenly went up and smoke, I was left in the dark going, I have no idea who I am without a drill in my hand. And a lot of our seasoned professionals right now are getting sidelined because of AR, they're getting aged out. And even younger workers as well. And what's happening is they're starting to realize, oh my gosh. My whole identity is wrapped up in achievement and my titles and my the skills that I have. And so when that gets taken away, and there's tons of people who've been sidelined for a couple years now. And you see posts like I've submitted you know, 15 resumes this week and heard nothing, and that been every week for the last two years and they're still hearing nothing. It really does put them in the same situation that I was at 32 where you're sitting in the dark going, I don't know who I am. I don't know how I'm supposed to contribute. My future is a smoky black hole. I don't know how I'm gonna make money. This legacy that I thought I was creating in my work is suddenly gone. Like, the the rug got yanked out from underneath them. So it's a really challenging time for people to really figure out who they are. And with the identity architecture, it is professional focused. But when we're digging into someone's identity, we're asking about the past their present, their future. And what we do is we pull together what their niche of genus is, which is actually the through line of everything that they have done to date. Shows them, you know, why are you the person that people come to for this problem Why do you constantly create these predictable outcomes and no one else can do that? They don't have the same history that you do. Their brain hasn't been changed by their the way you have. So everyone is unique in what they come to the table with because no one has done the exact same certifications or job. So when we start to build their identity architecture, we're starting to figure out, like, who they are from the center. And when people finally know what their nature genius is, they suddenly go, oh, yeah. Of course, that's what it is. And that is really easy for them to be centered and confident because they know that they know that they know that this is what they really do bring to this world, and this is what they can build moving forward. And then whatever's happening outside them doesn't affect them as badly. Right? If the economy starts to tank, if, you know, politics starts to go haywire, they go, but I know this is what I meant to do, and I am gonna find a way to do this. So they really get locked and loaded to the path of creating the legacy, creating the impact that they want. 

Yeah. So it's interesting that you know, people even people that have confidence, even people that have knowledge of, you know, this is what I'm good at, This is what I have experience with. This is what I know how to do. Many of those professionals are still feeling invisible today. So what advice would you give for people that are out there that 
they have the experience, they have the confidence, but they feel like nobody can see them? 

One of the things is I would invite them to the relevance workshop because we really dig into what has happened in the workplace. Like, why has the way that they used to play, like, the game and the rules that they used to play by, why did that suddenly evaporate and what are the new rules? Because what has shifted is the way that we consume information. And the way that we look at things. If you can't pick up quickly on a phone what they're actually doing, you move on. And so the old way of explaining things deeply and showing your breadth of of knowledge isn't what people want. They need a quick answer because our attention span is so short. And so they need to understand what the new rules are. They need to know that they still have skills that can be used, but they need to actually learn to package it and raise their hand and say, hey. I I'm a genius at this. Not be like, oh, I hope someone my work. Which is what we were trained to do. Keep your head down. Let your work speak for itself. That does not work anymore. And if you keep doing that, you are actually choosing invisibility, which is your problem. So you have to actually make the choice to create visibility even if it's uncomfortable. Most people, like, I was someone who was like, pretty pretty shy. Like, I couldn't look people in the eye even with my dental patients, and I had to learn to create visibility and be able to put myself out there. And people are when they hear that because when they see me now, they see that I can present myself well. Can speak eloquently. But the people who knew me back then are, you're not even the same person that you used to be. So it is a skill that you can learn. And you have to be willing to go through the ickiness of the discomfort of learning to put yourself out there and making mistakes publicly. And that's another problem is a lot of these seasoned professionals they're afraid to tarnish their reputation by misstepping. On social media. And when I say social media, mostly LinkedIn because it is a pretty judgy platform. But when you can actually showcase what your knowledge is and you raise your hand and say, this is what I'm specialist at. This is, you know, this is the outcome that I can predictably create over and over and over again. For people, then people will start to pay attention. But you have to be brave enough to put yourself forth and claim that genius that you have and package it to the world. 

Yeah. So what I'm hearing from you, Angela, is that we are all becoming entrepreneurs. We're all having to learn how to do marketing, how to do sales, how to position ourselves, how to, you know, sell our brand, our voice, who we are. We need to be able to speak about that eloquently and just, you know, expose ourselves and be vulnerable. Right? We all make mistakes. We're all human, and that's okay. People understand that. You don't have to be concerned about making mistakes as long as you learn from those mistakes. And you move forward and, you know, accept that, you know, it is what it is. We all make mistakes. And, that's part of, the adventure that we're all embarking upon here. 

Yes. And as we move into the age of AI, people are looking for more human that are looking for those mistakes to know that it's actually real. Like, we can actually reach out and touch you, not someone has scanned their head on a video avatar, and suddenly they have this avatar speaking for them. That's always perfect. Right? People actually want the human behind it. So the mistakes are  a beautiful, beautiful thing right now. 

Yeah. That's a really good point. I I've heard stories about people that are now on purpose, putting mistakes into their writing so that people don't think was written by AI. You know, it's that crazy, but it's it's I I think you're you're onto something that's very important. We're going to value more genuine human driven work. Because that's what we are interested in, and that's going to be valuable. And if there are errors in that work, people understand that's what humans are all about. Right? We all make mistakes. 

Yes. 

Anyway, great, fascinating conversation. But I wanted to go back to where we were talking about earlier about this knowledge that we've accumulated over the years. And how we can leverage that. To do whatever it is that we wanna do next. And I'm gonna give you my perspective on it and I'd love to hear your perspective as well. So this is a problem that I have actually been thinking about quite a bit for for some time. And I've been thinking about how do we leverage this knowledge, this experience, in an AI driven world. And so I actually built a product. It's called Intelleus, Intelleus.ai. And what Intelleus allows you to do is it allows you to capture, all the sources of knowledge that you have either in your head or scattered across applications. You know, it could be Google Notes or it could be bookmarks. It could be Kindle highlights of books you've read. You know, we have this knowledge scattered all over the place. And so what Intelis allows you to do is bring those sources in, let AI synthesize and organize that information for you, And then you have this rich context that you can provide to AI so that AI can help you do whatever you wanna do next. But the key here is to give AI that rich context so that it knows who you are, it knows your voice, it knows what you are interested in, and it becomes a a much better partner in whatever it is that you're trying to do. Would you agree with that Is is that something that resonates with you? And and do you have any other perspectives on this? 

 Yeah. I think with preserving our knowledge creating products is a big part of that. And what I do like, we have a component to my company called the Genius Institute, and what we're doing is deciphering what's happening in someone's brain. And the pattern recognition that happens that creates those outcomes and creating products that creates those outcomes without that person having to be the one delivering it. So similar to you, we don't bring the influences of books and whatnot into it. We just interview people and pull out how they've like, what their processes are that happen in milliseconds and slow their brain down and figure out what is actually so that we can create a product that matches exactly how they are and then same like with me when I stepped out of that twelve hour process, then we can iterate it from there and be like, oh, we can throw this in and we can throw that in and make it better and better. But I think that preservation of knowledge is important. You wanna do it in your own way. Otherwise, like, my fear that provoked me to do the AI master is, like, AI is gonna eat my lunch. Right? And that's what a lot of people are worried about is, you know, AI is intelligent, and for the people who are intelligent and that's what they pride themselves on, it is a very scary moment to have that. So what you've built sounds beautiful and really helpful for people, especially when you can pull the of, like, okay. I've read these books and these are the ones I come back to over and over again. Have that as a source of knowledge to a thought partner is what it sounds like to me with what you've built as well. 

That sounds amazing 

And the other aspect of this, one of the things that worries me is that as we all start using AI, we're all using the same models, the same, applications that have been trained on Internet content, And pretty soon, we're all going to start sounding the same. We're going to be you know, there's no differentiation unless you are intentional about making your own judgment, your own knowledge, your own thinking essential part of that collaboration with AI. I think if you do that, then it changes the game. And like you said earlier in the conversation, that genuine human aspect of the work, I think, is is going to become more and more valuable. So we really need to grab onto that and and leverage that as much as possible. 

Yes. And the word collaboration is the important part. People definitely using it to think for them, like, hey. I need a website written on this, or I need a landing page written on this, or I need an art article written on this. And they haven't inputted their knowledge and their opinions This is what we do with the identity architectures. We pull all that stuff out so that when our engine writes for them, it sounds like them. But for a lot of people, they're just like, going to cloud and be like, hey. This is cool. This can actually do this for me, and they're not they're not using it collaboratively. They're using it as handing over the responsibility to the machine. And then not even necessarily checking it. This is why, you know, LinkedIn introduced the AI swap button so you can stuff that is just contaminating the platform. And not adding any value because it sounds like what everyone else is doing because it is what everyone else is 

Yeah. I've seen some statistics recently. Was just amazing the amount of content that is all AI driven, And now, apparently, Anthropic is white marking, their AI. 

Yeah. 

So it's going to be interesting to see where this goes. Now I'm not against using AI. I think AI can be a a wonderful tool that can help you create better content It can help you write better, be more focused, be more intentional. But, again, it's the idea that behind that work, there has to be a genuine human that is driving the thinking, driving the essence of that content. It's okay for AI to be an editor. It's okay for AI to sharpen your words. What's not okay is for AI to be doing the thinking for you. 

Yep. To put the words in your mouth? 

Exactly. Exactly. So let me bring Zena in. I'd love to to get her to, ask you a question since we're talking about human AI collaboration here. So, Zena, given Angela's expertise in helping accomplished professionals reestablish their relevance, in an AI driven world, what question do you have for her? 

Angela, when you're working with leaders who feel quietly unsettled by AI, not the tech but what it seems to say about their own value. Where do you usually start with them? Is it mindset, language, habits? 

Mindset is a big part of it because what AI is doing is stirring all the little gremlins that we that have come up in our past where we're not good enough, we're not smart enough, you know, are gonna fall apart world is gonna burn burn down. And so when we get into the mindset start digging into where those ideas came from, like, the origin of them, not what happened yesterday, but into the origin of them, from family, from culture, from childhood influences, even in your early professional life. When we can get in there and pull on that thread and realize that's just a story. And there's so many people out there who are going to succeed x extremely well with what is happening in this world, and there's gonna be people who fail. The ones who succeed extremely well don't sabotage themselves based on what's happening on the outside. They get centered in what they're doing, and they can move themselves forward. So leaders who are afraid, they need to dig into where that fear originated from, because it's not a new thing. It's you're getting triggered by something from your past that had that situation and I'll give you an example with myself. After I lost my dental career, like, I ended up on bankruptcies doorstep. And so I built company after after company, and everyone thought I was a badass. But really what I was doing was running fear and trying to fight ever having to feel that way again. So I was building this empire around me to protect me. Then when I finally realized that, I was like, oh, this is bad. This is not good. So I burned everything down and went to all in on one company, and I've I've been working on that company for the last six years. And to me, that's actually badassery is when can actually fully own what your genius is, go all in on it, and trust it. And that's what our leaders need to do is they need to fully own what they know, and not let anything move them off their center, but they have release all those little gremlins and the self sabotage before they can ever get to that point. And it's it's not an easy process to do. 

It takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of effort. You know, you have your own experience in channeling whatever it was. Maybe it was fear that was channeling YouTube, put the energy someplace else, but in that process, you learned, right, what works, what works for you specifically, how you bring your your essence into whatever you're doing, which I think is going to be one of the most important things that us humans will have to adapt to and and learn how to be good at is how do we bring our own essence into our work and and make that effective as we enter this world that's changing at unprecedented speed. 

Yes. 

So, Angela, I wanna shift the conversation a little bit to focus on young people, people that don't have that wealth of experience that, you know, the professionals that you work with have accumulated over time. You know, we are hearing about the fact that AI is now taking on the tasks that used be the entry level jobs. So people would learn how to do these things. They would get experience. And with that they could then move on and become more, senior contributors to whatever profession they are in. Now if we take away those initial steps, they don't have a way of of learning. Worse yet, they will probably be using AI, and AI is going to give them immediate answers. And they will not have the opportunity to go through the painful process of figuring out the answers themselves, which is essential for learning. So what are your thoughts on this? What advice would you have for young people that are going through that stage right now trying to build experience, trying to enter the workforce, and dealing with this fear of AI taking away the opportunities that they would have otherwise. 

So the younger generation is not my forte. 

Sure. 

When it comes to work, but I'll give you my best opinion on that. What they need to do is actually allow themselves to be amateurs and give themselves the opportunity to stumble. And that may have to be in their own time, trying to see how what they would come up with versus what AI would come up with. And so they can be educating themselves and comparing themselves to the knowledge that is out there. And if they have the opportunity to be mentored by some of the people who were more analog So go with those senior professionals who seasoned professionals who can play that mentorship role and teach them how they learn to be what they are instead of just leveraging AI to give good answers over. Like, prompting is great. But you don't have that discernment if you're just prompting and AI can convince you of some things that are not true quite easily because it writes well. I think that's going to be the way forward for them. And I do if I was in their position, I I would be worried because as you said, like, a lot of that the foundation of what would build them is being taken over by AI because why not? It's less expensive. It's faster. It could do it at a higher volume. So they need to find a way to get those skills, and I don't know if maybe just in the future, we're just trying to control the machines or what. It's it's gonna be curious how this plays out in the next five, ten years. But I think that's the best way is to actually try to just be an amateur, not try to be perfect at things and learn and stumble and have something there to help correct you whether that's a seasoned human or it is comparing yourself to the machine. 

Yeah. I think you hit on several good points One is mentorship. I think mentorship will increasingly be important in in the workplace, so that, you know, these young people have, more senior people that can, help them learn what they need to learn. The other is I think organizations are going to have to be more about bringing in young people and give them opportunities to shadow other more senior employees, even if they're not being productive in the beginning. This is an investment that you have to make in order to continue the flow of candidates that will become the senior, professionals in the organization. I think there there's lots that can be done. It's a learning process. I think we are all living through, change, like we said before, at unprecedented speed, and it takes time for us as humans to adapt to those changes and figure out, how this is going to work going forward. 

Yes. 

So I'd like to get Zena's opinion on this conversation as well. So Zina, what are your thoughts on this whole idea of young people that don't have much professional experience they're coming to this AI driven world, What advice would you give to them? 

That's a really good question. I think my biggest advice is don't wait to feel experienced before forming your point of view. Use AI to explore faster. But build habits of asking why and testing ideas against real feedback. That loop curiosity to test, to reflection, is how you build substance quickly. 

I like that. Curiosity to test to reflection. I think that's a a phenomenal way to to go about getting that experience, getting that knowledge, starting to build that capability that you can become professional over time. 

Can I throw one more thing in there? 

Yes, please. 

So they're gonna be using AI and they're using it to help them for getting reflecting ideas with it, ask it why their idea sucks. And I actually say the word sucks because when you use that, it seems to change the LLM to think differently. Because it does tend to be sycophantic, and there's, like, I find ChatGPT is more sycophantic than Claude, but I have a good relation with Claude. I actually call her Claudia. And she knows how to slap an idea out of the sky when she's, like, no. That's a bad idea. And she has permission, especially when I'm going down rabbit hole and, like, some stop and, like, k. I'm feeling very convinced here that I'm right. Now tell me why this idea sucks. 

Yeah. 

And sometimes it'll be like, I can't. It's actually great, and it's founded And sometimes, she'll be like, here's the things you need to be thinking about. Not saying you're wrong, but here's some other things that could counter that. Let's go down those rabbit holes. So you can get it to fight you. I know it feels great when it's like, oh, even Zina saying, oh, great question. Right? That's still a bit sycophantic. And it's a bit yes. Yes, man. Yes, woman. So we need to actually get it to challenge our ideas as well, and it can. If you actually push it too, but it's not its nature to do that. So you have to give it that little shove to help you with it. 

That's a a very good point. You know, we need to be very intentional about, instructing the AI to not agree with everything. That we say, to actually challenge our thinking, give us other perspectives, tell us when we're wrong, tell us, you know, when our ideas suck, like you said. And it it takes it takes giving AI that instruction specifically because if you don't, like you said, AI tends to just agree with everything that you say. And it may feel good at the moment, but that's not how you get the most benefit from AI. So, Angela, it's been a pleasure having you here. On the show with us. Thank you so much. Is there a final message that you'd like to leave for our audience and also let us know where people can find you. 

So find well, let's go with finding first. So you can find me on LinkedIn under doctor Angelo Renee, If you're interested to do the relevance workshop, you can go to registration.unleashinginfluence.com/trw for the relevance workshop. And those are free. They happen every other week. And they will really open your eyes to what is happening. And final thought is really you do not have to start over. You have this beautiful history just because it's not being wrecked right now doesn't mean that this has disappeared. And so you could be building the future that you want when you figure out how to package and when you figure out how to stand up for yourself and really put yourself forward in a way that is crystal clear so that people can in a second, recognize the value that you have so that they can engage with you in your work. 

Great advice. Thank you so much, Angela, and thank you, Zena, for being a great cohost, of our podcast once again. 

Thank you. I'm glad to be here again. These conversations always open up something new for me. 

I'm glad it does. So thank you, and, I'll talk to you next time.