… am slightly ahead of the curve.

I had a beer with my friend Rick last night.

I mentioned that I had been fooling with ChatGPT’s new(ish) capability of analyzing data from an uploaded spreadsheet.

He said, “Wow, you’re pretty deep with all this stuff.”

Actually, I’m not. I’m a couple of inches deep … but he’s still standing on the shore, so it looks deep.

The truth is, it takes very little to be ahead of the curve on just about anything.

Think about any hobby or interest you have and I bet you know more about it than 99% of the population, most of whom pay little attention to that topic.

Well, right now it’s the same with AI. The big difference is that unlike your fascination with chainsaw wood carving (I’m guessing), AI is going to change everything.

Now is a good time to get your hands on it and be ahead of the curve. Start here.

… had breakfast with David.

Last week, I had lunch with Debbie.

Next week, I am meeting Will for coffee.

Living on the edge of civilization as I do, each of these requires at least a 30-minute drive in each direction.

So it takes time and yet almost never results in any immediate client work.

Even so, my goal is to have one face-to-face interaction like this each week. Fifty, every year.

First, because it’s fun.

Second, because if you live in a word-of-mouth world (hint: you do), you need to make real, memorable connections with the people whose mouths speak the words.

… used AI to summarize a podcast.

That’s correct. We have evolved from…

“Nobody has time to read a five-minute newsletter,” to…

“Everyone has time to listen to a two-hour podcast,” to…

“Podcasts are too long so let’s use AI to summarize them as text that can be read in five minutes.”

I can only assume that the next step is to convert the text-based podcast summaries into new podcasts so that we can listen to them as a way to save time.

Nobody knows where all this is going. But you do need to get your hands on this stuff and try it for yourself.

Because it is most definitely coming.

And whether it directly affects your job or not, the more you know, the more opportunities you will notice and the more threats you will see coming.

Recommendation if you have yet to do anything with AI: Open up a ChatGPT account here (it’s free, although I recommend the $20 a month paid version) and just start fooling with it: chat.openai.com

Your future self will thank me.

… will be going to dinner with friends.

In preparation, I will develop a list of topics based on prior conversations to make sure I don’t cover anything we have spoken about before.

I’ll also give them a heads-up regarding what I intend to talk about at future dinner meetings.

I hope you realize that I am just kidding.

Mealtime conversations, whether with friends, family, or business colleagues, are not scripted. They just happen, based on whatever is on everyone’s mind.

I recommend using the same approach when developing newsletter topics.

You don’t need (or want) an editorial calendar.

Talk about what you are interested in, what’s happening out in the world, what problems you are facing. 

That relieves you of having to plan ahead (yay!) and ensures that your content is always relevant.

P.S. In the next issue of this blog I will be discussing … never mind.

… am accomplishing much more than usual.

Of course, that makes sense, since today is the longest day of the year, giving me more time.

I hope you agree that’s idiotic.

But, it serves to make the point that some content ideas have an expiration date: the story of your child’s college graduation; your recent vacation; a reference to the longest day of the year.

When deciding what stories to tell in your writing, pay attention to which things have a clock ticking alongside them and use those first.