DeepSeek wiped a trillion off the US stock market this week. Oddly enough, it took six days for the market to react to DeepSeek, which launched on the 22nd. On its website “DeepSeek-R1 is now live and open source, rivaling OpenAI’s Model o1.” The Chinese startup behind it says DeepSeek is 20–50 times cheaper to use than the latest OpenAI o1 model. It’s number one in the App Store as I write this. It’s also a big target for cyber attackers, and registrations are limited. I got in before the...
1 day ago • 2 min read
A few days ago, I wrote a note on Substack that popped off. I write these notes every day. I spent five minutes on this one. My note went viral, attracting over 1000 likes, shares, and comments agreeing and disagreeing with my contrarian take. Some other big creators restacked or shared it, too. And I attracted a few dozen new subscribers for my Substack list: Not bad for five minutes of work. I’ve spent far more time on newsletters than have done far less for my brand. So what’s the takeaway...
2 days ago • 3 min read
Gary Vee says publish 6+ times daily on half a dozen channels and you’ll grow a business. Gary also has a team dedicated to his content strategy Creating and repurposing content sounds fine, but it can quickly become a stressful, low-paying job. Frankly, I don’t like spending that much time on the content hamster wheel. Enter AI. To use AI as part of a content creation workflow, craft a prompt that takes one piece of content and multiples it. I call this type of prompt the Content Multiplier,...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Most prompt engineers are just writers in disguise. Prompt engineering is the fancy word boffins building ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude use to describe telling AI who you are and what you want from it. Amanda Askell is a philosopher who works for Antrophic, the company behind Claude. She says the term “engineering” is apt because someone crafting a prompt defines a problem, develops a solution and refines their work through testing. I asked a real-world engineer friend about this take. He...
4 days ago • 2 min read
For a few years, I paid an editor a few hundred dollars a month to edit my content. When she left for another job, I didn’t hire anyone else. Instead, I started using Claude, and it only costs me $20 a month. That’s a 93% saving, and it’s a lot faster than going backward and forward on Google Docs. Here’s an example of how my AI+human content process works: I spent 15–30 minutes writing a daily email like this one every morning, usually working on a personal story or an angle. After finishing...
5 days ago • 1 min read
Even though I’ve spent years writing online, I woke up this morning and couldn’t think of anything to bash into my MacBook after the kids went to school. And I’d only have half an hour to write this email as I’ve got a call with a client later today. I’ve a near-mortal fear of the flashing cursor or a blank screen. So, I avoided this problem with the Post-It note strategy for a few years. Here’s how it works. Before bed, I write down a single idea on a Post-It like “write 300 words about...
6 days ago • 2 min read
I tested Google Gemini’s content creation capabilities. I wanted to see how it stacks up against ChatGPT and Claude for creating business copy. Google Gemini offers two interesting “gems” (think custom GPTs) for content creators: Copy Creator and Writing Editor. Copy Creator helps write taglines, mission statements, and social media posts. Writing Editor focuses on fixing grammar and improving content structure. I put both through their paces using content from my daily newsletter. When I fed...
7 days ago • 2 min read
Your existing content is like an untapped gold mine - most creators keep digging new holes instead of mining what they already have. I’ve spent years writing online, It can easily become a full-time, low-paying job if you keep digging. One method for getting around this problem is building a content library of your greatest hits. It’s easier to repurpose content if you have a library that you can draw from. Another method is tracking a few key weekly stats across each channel so you can see...
8 days ago • 1 min read
I spent years obsessing over niche selection. When I was a Forbes columnist, branding myself as “the productivity and leadership guy” seemed like a safe bet. I covered topics like time management, leadership, and getting sh*t done at work.I mapped dozens of hot niche-specific topics in a spreadsheet and published articles like: The Fastest Way To Accomplish More This Week How To Use The 4 Ds Of Time Management 4 Common Mistakes New Home Workers Make I wrote about these topics not because they...
9 days ago • 1 min read