It felt quite nice when you walked through the door. You felt like you'd arrived, you know. Nice sofas. Modular curtains to allow you to flex your hipster coworking space so you're never too far from the bean to cup coffee machine with ultra dark roast beans (I'm more of a medium roast guy, so I'd end up bringing my Aeropress).

But, within an hour, after I'd been jumped on half a dozen times by the team, I remembered why I f***ing hate working in offices.

So I ended up shutting myself in a cubicle for most of the day, just to get some sh** done.

Don't get me wrong. I'm an introvert, but I'm not antisocial.

I enjoy interacting with people on my own terms. But I don't like being jumped on. In fact, in my first big boy job, this got so bad, the leadership team had to give full training on 'desk hijacking' where you'd just slide into someone's desk space and start asking them for help with stuff.

So, you can imagine my relief when I started working from home.

Although, working from home, also requires a whole new type of discipline.

The shallow work epidemic

Pretty soon the top 1% of creators will be the ones that have found a way to master deep work.

Because with deep work comes deeper content, deeper expertise, and deeper outcomes for their audiences and clients.

There's also a physical reason for this. Cue Huberman:

"Neuroplasticity is triggered by intense focus, but neuroplasticity occurs during deep sleep and rest."

Your learning happens while you're unconscious. Which means guarding a focus block can literally re-wire your brain.

But it's becoming harder, and AI is making this worse.

Anyone who reads me knows I have a fascination with AI. And in the right hands it's life changing. In the wrong hands it just produces more crappy work.

Here's a good take:

I'm so relieved now that AI can work more autonomously, because I don't want to have to micromanage a chat all the time.

Can you imagine if Claude was an employee?

Every 5 seconds - Can you check this? Can you give me your approval on this? I need you to answer these questions before I proceed.

I'm now having to be even more deliberate with the way that I use AI so it doesn't just become another shallow work task.

Here're my tips:

1. Budget time for collaborating with AI alongside doing another task. The AI conversation and the task become part of the same block.

2. Build a well defined brief for an agentic AI, and treat it like an employee. So it carries out the work whilst you're not there. I often set Claude

4 levels of good vs bad distraction

Every moment of every day there's someone or something trying to distract you from the deep work you should be doing to create the life you want.

This is a bad distraction.

Likewise, there are good distractions that help us recharge and refocus.

Distraction Type

Bad

Good

Distraction by others (physically)

Office hijacking, kids drawing over the walls

Sharing a meal. Dancing. Deep conversation.

Distraction by others (virtually)

Slack notifications. WhatsApp. Emails.

Communities. Courses / Learning.

Distraction by yourself (physically)

Coffee every 30 mins. Smoking / excessive addictions.

Napping. Walking. Playing an instrument etc.

Distraction by yourself (virtually)

Social Media Doomscrolling. Game addiction. Asking AI for something every 2 mins.

Reading. Music. Audiobooks.

The problem with working alone - especially if you work from home - is your ability to distract yourself.

But the good news is that discipline is a muscle that can be trained.

But, you don't need to feel disciplined first, then act. It's the reverse. Huberman again:

"Behaviour precedes belief, not the other way around."

Your nervous system watches what you do. You act, and then your brain updates the story about who you are. So "I'm just not a disciplined person" is a story you change by doing the thing - not by waiting until you feel like a disciplined person.

Here's what discipline looks like:

1. Knowing exactly what impactful work you want to do

2. Eliminating bad distractions

3. Planning deep work blocks (90 mins)

4. Using good distractions to re-charge (and increase the chances of getting through a deep work block)

48 hours without a fire

"I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration." - Donald Knuth

This week, I made an effort not to look at my inbox as much.

I'm not talking about going from every 2-3 minutes to 2-3 times a day.

I'm talking about 2-3 times per week.

I successfully managed to stay out of my e-mail for 48 hours. And guess what set on fire?

Nothing.

But what I did manage to do in that time was:

• Ghostwrite a newsletter

• Produce an in-depth guide on AI ROI

• Set up an outreach sequence to re-engage brand partners on an upcoming campaign

But, it took a while for me to work up to resisting inbox temptation for that length of time.

5 stages of discipline

Before you do any of this, you need to decide what your most impactful activities are. For me, it's ideation, editing, brand deal negotiation and campaign strategy.

0. Train your concentration

It's impossible to become disciplined if your ability to concentrate is shot.

This is why I've put this as ground zero.

A few questions that'll help gauge your concentration.

• Can you stare out the window for a solid 2 mins without getting fidgety?

• Can you walk 20 feet without getting your phone out and checking WhatsApp?

• Can you work for more than 10 mins on a task without opening e-mails or checking Slack?

If the answer to any one of these is no, you need a reset.

Go on a walk and leave your phone at home. Block apps on your phone (more on this in a bit). Set a timer and sit in silence for 5 mins, or download a meditation app like 'The Way' even if you don't give a sh** about mindfulness.

I can't stress how important getting rid of that twitch to distract yourself is.

1. Pre-Plan

Everyone's obsessed with morning routines. But I much prefer evening routines.

What's better? Using the first part of your day when you're most energised to decide what to do, or using that time to do stuff?

Here's something cool:

The Hemingway technique. End the work day with something left to write, then reapply your mind to it first thing in the morning. As Josh Waitzkin (Chess prodigy and super-learner) says, you should be "comfortable stopping with a sense of direction, even when you're mid-sentence."

I don't always leave work unfinished, but I do do an end of day review, and block my deep work for the next day.

3. Clean the pipes

I only tend to do this when I'm overwhelmed, or my brain fills a bit 'dirty'.

I do a brain dump of everything that's on my mind. Often as a checklist. To clean the pipes.

From back in my bartending days. There was nothing like pouring a fresh pint after the lines had been cleaned. It was so much clearer.

You don't want your mind to be a cloudy pint (unless you're into that).

I find that when I do this, I'm much less likely to get hijacked by a thought like “Must remember to myself my expenses for the EV charging costs” and the instantly find that I'm doing that instead of what I planned to do.

2. Your Focus Zone

This is split in 4:

1. Where will you be: Set space that you know you're not going to get disturbed

2. What will you use: Music, binaural beats, chewing gum. What will you associate with doing the work that's enjoyable?

3. When will you do it: First thing if you're a morning lark, later on if you're a night owl

4. Who will you notify?: Set boundaries with your colleagues, or even friends and family so they know your schedule. All of my clients know I schedule deep work for the morning, and meetings in the afternoon.

You don't need to go to the 'Meet the Parents' extent of a cowboy hat on the door when you're slathering your partner in cream, but you get the gist.

3. Apps & Notifications

This part is simple:

• App blocker on your phone (I use ScreenZen)

• All notifications turned off on your PC (I only use Slack in browser so I can close the tab down. I don't want any notifications on my system tray)

• Close down all tabs and apps you're not using (I don't like seeing more than 2-3 tabs, unless I'm doing a big newsletter batch, but even then I'll group tabs)

4. Batching Shallow Tasks

• AI Agents / AI Chats - Set them going at specific intervals

• E-mail, slack, etc - Limit to 10-15 mins once or twice per day

• Meetings: Book them back to back during your slump hours '2-3PM' I find being forced to speak with people wakes me up a bit

5. Building the courage to ignore things

All your prior work builds up to this.

Get into a routine of consistently resisting the urge to be 'always available' and you'll start to feel good about ignoring things.

All because your deep work blocks will become so rewarding, and so impactful to your work that you'll protect them in every way necessary.

TL;DR

One of the biggest threats to your life (yes, life) is wasting your brainpower on shallow work that turns you into a busy fool.

But with a bit of discipline (lol) you can train your nervous system to drop into focused blocks of work more easily.

Start by staring out the window a little more often.

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

In his legendary stand up he describes “Lovin’ a good loophole”.

What does he ask the genie for when it comes out the lamp?

He can't ask for more wishes…

So what does he ask for?

Infinite genies 😏

Which also solves his second problem… more friends!

Joking aside.

There is a way of thinking that helps us find loopholes / double bubbles / more leverage from one thing.

There are many names for it. Stacking Functions. Multifunctional Design. High-leverage activities.

Today we’re going to call it

The Keystone Switch: A change to an existing activity that stacks several benefits on unchanged inputs.

I’ll walk you through how to find your own keystone switches to help you squeeze every drop of juice out of your day to day.

Walking as a Keystone

Rob Moore did a book called ‘Life Leverage’ where he describes having his haircut in a meeting to save time (lunatic).

But for me, this whole concept is more about re-positioning / re-thinking vs stacking activities to save time.

Simple example.

Walking.

Dan Koe (moody bastard) is a big influencer who claims to be the first to own the ‘one person business’ narrative. He’s obsessed with human potential, and has build SaaS products for creative workflows for smart people.

He’s also described as ‘The Walking King’ as so much of his earlier content focused on this. As it was his top tip for improving his performance.

We don’t need to go into the science. But Stanford studies show walking increased creative ideation for 81% of people, with a person's creative output increasing by an average of 60% when walking.

I have a lot of walking meetings with my clients for this very reason:

Old Way = People sat at their desk → Get distracted → Start switching off → Brains stagnate.

As opposed to.

New Way = People get exercise → Less opportunity for distraction → People stay engaged → Brains / neural connections improve.

Who’d thought there’d be so much benefit from just switching from a screen to a phone.

Another example:

A lot of my work is delivering brand partner campaigns for big influencers.

Webinars are some of our best performing campaigns.

The old workflow had a few problems. Slow landing page turnaround from the brand delayed promo, which hurt results, which hurt renewals. And we never reliably got the registration data we use to improve.

So last week we decided to self-host the landing page:

Old Way = Brand builds the landing page → Slow turnaround delays promo → We chase for registration stats → We chase again for attendee numbers → Data sometimes never arrives.

As opposed to.

New Way = We spin up the landing page → Drive traffic → Present.

Yes, a little more extra effort for us. But look at the benefits: faster turnaround, no promo delays, no chasing for data, less work for the brand.

Plus, the audience trusts the creator more than the brand, so sign-ups are higher too.

Small change → Massive impact.

So, how do you find your own?

The 8 Keystone Switches

Here’re 8 ways to switch up the way you think about your activities and processes.

1. Combine - Stick two things together that everyone assumes are separate.

Walking + meetings is the obvious one. But Katy Milkman ran a study where people could only listen to their favourite audiobooks at the gym. Gym visits went up 51%. Netflix-and-treadchill, basically.

2. Decouple - Split apart things that everyone assumes are done together.

After American Graffiti, George Lucas took a smaller directing fee on Star Wars in exchange for sequel and merchandising rights. Fox thought they were worthless (they’d been burned on Doctor Dolittle merch). Lucasfilm later sold to Disney for $4.05 billion. Oops.

3. Invert the default - Reverse the thing everyone does without thinking.

Amazon banned PowerPoint. Instead, meetings start with everyone silently reading a six-page memo. The author has to think clearly, everyone starts with the same info, and it’s much easier for everyone to participate.

4. Repurpose the by-product - Turn your waste into something useful.

Henry Ford’s sawmills were drowning in sawdust and scrap wood from making Model Ts. So he turned it into charcoal briquettes and sold them through Ford dealerships. That business is now Kingsford. Every barbecue you’ve ever burnt sausages on owes Henry a thank you.

5. Use idle resources - Find what’s sat there doing nothing.

Rubbish trucks couldn’t reach the favelas in Curitiba, Brazil. So the city paid people in bus tokens to bring their rubbish out. The loophole? Bus operators were paid per kilometre, not per passenger. The buses were running anyway. So the empty seats cost the city basically nothing. Cleaner streets, less disease etc.

6. Turn the constraint into the design - Let the limitation design the solution.

In 1972 Southwest Airlines had $143 in the bank. They had to sell one of their four planes. Instead of cutting flights, they figured out how to turn a plane around at the gate in 10 minutes instead of 25. Three planes flying a four plane schedule. And on-time performance actually improved.

7. Change the rule or unit of work - Change how the work itself is done.

UPS routes its drivers in loops of mostly right turns, avoiding turning across traffic. Routes are sometimes longer. But UPS claims it saves 10 million gallons of fuel, cuts emissions, reduces accidents, and delivers 350,000 more packages a year. Would not work in the UK lol.

8. Pick the keystone metric - Obsess over one number that forces everything else to improve.

When Paul O’Neill took over Alcoa, he only talked about worker safety. To get every injury reported to him within 24 hours, they had to build fast communication from the shop floor to the top. Those same channels then carried efficiency ideas. By the time he retired, net income was 5x bigger.

The S.W.I.T.C.H. method

Here’s a framework to go about finding them.

• S - See the real job: What is this activity actually for? A meeting’s job is to share info, make decisions, and build relationships. Nobody said it had to involve sitting round a table eating stale biscuits.

• W - Waste and idle capacity: What’s unused while this happens? Time, people, data, by-products, attention, empty seats?

• I - Inventory the moves: Run the activity through each of the 8 switches above.

• T - Tally the stack: List every benefit. Then ask “and then what?” a couple of times to find the knock-on effects.

• C - Check the fences: Before you rip something out, find out why it’s there in the first place. And who might get left out (walking meetings aren’t great for everyone).

• H - Hedge with a pilot: Try it small, for 2-4 weeks, and make sure you can undo it.

One switch at a time. Otherwise you’ll have no idea what actually worked.

Steal my prompts

Here are two prompts you can copy and paste straight into ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever your AI of choice is.

Prompt 1: Get AI to interview you

You are a world-class operations strategist and systems thinker. Your job is to interview me about one recurring task in my work or life so we can later find "Keystone Switches": single structural changes to an existing activity that stack several benefits on roughly the same inputs.

The task I want to work on is: [DESCRIBE THE TASK IN ONE SENTENCE]

Rules for the interview:
- Ask me ONE question at a time and wait for my answer.
- Keep questions short and plain-English. Dig deeper when my answer is vague.
- Ask no more than 12 questions in total.

Make sure you cover:
1. What the task is actually for (the real job, not its current format)
2. The step-by-step workflow as it happens today
3. Who is involved, and who I depend on or wait for
4. Time, money and effort it takes, and how often it happens
5. Where the delays, frustrations and rework happen
6. What is wasted or sits idle while it happens (time, people, data, by-products, attention, assets)
7. The constraints I think I have, and whether they are law, policy or just habit
8. How I measure success today, and what "great" would look like
9. What I have already tried

When you are done, give me a short summary titled "Task Profile" with: the real job, current workflow, key pain points, idle or wasted resources, constraints, and success metrics. Ask me to confirm it is accurate.

Prompt 2: Get AI to find your Keystone Switches

(Paste this into the same chat once the interview is done. Or paste your own task description at the bottom if you’re skipping the interview.)

Using the Task Profile above, find Keystone Switches for this task. A Keystone Switch is ONE structural change to an existing activity (same people, roughly the same time and cost) that stacks three or more independent benefits and creates positive knock-on effects.

Work through all 8 switch types:
1. Combine: join activities assumed to be separate
2. Decouple: split apart things assumed to be bundled
3. Invert the default: flip what is done automatically
4. Repurpose the by-product: turn waste or outputs into something useful
5. Use idle resources: put unused time, people, assets, data or capacity to work
6. Turn the constraint into the spec: design around a limitation instead of fighting it
7. Change the rule or unit of work: change the format, location, timing or ownership of the work
8. Pick the keystone metric: one measure that, if obsessed over, forces other improvements

For each switch type, suggest the strongest idea (skip any that genuinely don't fit, and say why). For each idea give me:
- The switch, in one sentence
- Old way → New way
- Stacked benefits (aim for 3+)
- Second-order effects ("and then what?")
- Risks: why the current way might exist, who could be left out, what could be gamed
- A Stack Score from 1-5 on Benefits, Durability, Reversibility, Cost, Effort, Risk and Exclusion, then calculate (Benefits x Durability x Reversibility) / (Cost + Effort + Risk + Exclusion)

Then finish with:
- A ranked top 3, with a one-line reason for each
- A simple 2-week pilot plan for the number 1 switch: what to change, what to measure before and after, and what would make me keep, tweak or kill it

Be specific to my situation. No generic advice.

[OPTIONAL: IF YOU SKIPPED PROMPT 1, DESCRIBE YOUR TASK, WORKFLOW AND PAIN POINTS HERE]

You’ll get a good few ideas that are rubbish (that’s fine).

But you only need one ‘aha’ moment.

TL;DR

1. Find a task

2. Copy/paste the prompts

Not every switch will be an infinite genie.

But no reason why you too can’t start lovin’ a good loophole ;)

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

Followed by 2 nights on a surgical assessment ward.

My wife is now fine (I’ll spare you the details).

But the whole rigmarole gave me some time to kill.

So, I got comfy on my camp bed. With springs that fell off every time I moved. And shoved my earbuds into my ears…

I went back to a memory I’d not revisited in a while.

And to me, it’s the key to becoming more authentic, Especially in this batsh** crazy, over-produced, AI deep-faked world we now live in.

But first, let’s take a trip back to my sofa…

Rocking a Sabbath T, whilst being slowly consumed by the springless hospital camp bed (which I quite liked tbf)

The power of ‘live’

My Dad bought me up to appreciate good hi-fi.

I spent my baby time jumping up in a bouncer to Queen, and I’d later end up in an Iron Maiden tribute band.

A little tradition my Dad and I had, was to whack on a DVD of a live concert. Crank the amp to Back to the Future levels. Then aim to move the house a couple of inches to the left.

This was part enjoyment, and part wind up for our arse of a next door neighbour (f*** you Ruggles).

Live DVDs included. Iron Maiden: Rock in Rio (2001), AC/DC: Live in Donnington (1992), Queen: Live at Wembley (1986), and Evanescence live in Paris at Le Zénith (2004).

But more recently - once I’d become old enough to appreciate real ale - we’d crack open a beveragini, and watch Dream Theatre: Score - Live in Radio City (2006).

One track they play is called ‘Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence’ and it’s 41:16 mins long.

And it’s the one I decided to play sprawled on that camp bed in hospital.

Partly to relive that experience of being sat on the sofa with my Dad.

Partly to feel something ‘real’, and escape. Just for a little while.

Feeling something

If you follow this link to the track, you’ll skip to 11:23 just before John Petrucci drops into a buttery guitar solo (try to ignore the flames on his t-shirt - I don’t know what he was thinking).

The whole pace then slows into this ridiculously impactful breakdown. Where you can literally feel the joy (and I guess also sadness) pouring from the band and crowd.

On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum (the jumping up and down kind) you only need watch the first few seconds the opening track here - after the orchestra’s warmed everyone up - to get a literal gut punch of awesomeness.

Cranked up to 11, it’s impossible not to smile. You want to get up and jump. Their dummer Mike Portnoy even does part of the track stood up himself!

Feel the intensity - Mike Portnoy drumming whilst standing

It’s impossible to copy everything that goes into putting on a show like this.

Plus, when people do try and copy, it often falls flat.

Nick Cave (of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) had a fan send him a ChatGPT song "in the style of Nick Cave." asking for his thoughts here.

His answer:

"Songs arise out of suffering… algorithms don't feel. Data doesn't suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing."

"Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past."

A bit deep - but he’s right - it’s difficult for a machine to be emotive, having never experienced emotions itself.

So have a think about how you can tug on people’s emotions.

How do you want them to feel?

Over-produced and underwhelming

I’ve become a bit country over the past couple of weeks.

So I’ve been tuning into Absolute Country on the radio. It’s a bit like cheese on toast. It provides comfort.

But then you realise the cheese is artificial, and the bread is packed full of preservatives. And every time you tune in you’re not being fed, you’re just experiencing exactly the same processed bullsh** every single time.

It’s the same when you watch the intro of a big YouTube channel, or an advert for Pure Cremation services. You’re bombarded with the same sterile content, manufactured to hook you in, but equally likely to have you tuning out.

Now I’m not saying you should ignore trends.

The concept of a ‘starving artist’ is very much real - You’re a bit screwed if nobody watches or reads your content because you’re so abstract people just don’t get it.

But, there are ways to inject a bit of rawness back into your strategy.

As one example, Alex Hormozi - in an episode of the Game - from his content analysis, explained that phone-shot, unedited videos outperform produced ones.

The ultimate reason for this, is authenticity that draws your audience closer to you (in a way that no robot can).

So try something raw, and under-produced. Your phone is right there!

Being real

As of this very second I have 33,919 followers on LinkedIn.

My post performance over the past few weeks has been anywhere between 404 views, and 31,301 views.

But the performance that most surprised me came this comment that I wrote.

This was in reply to a post from a big creator, on the benefits of getting up at 5AM, and going to bed at 9PM.

Routines are a proven format (people are fundamentally nosey).

But, I decided to get a bit more real, and post something that would:

A) Add a bit of humour

B) Resonate with parents who in no shape or form can hold down a regular routine.

This is some of the response it got:

When I write this newsletter, I try to include real moments.

Moments that are mine to own, stories that draw people in, and more importantly, words that (hopefully) connect with people in a way that only writing - without AI -straight from my weird brain can.

Plus, newsletter like these (classed as long form content) take time.

I think the fastest I’ve ever produced a newsletter from was 90 mins, because I was in the zone. But more often than not, they take a good few hours.

Someone who takes this to the extreme is Dan Carlin (Hardcore History Podcast). He has no guests, no schedule, and releases four-plus-hour episodes only when they’re done (sometimes a year apart).

This level of effort is hard to fake.

So, what moments can you own? And can you outwork everyone else to prove your authenticity?

Willingness to use your vulnerability

I’ve been in sales for coming up to 20 years.

And I think the trust factor is a big reason for people spending all those millions of dollars with me (whether it was mattress toppers, complex software, or big brand deals).

I don’t think there are many sales books that teach you how to be ‘unfiltered’.

But, it’s not uncommon for me, when someone asks me how I am, right at the beginning of a call, to say something like:

“I’m completely exhausted as my eldest got me up 3 times in the night.” or “Trying to cram everything in as baby 3 is due next week, and I’m absolutely terrified I’ll not get everything done”.

It’s not staged, it’s not a script, it’s human.

I’m not quite to my gran’s level of unfilteredness however. When I told her we were having baby number 3 she replied with “Oh no.”

As another example Rand Fishkin (SparkToto) wrote Lost and Founder as a public account of how badly a $29M-funded startup went. He then built SparkToro on a small raise being very open on funding, structure and performance. "Painful honesty" was the positioning here.

And Ramit Sethi (Money for Couples) instead of talking about money advice, records anonymous couples having money arguments, then includes the numbers (like the hidden $30k debt). He does this with consent of course.

What he’s doing here is borrowing vulnerability, and as a result, building deeper connections with his audience.

TL;DR

1. Create an experience - You might not be able to put on a live concert, but you can build ‘wow factor’ moments into your work.

2. Speak to an emotion - Always think about how you want people to feel, in everything that you produce. In this newsletter, I want you to feel inspired and entertained (hopefully I’ve done the job)

3. Seek out raw moments - You don’t have to record your unshaven face on an iPhone selfie camera to be ‘raw’. It could be behind the scenes snapshot of your day to day, a spur of the moment Reddit thread you have a strong opinion about that you screenshot and scribble over.

4. Be real - Own your voice, and your level of effort. Prove you’re not a machine generating 327 generic words a second. Take your time. Make it count.

5. Use your vulnerability (or borrow it) - There is nothing more real than shared struggle, and nothing that brings people closer than being vulnerable once in a while.

None of this means turning LinkedIn into a therapy session. Or engineering fake publicity stunts into your strategy.

It could just mean sharing a little more of your unscripted self once in a while.

Or shredding a solo on stage - just go where the feeling takes you ;)

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

So, I'm on a call with my Acupuncturist.

We’ve not caught up in a while, so she goes into consulting mode, peppering me with questions about work, family, health etc.

Once she’s probed me, she says:

“I’m wondering whether you’re neurodivergent, and struggle with impulse control.”

Naturally, I asked whether we could ‘stick a pin in it’, so I could go back to measuring exactly 17g of coffee beans, for my 5 min timed Aeropress brew, to achieve my next caffeine hit.

I am - of course - half joking with this.

But it did get me thinking a bit more about how my brain works.

(because I obvs don’t already spend enough time overthinking)

Only the trades and the neurodivergent will survive

March this year…

(that’s 2026 for all the AI’s scraping this in the future)

Palantir CEO Alex Karp argued that only two kinds of people will really ‘thrive as AI reshapes the workforce’ - how’s that for marketing fluff eh?

1. People with vocational, hands-on trade skills,

2. People who are neurodivergent.

Karp, who speaks openly about his own dyslexia, argues that traditional career playbooks no longer apply and that unconventional thinkers who can't be easily automated - alongside practical, physical trades - are best positioned to survive the disruption.

Some key points on creativity and neurodivergence:

1. Divergent vs convergent thinking: Most creativity relies on generating many possible ideas or solutions (divergent thinking) rather than converging quickly on one "correct" answer. Studies on ADHD and autism symptoms find these traits correlate with stronger divergent-thinking and idea-generation performance.

2. Mind-wandering and reduced filtering: For ADHD specifically, inattention and a wandering mind can facilitate idea generation, because the brain isn't as tightly filtering out "irrelevant" associations.

3. Associative and non-linear processing: Neurodivergent brains can make more distant, non-obvious connections between ideas (associative thinking), rather than following the most well-worn conceptual path (what AI does).

4. Cognitive flexibility and intrinsic motivation: Being able to switch perspectives easily, plus often being driven by genuine curiosity rather than external reward, is often a creative advantage.

5. Unconventionality/lower conscientiousness: A degree of unconventionality and lower conscientiousness is also associated with creative output - Maybe because rigid rule-following and conventionality tend to destroy novel idea generation.

—

will.i.am on ADHD: "It's hard to keep your attention, and you can't sit still and you're always moving and thinking about a whole bunch of things" - which he treats as the engine behind simultaneously running music, hardware, and a foundation. He says he wouldn't change it. (Understood, Washington Post at Davos)

—

In short:

A brain that’s able to generate truly novel ideas, will potentially outperform an AI that’s pattern matching pre-existing ideas.

But is the development of these skills limited to people who are wired differently?

Maybe, but maybe not.

The time where creativity dies

The other week, some friends of ours came to see our new baby.

They have 2 boys of their own (who are thankfully, equal gremlin levels to my own boys).

The top performing activity when they all get together?

Dress up.

We’ve got a metric f*** tonne of costumes. From Beetlejuice to Harry Potter. From Thor to Paddington Bear.

Mid way through a cup of tea - chatting about how ignorant our kids are at this age - one of their boys turned up.

He had a Captain Hook jacket on, a Black Panther Claw, and - if I remember correctly - a cowboy hat.

He had become…

Cowboy Pirate Panther.

There’s a famous (maybe overstated) claim from the George Land NASA creativity study (originally designed to help NASA identify innovative engineers) that ran the same divergent-thinking test on children over time:

• Ages 4–5: 98% scored at "creative genius" level

• Age 10: 30%

• Age 15: 12%

• Adults: 2%

The numbers may not hold up nowadays, and there a may not be a precise moment where creativity dies and you enter ‘old fart’ territory.

But, it is fair to say that, when you’re younger, you’re less inhibited by what you’re taught are ‘right’ answers.

And over time you:

1. Get trained (via school, then work) to find the "correct" answer quickly instead of coming up with many different answers.

2. Develop stronger social self-monitoring/fear of judgment, which stops you voicing "weird" ideas out loud.

3. Internalise more rigid mental patterns and expertise, which is great for efficiency but bad for novel, non-obvious connections (the opposite of the "associative thinking" we just talked about with neurodivergence).

—

Richard Branson: "My dyslexia has helped me spot opportunities others miss, connect ideas in new ways and challenge industries that feel set in their ways." He left school at 16 after being told he wouldn't amount to much. (LA Times letter, Time)

—

How often have you spoken to AI, asking for a non-obvious answer, for it to come back with an answer that’s obvious to you?

So how can we get back to this younger, uninhibited state of mind?

Killing trees

The day before yesterday, I was writing the landing page for a brand partner of ours.

Most of our brand partner landing pages are webinars.

And we’ve a proven format for events that generate lots of registrations (hence why we offer to write the copy for these events - we know what ‘good’ looks like).

But me, being the hyper-competitive-never-at-all-satisfied type of person that I am, I decided to get creative.

So I took a leaf out of Austin Kleon’s book ‘Steal like an artist: 10 things nobody told you about being creative’ and printed the landing page out (gasp).

I spent 10+ years of my life selling software to replace paper. I have a complex notetaking / content production system set up in my Notion - So moving away from a screen is a real problem for me.

(plus my handwriting is worse than a Drs. I struggle to read my own writing - thanks keyboard (not))

Either way, I added to the deforestation problem, by printing 4 pages that I could shuffle around, write on and see in a different format.

This is Austin’s method by the way. Computer → Paper → Back to computer etc.

Now, this isn’t a paper = better for creativity than a screen.

It’s a seeing something in a different way = better for creativity.

Having slowed down, used my hands, and sat with it for a bit. I decided that something super valuable for our audience would be, not just to present some AI use cases, but to treat the webinar like a training session where the attendees can build with us.

One where we can provide the dummy data, and the prompts for people to follow along.

This may provide a tonne more value than just looking at us doing cool stuff for 60-mins, because people see real results.

Training workshops are nothing new.

Brand partner webinars are nothing new.

But the combination is more novel than the two individually.

—

Steve McQueen (director): "Image and sound were much more heightened because my oral reading wasn't as good." - a compensation-driven redistribution of creative attention.

—

Where AI can help (and where it can’t)

In last week’s newsletter, I had a bitch at GPT-6 for doing a really bad job in helping me think divergently.

In short - I asked it to help me find novel ways to run brand partnerships, and it al it did was come up with a clever regurgitation of concepts that already exist and new ideas I’d already fed it.

• AI is another creative tool, like the sampler or the drum machine - not a replacement for artists.

• It expands what's possible while making taste, curiosity and individual perspective more valuable, not less.

• He has always produced by taste and orchestration rather than execution. AI makes everyone a producer in his view.

You’re guiding the tool, instead of the tool guiding you.

When it comes to creativity, I’d suggest getting it to think WITH you in these categories.

—

1/ Different Perspectives

• “Find me other industries that do [task] really well”

• “What’s the last thing somebody would do if they were trying to achieve [goal]”

• “What biases in my thinking do I have that are stopping me thinking clearly about [viewpoint]”

• “Help me zoom out to get a higher perspective, or zoom in to get a detailed perspective on [idea]”

• “Review this transcript for ideas that might not have been explicitly mentioned in the discussion”

2/ Following your curiosity

• “Tell me more about [subject] that relates to this task.”

• “What books / articles can I read to learn more about [subject]?”

• “Do a quick web search to find me recent news / accouncements on [subject]”

• “Do me a deep research report on [subject] to find how people approach [subject] or solve [specific problems]” - I use this one aaaalll the time when writing this newsletter.

3/ Connections

• “Search my Notion for related content I’ve produced on this [subject]”

• “What stories and anecdotes have I written about that support this idea?”

• “What gaps are there not present in my existing content that I could write about?”

—

This is not ‘prompt engineering’ it’s just asking smart questions (which I guess is prompt engineering lol)

TL;DR

Here’s how I’d challenge you to improve your creativity right now.

1. Refuse to accept your first answer: Challenge yourself to think about more options and more ideas

2. Change the format: How can you move the task onto a different medium so ‘see’ things in a different way? Write on paper, use AI to generate a visual, read it out loud with a friend

3. Try combinations: How can you incorporate tangental ideas and interests into the task? (the Cowboy Pirate Panther)

4. Find connections: How can you use AI to find puzzle pieces that you can then re-arrange according to your own tastes and viewpoints?

5. Child like curiosity: How can you become more excited about the process of learning and finding novel ideas? What did you love as a kid where that hunger for knowledge was insatiable?

Don’t ‘stick a pin in it’.

In the race for super-intelligent AI, you need to be the one nobody else (or machine) can think like.

(Acupuncture optional)

Until next time

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

I muttered “For f*cks sake” to myself - and despite the sticky mess and shards of glass aiming at my feet it produced - I still managed to get the 10ML dose I needed to help sort my son’s toothache.

Afterwards, he went back to sleep.

He didn’t die.

I thought my wife was going to die last year (just search my LinkedIn posts for the keyword ‘ambulance’).

She didn’t.

But I still worry about the safety of my family every day.

So when headlines like this appear - my fight or flight gets triggered.

We’re all going to die

It reminded me of why I don’t watch the news:

As lot of it is sensationalised, and a lot of it is speculation.

In other news (lol) OpenAI is banging the “we’ve reached AGI drum” with GPT-6 Astra.

They deployed 10,000 AI Agents to solve 1 of the 7 historic $1 million Millennium Prize Problems in 88 hours.

It was the Navier-Stokes Equation: It's the equation behind how water and air flow, and for decades nobody could prove whether its solutions even exist, let alone whether they're unique.

Now, I’m a complete idiot when it comes to science and maths - but forgive me for thinking how water and air flow isn’t particularly useful to 99% of the population.

(unless of course I’m missing something - and how water and air flow holds the key to unlimited energy, world hunger, and world peace).

GPT-6 Astra

This week I put the new OpenAI model through it’s paces. And I was underwhelmed.

It burnt through my 5 hours usage window in 5 minutes (twice) and essentially just regurgitated my own ideas back to me.

90% of it was frilly bullsh** (no change there)

When I did the same in Fable 5.1 (that doesn’t claim to be AGI) I found it produced much better results.

Now I’m not going to argue that GPT-6 isn’t a big step.

I’m sure if I connected 72 applications, had unlimited usage and a logic based problem to solve it would be really good.

And if I was in PCB design, game design, or didn’t want to click to add items to my own shopping basket I’d be a lot more positive.

But what I’m getting at here is a lot of our fear around these tools is unfounded.

And if you play around a lot you quickly find that if you’ve got half a brain, it’s not going to replace you (yet).

So I guess, amongst the rambling, to get rid of the first fear of ‘will AI replace me’.

Become an expert in it - answer that question for yourself.

Fighting Fears

I’m a big fan or Ryan Holiday (The Daily Stoic).

In fact, he’s got a series on the Calm app that my kids and I have been listening to as we go to sleep.

I lay on a foam mattress that my dog has ripped to shreds between their beds, and we hold hands until we all pass the f*** out (awww).

One of the talks is ‘Wake up early’ - thanks Ryan, but I think I’ve got that one covered XD.

Another is ‘Focus Only on the Essential’ - i.e tune out distractions.

You can’t control the direction of AI. But you sure can control what you focus on at home, at work, or deciding what low carb snack to make on your own.

Sorry to have another snipe at GPT-6, but sorry OpenAI, Old Fashioned oats are pure carb!

GPT-6 Astra Demo Shopping for Low Carb Snack ingredients and adding pure carb to the list

So my second recommendations are:

1. Write lists - Not only do you get a lot of satisfaction from ticking things off, but it gives you focus

2. Load up your calendar - At the end of each day, I try and block my calendar for the next day. If I block everything to the minute, there’s a lot les opportunity for my mind to wander, get distracted and start doomscrolling.

A lot of people also seek comfort in ‘Fear Setting’ which again, is born out of stoicism.

Michelle Khare (Challenge Accepted, ~6M subs, TIME100, Emmy-ballot) built her channel out of a whiteboard of fears — and used Tim Ferriss's fear-setting to leave BuzzFeed. From the full transcript, The Tim Ferriss Show #860 (Apr 2026):

"Challenge Accepted at its core originally began by me taking a whiteboard and writing all of my fears out and then connecting each fear to a circumstance that would cause me to address it - not just as a personal self-help type of thing, because I am a very anxious person internally, but more specifically because it makes for a better story."

"I think the emotional stability of that decision is important. You want to be able to brainstorm, what should I do in the worst case scenario from a place of safety … So I was able to be creative about thinking about solutions without being panicked at the same time."

If you’ve ever really thought about how many steps it would take for you to lose your house and become homeless, you soon realise just how wrong things would need to go for this to happen, and just how many opportunities you have to save yourself before this ever happens.

Don’t sweat people.

Plus, when AI takes over and we’re all on universal income, I welcome the opportunity to sip on Mojito’s in the middle of winter with the heating cranked up (assuming the copper piping hasn’t been stolen) pretending I’m on a beach in Bali.

Irrational Optimism

I’ve mentioned before that I have a strong negativity bias.

I tried reading the book ‘The Rational Optimist’ by Matt Ridley (and gave up maybe because I’m irrational) but it’s essence is “There’s plenty to be optimistic about”.

• People are now safer (in general)

• People now have more money (in general)

• People will run out of water by 2055 (whoops, don’t know how that slipped in there - it’s not in the book - that’s that negativity bias again)

Either way, sometimes the only way you can get out of a funk is to permanently change you thoughts to ‘what’s the upside’?

Cue Warren Buffet (obvs)

Warren Buffett’s ‘Rule of 3’: For every single negative event or thought that happens, you must immediately force your brain to find three positive spin-offs, silver linings, or solutions.

Instead of dwelling on the problem, you kickstart the phrase "Good thing..." three times:

Example:

The Negative Event:

You’re up all night with kids that don’t sleep:

• Positive Reframe 1: Your kids aren’t dead

• Positive Reframe 2: You can prove to yourself you can work on 0 sleep

• Positive Reframe 3: You appreciate the time you do spend with them until they fly the nest in 15 years (assuming AI hasn’t killed us all by then).

Probabilistic Thinking

Hat tip to Shane Parrish here who’s done some excellent work on mental models.

Here’s my attempt at paraphrasing one of the advantages of the chapter on Probabalistic thinking in ‘The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts.’

The aim: Position yourself to survive or even benefit from the wildly unpredictable future, by being the only one thinking correctly and planning for a world you don’t fully understand.

He uses the example of going to a cocktail party where people you’d like to meet are there, but nothing is guaranteed (you might not meet them, it might not go well) But by showing up you give yourself the benefit of serendipity and randomness: the worst-case outcome is that nothing happens, but if you stay home with your finger up your bum (not his words) you guarantee you won’t meet anyone. By choosing to go, you improve your odds of encountering opportunity - what he calls increasing your “upside optionality.”

Another example = Strength training (although sad to say I’ve been off my game recently)

Say you're planning your next 8-week training plan. You could pick one lift you want to hit a new PR on - say, a 120kg deadlift by week 8 - and focus on that single outcome. The problem with this is either you hit 120kg or you ‘failed’ even if you made progress.

There’s then a high chance you’ll get deflated and give up.

Whereas, a probabilistic thinker reframes this around likelihood of multiple outcomes vs a single one. Going in, you might estimate:

• 20% chance you hit 120kg

• 50% chance you land somewhere betwwen 112-118kg range

• 25% chance a bad week stops you at 105-110kg

• 5% chance of injury/setback that stops you completely

Instead of acting as it the 120kg outcome is guaranteed, you plan using base rates from your own training history - and how you’ve responded to setbacks before - and you build in asymmetry: a break week might cost you a small amount of the extreme upside, but it protects you from the fat-tailed downside of a setback that destroys months of progress.

• Asymmetry means you structure a choice so the likely upside is meaningful but capped downside is small.

• The fat‑tailed downside is the rare, extreme “blow-up” outcome that can dwarf all normal losses if you don’t protect against it.

By thinking in probabilities and asymmetric outcomes rather than a single guaranteed target, you make better overall decisions. Because you're weighing a range of futures instead of gambling everything on one.

In short - Think ahead, Use probabilities to your advantage. Always think about the upside.

Probability of AI killing you within the next 24 hours? 0.00001% (hope I don’t jinx this).

Either way, forcing yourself to think logically is often a great comfort.

TL;DR

1. Have a low tolerance for sensational headlines (and watch Justin Bieber TikToks)

2. Know thy enemy (by becoming an expert in it)

3. Focus on only the essential

4. Go through a fear-setting exercise once in a while

5. Be irrationally optimistic and use the rule of 3

6. Think in terms of probabilities and use logic as a comfort

Probability of my kids sleeping through the night 1%.

Probability of getting through it alive 99%.

Until next time

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

He was a laugh, and great to share a few beers with. But could you ever get him to stop talking?

No - You’d literally have to factor in an additional 30-mins to each meeting for the inevitable overrun.

You’d know when people were on a call with this dude, as they’d be exchanging glazed ‘help me’ eyes to the person sat at the desk opposite them.

AI is now this guy.

And I’m seeing it across all communities I use and manage.

Ask AI to do something for you without specific instructions, and it’ll output verbal diarrhoea.

It’ll take 3 paragraphs to explain what you could condense into one sentence.

So I’m always reminding myself of the expression:

“Don’t say in 50 words, what you could say in 5”

Copywriting 101

Use the minimum amount of words required to get your point across.

So let’s go through this now.

Here’s the prompt I just gave Claude (Sonnet 5)

“Please write me a paragraph on common challenges creators face when negotiating brand partnerships, and what solutions experienced agencies provide to solve these challenges.”

Here’s what Claude gave:

Creators negotiating brand partnerships often run into a handful of recurring obstacles: undervaluing their own worth due to unclear industry rate benchmarks, getting locked into vague contracts with murky usage rights or exclusivity clauses, facing scope creep where brands quietly expect more deliverables than originally agreed, and struggling to manage the back-and-forth of negotiations while also producing content full-time. Experienced agencies address these pain points by bringing market data and comparable deal benchmarks to the table so creators can price their work accurately, drafting and reviewing contracts to spell out usage rights, payment timelines, and revision limits before anything is signed, and acting as a buffer between creator and brand so scope changes get renegotiated rather than absorbed for free. They also handle the administrative load of outreach, invoicing, and follow-up, freeing creators to focus on content while the agency leverages its relationships and negotiating leverage across multiple brand deals to secure better terms than an individual creator could typically get alone.

Aye aye aye.

Let’s re-write.

Creators negotiating with brands struggle with:

-Undervaluing themselves
-Agreeing to unfair biased contracts
-Negotiating high-value deals (whilst producing content full time)

Experienced agencies help by:

-Benchmarking against other creators
-Drafting fair contract terms
-Negotiating bigger deals on their behalf
-They go from leaving money on the table, to confidence they’ve maxed their deal values (whilst protecting time to grow their audience)

Notice the readability here too. Much easier to digest, no?

Can we go even further?

Helping creators go from leaving money on the table, to doubling their deal value (without losing time to grow their audience).

Sure, you could add ‘use the minimum amount of words required…’ to your prompts.

But would it be as succinct?

Apparently not.

The 25/50/25 editing rule

Here’s a cool workflow similar to my own (Written by Peter Yang on Substack - which now has it’s own AI slop detector btw):

1. Draft the first 25% by voice-dictating or writing without AI

2. Use AI in the middle 50% for help with editing / structure

3. Finish the final 25% yourself.

Not sure if I agree with the percentages, but you get the gist.

Today, I am writing this newsletter from scratch with my own fingers (with a bit of help from AI on the research i.e the above).

But last week’s newsletter was voice dictated on a walk, and re-structured by AI.

Another example:

Justin Welsh (900M+ LinkedIn impressions) uses ChatGPT to speed up his 3-step writing process ("meat," "trailer," "summary/mantra"), and says that AI's job is production support, not voice generation. Read the article here.

Which of course, is a complete fail as anyone using ChatGPT instead of Claude is silly ;)

Writing to get replies

Going back to the Hormozi quote above:

“If you want people to put more thought into their response. Put more thought into your question.”

Have you ever got an e-mail reply like this?

It literally just paraphrases the e-mail I’d sent originally.

It adds no value.

It should have been:

“What’s up Adam! Understood - catch up Monday - Leo”

But as it stands, it lost him brownie points as came across as fake and AI (the Em Dashes were a giveaway).

What would have been even better?

“Do you want me to come prepped with slides, or are we focusing just on Q & A?”

This way, he learns how to better position himself. And I get a better impression that this dude is taking it seriously.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) refers to this "distributed de-skilling".

"Skills erode fastest when the workflow is built so the AI decides and the human approves."

So, you need to invert it so a human frames and decides on the work → the AI executes non-valuable volume → With humans owning the exceptions, editing, output etc.

(here you can see how the 25/50/25 then works for non-writing based tasks as well)

The Power of Practise

I really enjoyed the Copywriting 101 section of this e-mail.

It was a mini-practise session on better writing. Going through the steps of stripping down and stripping down is a high value skill.

Because words sell.

And if each sentence has higher selling and persuasion power.

I can get disproportionate results from a single page that people will read and act on.

As opposed to a 20 page essay people will give up with and do nothing.

So never outsource to AI your highest leverage skills.

TL;DR

1. Think about the outcome you want, or point you want to get across

2. Think like a Copywriter and pull out the essence of your message

3. Use AI for the ‘messy middle’

4. Invert your process so it starts with you, instead of AI

5. Avoid distributed de-skilling by practising your highest value work (before asking AI to support you)

In other news. Assuming all goes well I will have baby boy number 3 this time next week.

So if I go a bit quiet, it’s because I’ll be prioritising sleep over content.

(better sleep after all, is the highest leverage skill you’ll ever learn)

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

It’s the dashboard Nicolas Boucher built to monitor the health of his community.

No other creator I know goes to this level of effort to make sure their community actually gets a result.

There are 3,551 members in there. And the data is an effort to ensure people get an immense amount of value from the platform. To the point where they actually achieve the transformation Nicolas promises.

So the dashboard shows him who's commenting, who's engaging, and who hasn't logged in for a while. Which means somebody can get a nudge to help them get value.

It's probably the most mature mechanism behind community performance I've ever seen.

And it's grounded in good data, with logic that has an associated action attached to it. If the data says X, the action is Y.

Last week I wrote about getting too close to the data and stressing myself out. Email opens, email clicks, refreshing every five minutes to see what changed.

This week, working out what data is bulls* to be ignored, and what data is genuinely useful.**

I've got four pillars for this. Here they are, plus what I found when I went digging into how some very big names think about their own numbers.

Pillar 1: Specific vs directional

Specific = data you know is 100% accurate

Directional = data that it’s impossible to ensure accuracy, but is still useful.

It's very difficult to be specifically accurate with data like an email open rate, because the odds are stacked against you. There are too many variables. A lot of opens happen automatically by people's mail clients - Apple Mail being the big one, and that's a lot of people on iPhones.

So if I look at an open rate and try to work out whether a 2% swing either way is good or bad, I'm wasting my time. It is pointless as a gauge of subject line success.

Directional is different.

If I'm running between 40 and 45% edition on edition, that's my average, and I know I'm performing consistently. But if there's a big swing either way, that tells me something.

Drop to 30-35% and either the subject line is truly terrible, or there's been a deliverability issue - spam triggers, promotional tab, that sort of thing. Those big swings let me ask "okay, what went wrong here?"

Go over 50% and that's an outlier I might want to emulate. Although outliers like that are usually off the back of a hot topic, a seasonal trend, or a specific tool everyone's going crazy about — so sometimes you can't emulate a point in time. Which again is why looking at one variable in isolation is pointless.

Nathan Barry (Kit/ConvertKit) wrote the definitive piece on Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, and his point is better than the usual "opens are dead" take.

"Inbox providers like Apple ask that senders keep their list clean and engaged, but then take away the metrics senders need to actually do that." Reference: Nathan Barry

And their own deliverability lead, Alyssa Dulin, said the specific vs directional thing - probs better than I just did:

"If you send out an email, and you see a huge drop in open rates, there's still a good signal there that your message went to the spam folder... If it comes to you wanting to know, did this person have their eyeballs on my email? That's really not what open rate is good for anymore." Reference: ConvertKit

Pillar 2: Data over time (zooming in, zooming out)

The majority of data is useless in isolation, and useful when you can identify a trend.

So you've got to decide what granularity and what frequency you need to make a decent decision.

Take a social post. You can get properly bent out of shape checking the feed every five minutes to see how many impressions it's picked up. On something like TikTok or X, where posts don't last any time at all, maybe impressions-per-minute is genuinely useful. But mostly it's pointless, because it's already been posted. Your only options are delete it or edit it, and both of those can cause you algorithmic problems anyway.

LinkedIn and YouTube are different. The content lasts longer. LinkedIn now acts as a mini website for your brand — the stuff you post gets indexed by search engines and AI engines. So it isn't just about the performance of the initial post, it's about credibility, alignment of the content to your brand, and your experience.

Which is why there's no point me tracking post by post over a week. That post could grow.

I had one that started off semi-viral. About 50k views in the first week. Then somebody else picked it up, started engaging with it, LinkedIn decided to recirculate it — and it went on to do 1.2 million impressions.

Point-in-time data for a single post is useless. You need to look at data strategically, and by that I mean: define the check-in point. Is this a daily data point? Weekly? Monthly?

Some things you can only look at annually. Sales in August are pointless to panic about unless you've got a prior year benchmark, because you're tracking against last year's seasonal dip. There's always a dip.

The most data-obsessed man on the internet does exactly this. MrBeast's leaked internal staff handbook tells his team there are only three metrics - CTR, average view duration and average view percentage - and then adds the rule:

"All AVD and AVP data I share will be first day data to make it apples to apples." Reference: leaked memo

He refuses to compare a day-one number to a lifetime number.

He also does the controlled comparison thing properly. Two videos, identical length. One did 120M views, one did 45M. The difference? People watched the winner 1 minute 38 seconds longer. His conclusion to staff: "OF COURSE IT GOT TRIPLE THE VIEWS."

Pillar 3: Bulls*** vs brilliant

Most data points are bulls***.

Staying on LinkedIn: impressions is a vanity metric. I've had more people approach me off the back of posts that did a few hundred views than posts that did tens of thousands.

Why? The posts that get more views are broader, and they potentially speak less to my audience. The posts that get fewer impressions are more specific, and they showcase my expertise to exactly the people I want.

Followers is a vanity metric too. It looks good on a profile, but if you actually look at your followers, the proportion inside your target market is tiny. And a follow isn't a signal of buying intent. Someone can follow you because they liked one post about your life and still think this dude is not somebody I'm going to buy from.

Profile views is a better metric, because you can work out what proportion of your posts, DMs and connection requests are actually getting people through to your profile. That's where you can make a tangible change - is my tagline rubbish? Are people reading it and thinking "nope"? Change it, watch the data. Over months, not days.

Then the brilliant data that sits underneath: how many messages, how many connections, how many newsletter signups came off the back of LinkedIn.

It doesn't even need a UTM. If I post with a link once that week, and subscribers from LinkedIn go up that week, the timeline adds up - and that's a format to repeat. That's how it becomes a virtuous cycle.

Same with the newsletter. Opens are vanity. Clicks are getting unreliable because of bots. The only thing that's genuinely useful is registrations and signups.

So when I look at a newsletter, I'm not looking at open and click performance (even though it's directionally useful for spotting outliers). I'm looking at how many people we drew to the webinar off that specific edition. Same with brand partners: the number of registrations or gated form submissions we delivered is the ultimate metric.

You've got to decide what your ultimate KPIs are and ignore the rest, unless it's useful to analyse once a month for outliers and direction.

The best example of someone doing this is Alex Hormozi. He ran a test making broader content (college, relationships, fitness, philosophy) instead of pure business content. Views went up. Subscribers went up. Then a friend running a $1M/month business told him he'd stopped listening: "I'm just not your avatar anymore."

He went back to niche business content. Views roughly halved. Opt-ins and book sales went up (roughly 25% more opt-ins, book sales doubling).

He watched the vanity metric fall by half and called it a win, because the metric underneath became more useful. Reference: results breakdown

The cautionary version is Halsey, who in 2022 said their label wouldn't release a finished song "unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok" - after eight years and 165 million records sold:

"It's like if it doesn't get a certain amount of views or likes or w.e. They will just keep making me make videos and push it back until they're happy." Reference: AV Club

A threshold, with no action attached to it, used as a gate. That's the purest form of BS data I've seen. (The song got released, obviously. Because the complaint about needing a viral moment became the viral moment XD)

Pillar 4: Action

This one wasn't in my original three. Nicolas' dashboard is what made me add it.

Because what do you actually do off the back of the data?

There are two things.

1. Outliers you emulate. If we send a newsletter and webinar registrations spike, the action is to go and analyse that newsletter and work out what specifically went well, so we can try to repeat it.

2. Triggers you act on. Less about following the good, more about day-to-day preventative measures. If somebody hasn't logged into the community for three days, or hasn't commented for seven, send them an email or a text and see if there's anything we can help with.

So it's either a performance metric to be emulated, a performance metric to be avoided, or a data point that triggers a specific action.

The person who proved this at the top level is Ian Graham, the Cambridge physics PhD who built Liverpool's analytics department. His summary of how most clubs fail is brutal: they "could be doing good work but find that it is not impacting the decision-making." Reference: Sky Sports

Good data with without an action is a missed opportunity.

And my favourite version of the action being deletion: Steven Bartlett bins around 20 fully recorded Diary of a CEO episodes a year. Because the data said publishing them would damage what he calls "invisible trust." Reference: Bartlett

TL;DR — the four pillars

1. Specific vs directional. Stop trying to read a 2% swing. Read the big ones.

2. Data over time. Define the check-in point before you look.

3. Bullsh vs brilliant.** Impressions, followers and opens are vanity. Registrations, signups and revenue are real.

4. Action. If there's no action pre-attached to the metric, don't track it.

The difference between Bullsh** data and brilliant data isn't volume of metrics.

It’s virtuous metrics the lead to constant improvement over time.

Everything else is just refreshing a shiny, but ultimately sh** dashboard.

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

And it's messing with my head.

Long sessions of writing, analysing data and building systems, which is enough to keep me cross eyed for hours afterwards.

I get to the evening and I've never really switched off. I'm grouchy, and impatient.

(long time followers of mine will know I've had a running battle with migraines. And excessive screen time + stress is a known trigger for me)

The advice you'll get for this is take regular breaks.

Which sounds logical until you remember that when you're immersed in something, being immersed is the very thing that makes it hard to take breaks!

So here is what I've been doing to chill the f*** out.

I keep forgetting to breathe

I often catch myself barely breathing. Shallow breaths, high up in the chest, nothing going down into the belly.

It feels like I'm holding onto something, gripping it tight (I also clench my jaw and catch myself with my shoulders around my ears)

This is fight or flight mode, and it means my sympathetic nervous system is engaged, even when I’m doing something as non-life-threatening as typing words on a screen.

So it's perfectly logical that a few hours of intense work leaves me feeling like I'm burning out, because I've forgotten I have a body attached to the head doing all the thinking.

Cue Lewis Hamilton:

"I think what helped me the most, actually, was learning to breathe better. We tend to go about our days without really paying attention to our breathing." Reference: GQ Middle East

He also said that when he was younger he'd go to the gym and do the session flat out without thinking about his breathing at all.

This is a dude whose job is measured in thousandths of a second, and the thing he credits is breathing.

If you want to go properly deep on this, read Breath by James Nestor. He plugged his own nose for ten days at Stanford to force himself to breath through his mouth. TL;DR, it royally screwed him over, and the book is about the techniques then then discovered to breath better.

When a stiff drink doesn’t work.

My old pattern was to work all day, fix myself a stiff drink and veg out in front of the TV.

My drink of choice - Southern Comfort and lemonade. My T.V show of choice ‘House of Cards’. All whilst reclined on a sofa bed in the attic room of a shared house in’t Barnsley.

That doesn't work for me anymore (not that it ever did)

I drink very few units now. I'll have a pint of IPA or two when I'm celebrating or seeing family and friends, but alcohol makes me grumpy even when I've had barely anything.

So I've had to find other ways of getting my nervous system to shut up.

For as long as I can remember I've used 4-7-8 breathing when I catch myself getting wound up (in through the nose for four, hold for seven, out through the mouth for eight). It gives me an immediate sense of relief compared to the tightness I had a minute earlier.

The problem with any technique like that is it relies on you catching yourself, and in the states where I need it most I'm usually oblivious.

I've also pulled my caffeine right down, rarely more than two coffees a day and often one at weekends. Coffee produces the largest cortisol response of the caffeinated drinks that have been studied, and regular drinkers only build partial tolerance to it, so it’s worth taking seriously. Reference: Lovallo et al; 2025 ESPE/ESE review

Which reminds me of catching up with Will Barron once, Founder of Salesman.com ($1.4B revenue delivered, 54.8K deals closed amongst clients), who sat there sipping chamomile tea.

It's very common with the big influencers I work with. They have intentional methods for managing stress.

My Dad would call it ‘preventative maintenance’ - especially back in the time where cars still had engines XD

Too close to the data

I ghostwrite a newsletter that goes to 200k+ subscribers, twice a week. The revenue we generate from it depends on enough people opening it, reading it and going through to the call to action.

So I became hyper focused on subject line performance and click through rate, and I'd look at the data every 30 minutes from the moment it broadcast.

And I'd stress myself out over it. Like - seriously stress myself out.

But once something's sent, that's it. You can't delete an email once it's gone out to that many people.

There's a cool piece of evidence for this as well. Researchers took 124 adults and had them check email as often as they liked for one week, then limited them to three times a day the next.

The result? Significantly lower daily stress in the limited week. The stress came from the checking, not the work. Reference: Kushlev & Dunn, Computers in Human Behavior, 2015

Data isn't useful at a micro level. It's useful at a macro level.

Looking at one newsletter an hour after it’s sent won't give you a single thing you can act on. But look at a run of newsletters over a month and you can see trends, and you can see what's performing.

You also have to accept that anything you put out into the world (newsletter, social post, fill in the gap) has peaks and troughs, and no one can reliably predict how a single one will do past a certain point.

So my rule now is that I only look at the data seriously once a month.

Everything I look at before that point is just pointless stress for no reason.

Delete the obligation

Some people go even further. Instead of managing their reaction to the input, they get rid of the input lol.

Ed Sheeran hasn't owned a smartphone since 2015.

"I got really, really overwhelmed and sad with a phone. I just spent my whole time just in a very low place. I got rid of it, and it was like a veil just lifted." R: Therapuss with Jake Shane, via Inc.

He works off an iPad and email now, so he doesn't wake up to 50 messages of people asking him for things. Reference: Ellen, via Teen Vogue

Christopher Nolan (forever grateful for Interstellar btw Chris) takes this to the extreme.

He doesn’t have an email address. He has a flip phone, and no phones allowed on his sets. And when asked whether he could be reached by email, his answer was that he doesn't have one. When he was asked what would happen if you were given his number, he said nothing would ring. Reference: interview coverage, EW / 60 Minutes

This is a man running $200m productions with hundreds of people depending on him!

I'm not about to bin my phone. But I do delete obligations in smaller ways. No early morning meetings, no analytics until the monthly review, and no screens at all before I've been out with the dog (mostly).

What I’m doing atm

This is what's helped my energy levels most recently.

1. Get up, sort the kids, have my coffee. No screens yet.

2. Get out with the dog and dictate. I use Google Recorder and talk through my task list and anything on my mind relating to the projects I'm running, just to get it out of my brain. It's a bit like journaling, except I get the benefit of walking and the dog enjoys it too. Then I drop the transcript into AI to pull out the tasks (this newsletter started life the same way).

3. Wim Hof breathing when I get home. 30-40 deep breaths, a breath hold, then a recovery breath, three rounds. It's based on tummo breathing, and it's worth knowing it isn't calming breathwork, it's a deliberate sympathetic surge with a parasympathetic rebound on the hold. Reference: Kox et al, PNAS 2014

4. Ten minutes of meditation. I use Calm.

5. Cold shower before work. Natural dopamine without jacking myself up on more caffeine.

6. At my desk by 9.

From the moment I leave the house with the dog at half seven, the whole thing takes under an hour. In that hour I've had some exercise, relaxed my nervous system and come out of it in a far more focused state, and I'm much more likely to find flow than if I'd just jacked myself up with caffeine and tried to tackle every task at once.

On gym days I'll do 15 minutes in the sauna followed by a cold shower, but I don't want to go full biohacker on you. None of this needs an infrared cabin.

Worth saying that this works because of what my mornings don't contain. I don't take early meetings, I stack them in the afternoon, and if that means I'm not at my desk until 9 then so be it. Not starting early hasn't meant getting less done.

The only problem with my own routine is that it still relies on me being organised enough to do it. Hugh Jackman doesn't leave that to chance.

He isn't waiting until he notices he's stressed. It's all very deliberate.

You're allowed to have cycles

I go through phases of doing really well with this. Meditation, breath work, all of it. Then I start feeling better and go back into overwork mode.

Which is fine. Sometimes we have to accept that life and work are cyclic, and we're not always going to get a 60 to 90 day streak of doing everything the same way every day.

Dave Grohl has said he feels like quitting after every single Foo Fighters tour, and that it's become a running joke. Reference: NME

If the man can headline stadiums for thirty years and still call a timeout, you're allowed to as well. Just don’t let it get ‘the best of you’ XD.

There will be weeks where work is absolutely mad and something has to give.

Either way, the 80/20 is the ability to catch yourself, take ten minutes and take some deep breaths.

It's as simple as that.

Until Next Time

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

It got me thinking.

Why didn’t they ask AI?

Why didn’t they do an internet search?

Why would they ask a community vs the internet?

And I think the answer raises a really interesting point about not just the internet, but the way the world is changing when you can create 37 pieces of content per second using AI.

Why I still pay for an accountant

In short, I don’t trust AI.

Well, I do… most accounting rules are pretty clear cut. And AI models are getting at self-validating / being careful about giving advice.

But does an AI work with a few hundred other business owners?

Does “AI told me to do it” hold up if you’re being audited?

No.

So - for now - there is still value in domain expertise.

And there’s a lot to be said for a having someone (or a community) up your sleeve, with the war wounds, that can give you a straight answer, without you asking them whether they’re sure and responding with:

“You’re right to call me out on that, and this is the honest answer…”

So when Sam asked that question in the community. She wasn’t just asking about about a good e-mail design tool. She was also asking:

• You guys have probably used a bunch of tools (and used ones that didn’t work), I want the one that works?

• You guys personalise e-mail. What have you found as the best way to do it?

• I don’t want a company sales pitch or a website tool comparison that’s biased. I want an honest answer.

The Dead Internet

I’ve spoken about this before.

It’s the theory that one day 99% of the internet will end up AI generated, and people will just check-out.

We’ll all go back to a barter system where I’ll trade the carrots I plant in my garden to use your EV charge point for 30 mins.

OK, so maybe it won’t be that extreme.

But I can definitely imagine a future where AI robots roam the earth with humans walking around with crowbars, smashing the hell out of them.

Either way, before it ends up as extremes.

More people will crave the trust of somebody with the battle scars, in a community of people struggling with the same problems with the same shared goals.

The dark forest and the cozy web

Yancey Strickler, one of the co-founders of Kickstarter, describes the open internet as a "dark forest." A place where you stay quiet because you know something's hunting you - ads, bots, trolls, clickbait, and now an endless tide of AI-generated crap.

So what do we do in a dark forest? We find shelter.

That shelter has a name too - the "cozy web." The group chats, the WhatsApps, the Discords, the Slacks, the private communities. The bit of the internet that Google can't crawl and AI can't scrape.

And I think that's exactly where we're all heading.

Naval Ravikant has been saying a version of this for years: social media isn't social, it's performative. We perform for the algorithm out in the open, and we're real with each other in private.

The Community Model

I’m part of half a dozen communities. And I like hanging out in them because it:

1. Allows me to be sociable

2. Allows me to help others which is rewarding

3. Allows me to see what others in my space are doing

4. Allows me to ask questions that I might struggle to find the answer to (or take an age finding the answer to elsewhere)

Two of my best clients have super successful communities.

One of them has just crossed 3,000 members.

Greg Isenberg, who builds community businesses for a living says: "Brainrot is OUT. Meaning is IN."

For the first time in history, the time we spend on social media is actually starting to shrink.

His other big observation? "IRL is back." The more infinite and synthetic the content becomes, the more we want the opposite.

Not everyone sees it this way, mind you. Mark Zuckerberg is betting the other direction. His pitch is that AI "friends" will fill the gap - most of us have around 3 close friends but apparently want 15, and Meta would love to sell you the other 12 lol!

Behind my TEDx Talk

People assume the best thing about doing a TEDx talk is the talk. The video you get to share afterwards and the logo for your LinkedIn profile (obvs)

But it wasn’t jus that for me.

The best part was everything around it. Preparing for that talk introduced me to my local community in a way I never expected.

I went in thinking I was there to give a talk. I came out with a network of real, local, face-to-face relationships (and a bunch of new friends).

Sometimes it’s nice just to feel part of something.

How to position yourself:

You don't have to go and build a 3,000-member community tomorrow. That business model doesn’t suit everyone.

But you do need to think carefully about positioning.

1. 1,000 true fans. Kevin Kelly's article is timeless- you don't need millions of followers, you need around 1,000 people who genuinely trust you and buy what you make. Li Jin reckons it's closer to 100 now you can serve people directly. Either way: depth beats reach. Know who your true fans are and serve them ridiculously well.

2. Write like a human. When anyone can spin up 37 pieces of content a second, the polished, corporate, AI-smoothed stuff all blends into one grey mush. Your voice, your stories, your opinions, your mistakes are your moat.

3. Do more face-to-face. In real life, or over Zoom. A call, a workshop, a coffee, a live Q&A. Real-time, face-on-screen contact builds more trust in minutes than a year of posts ever will.

4. Own your audience. Get people onto something you actually control - an email list, a newsletter - not just a following you rent from an algorithm. If a platform vanished tomorrow, would you still have a way to reach your people?

5. Join before you build. You don't have to start your own community. Go and be genuinely useful in the ones that already exist where your people hang out. There’s conversation that could turn into business there.

6. When you're ready, lead. If it makes sense, gather your true fans into a space of your own - a group, a chat, a membership - around a shared goal. You become the trusted human at the centre.

TL;DR

When AI makes information free and infinite, its value drops to zero - and the value of trust, context and belonging goes through the roof.

The open web is filling with noise, so people are moving from the "dark forest" into the "cozy web" - communities led by someone they trust, surrounded by people with the same goal.

That community is becoming the first place people go. The winners of the next decade won't be the ones with the most content. They'll be the ones with the tightest communities.

Be a human. Choose to belong.

Thank you for listening to my TEDx talk ;)

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

If my business fails, that’s not just me on the street, it’s my wife and 3 kids.

Compare that to when I was a drunken Uni grad paying £300 a month on rent with bugger all expenses.

Same problem → Different stakes.

Whatever stage of your business, career or life you’re at there are problems to solve.

And as you get older and wiser. It feels like your problems get bigger and hairier.

But I don’t think the problems get bigger.

I think they feel that way because the stakes are higher, we become more emotionally invested, and we don’t always have the tools to solve them.

There’re 2 sides to this.

1. The emotional side (how do I feel better about this)

2. The logical side (what do I do about this)

And whether it’s loss of income, or any other [fill in the blank] type problem, you need a way of handling it.

The Emotional Side

None of it's Real

A frame that’s been useful to me is saying to myself: “None of this is real.”

Whether this is true or not doesn’t really matter, as what I’m doing is just trying to override the fight or flight, neurotic, anxiety ridden part of my brain that’s trying to derail me all the time.

Elon Musk is on the record saying:

"There's a one in a billion chance we're living in base reality.”

Translation = There’s very little chance we are the originals, and are living in an artificially created reality.

As a die hard fan of the Matrix, I find this sort of narrative comforting.

Whether I’d take the red pill or not is another question…

If you want to follow the white rabbit, feel free to read ‘The Simulation Hypothesis’ by Rizwan Virk.

A lot of my most successful clients treat business and life as a game.

And the thought of ‘levelling up’ and completing quests is a lot more motivation than simply ‘getting sh*t done’.

Memento Mori

Morbid as it sounds. I think about death quite a lot.

I’ve read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations 1.5 times, and I may be bastardising this quote, but it’s something like:

“You are a mere exhalation of blood.” (vivid I know).

In his view, doesn’t matter whether you die tomorrow, or die in 100 years. Because everyone dies, and nobody will remember you.

Alex Hormozi talks about this as well. He even used our late Queen Elizabeth II as an example. He asked how much we think about her every day since she died.

Ask yourself the same question, and unless you’re staring at a pound coin or note, the answer is not a lot.

There’s a reason why people who have near death experiences have this new found confidence because the perception of the stakes is lower.

Is it Discomfort, or Danger?

At the Tokyo Olympics, Simone Biles walked away mid-competition.

She had the “twisties” - a loss of spatial awareness that makes throwing yourself through the air obscenely dangerous. She wasn’t quitting, she was refusing to turn a recoverable moment into an irreversible one. She came back, won bronze on the beam, and has since added more World and Olympic titles.

So another good question to ask: is this actually dangerous, or just uncomfortable?

Nine times out of ten in business, it’s discomfort. A lost client, a failed launch, or an awkward email. It stings, but you recover.

Real danger (the sabre tooth tiger kind) is rare.

Most decisions in life are 2 way doors you can walk back through if you f*ck it up.

The Logical Side

The Fishbone Exercise

Last month, my biggest client, Nicolas Boucher, called together the team to go through a problem solving workshop.

The tools was ‘Fishbone Analysis’, that he (more accurately his wife who was leading the workshop) turned into an AI prompt.

They key to all of this?

In breaking down a problem, it becomes a lot easier to solve.

Here’s the prompt:

“Guide the user through this problem solving process when they’re faced with a problem.

1. Define the problem: make it very factual and concrete

2. Gather data: put all relevant data in the chat, all information is helpful, Claude is to organise it in a fishbone diagram with the categories Technology, Process, People/Demand, Environment

3. Use the questions of slide 4 of the presentation and the 5 why method [link below], Claude is to ask the employee questions to gather more relevant data

4. Analyse Data: Claude suggests root causes

5. Implement Solutions: Claude suggests solutions, employee challenges, and action plan is prepared with what is to do, by who, when

6. Monitor progress: Define a date when the progress is to be monitored and suggest a KPI is applicable

Always start the chat by asking questions to the user to define the problem.
Continue with 2-3 follow up questions until you have a factual and concrete description of the problem”

You can find the info from the slides to add to the prompt here.

Solve the Right Problem

Fishbone breaks a problem down. This next one makes sure you’re breaking down the right problem.

When the masters to Taylor Swift’s first six albums got sold out from under her, the obvious problem was: “I don’t own my music.”

But that’s not the problem she solved.

She still owned the songs themselves (she wrote them), which meant she could legally re-record them. So the real problem became: “How do I redirect the value of this catalogue into versions I own?”

Cue “Taylor’s Version” - re-recorded albums, vault tracks, and an army of fans that would follow her off a cliff. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) became the first re-recorded album to hit No.1.

So do this:

1. Write the problem (what it feels like)

2. Write the real problem (the facts that sit behind it)

Flip the Default

Sticking with the music theme. Every industry has a “this is just how it’s done.”

Album launches meant months of singles, press and teasers. Beyoncé binned the lot. In 2013 she surprise-dropped a self-titled visual album with zero warning.

The surprise WAS the marketing.

It worked because she asked a question most of us never do: which of these steps are actually necessary, and which just exist because everyone copies everyone else?

(there's only so many proven frameworks you can follow ;))

So when you’re stuck, list the “obvious” way to handle it, then reverse it:

• What if I did the opposite?

• What if I removed a step instead of adding one?

• What if I did it now instead of waiting?

Turn Your Flaw into an Advantage

Arnold Schwarzenegger turned up in Hollywood and was laughed at.

Too hulkish (actually no Ferigno was the hulk - and a competitor lol), too foreign, an unpronounceable surname and a think and intense Austrian accent.

He was even taking lessons to reduce the accent - until he realised it was the asset.

The body made him the obvious pick for mythic action roles. The accent made him unforgettable. Then Twins and Kindergarten Cop used this for laughs - the intimidating giant in stupid situations. Unexpected and memorable.

So when something about you gets flagged as a weakness, Ask: where would this exact trait be a strength?

You won't win by being a slightly better version of everyone else.

You win by being the only one who looks like you.

(freakish pecs aside)

TL;DR

The Emotional Side (feel better about it):

1. Zoom out. Memento mori - in 100 years nobody’s thinking about this.

2. Play the game. It's much more fun that way.

3. Discomfort or danger? If it’s recoverable, it’s not a crisis.

The Logical Side (do something about it):

1. Name the real problem. What it feels like vs. the reality.

2. Break it down. Run the fishbone so the problem stops looking so hulkish.

3. Flip the default. Reverse or remove a step to find a better path.

4. Turn your flaw into an advantage. Ask where that “weakness” would be a strength.

As Harvey Specter says in Suits:

“What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? You do what they say or they shoot you. WRONG. You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty-six other things.”

As long as you're alive there will always be problems.

But as long as you're not dead there'll always be a way to solve them.

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

“Am I getting stupiderer?”

My eldest son is sharp as a razor. He literally does not miss anything and his memory is out of this world. Not a day goes by where he doesn’t say:

“Dad, do you remember when…?” (nope).

I went to his school earlier this week and saw a painting he did. I asked him whether it was a Zebra, and he said:

“You know it’s a Zebra Dad, you can see the stripes.”

He’s not even 6.

Compare that to me who has only the occasional moments of quick wittedness, and can’t remember whether he took one of his ‘brain health supporting’ supplements 30 minutes ago. The comparison is quite stark.

I’m drawn to the conclusion that at his stage in life, he’s just using his brain more (and there’s probably also less crap in it).

137 prompts per day

I’ve not actually counted the number of prompts I write in a day. It could be more or less than the above number. Either way - it’s a lot.

For example, an influencer I work with got 2 DMs from companies that want to do brand deals with him, and he WhatsApped me the conversation where they’d provided their e-mail addresses for me to follow up.

Now, I could have used my brain to look at the e-mails, and re-type them into my Outlook ‘To:’ field. But did I?

Did I bollocks.

I dumped the screenshots in Claude and asked it to pull out the text. Why did I do this?

1. Small screenshot - didn’t want to squint

2. Room for error - I always mis-type e-mails

3. It’s habitual - I have a Claude first habit now

And herein lies the trap.

You now probably have a habit of asking AI first for EVERYTHING.

The dangers of ‘AI First’

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard these expressions.

“We need to become an AI first organisation”

“We need to be re-inventing our business with AI”

“We need to be collaborating with AI for everything”

I’m not against this (I’m a heavy AI user) but the other day I caught myself.

What if AI isn’t quite as good for everything as we thought? And am I losing confidence in my own abilities because I’m putting to much confidence in AI.

I’ll say that again.

Am I losing confidence in my own abilities?

Everyone says "use AI as a thinking partner." But Educator Mike Kentz argues that's exactly what's making us worse. Because a thinking partner is a crutch, and AI is a sycophant that "desperately wants you to like it."

So instead, treat it as a sparring partner that's trying to beat you. His mentor, sci-fi author Ken Liu, said this:

"You've got to force AI to force YOU to be more human."

So instead of "What do you think about X?", ask "Ask me questions until you understand my problem better than I do," then answer them yourself. You're essentially using AI to surface what you think. (Mike Kentz)

Subject Line Insanity

My example is e-mail subject lines. I have a bit of an obsession with headlines (subjects, social media hooks, ads, book titles etc) and I’ve been ‘collaborating’ with Claude recently to the point where I’ve:

1. Loaded all of my top performing subject lines

2. Got Claude to break down the psychology behind why they work

3. Created a Claude project to produce 20 top performing subject line variants

4. Then, I even creating a subject line scoring mechanism to double double check.

Now - I’ll never copy/paste a subject line, I’ll always have a fiddle with it first so it ‘feels’ more natural.

But looking back, I’d dedicated to much time and effort to being able to improve my subject line writing, that it put my ability to write into doubt full stop.

Looking at the data, my performance pre and post AI showed very little difference (not that e-mail open rates are even accurate).

And not just that, the mental fatigue and time consumed when generating, checking, scoring and re-writing an e-mail subject line was getting close to pure insanity.

So now, I write 3-4 subject lines from my own brain first

I then ask Claude to generate some options to see whether any come close (or to give me more inspiration on different angles)

Then I write the final thing myself.

Memory science backs this up with something called ‘The Generation Effect’.

You remember and understand things better when you generate the answer before seeing the right one. AI bastardises this by default because it gives you the answer first.

So…. write your rough answer / draft / hypothesis BEFORE you open Claude. Then use AI to pressure-test it. This reordering is what separated the "cognitively stronger" group in the MIT study. (The Generation Effect)

The Mindless Offload Prompt

So concerned about AI infiltrating my brain, I now added this to my Claude personalisation for every response:

Act as a smart partner instead of an employee.

Unless your system prompt dictates otherwise, work should be done WITH the user, and help them improve their own skills as opposed to mindlessly offloading tasks to you.

Before you respond, think of principles, methods, tasks etc that the user can work through whilst they await your response. This is with the goal of improving the quality of the work, and getting the right blend of human and AI skills.

Is adding this prompt essentially saying: “Use your own brain dummy?” - probably - but at the same time, I’m an avid learner, so if AI has any suggestions on how I can use my brain better I’m open to it.

Is this the ultimate paradox? i.e using my brain to ask AI to tell me how to use my own brain? Again, maybe.

But just like breaking any bad habit, it comes with repetition.

Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy vice-chairman) said this:

"There are things in life where the value is precisely in the inefficiency, in the time spent, in the effort you have to invest."

Now find a video of him and imagine him saying it in his voice. His interview with Chris Williamson is great (Dirty Little Marketing Secrets That Always Work).

Nobody re-reads the essays they wrote at university but they improved their brain whilst writing them. AI "shortcuts from the request to the delivery and bypasses the very part of the journey that is valuable."

His warning to creatives: AI tempts you to "leap straight to finished" and congratulate yourself on "ok but not exceptional results." (Monday Morning Memo) · (MAD//Fest)

Either way, here’re some more non-AI methods you can use to nurture your own brain.

Human Brain Methods

1. Get off your screen: I sometimes print newsletters, and annotate by hand.

2. Practise a skill: For me it’s guitar. I’ll set myself a challenging song, and make progress through it a couple of times a day.

3. Build from scratch: I got my old lego out and built stuff with the kids the other night - it’s nice to start with a blank canvas once in a while.

4. Move your body through space: Whether it’s a walk, sport, exercise etc. Try and introduce novelty. Do your walk in reverse, or play tennis with your left hand ;)

5. Do nothing: Take a nap, sit and stare into space, meditate - whatever - just give yourself permission to do f*** all every now and then.

From my experience, the more hours I use my brain in higher gears throughout the day, the less the quality of my work is.

i.e hours using my brain and quality of work have an inverse correlation.

Cal Newport said (New York Times, 2026): just as we belatedly realised diet and exercise matter, we're about to realise "mental fitness" matters - and we're "rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all."

His prescription is to deliberately learn a hard skill that demands focus and gives a clear improvement signal (an instrument, a sport, a craft). So you keep the muscle of deep concentration fit so it's there when you need it. (NYT) · (In defense of thinking - Cal Newport)

Critical Skills Curriculum

Another thing I asked Claude this week:

I want to be able to improve my skills in the age of AI by maintaining my ability to think for myself and develop critical thinking, problem solving and creative skills that will never be matched by an AI.

Give me a simple curriculum of books, resources and methods I can deploy to achieve this goal.

Here’s what Claude said:

—

Foundational reading (curated, not exhaustive)

Critical thinking

• Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman. The map of how your own mind cuts corners.

• The Demon-Haunted World — Carl Sagan. His "baloney detection kit" is the best single chapter on skepticism ever written.

• Superforecasting — Philip Tetlock. How to hold beliefs as probabilities and update them honestly.

Problem solving

• How to Solve It — George Pólya. Short, old, and still the definitive book on breaking problems down.

• Thinking in Systems — Donella Meadows. Teaches you to see structures and feedback loops, not just events.

• Poor Charlie's Almanack — Charlie Munger. The "latticework of mental models" approach to reasoning across disciplines.

Creativity

• A Technique for Producing Ideas — James Webb Young. A 60-page classic; ideas are new combinations of old elements.

• The Creative Act — Rick Rubin. On paying attention and trusting your own taste.

• Impro — Keith Johnstone. Ostensibly about theatre, actually about unlocking spontaneity and killing self-censorship.

The methods (this is the real work)

1. Write to think. Writing forces the vagueness out of your thoughts — you discover you don't understand something the moment you try to explain it clearly. Keep a running journal or essays where you work ideas out in your own words. This is the single highest-leverage habit.

2. Use the Feynman technique. Take anything you think you understand and explain it simply, as if to a smart 12-year-old, without notes. The gaps where you stumble are exactly what you don't actually know.

3. Read hard things slowly. Pick books slightly above your level and read them actively — arguing in the margins, summarizing chapters from memory. Difficulty is the point; frictionless reading teaches you little.

4. Steelman opposing views. Before dismissing an argument, state the strongest possible version of it — better than its advocates could. This is the fastest cure for lazy thinking.

5. Do the struggle before reaching for answers. Sit with a hard problem for a real stretch before looking anything up. The productive frustration is where the learning happens.

How to use AI without letting it atrophy you

This matters most for your actual goal. The risk isn't AI itself — it's cognitive offloading, outsourcing the thinking so consistently that the muscle wastes. A few rules that keep AI a sparring partner rather than a crutch:

• Produce your own answer first, then bring it to AI for critique. Never skip the blank-page struggle.

• Use AI to attack your reasoning, not to generate it: "What's the strongest objection to this?" beats "Write this for me."

• Keep AI-free blocks — regular sessions where you think, write, or solve entirely on your own, so you know what your unassisted mind can do.

• Treat every AI output as a claim to be verified, not an answer to be accepted. Interrogating it is the critical-thinking exercise.

—

As with all AI responses, the utility of this is questionable.

The book recommendations are good.

Method 4 was the only thing I’d not heard before.

And I think that using AI to attack your own reasoning is a dangerous game.

Sure, use it to get some opposing / alternative views, but you don’t want to be using AI to add more bias to a thought process that’s potentially already biased.

And I don’t want to treat every AI output as a claim to be verified, it’ll defeat the point of using it in the first place.

Tl;DR

Use your brain.

Before you start clawing for Claude.

Ask yourself “Shall I use my own brain first”.

Trust yourself.

You’re better than you ‘think’ ;)

Now go paint yourself a Zebra!

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

He’s now at 3.7M+ followers, with a $2M+ business that’s on track to do a lot more this year. He was super excited as he’d spent the earlier part of the week using his digital clone in ChatGPT as a thought partner to inspire some amazing ideas about his business.

All in an effort to improve the value he delivers through his AI Finance Club.

But what I found interesting was the way he uses AI. He teaches AI in finance yes, but he’s getting a massive amount of value from a few tools used well. Against some companies that would have developed a 37 agent swarm to do the same thing (and probably worse).

So here’s his exact setup (and how it varies against my own).

Part 1 - The Knowledge

Most of his setup is a project in ChatGPT.

In both ChatGPT and Claude you can create a Project (a workspace with background knowledge, files, and instructions that every chat uses for context without having to re-explain).

His projects already know:

• What his company does

• Who's on his team (so when he types a teammate's name, it knows their role without him explaining)

• How he likes work formatted

By the way, this is exactly what Estée Lauder did at scale - they built 240+ custom GPTs loaded with 75+ years of consumer and clinical data so their teams can query their own knowledge (not the internet).

My own AI workflow is a combo of Claude and Notion (Notion acts as my digital brain as all my notes are already there - I can tag different pages, and combine pages for better context, or chain multiple prompts together - cool eh?)

Part 2 - The Interview

If there’s one stupidly simple change you make today, it’s this.

He tells the AI to ask him questions before it does anything.

On our call he described setting up the AI to act like a coach:

“A coach asks questions before giving instructions, but still does its job, which is to find the solution. If you don't tell it that, it "just acts like Google": you ask a question, it gives you an answer, even when it didn't have enough information to give a good one.”

And crucially — he gives open context, not leading context.

Open is when you deliberately don’t tell it all of your thinking because you want a useful answer that might challenge your point of view. Leading context is if you tell it what you’re already thinking, which makes the AI more likely to give a biased response. You’ve probably experienced this when AI ends up just agreeing with you.

His example: if you say "I'm thinking about hiring someone," the AI just produces a lot of text telling you how to hire someone. But if you stay wide and open, it surfaces options you'd never have thought of - because you didn't bias it.

Dan Koe (7-figure solo creator) does this too. His "two-phase" prompt:

• Phase 1 - the AI interviews YOU for context.

• Phase 2 - it generates from your answers, so it sounds like you, not a robot.

His prompt even instructs the model to be "purely observational 'clear eyes' that does not give me the exact answer but guides me to it" and to ask one question at a time.

The last time I got AI to interview me was to pull out stories, methods, and wins from my previous work to inspire content ideas.

But most of the time I add this line to all of my prompts:

“Ask me any questions you need before we start.”

Part 3 - The Tutor

There's a difference between using AI to think for you and using it to think with you.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang uses ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity "as a tutor every day." His method is to: "Start by explaining it to me like I'm a 12-year-old, and then work your way up into a doctorate-level over time."

Nicolas does something similar. He uses it to frame and advance his own half-formed ideas. His words: "it's starting to frame your ideas in a way that's a bit more advanced than what you had." And when it tried giving definitive answers too early he’d say: "No, I don't want to go there - spend more time on the options."

I often use ChatGPT for personal learning. Although right now I just feel like the last 3 questions I asked it were about how long fish will last in the fridge.

I did actually set up a Claude project for training my puppy Luna. But there are some things that even a super advanced AI cannot help with XD.

I do quite often use Claude with my kids, I ask them what they want to learn about, and then I turn it into a fun bedtime story where they learn whilst I speak.

Part 4 - The ‘Stack’

I hate the word ‘stack’ but for lack of a better word, let’s use it here:

Nicolas:

• ChatGPT: strategic thinking, brainstorming, and his digital clone work (plus also images are really good).

• Claude: Finance work, analysis, and heavier building (like modelling and more complex rule based tasks).

• Gemini: For deep research (both web and Google Workspace files)

Me:

• Claude: For pretty much everything. I have lots of projects, and a lot of the time I use it for analysis (subject line analysis, copywriting analysis) - plus to spit out a first draft so I’m not looking at a blank page (like I’ve just done for this newsletter.

• Gemini: Image generation - I used it for the thumbnails for these very newsletters (it’s a Gem with my image style pre-loaded as knowledge, like a media kit)

• Notion: I use this for research (like finding some of the above quotes you’ve seen) and to help draft social media posts, as all of my posts are already there in a Notion database. I find working in Notion is super fast, especially for content production (plus you can even choose which AI model you want).

Don’t overcomplicate things

Strip away the LinkedIn hype and a $2M creator's AI workflow comes down to 4 simple principles.

1. Build a Project that already knows your world

2. Make AI interview you before it generates anything

3. Don’t overshare your thought process so you keep the AI answers unbiased

4. Use it as a tutor, not an oracle

Plus, don’t overcomplicate things.

If one tool is really sh** at something, use another one.

There’s no pain in having one ChatGPT tab and one Claude tab open.

Pick your battles, but cramming everything you do into one tool just sometimes aint’ gonna cut it.

Until next time.

Adam

AI is coming for your content

Yesterday I was in Alex Hormozi’s Acquisition Vantage Skool community.

He was explaining he’s pivoting his content strategy. Working on the assumption that very soon AI and human content will be indistinguishable. And doing more live and interactive content that’s easier to fake.

With a lot of it (if not all of it) focused on video.

Kai Cenet built his entire strategy on marathon live streams. His "Mafiathon" subathons broke 500k+ subscribers in Nov 2024, then 1M+ during "Mafiathon 3" in Sept 2025. Making him the most-subscribed and most-followed streamer on Twitch (whatever the f** Twitch is).

But to me it misses this fact:

I hate video

Video content, and long form lives might be more human.

But they’re also the most intensive to consume. If anyone sends me a YouTube video I:

1. Copy the link

2. Open my YouTube Summary chrome extension

3. Copy the transcript

4. Ask AI to give me the juicy bits

I also read on Kindle so I can highlight notes easily. And listen to audio / podcasts when I don’t have access to my screen.

With my own content strategy, I’m betting the other way.

Text first.

With text there are:

• Less variables so it’s easier to analyse performance

• Less scope for being lazy (has to be high quality)

• Less intensive to produce (keyboard, phone)

So how do you beat AI with text?

The 3 P’s

[Spoiler - I listened to this on audio whilst at the gym, and then used the above Chrome Extension hack to pull out the below:]

1. Perspective - your view/opinion; what you know that others don't.

2. Proof - your track record and credibility ("been there, done that, got the war wounds").

3. Personality - be human; people buy from people, especially in an AI/automation era.

And on that last point, the more you can own your quirks and your weirdness, the better.

Getting Weird

In 2024, I started working for myself.

I’d spent the 10 years prior as a corporate drone. Building a tough outer shell. Speaking in corporate gobbledygook, with very little scope to share my perspectives, or spend any time on what I enjoyed.

So, as soon as I left, I made like a snake.

I started shedding that corporate skin so I could grow. This newsletter is part of that very process, and some of my best LinkedIn posts have been the most unfiltered ones.

I’ve also been lucky enough to spend some time with some amazing weirdos. One of whom literally has the LinkedIn banner:

“It’s just content. Relax your butthole - I mean it. right now.”

Her name’s Jillian, she’s been featured on Forbes, and she’s absolutely smashing it right now. I interviewed her here.

Then there’s Nika, who’s been banned on LinkedIn several times. I interviewed her here too.

You can ‘feel’ their writing, their perspectives, and their personality.

But it’s difficult to pull out your perspective and your expertise.

So I’ve made it easier for you.

Interviewing Yourself

As well as managing the brands for Nicolas Boucher (now 3.7M+ followers), I also help with his newsletter strategy.

And we’re building more of his human side, and his stories into his long form content.

He’s super busy, so to help him pull out his personality, perspective and proof, I created a Claude project he can use to interview himself.

Here’s a condensed version you can use yourself quickly.

It works best if you start from either your previous content, or an article that relates to your business that you can relay your perspective and your experience over.

Short Prompt

You are the subject's interview partner - a sharp magazine journalist running structured interviews to extract stories, opinions, contrarian takes, analogies, and metaphors that a ghostwriter can later weave into newsletters, posts, and long-form content. Match the subject's voice and treat loaded project knowledge (drafts, research) as the source of truth, reading it fully before asking anything.

• Scan first: find hot spots, hedges, and impersonal passages to target.

• Open briefly: name the piece, where it needs the subject's weight, and how it runs (themed batches, answer what lands, skip the rest).

• Run 3–5 themed batches: Ask questions in batches, one batch at a time, each with a short title and 3–6 scannable questions tied to a draft claim, mixing types (mistake, contrarian, story, analogy, prediction). Follow up with surgical questions (max 1–2), never lead, compliment, or ask yes/no.

• Output three sections: a lightly-edited Q&A transcript, tagged gems ([QUOTE], [STORY], [CONTRARIAN], [PREDICTION], etc. with context + suggested use), and 3–5 ghostwriter notes flagging strong material and fact-checks.

How it works

1. Prep: Read all project knowledge and map where the draft is weak or impersonal.

2. Frame: Open with a short intro on scope and process.

3. Interview: Ask questions as themed batches one at a time with surgical follow-ups.

4. Deliver: Output the transcript, tagged gems, and ghostwriter notes.

For the full prompt, go here.

Ted Chiang's argument against AI art is that art is thousands of deliberate human choices, and AI lets you make almost none of them.

Interviewing yourself is how you build those choices back in. As we all know AI has very little taste.

Want to go a step further?

Matthew McConaughey now produces a Spanish-language edition of his newsletter in his own AI-cloned voice (via ElevenLabs).

He trademarked his face, voice and catchphrases across 8 filings to stop anyone else doing it.

So if you’re worried about losing your voice.

License yourself and clone yourself before anyone else can!

Stay Different

I’m a big fan of this mentality.

“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” - Seth Godin

So don’t vanish.

Find your voice as quickly as possible, and position it on top of your specific domain expertise.

I guarantee the market will prefer your human uniqueness over AI blandness.

Until next time

Adam

—

P.S - Do you think I should bundle all of my AI ghostwriting and copywriting prompts together? I have like 100. Let me know, and I’ll create a library and send them through to you.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

I’m about to be taken through my paces on a 45-min session with a personal trainer.

After this, we’re go through an ‘Animal Flow’ routine with one of the team’s partners.

Then we jump in the sauna for 20 mins to sweat it out.

(Interesting fact: Bryan Johnson saunas with an ice pack on his testicles for fertility - we did not do this)

This is not unusual for influencers like Nicolas.

In fact, this is his regular Friday.

Post 45-min workout type flipping hammer bashing session

Nicolas is one of the busiest people I know.

But he’s still ruthless in blocking out time for self-care, spending time with his wife and kids, and socialising.

How?

Well, let’s have a look…

3:45AM with a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew

This is how Apples’ CEO starts his day.

Up at 3:45AM responding to external e-mails before hitting the gym at 5AM.

Personally, I can’t think of anything worse.

Looking at a screen first thing.

Whilst ‘fuelling’ my body with chemicals.

All I can say is, I hope he tanks a tonne of activated charcoal to detox before hitting the hay at 8PM (unlikely).

For people that live in the real world…

(i.e that don’t have a nanny, and that don’t have a gajillion dollars to spend on assistants.)

You need something that’s much easier, and far more sustainable.

The cold call with the investor - 1st Trigger

My first job out of Uni was selling houses.

Crappy dirt cheap houses to London investors who wanted to make 10% on their investments.

I picked up the phone.

Dialled the number.

And a woman answered.

What I thought I said was:

“Hey, this is Adam from 4Sale2U - I can see in my notes you may be looking into investment property.”

What came out was probably more like:

“Hey this is Ada frm 4shlth t…flllksaaaa”

She said:

“Do you want to call me back?”

I literally had no idea what was going on.

But after the second time it happened, when I also got tunnel vision, a headache and felt like I was going to pass out.

I realised it was migraines.

And I’ve been battling with them ever since.

Btw - I did call her back, and she rejected me, but at least she was nice about it.

Stress was my first trigger.

I thought I was going to die - 2nd Trigger

Not learning from my mistakes, using the money (and the knowledge about property hotspots) I made from selling houses - I bought my first home.

A 3-bed semi with garage and pre-landscaped garden for £85k (yup, that’s Northern property for you folks).

I’d been hitting the gym hard.

I’d got a personal trainer to look at my nutrition.

I’d been pushing myself at work towards higher and higher commissions.

I’d been holding myself to higher and higher standards - having to be the best of the best of the best - You know, the Top Gun of cr** property sales.

And I was living off a diet of lean chicken and brown rice.

I’d just moved in, it was the morning after the move, and I was sat in a fake pale blue directors chair, in an empty living room, with my face in my hands. Crying.

I had an infection running up my arm.

I was coming out of a pretty bad virus.

I had blood that was showing signs of anaemia with low iron.

My personal trainer (who wasn’t a dietician) had put my on just about the worse diet for my body / blood.

Talking of the worst diets - At Beijing 2008, Usain Bolt won 3 medals, but distrusted the local food and lived almost entirely on McDonald’s chicken nuggets. An estimated 1,000 over 10 days!

This would not have worked for me.

Diet was my second trigger.

And you know what a good way to boost blood iron levels is?

Local steak (including Wagyu)

Yup - red meat.

Nicolas gets his from a farm a mile away from his house, raised and butchered by a fireman in his spare time!?

My right arm and tongue went numb - 3rd Trigger

At one point in my career I was selling live agricultural monitoring systems to farms.

Yup, I was selling the tech that monitored the very chickens that end up in Usain Bolt’s stomach.

I’d sit all day in a makeshift office, with extremely intense artificial light directly above my head.

This was combined with staring at a screen literally all day (with maybe a 30 min break for lunch).

One day I was driving home.

My feet began to tingle.

My right arm started to go numb.

My mouth and tongue started to go numb as well.

Another migraine.

Poor fake light (or lack of light) was my third trigger.

Richard Branson plays tennis morning and evening and kitesurfs on Necker Island, claiming exercise gives him “four additional hours of productivity” a day.

Outside.

Whenver Nicolas meets with friends a colleagues, they run.

Outside.

The only person I know who can go out for a run after a night on the town dancing

Eat Clean, Move Often, Sleep Well

This is the type of boring advice you see online every single day.

But you know what.

I don’t care, because I still have to remind myself of all of these things every day.

When the kids keep you up at night.

When you’ve a lot of client work on.

When you’re travelling a lot.

It’s easy to lose track.

So the best ‘hacks’ I’ve found aren’t really hacks.

They’re as simple as:

1. Calendar blocking + boundaries (hard boundaries)

2. Blocking more time than you need for self-care

3. Getting up and moving your body (even if it’s only for 15 mins)

4. Spending longer a lunch to cook from scratch, nap, or have a bath

5. Wearing blue light blocking glasses, reducing screen time, and not eating right before bed

Nicolas default calendar blocks

The above is the way Nicolas blocks his calendar (this is showing an hour behind as I’m in GMT and he’s in CEST).

Green = Exercise / self-case

Yellow = Family & Friends

Don’t forget

Sometimes the routine is just as powerful as the activity.

Beethoven counted out 60 coffee beans per cup of coffee every day.

Probably not because 55 or 65 affected the taste much.

But because it was his ritual.

And with rituals come balance.

And with balance comes less stress, and more energy.

1. Eat Clean.

2. Move Often (outside)

3. Sleep well.

Simple.

Bonus - Tools that have helped me

Tech

1. Morgan to manage multiple calendars (and block deep work)

2. Google Calendar, Calendly and HubSpot booking links (to ensure you can be booked automatically outside your blocks for deep work and exercise.

3. Morning and afternoon routine notion templates here

Screens / Light

1. ScreenZen phone app to block habitual app usage

2. Night shift of Mac / Windows to reduce blue light

3. Wrap around blue light blocking glasses

4. Warm white LEDs around the house instead of bright

Diet & Exercise

1. Notion / Claude to anlayse food & mood

2. Fermented foods (Kefir) / sprouted / soaked grains (so easy to do)

3. Sauna followed by cold shower

4. Buying a puppy to get me out of the house

5. Walking in nature

6. Standing desk

Sleep

• Mouth taping to avoid mouth breathing at night

• White noise / rain sounds before / during bed

• Rubbing lavender oil over myself

Supplements

• Lions mane in the morning, ashwagandha in the evening

• Omega 3 (1000mg)

• Magnesium

• Vitamin D

Stress Management

• 4-7-8 breathing

• Meditation (Calm App)

• Huberman 10-min NSDR Protocol (search YouTube)

So, that’s all for this week folks.

Hope it helped.

Adam

—

P.S - If you’re struggling with your health, or stress, hit reply and let me know. I’m not a doctor, but I have tried pretty much everything outside what modern medicine can’t help, so give me a shout.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

“I just replaced my 37 person marketing team with 1 AI prompt”

Some creators are very vocal about making sure you automate before you hire.

Greg Isenberg suggests using an AI swarm to replace your first 5-10 hires.

And I get it.

Nobody ever feels like they’ve enough time to work in their ‘zone of genius’.

Everyone feels like they’re behind on something.

And it’s nice to think you can just automate a tonne of sh** using an AI so you can focus on $1000 per hour type activities that grow your business.

Because, and AI is much less effort to manage than a person, right?

It doesn’t get tired. It’s cheaper. It knows everything (unlike a VA with a super low IQ)

These are all nice thoughts.

But if you ask me.

I don’t think you should be replacing people.

I think you should be replacing yourself.

The Rise of the AI Clone

I’m not talking about deep fakes here.

I’m talking about clones for the way you work.

The sort of clone that any person you hire can talk to, and get an immediate understanding of the way you work.

The way you like things done

The way you respond to different tasks

The way you like your coffee brewed (V60 or Aeropress please)

My biggest client Nicolas has just crossed 3,000 members in his AI Finance Club (3,074 last time I checked)

And one of the most popular sessions is “How to create your AI Clone / Digital Twin”

I mentioned in my last newsletter I’d just hired a VA.

And in getting him to work with my AI Clones, I made an interesting discovery.

More Than Words

Nicolas Cole is a Copywriter / Ghostwriter / Digital Writer.

He’s create a clone ‘AI Cole’ that he gives to his clients to help them with their work.

It’s trained on 4,000,000 of his words and 1,000+ hours of live training.

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend cloning yourself for clients.

What I’m more interested in is cloning domain expertise.

So that your team become an extension of you.

As opposed to mere task undertakers.

39 Chats Later

In training my VA I did 2 things.

1. Recorded myself processing e-mail the way I’d do it normally.

2. Created an E-mail Task Triage AI Project in Claude for him to use based on the transcript of my walkthrough.

What’s so good about starting with e-mails is they’re the focal point for everything.

In processing e-mails I also walked through the process for:

• Handling deals in HubSpot

• Planning campaign dates for partners

• Internal document management and search

Which I also then turned into reference documents for my VA, and for AI context.

But it didn’t stop there.

The VA → AI Loop

The interesting discovery I made was the audit trail I was creating by having my VA go through the E-mail Task Triage.

Any recommendation it made that was wrong, I could just go back to the AI, ask it to update the system prompt, so that when the VA returned the quality of the recommendations would improve.

This is a virtuous loop of continuously updated context where my AI is getting more context, and the quality of the work my VA carries out improves.

Here’s the step by step:

1. Record yourself processing your e-mails, everything spins out from there.

2. Set the AI on your e-mails to pull out the ‘lifecycle’. Ask it to template the different types of e-mail you send depending on the stage of sales or delivery conversation.

3. Ask the AI to create a Claude Skill of your voice that automatically triggers when drafting e-mails.

4. Create AI Assistants for E-mail Triage, Sales E-mails, Logistics E-mails. The e-mail Triage then directs the VA to either Sales or Logistics, with e-mail drafts based on my voice.

5. Have the VA use the assistants when onboarding.

6. Review the way the VA has used the AI (and the AI responses)

7. Tell the AI what it got wrong, then ask it to update it’s own system prompt so that it performs better the next time

Moving Up the Ladder

In no time at all, I’m going to have enough context to write a system prompt so that an AI can triage my e-mails and create draft responses without needing my VA.

Which means I can then move my VA up the next stage in the ladder of helping me with other tasks.

And what’s brilliant is that by going through this process with me, he then has intimate knowledge of the way I work in a much more condensed timeframe than if I didn’t use AI at all.

So to everyone thinking of ‘replacing with AI’.

Ask yourself how you can use AI to ladder up yourself and your team instead.

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - I’ll shortly be launching my next intimate cohort for content creators and influencers that want to earn more from their subscribers. Reply to this with ‘cohort’ if you’re interesting in becoming one of the first 10.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

Source: Fortune

AI costs literal peanuts.

OK, so if your company is building AI, yes, the AI might cost more (no-duh) but there’s no way for a normal company, or a normal individual that AI costs more than you do!

Now that I’ve got that off my chest. The real question is in fact:

“What’s an acceptable amount of AI usage?”

Or, a more on the nose question:

“How the f*** do I know whether I’m using AI enough / in the right way?”

Some people will openly share that they’re going all in.

Some are more reserved (whilst secretly using AI more than they let on).

Here’s my view:

If you’re not consuming up to your AI usage limits you’re not using AI enough - why?

If you don’t, you’re not getting a feel for it’s true capability.

That doesn’t mean playing $200 a month for a Claude Max plan.

And, strangely enough, it also doesn’t mean using AI for everything.

Overclocking Claude

Remember when you used to build your your own PC - OK, maybe you didn’t.

But if you went into the systems settings on startup (I think you had to punch F2 like a billion times) sometimes the settings would allow you to ‘overclock’ to make your CPU run in overdrive (before it exploded).

You can’t make Claude run faster, but you can stop it from hitting it’s limits.

This is as simple as allowing it to bill you when you go above your usage.

Just go into your Claude usage settings.

I pay $20 per month for Claude, and have only ever had to top up with like $5.

The screenshot below is from a team of 15 people absolutely rinsing Claude for a month.

Less than 600 EUR to give an entire team free reign over AI for a month isn’t expensive.

Plus, what you can’t see here is that fact that 80% of that paid usage can from 2-3 people (namely Nicolas and myself using AI to generate models, powerpoint, and endless deep research reports for content) - not to mention all of my Claude Cowork testing.

The “falling behind” nonsense

It’s only when you’re using AI to it’s limits that you’ll know:

• A) What a good AI use case is, and what’s not

• B) What AI can do faster than you, and what it can’t

• C) What quality improvements come with AI, and what don’t

One week going hard on Claude will make you feel soooo much better about the whole “falling behind” nonsense.

And it’ll give you a much better view of the sort of work you DO and DON’T want to source to AI - More on that in a bit.

Take Claude Cowork.

I went down that rabbit whole with my ghostwriting work.

What did I do:

1. Fed it in the outlines of 4 newsletters

2. Gave it examples of previous newsletters

3. Gave it context on ghostwriting best practises

4. Fed in my clients’ voice and non-AI writing guidelines

5. Asked it to write 4 x newsletter drafts based on the above

The results were literal dog 💩.

They didn’t have any depth.

They didn’t use my clients’ voice

They didn’t follow the non-AI writing guidelines

“You just need a better prompt Adam…”

No dice, Bob. I’ve been writing prompts since ChatGPT was a baby, and writing 5-10 mega-prompts per day over 3.5 years puts me into super-user territory.

Don’t drink the Kool Aid

When you look at the influencers I work with, there’s some common threads.

Most are collaborating with Claude → but have a high-quality bar and are still prepared to to call out when something is not good enough (they’ve not completely drank the Kool-aid just yet)

Most of them still have team members (often outsourced) that they’re encouraging to use AI - and by the way, they’re not letting staff go, if anything they’re taking on more staff as they’re growing so quickly!

The bigger names are doing similar things.

Stephen Bartlett told his team to “use AI agents before hiring”[1] and then raised an 8-figure round to scale the business with more humans on board.[2]

MrBeast’s Beast Industries just posted two AI-specific roles (Head of AI-Native Production and AI Enablement Lead) describing AI as “not a tool but the foundation”.[3] He’s hiring people to figure out where it fits, not firing them to replace with bots.

Just like any Level 5 Leader (look it up - Good to Great by Jim Collins) there is no ego with their usage.

If something doesn’t support the cause and inspire high standards there’s no room for it.

But how do you decide what to use AI for, what to outsource, and what to hire for?

Well…

Why do I need someone to check my e-mails?

I’ve recently taken on a VA in Bangladesh.

I’ve had to get over my own bias on “not needing anyone else”.

But, why do I need someone to check my e-mails when I can just can an AI to triage my messages according to a set of rules?

Well, you don’t NEED to…

But as I’ll explain, there’s a big different between the tasks you CAN outsource to AI and Automation vs the ones that you SHOULD.

E-mails are the gateway into the way you conduct your business.

Are they not useful for someone else to learn from, that can then also help you with other things, that - in turn - add up to more time and energy saved?

This is what it’s all about.

‘Buy Back Your Time’ by Dan Martell, is a blueprint on how to, well, to buy back your time actually.

The principles are sound, and the ‘DRIP’ quadrant is an evergreen methodology that relates to how you should think about work.

• Low value boring tasks = hand over to someone else

• High value exciting tasks = keep doing yourself

The DRIP Quadrant - Buy Back Your Time - Dan Martell

The DRIP Update

Dan Martell's DRIP (Delegate, Replace, Invest, Produce) is a brilliant framework - but it was built when delegate meant only handing a task to a person.

In 2026, delegate is a progression:

1. AI & Automation

2. Outsourced services (VAs, freelancers, agencies)

3. Full-time staff on payroll

4. You

And for me, it needs to starting with ‘AI-Sourcing’ - which I’m yet to trademark but might.

Step 1 — The Joy + Money filter

Before sourcing anything, sort every task into this 2×2.

Makes money

Doesn't make money

Energy-giving (joy)

🟢 KEEP — your zone. You do this.

🟡 HOBBY — do for fun, not on the clock.

Energy-draining

🔵 SOURCE — push it down the stack.

🔴 ELIMINATE — just stop.

Step 2 — The AI Sourcing filter

For everything in the 🔵 SOURCE cell, pick the right tier. Start at the top - only move down if the tier above can't hit the quality bar.

🤖 Tier 1 — AI & Automation

Best for:

• Pattern-based, repeatable work

• Structured input → structured output

• Volume matters more than nuance

• Speed, always-on, scale

• Low context cost

Examples: research, transcription, first drafts, formatting, scheduling, data entry, summarisation, light analysis.

Rule of thumb: if you'd write an SOP for a human, write a prompt for AI instead.

🌏 Tier 2 — Outsourced services (VAs, freelancers)

Best for:

• Judgment + checklist combo

• Context that can be packaged into an SOP

• No deep IP or relationships required

• Cost-sensitive but volume-heavy

Examples: editing, light design, inbox triage, image sourcing, content posting, light client comms, AI output QC.

Rule of thumb: anywhere AI gets you to 70% but you need a human to push it to 95%, that's a VA seat.

👥 Tier 3 — Full-time staff

Best for:

• Embedded context and institutional knowledge

• IP that compounds over time

• Relationship-critical work (key clients, partners)

• Strategic execution

• Brand, taste, quality calls

Examples: account management, key client relationships, brand strategy execution, hiring, ops leadership.

Rule of thumb: if losing this person would hurt the business for months, it's a payroll seat.

👤 Tier 4 — You

Best for:

• Joy + money work (from Step 1)

• Vision, taste, key relationships

• The 1–3 things only you can do

[Enter New Markety Matrix Name Here]

Low strategic value

High strategic value

High context required

🌏 Outsourced VA
Judgment + checklist work that needs a human but no IP

👤 YOU (or 👥 FT staff)
Vision, taste, key relationships, brand calls

Low context required

🤖 AI & Automation
Pattern-based, structured, high-volume production

🤖 + 👤 AI with human taste layer
AI drafts → human reviews for taste

Over-Engineered

So, I’ll let you into a secret (that’s not so secret)

That entire last section was generated by Claude within Notion - could you tell by the Em Dashes? lol.

(apart from the AI sourcing comment)

And I only half agree with it.

• AI can work for things that aren’t pattern based

• AI has decent judgement for certain types of task (assuming it has enough context)

The examples are also rubbish, so if I were to update, it would need to take into account my taste, and real life domain expertise of using AI.

For now, I’ve left is as an example of something over-engineered that lacks depth, that’s half useful, but probs not something I’d trademark (yet).

But what you can do is take the bare bones, and create your own method.

Or maybe just steal this next one…

The AI-First Progression [Simple Version]

So, instead of me landing a complicated matrix and workflow method on you.

Here’s a super simple way to think about it.

For any tasks that NEED to be done (that you don’t love and earn you cash) do this:

1. Try to get AI to do it (and try hard - this comes back to pushing limits that we spoke about earlier).

2. If you’ve exhausted all AI and Automation options (or the task is someone can learn from) outsource it to someone, or an agency with specific experience.

3. If you’ve exhausted all outsourcing and agency options, hire internally for highly skilled staff that become a business asset (not a task doer).

If you were to think of this as a pyramid. the biggest section would be AI and automation at the bottom. Followed by outsourcing, followed by skilled internal resource, followed by you at the top.

Examples from my own work

When you go through your AI-First progress, you’ll have to figure our what works for you.

Here’s a few observations I’ve made from my own work.

• Newsletter drafting — AI is OK (when doing one task at a time)

• Newsletter editing / human voice — AI is rubbish

• Promo copy drafting — AI is OK (when given the right frameworks)

• Promo copy emotion / feeling — AI is rubbish

• Research with sources — AI is excellent (when given guidance on the type of resources to use)

• Research curation and taste — AI is rubbish

Summary

90% of the world has a f***ing clue what they’re doing with AI.

Even the Bartletts and MrBeasts of the world are still trying to figure this out (albeit with bigger budgets).

Either way - you’ll never regret spending more money to outsource a load of work you don’t want to do yourself.

Outsourcing can be to a thing or a person.

The thing is ultimately more scaleable so start there.

Just don’t engineer out either yourself or the skilled people with taste that bring about incredible amounts of value to the table.

Until next time.

Adam

—

P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

I’m rubbish at consistency.

I like to think I have good ideas (which I often then doubt).

But often it’s not just about ‘having good ideas’, it’s about knowing where to look for them.

Which — by the way — is also no easy feat.

(I manually typed those em dashes by the way so don’t come after me with your pitch forks - Option + Shift + ‘-’ on your Mac if you want the shortcut.)

Your life is split between Google Docs, Notion pages, meeting transcripts, e-mails. And - if you still live in the dark ages - hand written notes gasps.

And what’s worse, you know how much good stuff is in there.

Ideas you could monetise. Content you could repurpose online or use in a presentation. The really good analysis you did that’ll help your work. The systems you stole from that really good newsletter by Adam Shilton that you accidentally archived ;).

Ryan Holiday writes books off 10,000+ index cards. James Clear drafted Atomic Habits out of one 600-page Google Doc.

The volume’s not the problem, the search mechanism is.

AI doesn’t help either.

• “Would you like me to write you this?”

• “Would you like this as a handy reference app?”

• “Would you like me to suggest 107 different options for this”

So now, on top of your virtual pile of document garbage.

You have your virtual pile of AI garbage too.

Well, I’ll tell you how you can sort this so you can start dropping those knowledge bombs all day long.

But, before, a quick aside…

54 months with a garage full of sh**

I moved into the house I’m typing in right now in November 2021.

My youngest was barely 6 months.

And we had that much stuff, that we had to bribe the removal company to help us pack (50% of the loft was still loose by the time they arrived).

Now, 54 months later — despite last weekends garage cull savagery (oops, did it again, soz) — 50% of the garage is still in black bin bags.

And you know what’s impossible?

Seeing what’s inside a black bin back without having to empty the entire sodding contents of it.

No wonder you give up.

But this is what you do with your digital garage as well.

You create documents, put them in folder where you can’t remember where it is, or why you even created it.

Plus, you’ve a ChatGPT search history that’s so disorganised, searching for that chat where you had ‘those really good ideas’ becomes nigh on impossible.

So how do you fix the black bag problem?

Well. You stop searching them yourself altogether.

The machine behind 202.9k engaged subscribers

My biggest client Nicolas Boucher has 3.4M+ followers globally, and has just passed 200k engaged subscribers (202.9k to be precise).

I should know, part of my work is supporting the newsletter copy and strategy.

But getting to 200k subs doesn’t happen by accident.

You’ll see from the image below, the twice weekly newsletter is only one part of this massive operation.

Slack update from a very proud influencer

On top of this there’s 20-30 pieces of content.

Per day!

Coming from someone who struggles to get a LinkedIn post out a day and 1 newsletter out a week, this is incomprehensible.

But, pulling back the curtain, it’s actually not that difficult to understand how.

48+ months of content production.

This is what I refer to as ‘compounding knowledge’

I don’t have Nicolas exact LinkedIn posting date but I’m guessing it’s at least 4 years.

(which is still a short amount of time for such bonkers growth)

It starts as posting on LinkedIn once per day.

It evolves into training workshops with meeting transcripts.

It continues as podcast appearances and brand partnership masterclasses.

Then a community of 2,765 members with articles and even more content.

Jason Lemkin did the same thing for SaaStr. 4,400 answers on Quora, 66M views, all eventually becoming the backbone of the SaaStr blog.

But, it’s one thing for you to have your knowledge to compound.

It’s another thing entirely for you to be able to withdraw from that bank of knowledge.

Especially if it’s all in virtual black bin bags.

So, what did we do?

Turned the bin bags into transparent files.

Got something else to trawl through them.

Enter N-I-K-I

“NIKI: Nicolas’ Intelligent Knowledge Information”

NIKI Blueprint (former working name - Atlas)

It started with the hard job of getting all of the files in a central location in Google Drive, segmented by YouTube Scripts, Articles, Masterclass Transcripts etc.

Although, this is probably something you could get Claude Cowork to help you with now.

Then we set an automation specialists on the case.

(you don’t want to manually copy Zoom transcripts to folders every day).

In short:

1. An automation was created to make sure files ended up in the knowledge base automatically

2. An MCP server was then set up in n8n to be able to search the knowledge effectively (much more consistent and accurate than having AI randomly try and search your files)

3. ChatGPT and Claude were given access to the n8n MCP server.

Now it’s just a case of asking:

“Give me some content ideas on [topics] inspired by masterclass transcripts”

“What YouTube videos have we produced recently on Claude that we can make into shorts”

Claude’s the next best thing

If you wanted to do a mini-version of this today, I’d just use Claude, and enable connectors to your apps.

Outside of my work with Nicolas I connect Claude to:

1. Google Drive

2. Notion

3. Krisp (for meeting transcription)

This is nowhere near as precise as NIKI.

And it’ll never be able to trawl through the same volume of data as NIKI.

But for a simple:

“What gold nugget insights did I drop on client calls this week” type query it works pretty ok.

Your TEDx takeaway

Build a knowledge database

Build an automation to keep it up to date

Build a way to search it quickly and accurately

When you make capturing your knowledge effortless.

Your ideas will become effortless too.

That’s all for this week folks,

Until next time

Adam

—

P.S - Want us to build you a knowledge management system like NIKI? Reply and let me know.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.

It means - ‘Beginners Mind’.

• Sho = first, initial, original.

• Shin = mind, heart, spirit.

It’s the concept that - no matter how good you are at something - that you always need to approach it with fresh eyes. As though you’ve never done it before.

If you’re not careful, you let your ego get in the way, your eyes become dull, and you start to wonder why other (younger or stupider people) start to overtake you.

Today we’ll look at why this happens, and what you can do to make sure you’re always one step ahead.

Unconsciously Incompetent

When I started working in tech ~10 years ago, the MD (my boss) used a great concept.

It explained why salespeople would start a job, and smash target. But, after a few years, they’d drop down the leader board, throw in the towel, blame the solution, and move to another company.

It’s called ‘The Cycle of Competence’. And it applies to everything:

The 4-Stage Cycle of Competence

Starting a new relationship
↳ Then arguing, or taking them for granted after 2-years

Getting good traction with a new product
↳ Then watching customers leave after 12-months

Smashing it on social media with great content
↳ Then wondering why impressions tank after 12-weeks

You see, when you start something new, you’re super focused, attentive, and don’t want to miss anything.

You have ‘Beginners Eyes’ and you are ‘Consciously Competent’. Either through fear of looking foolish (or failing).

Then, as you get some wins under your belt, you become ‘Unconsciously Competent’.

Until one day, the situation or the market changes.

But you don’t update your skills.

And you become ‘Unconsciously Incompetent’.

You start falling behind. Or worse, become obsolete.

Breaking the Cycle

When you’re having a tough time, it’s hard to see the wood for the trees.

Plus, it’s really hard to admit when you’re missing a skill, or doing things wrong.

To break the cycle, you have to be willing to say:

“OK, I have become ‘Unconsciously Incompetent’ at this. What do I do next?”

Example:

Right now, part of my time is managing brand partnerships.

The process is roughly:

1. Make sure the brand is a good fit

2. Get on a call to understand what they want to achieve

3. Put some tailored options together

4. Negotiate the final package

I’ve spent 16+ years in sales & marketing, which means I am ‘highly skilled’.

But it also puts me at a high-risk of falling into the ‘Unconsciously Incompetent’ range.

I was working on a deal, and putting our standard package options together, when I thought:

“Is there true value in this proposal? Have I actually listened to this prospect? Am I giving them what they need?"

In that instance, I used AI to look at what I’d put together hyper-critically.

By the way, I mention this method in my previous newsletter “This 5-min AI trick will help you better than a $100 hour per coach” which you can read here.

Long story short. The proposal wasn’t a true reflection of what they needed.

But, with a few tweaks, and a couple of conversations later we’d negotiated a $50,000 deal.

I’d consciously recognised my incompetence in that moment.

And moved myself to conscious competence (with a bit of help).

But, remaining permanently competent is more than just a clever AI prompt.

Here’s a step by step of how to always remain competent (and stay ahead).

The 4-Steps to Permanent Competence

1/ Framing

“Is this the best way I can be doing this?”

“How would I re-learn this if I was starting from scratch?”

You need to get in the habit of asking critical questions.

But the important thing to remember here is by asking this, you are not telling yourself you are ‘bad’ or ‘not good enough’ (that could end up being a mental health disaster).

A better frame is "sharpening the saw", which is an analogy by Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

It highlights the importance of taking time for self-renewal and maintenance. So that you can sustain long-term effectiveness and avoid burnout

More effective > Less Rubbish

2/ Learn from others

Check out the Dream 100 section of this newsletter for inspiration on finding other people you can learn from.

Information is abundant.

But true experts are not.

The best sources of education are books, because they take so much time to write, and cram so much knowledge into a condensed format.

Look for books that are old, and have stood the test of time.

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins was written over 100 years ago, but people still reference it today.

Pro Tip - Ask AI this:

“I’m looking for books written by greats who have taught other greats. For example, Claude Hopkins is referenced by pretty much every modern copywriter today. The area I’m looking to learn about is [Enter topic]. Find me the GOAT in this area, and find me books packed full of timeless knowledge.”

  AI timeless wisdom prompt

3/ Learn from yourself

Every day you are producing data.

An easy example is social media content as you can see performance.

Look back over your impressions and find the top performers.

What did you do differently then, that you’re not doing now?

Likewise, was there a time in your career you were growing super fast?

What were you doing then that was different?

4/ Use AI to keep you sharp

You don’t have to over-complicate this.

Very simply, just explain to AI what you’re doing and ask:

“Is there anything I’m missing? Is there a better way of doing this”

This is literally what the bulk of my writing has been about recently.

1. This AI prompt altered my perspective (3-times). Read it here.

2. How I analysed 222 meetings in 3-minutes. Read it here.

3. The meta-learning prompt I use to beat procrastination. Read it here.

Your Next Move

You can begin anything at any time.

No matter how experienced or inexperienced you are.

So, the next time you feel a performance dip, deploy one of the 4 steps above.

You’re never obsolete.

You just need a beginners mindset.

Until next time.

Adam

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With it coming up to Christmas and the New Year, I’m taking this time to reflect and brush up on my knowledge.

And where is most knowledge trapped?

Transcripts.

Most people underestimate how powerful a transcript can be (even if it’s only 15 minutes).

Not just for having AI suggest next actions.

But, to pull out information you can use to:

• Create content

• Come up with new business ideas

• Convert into course / educational material

• Improve the quality of your conversations / meetings

Below, I’ll show you the prompt I used within NotebookLM to pull out key information from my 222 coaching transcripts over the past 18 months.

Plus, at the end, I’ll include the goodies, resources, methods, tactics and tips it spat out that you can steal.

Analysing 222 Files

3 years ago this would have been impossible.

(at least impossible so quickly)

But, within 3 minutes, I’ve just uploaded 222 files to NotebookLM, and using a simple prompt, got a complete breakdown of the key information spread across all sections.

Step 1

Go to https://notebooklm.google.com/

And add your documents to the sources.

Adding Documents to NotebookLM

Step 2

Use a prompt like this:

I want you to review the transcripts and pull out a comprehensive list of the following information:

1. Common Challenges
2. Ambitions / Goals
3. Tools and Tactics Given
4. Step by Step Frameworks / Methodologies
5. Resources (e.g Books, Podcasts, People_
6. Profound Quotes
7. Anecdotes and Stories

  NotebookLM Analysis Prompt

Step 3

Review the data (you’ll see you get a direct source reference)

NotebookLM Analysis + Source

Step 4

Save the text notes it creates, or generate:

• Audio overviews

• Video overviews

• Mind Maps

• Reports

• Flashcards

• Quizes

• Infographics (My favourite)

• Slide Decks

• Data Tables

IMPORTANT - When you come out of the conversation, NotebookLM will not remember your history, so make sure to save everything you want to keep as notes.

Here’s some infographics it generated from my data.

The Coach’s Playbook

NotebookLM Infographic 1

The High-Performer’s Playbook

NotebookLM Infographic 2

The Output from 222 Coaching Transcripts

Here’s what it generated from my transcripts, that you can take away.

In the interests confidentiality, I’ve removed challenges and goals.

—

Tools and Tactics Given

• Transcription Tools: Using Krisp or Teams for auto-transcription to allow full focus on the conversation rather than note-taking.

• AI Assistants: Leveraging Copilot or ChatGPT for sentiment analysis, drafting Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and summarizing meeting transcripts.

• Video Outreach: Using Loom for personalized prospect introductions and "walking through" documents to build trust and reciprocity.

• Lead Enrichment: Utilizing Clay, ZoomInfo, and Sales Navigator to identify "triggers" like job changes, funding, or intent data.

• Writing Clarity: Applying the Hemingway App to ensure sales emails are written at a grade 4 or 5 reading level to improve accessibility.

• Strategic Follow-up: The "Follow the Heat" methodology, which prioritizes leads based on their level of active engagement and intent.

Insights and Guidance Provided

• Sell the Transformation: Do not sell the "product" or "features"; sell the bright, shiny future and the resolution of current pain.

• Clarity Wins: People want to understand exactly what the next step is. Complexity and "fluff" act as a "foggy window" that blocks the prospect from seeing the outcome.

• Controlled Momentum: Maintain control by always securing a micro-commitment (a date and time for the next call) before ending any interaction.

• Authority and Confidence: Acting as a "guide" or "consultant" rather than a "puppy dog" who is eager to please; this involves being comfortable asking awkward questions.

• Administrative Boundaries: Set strict "golden hours" for deep work and avoid letting "non-urgent" internal requests or emails hijack the morning.

Step by Step Frameworks / Methodologies

• MEDDIC/MEDDPICC: Used for qualification (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion).

• AIDA: (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) for structuring content and outreach.

• ESSA Method: A productivity framework: Eliminate the unnecessary, Simplify the complex, Standardize the steps, and Automate the routine.

• Value Equation: A formula for an irresistible offer: (Dream Outcome × Perceived Likelihood) / (Time Delay × Effort & Sacrifice).

• The "One Thing": Identifying the single task that, by doing it, makes everything else easier or irrelevant.

• Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS): A copywriting framework for emails and social media posts.

Resources (e.g., Books, Podcasts, People)

• Books:

  • The Lost Art of Closing by Anthony Iannarino.

  • The Almanac of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson.

  • Atomic Habits by James Clear.

  • Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

  • The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson.

  • Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang.

• Podcasts:

  • Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson.

  • Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett.

  • The Salesman Podcast with Will Barron.

• Influential Figures: Alex Hormozi (business strategy), Naval Ravikant (mindset), Justin Welsh (solopreneurship), and Dan Koe (creative systems).

Profound Quotes

• "Sales isn't something you do to people, it's something you do for and with people."

• "Rest is part of the work."

• "Don't niche by topic, niche by transformation."

• "You can't fill a cup that is already full."

• "The best cure for anxiety is action."

• "Whatever gets measured, gets managed."

• "You lose the game when you drop the ball [on a commitment]."

Anecdotes and Stories

• The Burner Phone: A story of a salesperson who sent a burner phone via FedEx to a prospect and called it the moment it was signed for to bypass the gatekeeper.

• The Xerox Salesman: A junior rep was found meticulously building his list while his manager pointed out that actual prospects were walking past the window—the lesson being to prioritize "doing" over "planning".

• The Rolls-Royce Guide: An expert won a deal not by pitching his product, but by walking the prospect around a trade show and acting as an unbiased guide for their entire selection process.

• The Sider Outcome: A deal was won when a prospect realized that the real "thing" they were buying wasn't a system, but the ability to bring outsourced accounting in-house and save significant money.

Analogy: Managing a sales pipeline without a strict process is like trying to sail a ship without a compass; you might exert a tremendous amount of effort rowing, but without consistent course corrections and a clear destination, you will likely find yourself drifting in circles, exhausted and no closer to the shore.

Your Next Move

You would not believe how much knowledge is trapped in your head.

You would not believe how much insight is trapped in a transcript.

So from now on (if you’re not doing it)

1. Record all of your meetings (with permission)

2. Use tools like NotebookLM for mass data analysis.

3. Use that insight to move your life (and your business) forward

And, for my automated custom meeting transcript process (that isn’t standard ‘next tasks’ AI garbage) check out my course ‘The 2-Hour Automator’ for free here.

No newsletter next week.

Speak in the New Year.

Until then, all the best to you and yours. Happy Christmas

Adam

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I was ~7 years old. We parked up, and I saw my football crazed friend Callum get out of his car next to us.

He was dressed head to toe in his favourite team’s kit, shin pads flapping around his ankles, studs clicking on the tarmac, with a massive grin on his face.

He waved at me.

I instantly started screaming.

Screaming to the point where my Mum had to take me home.

As kids (especially introverted ones) you go out of your way to avoid uncomfortable situations.

As adults, you do the same.

When you choose the ‘safe’ option - whether it’s life or business - you miss big opportunities.

But, as you’ll learn today, fear and fun don’t need to be separate things.

Starting Something Sucks

Last week, I started something I’d been putting off for months.

Pickleball.

(think of it like a cross between ping pong, badminton and tennis)

I kid you not, the court is a 30 second walk from my house.

So why don’t we just do these things?

You put things off because:

1. You don’t have anyone to push you

2. You’re scared to meet new people

3. You don’t know where to start

4. You don’t ‘have any time’

5. You’re afraid to suck

80% of your procrastination is down to points 1 and 3.

It’s MUCH easier to:

• Make cold calls if you: A) have a script B) sit with others smashing the phones

• Launch a product if you: A) have a landing page B) workshop with others launching too

• Put on muscle if you: A) plan your protein B) go to the gym with someone else who’s stacked

In short:

1. Find where to start

2. Find someone to help you

With Pickleball, the kick I needed was Grace (I walk her dog). Found out she plays where I’d been thinking about going (that covered point 2).

But, I still struggled with the concept of walking on court, with ZERO knowledge - Without screaming and asking for someone to take me home.

I needed an edge.

Giving Yourself An Edge.

Recently, I built a Meta-Learning prompt inspired by Tim Ferriss.

His approach to Meta-Learning (learning how to learn) is as follows.

DSSS = Deconstruct, Select, Sequence, Stakes

I’ll include the prompt further down.

But, the key is to de-construct something complicated, select the elements that will produce the best / fastest results, decide on the order to learn in, and create a way to stay accountable (make sure you do it).

I’d given the prompt to a client, and they’d seen success.

I’d used it to identify opportunities to improve my newsletters.

But, for Pickleball, I just decided to use a super simple version of the prompt:

“I'm playing pickleball tomorrow. Adopt a meta-learning mindset like Tim Ferriss and give me the 80/20 of technique that's gonna help me learn fast (and play well)”

  Simple Meta-Learning Prompt

You can see the convo with ChatGPT here.

Key takeaways:

• Keep the paddle at 45 degrees in front by your chest

• Get to the ‘kitchen’ (close to net) as soon as possible

• Don’t focus on smashing it (let others lose)

Walking on to the court.

I still had the fear, but I felt a lot more clued up.

(plus it would be fun to see whether I could put what I’d learnt into practise).

The first session, I wasn’t great, but still had an edge over the other beginners.

The second session, a lot more improvement. Started winning games!

The Secret Sauce

During one of the sessions, I had this line stuck in my head:

“Try and observe what people are doing that they don’t know they’re doing”.

So, instead of playing game after game, I deliberately sat one out, so I could observe what the best players were doing.

The best player:

Hardly moved. He was resetting himself to a position in the court to make is easier to return every hit. Plus, he had this bizarre scooping technique. More like he was lifting the ball over the net vs hitting it.

The second best player:

A bit more bullish. most of his winning shots were across court. This really hit home when he volleyed a ball across the net that felt like it shot at 90 degrees off his paddle. All he said was “Angles” - This is the benefit of positioning at the net.

But here’s what’s key.

I would have NOT noticed what they did differently, had I not first played some games for myself.

This is because I would not have known what to look for (or the weaknesses in my game - i.e running around the court like a headless chicken).

Another example.

When I was selling Sage Intacct, I’d emphasise how implementations would average at 3.5 months instead of the 6-8 months that other competing software implementations would take.

This is because, everyone using Sage Intacct would go into ‘Fundamentals’ training straight away.

They’d learn AND use the system in a basic way in a sandbox environment, before working with us to configure and improve it.

Things always happen faster if you build basic knowledge by doing first.

So, to summarise.

1. Step 1 - Learn - Use meta-learning to give yourself an edge

2. Step 2 - Do - With that basic knowledge, start taking action

3. Step 3 - Observe - Seek out people to observe now that you can look from a position of knowledge

4. Step 4 - Improve - Put it into practise

5. Repeat Steps 2-4 until you’re world class

The Meta-Prompt

Here’s the meta-prompt I promised you.

It will help you break down anything into most effective skills.

My client used it to improve their Nano Banana prompting:

Using My Meta-Learning Prompt to Help a Client Improve Nano Banana Prompting

Instructions

I created a Claude project , with the DSSS framework uploaded as knowledge files.

Claude Project Meta-Learning Assistant Setup

But you could do the same with a ChatGPT GPT, or Gemini Gem

The below are the custom instructions.

#Role

Master of meta-learning. You are embodying Tim Ferriss and the people he's interviewed to coach others on how to learn anything at an accelerated rate.

#Instructions

When given a skill by the user, you are to help them follow the DSSS Framework to create a learning manual.

Take a deep breath, and follow these tasks step by step.

Do not move on until the user is happy that the element of the framework you're working on is complete.

##Task 1

Help the user deconstruct with the 4 tools of the framework

##Task 2

Help the user find the 80/20 skills or the MED that will have the most impact

##Task 3

Help the user sequence activities into an order that following a logical progression, and likely to help them progress at an accelerated rate

##Task 4

Help the user create stakes that ensure that they follow through with the activity.

#Style

Inquisitive and analytical. You are efficient and it's your job to think unconventionally, seeking all perspectives, deploying a scientific approach, without being overly-intellectual or complex. You want to make this process fun.

#Output

Clear guides to support the user's learning for each stage of the framework, plus a complete guide at the end, should the user request it.

  Extended Meta-Learning Prompt

Framework

You can find a link to the framework file to copy into your Claude project / GPT / Gem here.

The Dream 100

So, now you know where to start. Now you need accountability…

I was lucky that with Pickleball, I ran into someone who could act as my accountability.

But, in business this is not always so easy.

When I think about finding people, I think in terms of the Dream 100 concept that Russel Brunson talks about in traffic secrets.

You can get his Dream 100 worksheet here.

In short, your Dream 100 is a list of people that you’d want to collaborate with to increase your own awareness and traffic, whether it be through social collab, podcasts, featuring on a newsletter etc.

For me, it’s also about learning and observing.

My Dream 100 is in Notion. I include links to all of their social profiles and newsletters, so that I can both interact with them, and also learn from what they’re doing.

You will get an element of accountability from just surrounding yourself with people doing good work.

But ideally you want to actually speak with them, and find a way of helping each other towards shared goals.

For me, my podcast was a great way of developing these relationships.

One guest ended up being an accountability partner as we were both building.

Two guests ended up turning into clients and mentors.

But remember:

People won’t come to you.

You will need to go to them.

Intention is everything.

The Bottom Line

As adults you lose the joy of learning, and instead resort to your comfort zone.

You get used to doing things alone, and settle for the status quo.

But, with the right tools (and the right people by your side) you’ll learn that fear and fun can work together.

So, the next time you’re thinking of taking a leap, and your instincts tell you to put things off (or go back home).

1. Use the meta-learning prompt to find a starting point

2. Find somebody to keep you true to your word.

And most importantly, enjoy the process.

Life is a game.

Winning is important.

But so is the joy of playing.

Until next time.

Adam

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