A Newsletter on Marketing (and Life) #016

AI, baby! + How to approach problems

Author

Jordan Ogren
October 06, 2023

I suck at hiding my emotions.

You will feel it if I am upset, sad, or angry. It's something I am working on.

For the past month or so, I've been struggling, and it shows. Not with any one thing but more so with how I think and view myself. It's been quite negative.

Aside from prayer and resting in the I AM (Christ's spirit) within me, I've found comfort in an unexpected quote:

"Be impatient for action but patient for outcomes," – Maureen Bisognano from Upstream by Dan Heath.

Currently, my outcomes are shit.

Which drives me to focus on my actions and become increasingly involved with executing my daily protocol. My desired outcomes will come if I stay focused on doing the right actions.

And if they don't, that's okay.

I'll keep pushing forward as I know I am being made stronger through this crucible. Every challenge inches me closer to my best version.

What crucible are you facing? And how are you "pushing through?" I’m curious to hear from others in the arena with me.

Enjoy this week’s (long) letter:

Marketing 💡: 3 ways to use AI

(Time to read: 3:11 minutes)

I have a confession to make…

I recently relapsed. I was a year-plus clean from watching Gary Vee videos, and then I clicked on a speech he gave on AI. And it was a reminder that with your own wisdom, you can learn from anyone.

During the video, a guy asked a question:

"I work in the plumbing industry, and most of our sales come from face-to-face appointments. Where will AI interfere with this?"

Gary is smart for not rushing to answer this man's question.

Instead, he touches on the way the question is phrased. This man is hesitant and resistant to working with AI. For him, it's an either/or equation, not a both/and.

That's where most people fail with AI—they perceive it as a threat vs. a superpower.

Instead, I (and Gary) suggest looking at AI for how it will:

  • Enable or enhance your current workflows.

  • Allow you to innovate to more efficient workflows.

  • Give you superpowers to get exponentially more done in less time.

The future is here. Are you willing to take advantage of it?

Rather than leave you with only inspiration, here are a few ways I've used AI to enhance my work and help me make more progress:

Way #1 – As an editor to stay on brand

ChatGPT has a Custom Instructions feature, which allows you to determine how the AI should respond. If your company has key messages and a brand voice, upload that into the Custom Instructions and leverage AI as your editor.

After I write a post or an article, I will paste it into ChatGPT and ask it to rate (1-7) how "on brand" the content is. Then, I will ask it to make its proposed suggestions in a few versions. From those outputs, I will merge them with my original to ensure they are "on brand."

While it's not perfect, if you continue to create branded content in a chat conversation, this tactic becomes even more effective as it has a longer history of "on brand" content to reference.

Way #2 – To help with brainstorming ideas

We all can come up with ideas. AI is much faster and can continue refining the ideas until they are specific enough or related to a particular persona. Also, you can use the web to derive ideas in seconds, which would take any mortal human hours to do.

Execution is where I can bring my human touch in, so I look to enhance my ideation with AI and lead me quicker to execution. You can also use AI to refine your idea to ensure it's a new topic that has yet to be covered. By prompting for "an angle of the idea that's yet to be fully covered," you can move past generic ideas.

While this is a simple way to use AI, it's surprising how many stop after the first prompt. Next time, tell the AI which ideas you like most (e.g., #2, 5, 7, 9) and give you ten more ideas like those.

Way #3 – Expand on concepts to increase efficacy

You've written that kick-ass blog or podcast outline. Now, it's time to publish or record. Or is it?

I've used AI in the final steps of my content creation process by asking it to "poke holes" in my content. This helps round off my content and ensure I'm not missing anything. It also allows you to strengthen weak areas and double down on the vital parts.

For my writing, I use AI to identify areas where my arguments could be strengthened, areas to restructure for better readability and potential sources/quotes to fill in gaps. For the podcast outline, I may ask AI to fill in any segments and ensure I fully cover the topic. I could also ask for better ways to open up and examples to share.

Ultimately, AI helps my content go from a B- to an A simply by rounding the edges.

Process matters.

One thing I hope that's evident is how much process drives AI's effectiveness.

I didn't just start using AI for everything. I documented my content creation process and thought about which steps AI could enhance. I didn't ask where AI would interfere but where it could improve. It's a mindset shift.

For many things in marketing, we don't have a documented process. That's where I recommend starting.

After that, I suggest spending 20+ hours playing around with AI before plugging AI into your process. Gary's main takeaway in the opening video was spending 20 hours prompting it, using different AI tools, and slowly grasping how to leverage AI. I have to agree with that.

And to be clear, I'm back on my Gary Vaynerchuk bullshit. Relapsing daily.

17 social posts a day coming at ya 😹 (IFYKYK)

Likely more on this to come… Click here to comment on this essay 

Three Books. Three Quotes

"The lesson is clear: You can’t help a thousand people, or a million, until you understand how to help one person.”

"The hardest thing any hero can do is forgive…We think that retribution, no matter how small or large, will soothe our soul. It will not.”

– Admiral William H. McRaven (The Hero Code)

"In order to alleviate my own suffering and to alleviate the suffering of others, I give myself up to others and I accept others as my own self.”

Heard. Saw. Experienced.

With an extra-long marketing essay, I wanted to get you to the end as soon as possible. (Also, I spent most of my time writing that). Next time!

Personal essay snippet (with links)

Time to read: 1:07 minutes

Diagnose the problem before solving

Most significant problems reside within complex systems that are difficult to interpret and solve.

Simple answers are rarely available, or someone else would have found them. Don’t think you’re that smart (that was mainly to myself). All that means is that we should be slow to jump into solving a problem in the hope of not making it worse.

We should take time to understand the system in which the problem lives. In science and medicine, they call this diagnosing. This goes hand-in-hand with hypothesizing and aiming for falsification to solve the problem better (and quicker).

This principle is one of the dearest to me as it’s completely changed how I see. Whenever I come across a meaningful challenge, I slow down and diagnose the problem. This allows me to come to better solutions and provide the thought process behind them (see: intentional).

This is one of the more radical mental models I’ve adopted that’s instantly improved my outputs. Figure out the problem fully (diagnose) before deploying a hypothesis to test and learn from. For me, this is in marketing, relationships, and my spiritual life. It’s helped me make progress and be more satisfied in all those areas.

I hope the mental model of diagnosing before action can help you begin the path toward those same outcomes. In this essay, I will cover:

  1. Why do we reverse the equation and jump into action? (spoiler: We are pompous!)

  2. How to properly diagnose and the steps to strategy thinking

  3. Dangers of diagnosing and ways to avoid falling for them

  4. The man who turned me onto diagnosing (thinking like a scientist)

Why do we fail to diagnose?

Because we are arrogant humans.

To be continued…….

(You can also comment and help improve my thoughts – I'm grateful to have smarter people reading this than I am; help me!)

Works in progress:

Thanks for being along for the ride. I hope you are well and stay well 😊

Enjoy your Friday!

– Jo (every second counts)