Stop Making AI So Complicated 🤖

I write this newsletter for my students, for the overwhelmed small business owner. For my friends and family learning AI

I want no one left behind on AI. 

Every week, I see another "Ultimate AI Framework" or "47 Prompts That Will Transform Your Marketing." Courses, certifications, and prompt libraries with 1,000 entries. And I watch smart folks freeze up because they think they need to master all of it before they're allowed to start.

You don't.

I just ran a full-day AI bootcamp for senior marketers at UNH. These are sharp people, directors, VPs, business owners. And the thing that actually moved the needle wasn't a framework. 

It was three embarrassingly simple steps.

I don't care which one you pick. They're all good. The one that wins is the one you'll actually open tomorrow morning.

800 million people use ChatGPT every month. It's the easiest starting point. But if you're a Google person, Gemini fits right into your workflow. If you live in Microsoft 365, Copilot is already there. If you want the best coding partner, Claude is hard to beat.

Pick one. Pay for it. (The free versions are a poor starting point — paid plans unlock bigger context windows, better reasoning, and actual data protection.) 

Then just... use it. For real work. This week.

This is the part that changed everything for students.

Use voice mode.

When you type to AI, it feels like a search engine. When you talk to it, it feels like a colleague. That shift matters more than any prompting technique I could teach you.

Here's what I tell people: talk to your AI. Tell it about your business, your problems, the client who's driving you crazy, the campaign that flopped. Let it get to know you the way a new coworker would.

You wouldn't expect a new hire to do great work after one email. Give your AI the same courtesy. Talk to it. Often. Out loud.

Turn Data Into Smarter Marketing Decisions

Many Google Analytics accounts are set up incorrectly, which means missed insights and wasted marketing dollars every month.

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to confidently navigate GA4, understand your data, and turn it into smarter marketing decisions.

Instead of theory, you’ll leave with practical skills you can apply immediately to improve your marketing performance.

Here's why most AI output sounds like it was written by a committee of robots: people ask AI to write things without telling it anything about who they are, who they're writing for, or what they actually sound like.

That's not an AI problem. It's a you problem.

Every prompt I built for the bootcamp starts the same way, with YOUR context:

Your brand voice. Not just "professional and friendly." Specific. "We sound like a smart colleague explaining something over coffee. We never sound like a corporate press release."

Your audience. Who they are, what they care about, and where they are in their journey.

Your constraints. No jargon. No superlatives. No filler paragraphs. Every section earns its space.

Here's a stripped-down version of what that looks like:

That's it. That one paragraph of context is the difference between AI slop and a draft you'd actually send to your boss.