Let's Make Some Noise

This week: It's hard to keep up with all the AI solutions hitting the market right now The problem? The main AI tools do so much, so most of these additional solutions just don't offer enough extra value to make them worth the price tag. Hi Reader: At my art class this week, I met a woman who spent $1,500 on AI training. She got reimbursed — lucky woman. But she's not alone. People are dropping hundreds of dollars a year (or more) on tools and courses that do what you can already do with AI...

This week: Remember Frogger? The 80s video game? The little guy kept hopping. Until he died. Then we started all over again. Just like adaptive strategy. Hi Reader: It's the last week of February. How are those New Year's resolutions holding up? If you're like most people, you haven't thought about your resolutions, in oh say, six weeks. Now you're staring at the screen wondering whether you should start again or just table them until December. My take? Stay in the game. Put another quarter...

This week: Somewhere along the line, the word reputation got a bad rep. We talk a lot more about "bad reps" than we celebrate good ones. It often feels like reputation is something that happens to us, but really, it should be something we carefully nurture. Hi Reader: Something cool happened this week—a new contact reached out to me on LinkedIn because they "heard" I speak about AI. I didn't pitch them. I didn't send a cold message. They just... found me. That's what a strong reputation does....

This week: If you've ever started the day wondering what to do next, you need a strategy Here's how to build your game plan in one page. Hi Reader: I had lots of fun this week speaking at my SCORE webinar on How to Build a Simple Strategic Plan with AI. There were so many great questions and the webinar resulted in SO MANY new subscribers to my newsletter. This was clearly a topic of interest. For those of you who are new, welcome to the newsletter! And for those of you who couldn't attend,...

This week: Stop competing with AI as a thinker. Start using it to think better. Hi Reader: Last week I had a fun time talking all about AI for strategic planning at a local NAWBO meeting. (Thanks Caren, for the invite.) The attendees were all at various levels of using AI, which meant I got to focus more on better outcomes than convincing people why they should use AI. Inevitably, a question came up about AI not understanding someone's world. I hear this question a lot, and I rarely have a...

In this week's issue: Most organizations have an info dungeon, a place where documents go to take their last breath. AI (and RAG) excels at organizing YOUR info to help you build a more valuable business . Hi Reader: One of my favorite uses for AI is arguing with it. I frequently call AI my sparring partner. It often gives me great "food for thought." Other times? That food is simply useless. When I argue with "general" AI, I get a lot of feedback that just isn't designed for me. Because the...

In this week's issue: 2025 was all about finding hidden gold in exhaustive AI prompts. But most of those prompts resembled the self-help magazine articles they were supposedly replacing. This week, I give you my favorite business prompt. Its maybe the shortest prompt known to mankind... and it starts with just three letters. Hi Reader: Although I'm generally not a fan of AI prompts substituting as blog posts, I do have a fantastic, favorite prompt I use...a lot. It started as a business...

In this week's issue: Happy New Year! We are heading into the Year of the Fire Horse. According to lunar astrology, this is a time of heat, change, and social activism. Read on to see how AI can help you navigate 2026. Hi Reader: Happy New Year! The holiday season—like life itself—rushes by and then suddenly it's over. And now, in a blink, it's planning season. I just happened to pull out my handy dandy guide to lunar astrology (read: Google Gemini) when it informed that the year ahead is the...

In this week's issue: The honeymoon is over. AI fatigue hit hard by March. Agentic AI is quietly reshaping business. And a San Francisco power outage reminded us that life is a series of unforeseen circumstances—which means AI still isn’t ready for primetime. Here are the 2025 AI highlights worth knowing. Hi Reader: I hope you had a long and lovely holiday weekend. I spent mine at my neighbor’s house, eating too much and soaking up the kind of family chaos that only small children can create....