Operator 11th Hour: Month 1 Update!
I have one quarter (January - March) to establish a viable business producing educational content. I’ve dubbed this mission… Operation 11th Hour!
Month 1 is complete! Where did I land?
The short answer is: 65%. I got 65% of a bulls-eye for the course launch.
Sales were… fine. They were slightly good. And I had good success in a few additional areas:
The Everything is a Remix newsletter had good growth.
I’ve been consistent with producing two articles per week.
The Remix site has gotten the most traffic since its heyday.
I tried Google Ads as a small experiment… and got an actual sale!
I started doing coaching and consulting and I’ve already arranged bookings for Month 2. I can help with ChatGPT training, video and creative consultation, and more. If you’re interested in working with me directly to help with education or your projects, reply to this email.
Overall, Month 1 sales results are mixed.
On the one hand, it’s a decent start and I’m still learning.
On the other hand, this was a launch, which is when you get to ride downhill for a bit. Month 2 will be all uphill, at least for the video course.
All in all, I need to regroup and find some high-leverage plays. Here are a couple upcoming attempts.
Videos are returning to the YouTube channel! The first one is already up!
I’m launching affiliate sales. If you register as an affiliate and sell a copy of my course via your link, you’ll make approximately fifty bucks. (Details TBD)
However, I’m not sure I’ve got anything on deck that can turn the ship quickly. So I called in the cavalry. I’m doing some commission work to relieve some short-term pressure. This will slow the progress on my business, but it’ll give me some financial runway and some space to reflect and re-orient.
Multiple Discovery
What if history's great innovators chose different paths and never made their breakthroughs? Would our world be different? Would we be further behind?
This is one of my favorite segments from the original Everything is a Remix series. It didn't fit in the new version, but I still wanted to update it and share it.
The Creative Apocalypse is Not Near
Image generated with Midjourney; type added by me
We are now about a year and a half into the age of generative AI. There was a lot of fear and anxiety heading into this era. I want to take a moment to assess what the reality of working with this software has been like, from a creative perspective.
Long story short: working with AI is a lot more work than everybody imagined.
Let's start with text.
The major theme of my course about creating content with ChatGPT is that you need to lead. You need to be creative and problem-solve to work around the serious limitations of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT writes generic, dull text, and it's hard for us to read more than a few paragraphs of this stuff without our eyes glazing over. The onus is on you to make that text work.
ChatGPT is a powerful and very worthwhile tool, but the area where it will have the most impact is gruntwork, the boring work you don't wanna do. Actual creative work? It can't do that.
Image generation is even more limited.
Image from The Polar Express, a film riddled with the uncanny valley effect
Much like there's the "uncanny valley" effect in CGI, AI-generated images feel empty and uninvolving. You can see one of these images at the top of this post. It’s fine for this modest purpose, but for higher-level work, it would seem "temp," like a placeholder. (It also looks like countless other images being pumped out all over the internet.)
But haven't I been using image generation? Yes, I've been experimenting and demonstrating what this software does. But, as I said in my course, I don't think image generation is ready for prime time yet. If AI art is going to work for you, it's your own creativity that will do the heavy lifting.
Text and image generation gives you raw ingredients, much more raw than what you would get from a human collaborator. And it takes a lot of imagination in your preparation to make these ingredients flavorful.
How James Clear Remixed a Blockbuster
James Clear poses with his bestseller, Atomic Habits
James Clear’s Atomic Habits is an absolutely monumental nonfiction bestseller. If you’ve only bought one nonfiction book in the last few years, there’s a good chance Atomic Habits is it.
The book is a remix of the work of countless others who’ve researched the psychology of habit formation. Clear is not sneaky about this at all and does a superb job of citing his sources.
Here are some of his biggest influences.
BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits
The premise of Atomic Habits is similar to BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits. Both are about how small habits can transform your life. Clear also writes about Fogg’s concept of habit stacking, which is when you link a new habit you’re trying to form to an established one.
Habits as compound interest
What good are little habits? Clear says these small actions create compound interest over time, just like small investments can reap huge rewards over decades. This concept is popular in lots of writing about habits, for instance, the long-running blog Zen Habits.
Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit
One of the most important sources for Atomic Habits is Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit. Duhigg broke habit formation into three steps: cue, routine, and reward.
Clear took these elements and transformed them into cue, craving, response, and reward. He kept the name “habit loop.”
Clear then presented his new model using this graphic from Nir Eyal’s Hooked as a template.
Nir Eyal’s Hook Model
Here’s James Clear's result. This concept is the foundation of Atomic Habits.
Clear’s Habit Loop
Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow State
One of the most influential concepts in self-improvement is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. This is when an activity is just slightly beyond your abilties, leading to immersion and improvement. Clear reframes this idea as The Goldilocks rule, which is the same thing as flow, but Clear probably wanted to frame it in a simpler way.
Anecdotes from other nonfiction books
Clear’s anecdotes in Atomic Habits are often drawn from other nonfiction books. For instance, he uses a story about how photography students who focused on quantity rather than quality ultimately took better photos. This story came from Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.
And Simon Sinek?
Again, Clear’s endnotes do a fantastic job of revealing how he wove his book together. But sometimes, he might go a bit far in his acknowledgments, as in the case of citing Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle concept from Start With Why.
Clear saw this.
Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle
Then created this.
Clear’s three levels of change
In this case, I’d say that design falls squarely in the public domain and no citation is needed
Clear’s secret ingredient?
Many of the books Clear remixes were successful, but none to near the level of Atomic Habits. What’s Clear’s secret?
I think the key was how Clear integrated all this knowledge into his own life. He directly practiced everything he learned and modified it to make it work better. He lived it and wrote about the experience.
Another formative influence on Clear was this tweet from the entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant: “To write a great book, you must first become the book.”
Feedback for my new ChatGPT and AI course has been fantastic! You can see a few testimonials from Hans, Jeff and Charlie on the landing page.
I'm now venturing into personalized coaching, consulting, and interactive teaching sessions. If you need deeper engagement, tailored guidance, or hands-on learning, this is how I can provide that. Head over to the contact page to get in touch.
Are We Creatively Losing It? And How Do We Get It Back? (Part 1)
The Rolling Stones in 2023
Are we, as a culture, in creative decline? If so, why and what can be done about it?
As many of you know, I’ve been thinking about this for a bit and I’m going to start sorting my thoughts here, in installments.
Let’s start with The Stones.
I love The Rolling Stones. Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street are as great as anything you’ll ever hear. As a young man, I loved them with a weird intensity, and I still love that music now. Lots of the stuff I loved when I was young doesn’t stand up. Their music does.
The band has a new album out and critics are again breaking out this old chestnut: “their best album since the seventies.”
I'm old enough to remember when critics said that about the now extremely forgotten Steel Wheels from 1989. As a hardcore teenage fan, I tried my best to love Steel Wheels but I couldn’t keep up the facade for long. And that album, for its time, seems better than this one.
To be clear: if you love The Stones, the band sounds good on the new album and hey, the old fuckers are still doing it! Maybe that’s more than enough. But let’s not delude ourselves: the new album isn’t actually good.
The Stones have lost it. Just like we all do. Some of us even become embarrassing.
When it comes to losing it, music is a tough industry, almost as tough as being an athlete. Musicians peak early and decline early. They have their heyday, then maybe they're good or occasionally very good after that, but not like they were.
There are always exceptions.
Beethoven was in his fifties when we wrote his 9th symphony (and almost entirely deaf).
Leonard Cohen released I’m Your Man at 54.
Beyonce has remained a vital pop artist into her forties.
Johnny Cash was releasing exciting music at the very end of his life.
It can be done. But mostly, it isn’t. And this doesn’t just apply to us as individuals.
Entire genres lose it. Jazz, classical, folk, the blues, and rock were all once teeming with innovation and are now dead. Rap is late in life and will soon follow.
And entire cultures lose it. Egypt, Rome, and the Ming Dynasty all lost it well before they fell. I’m sure war, disaster, and famines were major drivers, but I suspect creative decline is another factor for why empires fail to rejuvenate.
Are we late in the game too? (By “we” I’m not sure I mean Western Culture, I think I mean global culture. The world is now running on the same economic operating system and seems to operate within the one creative paradigm.)
Now some of you might be thinking… BUT TECHNOLOGY! AI! VIRTUAL REALITY!
Yes, there’s those. But next time I’ll explain why that’s not enough. I’ll continue unpacking this in the weeks to come.
Making creative work less scary
Creating something good is scary. Why?
Because it’s a BIG GOAL. Big goals are intimidating.
Writing a novel is a BIG GOAL. It’s scary.
Better to start with a small goal. Write an article.
Too big? Write a post.
Start with the easiest goal possible that gets you moving forward on the path.
Don’t feel guilty about it. Set the bar so low you can walk over it.
If you keep doing that task it’ll become easy and you’ll want more. Then raise the bar one level. Write a longer article. Keep raising the bar one level and eventually, the next level will be that novel.
Here’s a great way to set the bar low in creative work.
With a DRAFT.
A draft is an attempt at creating something. It’s a version, it’s a step.
Drafts do not have to be good. Especially a first draft.
The author Earnest Hemingway famously declared, "The first draft of anything is s**t."
Whether it’s text or music or code or art or something else, just start with a first draft. Then make it better. Raise the bar one level. Keep raising it until you’re leaping as high as you can.
The first draft is not only the easiest way to start moving forward, it’s the only way to start moving forward.
Operation 11th Hour
Image created with DALL-E
As mentioned last week, I have one quarter (January - March) to establish a viable business producing educational content. I’ve now dubbed this mission… Operation 11th Hour!
Sounds campy but also serious. Yeah, it is!
This is my final attempt at making an independent business work. If the numbers don’t add up come April, that’s it, and I move on to pursuing in-house opportunities.
The primary revenue vehicle for this is my new video course, Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024. (If you’ve not bought it yet, you should and you can still save $50.)
I’m now two weeks into Operation 11th Hour. How’s it going?
So far… it’s working! However, please brace yourself for a rather enormous “but.”
BUT!
This is the part that often works: the launch.
The challenge when selling digital products is to keep the faucet of sales flowing over the coming weeks and months. It’s very common to see sales stop entirely not long after launch. My daily battle is to keep the sales going.
I got a small win this week because week 2’s sales actually surpassed week 1’s. That’s no mean feat.
A huge win would be if month 2's sales exceeded month 1’s. How can I do that?
Firstly, through ongoing sales efforts, day in and day out.
And secondly, I’m gonna try something crazy…
Video.
I’m sure many of you are old enough to remember when I retired from video content creation. Yes, something like that did happen!
But actually, it was more specific than that. I quit doing the kind of video production I’d been doing for years: making cool videos and praying. That kind of video-making is indeed over.
When you don’t have a business model, video content doesn’t make sense. I now have one, so video makes sense.
For Operation 11th Hour, I’m trying some new things and some uncomfortable things, like ongoing sales. But I also want to play to my strengths. I need to break out the big guns for this battle… and that’s video.
So videos are coming to the YouTube channel! (I also might make a video for a large newspaper I’m sure you’re familiar with.)
Are you somehow not subscribed to my YouTube channel? I command you to go do that too.
When is it okay to use AI art?
AI-generated images sold on Adobe Stock that were inadvertently used by Wacom. Yeah, it’s complicated.
This week several companies found themselves on the wrong side of the internet pitchforks. Posts like this went viral on X.
The AI image generation controversy in a nutshell is this: all image generators were trained on human art. This was done without permission (except Adobe’s Firefly, which used Adobe’s stock library and public domain images). Artists feel that their labor has been exploited in service of replacing them.
(Text generation, like ChatGPT, is much less controversial, although not entirely so.)
As you can see in the examples above, artists spotted these uses of AI imagery. AI art has telltale quirks that identify it as AI-made. If you use AI art publicly, people will know.
If you want to use AI art but you also want to do the right thing, what are you supposed to do?
In my opinion, AI image generation is ethical in these circumstances.
If you do extensive editing, compositing, and other transformations
This is my most important point in favor of AI: if you take AI art, then copy, transform, and combine it into your own creation, that art becomes yours. It’s no longer an AI creation, it’s a human creation. For instance, this clip from Fabdream wasn’t just spit out by an AI. This artist worked hard to create this.
You’re a hobbyist
If you use AI art non-commercially and for fun, that’s fine. Just like using uncleared music samples in free music you give away is fine.
AI art is not the final product
If you use AI imagery as a step within your process, like for storyboards or prototypes, that seems fine. Just like an illustrator can use another person’s illustration temporarily during the creation process.
You’re in AI
If you work in AI or are a member of that community, using AI creations is probably fine because your role is to develop and experiment with these tools. For instance, I used AI art in my new course about creating content with AI.
Remember, even if you’ve been conscientious, if use AI art publicly, you might get negative attention.
When is it not okay to use AI art?
You’re a business
This is the big one. It is primarily businesses that hire artists or license imagery. That means a human artist potentially doesn’t paid if you opt for AI art. AI imagery is simply not worth the negative attention or the meager cost savings. Stock imagery is cheap, plentiful, fast, and high quality. If you’re in a business or run one, just steer clear of AI art. (Again, unless AI is your business.)
You’re in the art community
If you’re in the traditional art community, using AI art will likely offend lots of your peers.
Here are the main things to consider.
Am I displacing a human artist?
Could I have hired an artist or licensed stock instead?
If the answer is yes, it might be best to hire someone or license stock.
Our New Free Guide “An Introduction to Creative AI”
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Wading into a cold sea of indifference
Image created with Midjourney
Prompt: middle-aged man poised to dive into a cold sea of indifference --ar 16:9 --s 50 --v 6.0
Folks, I am bracing for a tough winter. I live in Southern California so it’s not the weather that’s gonna be tough. It’s my professional life. Here’s where I’m at.
If you don’t believe, why bother?
In the spring of last year, I officially pulled the plug on my old career. The business model for that era was this: make the best videos I could, give them away, money happens. That method worked extremely well for me once, about a decade ago, but it was in terminal decline for a while before I finally let it go.
For the rest of 2023, most of my income was generated by awesome freelance projects for people like Sysdig and Sandwich Video, Generation Genius, Nick Milo and Linking Your Thinking, and Bloomberg Law.
But alongside this work, I was creating impressive growth selling educational products through the Everything is a Remix site. My first little hit was a downloadable guide to writing in ChatGPT. I followed that up by selling pre-orders for an on-demand video course about creating content with ChatGPT. That course is by far the most successful product I’ve ever created.
Even though my educational ventures did well last year, it was still a minority of my income and nowhere near being a livelihood.
My objective this year is this: turn my educational work into a real business. That means it entirely provides for me and my family.
And I don’t have a full year to prove this is viable: I have one quarter. If the metrics aren’t good enough come April, it ends there and I look for in-house opportunities.
One of three futures will arrive come spring.
This attempt fails utterly.
I land somewhere in between and have to make a judgment call.
This works well enough to continue the pursuit.
You won’t hear me say this again, but number 1 is the most likely outcome. That’s the reality for all businesses – they mostly fail.
But I’m putting on the blinders… now. I am going to run at number 3 with all my might, with moronic optimism. If you don’t believe, then why bother? I believe.
Weathering my winter of suck
The product that will decide my fate is Creating Content With ChatGPT and AI 2024. If it can generate the right revenue this quarter, then the journey continues onward into the spring. If not, the path ends there and I move on to something else that is not running my own business.
I am by no means a master of online sales, but I’ve done enough to know this: launches are the easy part.
I have loyal fans and this product had a good launch. But I am now leaving the warm confines of my fandom, you guys, the people who know me and like me and trust me. This winter I am wading into a cold sea of indifference.
I will be doing sales and marketing all day, every day, for three months straight, weekends included. And I’ll be doing it to people who don’t know how I am and don’t care. Rejection and above all, indifference will be constant. Every day I’ll need to generate momentum and sales.
This winter is gonna be challenging. Here’s what will help me weather it.
I am extremely fortunate to otherwise have an awesome life. I will be grateful for it throughout.
I’m gonna celebrate every little win, every click, every newsletter subscriber, every sale.
Above all, I’m grateful that I get to give my all and try. I’m prepared, I’m ready, I’m gonna give this everything I’ve got and the chips will fall where they may.
How can I help?
Some of you might be wondering how you can help. Here are a few ideas.
Buy the course (you can still save $50!)
Share the course on social media
Talk to your company or organization about taking the course or bringing me in for instruction, either on-location or virtual.
Every little thing you can do to help spread the word means a lot to me, folks.
Lastly, if you’re still not sure if you think the course is for you, check out this free chapter which I’m sharing with you guys first, My Journey With ChatGPT.
My Journey With ChatGPT
This is a free chapter from my new course, Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024.
To see the whole course, click the link above!
Transcript
I'd like to tell you about my journey with ChatGPT.
When I first saw generative AI — so text generators like GPT as well as image generators like Dall-e, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. When I saw these and tried them I had two contradictory feelings.
Firstly, I was blown away that software could do this. Floored. The most stunned I've been by technology. This software was doing stuff I thought only people could do.
Secondly, for doing actual work, it seemed more awesome than useful. I didn't know really what to do with any of this stuff. I used programs like Photoshop and Final Cut Pro early. After you tried those, there was no confusion about what you would do with this software. You would do your work, just better and faster.
AI seemed awesome and historic, but it didn't click for me, I didn't really get what to do with it.
Anyway, I started using it for kind of minor, support tasks. It was saving me some time, but nothing amazing. But unexpectedly, it grew from there, I kept coming back to AI, in particular to ChatGPT, that became the big one. Image generation, which I will cover in this course, I still think is not yet that useful – at least for me right now.
Why did ChatGPT's role in my work expand?
One of the main reasons was I found ways to work around its limitations, which spotted very quickly when I started using it.
But also I found new ways to use it.
In particular, I made seven discoveries. I found seven incredibly useful things that ChatGPT does. Any one of these justifies using ChatGPT. But there are seven of them. I mean, this software is a big deal. The hype is excessive, but I think those people are closer to being right than the people who are dismissive of this technology.
These seven discoveries I have dubbed The Magnificent Seven. And they are the foundation of this course. There is of course, even more than that here, but these are the game-changers.
So if ChatGPT didn't click for you in the past, for doing real work, you didn't get it, you were like what I do with this B-minus grade text, I'm gonna show you what to do with it.
That was my journey with AI. I went from impressed but not a user, to an impressed user. This journey is still ongoing. It continues to grow for me and AI continues to get better and better and integrated into more and more different kinds of software. Everything is gonna have AI features. I mean it, everything. So it is high time to get on this train, it's still early. We're just getting rolling now.
Up next, I'm going to reveal The Magnificent Seven, the seven AI discoveries I made that changed the game for me.
I present them in ascending order, we're starting at the bottom, each of these is a bigger deal than the last.
The first video is an overview, the second is a walkthrough where I show you how to do real work.
Let's get to it.
Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024 is an on-demand video course about crafting content with ChatGPT and AI. Whether you’re a “content creator” or someone who needs to create content as part of your job, this course will dramatically raise your AI game… fast.
New Year’s Resolutions Work. Let’s Make Some.
Image created with Midjourney and Runway
My new ChatGPT course is live! I’m very proud of it and I think it’ll make a dent in your life. See the end of this article for a special launch promo.
New Year’s resolutions are a tradition with a bit of a bad rep. Sure, most resolutions will fail. Almost all attempts at making change in your life will ultimately fail. You exercise for a while, your enthusiasm fades, your workout sessions taper off, and before long you’re back where you were. You revert to our old ways – and you may find yourself demoralized and ashamed to boot.
Of course, if you keep trying, you will eventually break through. This is a certainty. Every major change I’ve made in my life was preceded by a string of failures. I tried to clean up my diet dozens of times before the change held.
Certain moments, though, give you better odds of creating change that sticks. When you get a clean slate in your life, a reset, it’s a bit easier to change your ways and keep it going. For example, when you move or start a new job or begin a new relationship.
Every year we get a new clean slate at the start of the year. And the changes we make at times like this are a little more likely to stick because we feel less weighed down by our past.
Change is hard and it mostly doesn’t work (unless you never stop trying). But the start of a new year provides an unusually good opportunity to pull it off.
Convinced? Alright, let’s make some resolutions!
Step 1: Give this year a theme
Your theme is your mission for the year, it’s the adventure you’re about to embark on.
For me, 2024 is My Best Year Ever. The main focus is my business. I worked all of 2023 creating the groundwork to build a proper business and livelihood. I’ve now got a superb product, a strong market, and loads of ideas and tactics for marketing and sales. I intend to rock the shit out of this year.
In 2023, I created 2X growth in this business in just six months of focus. This year I want 10X.
This could be your year of simplicity, creativity, giving, health, balance, or any realm you want to improve. (Not every resolution needs to fit the theme, but the most important ones should.) Your theme is what will give your resolutions meaning and purpose.
Step 2: Make some resolutions (not too many)
Now make some resolutions! Reflect on the year past. What went well and what didn’t? What are the areas of your life where you’d like to see improvement? What are some exciting and somewhat risky goals you can make?
Remember: a resolution is an activity, not a goal. My 10X business goal for this year is not a resolution. The resolutions are what will help me achieve that goal. “Lose 10 pounds” is a goal. “No snacking after 7pm” is a resolution.
How many should you make? Certainly no more than ten. If you want to keep things simple, three is always a good number. And if you’ve just got a single thing on your mind, one is just great.
I’ve made a few resolutions for my business and a few for my personal life.
Step 3: Write 'em down and put 'em everywhere
Write down the theme for the year and your resolutions and read them every day. Stick post-it notes everywhere, make them a daily item on your to-do list, write them down each day in your journal, whatever. Occasionally relocate them to someplace fresh.
Celebrate the little wins along the way. Get support from friends and family and be your own biggest cheerleader.
2024 is the year to start using AI
Conveniently enough, I have a recommendation for what one of those resolutions should be. This is the year to learn ChatGPT and AI. You should integrate AI into your work life this year, especially if creating content is part — or all — of your job.
And guess who should teach you? Yep, yours truly!
Learning ChatGPT can do any or all of these:
Raise your content creation game
Help you get more done in the same time
Allow you to work less
I achieved the first two of these while creating this course. The course is a bit better than it would have been without AI, and I created over 2 hours of high-quality content in just 2.5 months of part-time-ish work. Most excitingly, I released it on schedule, on Christmas day. Anybody who knows my history knows launching things on time has never exactly been my superpower.
After just the couple hours it takes to watch this course, plus your own practice, you will be good at working with ChatGPT. (For anyone thinking you can binge random YouTube videos and get the same result, sorry, you definitely won’t.)
Get Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024 now.
The regular price will be $199, but the launch price is just $149. And you can save an additional $25 by using this code at checkout: BESTYEAREVER
That code expires end-of-day this Friday (January 5th).