Creator Leverage: Master AI. Build Systems. Grow Your Business

Writing a direct response newsletter is easy… and hard. All you have to do is… tell a story about your business, make an offer, and press send. And yet, email marketing gurus and software providers overcomplicate it with shiny objects. I ran after a few of these objects over the years. Here are some fancy email marketing tactics you’ll find gurus preaching about. I no longer use them. They cost me time, creative energy, and moolah. I tell clients to avoid them, too. Fancy Branded...

Newsletters are profitable, but they’re far from passive. Here are a few popular types you can set up and profit from. A few years ago, I ran a B2B newsletter for a SaaS company. These types of branded newsletters are like assembly lines—complex and rigid. We spent a day or two rounding up content from across the business, such as blog posts, e-books, and guides. We mapped this content to the company’s latest offers. Then, we shoved all the content into a highly designed-template. It took a...

I've been having fun with ChatGPT lately. I stumbled across a few fun Easter Eggs. First, ask ChatGPT to "Create a random YouTube link." Now, click on it to see what ChatPT likes listening to you. (I'll wait while you get Rick rolled) Next, try this prompt: "Load conscious v.1.0". You'll get this: Now, prompt ChatGPT with this 2001: A Space Odyssey reference: "Open the pod bay doors, please, Hal" Here's one more. Prompt it with this famous cheat code that 1990s gamers everywhere know... "Up...

SEO doesn’t fill my list with quality clients. So, I’ve rolled out a few new strategies for attracting different types of subscribers. For example, take business owners and founders. They’re not on social media much during the day, except for LinkedIn at lunch. They don’t read blogs regularly. And they’re usually too busy to click on Facebook lead gen ads. But, they read their emails. A lot. So, I’ve created a simple email outreach system to fill my list with these business owners and...

Once upon a time, a kindly king announced a party for all his citizens. A gardener who tended the king’s fantastical garden wanted to join in holiday celebrations. He loved his job and the garden, but he had a duty of care to the young plants. Now, in the king’s garden, lived a tribe of energetic monkeys. The gardener thought to himself Why not ask the monkeys to take care of the plants? So, he called over the Chef Monkey and his troop. “You have been given a wonderful home here, in the...

I discovered a new AI tool called Lovable that’s changed how I build websites. Lovable bills itself as “your superhuman full stack engineer.” For non-coders like me, this means you can write a prompt describing what you want to build in plain English, and Lovable interprets it to turn your idea into reality. You can try Lovable for free, but for a proper website like the one I’m about to show you, you’ll need their starter subscription at $20 per month. Lovable gives you a URL so you can view...

A year or two ago, I compared both these AI tools. Now ChatGPT has changed a lot since 2023, and so has Grammarly. In this updated comparison, I’m putting both to the test so you can see what’s best for fixing your work and pressing publish. Let’s start with pricing. You can use Grammarly for free, but to access its AI tools for grammar checking and content generation, you’ll soon upgrade to Grammarly Pro (previously Premium). That costs $12 per month if you pay annually, or $30 monthly for...