Comes a question from a tech-curious reader named Jordan:
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Yo John quick question, is the Daily Email Habit built with the AI tools you mentioned building in the “the death of infoproducts” email?
There seems to be a lot of tech behind this (Especially with the streak stuff) and it only makes me wonder.
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I mainly bring up this question so I can gush about AI. Have you heard about AI? It’s pretty incredible.
At the moment, AI is not doing the content behind the scenes at Daily Email Habit. I write each daily puzzle by hand, and I find the day’s meme or cartoon by hand also.
But as Jordan guessed, AI definitely helped (read: did everything) with the tech.
ChatGPT wrote all the back-end code I’m using to track the streaks for different Daily Email habit subscribers — how many days straight they have been sending a daily email — and to display each user’s streak inside of the Daily Email Habit email (not technically trivial).
And if in the future I decide to add more bells and whistles to Daily Email Habit, you can bet my ragged little AI elf will be the one doing all the work.
The reason why I’m telling you this:
If you’re only offering what you do as courses, or coaching, or really any kind of strict DIY how-to info, it’s worth thinking how to turn some or all of that into a cross-cut saw, or a calculator, or a Wordle-like daily puzzle, or at least how to add in a streak counter.
Because right now, creating tools or devices or games has become shockingly easy and quick, even if you don’t want to write a line of code. And a tool or a device or game can make your customers’ experience much nicer… and it can create a little moat around what you offer, beyond just your personal authority.
And AI does it all. Like I said, it’s pretty incredible.
Except, how do you decide what to tell AI to create?
How do you have cool ideas?
How do you find out what device or tool or game people in your market might want, and might be willing to pay for, so you can command AI to go down to the shed and make it?
Also, how do you develop a sense of taste, so that you don’t just accept the first thing that AI comes back with, but keep going until it matches your vision?
And once you do create something you’re happy with, how do you package it up and sell it?
For all that, my answer is as familiar as it is fundamental:
You write.
Writing gives you a point of view. It gives you a sense of taste. It exposes you to ideas, both your own (which might disappear otherwise) and from other people (which you might ignore otherwise).
Writing puts you in contact with people in your market, so you can get your finger on the pulse of what people are interested in and are willing to pay paying for.
And of course, writing helps you make better decisions — because writing is really an exercise in decision making.
In short, if you want to get the most out of AI, write.
It might sound self-serving when I say that. So let me share a message I got a couple days ago, from Justin Zack, who is the Head of Partnerships at Write With AI, a paid newsletter with 54,000 subscribers, all about how to… write with AI.
I figure if anybody has the inside scoop on getting AI to work for you, it’s Justin. And yet, Justin signed up for my Daily Email Habit service, so he can write and so he can think. Says Justin:
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I’m 2 days into the daily email habit (which means I have a 1-day streak, lol).
BUT, I friggin’ love it.
Exactly what I needed to get me thinking about my list and how to write better emails.
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Actually, I just checked, and Justin’s streak is up to three days now.
Maybe you can start your own streak?
To to find out the daily email puzzle I’m using as a starting point for each of my own emails… the same puzzle that folks like Justin are using to get over the initial hurdle, to write something more interesting, and to write something different than they might write otherwise… take a look here: