An AI side project I'm testing this week
With some big goals in 2024 and new AI tools to leverage, it should be an exciting new year. Here's how I'm jumping in with two feet:
Happy Monday folks,
It’s the first “full week” of 2024, with most people finishing up their holidays and catch up from last week. That means full throttle ahead.
Let’s jump in:
Story: an AI side project I’m testing this week
I think 2023 will go down as the year that AI started to change the game and it’s certainly changing how I’m thinking about everything about my business.
At Visto, where we build immigration software in Canada, we’re incorporating it more into our product and will have some big - hopefully industry-changing - AI launches in 2024. Stay tuned for that in future posts.
As a busy entrepreneur, I’m also constantly thinking about how I can leverage it to save time and/or get more done in less time.
For example, building my personal brand. I recently finished my 2023 year in review and finalized my plan for content creation in 2024. I want to keep growing my following and presence on LinkedIn, Youtube, Tiktok and Twitter.
And as a 1.5 man army (my wife helps me repurpose long form videos to short snippets #lifehack), it takes a lot of time so I very carefully test and curate different tools and tech to help do it better and quicker.
For example, I really like using Descript for video/audio editing, clipping, etc. It’s how I edit my weekly vlog, cut it into snippets, add captions, scrape the audio for my podcast and more, in record time. Great tool (not affiliated, wish I was…).
Then I read about the new custom GPT feature that OpenAI recently launched, where you can basically - without any coding - build your own ChatGPT trained off your own data.
Lots of ideas around these, but here’s what I’m testing out this week:
a custom GPT that is trained on all of my LinkedIn content from the last 12 months
this is roughly 100 pages of text, which I think should be sufficient
prompting the custom GPT (JoshGPT?!) with my content ideas for posts I’d like in 2024
evaluating the responses, and at least deciding if they’re good enough as first drafts
Up until now I’ve been writing all of my LinkedIn posts because I think AI isn’t good enough (yet).
It’s still so easy to spot (I’m sure many of you can relate and can spot all of the AI-generated crap on LinkedIn these days) and I want to stand out from the crowd with high quality content that’s in my “own voice”.
But maybe, if a model is trained on enough of my previous content, it’ll be good enough at drafting new content for me?
Only one way to find out. I’ll be testing it this week, and of course, will report back with my findings (what worked well, what didn’t, would I recommend, exactly how I did it).
Key takeaway: we’re in a new era, are you embracing it?
Say what you want about the moral and ethical side of AI, but it’s probably here to stay. And as someone who really wants to build my business and personal brand in 2024 (and beyond), I’m going to make the most of it.
While many might be hesitant and busy arguing about what’s good and bad, I’ll be using it to 1) add incredible new features to our immigration platform at Visto, and 2) pumping out tons of quality content on multiple social media platforms, in multiple formats, and (hopefully) building a bigger audience than ever.
Don’t forget: people once thought that the car was a scary new tool that would never replace horses… I wonder what they missed out on because of it?
Content for the week:
Vlog: had a fun vlog this week talking about sales and segmenting. More specifically, why breaking down your target market into hyper-segmented groups will drastically improve your marketing and sales. That and some other fun stuff as well:
Book(s): I recently finished The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World's Imagination. It’s a biography/history of the company LEGO. I talk about it more in my vlog above, but in short, it was an “okay” read.
It was interesting to learn more about the history of LEGO, but I found it to be extremely detailed to the point of reading like a history book, which wasn’t as exciting as many of the other books I’ve read that are similar. Worth the read with plenty of lessons if you are interested in the company, but not required reading in my opinion.
Next up: Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul
Tiktok: my most viewed Tiktok vid from last week was this clip on why every entrepreneur should be building their personal brand online.
Thanks as always for following along on my journey and have an awesome week,
- Josh Schachnow
Canadian immigration lawyer, CEO at Visto.ai
If you’re looking for more of my help, you can check out:
My immigration tech platform, Visto, that helps Canadian immigration firms prep and file applications much quicker.
Make sure you’re subscribed on Youtube where I post the weekly vlog and am also posting shorter snippets of my tips/advice as Youtube Shorts!
I’m thinking of forming a curated online community for those looking to pump out more content and stay accountable/support each other in 2024. If interested, hit “reply” and let me know