The AI tools I'm using and tinkering with (so far)
In my last email I touched on my plan for growing my social media presence in 2025 and some of the tools I use to do it.
I’ve dabbled in some other sales/marketing strategies like cold calling, paid ads, all that fun stuff, but found the quality wasn’t great and/or they were too costly/painful.
After my last email though, I got some questions about AI tools in general so I wanted to share my full “AI tech stack”. Or for those who, like me, don’t/didn’t know what the heck a “tech stack” is, it’s what the cool kids call their list of tech tools.
These days we have more tools at our fingertips than ever before, and if you aren’t at least tinkering with them, I think you’ll be left in the dust by 2027 at the latest.
In no particular order, here are the main AI tools I’m using every week and why:
For summaries, research, analysis, planning, etc., I prefer ChatGPT. I find it the "smartest" of the big LLMs right now.
For writing I prefer Claude. The output reads much more natural and human.
For uploading documents, text, etc., to then play around with and Q&A, I'm using Google's Notebook LM. Insanely useful for building your own help centres on certain topics.
For video recording, editing, transcribing and more, I use Descript. It's incredible. Editing now takes minutes, even for people without a design bone in their body like me.
For splitting longform videos into short clips and posting on social media, Opus Pro is incredible. I tried it years ago, along with some of the competitors, and found them all mediocre so didn't bother using them. But now? Insanely good and convenient.
Lastly, for building automated AI multi-step workflows, I've been playing around with Make.com. I’d say start with the other tools above first to get the hang of them, then you can use Make to tie them together.
Note: those are affiliate links, so feel free to just google them instead, or if you use them, you’ll support the substack for free!
As always, I’ll continue to use and tinker with these tools, then share my feedback and suggestions with you.
One last note: don’t forget that these are just tools. You don’t have to dive in and automate everything with AI right now. Start playing with them here and there, as needed (depending on your business needs), and then expand based on what’s working well for you.
The tools are getting so much better, so quickly, that you don’t want to be clueless about them when they become our overlords and make us bow down to them more mainstream and change your respective industries forever.
And if you need any help? Let me know, I work with only a few people per month to help leverage AI for business/personal branding growth.
Have a great day,
- Josh Schachnow
Canadian lawyer, CEO at Visto.ai