Almost Timely News: ๐️ Free 15 Minute Consultation... From AI (2025-07-20)
Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Free 15 Minute Consultation... From AI (2025-07-20)Operators are not standing by and no one will call you
Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Free 15 Minute Consultation... From AI (2025-07-20) :: View in Browser
The Big Plug👉 My new book, Almost Timeless: 48 Foundation Principles of Generative AI is now available! Content Authenticity Statement100% of this week's newsletter was generated by me, the human. You will see bountiful AI outputs in the video. Learn why this kind of disclosure is a good idea and might be required for anyone doing business in any capacity with the EU in the near future. Watch This Newsletter On YouTube 📺 Click here for the video 📺 version of this newsletter on YouTube » Click here for an MP3 audio 🎧 only version » What's On My Mind: A Free 15 Minute Consultation... From AI?If you’ve been on LinkedIn or your inbox for more than five minutes, you’ve likely seen an offer that goes like this: “Hey person, I noticed {surface level observation about you and/or your business}. Our company does {somewhat related thing} and can {list of outlandish results}. Let’s set up a free 15 minute consultation!” There’s a good chance you’ve already mentally filled in the blanks with whatever the last obnoxious pitch was. Yet these pitches aren’t inherently wrong. Like any good scam, they’re targeted not at people who don’t have problems, but at people who have problems serious enough that they’ll grasp at any straw. When you’re drowning, anything looks like a lifeline, even if it’s a shark’s ass. That got me thinking… well, you’re going to get a sloppy assessment and a hard sales pitch if you even so much as sneeze in the general direction of one of these pitches. But what if that kernel of truth resonates, even if you wish it didn’t? For example, take this very real pitch: "Hi Christopherspenn.com, I am impressed with your almosttimely.substack.com newsletter is going well [sic] but you are missing key opportunities to grow your audience with the content. I am expert content marketing agency [sic] and can to help [sic] 5x your newsletter results through good content marketing. I helped brands like Dell, Gucci, and KFC 10x their results in content. Here is my calendly link for a free 15 minute consultation." Let's ignore the word salad in spots and the weird grammar for a moment. What if there was a grain of truth to this? Am I missing key opportunities? If so, what are they, and how could I know? The answer is: let's take that 15-minute consultation... but not from the person. Let's build an AI automation to do the 15-minute consultation for us. Part 1: Mise En PlaceAs always, before we undertake a project like this, we should have some ingredients on hand. We never, ever just leap straight to technology and tools, much as I might want to. What things do we need? Well, first, we should see if 5x to 10x newsletter results is even a thing. What does that mean? Using Katie Robbert's Trust Insights 5P Framework, the fifth P is performance - what outcomes constitute results? For me, my results are inquiries to speak at events for reassuringly expensive fees, and consulting engagements through Trust Insights. If either of those things happen, then my newsletter is doing a great job. This is our Purpose, the first of the 5Ps. The intermediate KPIs that lead to those results are people like you reading my newsletter. That data is readily available - after all, if no one reads this newsletter, then no one knows I'm available to help them. I've also got something most newsletters don't, because most people never ask: I have NPS scores for every issue of the newsletter, based on the poll a little bit later. It's there in every issue. So we'll need those numeric results, probably in JSON. We'll need my newsletter's ideal customer profile, which we've built previously. That contains my target audience, the people I need to reach who eventually can buy what I'm selling. We'll want to know what the general best practices are for high-performing newsletters like mine in the B2B marketing space, so that I can better assess what I am or am not doing well. We'll need my newsletter content itself. That's critical, because it contains what you actually get. And we'll need how I market and distribute my newsletter. Without that, there's no way for us to judge whether or not I'm missing opportunities. All this is covered in the Trust Insights AI-Ready Marketing Strategy Kit (free!), so if you want to do this for yourself, the kit will help you assemble a lot of it. I have most of these pieces from previous newsletters, but the one I've never actually sat down and discussed is how I do distribution. So what I'll do is grab my phone, turn on the Voice Memos app, and record all that. This is part of Process. Once I have all the pieces, I'll put them in a folder on my computer, all in the same file formats, Markdown for text, JSON for numbers. For AI purposes, Markdown is the lingua franca of AI. It's a format that's lightweight, easy for humans and machines to read, and well structured for AI to understand. Along with JSON, it's one of the two essential formats you should know. I personally prefer to put different formats in their own folders, so my folder structure might look like this:
Part 2: The WorkflowLet's start thinking about the workflow. Ultimately, we want to perform a detailed content marketing analysis with an eye towards 5x improvements in results, like the hard sales pitch said. So, based on my average open rate of about 16% give or take, what would be a 5x improvement? Mathematically, that would be an 80% open rate which is ludicrous. My highest open rate is 26%, so that would be a 62% improvement if I could maintain an open rate that high. That's not 5x, but it's realistic AND it's probably achievable if I did it once. That's our goal, then. We want a consultation to explore how to get open rates from 16% to 26%. How will we get this consultation done in an automated way? We'll use an AI coding agent. Now, before you run screaming, we're not going to do any coding. Instead, we're going to use a coding tool for non-coding purposes, because under the hood, all the AI agent coding tools just use regular language models. What makes the AI coding tools valuable is that they're programmed to handle multiple tasks sequentially and autonomously, only coming back to us when they need specific approvals. That's super valuable. Broadly then, what we want the coding tool to do is to read our support materials, read each issue of the newsletter, read the results, and perform an analysis of the results that lets us understand what's working and what's not. Generally speaking, if we have a series of topics and we have numeric outcomes, we can use classical AI - not generative - to perform a regression analysis to determine what MIGHT be causal. Part 3: The Prompt StructureTo pull this off, we need to give our coding tool a very specific set of instructions, meta-instructions for how to do this task. As I said, they are LLMs under the hood, so they can accept any kind of prompt that's compatible with their underlying model. Our prompt might look something like this:
All this can go in a top-level file called workplan.md in my folder so that we can just tell the AI coding agent to follow the work plan. What we've got here is a detailed work plan for the AI agent to execute. Part 4: It's Magic! (No It's Not)Once we've assembled all the pieces, we now choose the coding agent of our choice. There are so many to choose from; my recommendation is for you to use the one most compatible with your ecosystem. For example:
If you have multiple choices, choose the ecosystem that, for what you've already done, you know tends to write the best. Open the coding environment of your choice. For this exercise in the video version, I'll use Claude Code. I find it tends to work the best for this particular kind of use case, but all the different coding agents are roughly comparable in terms of capabilities. Once the analysis is done, read it, review it, ask follow up questions, and most important - do something with it. Part 5: Wrapping UpAI agents like coding agents are deceptive in that they're marketed as coding tools. They are, unquestionably, but they're also capable of far more than just coding. Any task that's a multi-step task which requires little interaction from us is fair game for these tools to process, so think about what you do currently that you could provide to a coding agent to execute on. It doesn't have to be code - though in our example, we snuck a little in - as long as it can run without much supervision besides you answering questions here and there. Think about things like writing a technical manual from a series of input documents, or following a prompt structure for a repeatable output, or processing data and turning it into reports - all those tasks are fair game for an agent to try working on. And with many coding agents having some capability included in paid AI plans, or through APIs that - for tasks like these - won't cost more than a few dollars per run, bringing an AI agent to life within an infrastructure that's already well-known is a straightforward win for you. The best part is that we got our free 15 minute consultation (okay, I cheated in that a lot of the document prep took way longer than 15 minutes, but you should have those documents on hand anyways. Also, it's part of probably what you're already paying for so it's not technically completely free) and we don't have to endure endless sales pitches and desperate calls and emails from a company we probably aren't going to buy from anyway. Give it a try. You might be surprised by the results. I certainly was. The real power of this comes from the second and subsequent times you run it. Once you work out all the details, the next time you just add new data, let it run, get a sandwich, come back in 15 minutes, and your updated task is done, waiting for you. How Was This Issue?Rate this week's newsletter issue with a single click/tap. Your feedback over time helps me figure out what content to create for you. Here's The UnsubscribeIt took me a while to find a convenient way to link it up, but here's how to get to the unsubscribe. If you don't see anything, here's the text link to copy and paste: https://almosttimely.substack.com/action/disable_email Share With a Friend or ColleagueIf you enjoy this newsletter and want to share it with a friend/colleague, please do. Send this URL to your friend/colleague: https://www.christopherspenn.com/newsletter For enrolled subscribers on Substack, there are referral rewards if you refer 100, 200, or 300 other readers. Visit the Leaderboard here. Advertisement: Bring Me In To Speak At Your EventElevate your next conference or corporate retreat with a customized keynote on the practical applications of AI. I deliver fresh insights tailored to your audience's industry and challenges, equipping your attendees with actionable resources and real-world knowledge to navigate the evolving AI landscape.  👉 If this sounds good to you, click/tap here to grab 15 minutes with the team to talk over your event's specific needs. If you'd like to see more, here are: ICYMI: In Case You Missed ItThis week, we had a lot of fun on Thursday doing some basic web design with generative AI on the Trust Insights livestream.
Skill Up With ClassesThese are just a few of the classes I have available over at the Trust Insights website that you can take. PremiumFree
Advertisement: New AI Book!In Almost Timeless, generative AI expert Christopher Penn provides the definitive playbook. Drawing on 18 months of in-the-trenches work and insights from thousands of real-world questions, Penn distills the noise into 48 foundational principles—durable mental models that give you a more permanent, strategic understanding of this transformative technology. In this book, you will learn to:
Stop feeling overwhelmed. Start leading with confidence. By the time you finish Almost Timeless, you won’t just know what to do; you will understand why you are doing it. And in an age of constant change, that understanding is the only real competitive advantage. 👉 Order your copy of Almost Timeless: 48 Foundation Principles of Generative AI today! What's In The Box? Here's a 5 Minute TourHere's a 5 minute video tour of the course so you can see what's inside.  Get Back to WorkFolks who post jobs in the free Analytics for Marketers Slack community may have those jobs shared here, too. If you're looking for work, check out these recent open positions, and check out the Slack group for the comprehensive list. Advertisement: Free AI Strategy KitGrab the Trust Insights AI-Ready Marketing Strategy Kit! It's the culmination of almost a decade of experience deploying AI (yes, classical AI pre-ChatGPT is still AI), and the lessons we've earned and learned along the way. In the kit, you'll find:
If you want to earn a black belt, the first step is mastering the basics as a white belt, and that's what this kit is. Get your house in order, master the basics of preparing for AI, and you'll be better positioned than 99% of the folks chasing buzzwords. 👉 Grab your kit for free at TrustInsights.ai/aikit today. How to Stay in TouchLet's make sure we're connected in the places it suits you best. Here's where you can find different content:
Listen to my theme song as a new single: Advertisement: Ukraine 🇺🇦 Humanitarian FundThe war to free Ukraine continues. If you'd like to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has set up a special portal, United24, to help make contributing easy. The effort to free Ukraine from Russia's illegal invasion needs your ongoing support. 👉 Donate today to the Ukraine Humanitarian Relief Fund » Events I'll Be AtHere are the public events where I'm speaking and attending. Say hi if you're at an event also:
There are also private events that aren't open to the public. If you're an event organizer, let me help your event shine. Visit my speaking page for more details. Can't be at an event? Stop by my private Slack group instead, Analytics for Marketers. Required DisclosuresEvents with links have purchased sponsorships in this newsletter and as a result, I receive direct financial compensation for promoting them. Advertisements in this newsletter have paid to be promoted, and as a result, I receive direct financial compensation for promoting them. My company, Trust Insights, maintains business partnerships with companies including, but not limited to, IBM, Cisco Systems, Amazon, Talkwalker, MarketingProfs, MarketMuse, Agorapulse, Hubspot, Informa, Demandbase, The Marketing AI Institute, and others. While links shared from partners are not explicit endorsements, nor do they directly financially benefit Trust Insights, a commercial relationship exists for which Trust Insights may receive indirect financial benefit, and thus I may receive indirect financial benefit from them as well. Thank YouThanks for subscribing and reading this far. I appreciate it. As always, thank you for your support, your attention, and your kindness. See you next week, Christopher S. Penn Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Almost Timely Newsletter, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.
|
Comments