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How AI Podcasts Drive Adoption, Adventure, and Self-Actualization

When I conduct a Small Agency Assessment, one of the ways that I help make the recommendations stick is by creating a bespoke podcast using the audio overview feature in NotebookLM, the new hotness coming out of Google. Far too often have I seen a business get really great advice but then don't do much with it, mainly because the advice wasn't easy to transmit throughout the business.

It's hard to take a series of insights, distill it to its key actionable points while retaining just enough context, then repackage the results so it's easily passed around, easily understood, and easily acted upon. You probably have a binder, a report, or held a conversation that should have gone somewhere but ended up nowhere.

NotebookLM allows me to eliminate that problem.

For those of you who aren't immersed in the fever dream of AI hype, NotebookLM comes packed with two very unique features:

1. User-specified Sources: Unlike many AI tools that use the entire internet to fuel its responses, NotebookLM allows you to specify what sources you want it to use. You can upload a research paper, link a YouTube video, or attach a series of Google Docs and then the AI pretty exclusively only searches and responds using those pieces of information.
   • Why this is innovative: AI responses that have a limited set of sources are far more accurate, hallucinate far less, cite EXACTLY where it is pulling responses, and provides a tightly scoped answer.
   • TL;DR- The AI is more precise.
2. Audio Overview: This feature scans all the specific sources and provides an EERILY LIFELIKE podcast between Generic Man and Generic Woman, complete with banter, analysis, reflective commentary, and slightly corny jokes.
   1. Why this is innovative: When you hear it, you'll know. I'm sharing three examples below; you're going to be blown away.

Ok, Dan, it's 2024 and this is yet another cool new AI tool: so what?

Well, I've found three great use cases where communicating lots of information through an AI-generated podcast super valuable:

Use Case 1: Upleveling Customer Experience: You've already heard about how I use it for the Small Agency Assessment: I can make a written report far more consumable, easy to share with team members, compelling, and easy to implement.

I also add a secret sauce to NotebookLM that's a codex of small marketing agency best practices around leadership, communication, etc. to provide deeper documentation to support specific client pain points.

Here's an audio overview for a fictional marketing agency, Opportunity Marketing.

Use Case 2: Dungeons and Dragons: Yeah, I'm in a D&D group, which probably shocks nobody. I got into this roleplaying/storytelling game back during the pandemic and over the past four years, my friends and I have adventured in a fantasy world for over 20 4-hour game sessions. We're talking over 80 hours of gametime, immersed in a massive fantasy world with complex politics, lore, backstories, and inventories.

And when we met two weeks ago, we got a 13-minute recap that was interesting (to me and my friends) and easy to listen to:

Use Case 3: Performance Reviews: I annually write an Entrepreneurship Manifesto (rationalizing why I still want to be an entrepreneur), I create Annual Reports (summarizing Learn to Scale's performance and my thoughts as its CEO), I've done the 30-Day Question Challenge twice (a series of 30 self-reflection question prompts), and more.

I've got five years of self-reflection documentation and I absolutely hate re-reading my own musings. If you ever had a journal and rediscovered it years later, you know: it's painful to see how dumb I was.

I was able to upload all that drivel into NotebookLM, ask it questions like I would do for an employee's performance review, as well as rip an audio podcast that was so accurate and discerning that on my first listen, it made me sob.

This AI gets me 😭😭😭

If you have an innovative use for NotebookLM, send it my way! I'm always interested in hearing how people make new technology work for them.

A TL;DR from the CRO

If you lay around waiting until AI is "good enough" to spend some time to learn how to use it, you should ask yourself: what does Good Enough really look like to you?

-Roman Noodles, Chief Ruff Officer

Follow Up Giveaway From Our Birthday

Last week, Learn to Scale celebrated its Five Year Birthday by sending out nineteen different resources: guides, ebooks, weird stuff, etc. If you missed it, check your inbox for "A Five Year Birthday Present From Us to You"

One final resource that I wanted to share is our Annual Report Template. Every year I carve out some time to do a full-year retrospective to learn from my wins and fails from the year. This is a separate activity from doing yearly strategic planning (which is something I typically do at the end/start of the calendar year).

I find it INCREDIBLY useful to do a retrospective a few months before the goal-setting. It gives me some time to integrate lessons learned, refocus on my goals for Q4, creates a point-in-time snapshot of the business (to fuel performance reviews like the one linked above) and- in the most practical sense- it keeps me from spending too much time doing non-revenue generating activities in the month.

Here's the final birthday gift: steal my Annual Report and make it work for your business.

I'm travelling for some client work in charming Sheboygan, WI, and I asked, "What's something pretty local for a Boston guy like me to do?"

Multiple answers: Go to a supper club.

So, of course I went to a supper club. I'm food-motivated, unlike CRO Roman Noodles.

The experience was delightful! I got the customary drink (brandy old fashioned, sour), the recommended meal (prime rib, queen), the relish tray (pickled carrots, baby corn, olives, peppers), and more. The best part was that all the other patrons looked like they had been going there for at least 30 years.

There's something enthralling about chatting with a gang of retirees in their local watering hole in a tiny town surrounded by corn fields...and holy smokes the prime rib was good.

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Hanging out with nonnas in Wisconsin,

Dan from Learn to Scale​

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​PS. Looking to make it to Rainbow Road? I know a guy who can help.​