Let AI Slice It. Never Let AI Say It.

You can’t let AI say your point of view... only slice it.

Have you seen all the AI backlash? (or the latest Substack AI detection tool!?!?)

Wow, people spend billions convincing us to write with AI and now people are screaming they hate it.

People swear they can spot (sometimes smell) AI content a mile away.

So for those of us who bought into the vision of AI helping us run our content machines... what are we supposed to do?

I wrote a book a few years back called the Simple Online Business Model.

It was the basics of what it took to keep a online business going, even as a busy homeschool dad/CEO.

I’ve been refining my method for years but as I took time off from posting on social and away from writing newsletters I really tried to get a visual image of how I could run my business.

Then it hit me, like a box of rocks (and I’m as dumb as one sometimes), it all made so much sense.

So here is the formula I see and how I’m reapproaching content writing for both my businesses so I can “just keep spinning” content up without becoming AI slop.

I call it the Content Flywheel.

Content Flywheel

Using AI or my own well-worn brain, that still works most days, (didn’t fry it totally with Claude and GPT last year… thank God!) I find a topic.

The topic is the “Core Content” of my weekly content flywheel.

Then out from that topic spins all other content for the week.

1. Core Content (Ideas)

2. Conversations (Newsletter/Podcast/Video)

3. Clips (Posts/Shorts/Carousel/Soundbites)

And it piggybacks on the model I laid out for you a couple episodes back of the Business/Company Flywheel.

1. Core (category/book)

2. Conversations

3. Content

Someone tuning into your podcast each week is having a conversation with you in their ears. There is an existing relationship.

Same with newsletter or YouTube channel. But how does someone typically get into that inner band?

Through content.

No conversation (even one way) happens if they don’t know you exist.

So we use that outer band of the flywheel to pull people into the inner band.

Here is what that practically looks like.

Core

You come up with the idea.

Here is what a core idea looks like. (this is a topic I came up with for my adjuster audience)

“16,000 Tomorrow vs. 1 Maybe
16,000 daily US auto claims against the single predicted major hurricane.”

So you do the same for your audience. Come up with a topic idea and hook.

That one idea is my content flywheel for a week and its rooted in my own book the Independent Adjuster’s Playbook.

Bonus if you find an idea that you can circle that’s from your book you have written or one you are writing.

Conversation

Next I actually write my newsletter… like type it or talk it.... myself... without AI... back in the stone ages I know.

Whether you can chat into a mic with an outline or tip tap on your keyboard determines what works best for you.

I’ve done both, took an idea, recorded it, but most times I type it out.

Doesn’t matter how, point is YOU do it. This is a conversation you are having with your audience.

You can’t outsource this all out to AI. This is where we mess up. We mess up our most important content. The conversation piece to our audience, and we become AI slop.

Studies are showing that people pay more for stuff when a human actually makes it. Like “handmade” but for the digital age.

So take the time to actually write your content.

Now I’m not the only person saying to do this.

Ryan Levesque, author of the widely popular book Ask and his upcoming book, Return to Real, practices this same concept.

He writes his newsletter, reads it as a podcast, then his team posts content for the week using those as the ingredients.

He is championing the idea of “Return to Real” by actually writing your core newsletter and then and only then using AI to do some repurposing.

Both Ryan and I, and many others are advocating for humanity in our content.

We cannot lose our voice to our AI… so we have to do the hard work to write the Conversation pieces.

Once you have your thoughts, your human thoughts, you can use the leverage of AI to create other content truly in your own voice.

Clips

Once you have your 1000-2000 word Conversation Content (or however long you want to write it) you can use AI to slice and dice and everything nice and be actually reflective of your voice.

You did the thinking, you didn’t outsource that, so we can leverage AI like team members to make stuff.

• Image post

• Carousel

• Infographic

• Soundbite

• Video Clip
  

These pieces of content go out in the world looking for people that will be helped by or resonate with the content.

If they like what they see they’ll sign up for a newsletter (usually through a CTA lead magnet) or follow you on YouTube or subscribe to your podcast.

That’s when you’ve gotten them into your weekly conversations.

They’ll be way more likely to see your content in the future. The job of the conversation content is then to keep pulling them into your Business Flywheel core... to get them to make a purchase.

To become a part of the story of your business.

Because at the beating heart of every successful business are the people who are raving fans.

Your superconsumers.

I hope that helps you think about content in a new way.

Quit thinking about content in “what should I post on LinkedIn?”

The question is what is this weeks “Core Idea?” and “What’s going to help someone and as a result move them closer to a conversation with me?”

Write that newsletter, record that podcast, then what to post on LinkedIn, Substack, Instagram, or Facebook becomes a logical conclusion that has your fingerprints all over it... not Claude’s.

That’s the whole rule I live by now.

Let AI slice it. Never let AI say it.

The saying is the human part, the slicing is just packaging

Guard the line between the two like your voice depends on it... because it does.

Keep spinning.

- Coach Chris

If you want to learn more about the concept of flywheels and how to build a business with one, check out my book, Mini Book Flywheel: How to Design a Category That Makes Your Business Unforgettable.

P.S. Yes, if you were wondering about the screenshots, I’ve been developing a tool around the concept of flywheels… stay tuned... more to come in the coming weeks.

P.P.S. Ironic the week I post this I see this as I go to post it. An “AI tool that grades whether it was written by a human or AI”. Ironic. Substack is using AI to judge if it is human or not. But it proves my point! People care if you wrote it or not.