I’m turning in the final draft of my book this week. That’s wild! It’s lived in the back of my mind for over a year, got really started a month ago, and in a matter of days it’s done and off to the finish line.

Writing it made me sit still longer than I have in a while. I went and counted the hours I’ve spent inside these A.I. tools, and it really is in the thousands. At some point you have to ask yourself what all of it was even for.

Here’s where I landed. It was never A.I. for the sake of A.I. I’m not building large language models or chasing A.G.I. That’s someone else’s life’s work, and for a stretch I was interested in those pieces too, mostly because I loved how fast it let me move.

Taking an idea, refining it, thinking it the whole way through, and building it into something someone else can pick up. That’s context training. That’s the book, Context Training, out September 4.

Finishing it handed me a question I haven’t been able to shake since, and I want you to sit with it too.

Know what you love, then promote it

Here’s the question. Your honest answer tells you more than any strategy session ever could.

Imagine no one could ever know you did it. You couldn’t post it, couldn’t film it, couldn’t tell a single soul. And you would never make one dollar from it. What would you still do?

Now the twist that makes it honest. What is the thing you would spend your own money to do? You’d work the job, take the cash, and pour it right back into this. The thing you pay for, not the thing that pays you.

That’s the thing. And it’s usually something you’ve gotten good at for years without even noticing, to the point that you don’t call it a skill.

For me, it’s travel. I’ve been doing it for decades. Over a dozen countries, more than thirty states, three continents, hundreds of towns most people would never think to stop in. I’ve lived in eight states myself. I’m the one who finds the single good vegan meal in a place with no reason to have one, who knows which playground fits the kid who bolts for the tallest slide and the kid who lives for the swings. I’d do every bit of it if no one ever knew, and I pay to do it. I mean we've put 40k miles on our brand new truck since October and I've stayed at over 10 hotels so far in 2026 alone. I do this. 25+ years in before I ever called it a skill.

That’s your North Star. Everything else is just how you fund it. And here’s where A.I. finally fits, off in the background. It’s never the point. It runs the systems around the thing you love, the finding, the planning, the busywork, so you get more of the actual thing.

Here’s the part I'm exploring with my other ventures. A.I. doesn’t have to be a business about A.I. If I go all in on the thing I love and build content around it, A.I. is what runs the systems behind that content. The planning, the sorting, the logistics of landing somewhere new with two kids and finding the good stuff fast. That’s a completely different business than teaching A.I. for its own sake. The love stays the point. A.I. just runs the machine behind it.

Then promote it

Knowing what you love is half of it. The other half is being willing to say it out loud.

You cannot make everybody happy. That’s not a mindset, it’s math. So make yourself happy, make the thing you actually believe in, and trust that your people find you there. Your vibe attracts your tribe. It always has.

Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate. So much of what passes for content online is someone naming what’s wrong and stopping there. All problem, no build. When a whole identity gets organized around what you hate, you never actually make anything. Point at what’s broken if you want, then go build the answer, even a small one.

And when you share it, share where it’s going. People will tell you to show the messy middle, and there’s real truth in that, the process is relatable. But be honest about what actually pulls people in. It’s the destination. The transformation. The proof that the path led somewhere.

That isn’t cynical. It’s how persuasion works, and it’s the most studied pattern we have. We follow the people who got where we want to go. It’s why a room full of people building toward a real number, next to someone who’s already hit it, is worth paying for. The mess matters as the road, not as the point. So build in the open, and keep pointing at the result.

So there it is. Know the thing you’d do for free, the thing you’d pay to do. Then promote it like it matters, because it does. That’s the whole game.

A nontechnical A.I. job, an open stage, and a $10,000 grant

Three doors this week, and every one rewards knowing your own strengths and saying them out loud. A six-figure role that never asks you to code, a stage you can pitch for free, and a real cash grant that’s open all year.

This Week on the Podcast

The show changed, and I want you in on it. Every episode now is short and built to act on, not just think about. One clear idea, one thing you can actually do today, and a resource you can download and run right away, the prompts, the steps, the exact wording. That’s the format I’m testing for the foreseeable future, because I’d rather hand you something you can use than something you just nod along to.

See all of Season 3 and follow the show →

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