Hello Reader,

Her glare was strong enough to melt stone.

I was sitting at one of my favorite parks, overlooking the Katherine River. I was sleepily listening to the bird song and the breeze and just generally soaking in the calm peacefulness.

I knew that eventually I'd have to buckle down and focus on the work that I'd brought with me to my outdoors "office", but for the moment it was enough to just sit there and relax.

And besides, it was fun to watch the tourists visiting the park wander around and explore.

Then this older couple on foldable electric bikes caught my eye. They drifted along the flat, looking at the river flowing past. Just meandering and taking their time, as you should in this beautiful place.

And then for some reason, the woman decided she was going to ride up the path to the top of the park. It's quite a steep hill and longer than it looks. And I wasn't surprised when she got about maybe halfway up, ran out of steam and had to get off and push.

She put her muscles into the effort, head down, obviously struggling a bit with the steepness.

And five seconds later, her husband or partner, whoever, saw what was happening. He grinned and followed her, but he took a bit of a wider swing to get more of a run-up, shifted gears, then applied more power.

And went happily scooting all the way up the hill, impudently tooting as he went past his struggling companion. It wasn't just a "ha ha, look how clever I am" toot, either. It was an imperious "move off the path so I can get past" kind of noise.

You could see his impish grin from where I was sitting. And feel her glare right back. If looks were heat rays, he wouldn't have had any hair left.

And I suspect she probably had something to say to him later.

Same hill, different gear

That's most freelance writing careers too. You can push harder on the same pitch, the same rate, the same handful of clients, and wonder why you're still halfway up the hill.

Or you can shift gears. Try a different type of client work, raise your rate, add an income stream that doesn't depend on an editor saying yes.

Here's a small thing to try this week: pick one thing you've been muscling through (a pitch, a client conversation, a task) and ask whether there's a gear change available, not more effort, just a different approach, before you push any harder.

Letting AI take some of the climb

I've been getting braver about handing AI the tasks I've always done manually. My podcast episode pages are a good example. Every time a new episode goes live, I used to build the page myself, pulling in the show notes, the player, all of it. Now Claude does the first pass and I just check it over.

If a full task feels like too big a leap, start smaller. Feed ChatGPT (or your AI tool of choice) your pitch template, your bio, or your rates page and ask it to point out what's outdated or inconsistent. That's the braver bit, because you actually have to look at what it finds.

And while I'm at it, I know I've shared this tip before, but it's absolutely priceless and worth repeating. When you hand a task to ChatGPT (or your AI tool of choice), add one line to your prompt: "ask me as many questions as you need to complete this task properly." It stops the tool from guessing and filling gaps with assumptions, and you get a result closer to right the first time.

Worth a listen

If you want to hear more on where AI actually helps versus where it gets messy, go listen to Ep. 252: AI Is a Toddler With Crayons: How to Rein It In and Put It to Work with Dan Kurtz.

Then go grab yourself your favourite hot drink of choice and think about this question: does what Dan's saying scare you, or excite you with the opportunities? He's talking about access to personal information, and the choice every business owner has to make about using it ethically or not. That's a bigger question than saving time on a task, and it's one only you can answer for your own business.

And that's it for this week. Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Trudy (and Treasa)

P.S. Treasa's running her Content Strategy Bootcamp in August, five live sessions from August 17 to 21, a proper look under the hood at what content strategy actually involves (and how it's different from a content plan). She'll also be taking over these emails for August, so you'll be hearing a lot more from her soon.

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