📝 LIB: Organising Your Life, A Father's Reflections on Loss & AI affiliates

Sup friends 👋,

Been a while! I’m currently in Mexico, having just finished a ‘Life Design Retreat’ with 15+ people that me & a few buddies organised.

I’m still working through my reflections, but this is a good force function to reflect on learnings that are top of mind:

• People are everything - we were at 8 people at the start of November. By the start of the retreat three weeks later, it was 15. I was worried what that might do for the vibe, but the people we brought on were absolutely phenomenal. I’m hands-down in favour of 15-20 person retreats if we can curate the right people.

• How do we curate the right people? - which then leads me to ask, how do we know someone is gonna fit the group vibe? This is more difficult to unpack, but I’d say: willingness to listen, provide feedback, be vulnerable about your own challenges and a couple more i’m still mulling over.

• Deeply think about the participant experience - One thing I think we did well was set the tone around the workshop experience we wanted to deliver, which in turn made everyone else think about how they’d deliver their workshop to elevate the participant experience. We also put together welcome packages and adjusted things in real-time (e.g. decided against an afternoon excursion to give more unstructured / organic time), which ultimately improved the experience people had in fostering rich conversations, playing games and hanging out together.

Lots more learnings to come, but here are a few snaps:

We’re definitely organising round #2 in 2024 - keep your eyes peeled for more deets 👀

Onto five interesting things I came across this week - let’s get it! 💪

#1: The 6 buckets to organise your life

Came across this post by Dickie Bush and think it’s a great breakdown of how to organise your life. I’ve usually grouped everything in my life under one bucket, so I like the call-out for specific sub-buckets.

#2: The rise of the AI affiliate

I have no idea how to link someone’s newsletter in my inbox if they don’t host the content on a public-facing website, so i’ll just write about it and if you wanna read more, reply to me and i’ll forward you the email.

Greg Isenberg writes a weekly newsletter on emerging business trends and multipreneurship - i’ve enjoyed his content over the years, even if i don’t like the word ‘multipreneur’.

He recently wrote about the history of affiliates, and spoke about 2024 being the rise of the AI affiliate - some of the trends he outlined:

1. Faceless Social - both personal and brand accounts can use AI to regularly produce diverse content, from written posts to animated or video content. AI tools are not just writing scripts; they're also animating and compiling videos. This enables marketers to effortlessly create high-quality, engaging content at a large scale, perfectly tailored for affiliate marketing.

2. Personalized AI Chatbots: Chatbots are the new search. OpenAI's GPTs. If billions of people are finding their content through bots like GPTs, these bots will be the new wild west in affiliate marketing. They'll be personalised sales assistants providing personalised product recommendations.

3. AI Niche Websites: The proliferation of AI-written SEO articles can dominate search engine rankings. It's a game-changer for organic search marketing.

Tons more opportunities worth exploring in this space.

#3: Draw and build a web app on your phone with AI

Came across this twitter post showcasing the power of GPT-4 Vision - you can essentially convert your drawing into HTML using PencilKit and GPT-4.

#4: How to sell $250k worth of ads in 60 days

Wouter Teunissen was part of the Milk Road team (crypto news site with 300k+ subscribers) and wrote about his experience selling $250k+ worth of newsletter ads (with zero experience).

Lots of good lessons in here, such as:

• Have a well-defined audience + well-defined value prop

• Avoid having long, boring cold emails

• Best practices on having a good media kit

#5: A father’s reflection on the sudden loss of his son

This is a tear-jerker - I regret reading this in a coffee shop.

The article is written by a father three weeks after the sudden passing of his young son as he wrestles with the trauma, regrets, and meaning.

Some important advice for all of us:

And lyrics from a song that meant a lot to them:

A hard—but important—read.

📚 Stuff I didn’t get time to listen to or read:

#1: The Best Advice from JL Collins

JL Collins runs a financial independence podcast that i’ve loosely followed - saw this podcast by Mad Fientist documenting the best advice he’s given. Haven’t had time to listen but the highlights seem interesting - they include:

• Why index investing is superior to active investing

• Thoughts on stock picking and actively-managed funds

• The three keys to becoming wealthy

• Why your house may not be a good investment

Will undoubtedly make time to listen before my flight home!

That’s all for today - feel free to respond and let me know what resonated w you and if you like the format 🙂 

Fahim