#40: AI-Powered Diaries, Proper Prompts, Wardrobe Makeovers and Consistent Characters

A very merry Monday to you

Did you know there are now 27,000 people reading this newsletter every week?! Incredible, eh.

I won’t yabber on, we’ve got a lot to get through.

So here’s my news in bullets:

• I became an official government AI trainer, teaching the AI part of the Help to Grow programme for small businesses at the University of Bedfordshire
• We hit 172 users on our beginners’ AI learning hub (that’s 28 x ￡20/mo lifetime memberships still up for grabs!)
• I got booked for some really exciting festivals, conferences and offsites around the UK and Europe over the next few months, including a session with the House of Lords

Right, that’s you up to date! Let’s get on with the show, shall we?

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?? This week:

• Let AI Organise Your Calendar: Motion has blown my organised mind
• Wardrobe Makeovers: Instantly change your look with Canva’s Magic Studio
• Prompt of the Week: A detailed strategic business growth plan
• Midjourney Upgrade: Now you can have consistent characters
• AI Posts of the Week: Sachin B, Reinventing AI and Isabella Bedoya
• Freebies: Hyperpersonalisation with AI: Live Webinar this week

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?? Let AI Organise Your Calendar

Endless to-do lists…

Constant replanning…

Overambitious deadlines…

Way too many meetings…

Forgotten tasks that slip between the cracks…

Sound familiar? We’re all slaves to our to do lists and calendars. Most of the time we could achieve so much more if our calendars and to do lists were properly organised.

Enter Motion - the new “AI executive assistant”. It reeled me right in with its magical promises:

• AI-built intelligent scheduling
• Goodbye to to-do lists
• Protect your weekends
• Inbuilt meeting limits
• Lunch, gym, dog walks factored in

Does it actually work, or is it too good to be true? I signed up to find out.

Feature 1: Timeblocking your to dos

“Motion takes all of your projects and tasks, prioritises and timeblocks them on your calendar, and dynamically optimises your schedule dozens of times a day, all done automatically. Your plan will always be perfect and up-to-date.”

So here’s how it works.

If you’ve a ‘to do’, instead of adding it to your list, you add it into Motion. It asks you all the right questions (deadlines, priority, dependencies, etc.) and will then slot it into your diary for you.

If you have a meeting, it’ll put those in around your schedule or theirs (see Meeting Assistant below).

It’ll also ask you about regular stuff you need time for: dog walks, lunch, It’s your choice and your schedule, it plans around it.

Feature 2: Complex project management?

“Motion gives you everything you need to organise complicated projects, and then uses AI to turn hundreds of tasks into an optimised plan, so that you can just focus on executing instead of worrying about planning and deadlines.”

When you run projects on a siloed platform, it’s really easy for you and other team members to forget or deprioritise your project tasks, isn’t it? It’s certainly happened to me many times.

With Motion, tasks are already time blocked in you and your team’s calendars, so it makes it much harder to forget. It’ll tell you how far along everyone is with getting their part done.

Also, when you describe a project, it’ll also use AI to break everything down into bitesized, manageable chunks so you don’t miss anything out. Revolutionary.

Feature 3: Meeting Assistant

“Schedule fewer meetings. At better times. And in less time. Motion’s Meeting Scheduler acts as your personal assistant, handling the laborious scheduling and communication for you. All you need to do? Show up to your meeting. (And we even make that easier too.)”

It’s like Calendly, but better. Have you ever found that some people don’t like being sent a link to book themselves in, they’d prefer time slots? This feature does that for you too, giving your clients an option to book themselves OR pick from your available time slots.

No need to faff about working out time slots either, just drag and drop and it’ll pull out where you’re available:

I’ll be retiring my Calendly account imminently.

Ooh and a bonus feature I dug out - something they probably should make more of a song and dance about:

Overview

It’s rare I get this excited about an AI tool. I’ve started to use it and have found it is incredible. I love it. I’ve got a strong feeling Motion will be right up there with Sybill, Humanlinker and ChatGPT Plus in my arsenal of tools I use without thinking, every day. I can’t wait to say a happy goodbye to my endless ‘to do’ lists.

What’s the damage? $34/mo billed monthly, $19/mo billed annually

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?? Free AI Wardrobe Makeover (with Canva Magic Studio)

I’ve managed to get tons of extra bang for my photoshoot buck using AI.

You see, I had a fancy photoshoot. It cost a lot, but the outcome was some seriously impressive photos. Thing is, I post that much content, I quickly run out of new photos to use.

Enter Canva’s Magic Studio, and the ‘Magic Grab’ feature.

My video below explains it best.

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?? Prompt of the Week: Business Growth Plan

This is one of my best yet.

Here’s a prompt I wrote this week, when exploring how best to grow my brand new AI for Non-Techies business.

Simply complete the information in square brackets and watch in wonder as a detailed business plan appears before your very eyes!

Act as a business growth strategist, with decades of experience of growing businesses in the [your industry] world via detailed strategic plans.

I’m a [insert your job] and I have come to you for help in growing my business. I want a strategic, step by step plan with timescales, approximate costs in [insert currency]. The plan should be produced in markdown and cover the following sections:

1. SMART objectives

2. Market deep dive: trends, competitors, customer needs

3. Leveraging technology

4. Optimising my offerings

5. Expanding reach

6. Building strategic partnerships

7. Financial planning

The plan should be extensive and detailed.

You will interview me to get the information you need. You will ask questions one at a time and I will reply with as much detail as I can. You will ask no less than 15 questions. If my answer doesn’t give you what you need, you will rephrase or probe further.

The resulting plan should be highly actionable and practical, so ensure you are asking questions around the resources and time that I have available to execute it. The plan should be produced in markdown.

You will begin by acknowledging you understand this task and asking if I am ready to begin the interview. When all questions have been answered, you will advise this and start building the strategic plan.

Give it a whirl, and let me know how it goes.

I always love hearing from you with feedback: [email protected]

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??? Midjourney Upgrade: Consistent Characters

Midjourney is undoubtedly the most powerful image generator out there for we non-technical folk.

But try to create an image with the same character…and it’s impossible. You end up with a different face every time, so you’ve got no consistency at all.

This useful, practical YouTube video from Future Tech Pilot shows you exactly how to achieve consistent characters and start building your own stories.

BIG Midjourney Update - CONSISTENT CHARACTERS

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?? This Week’s Top AI Content

And finally, here are some of my favourite AI posts from LinkedIn this week, just in case you missed them:

• Sachin B.’s AI Roundup of the Week - a quick way to stay ahead every single week
• Reinventing AI’s List of 40 GPT directories - inspiration akimbo!
• (The ever wonderful) Isabella Bedoya’s - Building a landing page with AI and automation

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? Coming up this week

I’m running a LinkedIn Live with Thibault Brioland, CEO of one of my favourite tools, Humanlinker. We’ll be discussing the art of hyperpersonalisation in your sales - something that enabled me to raise $75m in pipeline for my clients.

We’ve got nearly 500 people registered, it’s going to be a corker. Join us by clicking ‘attend’ here. (If you can’t come, it’ll automatically change to an on-demand link).

That’s it for now - it was a biggie this week, eh!

Heather