My Start Up Journal: Part 3 - Remix Time

(My banner image: Created by me using my skillz, my imagination with AI tools: AI Mirror & Photoshop)

Let's dive into where I'm at. 3 months since starting up my business. Loads of great conversations and collaborations. First proper paid gig in collaboration with Workshop took place at the end of September which I really enjoyed. You can check it out here: https://bit.ly/ai-ate-my-ic-todo-list

What to cover this time around:

Getting to know your audience/stakeholders

I made sure that I was mixing virtual calls and conversations with seeing people in real life. I got to meet some of my fav people in comms recently from Advita Patel , Rob Jones , and Joanna Parsons .

Have useful conversations, be curious, find out what they're up to, promote yourself and highlight what you're up to. Build cheerleaders and supporters and opportunities for collaboration as you look for opportunities for paid work.

My service offering

It's taken me about 3 months to define, tweak and hone my service offering to potential customers. My conversations have allowed me to fine-tune and think deeply about what I can offer based on what people are saying are the possible gaps.

I've landed on:

I help people unshackle their imagination to grow their personal & professional AI habits well.

I'm in the process now to refine this and highlight what sits under it.

The tools I'm using for my business

Having a good, trustworthy computer is important. I use a gaming laptop which needs to be upgraded so that I can have a better Nvidia RTX graphics processor for my future AI use.

From a personal and professional side:

• I'm currently with Tide for my business banking.
• I use Google Workspaces for my email and office apps.
• I use Sheets for my simple CRM.
• Notion for my business notes and AI second brain and knowledge library.
• Limitless for transcription.
• Remarkable e-ink tablet for my manual notetaking and reading and annotating PDFs.
• Claude, ChatGPT and Boodlebox (get 3 months discount) paid subs for my AI work and projects.
• Napkin.ai and Eraser for creating image icons and flow diagrams.
• Arc Browser for my internet surfing.
• 1Password for my password management, however, I'll revert back to Lastpass at the end of the year, because it's very poor.
• Photoshop for my image editing.
• Midjourney, Leonardo, Eden Art, Immersity and Magnific for image creation and enhancement.
• Runway ML, Luma, Kling, Pika, Capcut for video creation, editing and enhancement.
• Perplexity for deep research.
• LinkedIn as my key channel for knowledge, connection and building up my network.
• Powerpoint for presentations.
• Systeme.io for my website, blogging, community and training.
• Mindpal.space for AI agents.
• Websim for creating stuff from my imagination.
• Canva, Adobe Express, Comic Life 3, Doodly, Sketchwow for designing and templating.
• OBS Studio for webcam streaming and production.
• Mentimeter for my survey software.

Presentations & invoicing

It was good fun to pull together my presentation on AI Ate My Internal Comms To-Do List: How I'm Using AI In My Workflows. You can take a gander here if you missed it.

Having an idea on the structure is important and then I used Claude AI to work together to break the structure down into content. I then knew what each message was for each slide, then using my design skills together with AI, I pulled it together. I wanted wow factor and to create a different looking presentation with different approach to delivery. I wanted to experiment with new methods. Why not do that with a live audience! Ha. Thank you to everyone who joined me. I hope you found some of my points interesting enough to spark your imagination.

After the presentation, I had to pull together my first invoice. This is where I had to learn a bit more about international account details vs UK banking account details which Tide doesn't make too easy, but I got there in the end and got a chance to be paid for sharing my knowledge and entertaining others.

My next steps & scaling

In the last 4 months, I've thrown my hat into the ring for two Comms Lead, AI job roles. One at Informa and one at Adecco Group. My experience of learning AI, experimenting and integrating it into my personal and professional life over the last 18 months really made me stand out. Together with building up my external brand profile and sharing my views and opinions based on my experience on internal comms and AI helped me to train my mindset and behaviour to be a good candidate. Thankfully, my natural interest in technology mixed in with my passion for internal comms, has grown my knowledge and experience to build and grow my AI habits for personal and professional reasons.

I'm happy to say that I'm excited to be joining The Adecco Group in mid-October. They have their finger on the pulse about the workforce of the future which is going to be fascinating to see behind the scenes at the data. I'm looking forward to helping them tell their story on this pioneering journey for all of us into the unknown, both the positive and negative to come which we must adapt to.

I'll be scaling back my services and offering and focus on continuing to share my knowledge and expertise within this space.

If you haven't already, please sign up to my e-magazine, /REMIXING comms, due out in mid-October.

Thank you.

My Start Up Journal: Part 2 - The March Forward

My Start Up Journal: Part 1 - The Set-Up