This is the first audio episode of SPARK Insights and it exists because three friends showed me something I couldn't ignore.

I've been using AI to help write my newsletter for over seventy issues. I speak everything first, run it through Claude, and edit the draft. The ideas have always been mine. But a conversation with Caitlin, Amy Birks, and Brandon Fong from a community called Curiosity Island made me look at something I'd been avoiding: the voice on the page didn't sound like me.

In this episode I walk through what happened when I saw the patterns AI leaves behind in writing, the three filters I built to fix it, and why my writing started landing different with people before I even told anyone what I changed.

I'm also sharing the AI Writing Filter I built so you can do the same thing with your own content. And I close with an original song called "Worth Knowing."

To read and subscribe to SPARK Insights, visit https://sparkinsights.net

Key Moments:

[00:00] Why you're hearing my voice for the first time [02:00] How I've used AI to write 70+ issues of SPARK Insights [05:00] The process: I speak it, transcribe it, shape it, edit it [06:30] The question that changed everything: does the content still land? [08:30] The decision I had to make once I saw the patterns [09:30] The three filters I built: AI Tells, Voice, and Sovereignty [11:15] What shifted when people started telling me the writing was landing different [13:00] What Caitlin, Amy, and Brandon mirrored back to me [14:13] "Worth Knowing" - an original song

Hey friends, good to be talking with you.

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It's a different medium and

I'm trying to experiment.

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I like to try different things.

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This inaugural episode of Spark Insights

is me talking about an experience

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I had with a few friends of mine.

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And the reason that you're even hearing

me now is a result of a conversation

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with, three people from a group I

belong to called Curiosity Island.

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Now, at some point I will tell you

more about Curiosity Island, but for

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now I'm going to say that Curiosity

Island is a group of conscious

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individuals who have come together at

the invitation of somebody you may know.

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His name's Brandon Fong.

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Not to be confused with my partner,

business partner, Brandon Boyd.

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I do like to put a lot of Brandons

into my life, but I will share more

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about that community at some point.

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But just safe to say is this group

has been together a couple of years,

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and what we focus in on is working

with each other to become the best

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and truest version of ourselves.

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And we essentially operate as mirrors for

each other and we challenge each other.

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We create awareness.

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And it is a community where we value

questions over answers and, I'm sure

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you've been part of communities where

it was based on answers and it was based

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on a guru giving you those answers.

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I have removed myself from

joining and attending and being

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part of any groups like that.

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My desire is that I'm only part of

groups that, challenge me with questions

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and are okay with that, and that's

what I need at this current point.

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And I am maybe that sounded a little

judgmental about other groups and I'm,

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I am expressing where my mind is at.

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So, if there is any judgment in what I

just said, I apologize, but, the real

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purpose of this recording this week

is to talk about an awareness that was

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brought to my attention that now, I've

gone real deep into, and I'm gonna be

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sharing some tools in the newsletter

and some things around this topic.

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The topic is AI and specifically the

process of creating content using AI.

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I have been writing Spark Insights

now for, oh 14, 15, 15 months.

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And , right around the turn of

the year, the end of the year, we

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reached, the one year milestone.

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And I don't, I haven't proposed or

perpetrated any sort of falsehoods

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about the fact that, I use AI to

help me write that newsletter and.

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I, I started using chat GPT originally

and pretty much probably 20 issues in,

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I, I switched and started using Claude.

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I found Claude to be, much more.

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I found it.

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I found it much more capable as

a writing tool versus chat gPT.

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I think chat GPT has some

exceptional thinking qualities.

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I just find Claude has always been

a much better tool for writing.

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Now, when I started writing the

newsletter I have been writing.

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Pretty much my entire career and

I've written several books published

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several books, and the process

in which I have written all of my

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books has been to speak my book.

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And whether that book was spoken

into a recording like I'm doing

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now, or that book was spoken to an

individual, I process audibly first.

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My mind operates at about 100 x speed.

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My voice is about 10 x and my fingers

and my hand works at about one x

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speed, so it's very difficult for

me to sit down with a blank screen

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or a blank page and do writing.

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I have found that my mind goes so

quickly that I struggle to have my

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fingers in my hand operate in a way

that allows me to produce content

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that, is both clear and legible.

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I have some of the worst

handwriting, and I don't believe

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it's because I'm not careful.

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When I'm slow, I can actually write

something legible, but when I'm

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writing, my mind is working so fast

that I write things in a journal

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or I've written things in notebooks

where I literally can't read it.

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It's not that I was lazy, it's that

I'm just trying as fast as I can to

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capture what my mind is trying to say.

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So the process of writing books and of

writing this newsletter specifically has

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always been what is happening right now.

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I speak the newsletter into existence,

so I talk about things that are

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current that's what I've done

since I started this newsletter.

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And what I do is I simply talk into a

microphone like I'm doing right now, and

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I express the content as if I am talking

with a friend and what I've used AI for,

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is to take that process, audio file.

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I take the transcription and that becomes

the, initial draft of my newsletter.

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And so I put it into Claude.

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It knows how I want to produce these

newsletters and one of the things that

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I liked about AI's writing is its poetic

nature, and I share with some people that

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I, I feel like the writing that AI does

is very hypnotic and there are specific

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things that AI does that it's learned and

it's in its core memory that produce a

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very hypnotic type of language and I did

fall in love with it, and it's the format

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that I've been using for most of the time

that you've been reading this newsletter.

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Actually the entire time.

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And the other day, my friend Caitlin

sent me a voice message and she said,

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tell me about the process you use or

how you use AI to do your newsletter.

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And I sent her back, the process I just

shared with you is that I come up with

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an idea, I speak it, I transcribe it, and

I produce a draft, and then I edit it.

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It takes me about an hour

or so to produce each issue.

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And I don't just speak the newsletter, put

it through Claude, and then publish it.

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I go through, I make edits.

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I'm really good at taking something

that's already there and making it better.

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So I, I've always been able to

work more productively that way.

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When I was a programmer, by the

way, I was much better at optimizing

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code than writing code from scratch.

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That's a funny thing that

I learned about myself.

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I really like to take something

that exists in raw form and

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create something better from it.

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So I shared that with her, and then,

we did this group call where, Brandon

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Fong was on it and, Amy Birks.

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And we just started to have this

side conversation about AI tells, and

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there was something that I woke up to.

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And there is a way that AI writes.

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And I, said before I fell in

love with the hypnotic poetic

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nature and the way AI writes.

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But the question that was asked of me

was does the content land the same even

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though it's written and conceived by you?

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Does the content still land

if it was assembled by AI?

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And after I saw it and after I saw

the patterns, Amy shared with me a

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one page PDF she created with, five

AI tells and I saw the patterns.

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The problem that it caused for me is

that I now see those patterns everywhere.

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So I can now look at an email, I can look

at a newsletter, I can look at anything

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and tell that it was written by AI.

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And it's not just the em dash,

although that's one AI tell, there

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are patterns that an AI uses that

lets you know is written by AI.

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And so it put me in a place where

I needed to make a decision.

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I went through a process of doing deep

research on what the AI tells were, and

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this is gonna seem really funky, but

I created a AI filter to take a look

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at any produced content that I have,

to flag AI tells and to correct them.

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So the process is now I speak

the newsletter and I run

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it through the AI filter.

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But I don't think that went far

enough because my goal in my writing

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is to mimic conversational tone.

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I don't need to be prim and proper.

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That's not my style.

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This is a raw format that you're

listening to right now, and the idea

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is I want my writing to mimic that.

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So the next step for me was to go and

train Claude on how I really speak, and

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I went and created a secondary filter,

which is a Bob voice filter, and I

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trained it with 15 coaching conversations.

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I uploaded three hour long presentations

and three podcast interviews, and I

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asked it to learn my voice and it didn't

just learn my style, it learned nuances

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to my speech that I used the word

"actually," that I used the word "so".

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It learned how I drop into a story.

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It learned about self-deprecating

humor that I used on stage and

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used in my podcast interviews.

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It learned about, sarcasm and it

learned about sentence structures

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and the way that I talk.

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And so now I have a filter that's for

AI tells to clean up, AI tells, and I

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also have a filter that mimics my voice.

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Now there's the third filter that I

created, which is actually the first

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filter and I created this weeks ago.

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I created a filter called

the Sovereignty Filter.

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And what I am using that sovereignty

filter for is to remove language

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that diminishes my ability

to engage with an audience.

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There are certain things that

are said in a conversation

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like, "I believe", or "I think".

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Subtle phrases that are included at

the end of comments to give the reader

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a sense of "this is not something

that you really have to believe".

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So I have three filters now, that take my

writing and get it 90% of the way there.

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And so what I am sharing in this

week's newsletter: first of all, it's

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going to summarize this audio that

I'm speaking . I'm sharing with you a

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before and after version of last week's

newsletter, so that'll be interesting

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for you to compare side by side.

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Now here's the thing.

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Some of you may look at that and

say, " I prefer the AI version".

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Some of you may say, "I prefer

the conversational tone".

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For me, I'm going to stick with

the conversational tone because

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it's more authentic to who I am.

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It's closer to the way I speak, and it

produces something that is more closely

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matches the intent and spirit of which

I am producing these, newsletters.

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And, I'm also going to share

with you my AI filter, which

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will include some instructions

on how to train AI in your voice.

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If you're in the process of creating

emails, content, newsletters, I

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went and did the work for you, and

so I'm sharing that tool with you.

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When I first started using that

sovereignty filter, I noticed

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that my writing was more powerful.

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My writing was more beneficial

and direct , and had more impact.

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The comments that I've been getting back

from individuals first of all, I was

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hearing from individuals that I haven't

heard from before, which I thought was

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interesting, but I started hearing from

people saying, "I don't know what it is,

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but there's something about your writing

that is landing different with me" and

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they couldn't put their finger on it.

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I knew what it was.

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They would never know.

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And you would never know until now,

'cause I'm telling you what's happened.

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My role with my clients is to mirror

back to them what I see, to speak

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truth to them, and to give them

the freedom and permission to make

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choices about how they show up next.

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That's what Caitlin and Amy

and Brandon did for me was they

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presented something that they saw.

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This is going to be the basis

for this week's newsletter.

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And I'm sharing this audio with

you in a couple different ways.

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It'll be linked in the newsletter

and it'll be a podcast that you

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can download in Apple or Spotify or

whatever platform makes sense to you.

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This is an invitation for you to

use AI differently and to be more

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intentional and more thoughtful

about what you put out there.

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So it's really a decision point for you.

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For me, this is what I chose.

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Others may choose differently.

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I find it very impactful.

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I look forward to speaking with

you and sharing conversations

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with you in a new way.

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I'm really excited about this format

and I'm really thankful for people in

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my life that encourage me to do this.

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And to show you that I'm not

here to knock AI, I want to share

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with you a song that I wrote.

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It's called "Worth Knowing".

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So thank you.

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I appreciate you.

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We'll talk to you next time.