I hope everyone rang in 2026 in a safe and fun manner - even if you "slept it in" as I did. 😅

When someone downloads your freebie, you don't want to just dump it on them and never speak to them again! Not only would that be rude and transactional, it would also do nothing to help them understand what your other offerings might help them with.

I long thought of sales and marketing as dirty words, but various creators have helped me realize that they're actually a service. You create your marketing materials to let folks know all the various ways you can help them. I've found that as long as I keep my focus on that, I can feel very good about my marketing activities!

I started the writing process by having AI make me a draft. Then, thinking forward to when I'd be making this post, I asked AI to create an image of my koala avatar holding out a gift, but wasn’t happy with it, and couldn't figure out a prompt to get the AI to return exactly what I wanted.

So of course I just had to pull it into Canva to improve on it. Was this procrastivity?* Almost definitely. But after that dopamine hit I did get back to working on the first email of the series, and even got it to a stage where I might let it out into the world! So I’m calling it a win.

You might be surprised to learn that, despite my penchant for writing, I like to use AI when I draft things. Why?

One biggie is that saves me from blank page syndrome. One of the reasons my freelance work has been niched in the editing & proofreading world is because I haaaate writing things from scratch. So having a first draft to work from saves me that headache.

Of course, there are lots of ways to address that if you’re not a fan of AI; PLR**, outlining, freewriting, and brainstorming are other options, and I’ve used all of them at various times in the past. AI is just faster, and for someone whose focus is liable to crap out at any given time, speed can be important!

Yes indeed...at least when it comes to tasks that my brain doesn't find inherently fun. That's the ADHD side of my brain, screaming about "wasting time" because it doesn't see an immediate benefit.

Over the years I've learned to temper this, but I admit, a lot of the time I still give in. It's why I've developed the systems I have, and why I've decided to bring them to the world via this site and my others!

Now, back to my regularly scheduled blog post...

The other big reason I use AI for drafting is that when I'm not using it, I tend to delve into the huge stack of stuff I have from other creators, looking for inspiration make my own.

Can you guess where that lands me? You got it…right back in procrastivity land!

I could easily spend several hours reviewing messages others have sent me, courses I have signed up for over the years, and all of my notes about such things. (I take copious notes, but I admit, I still need to implement a better system for organizing them.)

So, using an AI draft helps me skip that (almost) entirely, and I always have the option to come back later and edit.

Remember…”done is better than perfect” is a saying for a reason! And I now have a first welcome email done, however imperfect, so today was a win.

*Procrastivity: the process of avoiding a high-priority, important task by doing other, lower-priority tasks that are still productive, creating a feeling of accomplishment while delaying what truly needs to be done.

**PLR: Private label rights content, or PLR, is content you can license from other creators and then use, modify, and rebrand as your own. This saves time and money on content creation by allowing you to customize pre-made material, rather than having to start from scratch.