That’s a great question

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

When I’m in a group or doing a Q&A after a talk, and someone asks a question I’ll often respond with “that’s a great question” as I begin to unpack it.

However, in Michael Port’s book “Steal the Show“, he thinks that’s a very bad idea:

Never say, “That’s a great question!” I rarely say never do something, but this is an exception. If some questions are great, what are the other questions, bad ones? It’s natural to get excited about a particular question and inadvertently express your appreciation. However, you can reframe your response with a little forethought. Try instead, “That’s the first time anyone has asked me that,” or “That’s a different way to think about it.” Or, better yet, just answer the question with excitement without qualifying the worth of the question.

While I agree with his statement above, I think perhaps he’s overdoing it. I can appreciate his suggestions, but I’m not sure “that’s a great question” is as bad as he’s making it out to be. Still, in an effort to improve, it’s one I’ll try to get rid of.

In this case, the key for me is remembering the alternatives so I can have them on the tip of my tongue when I feel like I want to say “that’s a great question”. Beyond his two suggested replacements, perhaps the third option is best and just dive excitedly into the answer.

What do you think? Is it kind of a bad thing to say “that’s a great question”?

Schools need to understand AI

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Over the past few weeks I’ve talked to handful of high school students about how AI is being treated at their schools, and the results are largely disappointing (though somewhat understandable).

Ultimately, I have three main takeaways from the conversations.

Schools are scared of AI

The general thought from the schools is “No AI for anything, ever”. You can’t use it in any way, for any assignment, at any time. Of course, this is faulty logic, because bits of AI are baked into so much, and because the definition of “AI” is very loose.

As a small example, when you’re texting someone and your phone suggests the next word or suggests fixing a typo, that very much could be considered AI. If Google Docs underlines a word to help with spelling, did you just cheat and use AI?

I get what schools are going for here, but it’s much more gray than they think. That leads to…

Handwritten essays

Since detecting AI-written work is nearly impossible, schools are requiring students to write essays in class, by hand. That makes sense to me. While I don’t love writing long pieces of text by hand, this seems like a reasonable solution. Allowing any use of the computer in class or at home to write an essay would undoubtedly be used some some students to cheat by using generative AI like ChatGPT and this is the best way to avoid that.

No learning

Having students write essays by hand is fine, but there should also be some curriculum to help students learn to make proper use of AI. The ones I’ve talked to have not seen anything related to learning about AI, how to write solid prompts, or anything related to that. The schools literally don’t talk about AI at all. It’s going to have a major impact in almost every field, so pretending that it doesn’t exist is doing a major disservice to these kids.

For those currently employed and are worried about AI, I recently heard this statement: “AI won’t take your job, but somebody that knows how to use AI will take your job.“

AI will impact jobs, for sure, but those that can work effectively with AI will be best positioned as time goes on.

All of this said, I don’t envy the position that school administrators are in right now. It’s easy for me to sit here and say “they should teach students more about writing prompts for AI”, but how should that be done? Have separate classes for that? Integrate it into some existing classes? There are no easy solutions here, but it seems that schools are largely putting their heads in the sand which absolutely feels like the wrong way to approach this.

Swipe right on Android to see why Google is heading the wrong way

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Google is no longer the darling that it once was. While it’s still clearly a huge, powerful and (generally) helpful company, it’s trending the wrong way.

Business Insider compares Google to lumbering giants like IBM, and last year I shared how Google’s treatment of RSS ended up being horrible for the health of the internet at large.

With Google becoming more sensitive to revenue and keeping shareholders happy, it’s making all of their services worse. We all all know how cluttered search results are becoming with ads, but there’s a relatively small thing on Android phones that showcases it even better — the slow death of “Google Now”.

Google Now?

For those not familiar with Google Now, it was a feature on Android phones (and iPhones for a while too) that was absolutely brilliant. You could swipe right on your home screen and Google would tell you tons of relevant information — info about your upcoming flights, weather, packages being shipped to you, concerts coming to your area that you might like, sports scores, and tons of other useful info. It was smart, personal, and very helpful.

Here’s an example of some of those cards from an article on Search Engine Journal back in 2012:

Or going further, here is MKBHD talking about Google Now in a video from 2013:

It was great!

Where is it?

The problem is that Google has slowly fazed it out in favor of “Google Discover”. When I swipe right on my Pixel home screen today, I get a bunch of algorithm-generated news articles to read. They’re somewhat relevant, but nothing even close to the value that Google Now brought, and for one big reason — money.

Google has the “Discover” area full of ads and click-bait, which pays the bills much better than my flight info and package delivery. Here is a shot of my “Discover” page at the time of this writing:

It’s not awful; I have an Android phone, I sometimes play city-builder games, and I have interest in learning more about Apple’s Vision Pro. However, you can quickly see how useless that screen is compared to what Google Now used to offer, but you can also see how Google is trying to make money from this instead of just offering me a great tool.

Google is continuing to head the wrong way. Their AI has had major issues lately, their search results continue to get worse, and you can’t trust that any product of theirs will exist tomorrow (here are 293 products that they’ve killed over the years).

I still have my Pixel, I still use Gmail, and life without Google Calendar would be chaotic. However, I’m trying to slowly de-Google myself as time goes on, as I don’t want to get caught having to frantically move to a new service if they kill something that I rely on.

Google still has a lot going for them, but their push of “cash over value” is becoming more clear every day, making them less important and easier to leave.

The Serendipity Vehicle

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Serendipity is one of those things that just seems to kind of happen on its own, similar to luck. However, just like luck, you can do things to make those random bits of serendipity happen more often.

David Perell feels that writing can be the best kind of networking, and I tend to agree. In an essay of his, he explains how writing has lead to some fantastic opportunities in his life. In short, writing gives you a chance to show up in front of various people, and writing somewhere that you control (so that your content doesn’t become vapor) is a great way to increase serendipity.

Tim Stodz

Tim Stodz wrote a great piece about this as well, suggesting that his personal brand is his “serendipity vehicle”. He shared:

My personal brand is my serendipity vehicle. It’s a way for me to interact with the spirit of the universe and to put myself in a position for good things to happen.

Then, once the good things happen, people tell me I’m lucky.

He also compares his personal brand with his business brands, and how they should be approached very differently from one another. In his case, like with mine, there is no monetization happening with his personal brand. He shares:

I hope you decide not to commoditize yourself. If you want to create a business, I encourage you to do so and do it under a brand that can scale and grow without you.

There are opportunities to directly monetize your personal brand, and some will choose that road instead, but a great use of your personal brand is to help build your other brands.

Tim ends his post with:

Ironically, the best way to monetize your personal brand is to not monetize it. You’ll be amazed at the opportunities that find you, once you show the courage to share yourself with the world.

If you monetize something, you’re having to keep some of it hidden away behind a paywall. In my case, you can read this blog on my site, via email, on Medium, or on Substack. Plus, I share it on sites such as LinkedIn, X, and Threads. It’s out there for all to see, with no limitations. In my case, I’m more interested in getting people to read my content than I am trying to monetize small pieces of it.

I obviously still work to make money, primarily via the services we offer at GreenMellen, and this blog supports that. I can send some links to the site, we’ve gained a few customers through my insights here, and the act of writing ideally is helping me to become a better leader. It’s a solid way to go, and I encourage to read more from Tim and David to further understand their thoughts on it.

Also, if you have personal blog that you want share, feel free to leave it in the comments below so we can check it out.

The Sunday Summary: High ranking blogs, crypto scams, and finding the nuance in the middle

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, March 11: Just do it
If I take the time to think “should I work out today?” or “should I blog today?”, the answer might be no. Instead, I just do it.

Tue, March 12: Blogs are still among the highest-ranking pages
Is a recent study of search result pages, blog posts still are the most common type of content found on them.

Wed, March 13: Processes over routines
Routines can be great and they serve an important role, but sometimes processes can be even more beneficial for us.

Thu, March 14: Pig butchering for cryptocurrency
You’ve probably received one of those “wrong number” scam text messages, which are known as “pig butchering”. Here is how they work.

Fri, March 15: Nuance is almost always correct
Seeing the world as “us” versus “them” is common, but finding the nuance is where you’ll most likely find the truth.

Sat, March 16: 20 years of blogging
I’ve been at this for 20 years now! Most years were very sporadic until recently, but it’s still pretty neat to be able to point to content that was published two decades ago.

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

20 years of blogging

by 2 Comments

Reading Time: < 1 minute

20 years ago tomorrow, on March 17, 2004, I published my first blog post. Or least, it’s the oldest that I can find. WordPress was less than a year old, and my first post regarding WordPress came just a few weeks later.

I’ve been hit or miss over the years. There were some very slow years (I only published four times in 2014) and some big bumps.

The last three years have been quite solid, with just two exceptions:

With over 1,700 posts on here, I certainly consider it to be a good use of my time, which I explained a bit more in-depth a few years ago.

The future is hard to see, but I have two predictions for the next 20 years:

  1. God-willing, this blog will still be around 20 years later.
  2. I almost certainly won’t be blogging every day at that point. I have no plans to quit anytime soon, but that would be a bit over 7,300 more posts, so I have to think it’s fairly unlikely. We’ll see!

If you have a blog, how far back can you trace your oldest post?

Nuance is almost always correct

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

As we head into this election season in the U.S., political nuance is likely to continue to be absent. As I shared a few years ago, moderate viewpoints tend to squashed, as it’s much easier to pick an “us” and a “them” and just fight. That also leads to very few people that are willing to vote a ticket that isn’t completely straight.

A recent post from Seth Godin got into the idea of nuance when it comes to journalism. There are great uses of nuance at times, but nuance doesn’t lead to attention. If you want attention, you need to go to the edges where you’ll find many viewers but little truth. In Seth’s post, he describes the two angles for lazy tech journalists: explain how a new product will change the world, or explain how it’s a complete scam. The truth is almost always in the middle for any given product, but the middle isn’t as popular to write about. Seth concludes his post with:

“Nuance isn’t easy, but nuance is almost always correct.”

When it comes to writing, voting, or anything else with multiple angles, I encourage you to find the nuance. Don’t be scared about every new technology, and don’t determine your thoughts on a societal issue based entirely on which “side” you need to take. Every situation is different, and you owe it to yourself to spend time to find the nuance.

Pig butchering for cryptocurrency

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

It’s a weird-sounding name, but you’ve likely seen it happen. You get a weird text from an unknown number, with something fairly innocent like “how are you doing?“, and it slowly evolves into a full conversation. The text is from a scammer, and over the course of a few days they try to build a friendship and ultimately encourage you to invest money in a fake cryptocurrency.

It happened to me a few weeks ago, but thankfully I was already aware of this scam and it wasn’t a problem.

A recent episode of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” dug deep into it, which you can view here:

I had a few takeaways from it.

The name

“Pig butchering” is an odd name for it, but it really describes it quite well. The scammer tries to “fatten you up” with innocent small talk, and then slowly gets you prepared for them to take advantage of you.

The system

I always wondered “how do people fall for this kind of thing?“, but the way they do it here is quite brilliant. You never send the scammer money directly, but instead they just give you a “tip” for a great cryptocurrency to invest in. It’s a fake crypto, but you can use legit apps to get to it. As a result, you’re downloading a popular and well-regarded app on your phone, which makes it seem more legit.

As you invest money, you can watch your investment rise, which often encourages you to put in more money or even get your friends and family involved. However, when you try to take any money out, you’re shut out and it’s all gone. Plus, due the nature of cryptocurrency, there is almost no hope of getting it back.

The scale

The scale of this is what amazes me. The video above shares the story of a bank CEO who lost $50M in a scheme like this! All told, these scams rake in over $3B per year in the US alone, and that’s likely an underreported number because many people are likely too embarrassed to admit what they did.

The scammers

Lastly, the actual scammers are not who you think. While the person texting you is doing a very bad thing, no doubt, they’re often locked in a building and forced to do this like a slave. The real crooks are the one holding them and making them do this.

As Oliver shares, there’s not much you can do to help other than raise awareness — hence this post. Make sure that the people you are about are aware of this kind of thing so they don’t fall prey to it. If you want more beyond the video above, a recent episode of the “Search Engine” podcast digs into it as well and went quite deep into how this all works.

Processes over routines

by 2 Comments

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I recently shared more thoughts on have routines instead of goals (“Just do it“), but in some cases processes can beat routines. For exercise and learning, I think routines can be great, but if your life is more varied it can be hard to stick to a routine. In those cases, processes can take over in a good way.

In a recent interview with MrBeast, Ben Wilson shared this thought about Napoleon:

“Napoleon’s secretary wrote about it and said that he didn’t have routines, because he couldn’t, because who knows what would happen, but he had processes. So like, when this happened, when he’s got to make a decision about these, these people come into a room and get out the binder.”

Processes have built our company. We don’t do the same thing every day, as different projects are in different stages, so processes are much more important in that context than routines.

Between goals, processes, and routines, they all have a place in our lives.

For me, routines win in my personal life, but processes rule my work.

Blogs are still among the highest-ranking pages

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

While it’s been well-established that users don’t click on the “blog” page for most sites, having those posts can still be incredibly valuable. The purpose of most blogs (not this one) are to drive people to the website via Google search, and then lead them to the pages that matter (registration, purchase, etc).

For those kinds of goals, blogs are still fantastic.

In a study from Brightedge Research, where they looked at 10,000 keywords across 10 industries, they found that the most common type of page found in the top 10 results on Google were blog posts. Here’s the breakdown:

Helpful content is always going to perform well on Google, and blogging is one of the best ways to generate content that your audience will find to be helpful.

I have my concerns about the future of blogging for SEO, largely depending on where AI takes us, but for now it’s still a great thing to do if you want your business to show up well on Google. Business blogs give you a great place to showcase your expertise and drive more users to your site. It’s a win-win.

Check out the full study from Brightedge here, and this post from Search Engine Land digs into it quite a bit more.