Good Morning. This is the Method, where we share how we’re bootstrapping small businesses.

This weeks we’re looking at:

• Becoming A Youtube Creator 🎥 

• The genius of Elon Musk🗺️ 

Content Marketing With AI

AI-generated content is getting good. So good it's hard to tell whether a video has been narrated by man or machine.

Done right - we now have the tools available to engage in Gary Vee levels of content marketing with just ourselves, a computer and an internet connection and potentially sell millions of dollars of products or services.

Take this video, for example, of lessons from Winston Churchill that I created in 02:47 minutes.

My news feeds are full of this stuff (maybe because I'm a history nerd). Many of these videos are racking up a million+ views and driving thousands of clicks to courses, merch, books and whatever else a marketer can conceivably conflate with Ataturk, the Turk.

Here's how simple they are to create:

1. Head to Invideo and sign up.

2. Click "Create AI video." 

3. Then, "Select Workflow" and choose your preferred format.

4. Now enter a prompt - the more specific, the better. Here's the one I used for the video I created above:
   
   "Create a 30-second video that has imagery of Winston Churchill in an English voice with the following script as outlined below with quotation marks: 

These five quotes from Winston Churchill apply to you whatever stage you are in business - listen for 30 seconds of wisdom. 

1. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm - Failure is inevitable. The best of us get up and go again. 

2. To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. - The ability to innovate and change is what the world's best companies claim as their mantra. We can do it too. 

3. Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. We need to know when to lead and when to listen. 

4. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. Most business is about giving as much as you can as profitably as possible — those who do this the best win. 

5. If you are going through hell, keep going. Most success comes from compounding. Keep going, and the results will compound. 

If you want more lessons like this, follow Hakune.”

5. Finally choose your target audience, look, feel & platform. For this video, I choose "business leaders", "inspiring", and "youtube".

From there you’ve just got to publish on the right platform.

Notes:

AI is levelling the content marketing playing field. Well kinda, this stuff isn't super engaging, but for the right platform and niche, it works. History topics are SEO friendly and YouTube is the worlds second largest search engine.

FYI - I found Invideo on this website. It’s a database of AI tools for practically any task you can think of.

What We Can Learn From Elon Musk

Elon Musk's new biography will be a predictable letdown for many.

A million or more of us will read that book over the next decade looking for a map to create our own Tesla or SpaceX - yet we won't learn anything about 'how to be Elon' that seems remotely insightful or advantageous.

Because his achievements are so remarkable - they're close to unrepeatable. And regardless of Elon and Walter Isaacson's best intentions, the millions of factors at play are impossible to diagnose in a few pages of text.

We encounter this ourselves with this newsletter. 

We share, to the best of our abilities, step-by-step instruction and the frames of thinking we've used to achieve our measly in comparison, outcomes.

We might get you 50% of the way there, but there's no such thing as half a sale or half a lead. 50% is as good as zero.

Every AI scientist in the world is frustrated by this phenomenon on the daily - have you ever thought about how much skill it takes to open a locked door? They have, and Moravec's paradox reminds them of the hard-to-fathom amount of sensorimotor and perception abilities required to complete such a simple task.

All this is to say maps play poorly with reality - and they always lose the wrestling match.

This wrestle is where hopes and dreams go to die. Where those who want but don't get fail. There is no replacement for doing; for even the simplest of tasks, we have to do and do again until we learn what only experience teaches.

Ironically, we don't do because we don't know what to do - yet we won't know what to do until we do it.

If there's anything we can take away from Elon's book - it's that. To win, you've just got to get on with it.