When was the last time you drove off a cliff, hit Continue, and just tried again? If you played video games as a kid, you know the drill. You get stepped on by a giant thing. You crash into a cow. You try again. We had no idea what was around the corner back then. If we died, we didn’t freak out. We didn’t say, “The whole world is falling apart.” We just went again. Because it was fun. That’s what I want to bring back. Right now so many marketers are freaking out about what’s around the next corner. A lot of us are operating from fear instead of opportunity. So here’s the announcement: the theme for Social Media Marketing World this year is retro. We’re taking the ‘90s and gaming and applying it to the modern era of AI. A few ways we’re bringing it to life: → Badges with a ‘90s video game look → A Mario Kart station where you can fly off cliffs together (yes, I know it’s not the ‘90s) → An opening keynote with that same vibe I think we’re at a precipice. We can choose to have fun and embrace change, or we can be scared and do nothing. My hope is that injecting fun into an age of uncertainty gives us room to build things, break things, and figure out new ways forward. Now I want your ideas. How would you bring a ‘90s game theme to a marketing conference? This is Mike’s Thoughts from the Porch. Drop your ideas in the comments 👇 #SocialMediaMarketingWorld# #AIinMarketing# #MarketingConference# #SocialMediaExaminer#

Today is the last “Mike’s Thoughts from the Porch.” For more than 60 days I’ve shown up here every single day with whatever random thought was rattling around in my brain. Here’s the truth: it’s not doing what I hoped it would do. What I pictured in my head was a show. Something you’d actually want to come back to every day. That’s not what I made. I made 60 days of thoughts. Admitting that out loud is harder than it sounds. I’ve been in marketing a long time. I’m supposed to know how this works. But that changes tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m going to ask you for something I’ve never asked for before. And then I’m going to run with it for months — in public, on this porch, where you can all watch whether it works or it falls apart. I’m not telling you what it is today. I just hope you show up tomorrow. If you’ve been here for any part of these 60 days, thank you. The next thing is going to need you a lot more than the last one did. See you tomorrow 👇 #AIinMarketing# #FounderLife# #MarketingTips# #SocialMediaExaminer#

I’m at 10,000 feet, out of breath, holding a bag of Popchips that looks like it’s about to explode. I’m in Breckenridge for a wedding. This place was built in the ‘70s, it’s a ski resort, and it took hours to get up here. You sunburn fast. You lose your breath fast. And I absolutely love being here. But there’s a strange juxtaposition going on. Behind me is all this beauty. On my phone, a lot of people are reacting to ChatGPT’s Astra rollout with “Whoa, this is the beginning of the end.” So I’ve been sitting up here asking a different version of that question. Is this the beginning of the end of us being stuck in front of a computer all day? The beginning of the end of the kind of work we’ve historically had? I think so. I’m still an AI optimist. I still believe we have a chance to work with AI in a way that frees us up to go wherever we want, do whatever we want, and disconnect a little bit to enjoy nature. I also know there’s a lot of fear right now. And sometimes the best thing I can do when I’m not sure what’s coming next is get out in nature and do something fun. It’s a big world out there. This is Mike’s Thoughts From the Porch, recorded a long way from the porch. Are you scared about the repercussions of what’s happening with AI? Let me know in the comments 👇 #AIOptimist# #AIinMarketing# #FounderLife# #SocialMediaExaminer#

I’ve been the bottleneck. I’ve told myself “I’m the best person to get this done” more times than I can count. And every single time, the thing didn’t get done. This week I was working on a project with one of my employees. She was stuck. Not happy with how things were coming together. So I threw an idea over the fence: “What if you use Claude to speed this up?” “Yeah, but I don’t have time. It takes time to teach Claude.” I recognized those exact words. Because I say them too. Here’s what I think is really going on. The belief isn’t “I don’t have time.” The belief is “I don’t think anyone else can do it as good as I can.” I can’t because I don’t have time. I don’t have bandwidth. I don’t have energy. Notice what all of those have in common. It’s all about me. I believe I’m the only one who can do this, so I drop a big old boulder in the middle of the road and then wonder how I’m going to get around it. Believing you’re the best and being the bottleneck are two sides of the same coin. What I’m learning is I need to rely on other people, and sometimes tools like AI, to take it further and remove the roadblock I keep creating. So here’s my question for you: When you say you don’t have time, do you really mean you don’t trust anyone else to do it? Let me know how you handle this in the comments 👇 Mike’s Thoughts from the Porch #FounderLife# #Leadership# #AIinMarketing# #SocialMediaExaminer#

Same AI. Same week. Same guy. One was magic, one was a dead end. I’m building a deck to teach Claude Design in the AI Business Society. So I started with Claude. Asked for an outline. Perfect. Then I asked, “Can you help me figure out what I should actually teach?” Dead end. That same week, I’m leading a Bible study on Romans, and Claude was crushing it. Structure, connections, fresh ways to say things I already believed. Here’s the difference. I’ve read my Bible every single day for decades. That thinking was already in me. Claude just helped me reorganize it. Claude Design? I’ve used it. I’ve never taught it. I don’t really know the substance yet. There was nothing for the AI to find. That was the shift for me. AI is strongest where I already have deep expertise and just need a new way to say it, structure it, or show it. Where I’m a newbie, the depth isn’t there. And if I teach from a script AI handed me, I’m a hollow vessel. A thin sheet of paper. I’ve still got to put in the work. Are you using AI for things you already know how to do well, or things you don’t know how to do at all? Where are you finding the most value? Tell me in the comments 👇 More thinking out loud on Mike Thoughts from the Porch. #AIinMarketing# #ClaudeDesign# #FounderLife# #SocialMediaExaminer#

Killing fish. Stealing ideas. That’s what I’ve been told because I use AI every day. Here’s the thing: I’m a marketer. In my world, using AI is normal. A brand-new three-year study says 73% of marketers use it daily and 84% of us plan to use it more next year. But step outside marketing and confess you’re using it, and you’re going to get flak. Sometimes from people you care about. Sometimes from people you really respect. And I don’t know what to do with that. It takes me back to the early internet, when people said you were stealing jobs by using it. Now nearly every job runs on it. Same thing when social media showed up — I took plenty of heat for being active there. Now it’s AI. Just about everyone is using it in some capacity. But disclose it, which is exactly what we’re encouraged to do, and the flak comes. If we’re intellectually honest, most of us in marketing are using it every day and plan to use it more. Not because it’s trendy. Because it actually helps. We’re learning things, discovering things, doing things we couldn’t do before. So how do you handle the people who don’t understand? Are you using AI every day? Do you plan to use it more? And how do you deal with the pushback? Tell me in the comments 👇 This is Mike Thoughts from the Porch. #AIinMarketing# #MarketingTips# #FounderLife# #SocialMediaExaminer#

I didn’t know if this was possible. I didn’t even know who to ask. So I asked Claude. A couple of weeks ago we published our AI Marketing Industry Report, and we gated it. No cookie on the site, you get pushed to a register page. But we’ve got a whole bunch of people already on our newsletter who’ve opted into our other free resources. Making them register again felt wrong. So I asked, “Claude, is this even possible? Can we give those people a special key that opens the report with no extra steps?” “Oh, of course it is.” And it figured out a little something we append to the URL. Then I pushed: “Can we hide that key after the page loads?” “I’m one step ahead of you, Mike. I’ve already figured that out.” It handed me a clear set of instructions for my marketing team on exactly how to add the parameter to our email links. If the key is there — click — you’re in. No register page. In the past, this would have been completely impossible for me. I wouldn’t have known where to start. All I did differently this time was ask, “Is this even possible?” A little side project before the end of my day. I couldn’t believe it. So here’s my question for you: is there something you’ve been thinking about doing, but you have no idea who to ask — because maybe you don’t even think it’s possible? This is Mike Thoughts from the Porch. Tell me what you’ve done that you thought was impossible in the comments 👇 #AIinMarketing# #ClaudeAI# #MarketingTips# #FounderLife# #SocialMediaExaminer#

I didn’t think I could publish 30 videos in a row. I’ve now done 57 — and I’m committed to 90. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way. Practice makes perfect. Putting in the reps has made this so much more effortless. I still do practice runs — this video took three or four takes because I hadn’t found my stride yet. Editing matters more than I expected. I didn’t want to do any editing at all at first. Now I pull each video into the Instagram Edits app, chop the front and back, and add captions that pop up one word at a time. That’s it. Minimum viable — and it makes a difference. But the bigger lesson? Engagement is absolutely essential. I always ask people to share something valuable in the comments, and I try my best to respond to everyone. I’m publishing these across six platforms, and it’s a lot of work. I’m still learning the tricks of the trade. So if you’re making videos on a regular basis — what little tips and techniques have worked for you? Share them in the comments below 👇 This is Mike Thoughts from the Porch. My lesson to myself: keep practicing, keep doing it. You only get better with time. #AIinMarketing# #MarketingTips# #VideoMarketing# #SocialMediaExaminer#

I let AI take control of my browser. Here’s what happened. My editorial director and I decided to start publishing our email newsletter on our WordPress website. She got it over there, but something was off — the margins weren’t right, and it just looked kind of thrown together. We went back and forth, and back and forth, until she hit her limit: “I can’t really go any further.” So I asked her to put the source code into a Google Doc. I looked at it. I didn’t know what I was looking at. That’s when I fired up Claude Cowork and said, “Go look at the code, go look at the preview of the article, and tell me what’s wrong.” It came back with “I found it.” A margins issue. Fixed relatively quickly. But here’s the big unlock. I then said, “Put together a detailed document I can give to my editorial director so she can understand how this happened and how it will never happen again.” It wrote a multi-page document in everyday English. She’s not techie. She’s not a developer. And now she can fix this herself, time and time again. AI didn’t just solve my problem — it helped me communicate it clearly to my team. So here’s my question: What’s the thing you don’t understand that you haven’t handed over to AI yet? This is Mike Thoughts from the Porch. I’d love to hear your stories in the comments 👇 #AIinMarketing# #ClaudeCowork# #MarketingTips# #SocialMediaExaminer#