A spring life update ✨
AI, CrossFit, and getting help in my business.
Right now it’s March, also known as “false spring” by the Internet Memes. Which seemed like a good time to send out a life and work update about nothing and everything.
Personally, we’ve just celebrated my husband’s 40th birthday, which involved a stay in London, various cakes, and my 20-month old learning to sing “hap birth dayy” (cutest thing ever). In true Spring fashion the household is also recovering from a series of colds and coughs which I can no longer find a start or an end for.
I’m working 3 (shortish) days per week which feels tight enough that I can’t afford to procrastinate, but open enough that my work no longer spills over into the weekend.
I’m “eating the frog” on tasks - making sure the most important task gets done first. I’m careful with “calls” - if it can be an email then I have to say that, and I’m also proactive with my clients. I’m the one to suggest an update call, a strategy resync, or that we do X, Y or Z.
In longer term freelance retainers I find it can be easy to fall into a lull where you aren’t being chased by clients, and so you may not do as much, but these are often the cases where being proactive really is the key. To manage upwards, so that your value is known and remembered (particularly in a world of “but can’t we just replace this with AI?”).
Which leads me onto something else that’s going on behind the scenes. I’m facing something I know I’m not along in, which is a conflict around AI.
On working with AI
My day job is mostly working for software startups, which today, means AI software startups (because the funds go where the market is, and right now the market is AI).
My clients are likely in the top 1% of AI users. This week I was sent two all-wide company memos about AI use expectation within such companies. The TLDR version? You must use AI, you must use AI to be even more productive, and do more with less. Your usage of AI will directly correlate with your position in the company and progression potential. Anyone who isn’t using AI (for everything) will be fired.
At the same time I’ve been led to try and use AI on certain initiatives where using AI has actually taken 5x as long as it might have to do the task manually. In some cases, it’s okay - if there’s a longer term gain to using AI, such as it will build an automated or repeatable process, then the initial upfront cost is worthwhile. But for some one-off tasks, it has felt frustrating and like we’re using it for the sake of using it. I also don’t like the narrative being pushed that AI must make us all do more with less - in one instance I saw a company boasting about its AI automated systems which allow it to upload to every social channel 20x per week. What I want to ask is: but is this content good? Is it moving the needle? Which goal is it helping you work towards? Without discernment, AI use becomes little more than vanity. I also question who benefits from AI usage and asking us to do even more with less. It’s giving industrialisation. I’m tired.
Perhaps in someways I’m just triggered by AI (I definitely am). As a freelancer, working tightly around my main role as parent, I don’t have the luxury of “company time” to learn and experiment with AI. I don’t like the fear that if I don’t get good (better) as this new thing, that I’ll be out of work. Fear has never served me well as a motivator. It makes me dig my heels in and resist. Give me a carrot and I’m there. Let me see the purpose, the wider mission, and I’ll jump on board.
Tell me I have to do something that I can’t quite believe in and I’ll have to get there in my own time. Anyone else? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
On starting CrossFit
In the first week of January I reluctantly tried a CrossFit beginner’s program. Surprisingly, to me more than anyone, I loved it. I am now firmly a CrossFit goer - and the main requisite of going to CrossFit is that you have to tell absolutely everyone, all the time, that you do indeed go to CrossFit.
There are so many things I could tell you about CrossFit - I’m obsessed. But most interesting is the neuroplasticity involved.
As someone who found school easy, who took to work like a duck to water, starting something I’m not “natural” at is very humbling. Most days I am the worst in the class and I can’t tell you how hard my brain has to work to be able to understand the movements, the workout and actually lift something.
But there are so many things I love about it. The feeling when you master something first time. The realisation that you’re now lifting 30kg, when last week you got stuck under 15 and the trainer had to come rescue you (🙋🏻♀️). The social aspect of meeting new people, getting two hours to be “me” and not Mum, or marketer, before the day begins.
This is your reminder to try something new this year. You might even like it.
On getting a VA
Other than my accountant who has been a firm fixture for the past 10 years, my business doesn’t have anyone else working in it or on it.
This month I started working with a very brilliant VA to help on a few things, and I can’t tell you how good it feels.
That things can be happening when I’m not there!
The hardest thing is working far enough in advance that I don’t block or hold her up. That’s tricky - the stuff she’s working on is the first stuff I usually drop when I get busy. Not because it’s not important but because it’s the long-game stuff, that isn’t urgent or for “clients.” But in being accountable, it’s forcing me to spend a few more hours each week working on, not in, my business. Which can only be a good thing!
I’ll keep you posted with how it goes.
What are you feelings on AI (or CrossFit?). Please do write to me in the comments - I’d love to hear!
Yours, feeling optimistic,
Beth
Thanks for reading 😊
Hello 👋 I’m Beth, a freelance marketer supporting B2B startups and ambitious businesses who want to go to market and grow. I’m also building Get Trendie - offering sensible advice about social.