Hi everyone, How’s your week going? I still find it a little amusing that after more than 40 years in publishing and content, I’m spending so much time thinking about tools that can produce in minutes what used to take us days. I use them. I’m curious about them. And yes, I like saving time as much as the next person. But I’ve spent enough years getting things wrong, fixing them, and occasionally wishing I’d listened to somebody sooner to wonder how much of that experience sh

Hi everyone, How was your weekend? I’m starting the week with a question I keep coming back to: when you read something that sounds knowledgeable, what makes you confident the person behind it actually knows what they’re talking about? With all the anxiety about AI, we spend a lot of time asking whether something looks or sounds human. But I think there’s a more useful question: Can we see the thinking behind it? The decisions, the experience, the reasons someone reached that

When imitation gets easier, the value of real experience rises Hi everyone, How’s your week going? I’ve been thinking about a question that may sound simple at first: What happens when AI can sound like you, use your face, and imitate your writing, but the thinking behind the words isn’t yours? A recent case in Japan brought that question into sharper focus. A well-known voice actor said that TikTok videos used an AI-generated imitation of his voice without permission. The To

Bye-Bye, Boston. Tampa Reminded Us Why Judgment Still Matters Hi everyone, How’s your week going? Baseball has always been a game of numbers and statistics. So it was probably inevitable that analytics would become part of how teams make decisions. I’ve been a Yankees fan for more than 50 years, so I relished those two wins over Boston. I wanted the Yankees to beat the Red Sox so thoroughly they’d be looking for the exit before the final out. That may sound a little harsh. Th

Hi everyone, How’s your week going? For the past three weeks, I’ve been thinking about how to write this newsletter. Not because I couldn’t come up with an argument. Because I wanted to get it right for the people I care about: authors who have a story inside them, want to tell it, and are afraid AI might somehow take that story away from them. Helping people tell their stories has always been personal for me. I’ve spent much of my career working with people who have somethin

How was your week? Mine was enlightening. I spent part of it meeting with people who promised they could help us generate more business. Why did I take the meetings? Because I wanted to know if I was missing something. I wasn’t. Most offered some version of the same solution: more emails, more LinkedIn messages, more automation, more follow-ups, and a little more AI. No silver bullet. When Personal Stops Feeling Personal AI has made it incredibly easy to reach almost anybody.

Hey everyone, How’s your week going? Mine has reminded me that experience doesn’t eliminate discomfort. It had been a long time since I created a formal presentation. I speak regularly, but usually I just speak. Give me a topic and a good question, and the conversation tends to find its way. A slide-by-slide presentation is different. I had to decide how to fit close to fifty years of publishing experience into one hour without turning it into a lecture or overwhelming every

Hi everyone, How’s your week going? Mine has had me thinking about a Wall Street Journal article on AI and publishing, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized I disagreed with the premise of the argument. The article describes a multimillion-dollar book deal that fell apart after the author’s agents said they could no longer verify that the manuscript had been wholly written by their client. It raises a legitimate question: where does AI assistance end and author

Happy Monday! We spent the last few days digging into LinkedIn’s new “Brew 360” changes because, honestly, I didn’t want to overreact to another wave of algorithm hype. But after reviewing the data, and more importantly, watching what’s already happening to visibility and engagement, it became clear this shift is bigger than most people realize. Especially for speakers. Because this isn’t really about LinkedIn. It’s about what happens when your visibility, authority, and oppo

Hi Everyone, How was your week? Mine, well, read below. Today’s newsletter is a little different. I spent a good portion of this week working on our next roundtable. It’s really one you don’t want to miss. You know those questions about AI you've been holding back? The one about AI and content that feels too basic to ask in public, or too pointed to ask in a webinar chat? On May 6th, you'll have 90 minutes to ask it. We're hosting a private roundtable with Tuhin Patra, founde

Hi everyone, how was your week? Mine felt like finally putting down something heavy I'd been carrying for a while. We've been deep in a rebuild. New website. New portal. New services. The kinds of projects that take over everything, your mornings, your margins, the back of your mind at midnight when you should be asleep. If you are passionate about anything, you know what I'm talking about. When you're building something you actually believe in, it's hard to stop. And it's ha

Hi everyone, How’s your week? Mine’s been one of those weeks where a small idea keeps resurfacing… and the more I sit with it, the bigger it gets. I wrote the Shmoo Diaries to make a point. Not about a cartoon, but about control. The Shmoo was a 1948 character that could produce whatever people needed, endlessly, without cost or ownership. That was the idea. And that idea creates a problem. Because if something valuable exists without control, without scarcity, and without ow

Hi everyone, How was your week? It’s been a busy stretch on our end with the rebrand. A lot of moving pieces are finally coming together. But even in the middle of all that, I’m still in conversations every day. And I keep hearing the same thing. A pattern I can’t ignore. Everyone Is Drowning Not in work. In content. Not because they don’t know what to do… but because everyone else is doing it too. That’s the shift no one saw coming. AI didn’t just make content easier. It mad

Hi everyone, Well… It’s official. The change we’ve been talking about over the past few weeks is now live. Digital Content Creators is now ContentKitchen. The new website is up. The new email addresses are active. And for the first time, the name actually matches the work. You can take a look here: https://www.contentkitchen.io/ A Quick Moment I’ll be honest, this one means something to me. Not because we changed the name. Because of what had to happen before we could. The la

Hi everyone, Over the past few weeks, you've been hearing about the internal rebuild happening at ContentKitchen. Not just the name change. The structure underneath it. This week, you're hearing from someone who has been part of this community longer than most people realize. Evan. Built with Intention, Not by Accident I've known Evan for many years, long before the Roundtable even existed. In fact, Evan came up with the idea for both the 3 Pillars of Influence and the Roundt

Hi everyone, Sometimes the most important changes inside a company aren’t loud. They’re structural. Foundational. Quietly transformative. Over the past few months, someone inside Digital Content Creators has been at the center of that transformation. Not just managing tasks, but helping redesign how we operate, communicate, and build for the long term. Today’s newsletter is different. Instead of hearing from me, you’re going to hear from the person who has been in the middle

Hi everyone, how’s your week? Ours has been hectic. In the best possible way. This is our 100th newsletter. That alone feels significant. One hundred weeks of sharing what we’re building and how we think about influence. It feels right that this milestone comes with an evolution. Because we are evolving. And we’re excited about it. From BoundUnbound Media to Digital Content Creators to ContentKitchen We began as BoundUnbound Media. The mission was clear. Help independent auth

Hi everyone, How's your week going? Mine has been busy! I've been having closed-door conversations with AI founders who are trying to keep the future from being swallowed by the usual giants. Big ideas. Real stakes. There’s a quiet urgency you don’t hear on conference stages or in press releases. In the space between those conversations, my client responsibilities, and picking up my grandkids at school, something clicked. I knew how the Shmoo Diaries needed to end. Why Any of

Hi everyone, how’s your week going? Mine’s been one of those weeks where you notice the invisible rules around you. The things that feel normal, until you realize they quietly decide who succeeds and who doesn’t. I started as a gatekeeper of a small gate. As the company grew, so did the gate. As responsibilities expanded, the consequences became clearer, yet they were always measured against what the market and the system could handle. In the earlier chapters of The Shmoo D

When You're Inside the Pattern, You Can't See the Shape This is a very Personal story. It was written after the announcement that one of the last remaining magazine wholesalers in the United States would be closing its doors, the same company that acquired my business and where I worked during my final year in distribution. It's another way of looking at abundance and the Morgan calculation. Hi, how’s your week been? Mine’s been a little slower than usual. Snow’s piled up