Hey Content Academy! I've got some news to share. After years of building and growing together in the Content Academy, it's time for the next evolution of what we're doing here. Why I'm Launching KontentEngine.io The Content Academy has been incredible – it was my first community and continues to be a thriving, active space that I'm genuinely grateful for. You've all been amazing, and I appreciate every single one of you who's been part of this journey. However, since we started the Content Academy, my content and products have evolved significantly. While many core elements of my strategy remain the same, I've gone much deeper into AI, automation, and what's become the KontentEngine database – well beyond just teaching people how to get on video. What's Different (And What's the Same) The big shift: I'm transitioning from the KontentEngine database being an Airtable/no-code product to launching an official SaaS product called KontentEngine. KontentEngine.io will be: - A support hub for the new SaaS product - More focused on AI automation, no-code and coding solutions - Centered around using APIs to scale content creation Content Academy will continue to be: - Our original community foundation - A place for broader content strategy discussions - Where I'll share news about other communities - A space for the more inspirational insights you've told me you enjoy Your Options (No Pressure!) I know being in multiple communities can be overwhelming, so here are your choices: Option 1: Stay in both communities - You'll get the full spectrum of content and support - Some crossover and duplicate content is likely Option 2: Choose the one that fits you best - Content Academy: For broader content strategy and community updates - KontentEngine.io: For AI automation, no-code, APIs, and SaaS product support

With the education industry moving toward an AI-driven experience for the customer... (AI bot walking clients through a learning process)... I'm trying to decide the best place to build/host my bot... I know I can do a GPT + Pinecone or use many of the third-party apps... What do you think is the best way to go about this? I'm looking for a long-term solution. (I don't want to build/train a bot in one place and then have to do it again later elsewhere) I'm also imagining the bot will also have the ability to serve up training materials (videos, checklists, templates) too... Thanks!

It’s funny looking back—after I sold my previous company I developed an ego, I told myself how great I was. But in reality all my business choices were total failures and bad moves. I spent a lot of time on ridiculous things—obsessing over a business card that no one would ever see, redoing my website over and over and over, changing my taglines endlessly. What’s the name of my business? Oh, I’d get different domain names. Everything except actually doing business. And even as I got through those things, I just kept making more and more mistakes. I was doing things that didn’t matter, avoiding the truly hard part, which was simply talking to a lot of people really fast and selling them stuff. That was the only thing that actually moved the needle, but I wasn’t doing it. Instead, I was keeping myself "busy." Of course, you can imagine that all this work didn’t do anything. So what did I think? That I wasn’t being productive enough. That I just couldn’t get enough done. And that became my main problem—or so I thought. Since I believed that was the issue, I started looking for all the optimization techniques. Getting up early, setting routines, journaling—all the things that everyone says you need to do. And that just became one more thing. And sure, all of that optimization matters—but only if you’re at least doing the right things in the first place. And that’s the key: The biggest productivity boost you can make today is simply to only do the things you need to do. Nothing else. I don’t know why it’s so hard for us to do that. Self-sabotage? Fear of failure? Maybe. But we don’t always see it. Instead of trying to optimize your life, there’s no point in even doing that until you’re actually working on the right things. So then the only question to ask is: What is the right thing to work on? And while that is different for everyone, the scariest part of that question is that I rarely look to myself to answer it. It was just the endless scrolling of social media that would leave me confused as to what to do. I’d take in all these different opinions, strategies, and ideas, and instead of finding clarity, I’d end up more lost than before.

Hey Stephen, I loved your most recent video on the RAG system. I have many clients who would buy a done-for-you RAG system (I would too). I'm curious, have you considered building/selling a software that would do all of this automatically? I'm imagining something where I just sync my podcast/youtube, train it on my brand voice and preferred writing practices, and it then uses claude to pump out endless tweets, scripts, emails, posts, etc.

Tomorrow I'll drop a YouTube video on how to generate these fully automated AI video from HeyGen's new API subscription. You can record audio notes in Slack and then automatically generate high quality videos and store them in Airtable (and publish them). Checkout the video tomorrow when it goes live at 10am Pacific.