🎯 Work Smart Wednesday - February 21, 2024
Awards: how and why to apply, Sora: a new tool I am testing, and a quote on upgrades
Work Smart Wednesday
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In these emails I will share with you 3 things to help you work smarter in 3 minutes or less. That leaves you with 10,077 more minutes to conquer your goals this week
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1. 🏆 My top tips for awards
Last week, I had a call with a university acquaintance way back from my time running the Enterprise Society. He reached out to me on LinkedIn to help him with his awards application after seeing my LinkedIn post announcing that I had been invited to judge the UK Start Up Awards.
He runs a successful, funded, start up called Gilley and found the advice to be very useful.
Following that call, I realised that the advice was relevant for all freelancers and all small/medium businesses across every country and I decided to share it here for free with you.
Awards are an easy win for you and your business. Yes, you are award-worthy.
Here are my top tips for applying to awards: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WGCffDgHjXNzRQNkVM6kNijZed9helPzOn3SXsrxjDc/edit?usp=sharing
ACTION: Find and apply to an award (1.5 hours)
Usually, finding and applying to awards is a task that is assigned as a ‘regular repeat’ for a VA. They can find and apply to them on your behalf quickly and easily. However, I do recommend writing the application yourself the first time.
There will be relevant free awards to apply to for your area and your business type. It is quick and easy way to build credibility and leverage PR.
PLEASE ANSWER THE BELOW POLL. I AM CONSIDERING MAJOR CHANGES AND I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR FEEDBACK.
2. 🎥 Sora: ChatGPT creator’s new tool
This thing is incredible. Put simply, Sora turns text prompts into videos.
At the moment the videos are short and can be janky, but this tool only got released 6 days ago (on 15th Feb). The quality is insanely good most of the time and will only get better from here.
While this tool might replace the need for some video creation or editing in the future, I don’t see that happening for a while. ChatGPT has already shown us that even if a tool is extremely useful, adoption is slow.
Sora is more likely to create opportunities for creators to improve efficiency and offer new services for now.
Those that use the tool right now will reap the rewards. It is such a massive step up in technology and a strong advantage to be quick on things like this. Now, you are one of the first people in the world to know about it - you’re there within 6 days!
ACTION: Play around with Sora (30 minutes+)
Test the tool. My favourite use-cases so far have been:
Short videos for ads
“Custom stock” footage (a marketplace to sell pre-generated AI stock footage and/or prompts is inevitable)
Product/service/creative project MVPs and testing
Resource creation like how-to guides and explainer videos
Promo reels for events etc
Social media content creation
Hundreds of others. Tell me your ideas for how to use Sora. I want new ways to experiment!
As I mentioned in an earlier edition when giving tips on how best to use ChatGPT, "Once a new technology rolls out, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road".
The difference in quality after 1 year of improvement in AI videos is mind-blowing 🤯
3. 💡 Quote I'm pondering
"The company that needs a new machine tool, and hasn't bought it yet, is already paying for it" - Charlie Munger
Beware opportunity cost. In my experience, an awareness and focus on opportunity cost is among the biggest things separating successful business owners and small-time entrepreneurs.
As mentioned before here and here.
The tool or service might cost you $1000 now, but not using it might cost you significantly more in the long run.
For the eagle-eyed of you: I have dropped the “click to tweet this quote” thing for now. The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. I may test it again in future.
That's it! I can't wait to hear what you think. What did you find most useful? What do you want more or less of? Reply to this email now and let me know
I adapted the style this week, with bolded action points. Your feedback would be much appreciated - how do you feel about the change? Email me at John@JohnJDMunn.com
Also, if you have anything interesting to share, I want to know about it😊
Have a great week,
John
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All the companies heavily using Google Sheets (or even worse local Excel) to manage their business are profusely sweating reading that last point 😅