Hi Friends,

Last week I sat down with Zohra for an hour.

Not for a date. For a training session. On AI.

Instead, I showed her Claude Code and its Cowork feature. We described what we wanted: cities, our desires, budget, pace of travel, must-see items. In 15 minutes, it researched destinations, built a day-by-day itinerary, and offered to book hotel rooms within our parameters.

Zohra looked at me and said: "Holy shit, this is amazing."

Two issues ago, I told you I was designing what comes next. Last issue, I went deep on AI and started asking bigger questions about where it could take me. This issue, I want to show you what the last two weeks actually looked like. Because something is starting to take shape.

I built a lot. And it was a lot of fun:

Two founders I am close to read my last two newsletters and reached out. One runs an online self-recovery program for addiction. His online program is gaining traction but his website was not telling a compelling story.

Most websites I see are disconnected sections: hero, services, testimonials, etc. Not a cohesive story of why you are better than all alternatives.

I rebuilt his positioning, messaging, and strategic narrative in a single sitting. The work that would have taken 2+ weeks took 3 hours. Not because AI did the strategy. Because AI collapsed the research. Pulling scattered information across podcasts, call notes, testimonials, market data, and competitive research used to be the bottleneck. That bottleneck is gone. I shared a 10-page strategy and positioning recommendation. His response:

"Holy shit, this is the most organized and purposeful look I have ever had."

That’s two “holy shits” in one week for those keeping score.

The other runs a video agency and wants to 3x his business this year. We worked through positioning and found his ideal niche: law firms.

It’s a space where he has deep domain knowledge and a proven track record. Using Claude Code and an unbelievable tool called Firecrawl, I scraped 100 validated emails, phone numbers, and social media profiles from law firms in his city that matched his perfect criteria: Partner or Managing Director level, active on Instagram and/or YouTube. That list would have taken someone two weeks to build manually. This took 15 minutes and a few dollars.

I am also building an AI agent that sends me personalized market research every morning at 6am. It gets better every day.

None of this was on a plan. I just kept showing up for the people around me.

When I stepped back and looked at everything I had built in two weeks, a pattern emerged that I was not expecting.

There is a Japanese concept called ikigai. It sits at the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

I sat down with my notepad this week and mapped what had been giving me energy. Every project, every rabbit hole, every conversation that made me lose track of time. When I drew the circles, the overlap was staring right back at me.

The ikigai surprised me. Not because the circles were hard to fill. Because the overlap was so obvious I almost missed it.

Everything I built in the last two weeks had the same DNA. The positioning & messaging work. The lead list. The coaching. The trip planning with Zohra. The market research agent. All of it was the same thing: taking what I already know and using AI to execute it at a speed that was not possible six months ago.

I am tired of the narrative that AI will take your job. It is lazy and designed to scare, not help. The real question is simpler: can you use these tools every day to do more of the work that actually matters?

I found it. Not a title. Not a plan. The work that makes me lose track of time and produces results for the people I care about. That is enough to build on.

I will keep showing you what I am building, in real time.

'Til next time,

--Ali

P.S. Two of my clients came from replying to this newsletter. If you are curious whether AI could accelerate something specific in your business, send me a note. No pitch. Just a conversation.

About Me: I am Ali. 18 years building and advising B2B companies. Now building AI systems that connect strategy to execution for growth-stage companies.