Motivation, humor, and honesty from a man actively dodging a midlife crisis so you can too.
Someone offered to pay me for something I wasn't even selling.
Let me back up.
I've been coaching for nearly 15 years.
My professional career as a storyteller in television, with books, and on stage started nearly 25 years ago.
For the past few years, I've spent a lot of time helping people build keynote talks that get them booked and paid.
I still love the work.
Then someone came to me and said:
"I don't need a keynote. I need you to extract my brain."
That stopped me.
They wanted me to pull their expertise out of them.
The things they knew how to do but couldn't explain.
The instincts they ran on but had never put into words.
The patterns they saw that nobody else in the room could see.
They wanted all of it extracted, organized, and clearly articulated so they could feed it into AI.
Claude. ChatGPT. The tools everyone is talking about.
They wanted a second brain that thinks like them.
So I did what I've always done.
I asked questions.
I listened like a journalist.
Pushed back like a coach.
Caught the throwaway line that turned out to be the whole insight.
Noticed the pause.
Read the face.
Connected things they didn't realize were connected.
When we were done, they had something they'd never had before.
Their own expertise.
Clearly laid out. In their own voice. Ready to be used.
The results came fast.
They started saving hours every week.
Producing work that used to take them a full weekend in a single afternoon.
Getting in rooms they weren't in before.
Within a few weeks, they referred me to three more people who wanted the same thing.
That's when I realized I'd accidentally started a business.
Most professionals are using AI at maybe 10% of what it can actually do.
Even at that level it's impressive.
But most people are still typing generic prompts into incredibly powerful systems and wondering why the output sounds generic too.
It's like driving a Ferrari in first gear.
The unlock isn't learning more about AI.
It's understanding what you actually know well enough to teach it to the machine.
That changes everything.
The part that nobody wants to hear is that you probably can't get there alone.
You can't interview yourself.
You can't hear your own pauses.
You can't catch the thing you think is obvious but is actually your competitive advantage.
You need a person on the other end of that conversation.
Someone who knows how to pull the signal from the noise.
Someone who hears what you're not saying.
The most valuable thing you know is the thing you've never been able to say out loud.
Antonio
PS: I'm curious how you're using AI right now. Hit reply and tell me.
Forwarded this email? Sign up here.
100+ Claude Code hacks to ship code 10X faster
Top engineers at Anthropic say AI now writes 100% of their code.
Are you using AI to write yours?
These 100+ Claude Code hacks show you exactly how. Sign up for The Code and get:
100+ Claude Code hacks — free
The Code newsletter — learn the latest AI tools and skills to code faster in 5 mins a day