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Forte Labs Newsletter

The Ultimate Tool for Thought?!

Published 4 months ago • 2 min read

I'm happy to announce that Simple Marketing for Smart People is now available!

I co-authored this book with Billy Broas, one of the few marketing experts I trust. Billy advised me in the early days of Building a Second Brain and helped me transform it from a side project into a seven-figure education company.

We wrote this book for those with a great product but unsure how to convey it without sounding “pitchy.” The marketing industry is packed with endless shiny objects. How do you find the signal in the noise?

If you want to move beyond the endless tactics and hacks, understand your customers like never before, and win them over without hype or hard-selling, this is for you.

INPUT: How to Remember What to Store in Your Second Brain

Newsletter reader Roman shared with me a clever acronym he developed to remember the criteria for what to save in his Second Brain. It's called INPUT...

  • Inspiring: Does it inspire me or move me in any way?
  • Needed: Is it useful and will come in handy in the future?
  • Personal: Is it personal information (thoughts, reflections, memories, lessons learned)?
  • Unexpected: Is it surprising information?
  • Topics: Is it related to one of my 12 favorite problems/questions/topics?

When I read it, I thought: Why didn't I come up with this?! Thanks, Roman, for gifting us this acronym.

Simple Marketing for Smart People ft. Billy Broas

In this video, Billy and I provide a sneak peek into our book Simple Marketing for Smart People and discuss...

  • Why marketing is not what you thought it was
  • The golden marketing rule anyone who wants to sell must follow
  • The one thing that will destroy all your marketing efforts (and how to avoid it)
  • Which 3 questions you can ask to get to know your customers like never before
  • How to educate your audience and change their beliefs

Also, if you're a podcaster and would like to have Billy on your show, let me know and I can make an intro.

Is NotebookLM—Google’s Research Assistant—the Ultimate Tool for Thought?

If you enjoyed my exploration of NotebookLM, you'll love this...

My friend Dan Shipper sat down with best-selling author Steven Johnson to see if they could come up with a concept for his next project—using AI.

They loaded 200,000 words of NASA transcripts and all of Steven’s reading notes since 1999 into NotebookLM to see if it could help them explore the Apollo 1 fire.

The results were mind-blowing. NotebookLM condensed the NASA transcripts into readable formats, sifted through the material to identify the catalyst for the fire, and identified an unexpected story from history that they could use to explain the origins of the fire in Steven's Readwise notes.

If you’re interested in AI as a creative tool, you need to check this out.

Btw, Google just announced that NotebookLM is now available in 200 countries 🥳 So if you haven't had the chance to try it out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot.

Help Me Visit the Birthplace of Email

You might have heard me say this before, but...I'd LOVE to visit the place where the first-ever email was sent on October 29, 1969: Room 3420 in Boelter Hall at UCLA.

If you know someone at UCLA who can help me get access, please connect me with them. I'd greatly appreciate it.

And if you're curious to read the story behind the first email, check it out here...

Build your Second Brain

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Tiago Forte

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Forte Labs Newsletter

Build your Second Brain with Tiago Forte

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