Monday Memo
A Byte of Knowledge
We type 50 words a minute, but can speak 150.
That gap costs you more than time, because typing forces you to ration what you say.
Sit at the keyboard and feel the rationing start.
Halfway through the third sentence of a prompt you begin cutting: out goes the note about the client's compliance rules, then the ad that flopped last spring.
By minute five you send a thinner version of what you meant, and the model answers the thinner version.
So get comfortable talking to your computer.
Flip on voice mode, or use a tool like SuperWhisper or Willow while you pace the kitchen....
And a whole prompt suddenly takes 90 seconds to get into the chat window instead of 9 minutes.
The compliance rules and the flopped ad make it in, because saying them out loud costs you nothing.Twenty prompts a day and the model works with everything you know. Week one, talking to a screen feels ridiculous. By week three, typing does.
🚀 WATCH: How These AI Copy Bots Are Producing World-Class Sales Copy 50X Faster Than Even The "BEST" Copywriters On The Market…
(Plus… They Don't Get Sick, Miss Deadlines, Or Ask For Raises Either!)
Watch the full AI Copywriting Tell-All Video Here
Something to Ponder
We Asked – AI Answered
Our Question:
"What are the biggest traps or illusions to avoid when weighing th| opportunity costs of a business decision?"
AI's Answer: The Ghost Ledger: 5 Opportunity Cost Illusions Bleeding Your Business 👻💸
Every decision buys one thing and quietly refuses another. The purchase shows up in your P&L... the refusal never does, and that invisible side of the ledger is exactly where smart founders get robbed.
🪦 1. The Sunk Cost Séance
Kodak took it to the grave. Their own engineer, Steve Sasson, built the first digital camera in 1975... leadership shelved it to protect film, and Chapter 11 arrived in 2012.
Your brain runs the same séance on a smaller budget, treating spent money as recoverable if you push harder.
📍 The receipts:
→ Arkes & Blumer, 1985: full-price theater subscribers attended far more shows than discounted-ticket holders, though both groups faced identical costs going forward
→ Britain and France bankrolled the Concorde long after the economics died... economists now call it the "Concorde fallacy"
Killing a zombie project stops the interest payments on a loss already taken.
🔦 2. Worshipping the Seen
Sunk costs sting because they're visible... which drags us into the next trap. Bastiat mapped it in 1850 with the broken window: the crowd counts the glazier's new income, and nobody counts the shoes the shopkeeper never bought.
Your version:
Seen... the $40K campaign you ran and can screenshot in a deck
Unseen... the product line that same $40K never became
Hazlitt stretched it into a full lesson in 1946: trace every decision to its long-run effects on everyone touched, including future-you. Your dashboard only reports on roads taken.
📅 3. The Yes...Damn! Effect
Time has its own mirage. Zauberman and Lynch found in 2005 that people assume future time will be abundant, so they overcommit months ahead... you'd reject that October conference if it landed this Thursday. Parkinson caught the companion disease in 1955: work expands to fill whatever time you give it.
🔍 The Thursday Test:
✅ Commit only if you'd rearrange this week for it
❌ Everything else is a no, however far out it sits
🎲 4. The Certainty Tax
The next one whispers. Daniel Ellsberg's 1961 paradox: people prefer a gamble with known odds over one with unknown odds... even when the expected value is identical.
You pay it here:
💸 Another $15K into the trade show converting at a sleepy, predictable 2%
🚫 Zero for the unproven channel with no benchmark and 10x headroom
Known mediocrity feels cheaper than unknown upside... markets don't refund feelings.
📏 5. Benchmarking Against Mediocrity
The last illusion hides inside your yardstick. Munger built his edge by measuring every deal against his best available alternative, since beating your worst current option burns cash when a better one sits unfunded. He dismisses bankers' IRR spreadsheets for grading deals against abstract hurdles instead of your next-best move.
Buffett codified the same blade in Berkshire's Owner's Manual: retained earnings must deliver "at least $1 of market value for each $1 retained" over time. If a dollar can't clear that bar, hand it back.
🎯 The Pre-Yes Gut Check
Two questions reprice every meeting you sit in:
🏛️ What am I refusing, and what is that worth in dollars?
⚰️ Starting fresh today, would I buy this again?
Jobs said it in five words at WWDC 1997: "Focusing is about saying no." Every yes smuggles in a stack of silent nos... choose them on purpose.
Thanks for reading the Monday Memo.
Until next time!
The AI Marketers
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