Writing
Notes on marketing, AI and building websites that do the work.
19 June 2026 · Tim
The thing agreed with you again. You brought it a decision. Explained the context. Added the nuance. It nodded, offered three supporting reasons, and sent you out the door feeling smart. That’s not a thinking partner. That’s a mirror. The positive reinforcement loop is the biggest trap in working with AI. It doesn’t feel like…
Read19 June 2026 · Tim
Most people use AI like a search engine. Ask. Get an answer. Move on. The people getting real leverage have stopped doing that. They’ve built a system. A system with parts, governance, and a direction. Not a better search engine. Something else entirely. There are seven parts. Identity is who the AI thinks…
Read19 June 2026 · Tim
Staring at a blank page trying to articulate your values is a particular kind of awful. You sit down to capture your goals, your rules, your tone preferences, the security constraints you want the AI to work inside. Within five minutes you’ve forgotten what you actually believe. So don’t write it from scratch. Let the…
Read19 June 2026 · Tim
There’s a moment, two or three sessions in, when the output still isn’t quite right and you wonder if any of this is actually going to work. Most people close the tab here. That’s the wall. The ones who push through figure out something the others don’t. The problem isn’t the AI. The problem is…
Read19 June 2026 · Tim
There’s a moment in every AI training I run where someone says: yeah, but you know how to prompt AI. True. I’ve been doing it for four years. But that’s not the real answer. The real answer is twenty-five years running businesses and fifteen years in tech. When I sit down to prompt, I already know…
Read19 June 2026 · Tim
Open ChatGPT or Claude right now. Look at the top of the screen. Which model is selected? Almost certainly the biggest, most expensive one. The platform defaults you there. It doesn’t ask. It doesn’t explain. It just assumes you want maximum firepower for every single thing you type. That’s fine when you’re doing serious work….
Read23 April 2026 · Tim
You know when you’re having a conversation with AI, whether that’s ChatGPT, Claude, or anything else, and you just find it responding to you overly positively? Reinforcing your own beliefs, nodding along to your decisions, when what you actually want is for it to act like a group of experts. To qualify what got you…
Read4 November 2025 · Tim
AI can’t fix bad strategy. Feed it clarity about who you are, where you’re playing, what you’ll say, and what you’ll do, and it becomes useful. Skip those steps and you’ll sound generic no matter how good the prompts are.
Read23 August 2025 · Tim
Meta advertising in the Clare Valley is an affordable and effective way to increase brand awareness and drive engagement. In this video, I’ll break down exactly what it costs to run ads on Facebook and Instagram for a day, how I’ve structured my campaigns, and how you can do the same for your business. I’ll…
Read23 August 2025 · Tim
Why do we pay more for a pair of Nikes than we do for unbranded shoes. And why it matters to your business.
Read23 June 2025 · Tim
Hi, Tim here. If you’re in South Australia, you’ve probably seen the big brand refresh from SATC over the past 24 hours—new TVC, Facebook content, and a revamped website. It’s a huge shift, and honestly, I’m into it. Most tourism brands play it safe and end up blending in. Not this one. South Australia’s gone…
Read30 May 2025 · Tim
I’m going to type this one out. I use AI to write so much of what I do these days. I dictate, because it’s fast and efficient. But between all the superfluous em dashes – and the excessive attempt at injecting personality and yet falling ever so far short, this is better written by hand….
Read23 May 2025 · Tim
Hello businesses of the Clare Valley. So I came out of that Destination Management Plan workshop on Monday probably like two things. One was inspired and one was a little bit impatient. The Funding Challenge So the Destination Management Plan is going to be released in July and, if we’re honest, unless something significant changes…
Read23 April 2025 · Tim
My Tourism Apprenticeship For a decade I was part of the trusted inner circle working for the benefit of the Geelong and Bellarine Tourism Industry. When I was leaving the region 5 or so years ago, they even tongue-in-cheek offered me a Lifetime Membership (which doesn’t exist) for my work and commitment over those years….
Read23 April 2025 · Tim
Different is easier to pick. Different is easier to repeat stories about. Different is why we’ll drive past other places to get to yours. And perhaps even pay a bit more. To prove it, here’s a short story about a pub we discovered while travelling. With the proper budget behind us, any one of us…
Read23 March 2025 · Tim
Discover how a small business can prime ChatGPT to write better prompts that give you better results. I’ve been using ChatGPT over 12 months. I’m sharing how you can prime it before you ask anything, to make sure the responses you get aren’t your typical marketing messages, completely off-brand and useless to you.
Read23 March 2025 · Tim
When it comes to marketing, most businesses small and large, tend to attempt too much. For too little results. So how do you pick what the best thing to put your time, money, or effort into? First, there’s no best thing to do in marketing. So get the idea out of your head that you’re…
Read23 March 2025 · Tim
Web designers and marketers will tell you to put an unmissable book now button at the top of your website. Maybe at the bottom too, or locked to some part of the screen even when the user scrolls. So convincing they’ll be about the colour, style, or size, it’d seem silly to ignore the advice….
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