Business

    Another chapter in the ever-growing story of how I interact with, and use, social media:

    I wrote a little while ago about choosing two social networks.

    I kind of have, Mastodon and Threads/Instagram/Facebook. By which I mean that the Meta platforms all blur together with crossposting and attention.

    That leaves my remaining accounts from the tier list, Facebook Page, LinkedIn, and Twitter/X.

    Rather than delete them, like I’d rather, I’ve trialled throwing them to ChatGPT.

    I’m still refining the prompt, but here’s what I’m asking ChatGPT 4 to do in a Zapier zap:

    It starts with an instruction, or a set up which looks like this …

    You are a content producer for Josh Withers the Australian wedding celebrant, a marriage celebrant famous worldwide for creating epic marriage ceremonies for adventurous people. You believe that the best kind of marriage ceremony and wedding is an intentional one, where everyone invited is invited for a reason and with a purpose, and that everything that happens at the wedding happens with intentionality and purpose. You are not necessarily against wedding traditions but you are against wedding traditions for the sake of wedding traditions. You write and speak in Australian English, and in a classic and timeless nature but with the wit and humour of Australian marriage celebrant Josh Withers. Be funny. When talking about weddings use inclusive language, use bride only if you’re talking about a female person getting married, not as the title of the wedding industry client, and explore a diverse range of topics, cultures, and kinds of people that could get married.

    Then I prompt it to write a post like this …

    Write another new controversial tweet as Josh Withers, do not enclose it in quotation marks, written in the style of Australian wedding celebrant Josh Withers based off his writing online and on social media, asking a question or posing an thought about Josh Withers’s wedding planning style. The tweet can be a controversial opinion about a modern, inclusive, intentional style of getting married; or an insight into modern wedding planning; or a reflection on wedding traditions of old and how they don’t matter any more. Designed to illicit engagement and a response from people who see it. Take into account all interviews and responses by Josh Withers Australian wedding celebrant, and everything Josh has written on his online. Keep the message to under 280 characters. Do not start with greetings, do not use Australian slang like “G’day”, do not use any hashtags. Be controversial and talk about all kinds of different wedding topics. Make each tweet different and unique.

    There’s a 66% chance of the zap running that every hour, and 50% of the time the content goes to Facebook.

    My engagement on these existing platforms has been very low for a long time, so let’s see if this moves the needle. If not, it’s a fun experiment into what a LLM can do for social media.

    Colonel Sanders and the sadness in scaling businesses

    Mimi Sheraton in the New York Times in 1976 telling the story of walking into a KFC with Colonel Harland Sanders: You’re frying for 12 minutes—that’s six minutes too long. What’s more, your frying fat should have been changed a week ago. That’s the worst fried chicken I’ve ever seen. Let me see your mashed potatoes with gravy, and how do you make them? The Colonel is paid $200,000 a year to do advertising and PR for KFC, but when asked about Sanders' remarks on the chain’s methods post-sale:

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    Enshittification reaches the wedding industry, revealing The Knot to be rotten

    Three former employees of The Knot have blown thy whitsle. Jennifer Croom Davidson, former Global Fashion Director; Rachel LaFera, former Director of Fine Jewelry; and Cindy Croom Elley, former Account Executive at The Knot, have since left, are out from under NDA, and they’re truth-telling about one of the world’s largest wedding industry companies: The Knot Worldwide. The Knot Worldwide is the current name of the parent company of WeddingWire, The Knot, The Bump, Hitched (which formerly had a presence in Australia, and disclosure, yours truly was a paid writer for them), a series of localised wedding directory websites through The Americas and Europe, and the Real Weddings TV show.

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    🗺️ Where’s Josh’o? An update

    Just going on the record for everyone who asks where we are, where we’re living now, and if we’re ever coming home to Australia: we’re in Italy then Paris and Singapore between now and getting home to the Gold Coast late August. I’m back to work and at your service making weddings and elopements from August 22, 2023. I’ve got travel around Australia and New Zealand for weddings and elopements through the end of this year and early next year before we head back to Europe in 2024.

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    Fourteen

    The 14th of May is my celebrant anniversary and today in 2023 I begin my 15th year creating awesome marriage ceremonies for adventurous couples who really really like each other and believe that getting married matters. They say time is the best teacher so with 14 years a wedding celebrant, 41 years 5 months a human, 10 years 8 months a husband, 4 years 6 months a father, 3 years 1 month a silver fox, 32 years 2 months a computer nerd, 6 years 1 month a Qantas Platinum Frequent Flyer, 7 days a Parisian, and 24 years 10 months as best kitchen cleaner home medalist in my home state, ask me anything.

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    July: great at selling luggage, not great at supporting it

    Update: July have made good on this error and sent me a replacement bag to where I was in the USA. Thanks for going the extra-mile guys. I feel so heartbroken when I didn’t keep my word. I struggle as a parent when I make a promise - or a threat - to my girls because I want to make sure I can follow through on my word. When I fail to keep my word in friendships, family, or business, it pains me.

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    What we measure is often not what matters

    Byrne Hobart, in The Diff: “If actors are getting older and the music we listen to is getting older, it may be because TikTok stars, Twitch streamers, and Roblox creators aren’t being counted among entertainers, even if they have a similar-sized audience. One thing that drags down the average age of Fortune 500 executives is when tech startups with young founders go public, but many of those startups don’t have the revenue to qualify for the Fortune 500, even if their market cap puts them in the S&P.

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    Instagram is embarrassing itself because it didn't steal, it copied

    Five days after Instagram launched in October 2010 I graced the new photo-sharing service with this gold nugget. [] (https://www.instagram.com/p/-iO/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=) 4,301 days later who knew that I could have summed up the entire social network in four words. “Make me feel better!” Instagram made me feel better for the longest time. The simple act of making and viewing photos was lubricated to the point of a simple addiction. I could make photos and share them so easily, and you could share your photos and I could experience them so easily.

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    How much are they paying for this myGov thing again? I got the notification email overnight, I’ve been anxious about it all day, finally got the guts to log in and find out what was wrong, and I owe them $0. Can I sue the ATO & myGov for anxiety inducement?

    Follow-up to

    I’ve been extraordinarily blessed to have so many phone calls, messages, offers of help regarding my recent post, I’m not ok. I wanted to offer a few follow-up remarks: Donations: Some of the world’s most generous people have made offers of finance to us. I won’t say no, that’s rude, but I also am not asking. We’re provided for today, and luckily we have things to sell. Getting a new job: I have very mixed feelings about this.

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    A wedding celebrant’s Covid story: I’m not ok

    I see so many of my friends, and randoms I follow on the Internet, talking about lockdown and Covid has affected them. Stories of woe like having to takeaway instead of dine-in, holidaying in Australia instead of overseas, and some people have even been forced to share their home and their office with partners and children. Horrible stuff. And maybe for some of the unlucky ones you’ve had hours cut and some have lost jobs.

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    Hey Siri, please remind me of this every day

    “People hate their own art because it looks like they made it. They think if they get better, it will stop looking like they made it. A better person made it. But there’s no level of skill beyond which you stop being you. You hate the most valuable thing about your art.” – Elicia Donze

    On paying more

    “Most people try to negotiate the lowest possible price when paying for a service. That’s a mistake. Because if you “win,” you may save some money but are likely to be the lowest priority for that service provider as a result. On the flipside, if you pay a bit MORE than the typical price, you become that service provider’s highest priority. You’ll wind up getting way more value for your money.

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    How cheap money and algorithms shaped the last decade and the opposite will shape the next

    This is a powerful read for people trying to mentally tie a bow on the 2010s. Ranjan wraps it up saying that the cheap money thanks to near zero interest rate policies we’ve had since the GFC, and social media algorithms, are what shaped the last ten years of our lives. “I’m incredibly excited about the coming decade because I am genuinely hopeful the two core trends I outlined will be reversed.

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    I’m speaking at the Wedding Business CEO Summit

    Registration is officially open for the Wedding Business CEO Summit! This summit is hosted by, and created by my friend Heidi, to help wedding business owners go from overwhelmed & overworked to streamlined & more profitable than ever. I’m speaking along with 24 other incredible speakers with topics ranging from finances, pricing, integration, going full-time and everything in between. I’m talking about creating a meaningful and fun customer journey! The summit kicks off on Australia Day and it’s going to be 5 action-packed days that you won’t want to miss!

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    The fact that Uber achieved the same growth in 10% of its $150 million as spend is one thing, the story of how they got there, that’s something else entirely!

    Simon Owens on 'the Substack problem'

    “2021 will be the year that publishers start to form strategies to deal with the Substack Problem. By that, I mean they’ll need to find ways to discourage their star writers from leaving to launch their own Substack newsletters. In the most likely scenario, they’ll make deals with writers to launch the newsletter under the banner of the media company. They might structure the deal so the writer gets to keep their current salary and then some percentage of the subscriber income they generate – similar to the advances and royalties that book publishers dole out.

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    Finally mapped out my talk for next month’s wedding business summit, now I just need to find a quiet place to film it

    I’m forecasting that within 12 months the remaining non-greys will be turned to the grey-side as we embark upon what will be our busiest and most taxing year ever. 2021 sees Britt and I with a newborn, a toddler, new 2021 weddings and elopements, and also most of 2020’s couples.

    My friend Geoff at Motion Art Cinema said we should take before and after photos to see how 2021 ages us.

    Bring it on 2021!

    Bullish on Airbnb in a post-Covid world

    Airbnb’s strength today and in a post-covid travel world is in it’s flexibility to offering a different kind of travel. “Airbnb’s “gross daily rate” was pretty flat at the end of last year, hovering around $110. This, too, declined in April. But by June, it had increased to $146, and has since settled to a rate around 20% higher than last year — $128 in September.” Airbnb in 2020 would be one of the least affected-by-Covid companies on the planet.

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    Today’s office: Byron Bay Airport.

    The Gig Economy Is White People Discovering Servants

    “The core functionality of these apps — despite all their fancy technology — is not significantly different than having a servant. What the technology has done is pool the servants, make them available to more people, make it easier to communicate tasks, and — most importantly — make it possible to not think of them as servants at all.” Read the article by Indi Samarajiva

    Someone asked me recently what my personal brand strategy was.

    I just see go to places, see cool things, make photos of them, and post the photos online where they get 2-3 likes.

    I’m not very good at being strategically cool.

    If you see me dancing in an Instagram Reel or on TikTok, know that this is a call for help because I will have been taken hostage and I need to be rescued. Please screenshot this and put it on your fridge as a reminder.

    Apple’s underdogs series is marketing at its best.

    April 2019: Apple releases “Apple at Work — The Underdogs

    July 2020: Apple release “The whole working-from-home thing — Apple

    Working on story telling at this height would honestly be so cool!

    Gary Vaynerchuck’s take on the Apple of today and why he thinks they’re leaving money on the table and should buy Target (the US one) - Listen to the whole podcast.

    There are two things in this world that take no skill, spending other people‘s money, and dismissing an idea.

    Netflix staffer: so, it’s like Netflix, but you don’t get to choose what you watch, it just shows up automatically.

    Netflix execs: wow

    Rest of humanity: are you just describing TV?

    “Social media encourages the myth that who we are is defined by the opinions we type. But the older I get, the less interested I am in how well people can script their beliefs in front of a computer and the more interested I am in how tenaciously they go about grinding out their moral existence. I’m impressed when someone can get up every single day, determined to be a better human being than he or she was yesterday. Typing out what we “stand for” is easy. But loving well isn’t. I am not down on typing out our opinions—clearly. I’m only down on thinking that typing in and of itself constitutes an ethical life. May we stop thinking that becoming the kind of person we want to be is as easy as typing “me too” at those we agree with and “stupid people” at those we don’t. That’s a distraction from the real work of being human. And I’m ready to work.”

    From Love Matters More by Jared Byas

    ”A crisis doesn’t have to be a negative event. A wedding is a crisis–one ceremony, one day, over and done. All eyes, all attention, all on this moment. That’s why we do it–even though the chronic condition of the marriage itself is always more important.”

    Seth Godin, on a useful crisis