How to use Best Tech

What good is the tech if we don’t know how to use it, and properly at that? I’ve collected data from some of you, and overwhelmingly what the average reader of ‘the Best Tech newsletter’ (‘written by human’ – me!) wants are easy to follow tutorials on how to use much of the available technology, as well as honest assessments of what tools to be using. Trying to keep up with AI can truly be like trying to drink out of a firehose, so I absolutely understand the desire for basically just snapshots of what good products currently exist, what they’re capable of, and how to get the best results from them.

As a generalist, an entrepreneur, an influencer and a coach myself (keep reading until to the end for a valuable giveaway for free on that front), my use cases for AI currently span making music, videos, websites, presentations, games, doing research, branding, and role play, so I’ll try to keep the tutorials here relevant, actionable, valuable, and also diverse – but I’m also keen to hear from you the readers what you’d like to learn from this publication that will make it the most valuable resource you’ve ecer been subscribed to (literally) so please do keep the feedback coming.

I’ll include screenshots in the tutorials, often from my cell phone (I try to use my iPhone 16 Pro for absolutely everything I do, although I do have to use my desktop for my other newsletter, Tech For Good, because LinkedIn are haters, lol), but again, please do provide me with feedback on how this newsletter best serves you, because I’m writing this for you, not myself. Also, in reference to my “other” newsletter, I’ll begin reserving that one for more commentary, editorial, news, and ancillary topics, and likely keeping in much longer, whereas your feedback on this one has been to keep it shorter).

Lastly, before getting into some tutorials, I’ll say that launching this newsletter has been a much steeper climb that with TFG – for reference, I’m 2 weeks into this one, and currently writing to you, 1 of 200 subscribers (thank you for being here with me since “day one”, hence the gift at the end); in contrast, 2 weeks into TFG I had over 100,000 subscribers already, so I’ll really trying to crack the code here on email newsletter so, again, your feedback is beyond appreciated.

One tool that is extremely powerful is NotebookLM by Google, who just launched a mobile app for it, and are also just coming off of I/O, where the revealed a number of new models, agentic capabilities, and their new video generation tool, Veo 3, which is empirically the very best AI video generator currently available, and its world model comprehension of physics is nothing short of incredible (check out an amazing example, and take a deeper dive here). But for now, let’s dive into Google’s NotebookLM.

At its core, notebook is a way to communicate with files, videos, and content for audio learners by turning any combination of documents, videos, websites or text into a podcast, summarizing it, discussing it back and forth with a male and female podcast host (surprisingly easy to listen to), but what makes it even more powerful is their new beta feature, “interactive”, which lets you interrupt, steer the conversation in any direction that you want, and go as deep as needed, and making the duration fit your schedule and preferred learning mechanics. Powerful both on web and now mobile with the new app that’s working really well, I highly recommend this product as a productivity and learning “hack”.

Another tool that I’m personally obsessed with to generate next-level music is Suno. I am a musician, producer, recording artist, and huge music fan (I even have a music tech startup, We J), I’m genuinely blown away by how much I love the music this engine produces. I’m a bit disconcerted that I can get it to closely replicate most songs I’ve loved over the years, often even using the original artists’ voice, flow, etc., and that it occasionally hallucinates lyrics and music I didn’t prompt for, that’s almost clearly a real human’s copyrighted material, without their consent, knowledge, or compensation, but the music it can generate it truly better than 90% of all music I’ve ever heard made by humans. We can also debate where the lines have existed with sampling, electronic instruments, inspiration (look at the Monkeys and the Beatles… as an aside, I’ve always thought the best name for a new hip-hop crew like Wu Tang would be The Beat-Ills, but I digress).

Arguably the best tutorial I could provide on Suno is how to get it to “cover” songs we love, particularly since we the humans promoting and generating the songs on Suno legally own the rights to them, and can use them publicly (although that is a bit ‘odd’), but that blurs my lines of ethics, so I’ll simply share some of my best tips for getting it to generate seriously incredible music. The first is – use custom mode. Don’t have it generate its own lyrics, which it just uses ChatGPT for anyway; rather, give it your own lyrics, or - worst case - use Claude or Gemini to write some lyrics, then try to modify them a bit to “make them your own” before feeding it to lyrics section. I’ve found that not letting it use the predefined cadence, verbiage, and same played out rhymes make the voices sound much more human, original, and just “good”.

Also, you can use brackets [like this] in the lyrics portion of the song to add things like guitar solo, best drop, record needle crackle, key change, DJ scratching, etc., which is a great way to have more creative control in addition to writing a robust production note in “style” as well as “exclude styles” to further refine your track. Its comprehension of genres, nuance, and even vibe is pretty remarkable, so be as specific as you can. You can’t reference actual recording artists by name, but sometimes describing them very closely or creatively spelling their names a bit differently can help crack that code as well. One thing I’ve found is that adding neighborhoods, specific years, sometimes even mentioning record labels and sub-genres can help a lot too.

I do want to keep writing, because I love it, and have so many more tutorials in my head, but for the sake of brevity, and as this newsletter continues to develop its personality, I’ll stop winding this issue down, particularly because of the following offer I have for you for being a subscriber, and for reading until the end. I recently taught a 2 hour paid workshop on how to use AI for numerous use cases, and sell the replay for $500 “on the street”, but to anyone providing my feedback on this issue of the Best Tech newsletter, it’s yours for free. Just use my email addy linked above, and provide your feedback and let me know that you want to recording. Furthermore, as I truly want to grow this newsletter, I will sweeten the deal by offering a 4-hour masterclass decoding LinkedIn and how to grow a viral brand there that I usually sell for $750 if you recommend this newsletter to five friends, or do a post about it on whatever social media platforms you’re active on. Tag me, I’ll be sure to engage! This add-on is honor-system, but you reading this pub gives me confidence that you’re good people.

Speaking of good people, especially good people who are great at using AI, the best growth hack I know and personally leverage is having human virtual assistants who excel at using AI and deploying well trained agents on their behalf’s, therefore mine. I write all of my own content and newsletters personally, as I love to write and build authentic relationships with my audience, but much else that I am able to get accomplished seemingly all at once is by having The VA Group on the clock to assist me with so much. I highly recommend them – one of the best ROIs I’ve ever seen in my life.

With that said, I’ll sign off with an acknowledgment that I mentioned screenshots in the tutorials and didn’t put any – I tried and they looked like they were going to be too big. So please when you provide your feedback let me know if they’d be helpful, what you think of the length of this issue, if you want the video assets I mentioned, and how I can truly make the Best Tech newsletter the best Best Tech newsletter in your life and add an insane amount of value to your inbox.