Personal Story of Career and Life: Community to AI to Content Automations and Back to Community

I started writing this newsletter in the beginning of 2024.

It was time for me to start my “Persona Brand” (ooh ahh).

Coming into 2024, all I had to show for that brand was a YouTube channel with Langchain development videos and a lack of direction.

I felt like I needed to be in a hyper specific box—which to an extent was true.

I needed walls so I knew what to break.

I decided to move towards AI and content.

Then AI + automation for content processes.

Then coming into present day, I have come back to something that has always been in my heart but now with new skills and perspective:

Community, Connection, Service, and Love.

I want to share how my journey through these different stages has helped me find more clarity and purpose in both my career and my life.

Making the Walls to Break Them

Early 2024, I decided I would do something.

I started pivoting the YouTube channel and brand away from development videos to AI and content creation.

I had other stuff I wanted to talk about but if I’m being honest, I didn’t see any way to monetize that in a meaningful way at the time.

I was a boat floating in the ocean and needed to dock somewhere for a while—that island was AI and content.

So I carried on like this for a few months, and kept iterating.

Over the course of those few months, I noticed that I was well suited to leverage my technical background to do what other creators in my niche couldn’t: building tools, automation, etc.

Let’s get into that transition next:

Solving My Own Problems with Content

Once I found my rhythm I started noticing the bridge from my technical background and AI for content processes—solving my own problems with my unique skillset, so it was more in line with who I was.

This led me to creating a brand more for human creativity with future technology (which I still believe is a crucial aspect to my person that helps me in my work and life).

I noticed how the process of content creation was just as important as the content.

Why?

Because I had little to no time to pick my head up and think about long-term plans, business, etc.

You can create all you want, but what does that matter in a world of attention wars and only 24 hours in day.

You need a purpose

Content is useful when it serves some purpose.

Even if the purpose is personal brand and I’ll show you what I mean:

If you don’t know what you’re doing or where you want to go how can you be anyone to someone else?

They need to see what it is you are doing, what you believe, etc.

Lots of successful entrepreneurs have great personal brands because they have a purpose and people see that.

Making content processes more efficient was important to me:

• automating away the menial tasks

• creating workflows that save time

• learning how to leverage new technology to empower our creativity

I can confirm from feedback I’ve gotten it’s important to others who are on their entrepreneurial journey as well.

I realized recently that I’m not just interested in doing this for any kind of content.

I’m interested in making my operations efficient in both content and business.

And the business I’ve really been passionate about for a while now is community.

Before talking about that more, I’m going to get into the story of how I arrived at this in hopes that it helps anyone else reading on their own journey.

The Spark that Started Deeper Self-Reflection

The TL;DR

Over the past few months, I’ve been going deeper on myself:

• figuring out my emotions

• practicing more mindfulness (getting back to a regular meditation and journaling habit)

and other things of that nature.

This took a lot of time thinking for me to get to where I am now.

I was afraid of letting go of what I had because I was so tied up in the tiny success I had there to let it go.

Then I had a very profound healing experience in Oregon which led to some huge unlocks…

But also more work to be done on myself, my relationships, and my life.

I’ve come out of that fog a bit now with much more clarity of who I am and what my purpose is.

There’s still plenty of work to be done, but I feel much more aligned with myself now.

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

I could talk all day—I wanted to give the high level overview of the personal process I went through so anyone reading can maybe grok a thing or two.

Now let’s carry on to how I reflected on my career trajectory.

Returning to What was Under my Nose all Along

Reflecting on the past couple of years

I started to reflect on

• what I was successful at in the past couple years.

• what made me feel the best in the gut, head and heart

and other questions of the like.

When I look at the thing I’ve stuck with the longest and enjoyed it’s been AITX: an in-person community for AI enthusiasts, engineers, entrepreneurs, and business operators in Texas.

It’s grown a ton in the past year and a half:

• We 100+ people coming to the monthly meetups consistently now in Austin.

• The local newsletter has grown all by word of mouth to 860+ subs and over half of that list opens it still today.

• We’ve expanded to San Antonio as a sister meetup.

• We recently had our first hackathon!

• I work with a team of amazing people I am happy to now call friends.

I realized it was not necessarily the fact that it is AI focused that excites me though…

It’s been the process of building community from the ground up, seeing the fruits of that labor and the positive impact it has on other people’s lives in their journey.

It’s been here all along

Community has always made me feel the best.

Seeing other people connect, share their stories and feeling like they belong somewhere brings me joy.

It’s something I’ve always wanted for myself so giving it to others is beyond amazing to me.

I am much more at home and in my element with people.

I used to resist this, but I’m leaning into it now.

I have been working with a few folks on a new concept for a business I am starting, getting feedback, refining it and learning a lot.

Where I’m Headed

My reflections like the one I’ve shared above coupled with the more personal transformative experiences I’ve had have led me to where I am now.

I know myself more insofar as I know what makes me come alive more than I did a year ago:

• community building

• bring people together

• facilitating deeper connections

• serving others in their missions

I want to do my part to bring back deeper connections in this modern world.

I believe we lack love and connection because we don’t spend enough time connecting in real life.

For what I do next, I see myself doing this through some version of what I’ve been doing with AITX for over a year and half—bringing people together through in-person experiences.

I will have much more to share on this in the coming weeks, but for now all that I can do is focus on the work and talk about it later.

What about the content here?

As for the content I write about, this will still include how I use AI but it isn’t the core focus.

Don’t read this to only learn how to use AI tools or prompt engineer—there is going to be much personal insight from what I do which involves: community, creativity, self-discovery, and of course I use AI in my work and life (automations sometimes too).

Thank You

For those that have been riding since January 2024, thanks for sticking with me.

For those who are new, welcome aboard.

What I write about will change as I have. I think you’ll enjoy it still.

‘Til next time, much love and peace y’all 🤠