8/28/2026

Editors: Rebecca Morgan & Ken Braly

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SNN Webcast Info


Tuesday, September 1
Create Your AI Workforce to Run
Your Marketing and Office for Pennies (webcast)
with Heather Lutze, CSP

Heather LutzeYou’re a speaker. You like to be in front of an audience.

If you’re like many of us, you’re not as fond of all the tasks you have to do to support that speaking. Writing a blog. Updating web pages. Maintaining your calendar. Responding to queries. Creating marketing materials.

Some speakers hire staff to handle office functions, but that can be expensive. Heather Lutze has figured out how to have AI do many of these tasks, very inexpensively.

Yes, this is another program about AI. But it will be filled with strategies and tips that will save you both time and money, and let you do more of what you like — speaking.

Read more about this session at the bottom of this newsletter, then register for the live program or pre-order the recording.

Note: Everyone who registers for the live webcast session or orders the recording will get a link to the recorded video of the online webcast, as well as the audio MP3 for convenient re-listening.

Mark your calendar:

  • Thurs., Sept. 24 — “Design with Purpose: Create Branded Visuals with Canva® that Support Your Speaking Business” with Carolyn Cummins (Details coming soon)

Miscellaneous Tips

Check pricing history before buying — Bob Rathbun

Amazon has a very useful feature. Right next to the price on an item is a blue “Price history” button. Clicking it shows a chart of the item’s price over time. Most inexpensive items don’t change, but more expensive items (like a power tool) can show drastic variations in price. If an item has had a lower price in the past you might want to wait to see if it drops again.

Amazon gives you the option to set up a price alert to get notified when it drops to your target price. If you are sure you want it at that price and are willing to wait, you can also set it to automatically purchase it at that price so you don’t miss it. I used to use CamelCamelCamel to do all this with Amazon, but this native function is much slicker and easier. In my experience, if you are willing to wait, an item will usually return to its lowest price sooner or later, and that can be a good bargain.

What works on LinkedIn isn’t what you think — Vickie Sullivan

The LinkedIn of today is far different than what the platform was like when it first launched. Nearly every working human uses it, plus the platform’s algorithms have dramatically changed what people see in their feed. And that makes it harder to know what works on LinkedIn — if your posts will get any engagement.

Some people have figured it out and are getting impressions and engagement. Drumbeat analyzed over 2.5 million engagements across 16,000 posts to find out what works on LinkedIn, and what doesn’t. Here are their findings.

What Works on LinkedIn Now

What types of LinkedIn posts perform well? These are ones getting high engagement these days:

  • Long posts (1,000 characters or longer)
  • Starting a new position
  • Being thankful, but not cheesy
  • Being personal (writing in the first person: I/my

My favorite part of this study, though, is the engagement bait graveyard. A lot of the tactics, emoji, and hooks we’ve been using are dying — if not already dead. It isn’t pretty.

What do all these bad ideas have in common? They were once effective. These maneuvers used to cut through the noise. They don’t anymore because everyone started doing the same thing.

The worst part: Lots of advisors still tell people to keep up this bad work.

Why do they do that? Because they don’t have their finger on the pulse of what’s working now. They are on autopilot.

So, the real takeaways in this report are twofold:

  1. Change tactics sooner than you want
  2. If you hire someone to help increase engagement, ask tough questions about what’s working

Call me an eternal optimist, but LinkedIn can still be a powerful platform. But you need to use it to the fullest advantage, and that calls for being nimble and willing to switch things up.

Technology Tips

One online hub for all your tools — Julie Holmes

We looked at a lot of tools recently, trying to find somewhere for all our tasks to live. A LOT! ClickUp is what we landed on.

Tasks, projects, speaking opportunities, newsletter planning, behind-the-scenes admin — it’s all in there. And because it integrates with pretty much everything, it’s also where AI outputs from other tools actually land and get acted on.

There is a learning curve. No way around it. But once it clicks, it earns its place.

Might not be for everyone, so do your own due diligence before committing to it. But if you’re juggling a lot of moving parts and need somewhere for it all to live, it’s worth a look.

Use AI to advise you on which credit cards to keep and which to downgrade — Rebecca Morgan

If you’re like a lot of us road warriors and have been amassing credit cards for their bonus points, perks, or loyalty programs, or if you just have a bunch of cards, use AI to suss out the ones you could downgrade (or cancel, knowing your credit score will take a brief hit) to save you tons in annual fees. By auditing my cards and having it recommend downgrades, I’ll save $1000/year in annual fees as many of my cards had redundant perks. I got a chart with which ones to keep, and why, plus which ones to downgrade.

Give AI your list of cards (not the numbers), and let it do its magic.

You can also have it recommend which cards to use for what categories (e.g., airlines, dining, internet, groceries, gas, office supplies). I had it make a chart so I can easily change my autopays and the cards saved in each account, eliminating excess cards for that account.

Have AI give you a list of each card’s perks — you may find some you didn’t know about or forgot about that you can use now.

If you want to amass more points/miles, have AI recommend which one you should add to your portfolio next.

SpeakerNet News Webcast Info


Tuesday, September 1
Create Your AI Workforce to Run
Your Marketing and Office for Pennies (webcast)
with Heather Lutze, CSP

Heather LutzeHeather runs a Monday staff meeting with seven people she never hired.

Eva has her calendar. Sonny brings what went out on social last week. Penny has a blog draft waiting. Stan reports on the conversations he’s been keeping warm. Linda flags anything in a contract that made her nervous. Rachel tells Heather who called. Walter builds the web pages.

Not one of them is a person. Not one of them is on payroll.

The meeting is real, though. Heather blocks the time, reviews the work, and sends things back when they’re wrong. That last part is where most people get this backward. They treat AI like a vending machine, look at what comes out, and decide the writing is garbage. They’re right about the output. They’re wrong about the process.

Here’s what she didn’t expect: the agents work together. Penny writes a blog post, Sonny builds the campaign around it, and neither one starts from a blank page. The result has a point of view because it started with Heather’s and got refined twice. No slop.

Last month this arrangement gave her back 70 hours.

Heather will show you how. (She’s not selling anything.) She’ll open her real dashboards and walk through the whole operation: what each agent does, how she built them, and where she’s watched them fail. That last part matters more than the highlight reel.

The tools are cheap. Sintra.com, Lovable.dev and Marblism.com cost less per month than a single afternoon of contract help.

You’ll walk away with:

  • How to hire your first agent, and what to put it on. Most people start with the hardest thing on their list and quit when it fails. Pick the right first job instead.
  • What Sintra.ai, Lovable.dev and Marblism.com each do well, and what they actually cost per month. Including where they overlap, so you don’t pay twice for the same thing.
  • The Monday review that keeps the output publishable. The difference between an agent and a chat window is a standing review cycle. You will watch Heather’s run.
  • How to pair two agents. A blog post and the campaign promoting it get built together instead of separately, which is why the writing has a point of view instead of reading like slop.
  • Where agents fail. The tasks Heather’s learned to keep on her own desk, so you don’t find those out the expensive way.

Bring your questions. Eva will remind Heather to answer them.

Register for the live program or order the recording.
Note: Everyone who registers for the live webcast session or orders the recording will get a link to the recorded video of the online webcast, as well as the audio MP3 for convenient re-listening.

Date: Tuesday, September 1
Time: 7:00 pm Eastern, 6 pm Central, 5 pm Mountain, 4 pm Pacific
 (Enter your location here to get your local time)
Length: 60 minutes
Cost: $49 (webcast)


Special Limited-Time Offer:

If you would like more creative ideas for using AI to help build and run your business, we’re suggesting the recordings of several earlier programs to complement this program:

  • “Searching for Speaking Engagements: Secrets to Leveraging Search and AI to Find Speaking Opportunities and Grow Your Business” with Sam Richter, CSP, CPAE
  • “Sell Smarter with AI: Turn Speaking Leads into Booked Gigs” with Julie Holmes

With your order of this live or recorded session, at checkout you will be offered these recordings.

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