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Hello, there!

It’s been an action-packed week 🙌 

• Podcast: 100 Days of ONLY Eating McDonald’s | “I Lost 60lbs!”

• Success story: Arati Prabhakar: The Woman Who Showed President Biden ChatGPT

• Biz Hack: Email Overload? Unleash Your Inner Mark Cuban with These Inbox-Conquering Tactics

• Content Creators, Find Your Niche the Easy Way

But first, a tour of the headlines…

Weekly Catchups

News | Industry Insights | Trends

• 🚗 Hands-Off Driving

  Wayve, a U.K.-born startup developing self-learning for autonomous driving, has closed $1.05 billion in Series C funding led by SoftBank Group. This is the U.K.’s largest AI fundraiser ever and sits among the top 20 AI fundraisers globally to date. Also participating in the raise was Nvidia and existing investor Microsoft.

• ☕️ Smell the Coffee

  Howard Schultz says Starbucks needs to fix its stores and mobile app to reverse its "fall from grace." The longtime former CEO wrote in a LinkedIn post on Sunday that the coffee chain should focus on improving its customer experience. This comes after Starbucks posted disappointing quarterly results last week. Starbucks says one in eight mobile customers are abandoning orders in peak morning hours.

• 💰️ $2,834

  The average credit card balance for 22-24-year-olds in the last quarter of 2023. That’s up from an average inflation-adjusted balance of $2,248 in the same period in 2013, according to credit-reporting agency TransUnion. Experts pin the blame on higher rent and student debt.

   

Uncharted Horizons

Personal Development | Success Story

Meet the Woman Who Showed President Biden ChatGPT—and Helped Set the Course for AI

Arati Prabhakar has done everything from introducing the POTUS to ChatGPT with a demo about Bruce Springsteen to pushing a 20,000-word executive order on AI regulations. 

In 2022, the US government could not afford ignoring AI’s ripple effects. While its potential benefits were unlimited, the technology also opened up a pandora’s box of potential downsides: disinformation, job insecurity, identity thefts, and scams. Someone had to demonstrate that to public officials. 

The job ended up in the lap of Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Tech Policy. There could have been none better than her, a PhD in Applied Physics from Caltech and someone who spent 15 years in Silicon Valley as a VC and CTO of several companies. 

Strategies | Tools | Marketing Tips

Mastering Your Email Inbox Like Mark Cuban

Is your inbox suffocating you? Want to declutter but don’t know where to begin? 

It is estimated that approximately 33 billion email messages are sent and received daily in the United States. Mark Cuban, a master entrepreneur and multitasker, has shared four useful tips for managing an overflowing inbox. He receives about 700 emails a day and claims to respond to about 200 of them within 24 hours. So what's his secret?

#1 Cuban’s Email Management Tips 

• Lightening Replies: Just like Cuban’s 7-minute response, tackle emails quickly. Unanswered emails are mental roadblocks. 

• Unread Messages are To-Dos: Don’t hit snooze on important emails. Make unread messages a task list arranged chronologically.

• Swipe to Delete (Gmail): Set a left swipe to delete useless emails for quick purging between meetings. 

#2 Organise Your Email 

• Label & Conquer: Don’t rely solely on unread emails. Designate labels or folders to categorise emails by project, client, or importance. 

• The One Touch Rule: Decide an action for each email you open (reply, archive, delete) and do it immediately. 

#3 Manage Your Email Time

• Schedule Email Time: Block specific times in your calendar to check and respond to emails. 

• Auto responds: Set up autoresponders for common inquiries when you are out of the office. Set up an autoresponder for project enquiries. Click here to view some great examples.

• Activate Smart Compose: Ensure Smart Compose is enabled in your Gmail settings. Navigate to Settings > General and locate the "Suggest words as you type" option. 

#4 Setting Up Effective Email Batches

Follow these steps to start batch-processing your emails:

• Create a folder in your email account called "Batch"

• Set up a rule to automatically route non-urgent emails from contacts into the Batch folder

• Check the Batch folder 3 times per day: mid-morning, after lunch, and before leaving work

• Process all emails in the batch when you open the folder

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Networking | Business Development | Entrepreneurship

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