Start here
Pick the path that matches where you are. Start with a guided sequence, or jump into a section below: each piece is hand-picked and labeled by level, so you always know what you are getting into.
Guided paths
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Building my first agent
CEOs who have a working Claude install and are ready to ship their first autonomous routine
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I have ChatGPT, I want real leverage
CEOs who use ChatGPT or Claude.ai as a chat tool and want to graduate to the workflows that actually compound
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I'm new to AI · 10 hours that change everything
CEOs who have never used Claude, GPT, or any LLM tool seriously and want a structured first 10 hours
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Understand AI as a CEO
CEOs who want to genuinely understand AI, what an agent is, where it breaks, what to ignore, and how to apply and roll it out, before or alongside the hands-on install paths
Never used AI
You have maybe typed into ChatGPT once, and that is it. Start with what these tools actually are, the right mental model, and why this is the year to stop watching from the sidelines.
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What is a large language model (LLM)?
The engine inside ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. It predicts the next word from patterns it read across the internet. Brilliant at fluency, indifferent to truth, and that one fact is most of what a…
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How AI actually works (plain English)
Under the hood of every chat tab: a pattern machine that predicts the next word, one token at a time. Beautiful fluency, no built-in truth filter, and a working memory that erases itself when the…
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The things non-technical CEOs get wrong about AI
Six beliefs that feel responsible and strategic, and each one costs you months.
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Treat AI like your sharpest new hire, not a search engine
Google trained you to type three words and skim three links. That habit is the exact reason most CEOs get mediocre results from a genuinely extraordinary tool.
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As a CEO, where should we start with AI, and what are the highest-value use cases?
Most CEOs start in the most expensive place: a top-down strategy, an AI committee, a chatbot bolted onto the website. The highest-value move is smaller, closer to home, and you can start it this…
Set up, and learn to prompt
Get on the right plan, get your first useful answer, and learn the one skill that decides everything: how to brief the model so it gives you something you can actually use.
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Free vs paid AI: what a CEO actually needs to pay for
Most CEOs are paying $20 a month and thinking they solved the AI decision, but they may be training the model on their most sensitive conversations without knowing it.
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Your first 30 minutes with Claude
Sign up, lock down your privacy, build your first Project, run a real task, iterate once. Thirty minutes and you will have done something useful with it, not just played with it.
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ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini: which should your company standardize on?
Three excellent models, one practical question: which one do you make the company default? The honest answer depends less on benchmarks than on what you already run and what you want AI to do.
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What is a prompt?
Everything you type into an AI chat is a prompt. But a prompt is more than a question. It's the full package you hand the model: task, context, format, and constraints. Most first prompts deliver…
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How to write a prompt that actually works
Most CEOs write prompts like search queries. Short, decontextualized, and hopeful. There is a better way, and it takes less than a minute to learn.
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What AI can and cannot do for a CEO right now
In a Harvard and BCG experiment with 758 consultants, AI made them about 40% better at some tasks and about 19% worse at others. The tasks looked identical. That gap is the whole game.
Have ChatGPT, want real leverage
You are comfortable in a chat box. These are the first wins that pay off this week, plus the difference between an assistant and an agent and the highest-return install for a CEO.
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Summarize any long document or email thread in 60 seconds
One pattern, six ready-to-use lenses, and a reusable template. No terminal, no setup.
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Draft and rewrite emails that still sound like you
How to use a plain chat window to draft, rewrite, and tighten emails across every situation you face, without losing the voice your relationships are built on.
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Prep for a meeting by pasting in the agenda
The core move is five minutes and a paste. No Granola, no terminal, no meeting history.
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AI agents vs AI assistants: which one for which job?
Assistant: you ask, it responds, you steer. Agent: you hand over a goal, it plans and acts on its own. The only question that matters is which one fits the job in front of you, and the honest answer…
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Granola for CEOs: the highest-ROI AI install of 2026
Five minutes to install. Thirty minutes to wire up the pipeline. Twelve workflows running on top of every meeting you'll have for the next year.
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What is Granola?
The meeting recorder that turns every conversation you have into searchable [markdown](/articles/what-is-a-markdown-file) your AI can read.
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A senior analyst, baked into Excel
Install one plugin and Excel goes from a tool you fight with to a senior analyst who builds models, reads pasted images, and rewrites entire workbooks on command.
Build your first workflows
Hands on the keyboard. Give the model standing context, then install the workflows that pay for themselves in the first week.
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Memory and Projects for beginners: what they are and when to switch them on
Every chat you open starts with no memory of you, and once you understand why, the two fixes take about ten minutes to set up.
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Your daily executive brief, assembled before you wake up
A scheduled AI job that runs before you wake, reads your inbox and calendar, pulls the one metric you watch, and leaves a single-page brief waiting for you, so your day starts oriented instead of…
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Inbox zero for CEOs: triage and draft replies in the terminal
An AI pass over your inbox that sorts the last day's mail into what needs you, what's just FYI, and what's noise, then drafts replies in your voice as Gmail drafts you review and send.
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Turn your P&L into plain-English answers you can ask anytime
Upload your profit-and-loss statement once and interrogate it like a person. "Why did margin drop in March?" "Which costs grew faster than revenue?" Answers in seconds, in English.
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The five AI workflows every CEO should install first
Most CEOs "use AI" by typing into a chat box and getting an answer. The real leverage is in a handful of workflows that run on your own work, in your own context, without you starting from scratch…
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Persistent memory across Claude Code sessions
Index your notes, decisions, and past work into a local search engine. Pull the relevant pieces into any Claude Code session with one command: `/recall`.
Use AI without getting burned
The habits that keep AI an asset instead of a liability: check its work before it matters, and set the ground rules before you delegate.
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How to check AI's work: a CEO's 3-step verification habit
A lawyer was fined after most of the citations in their AI-drafted brief turned out not to exist, and they never opened a single one.
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The one-paragraph ground rule to give AI before you delegate
A single paragraph, pasted at the start of any session where you hand AI something real, that installs a pause before the session starts and cuts the corrections you'd otherwise repeat every time.
Roll AI out to your team
You are getting value yourself. Now make it stick across the company: settle the jobs question, model the habit, and roll it out without a mandate everyone quietly ignores.
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Will this replace my team? How to think and talk about it
Before you can have the conversation with your team, you have to finish the one inside your own head.
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The one AI habit to model so your team actually copies it
Pick one visible habit, do it this week, and narrate it. That is the whole plan.
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How to get your team to actually use AI
You gave the speech. You bought the seats. Three weeks later nobody's using it. The gap isn't access. It's adoption, and adoption follows the person at the top.
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How to talk to your team about AI
The three fears your team has and isn't saying out loud. The five conversations that handle them. And the one mistake that quietly costs you a quarter of trust.
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From chat tabs to a real system: the CEO's 90-day AI roadmap
Twelve open chat tabs is not an AI strategy. This is the staged path from ad-hoc prompting to connected, scheduled workflows that run parts of your business, mapped to 90 days a non-technical CEO…
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Roll out AI to a non-technical team in 30 days
A focused 30-day rollout that picks one painful workflow, gives one team the tool and the prompts to fix it, and measures the result, instead of handing everyone a chatbot and hoping.
Keep going, every Thursday
The Thursday 3 is a free weekly email. Three workflows that put you in the top 1% of CEOs. 90-second read.