I run multiple businesses with no CRM, no assistant, and no analyst. People assume I am drowning. I have never been more organized in my life.

Here are my favorite AI hacks right now. I use Claude and Claude Cowork across everything I run, and these are the plays producing the most for me and my clients.

✔️ The daily scans. You can set up scheduled projects and scans in Cowork, and I currently have 9 running daily and 4 weekly across my ventures. Every weekday at 5:30 AM it scans the mortgage industry for hiring signals, layoffs, expansions, and leadership moves, so I wake up to a recruiting target list I did not have to build. By 7:30 it has scanned my whole team's workload and flagged what needs rebalancing, then read my forwarded emails for deal signals and proposed pipeline updates for my approval. Every Friday it tells me exactly who is engaging with my newsletter and LinkedIn content, bots filtered out, so I know which readers are quietly warming into prospects. It is a chief of staff who reads everything overnight and greets you with a briefing, except it never asks for a raise or time off.

✔️ The multiple-choice trick. This one is my favorite and nobody does it. I told CoWork to regularly fire quick multiple-choice questions at me so it understands my business and preferences better. Ten seconds of tapping on my phone or laptop teaches it more than an hour of me typing paragraphs about myself like a lunatic. The AI interviews me. I just press buttons.

✔️ The feed-it-everything start. When I work with clients to get them up and running on Cowork, the first prompt I give them is this: "Attached is a copy of my coaching engagement with Onward & Upward Consulting. Give me a ridiculously comprehensive list of everything I can upload or paste into you to help me achieve my professional goals." Then go feed it everything on that list. People spend months wondering why their AI feels generic. It is because it knows nothing about you. Feed the machine.

✔️ Raw data in, client-ready deliverable out. Last week I dropped raw loan officer production exports into Claude and out came a formatted six-tab recruiting workbook: ranked target lenders, Top 25 producer lists with contact info, branch clusters, metro breakdowns. That used to be a week of analyst work. It took less time than my lunch.

✔️ The promise layer. Have it log every commitment you make, to clients, to your team, to yourself, and then hold you to it. It is like having a tiny parole officer for your calendar. Deeply annoying. Wildly effective.

Read the rest of this post here …

The biggest algorithm change of the past year or two has almost nothing to do with AI, and everything to do with your neighborhood. Lemme explain, because this is quietly becoming one of the most effective plays my clients are running.

The social algorithms quietly flipped. LinkedIn and other social platforms have moved from a relationship graph to an interest graph. Your feed used to show you people you know. Now it shows you topics the machine thinks you care about, whether you follow them or not. Only about 31% of the average feed comes from your actual connections anymore. The rest is the algorithm playing matchmaker with total strangers.

Nothing signals relevance to that machine like local specificity. "The housing market" is a topic for a billion people, which means it is a topic for no one. "What is actually happening to first-time buyers in Medina County this summer" is a topic for the exact 5,000 people an LO actually wants. When the right local people stop and engage, the algorithm goes and finds more of them. Your neighbors become your distribution network, and they work for free.

So while everyone fights over the same purchase referrals with the same recycled content, the smartest LOs I know are doing something that sounds insane: they are leaving the office.

They carve out one half day a week. Tuesday, noon to six. Lunch with a great referral partner. Pop into a few local businesses. Hit a local landmark. Sit down with a community group or a local thought leader. Take pictures at every single stop.

That is two weeks of incredible content from one afternoon of eating tacos and shaking hands. And it does something no company graphic will ever do: it makes them look ingrained in the community, because they actually are. Revolutionary stuff. 🤔

Pair that with simple local market research, days on market in your town, what sold last month, what inventory looks like in your school district. AI pulls it together in minutes now. There is no excuse.

Here's what most LOs are posting instead...

Reshared company page graphics that scream "my marketing department made me do this." "Great time to buy" posts that have never once, in recorded human history, caused anyone to buy. Sales throwup with zero imagination. The algorithm buries that content in a shallow grave, and frankly it is doing the Lord's work.

In today's tsunami of AI slop and digital marketing vomit, genuine, raw, and real wins bigger than it ever has. The LO photographed at the taco joint next to the new development is more credible than the one resharing a corporate rate chart, not less. One of them looks like a person. The other looks like a kiosk.

Own your zip code. The platform will do the introductions.

If you wanna be great, you have to be willing to do the things others won't. Even AI won't change that.

BREAKING: First Leggings, Now This: Rate Launches Signature Fragrance "Locked"

CHICAGO (IL) - Rate announced Tuesday the launch of "Locked," a signature fragrance the company describes as having "top notes of fresh ink, bottom notes of basis points," the latest innovation from founder Victor Ciardelli in the wake of the RateFit luxury yoga pants launch.

The fragrance marks the second consecutive Rate product that is not a mortgage, a streak the company calls "the homeowner lifestyle ecosystem" and analysts call "a cry for help with excellent packaging."

"Victor believes homeownership has a smell," said a Rate spokesperson, misting the press room without asking. "It is the smell of a 45-day lock, a clean CD, and a man who has not slept since 2019. We bottled that."

"Locked" retails at $185 and comes in two sizes described internally as "30ml and 15ml terms." Customers who finish a bottle early face no prepayment penalty, though sources confirm a retention specialist will call within the hour.

The launch event, held at a Rate branch converted into a "scent experience," featured 400 employees, amazingly every one of them a Vice President. "I'm VP of Olfactory Origination," said one. "She's VP of Mist."

The fragrance was developed in Rate's in-house lab, formerly the break room before breaks were reclassified as non-producing activities. Employees test-wore prototypes during cold-call blocks to measure conversion lift. "The data was incredible," said the VP of Fragrance Analytics. "Guys wearing Locked closed 11 percent more loans. Guys not wearing it closed zero percent more, because they were let go."

Early reviews are mixed. "It opens with fresh ink and confidence," wrote one fragrance critic, "then dries down to something I can only describe as a rate sheet at 4:59 PM. My wife left the room. I refinanced."

One veteran bond trader was less charitable. "I've smelled this before," he said. "2007."

The company denies rumors of a companion candle called "Float," insisting it never discusses products in development, before immediately teasing a body wash named "Clear to Close."

Asked whether Rate remains, at its core, a mortgage company, the spokesperson seemed genuinely puzzled. "We are a lifestyle," she said. "The mortgage is just how you pay for it."

"Locked" is available now on the RateFit website, where it pairs beautifully with the yoga pants nobody has sweat in, and ships free with any funded loan.

Matching hoodie sold separately.

This is satire. Nobody at Rate has bottled anything, as far as we know.

Cease-fire over, Iran called scum, stocks tank, mortgage rates rise

Belgium’s bare-ass spanking of us was the most watched soccer game in US history

Lionel Messi rips Argentina from the jaws of defeat vs Egypt

The 10 most livable cities in the world

Create your name using real natural artifacts website

July 13 - MLB HR Derby

July 14 - MLB All-Star Game

July 14 - Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation reading

July 15 - Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation reading

July 19 - World Cup Final

July 28-29 - Fed Meeting/Decision

July 30 - Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and PCE inflation reading releases

AUGUST

Aug 7 - July Jobs Report

Aug 12 - Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation reading

Aug 13 - Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation reading

Aug 27-29 - Fed Jackson Hole Retreat

Aug 28 - FINAL NFL ROSTER CUTS FOR REGULAR SEASON!

Aug 29 - COLLEGE FOOTBALL RETURNS!

Aug 30 - US Open Tennis Tournament begins

“The market is the market. Stop making excuses and start adapting.” - Gary Vaynerchuk

Until the next one,
Swerb
[email protected]