Welcome to Gratitude Driven, a weekly newsletter where I share practical ideas and insights across personal growth, professional development, and the world of AI/ML. ✨

I’m stoked to announce this project! Introducing LocalAISource, a new platform to connect small and medium-sized businesses with AI talent.

The idea is this: When we think about careers in AI engineering, we typically think about building large-scale AI systems for big tech. But there are literally millions of small businesses that will also need AI talent in the coming years. Many need help with smaller-scale things, like data management, automations, and internal tooling, but they are super overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.

Here’s how it works:

At the moment this is only available in the US and Canada, but the hope is to expand as we scale.

Since we’re growing, I’m able to offer 15% off the subscription fees for life if you sign up with this link (this is an affiliate link btw!)

If you have any questions, let me know by responding to this email.

I can feel my brain turning more into mashed potatoes day-by-day.

Or at least, that’s how I was feeling a couple of weeks ago. I’d been focusing a lot on working as efficiently as possible; At my day job at Twitch, that means getting good at using Claude Code to work as fast as I can on multiple projects in parallel. For my content business, that meant using a lot of automations for everything from cleaning up my inbox to validating if a YouTube video idea was worth making.

I noticed that I was feeling frazzled and overwhelmed. My team wasn’t learning as quickly as I’d like. And generally I felt like we were producing low-quality outputs across the board.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against using AI, and there are a lot of boring, routine things I’m happy to be done with. But I don’t think we should reflexively use it for everything just because it’s there, or because we’re afraid of “falling behind.”

I’ve started implementing these rules with a good amount of success:

The main thing is to make sure you keep experiencing friction. In a world where everyone else gets lazy, generates slop, and stops being able to even read an email without having AI summarize it first, being the person who can still endure basic cognitive struggle is going to be a huge advantage.

And it’s also going to be important for your happiness. I worry a lot about what AI will do to our sense of meaning, and one of the fastest ways to lose a sense of purpose is to never experience struggle.

So, I hope you struggle this week. <3

If you've been applying to AI/ML roles and hearing nothing back, working through another course without a clear sense of what to do next, or sitting on a half-finished portfolio project you're not sure is even worth finishing, this summer is a good time to change that.

The AI/ML Career Launchpad is a structured path through skill development, portfolio projects, job applications, and interview prep, with direct access to me for the questions that don't have easy answers on YouTube. Let’s get you unstuck and on your way to a career you’ll love!

Learn more here. 🚀

p.s. We’re adding regular accountability check-ins, so if that’s something you struggle with, it might be worth taking a look.

I was invited to speak on the topic of breaking into AI Engineering on this fun livestream last week! You can check out the VOD here.

Want to chat 1:1? Book time with me here.

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Note: This email may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase I may make a small commission, at no cost to you. Thank you for your support!