You've probably done this: asked ChatGPT to "teach me photography" and gotten one giant answer you copied into a Notion doc and never opened again. I did the opposite. I built myself a real six-week audio engineering course, specifically to close a gap I already knew I had, not to relearn the basics.

I made AI interview me before it wrote a single lesson, forced it toward one specific finish line instead of some vague "I want to understand this," and kept sending it back to cut what I already knew. Then the part most people skip - assignments instead of just reading answers, a pass test every week that blocks me from moving to the next one, a small HTML dashboard so it didn't die in a buried chat thread, and one last step that had nothing to do with AI and decided whether any of this got used.

00:00 – Why "teach me X" prompts don't work

01:03 – My own six-week audio course

02:00 – Find the gap next to what you already do

03:29 – Make AI interview you first

04:59 – Get specific about the finish line

06:50 – Assignments, not answers 08:32 – The pass test

09:16 – Turning it into an HTML dashboard

11:09 – Put it on the calendar or it never happens

If this helped, subscribe to AI for Creative Professionals on Apple or Spotify for more practical AI tools for creatives — freelance and in-house designers, writers, marketers, photographers, video editors, podcasters and other creative professionals figuring out how to work with AI without losing what makes their work theirs.

I cover AI tools for creatives, AI workflows, prompt engineering, creative automation, AI-assisted content creation and the latest AI industry trends, with tools I tested in real creative workflows rather than just repeated from a launch announcement. I also talk about the other side of working with AI: creative careers, AI job anxiety, AI burnout, creative identity, maintaining your voice and taste, client expectations, boundaries, and what we might be better off keeping human.

I'm also on Substack at @aiforcreativeprofessionals if you want to connect directly, it's where I will post the more personal, behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn't fit into an episode.

New episodes every Wednesday. Full show notes and transcripts at aiforcreativepros.com

Your portfolio shows what you made. But does it show how you think?

In this episode, I make the case for an “audio CV” — a small, 8-episode podcast designed to help designers, writers, editors, photographers, and other creative professionals stand out to employers and potential clients.

We get into what those episodes should actually be about, examples for different creative professions, why you don't need a big audience for this to work, and how to use individual episodes in job applications and client pitches.

Want to build your own Audio CV? I'm exploring a strategy session where we'll design your concept, name, 8–12 episode ideas, and how you'll use the series professionally.

👉 Tell me about your Audio CV here

00:00 Why your portfolio might not be enough anymore 04:58 What creative portfolios can't show 08:27 The “audio CV” idea 11:17 What should you actually talk about? 17:20 How to use your podcast to get hired or win clients 19:57 How to create your own 8-episode Audio CV 23:58 Want help building yours?

If this helped, subscribe to AI for Creative Professionals on Apple or Spotify for more practical AI tools for creatives — freelance and in-house designers, writers, marketers, photographers, video editors, podcasters and other creative professionals figuring out how to work with AI without losing what makes their work theirs.

I cover AI tools for creatives, AI workflows, prompt engineering, creative automation, AI-assisted content creation and the latest AI industry trends, with tools I tested in real creative workflows rather than just repeated from a launch announcement. I also talk about the other side of working with AI: creative careers, AI job anxiety, AI burnout, creative identity, maintaining your voice and taste, client expectations, boundaries, and what we might be better off keeping human.

I'm also on Substack at @aiforcreativeprofessionals if you want to connect directly, it's where I will post the more personal, behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn't fit into an episode.

New episodes every Wednesday. Full show notes and transcripts at aiforcreativepros.com

Would you email an unreleased client interview to some random company you've never worked with? Probably not. But most of us do the AI version of that without a second thought. This episode is about what actually happens to client information the moment it goes into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and the four questions worth asking before anything gets uploaded again.

By the end you'll have an exact list of things to check this week, plus the wording I'm actually sending my own clients before I put their material anywhere near AI.

→ OpenAI — how to turn off model training in ChatGPT → Anthropic — whether Claude uses your data for training

→ Google — Gemini Apps Privacy Hub → American Bar Association — Formal Opinion 512 on lawyers and generative AI

→ TechCrunch — Samsung bans generative AI tools after 2023 internal data leak

00:00 – The interview you'd never email to a stranger 01:54 – The four questions to ask before uploading anything 03:19 – Your paid ChatGPT or Claude account is probably still "personal" 06:26 – Training vs. retention (and ChatGPT's hidden Library problem) 07:37 – The thumbs-down button that can lock in five years of storage 09:15 – NDAs vs. DPAs, and what the ABA tells lawyers 10:43 – My green, yellow, red system for client work 12:46 – Exactly what to do this week 14:31 – Wrap-up + a tease for next week

CLIENT PERMISSION EMAIL (mentioned at 13:30 — paste as-is or adapt per client)

Quick check before I bring AI into this part of the project — I'd like to use [tool + plan] to [transcribe / summarize / organize] [the specific material]. Under this plan's current terms, [one line on training/retention for that specific product]. I'll only give it what's needed for the task and will delete the material afterward, per their retention policy. Let me know if that's fine under your confidentiality requirements, or if you'd rather I keep this out of AI tools entirely.

If this helped, subscribe to AI for Creative Professionals on Apple or Spotify for more practical AI tools for creatives — freelance and in-house designers, writers, marketers, photographers, video editors, podcasters and other creative professionals figuring out how to work with AI without losing what makes their work theirs.

I cover AI tools for creatives, AI workflows, prompt engineering, creative automation, AI-assisted content creation and the latest AI industry trends, with tools I tested in real creative workflows rather than just repeated from a launch announcement. I also talk about the other side of working with AI: creative careers, AI job anxiety, AI burnout, creative identity, maintaining your voice and taste, client expectations, boundaries, and what we might be better off keeping human.

I'm also on Substack at @aiforcreativeprofessionals if you want to connect directly, it's where I will post the more personal, behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn't fit into an episode.

New episodes every Wednesday. Full show notes and transcripts at aiforcreativepros.com