Is Claude Winning? [Friday Wrap-Up]
This week I talk about whether Claude is quietly winning the AI war — at least among business owners and tech nerds — after every speaker at Ecamm Creator Camp reached for Claude and nobody mentioned ChatGPT or Gemini, and why its “constitutional” rule-following makes me more comfortable using it. Then my take on finishing The Odyssey (the Emily Wilson translation) on a plane into Chicago, and a look at my Five-CD Changer Playlist — the five-albums-only, no-shuffle rules that make it fun.
Links:
- Slides from my Ecamm Creator Camp / Max Stock talk (add link before publishing)
- The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson
- casabona.org/now
If you enjoyed this, consider joining my newsletter at https://streamlined.fm/wrap. You’ll get more tips on how to spend your time wisely, without worrying about your business.
- (00:00) – Introduction
- (01:03) – On My Mind: Is Claude winning the AI war?
- (05:08) – Recommended Reading: The Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation)
- (07:10) – Something Fun: The Five-CD Changer Playlist
- (10:18) – Outro
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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.
Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI…and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.
Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz
Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/
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Hey everybody, and welcome to the Friday wrap up on the Streamline Solopreneur, a
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short episode where I talk about three things, what’s on my mind this week, recommended
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reading and something fun. This is the show to help you automate your business so
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you can take time off where you free, and hopefully this curation will help you think
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more about how you’re spending your time.
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I’m your host, Joe Casabona, and here’s what’s on my mind for July 10th, 2026. First
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of all, you can tell I am not reporting from my normal recording space. I am in a
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hotel room in Crystal Lake, Illinois for Max Stock, specifically ECAs creator, camp
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Max stock edition. I spoke yesterday. It was wonderful.
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I got to give a somewhat new talk and a new concept, and it seemed
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really well received. So I am excited to,
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workshop this a little more, especially since I will be speaking at several more
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events this year. But that’s
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not what’s on my mind. What’s on my mind is Claude. One of the big things I’ve been
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noticing recently is it really seems like Claude is winning the AI war, at least
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among business owners and tech nerds. Yesterday, for example, I was one of many speakers
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who talked about how we use AI in our system while still showing up for our audience
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and our clients and customers. And
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all of us mentioned Claude specifically. Nobody said, oh, I use chat GPT for this
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and Gemini for that.
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It’s pretty much all Claude all the time, and I can’t help but wonder if Claude has
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like won the AI war, and I know that is a very,
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crazy thing to say. We’re still really early days, and
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I have been,
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a, a strong critic of most large language models and companies behind large language
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models. They’re all going for
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IPOs, but as far as
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performance goes,
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Claude appears to be doing better than most. Now, Gemini is getting a boost right
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in in iOS 27, but
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as far as
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anecdotally
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who I, or, or the, the large language model, I see most people in my niche in my
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space using it’s Claude, and it makes sense. Claude is extremely capable as far as,
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word calculators go.
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fable, I am testing it out now and it’s, I’m not gonna say it’s like groundbreaking
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or amazing.
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it’s, it’s come up with a plan for me and we’ll see how good that plan
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is. But,
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it also has,
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in my experience, the strongest convictions to adhere to,
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controls or rules.
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my friend doc,
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over at,
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you know, doc Rock,
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at Ecamm was explaining the difference to somebody and mentioned that like, Claude
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is a constitutional model, which means it has a strong set of rules it tries to follow.
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And I’ve noticed that, and that’s one of the reasons that I have felt more comfortable
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using Claude because even though,
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you know, I, I never have it right, whole cloth for me, and
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in times where I’ve asked it to, it says like, Hey, in your own rules you say I can’t.
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I like and appreciate that. I think it also connects to a lot more things during
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my talk yesterday,
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it was largely about automation and moving files around and having transcripts and
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doing things like that. And
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Claude Cowork is, is
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the thing I, I might have recommended the most, right? It’s really good, especially
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for on device automations.
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it kind of
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bridges this gap
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between on Demy device automations and web
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automations, right? Where Zapier can’t go into your computer and get something
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Claude can,
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and working with like shortcuts and Claude and Zapier, you can do a lot of really
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interesting things. So
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I don’t know,
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I’m not ready to say that Claude has won, but anecdotally I’ve been hearing a lot
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more about Claude lately than chat GPT or Gemini or anything else. So that’s the
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one I use exclusively too. So the, you know, this could be a, was it a Dunning Kruger
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effect where
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I’m using it the most? And so I’m seeing it the most, but
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I don’t think that’s the case.
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I hear
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people outside my niche, like my wife and, and a lot of people,
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who are maybe employed by another person or not running their own business, or not
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technically savvy,
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they use chat GPT, and that’s probably because it’s got,
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you know, the biggest name recognition.
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but
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as far as capabilities go,
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it seems that Claude is the most capable, right?
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Alright, so that is what’s on my mind.
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recommended reading on the plane into Chicago,
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which is
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the major airport I flew into.
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I finished reading The Odyssey, the Emily Wilson version. You can see it behind me
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over here somewhere.
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I really enjoyed it. I was excited to, I was really ho I had about a hundred pages
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left
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when I started my plane ride, and I was very dedicated to
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finishing it, and I’m really glad I did.
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it was a, a fun,
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interesting read and, and just, it, it’s my first time reading the Homeric poems
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and
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I’m really mad at myself for not reading them sooner, but I am glad as, you know,
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I, I, I hear that people who have like a background in this
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didn’t really like Emily Wilson’s version
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or maybe it’s just like
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people have their opinions. I really enjoyed Emily Wilson’s version. I felt like
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it was not hard to understand. She provided a lot of context and a lot of additional,
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notes and pronunciation guides, and it made,
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it made it an easier read for a Normie like me. I’m very excited to see the movie.
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I’m thinking about watching Troy before the movie comes out,
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even though they’re not related and they’ve got different directors and they’re 20
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years apart.
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and Troy is, is from what I remember, largely based on the Ilead, right?
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Brad Pitt played,
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uh, Achilles, right? So,
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and it was very focused on, on Troy, which
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something I learned reading the Odyssey is that the Odyssey is not,
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it’s like what happened years after Troy with Odysseus trying to get home.
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so anyway, I loved, I loved reading it. I’m very happy with my
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current reading,
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regime, I guess, of not really reading business books,
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and reading things that maybe I should have read when I was younger. So strongly
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recommend The Odyssey, the Emily Wilson version.
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that is my recommended reading for this week, and if you take me up on that, it’ll
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probably take you a little longer than a week.
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okay, now for something fun,
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I was talking to my friend’s son,
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the first night of
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the conference and he asked me, he’s 18,
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and he asked me, you know, what kind of music I I listen to and what I’ve been listening
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to lately.
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And I told him about my five CD Changer playlist.
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And if you don’t know about my five CD chair, uh, player Change List, play
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five CD Changer playlist.
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it’s a really fun and kind of dumb concept.
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it is a playlist that I have in Apple Music that is five albums and only five albums,
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like the five cd,
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changer Players of your,
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and I have a few rules for this playlist. I cannot put it on shuffle.
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I have to listen to,
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the albums in order from where I start. So I can start at the first song of the second
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album, but I have to listen to it through,
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I, I can start, you know, at the first song of the last album, but I have to listen
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to it through.
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and so it’s just a, a fun little,
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having constraints like that
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makes it, like,
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it makes you think a little bit more about what you’re gonna do. Like, am I gonna
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wanna listen to this album in a, in
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an hour, right? So stuff like that. So,
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my five CD
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Changer playlist,
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for this week
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is a lot of albums
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from the summer of my youth
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and then one that is not even remotely from the summer of my youth. So I thought
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I would just tell you what’s on mine and then something that maybe you can think
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about is what would currently be on yours.
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and I, I keep this updated
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on my,
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now page over at casabona.org/now.
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but right now it is Sticks and Stones by Newfound Glory. 2002, I believe is when
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that album came out. And it was a big part of my junior year summer,
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uh, enema of the State by Blink 180 2 that came out in 1998,
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uh, and was maybe my first like
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summer teenager teen Angst album.
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so Long Astoria by the Ataris that came out in 2003. And that was summer after my
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senior year, the summer before college.
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and I feel like it was very well timed
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for that louder now by taking back Sunday. This was really spring into summer 2006,
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so I was already in college and then the one that’s not like the others, but I’ve
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been really enjoying it. You seem pretty sad for a girl. So In Love by Olivia Rodrigo,
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and the reason it I’ve been enjoying this album is because it has a really strong,
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like
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late eighties feel to it,
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heavily influenced by the Cure.
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Robert Smith is even on a song.
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the song Expectations is very like,
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techno, like eighties techno pop.
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and it’s just a very enjoyable album. Olivia Rodrigo, incredibly talented and,
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I’ve been really enjoying that album.
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so
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that is my something fun for the week.
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there’s no automation of the week this week, but I will share a link to my slides
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from the talk so you can kind of see what I talked about.
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you can get my
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solopreneur starter kit, which comes with a bunch automations, planners, AI swipe
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files and prompts over at streamlined fm slash wrap.
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So if you want to see more about what I’m doing, how I help solopreneurs, you can
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head over to streamlined fm slash wrap. That’s it for this episode of the Friday
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Wrapup.
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I hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.
