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Hey everybody, and welcome to the Friday wrap up on Streamline Solopreneur, a short

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episode where I cover three things, what’s on my mind this week, recommended reading

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and something fun. This is the show that helps you build systems so your business

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doesn’t depend on you. Hopefully this week’s curation will get you thinking about

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your own systems before you close your laptop for the weekend. I’m your host, Joe

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Casabona, and here’s what’s on my mind. For July 24th, 2026,

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the thing that’s on my mind is the simplicity of yellow legal pads. I am a man who

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has spent 30 to $40 on a notebook, over $100 on leather bound disc books with refillable

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pages, and

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more than I’d like to admit on fountain pens.

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But over the weekend, I rediscovered yellow legal pads. I needed a notebook and grabbed

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whatever I found in the first draw I was near,

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and I forgot how satisfying it is to use a yellow legal pad. The amount of space

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I have on it, the fact that I’m not

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worried about how I’m using it or if I’m using it for the right thing.

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I stopped using yellow legal pads because most don’t accommodate fountain pens. And

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I, I like using fountain pens. My complicated approach,

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complicated my whole system. You might say

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for the past week, I’ve only used my yellow legal pad and it’s been delightful. I’m

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taking a couple of them on vacation with me next week,

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and I still love fancy notebooks, but in my fancy notebook phase, I fell into the

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trap of feeling like the notebooks I bought needed to be used for something important,

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some big idea, my next book, a journal, just something that had gravitas,

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so it added friction to my process. Every time I needed to do something, I would

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think, is this the notebook I really want to burn on this random thing?

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It’s been nice to not have to think about where I’m going to write. And if you’re

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listening to this going, Joe, this is a little,

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this is a little much, this is a little extra. Uh, yeah, it absolutely is. But I

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do love a good notebook. I have a fountain pen collection

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and I love using them, and I still have that paper. I still have those notebooks

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and I will still use those notebooks. But

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for everyday writing for scribbling down whatever I’m thinking for bringing stuff

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with me when I want to think without a screen, the yellow legal pad is the way to

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go. It is simple

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and it is straightforward

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and you don’t have to think about it. And that’s really the hallmark of a good system,

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right? Reducing the amount of friction between you and the task you’re trying to

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accomplish.

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Now, I do happen to like thicker paper in general, so I do recommend the AMPA gold

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fiber legal pads.

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They’re a little bit more expensive than,

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some other legal pads like I, I think Oxford, they make some, some old standbys.

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you can get those for like a buck 50 each. And the

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am padd gold fiber legal pads are like $3 each.

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but that’s okay. I mean, it’s a, a long way from

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20 to $30 for a single notebook. So that’s what I recommend. I’ll have a link in

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the description as well, but that is what’s on my mind for this week.

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Recommended reading.

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there is a great piece by Cashmere Hill at the New York Times called I Got Slopped,

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and it’s about

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how she discovered her biography on Amazon,

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but it’s not something that she authorized or was even contacted or talked to about.

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No, the book had been totally generated by ai, and she’s not the only victim of someone

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trying to profit off of her story in just the laziest way possible.

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The article goes on to explore the world of AI book

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writing,

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and she even interviews an AI

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author.

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Would you believe that most reviews of these AI books, especially from this AI author,

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quote unquote,

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are one star?

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I

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tend to rail against AI writing,

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for us more than most people, right? I, I constantly talk about how terrible and

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toxic and destructive it is, and when someone tells me they are using it to write

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for them, I am not shy about telling them how terrible it is.

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If you are looking for a shortcut,

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letting AI take a thought you have and turn it into a series of generic soulless,

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statistically likely sentences, isn’t it? And if you are sitting there going, well,

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it,

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it’s not the LLM, it’s the prompt. It’s not the agent, it’s the prompt. No, it’s

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not.

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It is that it’s a robot, not a writer.

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And

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I, I talk about this because I want

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solopreneurs to spend their time

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wisely

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and doing things

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to destroy the trust that your clients, your customers, the people you partner with

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have in you

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is detrimental to your business

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in an age where you can create anything from nothing

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with a few sentences to a word calculator.

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The thing that will last is trust and human connection.

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And you will not get that

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by telling people you are too lazy to write your own thoughts down.

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You will not get that by trying to swindle people out of even $10 for a book you

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are claiming to write that you didn’t write or research or review,

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you will not get that.

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AI is not the magical shortcut everybody wants to believe

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it is.

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It is a tool that is great for certain tasks

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and not for craft.

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That is and will always lie with us.

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Okay,

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Uh, I kind of feel like I need a drink now, which is good because for something fun,

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I am recommending a piece by Peter Suman called Want to Feel Rich, drink a Pineapple

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Cocktail. I enjoy trying my hand at interesting cocktails. I’m not really much of

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a drinker. I like the craft

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of cocktails, understanding the ingredients and how the flavors come together to

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create something interesting.

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I like the craft part of it. And my favorite cocktail website

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cocktails with Suman

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has been doing a fantastic series on summery drinks.

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As I prepare for the beach,

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I am checking the most interesting sounding recipes and bringing some ingredients

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along with me to make cocktails for my wife and her family.

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I am excited to try a pineapple cocktail. I just had like a pineapple sour

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beer the other day, and it was just delightfully, delightfully refreshing.

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As an aside, I also use Peter Suter Man’s Eggnog recipe or on Christmas, and it is

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always a huge hit. I mix it exactly the way he says to mix it, and then I age it

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for two to three weeks.

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So I’ll usually make it like right after Thanksgiving

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so that it is ready for an early Christmas party. And it’s just, it’s always such

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a hit. It’s so delicious. Uh, it, there’s a lot of sugar, so you gotta watch, but

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it’s really good.

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Okay? And for the automation of the week, I wanna talk about episode artwork generation

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for the Friday wrap up. You’ll know this if you are a listening and a podcast player

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that supports this, but

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I have custom episode artwork that is just the Friday wrap up logo with the current

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date,

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underneath it. So,

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in something a bit meta, I wanna talk about a new action I added for my Friday wrap

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up AI skill,

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which helps me generate the assets for

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these episodes and newsletters. And again, this is going back to the AI is for task

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not craft.

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So among other things, Claude has a Canva connector, and when I run the Friday wrap

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skill, it will figure out the next Friday. This includes

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Fridays on the day the skill is run, which is usually the case. I record this early

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on Friday morning, so I can release it by mid Friday morning,

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and then it will send that date to Canva, grab my Friday wrap up artwork template,

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and change the text on the image to the current date

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and then download it. This is a task that I was doing manually and would usually

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forget until I was ready to publish,

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when I was prompted by the upload custom artwork field

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in my podcast host. So

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this is something that I would forget to do, and then it would, you know, just prolong

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the process a few extra minutes.

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But now it’s done for me automatically. And since this is done,

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while the video for this episode is rendering, it’s a huge time saver for me. It

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means all the assets are done at the same time as I’m prepping for them to publish

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or as I’m prepping them for publish, I guess I should say. So

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this is such a fun one. I’m definitely going to explore

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using Canva for stuff like this because the main episodes are also just like text

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or sometimes a headshot, and my VA is doing that right now, but if I could take this

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task off my VA’s plate,

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I can free her up for other more important work that requires human discernment and

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not just filling in fields in an image template. So really excited about this automation

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of the week. As a quick programming note,

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I’m on vacation next week, so there will be no Friday wrap up,

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but I will wrap this one up. Do you have something on your mind? Let me know over@streamlinedfeedback.com.

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You can write in or leave a voice note. I might even play that voice note on the

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show. So again, that’s over@streamlinedfeedback.com. Thanks so much for listening,

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and until next time, I hope you find some space in your weekend.