Ep 319 | Step by Step Campaign Messaging Creation using AI with Russell Van Broklen

Are you spending weeks creating fundraising campaigns that could be done in hours? In this episode, I sit down with Russell Van Broecklen, a New York State Senate-funded dyslexia researcher and founder of dyslexiaclasses.com, to explore how artificial intelligence can revolutionize your campaign development process. We discuss practical strategies for using AI tools to create compelling, authentic messaging that connects with your donors and community.

Finding Your Campaign's Universal Theme

• Identifying the core message that drives your entire campaign
• Using AI to refine broad concepts into focused, actionable themes
• Avoiding jargon-heavy language that disconnects you from your audience
• Creating messaging that resonates emotionally with supporters

The Step-by-Step AI Campaign Creation Process

Discover how to leverage multiple AI platforms effectively:

• Starting with ChatGPT Thinking to develop your foundational concepts
• Moving to Claude Opus for superior writing quality
• Using specific prompts to guide AI through multiple revision cycles
• Implementing a quality control system that ensures publication-ready content

Avoiding Common AI Pitfalls

We address critical considerations for maintaining authenticity:

• Why rushing through the process leads to generic “AI slop”
• How to balance efficiency with quality in your campaign materials
• The importance of human oversight in the creative process
• When to involve team members versus maintaining singular vision

Building Better Campaigns Through Data and Iteration

Learn strategies for continuous improvement:

• Using results from previous campaigns to inform future messaging
• Incorporating feedback loops to refine your approach
• Balancing team input with focused decision-making
• Measuring success and adapting your strategy accordingly

Whether you're a small team handling multiple responsibilities or looking to streamline your campaign creation process, this conversation offers practical insights to help you create more effective fundraising materials in less time.

Want to skip ahead? Here are some key takeaways:

• 08:45 The Universal Theme Methodology Learn how to identify and refine the core message that will drive your entire campaign strategy.
• 15:22 Platform-Specific AI Strategies Discover why different AI tools excel at different tasks and how to use them strategically.
• 23:10 The Revision Process That Works Understand the specific prompts and quality checks that ensure your content is ready for publication.
• 31:40 Balancing Team Input with Vision Explore how to incorporate stakeholder feedback while maintaining message consistency and focus.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn how AI can help you create more compelling campaigns while freeing up time for other critical nonprofit activities. Tune in for strategies that could transform your approach to fundraising communications.

Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] You know, you can use AI for a whole host of things, but what about a fundraising campaign? And are all tools created equal? How do you use the tools to help you develop, create, strategize your campaign and how do you use it then to write and ideate and create the actual materials and the things that you need? How do you speed up your process and use data from past campaigns to kind of help feed the monster? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today with my guest, Russell Van Broecklen. Russell is a New York State Senate funding, sorry, New York State Senate funded dyslexia researcher and the founder of dyslexiaclasses.com where he spent over a decade helping students transform from hesitant writers into competent communicators. His groundbreaking approach, the writing method, was developed by combining the brain Research from overcoming dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shawitz with the practical classroom Strategies from Strategies for Struggle Writers by James Collins. This blend of neuroscience and pedagogy, I never say that word right. Anyway, became the foundation for his research, later owned by the SUNY Research Foundation. Russell students, many diagnosed with dyslexia or other language based learning differences, have achieved remarkable progress and often improve their writing by 7 to 8 grade levels in a single academic year. He has presented his work at Everyone. Excuse me. He has presented his work at the Everyone Reading Conference in Manhattan and the Learning Disability association of New Jersey conference, sharing his mission to make literacy instruction brain aligned, empowering and practical. So today we are talking all about how to run your whole campaign, how to really set it up, how to be successful step by step, resources to make this happen. And I think you're going to be really excited because his approach is not about we're going to get it done fast. His approach is we're going to get it done well. We're going to use resources to help us get it done better and faster. But not in five minutes, right?

So I think you're really going to like his approach to using AI for these things in a way that's genuine, authentic, real, and feels in alignment with how you want to show up for your audience, for your community, for your organization, for your donors, etc. But before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by Do Good University. You've heard me talk about this all the time. Do Good University is my favorite nonprofit membership program. That's why I coach inside of it every single week alongside Patrick Kirby. Inside, you'll find tons of on demand resources from everything from marketing to grant writing to board management to fundraising and capital campaigns. Plus, Patrick and I go live every single week to answer all of your questions and help you get unstuck and keep moving forward. Just like for this podcast, we are here this year to help you get things done, not just learn more things. So everything we provide to you is actionable and addressing the concern that you have right now, not just learning a bunch of things that you might need to implement in the future. We are here for you in real time. So I hope you will go to the firstclick.net dgu Grab your link for 2 weeks free. Join us inside the membership. I can't wait to see you there. Let's jump into the episode. You're listening to the Digital Marketing Therapy Podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

Hi friends please join me in welcoming Russell Van Broecklen to the podcast. Russell, thanks for being here today.

[Russell Van Broklen] Thanks for having me.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So I just love how every time we record or we get new topics on AI, everybody has such a different take, has such a different use case. And so we are here again talking about another use case for AI. But before we kind of jump into it, Russell, why don't you share a little bit about your journey and how you got into it and why you think it's such an exciting tool for people. Do you think?

[Russell Van Broklen] Well, I'm severely dyslexic. My first program, I was funded by the New York State Senate and I taught dyslexic high school kids in a public school how to highly motivated, highly intelligent high school juniors and seniors with middle school writing skills how to increase their writing to average of entering graduate students and they jumped 6, 7, 8 grade levels in one academic year cost New York State less than $900. They all went out of college. They all graduated with GP of 2.5 to 3.6. So dyslexia means that we always want to be valuable enough to have an assistant. Well, now we have AI. So this has freed us in ways that I can't even imagine before. So I've been using just so people know my background with AI. I've been using it for years. Last December 20, December 24, Chachi PT came out with its Pro version at 200 bucks a month. I bought it that day. And then I just got off that. I went back to plus at $20 a month because the new ChatGPT thinking is actually better than the pro version was just a couple of months ago. And I can spend that money on other platforms for that are better at certain things. Yeah, no, that's so good. And I think that that's the thing that stresses people out is because it is moving all the time that we can't keep up. But I think what you're going to share today and what we're going to talk about is literally just getting started with a purpose and then kind of practicing. Right. It's like you just have to keep practicing and utilizing it and then, you know, it'll become easier and easier for you. And so today we're talking about small teams who need to run campaigns. Right. We're just coming off year end. You've probably had a huge year end fundraising campaign. Probably took you a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of time away from your families over the holidays. And so I think it's as we look into our planning for the upcoming year, I love what you're going to share and how it can kind of help us put some campaigns together faster and more effectively. So I'm just going to turn it over to you and let's just kind of start with where do we begin if we're in kind of the conception or trying to figure out what we even need our campaign messaging to be or what's going to connect with our audience? How do we get started with even building a campaign language or ideas when it's kind of maybe just us or us in one person or us in a board member. So I'm just going to start off at a very high end and introduce you to a concept of a universal theme and how to use that in AI to generate much better messaging at a fraction of the time, I want you to think about a movie that everybody knows about that you think is one of the best of all time, that you know well. What movie would that be for me? For you?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Oh, well, we're still in the holidays in my favorite. Well, as we're recording this and my favorite holiday movie is Love actually. I've probably watched it like 50 times, Love actually. Okay, now I want you to think about what is the one universal theme that represents that movie? The one word relationships.

[Russell Van Broklen] Relationships. Okay. So I want you to think if you go back and look at the review when that movie came out, you probably had some Ivy League educated reviewer who Said this happened, this happened, and this happened. Basically you knew what happened before you went to see the movie. Sound familiar?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yep.

[Russell Van Broklen] Okay, so even Ivy League educated reviewers ready for major publications make this mistake all the time. Here's how you use a universal theme to make that clear. You start off with your one word universal theme, relationships. And you ask how do the director, how do the actors and how the screenwriter do with that universal theme? And then you write the review that way so people know what you think, but you're not ruining them for it. Makes sense. Okay, here's the problem with relationships. Do you see how big that is?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah.

[Russell Van Broklen] Okay, so what we need to do is you need to figure out one person's vision. So do you remember back when Pixar created all these great movies? They were all super successful. The first nine or ten of them, they had one person's vision. It was not made via committee. So you need to pick one person who's going to pick out the marketing message for your next campaign. Once you have that person, what you want to do is you want to identify a hero. The hero wants to do something. So you're going to pick out your charity's the hero. What is it that you want to do? Specifically? Write out in a sentence a paragraph, a bunch of paragraphs. Then I'm going to put it into chat. I know everybody here is not really technical, neither am I. But I'm going to give you some very specific steps. You're going to want to re listen to this, to follow each one of these and this will help you out tremendously. Go to ChatGPT thinking. Not instant, not automatic ChatGPT thinking. It'll give you something back if it takes 10 seconds or something simple or 7 minutes for something really deep. Give it the time it thinks to give it what it needs to give you the best, the best work. So go to chatgpt Thinking. Say what it is that you want to do in a sentence, in a paragraph, in multiple paragraphs. For each sentence, you're going to want to find the most important word and have it listed. And then what you're going to want it to do is pick the top five most important words. And then you as the human are going to pick out which one best reflects what you're trying to do now. Just like the word relationship for your, for your movie. Do you see how broad this is?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, absolutely.

[Russell Van Broklen] It's not usable yet. So then what you're going to want to do is tell Chachi PT Thinking to come up with a hundred Synonyms based on that universal thing and custom definitions. Then ask it out of that hundred to pick the top five or the top 10 that best reflect what the hero wants to do. And then you, as the human, want to pick the one that best matches what's in your head. It's going to be much more specific. That's your universal theme. Then I would.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Can I ask some questions real quick before we move on? Because there's a couple hiccups because I agree with you, the word relationship is also up to interpretation. Like everybody can interpret it in a different way.

[Russell Van Broklen] Yeah. It's just too broad.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Right. So the problem too, that a lot of nonprofits have is that they tend to go out very jargony and very like in interest, like with what they think versus how the public tends to talk or feel or react to the work that they're doing. So how can we also take that flow and make sure that even when we get all those words, we still pull ourselves out as the subject matter experts and still have it in the face of how our audience is going to react to that so that they get emotionally connected to our campaign?

[Russell Van Broklen] Well, what you again see is when I had you write out what you want to do and you picked the top five universal themes, the AI is picking those top five.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Okay.

[Russell Van Broklen] Okay. So these are not going to be jargon words.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Great.

[Russell Van Broklen] Okay, these are going to be. But they're going to be very broad. So then you pick the one you want to go with. That's what I call the base universal thing. Then you ask for 100 synonyms, and then you're asking the AI to come up with the top five or 10 based on what you want to accomplish. These are definitely not going to be jargon words. These are going to be hyper focused words. You pick the definition that best matches inside your head and then you're going to have that one word. Now, if it's not exactly what you're happy with, repeat this process until you come up with the one that you're happy with. Okay. Typically do it once, sometimes two or three times. Once you have that universal thing, this is going to be completely non jargon. It's going to reflect a very unique way of what you're trying to say. It's going to be spot on. Okay. Then it's time to leave OpenAI ChatGPT and go on to Claude Opus. Okay, yes, it's another $20 a month, but this is. But the writing is so much better. So then what you're going to want to do is say, here is the universal theme. This is what I'm trying to accomplish. Tell it to write itself some very long, detailed instructions on how to do what you want it to do. And then when it's done, tell it. That's not long enough. That's not detailed enough. I need this really long, really detailed so you're not going to make a mistake. And then I'll write something insanely long, then run it. Okay? At that point you're going to think, wow, that looks really good. You're not done yet. Then tell it. Here's the exact thing that I use. Look at this with fresh eyes. Is this ready to be published? If not, what percentage is it ready to be published? Write it out in a paragraph, then tell me. Up to 35 mistakes that prevent this from being ready to be published. Key note As I said, up to 35 mistakes that prevent this from being ready to be published. Tell me exactly in detail how you want to fix each problem. Then go ahead and fix it. Do not rewrite the entire document. Just make these changes to give me a fresh copy. Okay? It'll go and do that. Keep doing that until it hits 100%. It's going to take you three to six times typically. Then from there, if that, if, if it's really that important, I would go back into chat GPT 5.2. I started chat GBT thinking and say, this is what we want to accomplish. Here's the draft. Tell me what you like about it. Tell me what you dislike about it. And in a narrative, as long as possible, an exhaustive list of what you want to see fixed. It's really important. Then I would take that, go back to Opus, Claude Opus, and say, these are the recommended changes. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? And tell me how you'd want to make, what changes you would want to the problems you want to find and how you want to fix them. You. I generally go with what Claude recommends for writing because it's just so much better than OpenAI's ChatGPT. You may agree or disagree with some changes. Want to put some back in, take some out? You can do that. I don't bother generally because again, I go with Claude Opus most of the time. And then I would keep re. I go back and forth until you're getting nonsense, like things that don't really matter. I call them. I ask it, is this fluff or is this substantive? And when you're done with the fluff, now you have the final draft. This will take you much longer than people think. I. It'll. I'll probably be sitting down and doing this process for. In somewhere between 30 minutes to two hours. But the quality of writing I'm going to get out of this is something that is better than the vast majority of people are able to create. And I find then it's ready to go and implement. And what your end result is is the full story and kind of big long piece for your. Whatever your campaign, whatever you said was your initial goal that you have now done. And then now all you have to do is create all. Then I would send it out. I would send it out to, for comment, right. For editing and you know, to some board members. But now what it does is it gives you a really good draft. Okay. And then I would take those comments and I'd go back through. I would go back through with OPUS and go back and forth until it's polished enough to what what you're thinking.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Right. But what I'm saying is because you're having it write the long form piece now, your social media posts are in there, your email is in like all you just have from that to create the rest of your elements like you've done, the biggest part of your campaign is, is now going to be 95%.

[Russell Van Broklen] Yes, I would, yes. But I would go through all those editing processes until it's at 100% and then run it through ChatGPT thinking because I would, I would do that for every part of this. And honestly, when I, when I'm working with opus, I tell it to give me everything that I need. I do this. I don't do emails and then this. I just do the whole process together because it's capable of doing that. It's gotten so much more powerful just in the past couple of months.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, I think it's important to. We'll have all of this up in the show notes at the first click.net 319319 and the transcript will be there. So even if you want to copy paste some of the prompts that Russell's sharing here, we'll make sure that all of that is there for you and easy to grab. But I think there's a lot of things that you said in there that are things that we don't think to ask. Tell me what edits you think we should make. Give me the mistakes. I think a lot of times when we're editing in AI, we're just reading and being like, okay, well I don't like this. Or can you make it More, you know, caring and warm or can you make it more direct? Like we use those types of things. I think a lot. That's where people go. But I love what you're sharing with regards to is this ready to be published? Like that's a great question that I think is super easy for people to ask and that we need to guide AI. If you're not happy with the results that you're getting, it's probably because you gave up on step one and didn't go through the revision processes like what you're talking about.

[Russell Van Broklen] Yes. And that remember that every time I do this, it's usually between three and six times. Let me give you. This is completely unrelated, but I have a 10 year old client who's interested in the history of Mars. Not dyslexic, just a really bright kid. So I went and I had Opus create and from peer reviewed material only the entire history of Mars. And then I had it. I made sure it was what the appropriate length was. Then I told it I want this reduced to a sixth grade level, but at a ninth grade understanding because he's okay. So it goes through that. Then it cut the length in half. Then I went and said put it back. And I ran through it a few more times until finally I got the full edited document. So it's appropriate for at the really advanced 6th grade level understanding. At the 9th grade level he's 5th grade 10 but extremely bright. So I think it's just ready for him. But I had to go through it several times to make everything correct. All right. But it's worth it because the quality that you're going to get is going to be very, very good. Opus is writing better than not every human. But the only people I see that are better are those that are truly gifted professional writers who can make a legitimate living as a writer, which is very few of us. For the rest of us, this, this is actually writing better.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah.

[Russell Van Broklen] So are there any other tools that you find valuable? Because I know people have very strong opinions about the AI tool that they're using. But our ChatGPT and Claude or Opus are those kind of the two main ones that you kind of go back and forth between or are there others that, that are in your toolbox that you utilize for any of your writing processes to keep it simple, What I want you to think about is Chachi PT Think thinking is. It's very good as a brain. But when it comes to writing, Claude Opus is by far the best. I've played with Gemini from Google it's not as stable. It can come up with some good ideas, but it doesn't always follow through with what I'm asking. It'll go and start hallucinating a lot more things that the way that ChatGPT used to do like a year ago, they fixed that so it's not stable enough for me. I use that.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, real quick, before we jump up, could you share for people what you mean by when AI hallucinates? Because I think that's a term, but it's.

[Russell Van Broklen] Yeah, not explaining it tells you. It just makes stuff up. So I always tell it. Oh, here's a few other things you're going to want to focus on. Tell it to write at the eighth grade level, because that's what most people are looking for. But also, I will have it double check itself. All right? I'll say double check it if there's any mistakes, list the mistakes, and then do not rewrite the entire document. Just make those fixes and give me a fresh copy, a fresh draft, because otherwise it will literally rewrite a document that's like 20,000 words and it takes forever. Okay, so you want this. So you want to have it double check itself. And I will have Claude Opus check itself, and then I'll have ChatGPT thinking check itself. I cannot overemphasize enough on ChatGPT. You gotta spend the 20 bucks a month, put it on thinking, and just leave it there. Don't do the auto, don't do the instance. You're going to get garbage. Okay, you don't need the pro, because that'll take 20 minutes to do anything. Unless if you're doing some major PhD level research, it's just not needed. It's actually overkill. So just put it on thinking. And I will sometimes get things back in five seconds, usually within a minute or so. And sometimes it takes five, ten minutes when I'm doing really advanced stuff. But it takes the time it needs to give you a quality answer. And you have to have the patience for it because remember, you're being so much more productive. But there's a big problem out there with AI slop. This prevents you from doing AI slop well.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] And I think too, if you're using this method, you know, to build out your bigger campaigns, you're only doing maybe three or four a year between your fundraisers and maybe your launches or your programs opening or whatever. So I feel like it's worth the time because it's not like it's something you're doing every week, right? So you can put that into your schedule, that plan kind of back in, knowing that you're going to have better quality stuff. And, and also I would be curious your thoughts on, once you've kind of run a couple of these, if you have similar things that you're doing throughout the year, kind of the AI tools are going to understand your template. And doesn't it then sort of become faster and easier to get things done? Because now it knows exactly what you're looking for. You're just changing up maybe the story or the hero word and the theme.

[Russell Van Broklen] Actually, no, now it takes longer because what you're going to do is say, give 5.2, give ChatGPT thinking the results and say, this is what we planned out, this is the results. How do I make this better?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Got it.

[Russell Van Broklen] Okay. And then you go through the process again, come up with a better word, come up with, and then go and share that with Claude Opus. How do I make this better? And I go back and forth again. Because when I, when I set up these campaigns, I will again, I will set up up to two hours to get all this stuff done. As you're doing it around the third, fourth, fifth time, I will set up three or four hours and get it done per cycle. Okay. And then I will take that and I'll send it off to a few trusted humans. Because you're doing the recap of the last campaign and the setup of trying to, and you're always trying to make it better because think about what you're doing. You're taking hard earned donations, okay. And you're wanting to put this into better work. And I hear people complaining about the time I'm recommending. Then I would say, how long did this used to take you? And we're not talking about hours, we're talking days or weeks. And when you got your charity director who's got to do 50,000 things with 50,000 different hats, it becomes too much. But when it comes to getting out your central message, this really, I think falls on you or your director of marketing of fundraising, whoever that person is, take what you have, run it across your board, run it across the people that you really trust, make it a little better each time. And then after you've done this time in and time out, look at the data, have ChatGPT thinking explain how you can make this better. And it's all, you will never get it perfect. You're trying to get it a little better each time. And then after you do this several times, you're going to find that your effectiveness has gone up, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20%, sometimes more. But then you're constantly making it better. You're making, you're being much more productive over time with your fundraising dollars. They go a lot further, and that's really what you're trying to accomplish. But remember, we're spending hours instead of days or weeks to produce something that's far better than we used to be able to produce.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, and I think too, if we, as we kind of work, I would maybe say if you're in charge of fundraising or if you're the only person on your team or whatever, go through this process the first time yourself. Right. Whoever is the head of that and most responsible for the campaign. But I would think once you've gone through that process, then you could almost train somebody else to. You sit together, you meet, you come up with kind of, here's what the main campaign is, here's the goals of what we're trying to do. Somebody else could run through that whole process if they're trained and good to present then to you, here's what the campaign is. So it's also, I think, a plan that kind of removes the director of having to do all the work. Right. They can just approve as long as they've given the person that's doing it the information that they need. Now you kind of have an opportunity to train somebody else to do the work because they don't really need to be in your head. They just need to understand the organization and the goals of what we're trying to do with the campaign, to present something to you, for you to edit. That was very long winded way of saying that. But, you know.

[Russell Van Broklen] Right. But, but this, but then again, this comes. Remember I said this is one person's vision.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah.

[Russell Van Broklen] What you, what you want to understand is from Pixar, those first 10 films or so that were extraordinarily successful is you can farm out some of the grunt work to somebody to, to an underling. But when it comes to the thinking to, to making the connections of what, what the problems are, as the director, you want to keep hold of that or your director, whoever the director of the messaging is, you want that one person to maintain that level of directions. I've seen people who tried to farm these out to junior colleagues and the results are disastrous. So you can do some of the, of the grunt work, but generally the AI is already doing the grunt work.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Got it?

[Russell Van Broklen] Okay. So when I say you're looking for the senior person whose message, here's One of the big things that you need to understand about the workforce. Now, you've been out in the workforce for how many years?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Me?

[Russell Van Broklen] Yes.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Long time.

[Russell Van Broklen] Long time. Okay. You know what you're doing.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, we started our company in 2017, but, yes, I've been.

[Russell Van Broklen] Okay. You know, you're what I call. Yeah, you're. You're what I call a senior person. So what you're going to find is the real world is going to give you time to adapt to AI. Okay. Because you know everything. You're very good at what you do. It's just going to make you a lot more productive. The kids coming out of college, they are. Until they. A lot of companies want them to become senior within six to 12 months. How they do that, if they get. If they get a position, is they run a deep research report on anything they're trying to do and use that as a model compared to what they're doing. You don't need to do that because you already know what you're doing. Okay. So one of the problems people are doing is they're having the kids come out with or somebody who's just been in the workforce for five years or so who has some idea, and they try to give these major decisions to them, and this doesn't work. So the AI is already doing a lot of the grunt work. You can offshore some of it when you know exactly what that means. But for most of it right now, this is something a senior person's going to want to take control over.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah.

[Russell Van Broklen] Because I'm going to add a little nuance to this just because, like, I feel like, you know, I've worked for nonprofits that are large and nonprofits that are small. And I think that the one person with a vision gets a little tricky because every single position has its own motivation. So your programs team are really the heart center people of your organization. Your development person is, like, looking for money. Your executive director is trying to kind of make all of the things come together. So the only caveat that I would add to what you're saying is I would challenge you to have key players come to the table to determine what the language is as far as what is the ultimate goal of the campaign. Because I think that's where organizations get it wrong, is the goal. If you always have the development director, for example, running this process, they're always going to interject their personal motivations for their job into that campaign, just because that's what they're going to do. If it's always the Program people, they're always going to be wanting it to be fluffy and happy. And here's our impact. Right. So I think you do need to. I agree with you, one owner to run the process and other stakeholders can pay attention. But I would make sure that you come together as a team to fully understand what your campaign is supposed to do.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yes.

[Russell Van Broklen] Run it correctly. And not just one person should determine those goals. So that would be the only maybe caveat drive home. But here's how you modify that. So your program committee comes together and decides what is it that the hero wants to do.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yep.

[Russell Van Broklen] Write out. Heck, I've had people write out 30 pages. Okay. Write out 10 paragraphs. Whatever the committee wants to do. That is. That is actually much better. But once you got what they. What they want to do, then that one person has to go and pick the universal thing. Yeah, that. That would make that much more efficient.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yep.

I agree with that. Okay, well, we're already coming up on time. This went so fast. And Russell, you have given so many things for us to think about. I love all the different prompts. I love the way that you're kind of. Of reworking how we get what we need out of it, because that's not something that we've talked about, like that refined editing process on the podcast. So thank you so much for sharing that wisdom. Like I said, we'll have everything in the show notes at the first click.net 319319 But, Russell, if you were going to give kind of one last piece of advice or words of wisdom or share something that maybe we didn't talk about already, what would you kind of want to leave listeners with?

[Russell Van Broklen] I would just want people to understand that the current state of the art and we're recording this in December of 2020, is I would focus on getting $20 a month for chat GPT thinking, just leaving it on there. And then also $20 a month for Claude Opus. All right. I currently spend 100 bucks a month on that, but I'm on it all day. Most people, the $20 a month will do. Yes, it's $40 a month, but that's like a coffee or two from Starbucks a week. All right. For things that'll make you so much more competitive, that's what I would focus on right now. Get used to using those tools and you'll become so much more productive. Yeah, more productive. And the other thing I'd add is if your campaigns are running better, you're raising more money anyway, and you're probably going to see that increase in revenue cover the cost of what you're paying for the tool. Oh, yeah, it's really coming down to nothing. As I said, I used to spend 200 bucks a month on ChatGPT Pro. Now I spend 20 bucks a month on ChatGPT, 100 bucks a month on Cloud Opus, and 20 bucks a month on Gemini from Google. Because I'll go and have it scrape YouTube videos to give me an exact transcript when the other tools can't do that. But that's basically all I use it for.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Love it. Well, Russell, if people want to connect with you more, see more about what you do and how you serve people, how can they find you?

[Russell Van Broklen] Best thing to do is just go to dyslexiaclasses.com it's dyslexia classes with an S plural dyslexiaclasses.com there's a button there that says download free guide. Best thing to do is just click on that, answer a couple of questions, and then set up a time to speak with me for 30 minutes. It's free, doesn't cost anything, and we go over whatever you want to go over.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I love that. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and for being here today. I really appreciate it.

[Russell Van Broklen] Thanks for having me.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So many great, amazing resources, so many great strategies. I hope that you enjoyed this episode with Russell. Again, everything will be linked up in the show notes@the first click.net 319. I also don't forget, have the spreadsheet resource for you that lists out all of the podcasts that we have out. Well, all from 2025 and all of them as they're coming out in 2026. It breaks things down by category, by area, so that you can jump in and take a look at the episodes that mean the most to you. Where you're at right now, in this moment, where do you need support? We're here for you. If you have a question, please reach out to us at hello@thefirstclick.net. otherwise, make sure you subscribe wherever you listen. Episodes drop on Tuesdays and I'm so excited to be back again here with you every single week. We are on YouTube. We are wherever you listen. And if there's a place where you like to listen and we're not there, let me know. We'll make it happen. For now, thank you so much for listening and taking time to join us for these episodes and I will see you in the next one.