I REALLY hate it when scammers get savvy 🤬

Ahoy hoy.

Sorry I missed you last week. My weekend schedule got a bit messed around through lack of sleep… and I’m doing mad amounts of food prep each week so I can eat healthily and not lose my mind.

It’s not just me who’s limiting their calories – both Roscoe and Bailey (the Internet’s most infamous cats) are trying to slim down for the summer too. (Roscoe’s not on board.)

Anyway, enough about our calorie intakes.

Today I’m bringing a slightly toe-curling minute of audio to you. It comes from a new miniseries called Shell Game, which is exploring the world of AI voice cloning.

You might be aware that there are tools that can take a few snippets of your voice and make that synthetic voice say anything… without your knowledge or consent.

Yeah, 😧 is right.

In this clip from episode 2, host Evan Ratliff tasks his AI clone to field a call from a scammer.

There’s a couple of interesting about-turns in this exchange, and it’s well worth your time to check out the whole episode to hear how the conversation plays out.

It’s an example of a growing trend I hate, where the scammers know what they’re doing sucks, and that people will try and catch them out seemingly to shame them… but shame is not a thing they possess. (There’s a lot of nuance about overseas call centres that I’m skipping over here.)

But more usefully for us, I think it’s a great example of how we can show, rather than tell.

It’s closer to the way I want to operate. I’d rather show you what good looks like than tell you what I think you should do, because your constraints and interests are different from mine.

So if you’ve got something tricky or complex that needs explaining or justifying, making it practical is way better than keeping it theoretical.

If you’re a coach, for example, instead of describing a technique, clip out a section from a coaching session, or do a mini-session on your show.

And if you want help putting an idea like this into practice, hit Reply and we can chat. Same goes if you’re wondering whether your podcast is working right now, or could use a tune-up.

And lastly, before I go, I wanted to say how grateful I am for your feedback and comments. I gather people appreciate the newsletter, so I’ll keep it up. It’s nice to be read, and nice to know I’m doing a good job… or at least so you tell me! (It’s also another good example why “show, don’t tell” is a good methodology!)

Alright you. Stay cool – in both senses – and I’ll check in with you next week.