Howdy %Name%,
Are you selling an improvement, or an opportunity?
Here’s the word that cost me lots of money: faster.
- “This script will make your reports faster.”
- “This macro will speed up your data entry.”
- “Automate this and you’ll cut the time in half.”
Every one of those is true. Every one of those is a losing pitch.
Because the second you say “faster,” you’ve invited a comparison. Faster than WHAT?
Faster than the Excel macro they wrote in 2019. Faster than the VBA thing the last consultant built. Faster than the software they already bought and never rolled out.
They’ve got a Dropbox full of “faster.”
They’ve paid for it more than once.
So they’re not pricing YOUR offer. They’re pricing their own disappointment with the last three things that promised the same thing. And they finished doing that before you got through your first sentence.
Improvement is priced against memory. That’s the whole problem.
What “new“ sounds like instead
Now watch what happens when the pitch isn’t faster, it’s something they’ve never had at all.
Not: “This will speed up your reporting.” Instead: “Your reports will be sitting in your inbox before you get to the office, and you’ll never open that spreadsheet again.“
Not: “Automate your data entry.” Instead: “You’ll stop being the person who does data entry.“
Not: “Learn AutoHotkey to save time.” Instead: “You’ll build the tools nobody else at your company can build.“
Same underlying work. Completely different animal.
There’s no receipt for that second version. Nothing in their history to hold it up against, and no scar tissue attached to it.
That’s why “new” commands prices “faster” never will. Not because the code is harder or takes longer to write. Because there’s nothing in their memory for the price to anchor to.
Nobody lies awake at night wanting a slightly quicker version of the job they already hate.
They lie awake wanting OUT of it❗
Most of us write the “faster” pitch anyway, because it feels safer and more believable and more honest. And because it’s what every other automation guy is saying.
Start with what your market is desperate to BECOME, then build the offer backward from there.
Now on with the show…
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
The AI tool you didn’t know you needed
Jev is an amazing new AI tool that lets you get answers to closed-ended questions.
It’s a total game changer! Now you can get quick answers to your questions.
It’s already in OpenRouter.ai and I updated our OpenRouter class to let you use it easily.
Check it out in this video.
Jev is the Lightning Fast AI Reasoning You Need
Converting a Picture into an App for a Restaurant
A few months back I took a print menu for a local place and converted it to an app for them (but I didn’t record the process.)
So when I decided to repeat the process I hit record…
In this video you can watch me convert a photo of a menu into a working Progressive Web App using Claude in a bit over 30 minutes.
Truly an amazing world we live in❗
AI Turns Menu Photo Into App in Minutes
Making my own StreamDeck
Speaking of PWAs, in this video I showed how I re-created a Stream Deck that will work if my phone/device is on the same network. If you have an old Android or iPhone sitting around, you can easily use your phone as a “remote control” for your PC.
Progressive Web App Turns Phone Into Stream Deck | Hero Extract
Automating Editing Videos
In this video Kenneth, a Hero Member, demonstrates his custom AutoHotkey tool that helps him identify viral clips to extract from his podcasts.
It used to take him ½ a day to edit a video. Now he takes ½ an hour❗
His tool also suggests b-roll imagery and makes the edits for him.
We also outline some additional ideas to improve his tool.
AI Editor Automates Podcast Clips Into TikToks | Hero Extract
Reducing the Length of your Media
To go a different direction on media files I created MediaShrinker.
This tool is built to let you get through long video/audio files quicker by two main tricks:
- Removing silence
- Letting you change the playback speed
It’s amazing how much shorter you can make a video by using this tool❗
In this video I show how the tool works and show how it shrank one file by 63%.
Shorten Your Videos Up To 63 Percent by removing Silence and Speeding up Playback
Improving People’s Lives: Story #115
While working on a client’s project I realized she was manually assigning gender to people based on their names and voice. I had these files which contain 101,338 first names and the likely gender associated with them. So, in a couple of minutes, we had used a program to guess their gender (but still let the client override it if she wants to.)
What we’re reading
- How to use WinGet commands to keep Windows bloat free
- Cool features hiding in your car’s USB port
- Android’s private DNS feature solves a problem most people don’t know they have
AI News that you Need to Know
- It took me ~ 3 minutes to set up an AI bot to call me using Bland.ai
- Setting Grok Bot loose on procurement
- Jev is the AI that can’t talk back
Why Developers Are Losing Their Minds Over AI That Can’t Write
⚡️Productivity tips:
Do one thing until finished and don’t allow any interruptions until then.
A spot of Humor: Great Tribute to the Comedian’s Comedian
A Tribute To Sean Lock
What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #149
I cloned my own voice this week, and I’m planning to do the same for family members to help support their memory down the road.
I also pushed ~12 more web apps live on DirtSimple.app that run entirely in your browser with nothing uploaded anywhere, fixed a nasty OGG length bug in MediaMerger during a six hour transcription run, and taught TextUnderMouse to point at any control and hand you back a working AutoHotkey script.
In this week’s video I walk you through all of it, including the icon animator with 30 styles and a 101,338 First name database I mentioned earlier that figures out Mr. or Ms. on its own.
What we Automated this week #149
Clients say…
How can I pay more for this? — Kelly Coughlin
AHK Hero
Consider joining the Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc. Currently we have over 611 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that are exclusive to Hero members❗
During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:
- Help Hero Members with their Questions & Code
- Making phone calls with bland.ai
- Using Grok Bot
- AHK Tools
- TextUnderMouse Now gets paths & code
- IconAnimator – Syntax Writer & Caption changer
- Rust Tools
- Virtual Camera
- Using the Rust DLL with AutoHotkey
- Duplicate File Finder
- Progressive Web Apps DirtSimple.app
- LLM
- Local version of JEV (evaluates images)
- New Diarizer from Nvidia: Nemotron 3 with up to 8 speakers with overlapping speech
- New AI models: Opus 5.5, Fable 5.1, Jev, GPT-6 SOL/Luna & Solar Mini 4, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Grok 4.7, GLM 5.3
They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and 2 hours a week where we help people with their automation issues.
️ Quotable quotes
- Systems let the Ordinary do the Extraordinary — Joe Glines
- You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction — George Lorimer
- It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? — Henry David Thoreau
⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩
Do you know someone that would benefit from learning useful automation tips like the gems in today’s issue? Take a second and forward this newsletter and bask in the glow of their undying gratitude. Was this email forwarded to you?
Sign up for this Newsletter here. We never share your email with anyone. Ever!
the-Automator Dedicated to Multiplying your Income
Joe, Isaias, Irfan and staff
 |  |  |  |
P.S. If you’re still selling “faster” consider trying to change your positioning statement to “new“.
I bet you’ll be able to ask for larger margins and face less push-back.
