Hey folks, it's your content friend Eric here.

As I watched last week's Vibe Coding for Content Marketers workshop, I thought of my mom.

She recently retired as a direct mail marketer. As a child, I used to lay on the carpeted floor of her home office as I impatiently waited for my turn to use the family computer at 5 pm sharp (likely to torture my Sims or launch people off an unfinished Rollercoaster Tycoon coaster).

Waiting for those final minutes to tick away, I would watch her work in what felt like slow motion. She would receive a fax. She would go line-by-line with a red-ink marker, editing the latest mailer copy she received. She would load that back into the fax machine and send it off to whoever for edits. It took over an hour, all in, to get a few line edits back to the writer.

Keep in mind: this was someone at the top of their game using state-of-the-art technology.

So last week, as I watched content marketers (not programmers) whip up their own tools with AI in seconds, I reflected on what marketing looked like for my mom, what marketing looked like for me, and what marketing will look like for me...next year?

The productivity expectations of content marketers today would have been unthinkable for my mom 20 years ago, and not that much more thinkable for me five years ago.

I know nobody reading this newsletter is blind to the rate of change in marketing right now, but it's easy to become desensitized to how fast the rate of change is changing.

Using AI to write and edit copy faster is one thing. Using AI to build your own productivity tools is a whole new ballgame. We're getting productivity gains on productivity gains.

No big takeaways from me here beyond putting things in perspective. All I know is that I'm very grateful I don't have to use a fax machine. Or ride one of my death coasters.

Lots more in this newsletter below—please keep reading, or I will be sad.

- Eric

🧡 Why we closed the free part of our Slack community (+ save 20% Pro)

In case you missed it, after six years of building our Slack community up to 24,000+ members, we made the tough call to shut down the free portion of the Superpath Slack last week.

We knew the choice wouldn't be popular with everyone (we removed 99% of our members), but it's 100% the right move for Superpath. Jimmy and I can now focus on making Superpath Pro the most valuable career resource for content marketers.

We talked with tons of Pro members about this, and they were overwhelmingly in favor. In fact, many were actively avoiding the free channels. They don't want to be part of the biggest Slack community. They want a tighter-knit community. They want a great sense of trust and openness.

And to be honest, hardly any free members were upgrading to Pro, likely because the free experience had deteriorated over the last year or two. We're really grateful for all the messages of support from both Pro and free members over the past week—it's really confirmed we made the right choice. In the few days since the change, the community has never been more active.

But good news: it's free to try a Superpath Pro membership for 30 days.

Members get:

• A private Slack community

• Monthly 1:1 calls with peers

• Monthly group calls with themed breakout sessions

• 2x/week co-working sessions

• Our library of courses and content

Soon, members will also have access to a SaaS perks library, a vibe coding hackathon, a SaaS demo day, and more.

If you can't sign up for Pro right now — no worries, I'll still try to share as much value as possible in this newsletter.

Check out our free trial (available on monthly or annual). And you can use the code upgrade20 for 20% off the annual plan.

📺 Workshop Replay: Vibe Coding for Content Marketers

Thanks to everyone who joined us last week at the Vibe Coding for Content Marketers workshop! This event exceeded our very high expectations.

The vibe-coding examples from Tim, Sean, and Kate were inspiring, and the chat was popping off—we actually hit our participant limit because so many people turned up.

Big thanks to Riverside.fm and Lex for supporting this event. Sammy Krouse from Lex was kind enough to give us a 15-minute tour of Lex's newest features. It's the best AI writing tool out there. If you want to try it, use the code SP15 for 15% off your first month or year.

You can watch the full workshop recording here:

🎧 New on Content, Briefly: Dan Levy on Storytelling and Positioning

This week, Jimmy talks to Dan Levy, recent founder of Storyline—a consulting service that helps businesses figure out what their story is and then operationalize that story across the company. For example, they help companies tell a consistent story at their company town halls, in their product marketing, in their internal comms, in their sales pitch, etc.

Dan has also worked in content and communications at Unbounce, Zendesk, and a bunch of other impressive companies. He and Jimmy also go back over 14 years.

This is a pretty different episode in that Dan and Jimmy talk more about content in the context of Storyline's storytelling mission. They get into:

• How brand, product marketing, communications, and PR work together

• How to craft compelling narratives

• How his background in journalism shapes his approach to content marketing.

Really awesome episode! Listen here.

💬 Our favorite Superpath Pro threads this week

These are snippets of conversations from our paid Slack group for Superpath Pro members. You can sign up to access these conversations here.

• #ai-talk - When do you use a Custom GPT vs a ChatGPT project?

• #content-strategy - Does anyone have an article or a resource to help pitch product comparison pages to your founder/CEO? My boss is excited for us to start making them but insists we need to run it by him and she is worried.

• #ai-talk - What are people using for generating images and/or designs with AI tools? Bonus points for recs with free trials.

• #watercooler - How worried/concerned/alert are you about the tariffs? Do you see them affecting your industry/clients/customers? Or are you pretty insulated from them?

💼 Who's hiring?

Here's the latest from our job board:

• Carve Communications is hiring an Associate Content Manager

• First Round is hiring a Writer

• Growth Plays is hiring an SEO Editor - B2B Tech & Dev Tools

To get your open position in front of more than 20,000 talented writers and marketers, post a job here.

🆓 Get a 30-day free trial of Superpath Pro

Superpath Pro is our paid community membership, and we recently launched a free 30-day trial. On your trial, you'll get access to:

• 11 private Slack channels with 400+ members (including a new #ai-talk channel)

• Weekly coworking sessions

• Monthly 1:1 peer networking calls

• Monthly group calls with breakout sessions

• Graduate-level content courses

• And more

👉 Sign up for the 30-day trial here

"Within a month of joining Superpath, a client reached out to me after finding me on there. We started working together on regular assignments, and after just the first article, I’ve already more than recouped my year-long membership fee for Superpath.

Plus, there’s so much knowledge and advice being shared and plenty of built-in networking opportunities. Would highly recommend!"

— Katie Harp