INBOX INSIGHTS, September 3, 2025: Becoming AI Ready, Leading Economic Indicators

INBOX INSIGHTS: Becoming AI Ready, Leading Economic Indicators (2025-09-03) :: View in browser

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INBOX INSIGHTS: Becoming AI Ready, Leading Economic Indicators (2025-09-03)

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Why Being “AI-Ready” Is Really About Being Change-Ready

A friend recently said something that perfectly captures what leaders across industries are experiencing: “I know AI needs to be part of our strategy, but I’m struggling to move beyond the headlines to create something that actually works for our organization.”

This challenge extends far beyond AI implementation. The organizations that succeed with new technologies aren’t the most technically savvy—they’re the ones with systematic approaches to strategic change.

That’s exactly why we created our new course, The AI-Ready Strategist, live now!

I try not to get too salesy in the newsletter, but you really need to know why this course is so great. Besides, I’ve been working on it for months, and if you go to the landing page and scroll through the instructor bios, you’ll get a fun surprise!

The Real Solution: Strategic Frameworks That Work

After working through countless digital transformations, here’s what we’ve learned: you don’t need another theoretical discussion about AI’s importance. You need practical frameworks and proven templates that help you move from good ideas to measurable results.

The AI-Ready Strategist gives you exactly that—the systematic approach to evaluate, plan, and implement any transformative technology, whether it’s AI today or whatever comes next.

What You Actually Get

This isn’t just another course about AI strategy. It’s a comprehensive toolkit built from decades of strategic work and real client implementations:

The TRIPS Framework for identifying high-impact AI opportunities specific to your organization. No more being overwhelmed by endless possibilities—this shows you exactly where to focus.
The 5P Assessment that evaluates your organization’s actual readiness for AI implementation. You’ll know precisely what gaps to address before moving forward.
ROI Projection Calculator and business case templates that’ll help you get approved. These aren’t theoretical worksheets—they’re the exact tools that you’ll need to get the funding you’re after.investment funding.
Strategic Proposal Templates that communicate value clearly to leadership. Finally, a way to translate technical possibilities into business language that gets buy-in.
12-month implementation roadmap for sustainable AI adoption. This roadmap ensures your initiatives scale successfully instead of stalling after the pilot phase.

Plus over 20 additional frameworks, worksheets, and checklists that you can implement immediately.

Why These Tools Matter

Here’s what makes this different: every framework addresses the real challenges you’re facing right now.

Struggling to get leadership buy-in? The goal alignment and proposal templates are designed specifically to secure approval and budget allocation.

Not sure where to start with AI implementation? The TRIPS framework cuts through the noise to show you exactly where AI will have the highest impact in your organization.

Worried about organizational readiness? The assessment tools reveal precisely what you need to address before moving forward, preventing costly false starts.

These aren’t generic templates. They’re battle-tested frameworks that have consistently delivered results across diverse industries and organizational contexts.

Building Strategic Capabilities That Last

What you’re really getting is the ability to approach any technology transformation with confidence. The frameworks you’ll learn work for AI implementation, but they also work for automation projects, cloud migrations, or whatever disruptive technology emerges next year.

You’re building strategic muscle that compounds over time. Each technology evaluation you approach systematically makes you better at the next one. Each successful implementation builds organizational confidence and capacity for future challenges.

The Compound Effect

When you have systematic approaches to technology adoption, everything changes. You stop reacting to technological change and start strategically leveraging it. You move from feeling overwhelmed by options to confidently identifying the right opportunities. You transform from struggling to get buy-in to consistently securing resources for high-impact initiatives.

That’s the real value of strategic readiness: the ability to turn any technological opportunity into competitive advantage, regardless of what those technologies are or when they emerge.

What Success Looks Like

After completing this program, you’ll approach technology decisions completely differently. You’ll have proven methods to identify opportunities, build compelling business cases, and execute implementations that deliver measurable results.

More importantly, you’ll have the strategic confidence that comes from having a systematic approach to transformative change.

Your Next Step

The AI-Ready Strategist represents months of development and decades of strategic expertise, distilled into immediately actionable frameworks and templates. I’ve already done the hard part of trial and error, and I’m serving up only the best of the best of what I’ve learned.

If you’re ready to move from AI uncertainty to strategic confidence, this course gives you everything you need to succeed—not just with AI, but with any technological transformation your organization faces.

Want to be an AI-Ready Strategist? Get the course at trustinsights.ai/aistrategycourse

Are you ready for a real disruption? Reply to this email or join our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

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In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss whether blogs and websites still matter in the age of generative AI.

You’ll learn why traditional content and SEO remain essential for your online presence, even with the rise of AI. You’ll discover how to effectively adapt your content strategy so that AI models can easily find and use your information. You’ll understand why focusing on answering your customer’s questions will benefit both human and AI search. You’ll gain practical tips for optimizing your content for “Search Everywhere” to maximize your visibility across all platforms. Tune in now to ensure your content strategy is future-proof!

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In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s examine a few more leading economic indicators. Last week we looked at hiring demand to understand the state of the economy based on what industries we’re hiring.

While that data was revelatory, that’s only one slice of the pie. There are plenty of other leading economic indicators we can use to understand the state of the world, or at the very least the USA. Using data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank’s FRED Economic Data System, we can take a big picture look at the overall economy.

As we’ve discussed many times in past issues of the newsletter, A leading economic indicator is a bellwether, a canary in the coal mine that tells us how things are going based on current economic situations and inputs into the overall economy. If inputs are on the decline, then we know that outputs will decline shortly thereafter.

The contrast is lagging economic indicators, things like when the National Bureau of Economic Research designates a recession. This happens two quarters after the actual recession, so it’s not particularly useful for forecasting and planning.

Let’s look at 4 leading economic series and see what they have to say.

Our first is real disposable personal income:

This is a measure of how much disposable income people have in the USA. The higher it is, the more spare money people have to spend on things. What we see is in the last twelve months, disposable income hit a peak in early 2025 and has flattened off since then.

Our second is the ADP non farm private payroll:

Employment data in the USA comes from many different sources, but ADP is one of the longstanding series that is privately managed, meaning that is not subject to government review. What we see is that in the last twelve months, employment peaked in early January and has leveled off and begun to decline.

Our third series is Real Personal Consumption Expenditures:

This is a measure of what people actually spend. Whereas disposable personal income was how much people earn. This is what they’re actually spending and we see that spending was on an increase for the last four years and then immediately flattened out in January of 2025.

Our fourth series is the producer price index:

What we see is that the producer price index spiked at the midst of the pandemic and then began to decline thereafter. Beginning in January of this year, the producer price index began to increase again, indicating that companies were paying more for the goods and services they consume to make their products and services.

Each of these data series is important and each of them conveys information about a certain part of the economy. But the real value of this data is when we put it all together. What we see is that broadly speaking the consumer income has flattened out. And as a result, expenditures and consumer spending has flattened out. We see hiring flattening out. And we see prices of goods and services for companies increasing. This paints the picture of an economy that is struggling, which aligns with last week’s newsletter focused entirely on hiring demand and how hiring in general has declined 7% this year.

As annual planning season begins, this data can help us plan ahead. The big picture is that we should expect a softer economy, that we should expect sales to take longer, that we should expect value to become more important to the consumer and to B2B. Forward thinking planners should be considering how to intelligently implement AI, to reduce costs where possible, and look for opportunities to increase revenue by bundling or unbundling products and services to reach price points more palatable to what people are willing to spend.

The most important thing you can do is that planning, to do scenario planning that anticipates different possible outcomes and have plans in place so that no matter what happens, you’re not taken by surprise. No matter which way the wind blows, you’re ready to tack into it.

Almost every AI course is the same, conceptually. They show you how to prompt, how to set things up – the cooking equivalents of how to use a blender or how to cook a dish. These are foundation skills, and while they’re good and important, you know what’s missing from all of them? How to run a restaurant successfully. That’s the big miss. We’re so focused on the how that we completely lose sight of the why and the what.

This is why our new course, the AI-Ready Strategist, is different. It’s not a collection of prompting techniques or a set of recipes; it’s about why we do things with AI. AI strategy has nothing to do with prompting or the shiny object of the day — it has everything to do with extracting value from AI and avoiding preventable disasters. This course is for everyone in a decision-making capacity because it answers the questions almost every AI hype artist ignores: Why are you even considering AI in the first place? What will you do with it? If your AI strategy is the equivalent of obsessing over blenders while your steakhouse goes out of business, this is the course to get you back on course.

👉 Pre-register today! The course begins September 2.

Here’s a roundup of who’s hiring, based on positions shared in the Analytics for Marketers Slack group and other communities.

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SMPS, Denver, October 2025
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