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Welcome to Talk to Walk, your go-to newsletter empowering small business owners with clear, actionable AI insights to boost your success from day one!

Prompt of the week: Context is King

As we learn more and more about AI, we are coming to a better understanding of how we can leverage it. Similar to an engine, we keep finding ways to apply it.

For years now, we have thought of the use of AI as being prompting, and “Prompt Engineer” became the title for those who excelled at the skill.

While this title isn’t changing anytime soon, those at the forefront have realized a subtle distinction that is changing how we think about interacting with AI.

Context Engineering. When we are working with an AI, we are providing context, the more the better. About what we want, what we have now, and where the gap is in our knowledge.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a few short prompts to give you an idea as to what I mean. These are meant to be a dialogue with the AI to help achieve your goals.

Find them here → Contextual Prompting

App of the Week: Granola

Everyone has been raving about granola, so we thought we would hop on the bandwagon.

I have a side hustle as a Freelance UX researcher. While having a bot join my calls is extremely helpful, it can also be intrusive. Especially when everyone on the call has their own chatbot doubling the Zoom squares in the frame.

Enter, Granola.

Granola is a note taker that captures audio directly without the need for a bot to join the call. It will create stunningly accurate notes and even attribute content to each speaker.

The part that makes this a game changer for my business is that I can ask questions similar to talking to ChatGPT. But it will be entirely based on the content of my notes from that call. For me specifically, I ask questions based on the notes of all my calls for a research project. Try asking something like, What concerns do sales prospects have most often?

I have only a few calls left in my free plan (25 free calls) but I am going to upgrade for the $18 a month price point.

Here is a quick *AI Generated summary of the core features:

• Real-time transcription: Captures audio directly—no bot joins to record.

• Smart summaries: After the meeting, it expands user notes into structured outlines, summaries, action items, and even draft follow-ups.

• AI chat interface: You can ask questions across a single meeting or an entire project folder.

• Templates & collaboration: Offers tailored note formats (e.g., standups, pitches) and now supports shared folders and note-sharing, even with non-Granola users.

• Platform availability: Originally for Mac, now includes Windows, with Android on the way.

Give the free plan a try; those first 25 calls for free definitely hooked me.

“How to” of the Week: Use AI Responsibly

I love it when someone sends me and a few others a five-page Google Doc, and right away, you start seeing everyone highlight the entire doc to copy/paste…somewhere.

It’s far easier to ask AI to summarize it for you. The author could have included a TLDR AI Summary. With context below for those it applies to.

There is something lost here; it becomes so easy to ask AI to think for you. This is where you should draw the line. AI can do so much for you, but the moment you start asking it to think for you, your value decreases.

If you didn’t know, writing IS thinking. I am completely guilty of asking AI to rewrite and email for me in a formal tone, and sometimes even asking for summaries. But a friend of mine recently came up and shared rules for his AI use that I thought were worth sharing:

• Don’t outsource your thinking.

  If writing is thinking, then generating everything with AI means skipping the hard part. Use AI to challenge your ideas, not to create them from scratch. Ask it questions. Test your assumptions. But don’t let it think for you, especially on the things that matter.

• Don’t create messes for your team.

  AI can spit out a 10-page doc or 25 “strategic insights” in seconds. That doesn’t mean you should. Volume ≠ value. Be intentional. Every AI-generated idea you delegate becomes someone else’s time sink.

• Don’t just summarize: train.

  Learning isn’t passive. Skimming a summary isn’t the same as understanding. Instead, use AI to quiz you, walk you through examples, or make you teach it back. That’s where real growth happens.

Bottom line: AI isn’t a magic shortcut. It’s a force multiplier. So multiply what matters.

That’s all for now.

Got an idea we should chase next? A favorite tool we should test? We read every suggestion.

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Catch you soon,
The Talk to Walk team