Previously: In Article 5, we talked about your content as a mixtape. Proof you were there, curated with the same care you once gave a mixtape that you lovingly created for someone. Now let’s talk about the studio where the mixtape is created.
The Paradox
But first, a paradox, Merriam-Webster says, is “a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement that when investigated may prove to be well-founded or true.”
I don’t consider AI a productivity hack. I envision the New York Public Library at the corner of 42nd and Fifth, and imagine wearing the whole building as a backpack filled with more knowledge and information than I can possibly hold in my brain.
What AI Doesn’t Have
AI does not have a nervous system. It has no scars from failure. It’s never had to make hard choices at 2am.
Your wisdom is evidence you survived something.
Meet Miranda
I don’t open a blank AI chat and ask it to write something for me. I co-write. I co-think. I stay in the driver’s seat.
The tools I work with are Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini Notebook. Collectively, I call them Miranda. Each does something different. In this article, we’re focusing on Gemini Notebook. This is a closed environment where I build living libraries that hold years of my own interviews, articles, and frameworks. Nothing is pulled from the internet unless I ask for it. When I sit down to draft, the first pass almost always happens in my living libraries in Notebook.
The LLM of YOU
You’ve probably heard the term LLM — Large Language Model. It’s the technology behind Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. AI models are trained on a massive dataset of books, articles, and conversations. It’s the accumulated writing of millions of people. It can recognize patterns that we often miss.
I have a different take. You already have your own dataset. Not the words of millions of strangers randomly strung together. Decades of your own. Your talks, articles, interviews, half-written books, and emails. The soundbites that you repeat without noticing. That’s not a metaphor. It’s the same raw material an LLM runs on, except it’s all real, all lived, and all YOU.
I did this manually for years with my own content and with clients. When I found Gemini Notebook about 2 years ago, I saw how much easier this can be and created a workshop called… The LLM of YOU. Where you gather that material into one place, Gemini Notebook. And build private libraries made of nothing but your own work. There is no need to train it or wrestle with prompts. Simply ask it questions and have it reflect back your own patterns. Work together to find new concepts and ideas from the content that helped you get to where you are now.
This is the “New” half of Tried & New from Article 4. You’ve already done the excavation — what stays, what goes, what gets upcycled. The LLM of YOU is where you put it to work. You upload your sources and stop starting from a blank page. You ask it about your own work, and it answers in patterns pulled from decades of things you already said, already proved.
There is a studio with predefined formats. My favorite is the audio overviews that act as a two-person podcast to discuss the sources you provided. There are also mind maps, data tables, various reports, infographics, videos, and more.
There is a very low barrier to tech. If you are already using Google Workspace, the Pro plan is included, and they’ve recently added a few affordable plans that can be used with a personal Gmail account. There is a free plan, but I prefer the extra bandwidth and increased security of paid tools.
How I Use My Living Libraries
These living libraries have changed the way I work with my own content and for clients. It’s also what I teach in the Founding member tier of my Substack. That is the only place I share the LLM of YOU workshop.
Here are a few stories…
I uploaded the transcripts of 145 Real 50 over 50 interviews and 18 panels. I asked how many topics we discussed. The response was 347. Then I asked for the top 10, and the number one topic was remembering and reclaiming. Reinvention did not make the top 10. I can now have a source for my own research for women over 50. What they care about, how they got to where they are today, the challenges they face, what they are looking forward to in the next 10, 20, 30 years. That is invaluable.
I wrote a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn for a year. About 8 months in, I realized it was more of a journal about how my work was changing. I uploaded 55 of those newsletters to a notebook, and that is how I created this methodology.
I uploaded 116 files from a program I ran from 2009-2016. It spanned social media, PR, content development, SEO, audience development, and more. I asked what is still relevant. Most of the social media content was outdated, but it has interesting stories about vintage social media - the rest… still relevant. I’ve been using it to create content for PR, SEO, audience development, and relationship marketing.
And with clients, I’m currently building out living libraries for several clients.
One has 20 years of media and podcast interviews with mostly-evergreen marketing advice, and we’re using them to build out her thought-leadership Substack.
Another has a platform where she shares the stories of about 100 experts and professionals. We’re turning that into a media platform on Substack.
And one of the Founding Members of my Substack has recently launched her Substack, sharing stories about the people featured in an interview series from 13 years ago - where they were then and now.
Why This Matters
This is so much more than content creation. This is the remembering and reclaiming of your stories and your past accomplishments. What I see when I do this work for myself and with others is the transformation that happens when you start to pull together the parts of your stories, the words you don’t even realize you say, and the reactions of a podcast host you didn’t register because you were deep in conversation. You see a version of yourself that you either forgot or never met. This is the wisdom.
AI holds it for you, and when there is nothing but you in the sources, it’s clear, and it’s true. You know the content and that it’s true. There is space for you to reconnect with the parts of yourself that you put aside. You get to choose what comes with you in this next act.
That is not AI slop. That is self-trust and self-value. That is evidence that, of course, you can do the next thing… because you already have.
This becomes the home for your voice and the foundation that everything else in this series stands on.
Your mixtape from Article 5 pulls from your living libraries. Your audience will begin to recognize your unmistakable voice. And the systems we’ll build in Found & Known only work when they’re rooted in something real.
Next Tuesday, we shift from your stories to the people you’re actually here to serve.
Because you are not the hero of this story… your audience is.
-Donna
