I’m sitting in a coffee shop in upstate NY thinking about how I can create a better personalized experience for coaching clients, while still automating it.

Right now, I’m sending them an automated DM welcoming them and pointing them to a pinned post in a shared community.

But a video would be better. Instead of telling them how the space works, I can show them, while giving them a tour of all they get in the program.

Here was my thought process:

1. I could create a generic video for them, welcoming them and giving them a tour of the space.
2. It would surely be better if I actually said their name in the video, but that’s not exactly scalable.
3. I bet I could use AI to generate just one clip, where I say their name.
4. The lips might not look great — I could ADR* it over a welcome screen though.
5. That’s stupid.

First, that’s a lot of work and it’s not like there are dozens of people signing up every day, or even every week. I’d be automating something that doesn’t really need to be automated…at least not yet.

But second, what if the AI mispronounces the name? This is their first post-purchase experience, and it should be a good one.

Dale Carnegie said, “People love hearing the sound of their own names.”

A personalized video would be great…but punting on perhaps the most important part of it, where I actually welcome them by name…that could set us off on the wrong foot.

Ultimately, I either create a general video, or I have a mostly general video, and record a 10-15 second customized clip for each client, before throwing it to the general video.

The point: don’t automate the stuff that matters. We free up our time to show up better for people — not outsource showing up.

• ADR is Automated Dialogue Replacement. It’s a movie technique to add audio to already recorded clips