OP #301: The Tools Are Changing. The Mindset Still Matters.

From F1 branding to AI assistants and analog notebooks—what operators can learn from the way we work now.

Author

Darren Herman
July 01, 2025

Happy Tuesday.

Hard to believe we’re heading into July 4th weekend already. This year’s flying by—half gone in what feels like a blink.

Over the weekend, I took my teenage son to see the new F1 movie. I’m not a hardcore Formula 1 fan (yet), but I do respect the sport—the precision, the speed, the technology. The movie? Fun. Simple. Well-done. What stood out to me, though, wasn’t just the racing. It was the branding.

As a watch guy, I clocked the IWC product placement immediately. But then there was SharkNinja, Expensify, and a handful of other modern consumer brands woven into the story. The whole film felt like one giant, beautifully shot advertisement. Not in a bad way. In a clever way. More on that here.

And even though I promised I wouldn’t turn The Operating Partner into a weekly watch digest… I can’t help myself. Here are three videos I’ve been looping this week—worth a look, even if you don’t know a spring bar from a Speedmaster:

What I love about these creators—Just One More Watch, Britt Pearce, and others—isn’t just the watches. It’s the community. Passionate, engaged, opinionated. There's a lesson here for marketers: if you're not spending time studying these niche media ecosystems, you're missing the best focus groups in the world.

I wrote more about that a while back [here]—still feels relevant. The smartest brands aren’t shouting into the void. They’re learning from the corners of the internet where people actually care. These creators are tapping their fanbases in organic ways. How are you doing the same?

Lets begin the OP with a some fun links as always:

Thank you for reading. As always, feel free to reply to this letter and I’ll respond back.

Be well, do good.
Darren

AI, Insights, and the “So What” Question

Last week, I found myself watching a video of Amaresh Tripathy, co-founder of AuxoAI, and Pavi Gupta, a marketing insights vet who’s seen it all—Coca-Cola, J&J, SC Johnson. They’re the kind of people who make you want to listen a little harder. Not just because they’re smart (they are), but because they’ve been in the rooms where insight becomes action—or doesn’t.

The conversation? How AI is fundamentally rewiring how brands understand consumers.

But here’s the kicker—it wasn’t some glossy, over-promised AI pitch. It was real talk. And the core idea stuck with me:

AI isn’t the sidecar. It’s becoming the engine.

Gone are the days of waiting weeks for a qual report. Today, AI is scanning terabytes of digital breadcrumbs—search behavior, call transcripts, TikTok trends—and surfacing insights before your agency finishes the kickoff deck. But speed alone isn't a strategy.

Here’s what they unpacked:

Speed to Insight

When AI works, it collapses time. What used to take three weeks now takes three days. The best teams are using that time not to admire dashboards—but to act.

The Power of And

It’s not humans vs. machines. It’s humans and machines. Pavi said it best: “AI gets you the what. But the why—that still takes curiosity.” The best orgs are pairing data with storytelling, pattern with context. Analysts are becoming translators, not just statisticians.

New Team Structures

Forget functional silos. The future is pod-based: researchers, marketers, and data engineers sitting together, building prompts, interpreting signals, and pressure-testing hypotheses in real time. Speed creates clarity. Clarity builds conviction.

Everyday Tools, Real Impact

Even simple use cases—like using LLMs to summarize open-ends or cluster verbatims—are shaving hours off workflows. This isn’t sci-fi. It’s already here.

Mindset over Models

You don’t need a custom GPT or a six-figure platform to get started. What you need is a shift in posture: ask sharper questions. Be willing to iterate. Start small, stay curious, and use AI to get to the “so what” faster.

If you’re in the insights business—and let’s be honest, every operator is—you should listen to the full convo. It’ll change how you think about what’s possible.

Because the future of insight isn’t more data.
It’s better questions.
And faster, smarter answers.

If this is of interest, you can check out AuxoAI, Evidenza, AARU, SyntheticUsers, amongst other players in the burgeoning synthetic research ecosystem. Here’s a good market map on the research landscape by some friends at a16z.

Waxed Canvas, Claude, and the Systems That Stick

After last week’s note on how readers are wiring their workflows, I got into a great back-and-forth with longtime friend and OP community member Ken Rossi, who sent over a breakdown of his setup. It was one of those emails where I found myself nodding the whole way through. Not because I do it all the same way, but because it’s so clearly his way. Thoughtful. Tactile. Actually usable.

He starts analog.

Ken’s been writing and sketching again in a Lochby notebook—a waxed canvas cover that looks like it belongs in an old field journal. There’s something about the texture of paper that slows the brain down just enough to think. I get that. Some of my best frameworks start on a page, not a screen.

Once it’s worth saving, he scans it into reMarkable and keeps going. It’s not about staying analog or digital—it’s about flow.

On the productivity side, Ken uses Todoist as a kind of safety net—quick capture, calendar hooks, basic reminders. But he plans his day with Ugmonk’s Analog system (if you’ve seen those wooden card holders on Instagram, that’s the one). His twist on the classic 1-3-5 rule is what caught my eye:

  • 1 big thing (90 min)

  • 2 medium (60 min each)

  • 3 small (10–30 min each)

Simple. Tactile. Clear. It forces a real choice about what actually matters that day.

Where things get deeper is his note system.

Everything lands in Obsidian—his thinking archive. Notes, research, stuff he’s working through. What makes it powerful is how he’s layering AI on top, but in a totally local, privacy-first, builder-brain kind of way.

He’s using something called SystemSculpt to run models like DeepSeek on his machine and search through his notes without sending anything to the cloud. And he’s wiring up Claude to tag, interlink, and build out a personal wiki—automating the boring parts so he can focus on what the notes are actually saying.

He’s basically building his own assistant. But not the kind that books meetings. The kind that helps him think.

A fun follow-up: I finished my first whole week using the Remarkable Paper Pro. I’m loving it. My wife, Sherri, saw it and asked me about it. She purchased one too. This is one of those purchases that I have been debating for years and now upset that I did not do it earlier.

Below are a few articles I came across this past week that I found interesting. While I may not agree with everything in each one, I think they're worth a read. If you stumble upon an article you think I or the Operating Partner community would enjoy, feel free to share it with me. Of course, I reserve the right to decide what gets featured in the OP.

Thank you for subscribing to the Operating Partner. I hope you enjoyed OP #301… was a ton of fun to write and share out.

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