I always think September feels a little bit like January.
It doesn’t seem to matter how many years it’s been since I went back to school. There’s still something about the end of summer that makes me want to buy a new notebook, clear my desk and start something.
And actually, if you make money online, I think September is a much better time for a reset than January.
Because we still have nearly four months of the year left.
Christmas is coming, people are buying abd Businesses are spending. And if there’s something you’ve been meaning to create, launch, sell or sort out this year, there’s still plenty of time to do it.
So I thought this week I’d give you a few things I’ve found that might help.
First, have a look at what’s changing
AI obviously isn’t going anywhere, but I think we’re moving into a much more interesting stage of it.
The question a year or two ago was what can AI do?
Now I think the more useful question is:
What can I do with it that somebody might actually want to buy?
Kit has just published its 2026 State of AI in the Creator Economy, based on a survey of 550 creators.
More than half now use AI every day, but almost 90% still review and edit what it produces.
That feels about right to me. AI is becoming part of the machinery rather than the finished product.
Read Kit’s State of AI in the Creator Economy:
https://kit.com/resources/blog/ai-creator-economy-report
Metricool has also just released its 2026 State of AI in Social Media.
One of the interesting things there is how much AI use has shifted beyond simply writing posts and towards strategy, research and analysing what’s working.
Use for strategy has jumped from 39% to 62%, trend research from 36% to 61% and performance analysis from 32% to 59%.
See Metricool’s new AI study:
Then work out what you’re going to DO with it
This is where I think we can all get stuck.
There’s always another tool or course to investigate. And another clever thing AI can apparently do.
None of those things make you any money unless you actually use them.
So I rather liked BoostQ4 when I found it.
You give it your website and it creates a Q4 marketing playbook for your business, with ideas for making more of the final part of the year.
You certainly don’t have to do everything it suggests. In fact, please don’t.
But it could be an interesting way of spotting one or two things you’re currently missing.
Generate your free Q4 marketing plan:
And if what you really need is a better set of tools, there are three very recent collections worth bookmarking.
EmailTooltester published a new guide to 21 free marketing tools in August, organised around the different jobs you need them to do, from getting discovered to converting customers and getting them to come back.
Browse the 21 free marketing tools:
https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/blog/free-marketing-tools
Buffer has also updated its collection of digital marketing tools for small businesses, with 28 covering most of the jobs an online business needs to do and plenty of free and budget-friendly choices.
See Buffer’s marketing toolkit:
https://buffer.com/resources/digital-marketing-tools
Shopify has put together 10 AI marketing tools you can use for free, with ideas for how you might actually use them rather than just a list of names.
Explore Shopify’s free AI marketing tools:
https://www.shopify.com/blog/ai-tools-marketing-free
Don’t forget that somebody has to SEE the thing you’re selling
This is one I’m reminding myself of too.
We can spend an enormous amount of time creating products and comparatively little thinking about how people are going to find them.
G2 has a useful new guide to 7 free influencer marketing platforms for small businesses.
Don’t be put off by the word influencer. Some of these can be useful for finding creators and people who might help you get what you’re selling in front of a wider audience.
If you’re planning to sell something between now and Christmas, it’s worth asking:
Who already has the people who might want it?
See G2’s free influencer marketing platforms:
https://learn.g2.com/free-influencer-marketing-platforms
Which brings me to something I’ve just done myself…
A couple of weeks ago I started playing around with an idea.
Instead of using AI to make another ebook or report, I wondered whether I could use it to help create an actual experience people would pay for.
So I invented a woman called Holly Mercer.
I checked her into Room 17 of a seaside hotel in 1986.
Then I made her disappear.
I created the suspects, witness statements, police reports, photographs, hotel records and 33 separate pieces of evidence needed to work out what happened to her.
And from that experiment came Cold Case Cash, my system for creating printable cold case mysteries that customers pay to play detective with.
I launched it on Thursday.
It went straight to #1 on WarriorPlus and was picked as Deal of the Day the following morning.
Which rather reinforces what I’ve been thinking.
There are now a million ways to get AI to produce stuff.
The opportunity is in using it to create something people actually want.
See what I did with Cold Case Cash
Something to watch while you’re avoiding doing all of the above
It has to be Tim Urban’s Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator.
It’s an old TED talk, but there’s a reason it’s become one of the best-known TED talks.
It’s funny, painfully recognisable and particularly appropriate if September has given you that right, I’m finally going to do this feeling.
Watch it here:
And perhaps that’s the thing to take into this week.
You don’t have to reinvent your business before Christmas.
You don’t need seven new tools eitherdespite the fact I’ve just given you seven of them.
But there is still plenty of time to do something useful with the rest of 2026.
Pick something you want to do and get on with it.
I’ll try to do the same.