EJM dynamic technologies LLC

Everyone found AI in 2023. My family was in tech long before that.

MIT alumni roots and college board service run in my family. What I take from that is simple: a tool is only as good as the system around it.

That's why this Page shows the whole setup around each tool: the rules, the review step, and the part a person still handles. A clever prompt on its own doesn't hold up for long.

What tech advice from your family still holds up?

Keeping the wrong system out of kindness is still expensive.

Reed Hastings' Netflix line is blunt: "Adequate performance gets a generous severance package." I am not talking about people here. I am talking about tools and workflows. If an automation is only "fine," it quietly burns attention every week.

Sometimes the kind move is to shut it off and build the one you actually need.

Which tool or habit in your business is only adequate?

Honest question. Did anything from this week actually change how you do something?

The card has the list. Even "none yet" is useful to me, because it tells me where the posts didn't land.

Reply below or send me a message. Your answers shape what goes up next week.

The problem on your mind right now feels bigger than it will next week.

Daniel Kahneman wrote: "Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it." That focus trap is why people chase every AI headline. The tool of the day looks huge. A week later the real issue is still the unanswered phone.

Zoom out before you buy.

What feels urgent today that might be a distraction?

Renting every layer of your stack has a cost you feel later.

Tim Cook has said: "We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make." Apple is huge. A Medford shop is not. The idea still travels: keep control of the pieces that define how you serve customers. Your customer list. Your review voice. Your booking flow.

What part of your business should you own instead of rent forever?

Here's what this week covered, in case you missed a day.

Monday and Tuesday were the inbox rules. Wednesday was the five systems I'd set up first. Thursday was a restaurant build (an example). Friday was the never-paste list and the scam-text check, and Saturday was custom instructions.

Next week is Main Street builds for businesses around Medford and Boston, again as examples, with every step shown.

If you tried any of it, how did it go? And if you didn't, what got in the way?

A good Saturday rule: fix one setting, then close the laptop.

Pick whatever bugged you most this week. A filter that missed, a notification you never read, an instruction that keeps giving long answers. One fix, and you're done.

What's the one setting you keep meaning to fix?

A pile of goals is not a strategy.

Roger Martin defined it this way in Playing to Win: "Strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition."

For a small business, that can mean choosing two systems you will actually run and naming the five you will skip, even the popular ones.

What have you chosen not to chase this year?

If you set up custom instructions this morning, check these three.

Did you say who you serve, or only your job title? "Bookkeeper" gets generic answers. "Bookkeeper for restaurants north of Boston" gets useful ones.

Did you ask for short answers by default? You can always ask for more.

Did you tell it what to flag instead of answer, like anything legal or tax-related?

Revisit yours every few months, because the business changes and the instructions should too.

Which one did you skip?

If you treat your skills as fixed, every new tool feels like a threat.

Carol Dweck wrote in Mindset: "The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life." When owners tell me "I'm just not a tech person," that view is doing a lot of work. A growth view sounds smaller: I can learn this system the same way I learned the register.

Which story about yourself is getting in the way of a useful change?