Newspapers in the AI Era

Today, I saw an article on Linked in about how the Encyclopedia Brittanica is now positioning itself as an AI research company (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7275863301777997824/).

This is a reminder that, with the AI Era, any company with access to data has a valuable asset. This makes me think of newspapers.

Major newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, have over 100 years of articles, information, reviews, etc. I always thought that one thing that can save them is to partner with other media to present "infotainment", such as a streaming series on organized crime during Prohibition, etc.

Now, I think they can also become AI research tools. They can create interfaces that let people type in a prompt and it can present research from its archives, with the reference line generated. Perhaps they can set the paywall so that, someone clicking on the reference inserted in an paper than allows them to read only that article.

It would allow students and researchers to be able to expand the first-person resources they can use.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Why It's Important to Separate Data from Business Logic

I recently advised a client with a critical data acquisition project.  It reminded me yet again why it's so important to abstract parts of a system as black boxes with interfaces.

In their case, they get data from many different sources, in different formats (such as web APIs, CSV files, pdfs, etc), then process them with business logic.

They recently had one critical source who suddenly, with no warning, changed the format of the information.  Instead of letting them rewrite the business logic, which would then require extensive QA testing, I showed them how to call an existing library function which converted the data back to the old format.  Once they did this, they were able to re-use the same business logic without modification, thus saving a lot of retesting.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Technology Platform "Chicken and Egg Problem"

If you come out with a new hardware or software platform (like a new chip or new operating system), customers will not want to buy it unless it has a lot of useful apps.

App developers, however, won't write for your platform unless they see values, in terms of many customers.

Almost 25 years ago, Joel Spolsky wrote about this problem (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii-chicken-and-egg-problems/), and he feels that the solution to consider is backwards compatibility.

In other words, you spend a lot of time figuring out how your system will run apps from the current popular platforms.

For example, Microsoft DOS got established on IBM PCs because it offered backwards compatibility to CP/M, the operating system in use at the time, which had Word Star, a popular word processing application.

Also, competitors to Intel's x86 chips did not make any progress until they made their new chips capable of emulating x86 chips.

Spolsky also mentions the case of early, online bill payment services. The ones that succeeded offered "backwards compatibility" for merchants that weren't directly enrolled with them. They simply provided a mailing address where customers could have their bills forwarded, where they were manually scanned and uploaded.  It was tedious but, once they got a critical mass of customers, they could go back to the merchants and show them how much they can save by not having to mail paper bills.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

College Football is Now a Professional League

Now, college football has done what the USFL, XFL, etc. couldn't accomplish. It's now a professional, alternative league to the NFL. 

That is why Bill Belichick feels comfortable coaching in NC: it's much more like the NFL now.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Consulting Haiku

Consulting goes with
the ancient art of haiku:
two sides, yin and yang

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Myth: People Don't Like Change

It's a myth that people don't like change.  If they didn't, they would never go to college, get married, or have kids.  What people don't like is to have change thrust on them, where they don't see the value in it.

If you want to change a workplace,  the workers need to help drive it.  They need to understand the change, why it's needed, and how it helps them and the company.  They need to help shape the details.

This means that you don't just spring a new computer system on them one day and provide them with a couple of hours of training.  This means, as you develop the system, you also develop simulators, and you allow groups of users to try them out (even at the beginning of the project, where functionality is minimum).  Get their feedback, and incorporate that into the design.  There are no excuses to not iterate, especially if you consider yourself "agile."

Finally, when the system is ready, you don't just tell the users to do everything with the new system, especially if they are under a time crunch.  Have both systems side by side, and start by letting them work a few, simple tasks through the new system.  Let them naturally shift over their workload to the new system as they get comfortable.

These are all covered by my Strategic Simplicity® Framework, CLOUD:

Change simplicity

Language simplicity

Operational simplicity

User simplicity

Decision simplicity 

© 2024 Praveen Puri

The Real Twilight Zone

The real Twilight Zone is when you wake up and see that there is less than 15 minutes before your alarm will go off.  Do you try to sleep or get up?

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Monitoring Independent Key Indicators

When my support team was monitoring complex financial applications that spanned multiple servers, processes, and software teams, we put in place dual monitoring. First, we had a page that was updated regularly with key database queries (such as the number of transactions currently in transitional states). If counts were building we could detect if certain subsystems were down.

At the same time, we had a page that was updated by software monitoring multiple application logs, looking for certain key phrases.  Many times, if a multiple outage or problem was occurring, we would be notified by at least one of the monitoring methods, many time by both.

The generalized lesson (even beyond software) is that it's good to monitor multiple key indicators that are independently generated.  It increases your chances of catching problems early.

In fact, we found that some messages, if they occurred in a log file were like Spiderman's "Spidey sense!" They indicated that a problem was about to incur in the next 5-10 minutes and allowed us to take preventive measures.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Notre Dame Cathedral: An Amazing Example of Project Management Success and Strategic Simplicity®

After Notre Dame Cathedral burned down, the French government vowed to rebuild it in 5 years.  Many were doubtful, given the damage to the centuries old structure.

As most of us know, in modern times, major projects almost invariably take longer than planned.  Some giant public-works projects fall behind by decades.

Well, this weekend, after 5 years, Notre Dame opened on time.  This is one of the few massive projects that came in on time.  

One of the reasons for the success was that they followed Strategic Simplicity®.  Like with most projects in the planning stage, people came out of the wood work, suggesting "improvements" and "enhancements" that were now possible with the reconstruction.

The managers, architects, and stakeholders turned them all down.  They focused on one end result: rebuild the beloved cathedral just as it had been.  No scope creep allowed.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

"Billboard Hot 100" for Chatbots

This weekend's WSJ had an article about a pair of grad students at Berkeley who, as part of a project, developed a system to rate chatbots.

Their site, Chatbot Arena, has exploded into one of the most-watched rankings for AI systems.  It works by letting visitors to the site ask a question, which is then answered by two anonymous chatbots.  The visitor then votes for which one answered best. It then tracks the chatbots on a leaderboard.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

A Real-World Example of AI Success

Crain's Chicago Business has just written about a real-world example of business success with AI: Northwest Meat.  This small, family-owned business provides meat to restaurants in Chicago.  They had a daily task that they dreaded: taking orders, and compiling the warehouse schedule for the next day, involving over 1,000 different products.  It involved either the owner, or office staff, spending three hours at night.

Now, they use an AI tool called Choco AI that is designed for food distributors. It's cut their time down from three hours to less than 60 minutes.  Northwest Meat told Crain's that they pay $1100/month for the tool, and the owner estimates it saves him $22k/year in labor expenses.  #AI #distribution #supplychain

© 2024 Praveen Puri

High Tech / High Touch and Medical AI

Today, I was reading some letters to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, written by physicians.

They were commenting on how the current business of healthcare pushes doctors out and into a role like a cog in the machine.

One MD said "I was told that individualized medical care was too inefficient, and I wasn't a team player."

The thing is that health care is not like getting an appliance fixed. We are talking about people's lives, and the stress, emotion, and drama that goes with it.  People need patient-centric medicine.

I think the solution can be found in the title of an old book called "High Tech / High Touch."  The secret should be to give "inefficient" personalized healthcare, and attention, while compensating by making the back office bureaucracy efficient through intelligent use of technology and AI.

Today, it's just the opposite, where medical and insurance paperwork take up so much of doctors' time, and pressure them to reduce their face time with patients.

#AI #medicaltechnology #medicine

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Juggling Glass and Rubber Balls

"We are all juggling too many balls. Differentiate between glass balls and rubber balls — and don’t be afraid to drop the rubber balls." - Praveen Puri

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Unlikely Viral You-Tube Series from Azerbaijan

In the Economist, they had an article about this farm lady in Azerbaijan who has a hit You Tube channel, just cooking on the farm.  I watched an episode, and it’s so interesting and relaxing to watch.  No talking, and great edits to all the animals (lambs, puppies, kittens, ducks, etc) playing around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TKP0USuzR4

© 2024 Praveen Puri

How To Improve Airline Boarding

1. Anyone trying to board with an early group get moved to last.

   
   

2. Also have a cleared area to board that is free of everyone except the next group to board.

   
   

3. Charge for carry-on luggage, and make checked luggage free.

   
   

   
   

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Is AI stealing when it trains on copyrighted work?

Is AI stealing when it trains on copyrighted work? But that's how we humans learn to write. Like AI, we "train" by reading copyrighted books and stories written by others, and we pick up the language patterns and formations.

But, while learning, if we re-write someone's paragraph or (in the case of an artist) reproduce their drawing, then we know we're in "learning mode" and won't pass that off as our work.

I think that might be missing in AI: some over-rule which tells it that, if the current iteration is too close to the training sources, then consider it "learning material" and don't output it.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Halloween Dad Joke!

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Companies should first focus on "Small AI"

They should focus on simple AI command lines that are trained on a very limited command set, simply to improve the GUI on applications. 

For example, a command line on Excel, that lets you describe what you want done to your spreadsheet, "like create a new column that is equal to 5 * col1 + 3 * col2, if col3 is true".

So you don't have to memorize (or google to find out) menus, and copying formulas into each row.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Nobel Prize in Physics...for AI?

Today, they awarded the Physics Nobel prize to the computer scientists who laid the foundation for AI.

There is no Nobel Prize for mathematics or computer science but (perhaps for timeliness) the Nobel committee decided to give a prize to the pioneers of neural networks (which underlie artificial intelligence).

They "stretched" the definition of physics and shoe-horned them in.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Can't Sue Uber: Software Terms and Conditions

Do you also click through the long terms and conditions when using apps and other software?

I was reading today about a couple who were injured after their Uber driver went through a red light.

A NJ appellate court agreed with Uber that they can't sue the company because their daughter once ordered a pizza through Uber eats, and had clicked away any future trial rights while going through the app.

So, now they can only go through private arbitration.

Do you think this is fair, or sneaky?

© 2024 Praveen Puri

East Coast Longshoremen Strike

One of the things that the port workers want is protection from automation.  But, you can't fight automation, and it's a disadvantage to do so.  Other countries have already implemented more tech at their ports, and are more competitive.

All advancement and increases in living standards have occurred because of dynamic, innovative capitalism. Jobs are continually destroyed and new ones are created. Just think of the thousands of elevator operators and print press jobs from the early 20th century. Nobody is guaranteed a job. 

Jobs exist because they offer value. If automation can do your job better, than you're not in a value-added position. The only real security today (for both companies and workers) is the ability to change and find new ways to provide value.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Ozempic, Packaged Foods, and Business Strategy "Judo"

What do you do if a new scientific breakthrough threatens your industry?

This was the dilemma facing the makers of packaged foods.  Survey data predicted that Ozempic, now popular for weight loss, suppressed appetites and threatened their sales.

However, in a "judo" move, multinationals like Conagra, Campbell Soup, and Danone figured out a way to flip Ozempic from existential threat to a strategic advantage.

It turns out that people on the drug are advised to boost their protein intake. Also, some suffer digestive side effects.

The food manufacturers are now planning to this niche of users with products that are protein-rich, and easily digestible.

Lesson for business leaders: how can you turn threats and weaknesses into opportunities?

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Gas Cars --> Electric

Someone said that "switching vehicles to electric, when the plant generating that electricity is an old-school coal-fired power plant, isn't a win."

My response:

Yes, but that's the way it realistically has to be done, in steps.

1. Switching a car to electric (even if, for now, the source is coal) is a partial win, one step in the right direction. Now, that car is no longer dependent on gas or diesel.

2. As cars get switched over to electricity, the electrical demand will skyrocket. So, you need, in the interim, combinations of power plants (some more green than others) to prevent outages.

3. At the next phase, you can systematically work on replacing the worst sources with better sources. As you do that, as long as you keep supply constant, electric car owners don't have to do anything, because the source of power is abstracted away from them.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Opportunistic Innovation And Migrants

My mentor, famed consultant Alan Weiss, has written about the three types of innovation (opportunistic, conformist, non-conformist).

I've recently read a couple of articles about how opportunistic innovation is causing a "capitalist ecosystem" to sprout around migrants:

1. At a migrant shelter in NY, the migrants want to work but don't have work permits.  Opportunity: Some people rent them bikes and others set up fake delivery accounts on Uber Eats, etc. and "rent" them to migrants for, say 6 weeks. (After the time, they delete the account. On that last day, the migrants tend not to deliver the last order of the day and keep it for themselves 🙂 ).

2. I was reading today about a scuffle at a Chicago Home Depot (which ended up with the security guard shooting the suspect and wounding him).  The interesting thing was that the suspect wasn't one of the laborers that crowd the parking lot hoping to get picked for a job.  He was there to offer haircuts to the migrants who gather there.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Why the Tech Slowdown?

I think pure technology companies (those that make products or marketplaces, like Ebay or Uber) are more insular. They listen to the same venture capitalists, and watch the FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, google).  They all overreacted to the pandemic, and hired like crazy from 2020-2022. Now, they are focused on being defensive and cutting costs.  They're acting like lemmings.

With companies that use tech (such as financial or insurance services), I'm not seeing this kind of behavior. 

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Glasses Visual Humor

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Worldwide Windows / CrowdStrike Outage

Systems have been down all over the world, including airports because of Microsoft Windows systems being shut down.  A lot of businesses use Windows with CrowdStrike for cybersecurity, and CrowdStrike pushed out an automatic update that crashed Windows machines.

My nephew was supposed to fly in from CA today, but it looks like his flight was cancelled.

This shows the danger and fragility when companies rely on a small handful of providers.

It also shows the downside of frequent, automatic software releases.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Gen Z's Wikipedia

The Economist recently had an interesting article about a site called Famous Birthdays. They called it "Gen Z's Wikipedia." The founder found a niche in that, besides just listing conventional celebrities, the site lists influencers.

It's success shows how the nature of fame is no splintered. In fact, marketers are now using this site as a tool to identify influencers for ad campaigns.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Scary News About China and AI

This is one of the scariest things I've read recently (June 15, 2024 Economist):


"At the start of 2023 experts reckoned that the Chinese LLMs that did exist were a decade behind the American cutting edge. Now the same experts reckon that the transpacific model gap has shrunk to a year or less."

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Strategic Simplicity® is the Key to Business Success

As I've said before, we are in the Attention Scarcity Age and the key to business success today is streamlining the customer experience, and making it very quick and easy for people to accomplish tasks.

It's the secret to Uber, AirBNB, take out services, and AI.

The Lefsetz Letter touches on this while talking about how the best non-blockbuster/superhero  movies are 

now appearing on Netflix (https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2024/06/11/hit-man/), bolding is mine:

"On Netflix, to paraphrase Mick Jagger, it’s just a click away.

There’s too much friction in going to the movies. You’ve got to look up the time, get in your car, park, pay, sit through a zillion trailers, and maybe commercials, and endure the great unwashed populace.

But on Netflix… It’s on demand, ready when you are. To watch straight through, to pause, to see again and again.

This is the modern paradigm. He with the most friction loses. Didn’t the music business prove this?"

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Interesting Connection 2

Elon Musk launched a new AI company (xAI - he's fascinated by the letter X), and it raised a lot of money in a short time.  Why?

Because he also owns Tesla and X (nee Twitter), which gives his AI models a big advantage in training data (tweets, file from Tesla cameras, etc).
© 2024 Praveen Puri

Interesting Connection 1

Did you now that, outside the main bull fighting stadium in Madrid, there is a statue dedicated to Alexander Fleming?

Why?  His invention of penicillin saved countless bullfighters.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

The Mythical Man-Month

When a project is falling behind, beware the seductive idea of simply increasing manpower. Adding bodies doesn't scale for knowledge workers.

hashta work.
For example,

Adding more farm workers to pick wheat is productive because the work can be divided and they don't have to communicate with each other.

Adding more hashtagprogrammers to a project falling behind does not increase hashtagproductivity because they have to communicate / coordinate / share constraints.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Three Ways to Be An Innovative Leader in Your Field

1. You have to learn, learn, learn. If you don't have the passion to read and learn outside of work, you should find another field because you won't be an innovative leader. Also, learn in adjacent areas. for example, if your field is healthcare, also learn and be curious in technology and consumer care.

2. Use data. You don't have to be a data scientist. You can work with programmers and data experts, who can help you put together the queries. The main skills you need is the ability to think up the queries by thinking about cause, effect, and relationships between measures, and testing your hypothesis.

3. Set both clear (in pen) and "in pencil" goals. For example, if you're in health care, set the clear goal of identifying a way to kill a certain cancer cell. But, then you want to set an "in pencil" sub-goal, such as can substance X affect the cancer cell.  Because, then you want to test this hypothesis, and either pursue it further or quickly discard it (fail fast). "in pencil" means don't be wedded to it, and be willing to pivot based on the evidence.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Go Team Go!

The Economist had an article about how researchers are now working on building teams of chatbots.  These open up more powerful opportunities than single chatbots.

The bots can self-organize, assign each other tasks, and review each other's work.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Latest Fortune Cookie Advice

"Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it."

- From today's fortune cookie

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Actual Execution Should Be Thoughtless

You need to strategize and plan, so that you take the right action.  But, when you actually take action, you have to not think, and just execute, if you want to be successful.

I noticed this when I threw a crumpled paper into the garage can.  I made the shot because I didn't aim, or think about whether I would make it in.  My mind was a void, and I just tossed it in.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

How Not To Do Projects

San Francisco built a single public toilet. The stats:

$1.7 million with a two-year timeline

$91,800 in project management fees

$90,000 in architecture and engineering fee

© 2024 Praveen Puri

"My AI agent will be in touch with your AI agent"

In the future, I think we will have AI assistants who complete tasks and schedule things for us.  

For example, instead of booking travel yourself, you tell your AI. It knows your preferences, goes out to your favorite travel site, finds and presents to you 3-4 options, then books your choice.

At first, site connections for your agent may need to be cobbled together, but I think standards will emerge.  AIs will have access to directories listing APIs for different websites so that, when your agent needs to interact with a site for the first time, there is little or no initial setup required. 

© 2024 Praveen Puri

You Can't Fail At Innovation

You can't fail at innovation. It's not "success or fail"–it's "success or iterate." If you give up on innovation, your business will fail. If, instead, you pivot, review what happened, and adjust, you can always grow your business, add value to your customers, and increase the value of your business.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Airbnb for Dog Parks

If you're creative, there is no end to the apps and services you can come up with to satisfy people's wants and needs.

Today, I was reading Crain's Chicago Business and saw an article about sniffspot, which is an "Airbnb for dog parks."

It lets people offer their property for people who want a safe, private place for their dogs to run around unleashed.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

The Frenchman Who Ended Use of The Guillotine Died Last Month

Whenever I thought of France and the guillotine, I always thought of the French Revolution in the 18th century.  Imagine my surprise when I saw, in a recent edition of The Economist, the obituary of the man who ended its use: Robert Badinter, who died on February 9, at the age of 95.

It turns out that the guillotine was used into the 1970's, and he got France to end the death penalty in 1981.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

AI is a Complement, Not Replacement, for the Human Touch

AI will complement, but not replacement human touch. 

It will be a valuable tool for companies that want to empower their customers and simplify the user experience. However, like any tool, AI has its limitations.

For complex and stressful situations, clients will still want to talk with humans, who can provide empathy and flexibility.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Medical AI to Screen for Diseases

If you're developing AI to screen for diseases in health care, it would probably be better to think analog instead of digital.

Instead of making the AI respond "yes" or "no", have it rate the likelihood of having the disease, on a scale such as 1-5.

If your AI only responds "yes" or "no", it would probably be useless because of false positives and negatives.

With using a scale, however, the screening could actually prove useful.  For example, after running clinical trials, it might be found that:

1. Ratings of 1 don't need follow-up.

2. Ratings of 2-3 require follow-up, but not urgently.

3. Ratings of 4-5 should be a priority follow-up.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Innovation Isn't About Hard Skills

Innovation isn't about hard skills (data analysis, programming, project management, design thinking, etc.). 

All of the hard skills listed above are superseded by curiosity. You could be an expert in all those skills but, if you don't have the curiosity to play with concepts, try new things, and go down dead ends, then you won't reach your potential for innovation. 

Conversely, if you are weak on the hard skills, but are curious and playful, you'll succeed.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Venture Capital Company to Buy Hospital System

Today I read on Forbes.com (https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2023/10/24/why-vc-firm-general-catalyst-wants-to-spend-billions-to-buy-a-hospital-system/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydozen&cdlcid=60a54ad5fe2c195e915216fc&section=&sh=7a0e58aa18dc)  

that a General Catalyst, VC company, plans to spend billions of dollars to buy a health system.

The strategy is not to gut it, load it up with debt, and sell it.

Instead, their plan is to own it for the long term, and use the hospital system as a proving ground for the innovative health startups in their portfolios.

They think this will solve two problems facing digital health startups:

1. It can take months or years to get deals signed with hospitals.

2. Healthcare AI systems needs a lot of medical data to train on.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

CIOs Complain About Tech Bundling

Consumers have been "cutting the cord", and switching from cable to streaming, because they don't want to pay for bundled channels they don't watch.

Now, according to a recent WSJ article, CIOs are having the same issue with tech vendors.

There have been an increasing number of business technology acquisitions, and it's resulting in fewer, but large-bundled, offerings.  For example, the article mentions that, after VMware bought Broadcom, it "went from more than 160 individual products to two primary bundled offerings."

The CIOs don't like it because, in many cases, they are just searching for products to fill gaps in their IT systems.  By having to buy in bundles, they end up with more complex systems with redundant functionality.  As one CIO described it: "I now end up with overlapped Venn diagrams...very hard to manage."

To simplify their IT, thus promoting robustness, reliability, and better security, CIOs need access to streamlined, modular products that let them better customize for their needs.

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Lab Form

© 2024 Praveen Puri

A Tech Product Has to Add Value

Did you ever hear about the Juicero? 

It was a startup that sold a $699 (later $399) wifi-connected juicer and then you subscribed to get bags of pre-pulped fruits and veggies that you used in the machine to make cold-pressed juices.  

Bloomberg put them out of business with one video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lutHF5HhVA

Turns out, you could just hand-squeeze the bags into your glass and didn't need the wi-fi enabled juicer...

© 2024 Praveen Puri

Chat GPT Can Be A Good Interface to APIs

I read about how Open AI will let developers and users add APIs to Chat GPT.  

If I added an email_to function, here is how simple it would be to get ChatGPT to use it (and I did this using the less powerful, free version of GPT 3.5):

me: given a function api called email_to(subject, body), if I tell you in English to email someone about something, can you take my sentence and tell me what the api call would be?

ChatGPT: Of course! Please provide me with the sentence you'd like to use to email someone about something, and I'll convert it into the corresponding API call.

me: can you email Fred and ask for last week's sales figures?

ChatGPT: Certainly! The corresponding API call would be:

email_to("Request for Last Week's Sales Figures", "Hi Fred,\n\nI hope you're doing well. Could you please provide me with the sales figures from last week? It would be greatly appreciated.\n\nThank you!\n[Your Name]")

me: Can you amend the function to first include the person's email?

ChatGPT: Sure, here's an updated version of the function email_to that includes the recipient's email:

def email_to(recipient_email, subject, body): # Logic to send email to recipient_email with given subject and body pass

And here's how you would use it to email Fred and ask for last week's sales figures:

email_to("fred@example.com", "Request for Last Week's Sales Figures", "Hi Fred,\n\nI hope you're doing well. Could you please provide me with the sales figures from last week? It would be greatly appreciated.\n\nThank you!\n[Your Name]")

Replace "fred@example.com" with Fred's actual email address.

© 2024 Praveen Puri