15-Minute Fact Check ✅

AI writes fast. Too fast sometimes.

It also writes things that are wrong: invented stats, outdated details, studies that don’t exist. And it says all of them with total confidence.

Most teams handle this in one of two ways. Both are broken.

This mini-course gives you a third way: three passes, five minutes each, one timer.

It’s built for anyone who publishes content that AI helped write: marketers, content teams, founders, and consultants.

What you’ll walk away with:

• A repeatable 15-minute check for every piece

• Your own high-risk claims list for your industry

• A printable Pass 1 worksheet to download (you’ll find it in Your List)

• A first run of the check on a real piece of your content

ONE MORE THING...

A surprise bonus is waiting at the end. It only unlocks once you finish the course, so don’t skip ahead.

Start with The Trap.

Two Ways Teams Get This Wrong

Approach 1: Trust it and catch the obvious

"AI is mostly right. We'll spot anything that looks off."

Errors slip through. Eventually, something embarrassing gets published, and leadership responds by requiring expert review on every piece, which is slow and expensive.

Approach 2: Check everything

"We can't trust AI, so we verify every claim."

Someone spends 2–3 hours per piece checking every stat, example, and sentence. Production slows to a crawl and the team burns out.

The fix isn't more checking or less checking. It's structured checking.

A time limit forces you to spend your attention where errors do the most damage.

Next...

Pass 1: High-Risk Claims (5 minutes)

Start your timer. Scan the piece and verify anything that:

• Involves numbers: stats, percentages, dollar amounts

• Cites research: specific studies, surveys, reports

• Touches regulation: laws, compliance, legal requirements

• Mentions dates or timelines

• Names companies, products, or people
  

These are the claims that damage your credibility if they're wrong, so they get checked first.

Rule: Verify against the primary source, not a blog post that quotes it. If you can't find the original source, cut the claim or soften it.

Next...

Pass 2: Logical Consistency (5 minutes)

Now read through the whole piece and flag anything that:

• Contradicts itself: a number or claim that doesn't match something said earlier

• Feels outdated: old product versions, retired features, last year's rules

• Doesn't match your experience: if it doesn't line up with what you see in your industry, it's a red flag

• Uses examples that don't prove the point

You aren't verifying every sentence in this pass. You're using what you know to spot what's off. This is where your expertise does work that AI can't.

Next...

Pass 3: Source Documentation (5 minutes)

For each claim you verified in Pass 1, record where it came from:

• Add inline citations or footnotes

• Add a short Sources section at the end

• Link to primary sources wherever you can

• Note which claims come from your own data or experience

Why it's worth five minutes:

1. Readers trust content that shows its sources.

2. When the piece needs an update next year, you'll know exactly where every number came from.

Stop when the timer hits 15:00.

The piece doesn't have to be perfect. The high-risk claims are verified, the logic holds up, and the sources are on record.

Next...

Before and After: Marcus at Vitality Health Group

Healthcare content can’t afford to be wrong, so Marcus checked everything.

Before (one 1,200-word blog post):

• Every health claim: 45 minutes

• Every statistic: 35 minutes

• Compliance review: 40 minutes

• Total: 2 hours per post, 20 hours a month

After (the three-pass system):

• Pass 1: verified 3–4 critical health statistics, checked medical terminology, confirmed no outdated treatment protocols

• Pass 2: scanned for anything contradicting current medical consensus and used his clinical expertise to flag examples that seemed off

• Pass 3: cited peer-reviewed studies, linked to CDC and WHO data, and noted which anecdotes came from his own clinical experience

• Total: 15 minutes per post, 2.5 hours a month

Result: 210 hours a year recovered, and accuracy improved, because the structure put the high-risk claims first.

The time limit is what makes it work. Without one, fact-checking expands to fill whatever time you give it.

Next...

Build Your High-Risk Checklist

Pass 1 only works if you know what counts as high-risk for you. A healthcare team’s list looks nothing like a SaaS team’s list.

Take 10 minutes and run this checklist for your industry and content type:

Write it down and date it. A list in your head drifts. A written list can be shared with your team, handed to a freelancer, and updated when something slips through.

Keep this list somewhere you’ll find it again. It matters more than you think (see What’s Next).

Next...

Your 15-Minute Challenge

Today: pick the last piece of content you published with AI’s help. Set a 15-minute timer and run all three passes.

Did you find anything? Most people do.

This week: track your fact-checking time on your next 3 pieces. For each one, note:

• How long it took

• What you checked

• How many of your checks actually found an error

Many teams find they spend about 90% of their checking time on low-risk claims and 10% on high-risk ones, which is exactly backward. Your baseline shows you where your time is really going.

Next...

Where This Fix Breaks

The 15-Minute Fact Check is built for content written at human speed. AI agents change that.

At 40 pieces a week, 15 minutes each is 10 hours of someone’s time. At 400 pieces a week, it isn’t a rule anymore; it’s a fantasy.

The principle survives: time-boxed, risk-prioritized verification.

The method has to be rebuilt in three parts when scaled to AI agent output velocity:

1. Automated verification against sources you’ve approved

2. Sampling to check whether the system is producing correct work, rather than checking every piece

3. Mandatory human checks for the high-risk categories, every time, without exception

Remember the list you built in Your List? At agent scale, it becomes the line between what a system may decide and what a person must.

Chapter 5 of The AI Content Paradox walks through the full rebuild, alongside two other workflow fixes that get stronger at agent scale.

• Get the book: The AI Content Paradox

• Free tools: aicontentcmo.com/book-resources (Use the $10,000 Trap Calculator, Three Leaks Diagnostic, and ROI Scorecard)

Three Leaks.

Four Gates.

Five Pillars.

15-Minute Fact-Check.

90-Day Implementation.