I was already using Claude on my YouTube videos, but only for the very last step: turning the script into a blog post. The research before that was all on me. Search volume in Keywords Everywhere, the competition score in vidIQ, then testing titles in Morning Fame, one video at a time… and Claude never once said there might be a better way.
It wasn’t holding out on me. I’d just never told it how I did the job.
Jump to a bit of the video:
0:37 Ask Claude: is there a better way?
1:09 What does Claude know about you?
2:28 Are Claude connectors enough?
3:18 Why Claude projects go stale
4:10 How to make Claude sound like you
5:37 How to set up Claude for business
6:27 Claude skills for business
7:13 What goes in your Business Brain
7:37 Let Claude interview you
8:44 Demo: a landing page in one prompt
The short version
To set up Claude for your business so it actually knows you, start by asking it what it knows about you and where it’s guessing. Then let it interview you about what you sell, who you’re for, how you work, how you sound and your story, and keep the answers in files Claude can read and update. Build in this order:
- Your business
- Everything Claude needs to know about how you work
- The jobs you want it doing, which Claude calls skills
- Automations
Why doesn’t Claude know my business, even with connectors on?
Because being able to see your stuff isn’t the same as knowing how you work. Connectors let Claude look at things like your emails and your calendar, but nothing in there tells it how you do a job, or why you do it that way.
This one catches a LOT of people out. You connect everything, it can see everything, so surely it knows everything by now?
It doesn’t. And it won’t come up with creative solutions or a better way of doing things all by itself either. Claude isn’t some magical critical thinker sitting inside your business… that part’s still your job.
So if you’ve started finding gaps, that’s not your fault. Claude can only work with what it’s been told.
How do I get Claude to suggest a better way to do my work?
Tell it exactly how you do the job right now, step by step, and then ask if there’s a better way. It won’t offer one unprompted, because all it can see are the bits of the job that happen inside Claude.
Pick a job you do every single week (the more tedious, the better) and paste this into a new chat:
Here’s how I do [a job I do every week] right now, step by step: [your steps]. Is there a faster or better way to do this with the tools you can access? Ask me anything you need to know before you suggest something.
That’s exactly what I did with my YouTube research. Three tools, one video at a time, and SO tedious. Now vidIQ is plugged into Claude, and it does the keywords, the competition and the titles for me, plus the repurposing at the same time.
That process was one small thing Claude didn’t know about me. There was still so much more it didn’t know… that I didn’t know it didn’t know.
How do I find out what Claude really knows about me?
Open a blank chat and ask it. This prompt asks Claude three things (which tools you use, who your ideal client is and how you sound when you write), and it asks Claude to be honest about where it’s guessing:
I’m trying to work out what you actually know about me and my business, and where the gaps are. Answer these from what you already know, and tell me honestly where you’re guessing.
1. Which tools and software do I use to run my business, and what do I use each one for?
2. Who’s my ideal client, and what are they struggling with most right now?
3. Describe how I sound when I write, and give me five words or phrases I use all the time and five I’d never use.
Whatever comes back lands in one of three buckets. It knows, it’s guessing, or it tells you it has absolutely no idea. The middle bucket is the one to watch.
Unless it’s been told otherwise, Claude (like any AI model) will often take a best guess. So it might say you use Mailchimp and Canva, because that’s what a lot of people use when they’re first starting out. Or it might describe your audience as “busy professionals”. (I still don’t know what that means.)
A guess like that can be more dangerous than a flat “no idea”, because it sounds like knowledge. It’s really just an average of everyone else.
If it got all three right, brilliant. Skip ahead to the order I’d set things up in.
Why do Claude projects go stale?
Because your business keeps changing and the files inside your projects don’t. And who goes back to update their project files every week? So Claude ends up working from a version of your business that doesn’t exist any more.
Full disclosure: when I started filling in the gaps, I got it wrong twice, and this was mistake number one. I set up a Claude project for every part of my business and loaded each one with detailed files: the context, my old answers, my emails, everything relevant to that part of the business.
It worked… for a little while. Then my business evolved, and the files stayed exactly where they were. Updating them all would’ve taken WAY too long, so I didn’t, and everything slowly went a bit stale.
So if you’ve ever thought “why does Claude keep getting this wrong when I’ve told it over and over that it’s changed?”, this could be why.
Why does Claude still not sound like me when I give it my old writing?
Because your old writing is how you used to sound, and it leaves out what got you there. Give Claude a pile of stiff old posts and it’ll write you stiff new ones.
That was my second mistake. Claude had my newsletters, the blog posts I’d published and captions I’d written. But honestly, a lot of it sounded quite stiff… so the stuff it wrote for me sounded stiff too.
What it was missing was my backstory. Where I grew up, my values, my quirks, what I think about parenting and life and the environment. None of that looks like business context, but it’s what shaped who I am today, and that’s where the magic in your writing comes from. (I’ve gone deeper on the writing side in why AI doesn’t sound like you, and the five fixes that helped me.)
Think of it as a first date versus being married. I’ve known my husband for 13 years, and that’s a very different conversation from the one you have on a first date. Most of us are still on the first date with Claude. It knows our name, what we do and whatever we said in the last hour.
Because here’s the thing: if what comes back isn’t quite right, it’s not a prompt problem. It’s a foundation problem.
What order should I set Claude up in?
Your business first, then how you work, then the jobs you want Claude doing, then automations. The order really does matter, because each step leans on the one before it.
- Your business. What you sell and who buys it, who you’re for, how you sound, how you create, even your colours and fonts.
- Everything Claude needs to know about how you work. Your processes, your tools, who helps you, and why you do things the way you do. This is the bit connectors can’t give it.
- The jobs, which Claude calls skills. A Claude skill is a saved set of instructions Claude follows whenever you ask it for a particular job, so you explain that job once instead of in every chat. Your email writing, your captions, your blog posts. Each skill reads from the first two steps, so it knows how to sound like you and create like you without you explaining yourself 10,000 times.
- Automation. Last, on purpose. Automate anything before Claude knows you and all you’ve done is make generic content MUCH faster.
All four live in one place, which I call your Business Brain: files Claude can read from AND update, so nothing goes stale the way a project does.
Most people jump straight to the skills or the automations, because honestly, they’re the exciting bit. The first two steps are mostly admin. But get them right and the rest is pure magic.
When you’re ready for the skills, I’ve walked through the five skills I use in Claude skills for social media, and shown how to create a Claude skill by letting it watch you work.
What goes in a Business Brain, and how do I build one?
A Business Brain holds five things: what you sell, who you’re for, how you work, your voice and your story. The easiest way to build one is to let Claude interview you, rather than writing it all out yourself.
- What you sell, and who buys it.
- Who you’re for, and the actual words they use.
- How you work: your tools, who helps you and what a normal week looks like.
- Your voice: how you want to sound going forward, not how you sounded in your old posts.
- You: your backstory, your stories, your unique ideas and what you believe.
You could sit down and write all of that out… please don’t. You’re a little bit too close to it, and it’s hard to remember what’s in your own head versus what you’ve told Claude. So paste this in and let it ask you one or two questions at a time:
I want you to properly understand my business. Interview me, one or two questions at a time, about everything you’d need to know to work with me well: what I sell and who buys it, who my ideal client is, the tools and software I use and how I use them, who else works with me, what a normal week looks like, how I want to sound when I write, the stories I tell, my backstory and what’s shaped how I think, what I believe about my industry, and anything I’d never say. Keep asking until you’d be confident writing as me. Then write it all up as one document, with a clear section for each: my business and offers, my audience, how I work, my voice, and my story. Use my own words wherever you can, and flag anything you’re unsure of so I can check it.
My tip: talk your answers rather than typing them. It sounds so much more natural.
You’ll end up with one document holding all of it, which you can drop into any new chat whenever Claude needs to know you. That does work.
But you have to keep it updated yourself, and pointing Claude’s global instructions at a file on your computer doesn’t always work either. It all gets a bit clunky… and you’re back to my project problem, only more manual, because you’re the one attaching it every time.
What fixes that is a live Business Brain: files Claude reads from whenever it works for you, and updates as your business changes.
What does it look like when the setup is done?
One prompt can get you something finished, because Claude already knows everything the job needs.
In the video, I give Claude one prompt: build a landing page from a YouTube video script, using everything it already knows from my Business Brain. What comes back is a full landing page delivering a lead magnet, in my brand colours, with my own images, in my tone of voice, written for my ideal client. From there it would go on to write the email that delivers it, set up the opt-in page and make the marketing materials around it.
Compare that with a Claude that can barely write you a proper Instagram caption. The only thing that changed is that my Business Brain is super, super dialled in.
That’s exactly why I built The Handover. It’s a build-along where you create your own Business Brain alongside me, in one sitting, and finish with something Claude can read from and update as you work. It isn’t open yet, but you can join The Handover waitlist to hear the moment it is.
Either way, go and have a really, really long first date with Claude. Start with the job you’d most like to stop doing by hand, and ask it if there’s a better way.
