Hello stranger!

Welcome to another edition of AI versus Marshy.

Something unfortunate happened since last edition - I started writing a “let’s go deep on a topic” edition to change things up.

Then it got too large, and the tool I was covering wasn’t as easy to use as originally hoped, and things got stuck.

So then I abandoned ship, got really busy with client work (good), then went ahead and started writing another edition covering Claude Skills and some other things and then go stuck again!

So here’s my make-up edition and I’m going to just rattle through things I want to cover in a bit of a scattergun format in the hope of shipping.

As always - if it sparked any thoughts from you I’d love to hear them - just hit reply and fire away.

Now let’s make like a typewriter and klaxon with it 🚨

-Marshy

Claude Skills is quite good + has high potential

I write about AI every week because it forces me to learn.

I saw the Claude Skills announcement and thought “s**t, I need to write about this”.

My next thought was - “I don’t know s**t about this”.

So I took a break and boned up.

In a nutshell - Skills let you create a bunch of instructions for a specific task.

They’re customisable, shareable, and don’t gobble up mountains of resources like MCPs do.

Take the writing of this newsletter - there’s research, there’s drafting, there’s publishing, there’s writing social snippets to share in other channels etc.

I can convert these processes into “SKILL.md” <– the term for these things - and use them again and again.

I did a bigger piece testing some of these and to be honest I want to keep testing.

There’s a learning curve to generating the skills (although there’s lots of helpful resources for doing so) and then seeing what the output is, and then improving the skill again.

One of things I’ve been challenging myself with as a consultant is “what do I do with all of these opportunities” and “how do I service these faster so I can generate more?”

I think Skills is going to be a part of that equation - and I think creating a “one-man agency” for growth systems will be the output from that equation.

AI Flow Chat + content creation

Another part of the equation is content.

I’m a writer and love being able to go one-to-one with white space and WIN.

Well most of the time (winky face).

I’m starting to see more backlash against AI-generated copy.

A couple of things are happening:

• For most normies, the “improvements” in writing have hit a ceiling. They just can’t flex as much craft, imprecision, style, or authenticity. People’s awareness of AI-generated copy has gone up, and interest in copy has generally gone down.
• This actually enables more personality. If you do go to the trouble of writing something raw, honest, emotional, humour-laden, or satirical - it tends to stand out MORE - because AI can’t do that.

Even if you don’t regularly post - just put some random rant out there. Like go hammer and tongs - you’ll be surprised by the engagement it gets because it’s deviating from the normalisation that is taking place.

By normalisation - I mean the “averaging” out of copy/content/posts as things keep algorithmically optimising towards the most engaging hooks.

I hate that this is a thing, but there’s not a lot I can do to change it.

One workaround for these limitations I’ve found is AI Flow Chat.

It lets you plug in media of various kinds and sources (YouTube videos, Word docs, PDFs, website links etc) and then prompt what you want done with it.

This can range from:

“Rewrite this script but do it Marshy-style - cha-cha!”

To:

“Ingest this vast body of literature and thought leadership and create content framework for creating new short-form videos”

You can technically do this with agents and automation builders, but it’s not quite the same flavour because their use cases are so broad.

I was working with a client (who has put out a lot of thought leadership) to create an email onboarding series and he said:

“This is really good Marshy - did you write this or the AI?”

I laughed and said “you kind of did” because the content generation came from anonymised sales transcripts, his podcast transcripts, and his last 100 LinkedIn posts.

Research signals + connecting them together

There’s an insane amount of data available in-market if you’re trying to target other businesses.

On one hand you’ve got expensive marketplaces of live tech data like Spectre:

And on the other hand you’ve got information that’s near-freely available like posts by attendees at a business conference, the last time a brand manager posted about their new strategy, or whether someone is following an tech + automation influencer’s social accounts.

All of these data points form signals that might make what you’re offering more or less interesting.

I’ve been unpacking this with a few clients in different areas and building systems for repeatedly getting them results.

It hasn’t been easy going “full-stack” and connecting accounts, getting new software, grabbing CRM data, grabbing external market data, creating new content with hooks, entry points, and ways to bust-in and then running campaigns designed to get results with all of the above.

But it is possible. And as a process is going to continue improving.

Right now I’ve just been documenting what I can, making note of where the friction is, and thinking about how I can moves like this with skills, tools, (freelancers?), and what bits benefit from me alone - judgment, quality control, and decision-making are obvious ones, and managing clients in a way that’s smoothed is another.

–

I’ve continually said the market is changing and in some ways its frustrating being “ahead of the curve”.

But that’s what I’m thinking about at the moment and I hope you enjoyed today’s read - I’d rather ship you some honest thoughts than delay it any more as I want to let the thoughts out!

Until next time!
-Marshy

p.s. Winter sucked for my running (RSV) but I’m starting to get in a groove again and doing a lot of hill work in my area, this snap is from a nearby trail that’s wide, usually empty, and a solid 7km round trip (5.5km of which is off-road). I love living out in the sticks!