⚡ Today's level-up ⚡
Last month I showed you how I orchestrated a book with the help of my AI system. This week I built the first piece of the thing I actually left sales to make, in real time, for one Inner Circle member. Here is the anonymized version, the behind-the-scenes, and one limited way to build your own.
The call
On Thursday afternoon, I went over an hour with an Inner Circle member who has been in enterprise sales for over a decade and is starting to coach sellers on the side and building a significant presence on LinkedIn.
Before our session, he had asked me three times by email to show him how I use AI to write. He's contemplating writing a book too. He does a lot of his sparring with Claude from his phone: he talks the chapter into a voice app, the model drafts it, he edits until it reads like him, and he locks it in a document. One chat per chapter.
That's a good system. Most sellers I talk to aren't there yet.
It still had one thing backward. The machine wrote first, and then he edited. Every chapter started with a robot's sentences, and his job was to fix them.
So we flipped it. He talks first. The machine proposes. He decides.
That simple move elevates him to a new level.
What I had ready before he joined
I didn't walk into that call with manual research and notes.
Before we got on, my system pulled our email thread, which of my last five essays he'd opened, every recorded call we've had for the past two years, his Autonomy Assessment, and the one comment James, my editor, left on his story in my book (yes, I’m including him in it). Then it built a page I shared on my screen: eight stages, a meter that placed him on the craft continuum, and a "bonus level" for building his book.
It was designed like a game console.
After the call, it read the transcript and created a second page for him that he can use and treat like his own game console. It includes things like:
The recording.
What we learned.
One move before our next session.
Every prompt we talked about to simply copy and paste.
The recipe for building the page, so he can do it for his own clients.
That page is live on my site. It took minutes to set up, not days.
Here's the anonymized version, so you can see exactly what he got: purposefulperformer.com/questdemo
The recording box is empty on purpose. That part is for him only (and every member I coach).
Why this is a step in the right direction
I left a seven-figure sales job to build one thing: a coach in your pocket. Not a course. Not a cohort. Not a chatbot that sounds like everyone else. Something that knows how you sell, sits inside the work you're already doing, and helps you turn a sales career into a life no employer can touch.
I've been building it in steps for a while. I haven't been shipping it because it’s not ready.
I want to be clear about what it is and isn't. The title oversells it a little. A coach is interactive. You ask it something, and it asks you something back.
What I built this week is one-way: it reads what it knows about you, then hands you a page. That's a step toward the vision, not the end state. I'm building in public and wanted to show you the progress. There's still a long way to go.
How it works, in plain words
Everything runs in one order. Human first. Professional second. AI third.
Human first. You lived it. You say it out loud, in your own words, before any machine touches it. Voice notes. A whiteboard photo. The story you told on a call.
Professional second. You know who it's for and what it has to do. The reader. Your point of view. Your standard. Twenty years of selling taught you this. Write it down once so the machine can learn from your work rather than compete with it.
AI third. It's last on purpose. If you start with AI, you skip the part where you become worth listening to. The machine doesn't write; you edit. Instead, you set the standard, and it works within it.
Knowing more was the old game. Orchestrating better is the new one.
You stop asking for outputs and start designing a system: what goes in, who does what, what gets checked, and where you step in.
Here are some basic definitions to help set up your own human-first AI system:
Project — one place in Claude for one body of work. The instructions and files inside it load every time. You stop re-explaining yourself.
Skill — a plain-English file of rules. "Never say this. Always show the old line and the new line." When you like an output and know you'll want it again, you save it as a skill.
Node — one job. Think of it as an agent with one specialty. One node absorbs your sources. One proposes lines. One cuts. You want a specialist as a node, not one agent doing a bunch of writing and editing.
Graph — the order the nodes hand off in. You start it. You check it. You decide what survives.
Propose only — the rule that makes it work. The machine never writes a line of your prose from scratch. It proposes a line, shows where it came from, and waits.
That's the difference between being a worker in the chat and being its orchestrator.
With a good system, I feel like I've got ten experts working for me, and each time I use AI, it gets better and better—I no longer have to start over every single chat.
Where you are on the continuum
It’s the same scale I use for your professional craft. This one is for the AI system around it.
Deficient. Blank prompt. "Write me a follow-up." You edit whatever comes back and can't tell whose sentences are whose.
Baseline. Your material goes in first. Clean chats. A home for drafts. The machine still writes first.
Pro. One Project with standing rules. Five pieces only you could have written, pinned on top. Propose-only. A trust score. You read it out loud.
Elite. Separate nodes. A voice file that banks every lesson so you never repeat yourself. A grader outside the model.
World-Class. It compounds. Someone else could run it. One pile makes four products. And it leaves with you when you leave the company.
Most reading this are at Baseline. That's fine. One move gets you to Pro.
Try this before next Friday
Pick the thing you're already using AI for. Whether it’s setting up a pre-call brief, designing an account plan, creating a presentation, writing emails, or drafting posts on LinkedIn.
1). Find the last thing it produced for you. Read it out loud. Mark every sentence you would not say to a friend. Count them. That number is your Baseline.
2). Open a new Project. Write five lines of standing instructions:
Who you are
Who the ideal recipient is
Your unique point of view based on your experience
3-5 words you never use
Apply this rule: You never write from scratch. You propose lines from what I give you, show me the old line and the new line, and wait.
3). Do the same task again inside that Project. Read it out loud. Count again.
The gap between the two numbers is the gap between Baseline and Pro. It took my member about 20 minutes.
If you want to build yours with me
I'm opening 10 spots for a three-session 1:1 package, and it's for one thing only: building your own human-first AI system, for the skill that matters most in your role right now. Account plans. Creative outreach that gets attention. Pre-call briefs. Building a POV. Executive narratives. Designing a transformative business case. Writing content on LinkedIn. Building your side project. Pick one. Not your whole job.
Here's how it runs.
Session 1: We place you on the continuum and pick the skill.
Session 2: We build the Project, the rules, and set up your system.
Session 3: We test it, fix what fails, and you ship it out into the real-world.
After every session, you get your own page like the one above—the recording, what we learned, one move, and the exact prompts.
Members pay $900 for the package. Non-members pay $3,500. The gap is real, and it's on purpose: members already run the frameworks, so we skip the ramp-up, since they already share the philosophy inside The Purposeful Performer, and go straight to building.
I'm fully booked for the next two weeks. First openings are mid-September. When the ten are gone, I won't open new sessions until the first quarter of 2027.
My benchmark is that the ROI delivers at least 10x what you pay, measured by the hours you get back from what you build. That's a goal, not a guarantee. This is coaching, not an investment fund.
→ To claim a spot, reply to this email with this line: the ONE skill you'd point it at.
I'll respond to every reply myself and send the booking link if it’s the right fit.
Future content: The knowledge stays free—every essay and lesson. Putting it into practice with me is the only thing that costs you.
Book update: My book is in the editing phase. It has a new working title— Permanent Leverage: Turn Your Sales Career Into a Life No Employer Can Touch.
My “advisory board” is excited about it, and the first round of editing notes are in hand.
Anyone who books coaching this quarter gets a free copy of the manuscript and becomes a part of the first cohort to read it and provide initial feedback.
One more thing. Every page I build for a member is also a lesson in how I coach. Keep that in the back of your mind. I'll come back to it.
Stay human, friends.
