Align Your True North

Most "AI agents" people brag about are just a glorified skill with a chat window. If yours only talks and never runs the work, it is still a shell. Today I walk through the anatomy of a crew member: the five pieces that turn a partial agent into someone who can actually help run your business.

You will see the brief as a job description plus personality, the context brief as the founder knowledge base most people skip, skills as SOP recipes, connectors as hands into tools like Gmail and Facebook ads, and autonomy as scheduled routines that keep the work moving. Platform is secondary. Get the structure right and you can switch Claude, ChatGPT, Hermes, or Grok Bot in about 30 seconds. Strategy first. AI second.

Takeaways:

• Why a chat-only AI agent still can't run your business
• Brief: job description plus personality for your AI crew member
• Context brief: the knowledge base piece people miss
• Skills: SOP recipes that repeat the right way
• Connectors: hands into Gmail, ads, and other tools
• Autonomy: scheduled routines (weekly social from Granola, monthly CFO P&L)
• Why the structure travels across Claude, ChatGPT, Hermes, and Grok Bot

Links referenced in this episode:

• Watch on YouTube: Why Your AI Agent Still Can't Run Your Business
• Join the free AI Ops Yacht Club
• Related: I Tested Claude vs Hermes vs Grok Bot on My Inbox

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Claude
• ChatGPT
• Hermes
• Grok Bot
• Granola

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

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Ever open your inbox and feel like you should have hired a VA yesterday? Personal email, support tickets, business threads, and somehow you are still the one drafting every reply. Sound familiar? Today I put three AI email agents head to head on the real inboxes in my company so you can stop guessing which one is actually worth trusting.

I ran Claude, Hermes, and Grok Bot for weeks with one hard rule: drafts only, human review before anything sends. You will see how to file resolved emails so the agent learns your voice, why auto-send is a trap, what broke in Claude and Hermes, and why Grok Bot scored a 10 for email while Claude still wins for strategy. Then I end with the Strategy First interview prompt I use in Claude before I hand any inbox rules to an agent.

By the end you will know which AI email agent became my daily driver, how to set up each one without losing control of customer service, and the training habits that make any inbox agent actually useful. Strategy first. AI second!

Takeaways:

• Why you file resolved emails instead of deleting them (so the agent can learn your voice)
• The drafts-only rule that keeps AI from sending the wrong reply
• Claude email agent setup, what earned an honest 8/10, and where it still wins (strategy)
• Hermes multi-inbox triage, duplicate drafts, and Telegram limits
• Why Grok Bot won for email (10/10): multi-inbox, reports, attachment recall
• The Strategy First Claude interview prompt before you hand off inbox rules

Links referenced in this episode:

• Join the Ops Yacht Club (free)
• Watch on YouTube: I Tested Claude vs Hermes vs Grok Bot on My Inbox
• Related: I Automated My Entire Customer Service Inbox in ClickUp

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Claude
• Hermes
• Grok Bot
• ClickUp

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!

Ever find yourself putting out fires all morning, doing a little marketing, a little sales, then jumping in to save a client, and realizing you never once sat in the CEO seat? Sound familiar? That exact trap is why I built myself a board of directors, and today I'm pulling back the curtain on how I actually use it every single week.

Here's the honest truth: building cool things in AI is fun, but if you never use them, they aren't moving the needle. So every Monday I run a board meeting skill inside Claude with the mentors I look up to (Taylor Welch, Seth Godin, John Maxwell, Dan Martell, and Cody Sanchez). It pulls my real context from Granola, ClickUp, and Google Calendar, then my board weighs in, agrees, disagrees, and hands me one decision to commit to by Tuesday. Because a regular chat with AI just tells you everything you're doing is amazing, and a real board looks at your business from different angles and keeps you honest.

By the end you'll know exactly how to set up your own AI board, run a weekly meeting that pulls your real context, use a True North brief to stay accountable to your quarterly goals, and finally quiet the shiny object syndrome that keeps founders busy but not productive. Remember, the build was never the bottleneck. Strategy first, then AI second!

Takeaways:

• Why a board of directors keeps you in the CEO seat instead of stuck in the weeds
• How to run a Monday board meeting skill that pulls your real business context
• The connectors that give Claude your meetings, tasks, and calendar
• Why a board beats an AI that agrees with everything you say
• Using a True North brief to stay accountable and dodge shiny object syndrome

Links referenced in this episode:

• Join the Ops Yacht Club (free) and grab the Monday Board Meeting skill
• Strategic AI Crew

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Claude
• Granola
• ClickUp
• Google Calendar

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!

Ever look at your business on paper and think it should feel a whole lot easier than this? Revenue is up, the team is bigger, the milestones are checked off, and you are still working ten-hour days as the person every question comes back to. Sound familiar? Here is the uncomfortable truth: you did not build a business, you built the highest paying, hardest job you have ever had. And it is because every system you built quietly has the same owner. You.

In this episode I break down the four parts of every system (input, process, output, and feedback), a fast way to spot the fifteen or twenty systems that are secretly yours, and the real difference between an AI tool and an AI crew member. The shift almost nobody talks about? The systems that eat your day do not need another hire to own them. They can be owned by a trained AI crew member whose whole job is that one system, running whether or not you remember it exists. I also share the exact line I use to decide what goes to AI and what stays with a human.

By the end you will know how one owner went from fifty-hour weeks to five (with revenue holding steady around 1.4 million dollars) and the four steps to hand off your very first system this way. Strategy first, AI second, every time. Grab your favorite drink and let's get you out of the weeds.

Takeaways:

Links referenced in this episode:

Companies mentioned in this episode:

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!

Ever wrap up a great meeting, recap everyone’s to-dos, feel super on top of it — and then show up to the next meeting and half of it never got done? Or maybe you’re the one spending an hour after every call typing tasks into ClickUp so nothing slips through. Sound familiar? Trust me, there’s a better way, and it doesn’t involve you touching your task manager at all. Today I’m showing you how to turn the things you SAY in a meeting into real, assigned, due-dated tasks — automatically.

We’re building this with three tools: Granola (my favorite AI notetaker, because it never actually joins your Zoom call), ClickUp (or Asana, or Monday, whatever you already use), and Claude. But here’s the part most people skip — strategy first, AI second. Before we prompt anything, we map how your meetings actually work: which meeting feeds which list, who owns what, and the one rule I never break — every task gets an assignee AND a due date (no date given? default it two days out). Then I’ll show you how simply SAYING those tasks out loud in your recap is enough for Granola to catch them.

From there we head into Claude Cowork, connect Granola and ClickUp, write the prompt once, and test it on your last meeting. The magic moment? Telling Claude to run it on a schedule — every Monday at 10, it reads the transcript and drops every to-do into your task manager while you go do literally anything else. And if you’ve got a team, this is how you finally get visibility on who’s doing what and what’s slipping. By the end you’ll have a hands-off system that builds your tasks for you. Hit play, and remember: strategy first, AI second, every time!

Takeaways:

• Granola captures your meetings without ever joining the call, so you skip the robot-in-the-room awkwardness and still get every note
• Say your tasks out loud in the recap and your AI notetaker grabs them, so you create tasks just by talking
• Every task needs an assignee AND a due date, and if you never said a date, default it to two days out
• Map which meeting feeds which list before you prompt Claude, because strategy first, AI second is what makes the automation actually work
• Schedule Claude in Cowork to read the transcript every week and build your tasks on autopilot, even across a whole team

Links referenced in this episode:

• Join the Ops Yacht Club (free community)

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Granola
• Claude / Claude Cowork
• ClickUp
• Asana
• Monday.com
• Zoom

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!

You know that feeling. You're paying for Zapier every month, something quietly breaks, and an automation you forgot you even had just stops working. You poke around, you can't figure out why, and you start wondering if you need to hire someone just to keep the duct tape together. Every entrepreneur Brooke talks to has the same love-hate relationship with it. Sound familiar?

In this episode, Brooke walks you through Relay: her own version of Zapier, built with Claude. She shows the exact automation that gives her Inner Circle members access inside Heartbeat the moment a tag drops in Ontraport, then opens the hood on how you can build the same kind of thing for your own business. Two programs talking to each other and doing a task, without the per-zap pricing and the mystery breakages. The best part? Because it runs straight through the API, she can actually do more than Zapier ever let her.

You'll hear how the Relay kit reads every Zap you already have and rebuilds it for you, how to get Claude to walk you through any setup step by step (even the scary API bits), and the real game changer: Claude watching your automations and fixing the errors before they ever shut you down. By the end, you'll see why this might replace a whole lot more than your Zapier bill. Strategy first, AI second, every time!

Takeaways:

Links referenced in this episode:

Companies mentioned in this episode:

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!

Sound familiar? You set big goals back in January, and now it's the middle of the year and you're nowhere near where you wanted to be. Trust me, you are not alone, and it's almost never because you didn't work hard enough. It's because the plan never got broken down into something you could actually do. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail" is a cliché for a reason, so in this episode we fix the plan itself.

I walk you through a free Claude skill for annual planning that you can grab inside our free community, the AI Ops Yacht Club. It interviews you about last year (your revenue, your wins, your misses), pulls out what to start, stop, and keep, then builds your theme for the year, your goals, your metrics and targets, and the resources you'll actually need to hit them. From there it cascades everything down into quarters and even hands you a one-page plan you can share so your whole team is rowing in the same direction. Every business needs a visionary AND an integrator, and this is how Claude can play that strategic-partner role for you.

By the end you'll know how to upload and run the skill, how to feed it your existing business knowledge through a Claude project, and how to pair it with the quarterly planning skill so big goals turn into daily action. We create it on paper first, then call it into existence, eating the elephant one bite at a time. This is what working strategy first, AI second actually looks like, and it's a game-changer for visionary (and ADHD!) business owners.

Takeaways:

• An annual plan gives you the mission, vision, and path that your quarterly plan needs to even make sense
• Start, Stop, Keep (straight from EOS) turns last year's wins and misses into next year's direction
• A real plan names the goals, metrics, targets, AND the time, money, and people each one requires
• Cascade the year into quarters, then into daily to-dos in ClickUp, or the goals never get done
• Drop your annual plan into a Claude project so every future task gets checked against your goals

Links referenced in this episode:

• Join the AI Ops Yacht Club (free) + grab the annual planning skill

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Claude
• Claude Code
• Cowork
• ClickUp
• EOS
• AI Ops Yacht Club

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!

I let an AI agent run my Facebook ads for twenty-four hours, and it spent $300 in one day instead of $50. Ouch. Here's the kicker though — the AI wasn't broken. It did exactly what I told it to do. The problem was me! I handed it a task without a strategy, and garbage came out the other side. Sound familiar? Everyone is selling you the dream of AI employees and AI agents right now, but they're showing you the hype and hiding the mess it creates on the back end. Today we're fixing that.

We start with the simplest example there is: asking ChatGPT or Claude to "write me a blog post." You'll get words, punctuation, and paragraphs — but will it convert readers into paying clients? Not unless you tell it what good looks like. Then I share the story of our Amazon seller client whose sourcing agent now saves him five to six hours every single day, and the one reason it actually works: we built it on HIS years of product knowledge. That's the missing key nobody is talking about. Your agents are only as smart as the strategy and expertise you load into them. (And yes, there's a sandwich-cutting video in the YouTube version that explains this better than any lecture ever could.)

By the end you'll know exactly which agent to build first — it's based on what YOU know, a process you run daily, weekly, or monthly, where you can spot what good looks like — plus the simple prompt to take into Claude to get started today. And if you want to go deeper, I'm teaching a free live training on June 18th walking you through setting all of this up step by step. The replay will be waiting if you're catching this later. Remember: it's strategy first, AI second, every time!

Takeaways:

• AI does exactly what you tell it to do, so a task without strategy comes out as garbage (ask my ad account)
• Your knowledge is the missing key — agents only work as well as the expertise you build into them
• The best first agent automates a process you run every day and where you can spot what good looks like
• A new employee can read between the lines, but AI takes you 100% literally, so spell out the outcome you want
• AI will tell you what you want to hear, but it may not give you what you want to see

Links referenced in this episode:

• Free Live Training (June 18): Strategy First, AI Second

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Claude
• ChatGPT
• Claude Code
• Claude Cowork
• Amazon
• Facebook
• Telegram

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!

Picture this: your desk is a mosaic of sticky notes, your brain is still juggling yesterday's to-dos, and you're starting the day already behind. Sound familiar? Here's the secret most productivity advice skips right over — how you START your day comes down to how you ENDED the day before. Trust me, the magic isn't another app, it's a rhythm. Today I'm walking you through the exact ClickUp start-up and shut-down routine I use to turn that sticky-note chaos into a calm, you-know-exactly-what-to-do morning. Grab your favorite drink, this one's a build-along!

First we tackle the sneaky productivity killer: context switching. Every time you bounce from a project to email to a Facebook ping and back, your brain pays a tax, and that flow state where your best ideas live never gets a chance to show up. So we set the foundation with the Pomodoro rhythm (50 minutes on, 10 minutes off), then jump into ClickUp and build your home base. I'll show you the My Tasks dashboard, the cards worth keeping (Recents, Agenda, My Work, Personal List), the one rule I never break — every task gets an assignee AND a due date — and my favorite trick: pinning your day's tasks to Favorites so no matter what space you're in, you always know what's on your plate.

Then we button up the day. You'll learn my end-of-day routine — pushing unfinished tasks to tomorrow, clearing your desk and your brain of every lingering sticky note, and even peeking at the AI Standup that shows you everything you actually finished this week (because we're great at seeing what's left, and terrible at celebrating what's done). I'll also show you how I use a notetaker like Granola to ask, "out of all my meetings today, what do I need to add to my to-do list?" By the end you'll have a repeatable system that helps you get more done in less time, with nothing falling through the cracks. Hit play, set up your day for success, and keep thinking strategically!

Takeaways:

• How you start your day depends on how you ended the day before, so a real shut-down routine is where the calm morning actually begins
• Context switching quietly steals your focus, and the Pomodoro rhythm of 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off pulls you back into flow
• Every task in ClickUp gets an assignee AND a due date, no exceptions, that's the rule that keeps work from slipping
• Pin your daily tasks to Favorites so you always see what's on your plate, no matter which space you're working in
• Use the AI Standup and a notetaker like Granola to capture what you finished and what still needs to land in ClickUp

Links referenced in this episode:

• Join the Strategic AI Crew

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• ClickUp
• Granola
• Fathom

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!

It's the first week of the new quarter and your calendar is already swallowing you whole. You've heard it from every coach, every podcast, every "top business book of the year" — set quarterly priorities, build a real 90-day plan, work the plan. Sound familiar? And yet, here you are again, hoping that "kind of focusing on growth this quarter" counts as a strategy. Trust me, you're not behind, and you're definitely not lazy. You're just missing the part where someone helps you SIZE the priorities, BREAK them into weekly moves, and push them where your team will actually see them. Today I'm walking you through the free Claude skill I built that does exactly that — and I'm pairing it with ClickUp so the whole 90-day plan lives where your team already works. Grab your favorite drink, this one's a build-along!

We dig into the biggest reason your past quarterly plans went sideways — sizing. Most owners pick priorities that are either WAY too big (annual goals in a quarterly wrapper) or way too small (done in two weeks, then it's just vibes until April). The skill pressure-tests each priority and gives you a verdict — green light, or push back. And yes, you can push back on Claude when you disagree, because it's a conversation, not a verdict. We walk through Start, Stop, Keep for the last quarter's review, the 13-week rule that keeps you honest about what fits, and the two ways to run the skill — straight from your Claude project knowledge base OR inside Claude Cowork pulling live from QuickBooks and Xero. Strategy first, AI second, every single time.

By the end you'll know how to install the skill in Claude, how to talk it through a real plan in about two hours, and how to push the entire thing straight into ClickUp (or Notion, or Monday) with monthly milestones, weekly subtasks, an owner on every task, and a due date on every task. Because every task needs a name on it AND a date on it — that's the rule. The grab-it-now bonus? Claude starts feeling less like a tool and more like your second team member, the one who actually remembers what you said three weeks ago. Hit play, and let's build the plan that actually finishes!

Takeaways:

• Most quarterly plans fail because priorities are wrong-sized — too big finishes nothing, too small leaves dead time after week three
• The 13-week rule keeps you honest about what actually fits in a quarter, no more annual goals dressed up as quarterly priorities
• Push back on Claude when you disagree, because the skill is built for a real conversation, not a one-shot verdict
• Every task needs a name on it AND a date on it, the rule that keeps quarters from quietly dying mid-March
• Once the plan pushes to ClickUp, Notion, or Monday, your team finally sees exactly what's supposed to happen each week of the quarter

Links referenced in this episode:

• Grab the free Quarterly Planning Skill in the Ops Yacht Club
• Join the Strategic AI Crew

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Claude
• ClickUp
• Notion
• Monday
• QuickBooks
• Xero

Mentioned in this episode:

Become a Member of the Ops Yacht Club

I've created a free community where we are posting job opportunities for people just like you!