Here they are - your
2-second Claude upgrades.

One · Honest feedback

Is your Claude turning into a bit of a yes-man?

{'cause honestly, mine used to - until I did this too}

Okay so - you share an idea, and Claude says it's brilliant. Share kind of the opposite idea an hour later? Also brilliant. 🫠 You ask "is this any good?" and it just gushes. And somewhere in your gut you're like, hmmm, I don't actually think you're being honest with me here.

AND IT'S NOT. Not all the time, anyway. Claude's one of the best models at giving real, constructive feedback - but it's not always automatic, and you can teach it to be so much better. Here's exactly what I taught mine {it lives in my brain and loads every time I open Claude}:

And where you pop it so it actually sticks:

• Built a Claude brain my way {through the Claude Small Biz Starter Kit}? → drop it in your brain, load it each time
• Working in Projects? → add it to your project instructions
• In Claude Code? → pop it in your CLAUDE.md
• Just in a chat? → paste it in {heads up - this only lasts THIS chat; the options above make it permanent - or pop it in your Claude memory so it carries across your chats}

Teach it once, and honest is just how your Claude talks to you from here. ♥

Two · The way you ask

Careful - the way you ask can sway Claude.

{this is the other half of getting the truth out of it}

Here's the thing most people miss: how you ask changes the answer you get. Claude wants to be helpful - so if you lean the question one way, it'll lean the answer right back at you.

Ask "is this any good?" and it'll hand you the good points. Ask it to "tear this apart" and it'll give you only the bad. Neither one is the honest picture - you've just told it which way to fall before it's even looked.

So don't hand your work over leaning one way. Ask for the whole truth instead:

Now both sides are on the table. That's Claude being an actual advisor - not something that just tells you what it thinks you want to hear. ♥

Four · Talk, don't type

Talk to Claude the way you actually think.

{this one completely changed my speed}

Okay, this is one of my favourites, and it's so simple. Most people type careful, tidied-up prompts at Claude - like they're writing something formal. It's slow, and it means Claude only ever sees the polished version of you.

So instead, I just talk to it. Not normal voice-to-text either {more on the tool below} - I give Claude a full stream of consciousness, messy and unpolished, exactly as it's coming to me.

Here's why that matters more than it sounds: when you talk to it like that, Claude gets to see the real you - your actual thoughts, before you've tidied them up. It's not only faster, but the real magic is that it gets to see how you actually think. I'll be talking through something, and halfway I'll go "actually - no, wait, it's this way instead." Because Claude saw that shift happen live, it genuinely understands my reasoning. It's not just doing what I told it. It's thinking WITH me.

Hand on heart, talking to Claude like this has 10x'd my speed in my business.

Six · Connect it up

Stop doing it all by hand - connect Claude to your business.

So many people are using Claude, but still doing half the work themselves. Copying and pasting things in. Finding the info manually first. Then carrying Claude's answer back to wherever it needs to go.

Here's the upgrade: a lot of the time, you don't even need to hand Claude the information. You can just tell it to go and get it. Once you connect Claude to the tools your business runs on, you can say things like:

• "Go read this email about the collab and tell me what they're actually asking for."
• "Go look at this doc in my Drive and pull out the key points."
• "Go check my calendar and tell me what my week looks like."
• "Go update this page in my Notion with these changes."

And it just… goes and does it. No fetching, no carrying, no copy-paste. The ones you can connect in a couple of clicks {claude.ai → Settings → Connections}:

• Gmail - reads + drafts your emails {it won't send on its own, which I prefer}
• Google Drive - reads + works with your docs and files
• Google Calendar - sees + manages your calendar
• Notion - reads + updates your pages and databases
• Canva - works with your designs

{Already got those connected? Gold star - the next page is where it gets fun.}

Seven · Custom connections

Go look for custom connections.

You'll find loads of connectors in Claude's own library - but your options don't end there. Some tools offer their own custom connectors. You won't find Meta in the library right now, for example, but google "Meta Claude MCP connection" {MCP being the bit that lets you plug Claude into the tool} and you'll often find you can connect it manually - just head to their help guide.

One thing that trips people up: for these everyday "go grab this" jobs, a direct connection beats firing up Cowork every time. Cowork's brilliant for big, multi-step jobs Claude runs on its own - but it spins up a whole session and loads everything first, so it's slower and burns more credits. For a quick "read this email and tell me what they want," a connection just does it - faster, cheaper, done.

{And once you're deeper in - this is where my Claude Code world lives - you can connect it to basically anything: your ad account, your finances, even your whole website. But start with the ones above.}

Nine · Feed it right

Give Claude your info the way it actually likes it.

Here's a good one - once this clicks, everything you feed Claude gets better. Whenever you're uploading a document to Claude, give it as a Markdown file wherever you can.

"A Markdown what?" - don't worry, it's simpler than it sounds. A Markdown file {.md} is just a text file Claude really likes - clean and simple, and it still holds all your formatting. And you don't need to be techy: in Google Docs, just File → Download → Markdown (.md).

So anytime I'm handing Claude something - transcripts, ideal-client research, a big set of instructions - I give it as a proper .md file. Two reasons:

• It saves your usage. Just clean text {no layout or pages to wade through} - so it saves a big chunk of your usage and credits, and makes Claude faster at the same time.
• The formatting matters. Claude actually pays attention to your headings, bold and italics - they help it read which bits matter. And Markdown holds all of that.

That one little swap - PDF to .md - quietly makes everything you hand Claude land better. ♥

Eleven · Build it into a skill

Making a skill? Let Claude build it for you.

When you find yourself doing the same kind of job again and again, that's a skill waiting to happen - and Claude has a built-in tool that builds it with you. It's called the skill creator.

Go to Customise → Skills and look for /skill-creator. Bring it into any chat, and when you want to turn what you've just done into a saved skill, simply ask:

It makes sure the work is captured in the very best way for skill creation - none of the messy back-and-forth, just the clean instructions. And the bonus: bring /skill-creator in any time you want to edit a skill too, and it'll supercharge the one you've already got. ♥