Hey all - Darby here with a quick announcement about our recent workshop experiment implementing SelfPublishing.ai as an AI book writing engine. Since 2021, we have been writing books with AI. It's how I had my first big "unlock" with AI. Back then it was Jasper. Now it is Claude, custom skills, and a platform we are building called SelfPublishing.ai. NOTE: It is still in active development. We use it inside of a process we implement with clients. On Saturday Feb 28th, I hosted a workshop where we gathered and implemented the process live. A few weeks of lead time and a 2 hour Big Idea, Research & Outline workshop to prep on Tuesday the week of. I've shared the replay to this workshop with some technical support trimmed out to reduce the overall recorded time we were on, and additional resources below. What we see over and over is that people have the information. The ideas. The research. The experience. And it gets stuck. Scattered docs. Half-finished outlines that never make it to a first draft. Much less edited. Much less published. That is what the SelfPublishing.ai engine is for. Getting it out. Whether it is a book for sales, marketing, operations, or authority. You go through this process and it helps you consolidate, organize, and execute a draft from what you already know. Nine people went through this on February 28. About 7 hours total across the full process from prep to draft. 3 hours prep. 4 hours on the workshop. On workshop day, @Chris Lannon (the developer) joined live. We walked through the platform together. Everyone building at the same time. @Mark Cruver wrote his first book with me four years ago. That took an entire weekend. This time he said the process has been "exponentially expedited." @Jnd Janine N Davis started at zero and ended at 75 in a few hours. @Steve Lacy liked his first chapter enough to start editing on the spot. @John Gallagher pulled research from six months ago and generated a full draft. @Thorsten Laabs came in with an idea from two days prior and left with a complete manuscript.

I use Claude with almost everything now. Since it connects to almost everything. We've got three sessions left this month for wrapping up a full three months of Claude focus in Q1 this year. How are you liking the focus on Claude with different sessions on different integrations? Digging into more of Claude Code today, too. Should we keep the Claude Mastery Series going as the primary focus for the next year? Please answer the poll to let me know and comment if you have any thoughts you want to share on WHY yes or no.

I came across this and realized that a lot of the things we build are going to need to have this built-in. While it is the law in California, it’s also probably something that we should consider building into our chatbots regardless of whether we serve Californians. https://www.gunder.com/en/news-insights/insights/client-insight-california-sb-243-new-compliance-requirements-for-operators-of-ai-companion-chatbots?fbclid=IwdGRleAO7mM1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeFmcKZFQ8AAjHuWu2avd6fKc2nR-bmJ-ZPC8MYJrkB0FQN9IhMIr3TijZd8U_aem_ncIg1v-9avBANOeNVzEnIw

Update: we’re going deeper into Gamma mastery and pairing Gamma with other tools in December. Hey all - I've got a 3-part Claude Mastery series penciled in but have a feeling for December, this may not be the right tool to do this series on. Part of me is considering continuing the Gamma Mastery series to go even deeper in to Gamma to finish out the year, building on Parts 1-3 from this month. What do you think? Do you want to go even deeper into Gamma? Or do you want to unlock more of Claude - or something else? Google made a huge upgrade with Gemini 3 and it's something I've been wanting to go deeper on personally - which may include in general, the Google AI suite since they have so many powerful tools that all tie in together in their ecosystem. Or what about Pickaxe Mastery? To build your own custom AI studio? Obviously there is no shortage of incredible tools we can leverage these days. I'm wondering if we have still just scratched the surface of what Gamma can do, or if we should consider another tool beyond Claude for December? Let me know your thoughts. UPDATE: Going to roll with Gamma and will incorporate a few other tools this month into the workflow like Claude, Zapier, and more to learn more ways to leverage Gamma with other tools to get the most out of it for what you're building. Still... Vote: December AI Tool Mastery Series Focus 👇 It helps know what's important to you for 2026.

Bidding has closed and @Ellen Martin won the auction with thew high bid of $400! Congrats, Ellen. Looking forward to working together as we kick things off this week. *Closed Thursday 11/20 at 11am CST sharp. RECAP: THE RULES - Starting bid: $1 - How to bid: Comment below with your bid amount - To win: Be the highest bid when auction closes - Outbid: Just post a higher number than the current high bid - Auction closes: Thursday 11/20 at 11am CST - no bids after that time count I'll update the high bid at the bottom of this post throughout the 24 hours so you know where it stands. WHAT THE WINNER GETS One custom AI Studio build - done WITH you. Working 1-on-1 directly with me. Built in Pickaxe BUT also with custom instructions you can apply directly into other LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. The Process: - Discovery call: We map your exact workflow and where this fits - Framework extraction: Pull your processes and expertise out of your head - Custom GPT build: I write the instructions specifically for YOUR use case - Studio setup: Embed it, license it, tie it into your CRM - wherever it needs to live - 90 days support: Async collaboration to fine-tune until it's dialed Real talk: I've charged $1k+ for simple builds. $5k+ for more advanced builds and have revenue share deals in place with partners when it makes sense. Typically I only build these this with ongoing clients I work with monthly. Outside of the one-off build here or there over the past year. This is the first time I'm offering this level of work. Not sure I will do it again. We shall see! Whether the winning bid is $20 or $2k or $20k, we'll work directly together to make this AI Studio a kick-ass asset that you can leverage in your business and use as a time-saving resource that also can help generate revenue. So many ways to use these types of custom GPTs, it really depends on YOU and so with that said, here are a few examples of what I've built with clients and partners in the past: