For all you aspiring solo AI agencies and entrepreneurs out there, you will appreciate this story. I was recently engaged to conduct an “Intro to AI” training for 200 employees. Less than a year ago, I was the president of a tech marketing company on a totally different path. One day, I was presented with a fork in the road opportunity and took the AI path. Today, I run a full AI agency offering AI Opportunity Mapping, AI Readiness Assessments, AI App Prototyping, and enterprise AI workflow and automation solutions. More recently, I’ve also added something I call “strategic workforce resiliency”, a strategy to prepare and future proof your business with AI. How did I get here, by surrounding myself with like minded people in the AI industry. In a community like AI Bits & Pieces where professionals like @Matthew Sutherland @Collin Thomas @Mike AI Consultant @Usman Mohammed @Nick Mohler are building, testing, sharing, and talking through real AI business challenges. It speeds things up. It gives you better pattern recognition. It helps you not just use AI, it teaches you to start building with it. Another thing that has changed for me is how I structure client value. I now include my beginner AI fluency training, AI Bits & Pieces, as a free service when signing a multiple month agreement for corporate clients. That has been a strong move because it raises the baseline AI understanding across the team and it completely avoids the “can you do this for less money” conversation. The discussion becomes about value, capability, and how to actually move the business forward with AI. A lot can change in less than a year when you are in the right room - with the right people. Thank you to the members in this community that help us sharpen the saw for all of us to get better.

We just wrapped Session 2 of our live build series and it was a great one! Starting from absolute scratch, we built a fully functional Task List app in under 10 minutes of total “cook time” using nothing but natural language prompts in Claude Code. No traditional coding. Just clear instructions and AI doing the heavy lifting. Here is everything we built in one session: ✅ Add, edit, and delete tasks ✅ Priority levels with color coding ✅ Due dates, categories, and status tracking ✅ Notes field per task ✅ Live progress bar ✅ Search, filter, and sort ✅ Collapsible completed tasks section ✅ Real SQLite database ✅ Runs locally on your machine The best part, while I was feeding Claude Code with prompts to build an enhanced Task List, several conversations broken out between @Matthew Sutherland @Bruce Kaufmann and I discussing many planning and building tips that only experienced builders could offer. The biggest lesson from today? Prompting is the new coding. If you can describe what you want clearly and in phases, you can build real working software — even if you have never written a line of code in your life. The YouTube video is now live. Go check it out and follow along. All the prompts we used are included. 👉 https://youtu.be/oJwNzUDzsIA?si=peazUxtSTJ8Y4rKA Session 3 is coming up on Monday. #ClaudeCode #VibeCoding #AIBitsAndPieces

We just crossed 600 members in AI Bits & Pieces. Consistent growth from day one, fueled by people trying to understand what AI actually means for their work and day-to-day life—and how it can help them stand out in the workforce, business environment, or executive ranks. That’s been the goal from the start. A place for: 🔵 AI Curious — figuring out what this all is 🟢 AI Enthusiasts — using it regularly 🟠 AI Practitioners — applying it to real work 🟣 Enterprise — thinking about scale across teams What’s been interesting isn’t just the number—it’s the mix of people and the conversations starting to take shape. Members are building small things. Members are asking in-depth questions. And members are starting to connect the dots between tools and outcomes. A special shoutout to each and every member, and the people who have supported me from the beginning: @Michele Wacht @Dena Dion @Debra Schmitt @Patti Hoekstra @Mark Zayec @Matthew Sutherland @Jason Hagen @Usman Mohammed @Nick Mohler @Eduard Friesen We have some exciting updates and new offerings for the community designed to help you win the AI game in life, at work, as a business owner, or as an agency. A heartfelt thank you. Michael

I stopped opening IDE's The setup Two windows: 1. Claude Desktop App (for research, planning, long conversations) 2. Mac terminal running Claude Code (for all execution) Why this works better than running Claude Code inside an IDE When Claude Code runs inside an IDE terminal, every file operation passes through the editor's plugin layer: file watchers, extensions, lock conflicts. In a standalone terminal, Claude Code talks directly to your filesystem. No interception, no translation. The practical difference: - File writes are instant. No "file changed externally, reload?" dialogs. - Git operations run clean. No source control extension competing for the same lock. - Shell access is unfiltered. Package installs, curl, deployment scripts, SSH tunnels. All native. - No extension memory overhead. My terminal session uses a fraction of what VSCode was consuming. - MCP servers (GitHub, databases, APIs) wire in directly without fighting IDE plugin architecture. What a real session looks like Last week I built a Cloudflare Worker with KV bindings. One terminal window: - Claude Code scaffolded the project structure - Wrote the Worker handler, wrangler config, and KV namespace bindings - Ran wrangler deploy - Tested the endpoint with curl - Fixed a routing issue based on the error response - Committed and pushed Total time: under 20 minutes. I never typed a line of code. I described what I needed, reviewed the output, approved the operations. You're not coding in a terminal. You're directing an agent that codes for you. How to set this up (10 minutes) If you have a Mac and Claude Pro or Max: (On a PC? Your setup instructions are in the attached file.) 1. Install Claude Code: open terminal, run the install command from Anthropic's docs. 2. Run "claude" in any project directory. You're in an agentic session. 3. Open Claude Desktop App alongside for planning, research, and longer thinking conversations. Optional but useful: - Set up a .claude directory in your project with a CLAUDE.md file. Same idea as onboarding docs, but for your coding agent. Persistent instructions about your project, coding standards, and preferences.

Edit NotebookLM infographics in Canva! One of the nice things about NotebookLM is how quickly it can turn source material into a useful infographic. The challenge is that the finished infographic is a static image, so if you want to make small visual changes, adjust wording, or move elements around, you cannot really edit it directly. A simple - yet powerful trick - is to take that infographic into Canva and break it into editable pieces. ▶️ I put together a short video showing exactly how this works, or you can follow the process below. Here’s the basic flow: 1. Import your source document into NotebookLM Start by bringing your source document into NotebookLM and shaping the content until it says what you want it to say. 2. Create the infographic Once the content is where you want it, generate the infographic inside NotebookLM. 3. Copy and paste the infographic into Canva When the infographic looks close to right, move it into Canva by copying and pasting it. 4. Select Edit, then Magic Layers 🪄 Inside Canva, choose Edit and then Magic Layers. 5. Break the infographic into editable elements Canva will separate the infographic into individual parts so you can edit text, move sections around, adjust spacing, and refine the design. 6. Polish the final version Instead of starting from scratch, you are starting with structure already in place and then improving it into something more usable and presentable. This is one of those practical little moves that makes AI output easier to turn into something polished and usable.