Notes · The stack
for founders, operators, and growth marketers
You've heard of Claude. You've seen the hype: do your marketing on it, cut your costs, get more done with less. What nobody tells you is where you actually stand with it. Are you doing the basic stuff, the medium stuff, or are you ahead of most people? I use it every day, and not just for marketing: to run growth, work the numbers, and build the tools that run the rest. And honestly, I still couldn't have told you where I stood.
Then a chart went round: seven levels of using Claude, and most people never get past the first. That's what made it useful, it hands you a mirror. So I redrew it, all eleven levels, the deep ones that chart never drew, so you can see where you stand and where to push next. It showed me exactly where I need to improve.
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1 · the ladder
Levels one to seven are the viral chart, rewritten for a brand. Eight to eleven are what the picture leaves out: the deep water, where the compounding happens.
End your prompt with "ask me questions first." The answers get better because the brief got better. Same rule as agencies.
Dictate your briefs. You speak at three times the speed you type, and the rambling version carries more context anyway.
Stop accepting chat answers. Make it produce the deck, the report, the landing page, the spreadsheet. Work product, not conversation.
Your analytics, your email platform, your storefront. Claude reading the internet is a toy. Claude reading your numbers is a tool.
Skills: codify how you run a promo, a weekly report, a creative brief, once. Then it runs your way every time, instead of the generic way.
Right model for the job, right effort level, cost per output. You wouldn't run every campaign on the most expensive placement. Same discipline.
Internal tools your team uses that didn't exist a quarter ago. Described in English, working by Friday.
▲ the viral chart ends here
▼ below the keel is open water. This is where the compounding happens.
It knows your brand, your margins, your history, every session, without being re-briefed. The difference between a freelancer and a team member.
When the integration you need doesn't exist, have it write one. Direct platform access, no middleman SaaS fee.
Agents on schedules, watching your accounts, messaging you when a number moves. Software that works while you sleep.
All of it aimed at the only three questions that matter: what it costs to win a customer, what they're worth over time, whether it scales. The doing got cheaper. The judgment didn't.
2 · where I sit
Claude runs across my work every day, so I sent it the viral chart with one instruction and let it grade me against everything it actually knows about how I operate.
Straight answer: you're not on this iceberg. You're past the bottom of it, and I can evidence every level from what's actually running on this machine.
Level by level:
The honest part, since you asked for it: there are levels above this chart, and you're on them. Background agents on schedules, self-built connectors, a memory system, an ops dashboard for your own automations. The chart stops where you start.
Which means the chart also can't tell you where the real opportunity sits, so here it is: the gap isn't capability, it's what the capability gets pointed at. The tooling is already ahead of what it earns, and that's the opportunity, not the problem. The foundations and the frameworks are built, so turning them into revenue is a short jump, not a standing start.
So the assessment: the chart has nothing left for you. The thing worth stealing is the packaging instinct.
My map, as graded
Level ten isn't mastery. It's just what happens when you're too stubborn to stop tinkering. And eleven, the one that actually moves the number, is still ahead of me, same as everyone. So this isn't a lecture from the top of the ladder.
That's mine, warts and all. Now let's draw yours.
3 · your turn
Your turn at the mirror. Two ways to get it, the same two I got: the map and the read. The map draws right here on the page. The read comes from your own Claude. Do both.
The map
Tick what's honestly true in the checklist below and the page draws your iceberg on the spot: no plugins, no AI features to switch on, works for everyone. Screenshot it and send it to whoever runs your marketing.
The read
Paste this into the Claude you already use. If you use it regularly it has the evidence; if not, it will ask you the right questions. This is the written, level-by-level read: the words behind the map.
Works in Claude, or any AI you use day to day. No reference image needed: the eleven levels are baked into the prompt.
4 · the honest bit
What it can't do is tell you which of your numbers is lying to you. Whether the traffic problem is really a margin problem. Whether the retention curve pays for the acquisition cost. That read is the human.
If you want to use the operating system, it's free: the CMO Guy Operating System Skill, installable on your own Claude.
If you want the read, that's a conversation.