A keyboard for your claws

Issue 18: A keyboard for people with claws and how to promote yourself if you hate social media

by Sophia Amoruso and Melanie Ehrenkranz

Business Class is a weekly newsletter for people who work for themselves. Have a scoop? Wanna partner? Hit reply.

Notes from Melanie's Desk:

Sophia is changing her life this week, so you’ve got me today.

I just rolled out my massive new desk pad from the brilliant mind of Michelle Pellizzon to get my neuroaesthetic freak on. This week, that involved finally getting my passion project out of my head and down on paper, and doodling some robots.

I was laid off last year when the early-stage startup I worked for ran out of runway. I have more friends that’ve been laid off over the last decade than not. LinkedIn feels like a cemetery of corporate dreams and #opentowork banners.

Everyone’s got a lay-off connection, but here are a few of mine: One of my best friends was laid off weeks into maternity leave. I had a friend leave the state he loves for a job opportunity after a year of rejection. I’ve sat at bars with former colleagues, drinking cheap beer after entire teams were cut, wondering, what now?

Lay-offs can be a radicalizing moment – you realize work is not your family, job stability when you’re not the boss is a precarious promise, and that even a depressingly widespread phenomena can feel crushingly lonely.

I want to go deeper than lay-off posts on LinkedIn – I want to know how your boss handled it. If there were signs. Who the first person you told was. What you did for health insurance. If you have a group chat with your former colleagues (and what it’s called).

That’s why I created Laid Off (coming soon), a weekly interview series with smart and cool people who were laid off. If that’s you (or someone you know), I’m collecting interviews here , and I’d love to hear from you.

Ok, now let’s dive into the newsletter. We’ve got a good one today.

-Melanie

In today’s issue:

• A keyboard for your claws
• A phrase to add to your ChatGPT prompts
• A free starter pack for marketers
• And more…

Join my friend and CEO of creator monetization platform Kajabi Ahad Khan and I in a few hours this Wednesday, August 14th at 11am PT for a free LIVE webinar on how creators can launch (and monetize) their entrepreneurial journey.

In 60 minutes, we’ll cover:

• The state of the 2024 creator economy
• The best techniques to make money as a creators
• Ahad’s inside scoop on the latest trends & predictions
• How to harness AI to scale your business
• How to get started building your audience from zero
• Why social media isn’t the end-all-be-all
• Plus, a Q+A at the end where you can pick our brains on monetizing yourself online

RSVP here , and hope to see you SOON!

-Sophia

Add this phrase to your ChatGPT prompts

Justin Fineberg , the founder of AI workspace Cassidy, says you should use the “think before” technique to get better results from your ChatGPT prompts.

Take your prompt and add in “Before X, I want you to think through…” at the beginning.

This is genius in its simplicity.

Check it out here .

We’ve written about how to write the best conversational AI prompts in an earlier issue. (We love our boy Claude.) A few more tips:

Be specific. If you don’t want a generic response, then don’t write a generic prompt. Include things like your target audience, the tone you want to capture, how long you want it to be, structure (think: bullet points) if you need any specific points addressed.

Refine and experiment. Get creative! Don’t settle for the first result, because it probably won’t be exactly what you need. Keep iterating on it! Is the tone too formal? Did it not address the right issue? Do you need to get even more specific on who your target customer is? What is your product? What is the message? Play around with even more specific, and even weird or wacky prompts to see what you get. Have fun.

Yes, AI can help with getting the basics out when you’re creatively tapped out. But it can also be a brainstorm buddy, spitting out word choices you might’ve not come up with on your own. (The first time I used ChatGPT I had it write an email in the style of a wizard. Gets the juices flowing.)

Save successful prompts. These AI chatbots are constantly evolving (like Claude 3.5), but consider a doc with prompts that yielded promising results. That way you don’t have to start from scratch each time you go to type your request to Claude. Plus, if you have other execs or employees using the tool, they can reference the ones you used and liked.

You can still promote yourself if you hate social media

Founders can feel a lot of pressure to be the “face” of their social (especially female founders), but a lot of entrepreneurs we’ve spoken to dread going on Instagram and talking about their business.

Amelia Hruby, PhD , founder of feminist podcast studio Softer Sounds, put together 100 ways to share your work that aren’t social media after she left Instagram.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Join a free online community: Build relationships that don’t feel so transactional, but are organic and around shared interests. If you vibe, people will genuinely want to know what you’re working on and maybe even share it. A few communities we like are Geneva , Discord , why?! , and Saloon .

Create a free resource on something you’re good at: Give a little to get some. Create a template or guide or whatever valuable resource you know a lot about and give it away for free. You can create it on Notion templates and use it as a lead magnet to get people to subscribe to your email list.

Reconnect with one person you already know each day for a whole month: This is a way to more meaningfully share what you’re working on with existing connections and learn what they’re up to as well. (Maybe the beginning of a beautiful collab.) Create a standing calendar event each day to reach out to someone in your LinkedIn network and catch up. Maybe offer to grab a virtual coffee and send them $5 to Starbucks.

Start an email newsletter: “Substack is the new Instagram; it’s catching on and it’s going to be an [important] channel,” Free People’s director of brand marketing, Libby Strachan, told Glossy . “What’s old is new — blogging is back.” A newsletter is a great way to collect emails, connect with your community, and candidly share what you’re working on without the pressure of being camera-ready.

Check out all of Amelia’s ways to share your work here .

Back that shit up

Link rot is real, and more than a quarter of webpages from 2013 are no longer accessible, with some having vanished altogether.

Speaking of promoting your work, it’s hard to do that if it gets wiped from the web. That’s especially true for creatives whose work is hosted on websites owned by brands and clients.

The simplest way to archive your work is to save a PDF of each project and add it to a cloud-based storage solution (that way it doesn’t get lost again to a wonky computer.) You can also use a service made specifically to archive your work, like Authory or Conifer .

And stay vigilant – use your favorite organizational tool to keep track of all your archived work and set reminders to preserve future digital projects.

Phrase of the day: Portfolio Career Layering Method

Startup advisor Anna Mackenzie wrote about picking a lane, AKA not building all the things at the same time so you don’t burn out. She recommends taking the Portfolio Career Layering Method approach.

“It involves starting with one focus, and then as you achieve critical mass, expanding to another.”

She wrote out seven steps on how to start with one thing and build momentum from there. It’s very good advice.

Read all about it here .

Merch recommendation: Branded matchbooks (they're hot right now)

The Wall Street Journal says we’re in a matchbook renaissance . A quick search for “matchbook” on TikTok proves the point, with millions of videos of girlies showing off their collections.

So here’s a free idea: custom matchbooks for your brand. Make it cool, and better yet, city-specific. A lot of matchbook collectors on TikTok have sets for different places they’ve visited.

You also want merch with function (even if it’s too beautiful to use). Pointless merch ends up in the trash, which ends up in the landfill, which doesn’t align with consumers’ growing desire to waste less.

Free starter pack for marketers

Design service Magic Design vetted and curated marketing templates that don’t suck. The set includes a Google Analytics tracking plan, a product demo video script, a landing page guide, an influencer strategy doc, and an e-commerce conversion rate checklist, to name a few.

You can sign up for the free Notion templates here .

How to network with product designers

Product design educator @lalizlabeth shared a cold outreach email that she found kind of annoying. If you’re sending a note to someone you have no connection to and want to a) not annoy them, b) actually hear back and c) get some help, Elizabeth recommends:

Personalize it: It is immediately obvious (especially to people who get a bunch of emails everyday) when someone is copy and pasting a cold outreach and changing the first name. Make sure you include why you are reaching out to this person, what you like about their work or experience, and why they are uniquely equipped to help you out.

Tell them who you are: Share your own expertise and why you’re aligned with this person, but keep it short and sweet.

Include a specific ask: Whether it’s feedback or advice, tell the person what you’re looking for, and be mindful that this is a busy person. Just pick one.

See all of her recommendations here.

Stuff we're into

A keyboard cover for long ass nails

A reflection journal that calls you each morning

Joyful social media templates so that service providers can easily book projects

A portable speaker that looks like a luxury picnic basket or expensive hand bag

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Business Class gets beautiful calendars

Yesterday, digital organization coach Jésabel DC taught Business Class members how to get a dopamine hit from doing taxes and tedious admin work.

Over an hour, she showed us how to use colors and visual cues to design a calendar you’ll actually want to spend time in. (Like a chartreuse block for your finances and using your to-do list in unison with your calendar.)

Jésabel has experience working specifically with entrepreneurs and creatives, so she knew our pain points and how to address them. We all left with more joyful and approachable calendars. It was a lot of fun.

Want more?

Host a workshop for our community of 3k+ entrepreneurs ! We’re looking for domain experts to share their genius. Email [email protected]

Promote your business to over 130,000 subscribers! Email [email protected]

Check out the Business Class Flight Planner – an undated annual planner that’ll set you straight and ready for take off.

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