Revenue Diaries Entry 84

Confession time. I have a file on my computer that tells Claude exactly how I write. I update it almost every week. Hell, it even updates itself now. I also own several very nice notebooks. They are mostly empty. haha.

So yah... I’ll happily write down everything I know so a piece of software can learn it. Writing down what I feel so I can learn it? Apparently that’s a bridge too far. (Yes, I see the irony.)

That’s what we are writing about this week. 

First, Heather Shelstad joined me on episode 2 of Head Trash to talk about a 107-pound golden retriever named Gus and why 200 straight days of meditation counts as discipline, whatever you want to call it. 

Then we’re getting a little nerdy. 

Anthropic just handed Agent Skills over to the same Linux Foundation group that looks after MCP, and I’m pulling three plugins every marketer should care about: one for your taste, one for your process, and one for the stuff only your team knows.

Different topics but the lesson is similar: What you write down and repeat is what sticks.

♥️ kyle

3 Claude Code Plugins for Every Marketer

I always love a good X post that is helpful over hurtful. And last week, a user named Yurshev posted a breakdown of 10 Claude Code plugins he believes are MOST important from Anthropic’s own directory of 528 free plugins. 

It was so helpful for me that I wanted to share a couple of ideas here.

On October 22, Anthropic handed Agent Skills to the Agentic AI Foundation, the same Linux Foundation group that already looks after MCP. Anthropic says the standard has a million published skills, nearly 280 million installs, and more than 70 platforms supporting it.

Sure, that sounds like our engineering friends will be the only people to care but here's why marketers should care...

A skill is just know-how written down so an AI can use it. And I know that I don’t have to give a complete breakdown on why a skill is important. You’ve got that, right? Well, it’s important to dive in.

Yurshev picked ten. I'm pulling three, because they map to the three things marketing can't afford to lose when AI starts doing more of the work: taste, process, and the stuff only your team knows.

Frontend Design: Kill the Purple Gradient

Get it here

You've seen it. Every AI-built landing page has this amazingly beautiful and super creative purple-to-blue gradient. Oh yah, and the same rounded cards and font. It all looks like it came from the same kid who just discovered Canva.

And yes, this is the new stock photo. Remember the handshake-in-front-of-a-skyscraper image every B2B company used in 2012? Yep. Same thing. 

Frontend Design is Anthropic's fix, and per Yurshev's count it's the most installed plugin in the whole directory, north of 1.1 million installs. The idea is simple. Before Claude writes a single line, it commits to an actual aesthetic direction (brutalist, editorial, retro, minimal) and builds to it. It picks a point of view first.

I've spent a lot of words in this newsletter fighting boring. When AI makes every company's product features look the same, brand is what's left. Taste is what's left. And the tools most of us reach for are trained to land in the middle, because the middle is the safest answer for the most people.

So why would you let the default pick your taste?

If you're on a marketing team, hand this one to your designers, your web folks, and anyone who mocks up an event page or a campaign microsite in Claude. 

Superpowers: Make the Robot Show Its Work

Get it here

Superpowers is Jesse Vincent's method for agentic coding. Brainstorm first and then work on the plan that includes writing the tests before you write the code. Then you build the damn thing.  And when something breaks, debug from the root cause instead of guessing.

Process sounds boring. I get it. But the process is what protects the good stuff. When the plan and the checks are handled, your gut instinct gets to spend its energy on the calls that actually need it.

Left alone, the tool will happily skip straight to the answer. Would you let a new hire do that?

Skill Creator: The Skill That Writes Skills

Get it here

If you only install one, make it this one. 

Skill Creator is a skill that builds skills. You describe how you want something done, and Claude turns it into a proper skill, with instructions, tests, and evals so you can actually check whether it works.

That's exactly how my voice skill started. A pile of notes I kept pasting into every chat. Now it's a file Claude reads, and every time I catch something new (looking at you, "I haven't stopped thinking about..."), it goes on the list and never comes back. The skill gets better every week. I don't have to remember any of it.

I run marketing at a learning company, so maybe I'm biased. But a skill is basically a training program for an agent. You take what's in your head, the stuff only you know, and you make it teachable. That's what good enablement has always been. Now the student just happens to be software.

And because of that October 22 move, the training travels. Build it once and it works across every platform that supports the standard.

So try this. Write down the three things you explain to AI most often. Pick one. Turn it into a skill this week.

Read the Label First

One quick warning before you go install all of it. Skills can run scripts on your machine, and Anthropic's own documentation warns that a malicious skill can do things beyond what it says it does.

So stick to the verified plugins in Anthropic's directory. For anything else, open the SKILL.md and read it before you install. It's plain English. Two minutes of reading beats one very bad night with your IT team.

Thank me later, Nitin. :)

On Episode 2: Head Trash with Heather Shelstad

The day before we recorded, Heather got off a phone call about a potential opportunity. She’d been talking with the recruiter, getting a little more detail on what the company was looking for. Ya know, the normal calls when you are vetting something. 

She hung up and immediately thought: Well, this isn’t gonna work out.

All gut instinct with a sidedish of slight anxiety. Why? Nobody told her it was a bad call, or that it wasn’t going to work out. It was all in her head. 

We’ve all been there. You close out of that Zoom call and think to yourself, “Well damn. They weren’t impressed. You shouldn’t have talked so much. They are NEVER going to call you back.” 

Yah. I know you’ve been there. Back to Heather… 

She has spent close to 20 years as a marketing leader in ad tech. She’s an empty nester with two adult kids out of college, a gardener this time of year, a football fan, and a dog mom to a 107-pound golden retriever named Gus. (Human names for dogs are the best thing EVER). She also told me most of the imposter syndrome conversations she’s had over the years have been with other women. So I was grateful she was willing to have one with me.

Taking Gus for a walk… 

So after that call when her head trash was absolutely destroying her sense of self. She went on a walk with Gus. Because when it’s loud you must do something. 

Anything. Just go move and think through the thoughts spiraling out of control. She called it a ‘deliberate reframe’ by contextualizing the conversation. What if it doesn’t work out?

“Sure. I didn’t answer that question right, and the role is asking for an expanded scope… those don’t line up with my experience, BUT there are five or six things I KNOW I’m good at, ands p’s perfect for this exact role.” 

Because… “Not everything that pops into my head is true.”

All while walking Gus through the neighborhood. 

She didn’t push the thought away. She met it and worked through the feedback and the other feelings pushing the narrative to work it out. 

In a past life I would have skipped straight to shaming myself “stop thinking that,” which doesn’t work. Believe me. 

Write the ugly stuff down…

Another tip to shaping the head trash? Heather writes it down. What she’s thinking, what she’s feeling, and then a couple of steps further into why.

Full disclosure: I’m terrible at this. I admitted it on the episode. I’ve bought the nice notebooks. They are very nice notebooks and unfortunately… they are also mostly empty.

Her daughter, on the other hand, has kept a journal for as long as Heather can remember, and writes down what she’s grateful for every day. Heather didn’t realize how much it meant to her until her daughter moved to San Francisco for her first job and asked her mom to find the journal she’d left behind. 

None of this is woo-woo

When I asked how she handles the deeper stuff, mainly the insecurities, her answer was one word: kindness.

Compassion and giving herself a little grace… accepting that self-doubt is just part of being human.

And then we got into the good woo-woo stuff. :) Meditation and affirmations. I stopped her right there, because she’s past 200 consecutive days of meditation on Insight Timer. Two hundred days in a row of anything is discipline. Call it whatever you want. She uses breathwork the same way, to interrupt the cycle when the snowball starts turning into actual anxiety.

Now, here’s where I come at it a little differently. If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I’ve been deep in IFS (internal family systems). Most of my work lately has been trying to understand why the voices show up, not just how to quiet them. I’m reading The Presence Process by Michael Brown, which is heady as hell, and he uses weight loss as an example. If you keep losing the weight and gaining it back no matter how hard you work out, you probably haven’t dealt with whatever’s underneath. 

So I pushed on that a bit. And honestly? I don’t think Heather and I disagree. The reframe will always help in the moment and pushing deeper through meditation will help you solve the larger issue of self-doubt. You need both. And both only work if you consistently work through them.  if you do them again tomorrow.

Even if you don’t know it

I asked Heather how her daughter ended up with that journaling habit. Her answer: she doesn’t think she did anything explicit. 

She just created space for her kids to be vulnerable about their feelings.

Both of her kids dealt with anxiety growing up, in a way Heather doesn’t remember experiencing herself. So she kept nudging them toward breathwork and box breathing. She never knew if any of it landed. Now they’re adults, and she’s starting to see they have their own tools.

I’ve got two boys, eight and ten. In the episode I said kids are going to take on whatever you’re putting out, whether you mean to teach it or not. Heather finished the thought for me: “Even if you don’t know it.”

That cuts both ways, right? 

I am a morning person (I am not)

We ended on affirmations, which Heather admits she was skeptical about. Her example: she is not a morning person. Like, so not a morning person. Don’t expect critical thinking out of her until she’s had at least two cups of coffee.

But say becoming a morning person really mattered to her. 

Step one is repetition. I am a morning person. Your brain starts to index toward whatever you keep telling it (I called them grooves). 

Step two is where most of us bail... you have to start acting like one. Affirmation plus action.

Which is a pretty good description of that walk with Gus, too. She told herself a truer story, and she was moving while she did it.

Listen to the full episode with Heather here. Connect with Heather on LinkedIn and check out her work at mktgminded.