I Trained AI to Write Like Me - And It Actually Worked

After publishing 500 blog posts and 11 books, I realized something. I didn't

need to write every word myself. I used

one prompt, edit my best writing, and now AI drafts 90% of my content in my voice with my style of thinking. I'll

show you how I made that happen and what it means for your business, your time, and your ideas.

I started by identifying 20 of my most recent long- form essays. I really

wanted to give AI a broad array of the kinds of writing that I tend to do, asking the AI itself to propose a process that would allow it to replicate these kinds of writing samples. So, the

AI, and I'm using Claude in my example, proposed two critical tools that it would need in order to replicate my writing. First was a style guide and

writing. First was a style guide and second was an implementation guide for how to use it. In part two, I'll cover how I went about creating and using each of those. But for now, I just want to

of those. But for now, I just want to skip all the way to the end and show you the final result. So, let's go ahead and open up Claude. And if you're curious what plan I'm using for this video and

the rest of the series, you really just need to be on the pro plan, which costs $17 a month when build annually. I

personally am on the max plan which is the same thing with just a lot more usage because I use this to produce so much writing but you'll be fine with this one over here. So you can see here

I have my paid claude account and I'll go ahead and click on projects in the sidebar. You can think of a project as a

sidebar. You can think of a project as a container that has certain documents within it and any conversation you have with AI within that project can draw on the knowledge that is contained in those

documents. So you can see here I have my

documents. So you can see here I have my AI writing generator. Here is the title of the project. Here is a sentence about what this project is for. And the key thing to notice is what is called

project knowledge over here. So by

clicking this plus button, you can add a document or a bunch of documents. And

any conversation you have over here on the left will automatically draw on all the information contained in those documents. Because Claude has all the

documents. Because Claude has all the context contained in this document, which is something like 21,000 words long, I can just in a single sentence say, "Help me create a new piece of

writing." So, you can see right here,

writing." So, you can see right here, I'd be happy to help you create a new piece of writing. That's what any AI would typically say. But the next part is very different. I can see you shared

Thiago Forte's AI style guide, which provides a comprehensive framework for crafting content in his distinctive voice and style. Okay. So, right there, I didn't have to put in this crazy multi-step prompt. In a way, I've

multi-step prompt. In a way, I've already given it the prompt that I want to use every single time. So, it already knows over 20,000 words of rules, principles, guidelines, dos and don'ts,

examples of how I want my writing to sound, examples of how I don't want it to sound, all these different things.

You can see here in order to get started, it's actually following exactly the steps that I outlined in the implementation guide which I've combined with the style guide into one kind of

master document. So all I have to do

master document. So all I have to do here is answer its questions. So which

topic would you like to write about? I

have one in mind. the impact of heat due to climate change on human civilization.

Summarizing the book called the heat will kill you first, which I've just finished reading. So, I'm going to hit

finished reading. So, I'm going to hit shift return, which will send me to a new line without sending the message yet. For the format, I'll say a long

yet. For the format, I'll say a long form thought piece essay to be shared on my blog. That's important context. For

my blog. That's important context. For

number three, which is about any specific elements that I want to emphasize, I think I'll say the direct concrete impact on people's everyday

lives that's already happening. And then

for four, I think I'd like something around 2500 to 3,000 words. And then one more note is I'm going to say, I have extensive

excerpts from the book I'd like you to use. So, I could ask it to go ahead and

use. So, I could ask it to go ahead and summarize the book without my excerpts and my highlights because it does know something about this book. The problem

is it doesn't actually have access to the full text of really any book. So,

without those excerpts, it will just lack a lot of specificity, a lot of concretess, the specific stories that that book contains. So, I've already read this book and synced my highlights

to my note-taking app. So, I'm going to go ahead and provide those excerpts to Claude. Go ahead and hit return.

Claude. Go ahead and hit return.

So you can see this first paragraph repeats back to me just to make sure that it understands what I want, what it will do. It's helpful that it's not

will do. It's helpful that it's not reproducing copyrighted material directly or if it does, it will be in quotes. It's going to be in my style,

quotes. It's going to be in my style, conversational, framework driven with concrete examples and personal connections. That sounds perfect. And

connections. That sounds perfect. And

then you can see because I said I wanted to have it be based on my excerpts that it's asking for those excerpts. So I'll

now head over to my note-taking app, which is Evernote. And you can see here, each one of these paragraphs is something that I highlighted while reading the ebook on my Kindle. They're

automatically synced to my note-taking app using a service called Readwise, which I highly recommend. So, you can see here, this is quite extensive. This

note, which is composed only of excerpts, is over 5,000 words long.

That's like 10 pages long. You can also see here that I've also already bolded the parts that I thought were most important or interesting. That's

optional. You can choose to do that if you really want to kind of guide the AI and what it's going to focus on, but you really don't have to do that. So, I'll

go ahead and do command A and then command C to copy all of that. Head back

over to Claude and paste it right there.

So, you can see when you paste a lot of text into Claude all at once, instead of filling the chat window, which would be kind of unwieldy to scroll up and down, it just creates a new little mini

document with the pasted context. I'll

go ahead and hit send.

The AI is essentially walking me through the 40page style guide that we created together. And within a few minutes, as

together. And within a few minutes, as you can see here, we have a brand new draft of a piece of writing that I want to exist in the world in my voice. And

you know what? I found from going through this process many times that this draft tends to be around 90 to 95% of the way there. I'll typically do just one or two editing passes to make sure

there's nothing missing and then it's something that I feel comfortable publishing in my name. For this one, for example, if I go to the top, I notice that it's started with a personal

anecdote. The problem is that this

anecdote. The problem is that this personal anecdote is not personal to me.

So, I think I'll ask it to to replace the opening anecdote with one of my own, which was actually the true story of when I was first kind of radicalized and

made aware of the impact of heat, which I'll briefly describe here.

So, you can see there that this is now version two, and it will automatically keep track of all the versions for you.

And it's now just replaced the opening anecdote with one that is true. and

personal and unique to me so that it's something that could have been written by me. And this is kind of amazing cuz I

by me. And this is kind of amazing cuz I gave it so few details and yet because it's very intelligent and because it has all the context in my style guide and

also other context about me. This is all true. It was an apocalyptic orange sky.

true. It was an apocalyptic orange sky.

The air quality index had spiked well into the hazardous range. We were

sitting inside with the air purifier humming beside us. This is just a great illustration of how when creating a piece of writing, many of the details can sort of be extrapolated. They are

kind of obvious or predictable, which means you don't have to sit there typing each individual word. Oftent times, your role is really just to provide a few key

details and let the AI do the actual turning of that into writing. I can also do more targeted changes. For example,

if a paragraph doesn't make sense and I don't really understand it, I can highlight it and say explain.

So, you can see it's telling me this serves as a bridge between the personal anecdote and the broader themes of the essay, which is super useful. Or

alternatively, let's say I don't like this paragraph right here. I can say improve. And I might actually say

improve. And I might actually say something like this sounds like an academic essay saying in this piece. I

don't really like that language. It's

too formal. Try something less formal.

So you can see here that it's summarized what it's done, the changes that it's made. And I can also just look here. So

made. And I can also just look here. So

I've been devouring Jeff Goodle's eye opening book. So that's better. It's a

opening book. So that's better. It's a

little more informal, a little more personal, and a little more dramatic.

So, let me just look through this essay to be sure that it's produced something of quality. It's interesting. I'm

of quality. It's interesting. I'm

recognizing a lot of the points that I highlighted in the book that I myself found interesting and helpful. And

because I provided those notes to Claude, it has incorporated those as key points. I'm kind of just looking at what

points. I'm kind of just looking at what the main sections are. So, social

impact. Yeah, that's also super interesting to me. What are the bigger scale impacts that it has? Environmental

impact, economic impact. So interesting.

I would not have thought to divide it that way, like the four different kinds of impacts, but it's actually a very logical way of structuring this essay. I

specifically asked it to focus on the immediate concrete impacts on people's lives. So you can see it has a whole

lives. So you can see it has a whole another section for that. How cities are being changed, cultural shifts, what this means for your life. So that's an excellent uh following of my instructions that it's doing. I would

probably put this in Google Docs and do one more detailed pass just on the the really fine details of the language. So

in a matter of what 10 or 15 minutes, I've saved 4 to 6 hours of my own personal time. Before building your AI

personal time. Before building your AI writing system, you need to gather your materials. I've created a 15-minute prep

materials. I've created a 15-minute prep checklist. Collect your best writing.

checklist. Collect your best writing.

Spot your patterns. Capture your unique style. Get it free with the QR code on

style. Get it free with the QR code on screen so you're ready for the next part of this educational series. I started

writing when I was 14 years old. It was

1998 and I was living in a small town in Brazil with my family. I would write emails back home to our friends and family on our little compact laptop telling them stories about our

adventures in Brazil. And I still remember seeing how delighted and excited they were to read what I had written. I was hooked on writing for

written. I was hooked on writing for life. And that writing has generated

life. And that writing has generated over a million dollars directly from the writing, not counting the multi-million dollar business built on top of it. I

realized that around maybe half of the pieces of writing that I produce, aren't inherently valuable for me. They're

about marketing my business or doing research for my books or creating building blocks, what I call intermediate packets, for the future pieces of writing that I really want to write. For example, I write a lot of

write. For example, I write a lot of articles summarizing my takeaways from books I've read. These book summaries have been pivotal parts of my learning and also some of my most popular blog

posts, too. But they also take maybe 20

posts, too. But they also take maybe 20 hours each to create. To read the book, that's 8 to 10 hours by itself. To

download all the highlights, to organize them into an outline, to turn that outline into pros, to do multiple rounds of editing. It's just not sustainable

of editing. It's just not sustainable for me to spend so much time and effort on these book summaries. especially

since I've become a parent. So, I'm a little bit stuck in a paradox. It's

important to me that these pieces exist.

So, I'm documenting my learning and I'm sharing it with others. But at the same time, it's not important that I do 100% of the writing myself. This realization

hit me really hard because I realized I was spending so much of my time on the parts of writing, the aspects, the activities within writing that don't

necessarily require my unique perspective. I started wondering what if

perspective. I started wondering what if there was a way to use AI to handle the half of the writing process that doesn't

need my personal attention so I can focus 100% of my time on the remaining half that does. In the next video in this series, I'll take you behind the

scenes to show exactly how I built this system step by step. If you're serious about combining the leverage of AI with the leverage of your ideas while also

saving time so you can focus on more interesting unusual meaningful problems. Make sure you catch part two and don't forget to like and subscribe

so you get the notification.

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