Erin Braxton (00:00)

So Claude says, are always called in when the problem is bigger than the client understands. Hmm. That's so interesting. I didn't even think about that. You are a translator. You protect people from their own blind spots. You deliver adoption, not just delivery. You are an operational architect. You build the infrastructure that lets organizations actually function and scale. And I know everybody's talking about AI this and AI that.

But I know that a lot of us, especially as black women, we have issues with self-promotion. We have issues with saying, look at me, look at me. A lot of times we think because things come easy to us or it's sort of our jam, anybody could do it. And Claude will help you think out of that so that you can sell yourself, that you can really ⁓ extract value instead of just tasks.

When you know your value, can make more money, you'll have more opportunity. Once you know what you want and you know what your value is, then what's stopping you? If you don't self promote for yourself, who will? If you want to get a promotion in your current job, you're going to have to self promote. If you want to go out and do your own thing, you're going to have to self promote.

So you are at your wit's end with the job. You know there's something better for you. You know you don't want to be there anymore. Maybe you want to move up. Maybe you don't know how. In April, I did a video about the five shifts, the five shifts that we need to make from here to here. Particularly, we talked about value thinking and shifting your mindset from

task-oriented things and capabilities to value thinking what it is you bring to the table. I told you guys that I use Claude or Chachi BT to help me brainstorm. I know everybody's talking about AI this and AI that, but I know that a lot of us, especially as black women, we have issues with self-promotion. We have issues

with saying, look at me, look at me, you know? And two of the shifts that I spoke about in that episode were shifting to value thinking and getting into the exercise and starting to self promote. Because if you don't self promote for yourself, who will? If you want to get a promotion in your current job, you're going to have to self promote. If you want to go out and do your own thing, you're going to have to self promote. So.

Today, I'm going to actually walk you through how I use Claude to help me figure out my value. I had to do this too. It is not something that comes naturally for me. One would think it does. I'm a Leo and all of that. I'm sitting here on this podcast coming to you guys week after week, talking freely pretty easily, but...

I am not one that likes to say, look at me, look at me, I'm doing this thing or that thing. And additionally, because of the trauma and because of my past experiences and because of being diminished and pushed down, the amazing things that I have done, I just assume they're just regular. don't always think of them as like, wow, you you're really the shit, you did that. Right. And

You know, somebody wrote when I did that video, somebody left a comment about, you know, using AI and AI is just there to make you feel good. And this is true. AI is programmed to help you feel good. It's not gonna talk bad to you. It's not going to ⁓ say anything to make you feel bad about yourself, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be using it. What it will do is it will help.

reframe in your mind what it is that you've actually done so then you can start using that language to figure out how to best talk about what it is that you bring to the table. So before we get into it, welcome to the Coffee No Cream podcast. My name is Erin Braxton and I am the host of Coffee No Cream. Here on Coffee No Cream, we are unapologetically dedicated to black women and we share what I like to call Coffee No Cream moments.

those things that happen to us black women in business and in life just because we are black women. And no Coffee No Cream moment today, but we are going to go through an actual exercise. So I'm gonna use my phone. I'm gonna record the screen and I'm going to ⁓ tell you and show you what Claude can do for you or AI in general, if you allow it to. I personally...

Use both chat gpt and I use clod I find That clod is better for this type of thing and I learned that several months ago when I was trying to Pivot my business figure out a new path a new way because remember guys i'm in tech I I build web platforms and digital platforms. So I do have to stay on top of this stuff, but this is not hard. Okay

This is not hard. This is something accessible to all of us and you might as well get used to it. Utilize it. Let it do for you what it can do for you. Utilize the technology guys. Okay. You don't have to be so perfect about what it is you say. I like to just talk to Claude. I don't, especially when I'm trying to figure out my thoughts, what you're about to see in a minute as I stumble through my words.

A lot of people are going to be like, use this prompt, say this exact thing. And I'll put some prompts up in there on the screen. And I'm going to show you my screen on my phone at the same time as I'm talking. But you don't have to be so perfect about it. The more you talk to Claude and you get it to know you, the better outcomes that you'll have. And you realize that you really don't need any special training. Just talk. Tell it how you feel, what you're thinking. ⁓

what it is you do and just don't worry about being so perfect about it, all right? So one thing though to say to people who we had, I did have a woman who said it's meant to show you or be perfectly nice to you. I do have something set up in my settings and I'm gonna read it to you right now. So in my Claude profile,

This is what I have written in my profile. I'm just going to read it you really quick because I'm telling Claude how to talk to me so that it challenges me and it doesn't just say yes to everything I tell it or make me feel good and give me some bullshit. I mean, you guys use your discernment. It is a computer. It's artificial intelligence, but it's useful. So and I'll show this on the screen. I wrote, I am an expert entrepreneur. am skeptical.

and I research almost everything. Do not simply agree with what I say. I want the truth. I want to be challenged. I want to be asked clarifying questions. You will support my ideas, but you're not afraid to point out things that don't make sense or could waste my time by sending me down the wrong path. I need you to talk to me as a trusted peer, colleague, and best friend, not just a cheerleader. Tell me the truth, even if it hurts.

I like talking to you and I need you to nudge me and push me like my best homegirl. Proper direction is what I'm looking for. I didn't come up with that by the way. ⁓ I got that from somebody. I cannot remember, but you can update your profile settings. It'll say what personal preferences should Claude consider in responses. And that is what I have in my, my profile. Okay. So let's just get into

how I would take what I've done in my career and ask Claude what it is, what value do I bring to the table? And the reason this is so important is because we need to become more comfortable self promoting black women. We need to quit shying back. We're underselling ourselves. So we got to stop that shit. So this is going to help you just get out of your way a little bit.

And I'm not going to say you're going to become like a master self-promoter overnight, but it will, it will challenge you to think about what it is you do differently. So I'm going to talk about three projects that I did. I'm going to tell him what I did and we're going to see what Claude gives me back. Okay. So just going to open up a chat, brand new chat, and it says afternoon Erin. So I don't use the keyboard on this particular one. I'm just going to type.

tap the microphone and talk. Hey Claude, so I'm trying to extract value out of, okay, see I messed up. Hey Claude, I am looking to figure out the value that I provide and what it is I do for a living. I know the tasks that I perform, but it's a little bit harder for me to,

extract the value that I provide from those tasks. So I want to give you a couple of the projects that I've worked on that will help me better communicate what I bring to the table when I go out for a new job, when I'm looking for new clients, and I'm not just reaching and grabbing for words and I'm more articulate. Can you help me do that if I give you some projects?

So I just hit submit. So it's gonna pop up what I just asked and I just hit the arrow up.

And Claude just responds, yes, absolutely, drop the projects on me. And just so you know what we're doing here, I'm not going to just reflect your words back at you with fancier vocabulary. I'm going to listen for the pattern across the projects. What's the actual problem you keep solving? What would have gone wrong without you and who specifically needs that? That's where your real value proposition lives. Give me two or three projects, as much detail as you want.

Don't edit yourself trying to make it sound impressive. Just tell me what happened. That's what I'm telling you to do. Just talk, all right? It's actually kind of fun, okay? So I'm gonna talk. I'm gonna let you guys hear a little bit about what I'm saying, but probably not gonna record the whole, whole thing. I'll probably fast forward because I can go with Claude. Claude is my buddy and ⁓ we are partners in crime, okay?

So here we go with my first project. Okay, Claude, my first project. So someone brought me in to work for a Fortune, I believe it's a Fortune 500 financial services company. And they told me that they needed a form. It turns out it was not a form. It was an entire grant application.

intake process. And I didn't know this when we first started. and just to say this, ⁓ before I came on board, I was told that if they wouldn't have found me, they would have probably just used like Google Forms or something. So when I got, you know, ⁓ an idea of what they were looking for, here's what we did on WordPress. We created a grant application intake process.

Now, applicants would come to a website. I used WordPress for this. They would come to a website and they would answer the first nine questions. These were the requirements to qualify for the grant. If they missed any of those requirements, they would immediately go to a thank you page and they were told that somebody would reach out to them for next steps. So I wanted to just talk over me recording because I know you guys didn't want to listen to me talk to Claude for...

a minute. You can see on this video that I am talking to Claude for about three minutes. And as long as you keep your phone steady, sometimes the app can be a little bit buggy and you could be recording and lose it. So just keep your phone steady and don't shake it around a lot and make sure that the audio track is recording at all times. you guys get really detailed here. Tell it everything. Don't treat it like you're talking to a person and you're going to...

lose them or you're going to be confusing. Even if you're confusing, he can work it out. If you forget something, say, and by the way, or go back to it, don't necessarily worry about telling it in a straight line, if you will. Use the freedom to just speak freely and openly and don't worry about it being so perfect again. Just get it out and take as much time as you need. So that was the first project that I did. So got it?

and then I just hit the check mark, make sure they got it, submit.

His response, that's a meaty one. Let me sit with it for a second before you give me the next one. What you just described is not a form. It's not even a form with bells and whistles. What you actually built was a multi-stage adjudication workflow with conditional routing, document management, automated file organization, exception handling, and an administrative override mechanism. On top of that,

You did it on a stack that cost them a fraction of what enterprise grant management software would have run them. Here's what I want to flag the most important detail you almost buried was the Google forms comment that tells me the client didn't actually know what they needed. They thought they had a simple problem. You diagnosed that it was a complex one and built accordingly. That's not a developer skill. That's a consulting and systems architecture skill dressed in developer clothing.

a few clarifying questions before you move on. Now this is what I like because I'm like, okay, and I've told you guys this before, I've done this before in different chats that he's not looking at right now, but okay, systems architecture consulting. You know, before I was just a web girl, I wasn't thinking of the value that I brought to things and I really had to sit with it and utilize Claude to help me figure this out because I would have just been out there underselling what I bring to the table, which is quite...

Amazing. I'm pretty pretty awesome. I fight if I do say so myself at thinking through systems So this is something I did and I've been using it ever since He's asking me who is your actual client contact? What was it IT operations a program director? Did you scope this yourself or did someone hand you a requirements doc? How long did it take to build roughly and did they have any ongoing issues after launch or did it just work?

I'm gonna answer Claude's questions. So first, who was your actual client contact? And I can't confirm this right now. ⁓ I'd have to look this up, but technically you're supposed to be able to talk to him for about 40 minutes and he can get it. But every now and then I would just stop and make sure that he got what you're saying, because I've talked for a longer time than three or four minutes and something glitched out and he didn't get any of it.

Just stop it every now and then make sure he's got it submit it and keep going so i'm going to submit that

So that last part is the most important thing you've said so far, they're still using it. That's your proof of concept right there. Okay, here's what I'm extracting from all of that. You didn't just build a thing, you co-created the solution architecture with the client, which means you were doing business analysis and process design before you ever wrote a line of anything. The client didn't know what they needed, you helped them figure that out, and then you built it.

That's two distinct skill sets that most people can only do one of. And the scope creep you described where they kept adding because they realized you could deliver, that tells me you built trust fast. Clients only do that when they feel like someone actually understands what they're trying to accomplish, not just executing a ticket. So that right there, that comment that he just said, you know, use your discernment. Claude doesn't know that.

Clients creep up on scope all the time, but again, you know, he's giving me good information. So my honest pushback though, two months for that scope with a moving target is actually pretty tight. Don't undersell that. When you talk about this project, you are currently framing it as I built a form or something closer to what it actually was. Because if you're saying I built a form, we need to fix that. Also one more thing, I want to know before you give me the next project,

Did you document the process or create any training materials for the administrators or did you hand it off? I created training videos for the administrators as I always do.

All right, so you get the point. So Claude comes back with, you know, multiple comments. He pushes you. He asks for more. These are things that you wouldn't think to ask yourself. You just kind of take for granted what it is you do because a lot of times, especially as black women, we're such workers, we're such doers, we don't see the value in what we bring to the table. So AI can really work in our benefit to help us figure out, hey,

this shit is pretty valuable what I'm doing and you know it's kind of like my sister plays the piano I used to play the piano as a kid I couldn't get it like it just really was hard for me she was always brilliant at it and she still plays she thinks I can play I cannot play I it's like it's like blocked from my head I mean I've sat down and played really impressive stuff but

If you asked me to do it right now, I could not. It was very, very difficult because it's so easy for her. She just assumes that it's easy for me or anybody else and it's not. And that's the point I'm trying to make to you guys. A lot of times we think because things come easy to us or it's sort of our jam, anybody could do it. And Claude will help you think out of that so that you can sell yourself, that you can really ⁓ extract value instead of just tasks.

All right.

And he's some other stuff. He says, what do you, he's saying when you go out for the new work, how are you currently introducing yourself? Claude, I don't want to get into all that right now. I just want to give you the projects so that you can give me my value. Can we move on or do you really need to know the answer to that question?

He said, fair enough, give me the next project. another thing when you're using him, don't let him get off in the weeds on you. Claude does this. think ChatGPT is even more wordy than Claude and you will be all off on the weeds. I came on here for a specific reason. So keep him on track because you can veer. Okay. I'm to give him my next project. Okay. I'm going to give you one more project.

I worked with a test prep company for 11 years. When they came to me, they were schlepping around DVDs and hard copy books all over the country and selling them at conferences. Now again, guys, I just wanted to stop and talk to you over this one. I'm talking some more about another project that I'm doing and just give you some more tips when it comes to using Claude, especially the audio.

every single detail that you can think of. I was recording a video and in the interest of time, I didn't want to take it too far because I obviously want you guys to watch and listen to the end so you can get the most out of the video that you can get. But give it as many details as you possibly can. And the reason that you want to do that is, first of all, you're not going to overwhelm it with details. You're not going to get him saying, wait, what?

What did you say? He's not gonna do that. So again, as many details as you can remember, if you have to pause and think about it a little bit, he just waits. So just become comfortable with talking to him and you'll realize that all of your word vomit, if you will, doesn't go lost on Claude. He understands it, he can make sense of it so that you can get a clear answer from him.

Hopefully that's enough information to give you what we needed, just so many things, but that just gives you the top line.

Here comes Claude. Now Claude will make you feel good, but take out of it what you need. Stop. I need you to hear something. You just described an 11 year digital transformation of an entire business model. You didn't build them a website. You moved them from physical media and in-person everything to a fully automated e-commerce driven virtual learning operation. And when their entire revenue model collapsed during COVID, you pivoted them in real time with your idea, not theirs.

That virtual conference wasn't just a creative workaround. That was business continuity strategy. You kept a company alive. And the POS to LMS to user provisioning pipeline you built, where someone swipes a card at a conference and their entire account ecosystem is waiting in their inbox by the time they get home, that's not a WordPress plugin. That's automated customer onboarding at the point of sale. That's something enterprise SaaS companies charge six figures to implement.

Here's what I'm seeing across both projects. And it's very clear. You are in the business of translating organizational chaos into operational systems at scale. You don't just build things, you diagnose what's actually broken, design the solution, build it, and then make sure humans can actually use it. Now I have to ask you something directly and I want you to think about it honestly. Do you have any idea what you've been undercharging? Yes. Okay, so.

I'm just going to leave it there. ⁓ Because this is the aha moment that I want you guys to have because I've said this on my videos in the past. I have struggled with undercharging pricing is is an issue to me less now than it used to be. But pricing has been an issue. And in the last couple years, few years actually,

I have stopped charging for my time and charging for the value that I bring to the table. And this is the way I want you guys to think of it. And this is the value that I want you guys to find in the things that you are doing. Not only is it going to help you to sell yourself better,

on the job, it's gonna help you to sell your services better if you're looking to do fractional work, if you're looking to do freelance work, if you're in your own company, if you have your own business. This is so, so important, you guys. So in the interest of time, Claud has said some great things. He's made me feel great about myself. He's made me, and not in a bullshitty way, like he's pointed out like,

I don't just build websites. I didn't just do a form. I really architected that thing, right? And he could do the same thing for you, utilize it to help you figure that out. So in the interest of time, I'm going to ask Claude between the two projects, what are the commonalities that he sees? What values does he see me bringing to the table? So let me ask. Hey Claude, so when you...

First of all, yes, I know I've been completely undercharging. I'm a work in progress. But between the two projects that I gave you, what commonalities do you see? What trends do you see in the way that I work, in the way that I think, in the skills and the value that I bring to the table when talking about myself as a professional and what I can do for an organization?

And I'm going to submit. So Claude says, OK, here's what I see clearly across both projects. And I want you to notice that these aren't tasks. These are patterns. You are always called in when the problem is bigger than the client understands. Hmm. That's so interesting. I didn't even think about that. I actually just ⁓ been on a project that the guy was so confused about. He thought he ran me away. And I'm like, I got it. OK. In both cases, the client thought they had a simple need, a form.

a way to sell DVDs, what they actually had was a broken or non-existent operational system. You were the person who saw the real problem and didn't just execute the small task. You think in systems, not features. You never built a thing in isolation. Every piece you built connected to another piece. The form connects to Google Drive, connects to the admin dashboard, connects to the exception workflow. The POS connects to the LMS, connects to the user provisioning, connects to the classroom.

You instinctively think about the entire ecosystem and how data and people move through it. You are a translator. You sit between the business brain and the technical execution. You speak both languages fluently. That is genuinely rare. Most people are one or the other. That is actually true. Don't let it get to your head, guys. Just use your discernment. ⁓

You can sit with a program director or a small business owner who has zero technical vocabulary and extract what they actually need, then go build it. You protect people from their own blind spots. The flagged issues before launch, the virtual conference idea, the training videos, these weren't in your job description. You did them because you saw what was coming and you handled it. You deliver adoption, not just delivery. A lot of builders hand off and walk.

you hand off and make sure it works for the humans using it. Here's the one word I'd put on all of it. You are an operational architect. You build the infrastructure that lets organizations actually function and scale. Does that resonate or does something feel off? Okay, and I will leave it at that. mean, I mean, and I've done this exercise with these projects and a few others, and I did not get that from

him before, but it's worth doing and it's worth doing, you know, after every project and really understanding what it is we do. We can be so close to it and we can downplay it so much because we have been conditioned to do so that we don't understand how amazing we are. We don't realize the scale and the level of brilliance that we bring to the table. That's

All I'm trying to get you guys to understand black women have been treated in such a way and handled in such a way. And we talked about this that they discount you. So we don't, we don't say, look at me. I'm I'm, did this amazing thing, you know, and again, we're there for a reason, but we need to understand how important it is for us to be there. And when

when it's not being shown us how important it is for us to be there, we need to take our value and ourselves and walk over to the place that does value what we do, that does appreciate what we bring to the table. So hopefully this has been helpful to someone, because I mean, I'm doing this live, but it's so funny because I, you know, I didn't know what.

it was going to say. mean, I had an idea because I've done this exercise before, but I just wanted to share with you guys because I know a lot of people are so afraid and I just talk. I just talk. don't say anything special. I don't have to be fancy with it. I just say what I need to say. You just get on there and talk the way you talk and you let it talk back to you and tell you what it thinks. Now, of course, use your discernment, know, set it up.

so that it's not just saying yes to everything you're giving it. Set it up so it's challenging you to think deeper, to think harder, to really dig in. All right? But when you know your value, you can make more money, you'll have more opportunity. Because what did Bernie Fraser say? A lot of times we don't even know what we want. We don't know what we want. But once you know what you want and you know what your value is, then what's stopping you?

If it's not at the job, it's going to be doing your own thing or at another job or wherever it is that is looking for what you provide. Right? I know this was a little bit of a different type of video, but I just have been talking to so many people lately and hearing how they don't know where to start or, you know, they're afraid to jump out there. I have to tell you when I

As a business owner, when I first started, it's really tough, especially if you're stepping outside of your current field of expertise. But no matter what you decide to do, even if I decided to go out and, I don't know, sell houses, I could definitely connect the dots on the value I bring in my tech business to value that I can provide when selling houses. I just know I can, but...

We can't do that unless we know what that value is. Does that make sense? ⁓ Yeah, I don't know how you guys are gonna respond to this one, ⁓ but hopefully it helps. And I really want you guys to take some time and do this, even if you're not trying to necessarily move into a new position right now, it doesn't matter. You should still know because...

People will try you and test you and you need to know that inside. So even when people talk to you a certain kind of way, they try to handle you a certain type of way, you understand your value. It's so important. And this isn't going to be like I'm saying the end all be all when it comes to that, but it just helps get the juices flowing in your brain and it helps you start to think about, yeah, yeah, I did that. I did this. Yeah, I did that thing too.

It also helps you start to create that documentation of all of the things that you've done. If you haven't started doing that already, that was one of the shifts that we talked about in that video as well. Keeping track of what it is that you've done so that you don't forget when the time comes. So guys, I hope that helped somebody. I just wanted to...

Come on and say that we've got to shift into value thinking. I've changed the board. I'll be changing it more often. ⁓ Quit getting ready to get ready. We'll come back. And I mean, that is just our motto over here. But we do need to shift into value thinking because people will try to put you in a box. People will try to limit you. People will try to tell you where you should go. This is what you need to do. You know, when I worked... ⁓

Like I said, in advertising, people really tried to minimize the stuff that I would do. Like, ⁓ you're only capable of this because they said so. No, no, it doesn't work like that. You determine your value. And the only way that you're going to be able to do that is by identifying that on your own, not allowing somebody else to do that. You let Claude, AI, somebody, a friend help you.

Determine your value so you can come out here and be like, you know what? Look at me. I'm Look at me. Look at me, you know, and it doesn't have to be like all this like I said, you don't have to You know be posting on tik-tok and Instagram all the time I'm not saying that but I'm just saying you have to know how to communicate what it is you bring to the table and I know there's some pushback. There's some resistance

to utilizing AI and AI ⁓ is a really, really legit tool. So I'm trying to bring you guys some options so maybe you can start to see a light, maybe a different light than you thought. Some of you guys feel stuck, you feel like you don't know what to do. ⁓ You might feel like you don't wanna be doing all this online, which I totally understand. You don't wanna be an influencer, you don't wanna be a creator.

I get it. I don't really want to be an influencer in that way. ⁓ I want to create and talk to you guys, but everything isn't for everybody. But being able to figure out your way forward is what I'm here for. So helping black women move it forward, this is one of the ways that I have been using to move it forward. I use it for everything, even the Help Me concept coming on here and talking to you guys.

Hopefully that helps guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. yeah, leave me some questions. Let me know. ⁓ Leave me some comments. Let me know how you guys are using AI, if you're using AI. ⁓ What it is that you're using it for, how you're using it. There's a lot of talk and you gotta walk before you can run, before you can fly. So this is a way to start walking toward your future, all right?

Alright guys, thank you so much. ⁓ Leave me some comments, like, share, subscribe, all the things, and I will see you in the next episode.