Buddy Rathmell

@patrickbetdavid Give people dignity.

What is the biggest lesson you learned from your father growing up? Share 👇🏽

I used to scroll YouTube every morning looking for something worth watching while I workout. Sometimes I'd find something good but usually I'd waste 10 minutes picking, then half-watch a mediocre video. So I gave my agent a skill that doom scrolls YouTube for me. It uses the YouTube API to search for videos based on my projects and calendar. Each video gets its own page in a @NotionHQ database with a learning exercise that connects the content to whatever I'm actually working on. And it's ready every morning before I go down to the gym. An example of how powerful this is: I'm speaking at a conference this week, so it started pulling public speaking videos. It knows I've been deep in @claudeai Cowork, so those topics have shown up too. All from my project file and calendar. I didn't tell it to do any of that. This took about 30 min to set up, and has already made my workouts more efficient and the videos I watch far more actionable.

AI is sort of like money... it just makes you more of what you already are.

@theaaron @ChatGPT @claudeai This is awesome. Thanks, Aaron.

If you are a @ChatGPT refugee exploring @claudeai This is what I wish someone would have told me when I first set up Claude Cowork: I would load up a session of Claude Cowork and immediately start prompting like I’m still in a chat app. Ask a question, get an answer, close the tab, start over next time. That works fine. But it's not how Cowork is designed to be used. The difference with Cowork is that it maintains context across sessions AND it can work locally with your files. But you have to give it context first. Three files make the difference: about-me.md: who you are, what you do, your constraints working-preferences.md: how you want Claude to work with you voice-and-tone.md: how you actually sound when you write Cowork reads the relevant context before every task which means I don't need to repeat myself or prompt from scratch. The setup takes 10-15 minutes if you do it manually. Or you can use this: Guided setup (free): github.com/a-makelky/clau… Paste the prompt, answer the questions, get your context files generated automatically. Drop them into Cowork and you're done. I'm not sharing my actual context files (they're too specific to my work to be valuable to others anyways). But this setup creates personalized workspaces for whatever you're doing.

@JackieHirsch_ Yeah, I imagine that is often difficult. Anytime you can get it or after any agreements expire even going back to get reviews from clients ten years ago would be great.

@buddy7 Due to confidentiality of the deal that probably won’t happen. It’s why I don’t announce with names. Buyers and sellers like I keep it quiet.

Just Sold $12 MM Materials testing business. Contact us to see how we can sell your business.

@JackieHirsch_ Getting the seller (and possibly the buyer too) to do a 30 second video at some point would be great as well.

@buddy7 Thanks Buddy. I need to figure out how to post about it. I know you’re working on it on your end.

⬇️ ⬆️ ⬇️ ⬆️ ⬇️ ⬆️ ⬇️ ⬆️🚀

@BPD1776 I'm thinking I should relaunch stopslavery.org. I'm looking for a chairman. 25% off right now. only $7500 a month. :-)

@buddy7 I mean…I donate to the charities I’m on the board of. But this is kind of wild to have it spelled out as a menu.

Saw a non-profit board that I thought might be interesting... They were welcoming submissions/requests to join the board, which is odd to me. Intrigued on two levels...is this real/scam? How so? I inquired. This is what I found: It's an explicit pay to participate board.

@BPD1776 Yeah, I was on the board once where they expected us to give and raise a certain amount but nothing like this on the paying side.

@jordan_ross_8F cowork

I've worked with 1,500+ agency owners. My clients have added over $500M in annual combined revenue. And the #1 thing that used to eat their week alive was work a $15/hr VA should've been doing. Competitive research. Client reports. Landing pages. Email drafts. SOPs. Cowork does all of it. One prompt. You step away. You come back to a finished file. The problem: most agency owners can't set it up. Not because they're not smart — because nobody walked them through it. So I built a document you upload directly into any LLM. The LLM reads it then coaches you through setup, one step at a time, confirms you're good before moving on. No YouTube tutorial. No course to sit through. Just an LLM holding your hand until your AI teammate is live and knows how you work. By the end: — It knows your voice — It's connected to your tools — It's producing finished work you can send Comment "COWORK" and I'll DM it to you. Must be following to receive it.

@kritikakodes Where do you store documents?

This is all you need: - Claude for coding - Vercel for deploying - Supabase for backend - Namecheap for domain - Stripe for payments - n8n for agents It's not that deep, bro. read more...

@Lat3ntG3nius @noahkagan Does Claude team let you store documents? how do teams handle that part?

@noahkagan The scattered tools problem is mostly a coordination failure. One shared Claude account fixes most of it. The bigger result from giving everyone access is not productivity -- it is surface area. Tasks that were being avoided because friction was too high suddenly get done.

Before you stake your reputation on an AI product you vibe coded, think long and hard about defensibility and moat 12 months from now when AI has ended all our lives and no one has money anymore

@TennisonEddie Nice. My wife wants to improve the rental we have locally in case our kids want to live in our area long term.

@buddy7 The new one. My kids are going to need it for a couple of months when their lease runs out next month, and then it will go into rental for a while.

Spent the day emptying the boxes that accumulated in the living room in my absence. Assembled the Lovesac couch. Final configuration is still pending. Assembled the rest of the TV....not quite done. Tomorrow I start excavating for a 12X12 patio in the backyard to park the hot tub. So far so good.

@SuccessWithJake Congratulations! Love it.

My wife just passed her US citizenship exam. She moved here from Canada 7 years ago, raised 3 kids, and passed it on the first try. Meanwhile I’ve been here 41 years and couldn’t tell you half of what she studied. Couldn’t be more proud. Welcome home, babe. 🇺🇸

@buddy7 For sure. That one win gave me the confidence to try other things. The best thing I could have done was not to quit.

I failed at my first business for 14 months straight. I went all in on SMMA (FB Ads) after watching a course that made it look easy. Followed every step and came out the other side with zero clients. No revenue or traction. Just time gone. But I didn't stop. I bought a second course from a different coach. The focus was slightly different: posting content for clients. Immediately hired a VA and a graphic designer before I could fully justify the expense. Then I went back to work. 5 clients in the door that year. Made my first $5k in revenue within 2 months. One of those clients stayed with me for over 2 years. Quitting after the first failure is the most expensive decision a founder can make. And I refused to make it.