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Allison came to me after taking one of my classes. Her request was simple.

"I need help building a presentation with AI."

Her contract at the university was ending in 30 days. She needed to land her next opportunity. She'd built a deck in Gamma to pitch herself for project management roles at other institutions.

She wanted prompts. Tips. A better tool.

I asked if we could talk for 15 minutes first.

What her deck actually looked like.

She showed me what she'd built. It had all the information. But it was a wall of text.

No clear problem statement. No story. The customer had to dig to figure out what she was offering. The offer wasn't black and white - fuzzy scope, unclear pricing.

Sales decks are skim-worthy assets. Quick scan. Problem clear. Offer clear. Yes or no.

Look at any big company - Google, Apple, whoever. Their pitch materials don't make you work to understand them.

Allison's deck made people work. That's why it wasn't converting.

The question that changed everything.

"Do you have a productized offer, or are you selling custom projects each time?"

She paused. Custom projects. Every time.

That's the problem. When you sell a custom scope, buyers can't say yes or no. They say, "Let me think about it." Sales cycles drag. You compete on hourly rates. You're a vendor, not a solution.

Her deck said, "Hire me." It listed credentials. Experience. Past projects.

That's job seeker positioning. It puts the buyer in control. They decide the scope, timeline, and budget. You negotiate from weakness.

She didn't have a presentation problem. She had a positioning problem.

The mandate she hadn't named.

I asked more questions. As she talked, the real mandate revealed itself.

HBCUs lose $2.3B annually in potential grant funding. Why? Poor program management. Professors are teachers, not business operators. No systems. No infrastructure. Proposals fail on compliance, not merit. Grants slip through cracks. Faculty burn out on admin work.

Allison knew this world. She'd lived it. She had the expertise to solve it.

But she was packaging herself as a contractor looking for work. Not a strategist with a solution.

Everyone has a mandate. You might not have named yours yet.

Maybe your leader handed it to you. "Figure out AI adoption." Now you're on the hook to deliver something you don't fully understand.

Maybe it's internal. Stay relevant. Prove value. Don't get automated out.

Maybe it's personal. Use AI to unlock capabilities you didn't have before. Better opportunities. Higher leverage.

Allison had all three. Contract ending. Career pressure. A vision for something bigger than a job.

She just hadn't connected them yet.

Thinking first. Then the build.

We built her offer before we touched any tool.

Three tiers based on the problem she actually solves:

Now she's not saying, "Hire me for a project." She's saying, "Here's what I solve, here's what it costs, pick one."

Buyers can say yes or no. That shortens sales cycles.

Once the thinking was done, I directed Claude:

"You are a senior UX designer at Google and a copywriting expert. Review this presentation. Go to her website. Build a playbook first - the strategy she needs to execute. Then build a PowerPoint presentation that considers her brand colors, themes, and growth marketing. Build offers tied to the problem she solves. Ask any follow-up questions you need."

That's not prompting. That's directing.

Claude asked clarifying questions. I fed it what Allison told me. It built the playbook. Then the deck. Then a generator prompt so she can reuse it for any prospect.

15 minutes. But only because the thinking was done first.

What she walked away with.

A 384-line playbook. The 35-day close framework. Qualification criteria. Objection scripts. Email templates for every stage of the sale.

A deck generator prompt she can customize for any HBCU prospect.

A complete 15-slide presentation built around her productized offer - not generic consulting language, but a story that states the problem, shows the cost of inaction, presents the solution, and makes the ask clear.

She sent me a message after: "I got way more out of that than I expected."

She asked for help with a presentation. She left with a sales system.

This isn't just Allison.

I've done this same process repeatedly.

Two community members inside THINK School - same approach. Playbook plus skill to execute.

A chamber partnership - we built an 11-page strategy to go after AI infrastructure investments tied to four data centers being built in our area. Found the key players. Mapped the opportunities. Now we're building workforce programs with a university and community college, creating an AI infrastructure event, and local politicians are helping us pull it together.

Different contexts. Same process. Thinking first. Playbook second. Execution third.

The presentation was the last step. Not the first.

Most people reverse this.

They open the tool and start prompting. They ask AI to build the thing before they've figured out what the thing should say.

That's why they get generic outputs that don't convert.

Allison thought she needed a better presentation builder. She needed to name her mandate, build her offer, and create her playbook. The presentation built itself after that.

Tool users ask, "How do I make this thing?"

Strategists ask, "What problem am I solving and for whom?"

I started by thinking. Then I applied AI to execute. The playbook, the deck, the offer architecture - Claude built those fast.

But only because the thinking was done first.

You have a mandate too.

You might not have named it yet.

Maybe someone handed it to you. Maybe you feel it pressing from inside. Maybe you're watching the world change and wondering where you fit.

Allison's mandate was hiding behind a presentation request. Yours might be hiding behind a tool question, a project you're stuck on, a career pressure you haven't faced directly.

The playbook unlocks when you name it.

Not sure where you are?

Take the diagnostic. Find out if you're a Tool User, Builder, or Strategist.

Most people think they're further along than they are. See where you actually are and decide where you want to go.

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Marvin