You open ChatGPT. You type “write me a newsletter.” You get generic garbage that sounds like everyone else on the internet.

Then you blame the AI.

Here’s the problem: You’re asking it to cook dinner without telling it what ingredients you have, what cuisine you like, or even what meal you’re making.

Without context, AI gives you generic output. With the right context? It gives you exactly what you need.

I’ve built a following of 800,000 people across platforms while working full time. I write weekly newsletters, create YouTube videos, and post shorts daily. And I do this in about 2-3 hours per week.

Here are five things you need to set up before AI can help you create content.

A Folder Structure That Organizes By Purpose

Most creators have content scattered across Google Drive, random Notion pages, desktop folders. That’s not AI-ready. That’s chaos.

My folder structure is simple. Each business has four folders:

Inputs - All the content you’ve ever created. Coaching transcripts, blog posts, YouTube scripts, course material. This is your raw material.

Prompt Playbooks - Reusable instructions for how to transform inputs into outputs (more on this in a second).

Outputs - The finished content AI helps you create.

Miscellaneous - Catch-all for anything else.

When I want to create a newsletter, I don’t start from scratch. I tell Claude: “Use my newsletter prompt playbook, pull from this coaching transcript, reference my brand voice guide.”

The AI has everything it needs. Not because it’s magic, but because I gave it context.

A Knowledge Base (Extracted, Not Written)

Your knowledge base tells AI what you talk about and what your business is about.

Most people hear “knowledge base” and think they need to write it from scratch. No.

Here’s what I actually did:

• I took all the content I’d already created - coaching transcripts, newsletter archives, YouTube scripts, short form videos.
• Then I fed it all to Claude and said: “Analyze this. Extract my voice, my frameworks, my story beats, my positioning. Create a knowledge base from what already exists.”

The AI synthesized everything I created into one document. It pulled out patterns I didn’t even realize I had.

If your content is scattered everywhere, you can’t do this. But if it’s organized, you can generate your knowledge base in about 30 minutes.

A Brand Voice Guide (Also Extracted)

Your brand voice guide tells AI how you talk. This is different from your knowledge base.

Same approach:

• I fed Claude 20 of my best newsletter issues, 10 of my best short form scripts, and five of my top YouTube scripts.
• Then I asked: “Analyze this content. What patterns do you see? What phrases do I use repeatedly? What’s my sentence structure? What do I avoid? Create a brand voice guide from what you observe.”

Now every piece of content references this guide. Same voice, same phrases, same style. Consistency without effort.

Prompt Playbooks (Your Iteration Patterns, Systematized)

Stop writing new prompts from scratch every time you want to create something. That’s reinventing the wheel.

A prompt playbook is a reusable set of instructions that tells AI exactly how to create a specific type of content.

Here’s how mine got built:

• I created my first newsletter with Claude.
• Went back and forth, gave feedback, refined it.
• Then I saved the entire conversation history.

Then I did it again for newsletter two. And three. And four. All the way up to twenty.

Then I told Claude:

The AI extracted a playbook from my own iteration patterns. Not theoretical best practices. My actual workflow, systematized.

That’s the key insight: A prompt playbook is just your iteration patterns turned into a blueprint.

Tools That See Everything

Most creators use ChatGPT in a browser. Copy, paste text. Attach files manually. Repeat context every conversation. That works, but it’s slow.

I use Claude Projects. Inside a project, you can add all your prompt playbooks, your top scripts, your brand voice guide, your knowledge base. Then the AI sees everything automatically. No more copy pasting, no more repeating context.

For capturing ideas, I use Wispr Flow for voice-to-text. I riff on an idea for five minutes, Wispr captures it as a transcript, then I drop it into Claude with my prompt playbook.

The Recap

1. Folder structure organized by purpose (inputs, playbooks, outputs)
2. Knowledge base extracted from your existing content
3. Brand voice guide extracted from your best work
4. Prompt playbooks built from your iteration patterns
5. Tools that see everything at once

That’s the system behind 800,000 followers and content that takes 2-3 hours a week.

To be clear, I don't advocate using AI slop. I reread everything AI drafts and polish it with my own words. I make sure it's grounded in my own knowledge base.

And if I want to experiment with new ideas instead of repurpose existing ideas (about 2/3 of the time), I'll riff on an idea out loud with Wispr Flow, have AI ask me follow-up questions to go deeper on the topic, and then have AI synthesize all of my thoughts in newsletters that will help people.

Hope this was helpful. What other systems are you interested in learning from me?

Preston