Anyone remember the white screen of death?
Back when I started blogging in 2009, I had to figure out how to code my own Wordpress site. Even so much as getting your posts to be centered in the side bar was a shitshow. I'd sit there in my friend's basement, where I lived in grad school, up at 11 o'clock at night, banging my head against the screen, Googling CSS, hunting through the theme files, and then inevitably deleting something very, very, very wrong. 🤣
I kept it black and white because I literally didn't know how to do anything else.
Behold:
Website #2
Eventually I earned enough money with my fun little blog to hire my first designer. Her name was Amanda. She was techy and cool and knew how to do all of that coding stuff! Plus, she had great hair. Short. Choppy. Black. Also the only person on earth who could change the word "the" on my homepage.
I think it cost me something like $3,500?
Website #3: $8,000
Hired a brilliant artist who did web design on the side. Oh my god, the artwork I had! But then, she got hired by Oprah, LOL. And I was lost at sea. 🌊 🚢 ⚓️
Website #4: $30,000
Entered my beige phase. Remember when all of Instagram was beige? Re-did entire site to be more “professional.” What a crock. Terrible mistake. Ended up hating it. It had the personality of a rice cake.
Website #5: $15,000
Hired a kick-ass branding firm to get my swagger back. Serious geniuses. But still needed to hire them (and torture them) for every little thing, including having PDFs designed. Do you know how much longer everything took back then???
Website #6: $5K/month x 2 years = $120,000
Worked with my seriously creative cool designer friend. Paid her $5K a month to work together for one day/week on design. It was a DREAM COLLAB. It was also an expensive dream. 🤣 And, of course, if I had an idea I wanted to throw out there immediately, I couldn't do it until the following Wednesday.
So I'm thinking I've spent around—total?—$176,500 on design throughout the years?
...and I still couldn't change a headline by myself.
The thing is: I like to move fast and break things. It's how I roll as a creator. But anytime I wanted to whip up something new, the design would *always* limit me. It was always a problem. Because, I mean, we ALL know how bad those generic landing page templates are. Even landing page platforms made specifically for that reason are so outdated. (I never understood this.) So anytime I wanted to create a new landing page, or test a new lead magnet, or advertise a new class, I'd have to send it to designers. Or risk completely tanking my conversions by using an amateur-hour template.
When Squarespace came along, us internet peeps were super relieved: finally, a drag and drop builder that was slick! The only other drag-and-drop builder on the market at the time was Elementor, for Wordpress, and god was it clunky. You couldn't make anything look good in Wordpress unless you were a developer. So, Squarespace was a sweet breath of fresh air. I launched several projects on it myself, without a designer, and was pretty pleased, but still, it didn't look that profesh. There were huge limitations. Changing the fonts can only do so much.
So when ShowIt came out with an even better drag-and-drop interface, one that let you actually put your text anywhere, and overlap elements, and tilt them sideways, and have full creative control, I was SMOKIN' THRILLED. But, there's just one little problem: I'm, ahem, still not a designer, hahaha. So, I still needed to buy templates. Granted, these templates were beautiful, nothing like templates of the past. I really love Tonic's templates to this day, they're lovely. Jen does a killer job. Howevahhhhh, they are still ~ $1,500 each, and you still have to be tech-savvy to make ShowIt look great, and you still have to re-build the entire page for mobile (iykyk), and you still kinda sorta end up looking like everyone else in your industry who bought the same template, lol.
But, okay, progress.
A win for those of us who are builders and creators and we want to ship ideas and iterate quickly.
THEN, something big happened: AI was born. Everyone was talking about how awesome AI was, but every time I'd get in there to play around, everything turned out so jenky. Was not impressed.
Until one day...
CLAUDE DESIGN LAUNCHED AND CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER.
Seriously. I did NOT see that coming. But, as soon as I tested it for the first time? I knew that this was a total game-changer. Finally (after seventeen years), a tool that would help me create amazing, professional-looking design, as if I had paid thousands for it, in a matter of moments. Like, jaw-dropping stuff that looked incredible.
And, even better? Because it could design a page well, and break up text beautifully, and make it all look super duper? I no longer needed 80,000 stock images, either, alternating left and right down the entire page. 🙄 (Which always look cheap and generic, no matter what kind.)
To show you what I mean, the first image below👇 is an actual current Kajabi template, and the one under it is what I was able to design myself, using no code, with Claude Design, as a complete non-designer moron.
(Yup, the email opt-in works, too.)
Then, just for fun?
I made multiple versions of that page, just to see what it was capable of. #technerdforlife
Would it make the same design over and over again? Would everything look and feel the same? Would it put the same elements in the same places? Would it resort to using the same kind of button styles?
Alas.
I gave it 3 different design directions using the same copy.
Here's what it gave me back:
WHAT???????
Like, what?????????
I was FLOORED.
Turns out, you can have Claude Design make you whatever you want.
In whatever colors you want.
In whatever style you want.
In whatever fonts you want.
You're a creative art director, now, not a stale loaf of bread. 🥖 (Whenever I can talk about bread, I MEAN.)
Literally. Took. Me. One. Hour. To. Make. All. Of. That.
Finally, the biggest thing that had always limited me, annoyed me, slowed me down, making it cumbersome to ship projects, hindering my growth?
FIXED, OVERNIGHT.
I could have never made something like that before.
So, ever since, I've been in major build mode. I'm building everything over here, lol. I cannot tell you how giddy I am over the ability to finally build things independently. To actually create. To use technology to make things.
And that, my internet friend, is precisely why I'm sending you this email.
I built you a new hands-on tech skills class, all about—drum roll!—how to make your own sales page with Claude Design. 🪄
Because you can't not know this. Not knowing how to use this is basically like not knowing how to send an email. Remember when people back in the day resisted "getting online?" Well, now everyone's online: it's just a matter of whether or not you're going to be an early adopter, or a late one.
And if you create anything online?
This is a skill you can't afford not to have.
*Especially* if you have zero design chops. Especially if you've been struggling with this part for years. And especially if you know that design matters for your conversions, for your credibility, for your professional image, and, ya know, for your confidence, too. Confidence is a biggie. Being proud to share your shit is a biggie.
No more wrestling with a clunky template that looks like it was made in '98.
No more feeling inferior because your sales pages look like an unshaved armpit.
No more feeling like teeny, tiny, small, moldy potatoes online.
You can be a big potato. A very big potato. With a very sexy sales page.
LET ME SHOW YOU THE WAYS.
What it is: A two-hour class where I build a sales page from a blank screen using Claude Design, and you build one right alongside me.
What you leave with: An advanced tech skill you will use every single day. And for every single project. Forever and ever, amen. (And, you'll also leave with a finished sales page, if you want to transform one you've already got, make something new, or just build out the bones for you to swap your real copy into later.)
"But my copy isn't ready." That's ok! You can just use dummy copy for now. This class is about learning a life-changing new design skill. You can tell Claude to change the words anytime.
What you'll actually learn: How to use Claude so it hands you the $10,000 agency version instead of the confused intern version. How to make a decent draft look expensive. How to get it live without touching code.
When it drops: Saturday, August 8th, 11am ET. Yours forever, stream it whenever. (This is not a live class. You do not need to show up at a certain time. That's just when it will be available in your account.)
What you need: A Claude Pro account, $20/month, for a skill that replaces the $1,500 template you were about to buy.
Price: $197 until 11am ET Saturday. $297 after that. Early bird gets big, juicy worms.
I cannot wait to see what you make!!!!
(You know I'll be pestering you to see your designs, right?!)
XOXO,
Ash
P.S. Seriously, I'm dubbing this "The #1 Skill of the Year" you need as a creator.
P.P.S. If you go to the checkout page, see the countdown timer and bullet points? I had Claude go in there and set that up for me while I was watering the tomatoes this morning. I hate fiddling with Kajabi.
P.P.P.S. Claude is also scheduled to go into my account on Saturday at 11am ET to change the price for me automatically. I don't have to worry about it. Don't have to remember. You want to talk about using technology to free up your time so you can actually go do interesting things and enjoy your life? This is a whole new level.