Two years ago, I landed my first $8K client.

No AI agents. No automation workflows. Just me, a pitch, and three tools I knew how to use well.

Here's what my early stack looked like:

ChatGPT handled the research and helped me shape the copy.

Gamma.ai let me build a clean presentation I could actually send over and look professional doing it.

Canva gave me the visual assets to show the client what the work could look like before we ever started.

That package worked.

Not because the tools were fancy.

I just knew what I was trying to say and I used the simplest path to say it well.

Now the stack has evolved. And it’s hitting a lot different.

These are the tools I'm in every day right now:

Claude is my foundation. What makes it powerful for me specifically are Claude skills, which are custom instructions that can execute repeatable tasks without me having to think about it each time. I'm also getting into Claude Code, an agentic assistant that handles things in the background while I focus on what actually moves the needle.

Google Gemini connects directly to my Google workspace and YouTube. For someone who creates on Youtube and uses the Google ecosystem, that integration alone makes it worth using.

Nano Banana is the best image generation model out. I trust it for thumbnails and quick visual assets. Fast. Sharp. Saves time on client deliverables.

Wispr Flow is the dictation tool I used to write this very newsletter. If you have ever tried to batch content or capture ideas while also running a business, you already know why this matters.

Perplexity is where I go when I need actual data. It digs. It cites. It finds things that matter.

The tools are better now. But the move is the same: know what you want to communicate, find the simplest stack to get it done, and stay consistent long enough to get results.

AI improves every week. Literally.

Don’t settle for good enough.

You can access the entire world from your keyboard.

I'll be sharing more as I keep learning these agentic tools

Catch you in the next email,

~ Q

p.s. If you’re interested in learning some of these tools reply 'TOOLS' and tell me which one you want to learn first.

Curated by Q

Something to read: Currently listening to “The Wealth Choice” by Dennis Kimbro. A book about Black millionaires is better than scrolling the timeline.

Something to think about: What would change in your business if you could close your next client without a single sales call?

Something to watch: This one is deep. Perplexity just dropped its agent feature. I’m sharing because this is an easy way to understand “AI employees”. LMK what you think: