Week 21 · May 28, 2026

The cutting edge of POD
runs through this room.

Two-hour cohort call. 73 active brands. $1.56M in cohort sales last week. The most leveraged group of POD operators on the planet right now, sharing what works in real time.
$1.56M
Cohort sales · W21
73
Active brands
$132K
Top brand · single week
5
Live polls today
The mission This room is the most leveraged group of POD operators in the game. We share what's working. We learn from each other. We ship more designs, more ads, more revenue. Together. Claude is the leverage. Sales is the scoreboard.
01

Agenda.

Two hours. Four sections. Five polls along the way. Times are soft.

SECTION 1
Open
~15 min
SECTION 2
Scorecard review
~40 min
SECTION 3
Claude
~45 min
SECTION 4
Action items + Q&A
~20 min
02 · Before we dig in

You are not behind.

Claude Code at this scale is six months old. Half the people you think are ahead of you started two weeks ago. We're figuring this out together. Every share and every shipped design helps the whole group move forward. Today is not a test. It is a tune-up.
Everything we cover today comes back to one question: did your Claude work translate into more designs launched and more ads launched this week? If yes, share how. If no, the room is here to help you change something.
POLL 1 Brainstorm · synthesized live
One thing you tried with Claude this week that's working.
One sentence. Doesn't matter how small. We're going to put them all on screen and look for patterns.
03 · Scorecard headline

$1.56M last week. The cohort keeps climbing.

$1.56M
Combined cohort sales · W21
Highest quarter on record
59
Brands above $0 this week
Most active week of the quarter
$132K
Top single-brand week
Alexandra Baia · Dolce Reverie
2.46
Cohort blended MER
$1 spent → $2.46 back

Quarter trajectory · cohort weekly sales W1 → W21

W1W2W3W4W5W6W7 W8W9W10W11W12W13W14 W15W16W17W18W19W20W21
04 · Trending up this week

Biggest jumps from last week.

W20 to W21. Real receipts.

↑
Pierre Luc & Marie-Elise
Sawdust Style
+208%$7.3K → $22.6K
↑
Peter Heckman
HistoreeTees
+147%$9.8K → $24.2K
↑
Joanne Schmidt
PuppyJo
+94%$2.2K → $4.3K
↑
Saleem Sisalem
Watermello
+71%$4.7K → $8.0K
↑
Aaron Bowersock
GG Tees
+66%$6.9K → $11.4K
↑
Steve Brigden
SLBMoto
+53%$4.1K → $6.3K
↑
Geert-Jan Hendriks
Labs of Love
+46%$13.2K → $19.2K
05 · Where the cohort is

Three buckets. One move each.

Split by W21 sales. Average inputs side by side. Find yours, then jump to the action items at the end.

Scaling

Top tier · 19 brands
$38.5K
Avg sales
19.9
Avg designs / wk
37.9
Avg ad tests / wk
The moveFind more winners. Push spend on what's working. Don't drop input cadence.

Holding

Mid tier · 20 brands
$11.8K
Avg sales
12.6
Avg designs / wk
27.9
Avg ad tests / wk
The moveShip 20+ designs this week. That's the threshold to break out.

Optimizing

Lower tier · 20 brands
$5.0K
Avg sales
11.8
Avg designs / wk
20.1
Avg ad tests / wk
The moveClose Claude this week. Just ship. Inputs first, tools later.
POLL 2 Vote · pick one
Which bucket are you in this week?
  • Scaling — finding winners and pushing budget
  • Holding — steady but not breaking out
  • Optimizing — rebuilding the input engine
  • Not sure / off the chart

Personalized scorecard reviews dropping this weekend.

Every active member gets a one-page diagnostic. Your #1 constraint, the leading indicator that explains it, and the move to make next. Watch your Slack.

PRESENTER · SCREEN-SHARE

Open the scorecard review example.

Show the room what their personalized review will look like Sunday. Walk through one member's diagnostic so they know what to expect when it lands in Slack.

~/Code/WeScale-EA/output/scorecard-reviews/w21-test.html
06 · Catching up

Where we left off.

Quick connect-the-dots so today builds on what you already have. We're not redoing any of it.

Last week's workshop

  • Mindset is 80% of the battle. Quiet the noise first.
  • Skills, agents, workflows · they're all just chats. Don't overthink it.
  • Wand vs Wizard. The wand is a commodity. Your taste and judgment are not.
  • Every use of AI is one of 4 shapes. Add, Augment, Automate, Analyze. All four move the scorecard.
  • Everything ties back to the scorecard. No exceptions.

The Claude course · live now

  • Lessons 1-3: setup. Claude Code, your brand repo, your API keys locked in.
  • Lesson 4: bulk design variations.
  • Lesson 5: drive skill-builder yourself.
  • Lesson 6: the seven-day challenge.
  • Lesson 7: the 5-minute Monday ad brief.
  • Lesson 8: the simple design pipeline.
  • + 6 habits cheat sheet for fast reference.
Today builds on both. The wins, the trends, the two new course lessons we're dropping this week, they all come from the same playbook. If you missed the workshop or you're behind on the course, you're still good. Today stands alone too.
07 · What you built with Claude this week

Real wins from the cohort.

Pulled straight from your scorecard notes. Not theory. You did these. Use whatever's useful for your own setup.

Dave Shaffer · Apocalypse Club

Got Claude making designs. Two fast sellers already.

Steve Brigden · SLBMoto

Two days on Claude, then shipped 5 apps to launch designs and ads. Sales up 53%.

Jen Ae · Wandering Owl Adventure

Had Claude build her international catalog. Emails kicking in now.

Sal Presti · Echos of Antiquity

Built a P&L tool that beats profitcalc. Overhead coming down.

Lori Scott · Dog Wear Studio

Her words: putting a week of Claude in for a lifetime of savings.

Peter Heckman · HistoreeTees

Learning Claude to replace paid tools. Sales up 147% this week.

08 · The trend that matters

It's still inputs. Not time in Claude.

Designs launched per week vs sales. Pulled from the W21 cohort scorecard. The pattern is clean.

Avg designs launched per week, by bucket

r = 0.36designs ↔ sales correlation
19.9
Scaling tier
$38.5K avg sales
12.6
Holding tier
$11.8K avg sales
11.8
Optimizing tier
$5.0K avg sales
Scaling brands launch 60% more designs than the other two tiers. Time spent inside Claude is not what shows up in the data. Designs shipped does.
POLL 3 Vote · pick one
How many new designs did you launch last week?
  • 0 — none
  • 1 to 9
  • 10 to 19
  • 20 or more
09 · The split inside the cohort

Claude paying off vs Claude eating your inputs.

Same scorecard. Same tooling. Two outcomes. Notes pulled verbatim from the W21 scorecard column.

Camp A · Paying off

Claude work converted to ads and designs in the same week.
  • Dave Shaffer"Working on claude code solutions to create designs more efficiently. The last two weeks have created two fast sellers."
  • Steve Brigden"Spent two days really developing the Claude Code, and then I created five apps to launch and design ads." Sales up 53%.
  • Jen Ae"Had to pause uploading new designs for a few days while Claude created my international catalog. Emails starting to gain traction."
  • Sal Presti"The P&L tool fully replaces profitcalc and is a bit more accurate. Will lower my overhead further with an email tool."
  • Lori Scott"Putting a week of claude for a lifetime of savings."

Camp B · Eating inputs

Claude time replaced input time. Revenue followed.
  • Alex Chao"Balancing personal life, business, claude code, designs, ads. I haven't been able to get the inputs that I need to be pushing." Sales -59% over the quarter.
  • Craig McGinty"I've really been slowed down with my inputs as I spent a good chunk of time with Claude building systems for ads and designs."
  • Trevor Welsh"I need to launch more designs. I was busy with claude."
  • Bonnie B"Spent a lot of the last week building out claude code processes."
  • Sal Presti (also said)"Have been getting distracted by claude code."
The pattern. Two camps. Same tooling. The difference is whether the Claude work showed up as designs and ads this week or stayed inside Claude. We want every member in Camp A by next call.
10 · The right mental model
THE PRINCIPLE

Claude is not a new tool you're adding on.

It is an extension of you. The best way to operate is to pretend Claude doesn't exist and run your business the same way. Then, when you go to take an action, route it through Claude instead of doing it yourself.

WRONG FRAME

Claude as a product

"What can Claude do for me?" Treats Claude as a separate system to study, configure, optimize. The work becomes about Claude, not about your business.

→

RIGHT FRAME

Claude as you

"What was I about to do anyway? Do it through Claude." Same business decisions. Same inputs. Just a faster, more durable way to execute them.

If the question is "how do I get Claude to do X", you're in the wrong frame. The real question is: what action was I about to take, and how do I route it through Claude so it ships faster?
11 · Where to point Claude

Top-line revenue. Designs and launching ads.

Overhead reduction is real, but it's going to get easier on its own. Pointing Claude at software replacement is a low-priority game.

DO POINT IT HERE

  • Generating designs · the cohort's #1 leading indicator
  • Launching ads · creating and pushing, not just analyzing
  • Email creatives · campaign + flow content faster
  • Catalog expansion · variants, sizes, internationals

DON'T MAKE THIS YOUR FOCUS

  • Replacing paid tools · fine if it's a side-effect, not a goal
  • Building internal dashboards · pretty, but ROAS doesn't move
  • Process docs for yourself · the docs do not sell shirts
  • "Just exploring" · 4 hours of exploring = 0 designs shipped
12 · The two skills to build first

Designs, then ad launching.

Everything else gets easier when these two are dialed.

SKILL 1 · The design edit (live demo)

The simplest working pattern in the cohort right now: take a winning design, ask Claude to edit it, route the prompt to GPT image 2. No fancy pipeline. No multi-agent orchestration. Just edit, render, ship.

  1. Open Claude in your design folder
  2. Pull a known winner as the seed · for the demo we use a Sloth Hiking Club design
  3. Drop in the design-edit prompt · gives Claude the brand, tone, and output format up front
  4. Ask Claude to edit the seed · "make it about [new niche / new joke / new vibe]"
  5. Claude routes the edit through GPT image 2 · returns a finished design ready to upload
  6. Upload to Shopify, push to Meta, repeat
PAIRED COURSE LESSON · NEW THIS WEEK

Lesson · Design workflow

Walks the cohort through this exact pattern with the working prompts, example outputs, and the failure modes. Going live in the mastermind course this week.

PRESENTER · SCREEN-SHARE

Open the new Design Workflow lesson.

Walk the room through the new course lesson. Show the working prompt, the example outputs, and where it lives in the course site so they can come back to it this week.

~/Code/WeScale-EA/mastermind-course-site/ · new lesson tile

SKILL 2 · Ad launching

Generating ads is half the job. Launching them is what moves ROAS. Most members get stuck between "I have new creative" and "it's running in Meta."

  • Pick the winner format · static, weavy, UGC video
  • Use Claude to brief the creative · headline, hook, body, CTA
  • Have Claude launch it · via meta-ads CLI, not by hand in Ads Manager
  • Don't sit on creative · launched beats polished
POLL 4 Brainstorm · synthesized live
One Claude workflow you want help building before next week's call.
Be specific. "Help with Claude" is too broad. "Help me build a script that pulls my top 10 designs from Shopify and asks Claude to make 3 variants of each" is gold.
13 · Where we're going together

Four phases. Today we're in phase zero.

This is the multi-month arc. Not every member moves at the same pace. The phase you're in determines what your next move looks like.

PHASE 0

Fundamentals

Learn how Claude Code works. Get comfortable with prompts, sessions, the editor.

YOU ARE HERE
PHASE 1

Tool / extension

Use Claude to actively push designs and ads at higher volume than you do today. Same business decisions, just faster.

PHASE 2

Thought partner

Use Claude to analyze your store, your ads, your funnel. Iterate on workflows. Sharper decisions.

PHASE 3

Automations

Build closed loops. Pipelines that run without you in the loop for routine work. Your time goes back to strategy.

PAIRED COURSE LESSON · NEW THIS WEEK

Lesson · Meta analysis

Live this week. How to use Claude to analyze your Meta ads account, surface the winners and the leaks, and brief the next round of creative. Pairs with the design lesson — analysis informs what you ship next.

PRESENTER · SCREEN-SHARE

Open the new Meta Analysis lesson.

Walk the room through the new lesson. Show how it surfaces ad-account winners and leaks, and how it briefs the next creative round. This is what Phase 2 looks like in practice.

~/Code/WeScale-EA/mastermind-course-site/ · new lesson tile
POLL 5 Vote · pick one
Which phase describes where you are right now?
  • Phase 0 — still learning the fundamentals
  • Phase 1 — using Claude for designs and ads
  • Phase 2 — using Claude as a thought partner
  • Phase 3 — automations running
14 · This week's action items

One move per bucket. Pick yours.

If you do nothing else from today, do this.

If you're scaling

  • Find one more winner this week. Use Claude to brief 5 variant designs of your top seller.
  • Push spend on the winning ads you already have. Don't let polishing become a delay.
  • Don't drop input cadence below 20 designs / week while you're scaling.

If you're holding

  • Ship 20+ new designs this week. That's the threshold to break out.
  • Launch every design as a static ad test. Cheap signal beats clean data.
  • Use Claude for design edits only. Don't build tools this week.

If you're optimizing

  • Close Claude this week. Open it once a day for design help, that's it.
  • Get back to 10+ designs shipped, no exceptions.
  • Re-engage the email flow that worked best in March. Don't rebuild, reactivate.

The mission, one more time.

We're the cutting edge of POD plus AI. We share what's working. We ship together. Claude is the leverage. Sales is the scoreboard. If your Claude work this week did not show up as designs launched or ads launched, change something. Next week, we come back and share what worked.

15 · Open floor

Q&A.

Mic open. This is the room you came here for. Share what's working. Ask what's not. Twenty minutes.

Scorecard questions

Your numbers, your bucket, the diagnostic you'll get Sunday.

Claude questions

Stuck on a workflow. Want help on the design edit. New course lesson follow-ups.

Mindset / direction

Big picture, where to focus, what to ignore.