If you're a solo business owner and you've been tinkering with ChatGBT and you're starting to wonder, is Claude something I should look into? Well, in this podcast episode, I'm going to give you the breakdown all about Claude and Claude co-work and compare it to Chat GBT so you can make an informed decision. Stay tuned. Welcome to the Amplify Your Authority podcast. I'm your host, Marissa Shatterg. I'm so glad you're here. And I hope to give you 100% value as we talk about Claude and how it compares to ChatGPT. Now, I recently looked back at some journal entries I had and I read one that stood out. I had written down, I can't go at this pace. Something's got to give. Now that may resonate with you as a solo business owner because we wear many, many hats. We are creating content. We're creating social posts, we're creating courses and webinars and email sequences, and we're making all the business decisions as well. That's a lot of brain power. And so when AI was introduced in 2022, I jumped on board because I knew I needed help. I needed assistance. And Chat GBT has served me well. And I had already trained it to write in my voice, and we had pretty good, comfortable relationship. But it's not just about writing. When we look at AI, we have to think that this is artificial intelligence. This is technology that can help us with so much more than just answers to questions or just writing. So just this year, I decided to take a closer look at Claude because it added some new features. Claude Co work. So in order to help you understand Claude, I'm going to give you a little bit of background. Most of these language models have subscriptions. You can use the free version, but you kind of time out, you run out of time to use it. But in the paid versions, and they all run around 20 bucks for the first tier, it does a lot for that membership price, which in the beginning surprised me because this piece of technology can do so much, but it was still in its early stages, right? And so now it has evolved. So I think it's important to give you a little bit of background, context on Claude and just lightly compare it to ChatGPT because most people are a little familiar with ChatGPT. But before we get started, if you're watching this on YouTube, I would love it if you would subscribe and leave a comment. And if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform, I would love it if you leave a rating and review. So let's take a closer look. Claude is Anthropics flagship product built and founded by siblings, Dario and Daniela Albudea, along with other former OpenAI researchers in 2021. In 2022, the model had an internal version that was being trained and tested. And if you remember in 2022, that's when ChatGPT came out and everybody was, ooh, this is so cool, right? Well, Claude was still in training, and then in 2023, it publicly launched. In 2024, it launched what they call the Claude Family, which were the models that included Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku. In 2024 and 2025, Claude had gone through several revisions or versions, as well as ChatGPT. If you were using ChatGPT in 2025, you may recall there was an update, a new model, a change, at least every month, if not every couple of weeks. We were trying to keep up with all the changes and updates. In 2026, Claude introduced co-work. Now that's when I jumped on board and got my subscription, decided I'm going to take a closer look at Claude, and I'll explain why. Now, all these revisions, I know it feels like a lot, a change all the time. We are still in the beginning stages of working with artificial intelligence and this type of technology. And companies like Anthropic have big name investors. They have Amazon and Google behind them. And ChatGBT has Microsoft as one of their investors as well. So you know there's going to be more competition between these AI tools and there's going to be more features coming out. Now, will the price go up? Who knows? Maybe in the future. But this is an advantage for us because they are running this race and we're reaping the benefits because the tools are just getting better and better. So let's start by looking at the models. Now, these may change later, but this is what we have now as of the time of this recording. Opus is highly intelligent. It's best for hard problems, deep analysis, and complex code. Sonnet, it is a balance of smart and value. It's great for daily work, coding, long documents. And haiku is great for speed and low cost, which means quick answers, simple tasks, really easy to use. So these models, the more they think, the slower they are, but the more accurate the output. So you can use the strength of a model like Opus for analysis and for building code, and then switch back to another model for simple tasks. That way you can serve your tokens. You get a certain amount across Claude, and when you begin to use Claude in the chat or you begin to use co-work, it eats up tokens. In my experience with all of the things that I was creating inside of Claude Cowork, which I'll explain more what that is in just a second, I only tapped out, I think, twice in a three-week period because I was really focusing on big tasks. And so it was building code, it was doing a lot of analysis. And even when it tapped out, I was able to use it again a couple hours later. It just kind of wanted to take a break. And then it let me get back to work and use it again. So it's not like you have to wait a day or a week or a month. You can resume your work that same day. You just have to wait until it takes a little break and then get back to it. But like I said, I used it heavily and that only happened to me a couple of times. So you also have extended thinking, which is not a model, it is a mode. So for any of the models that you choose, you can even tell it to do deeper thinking, much like ChatGBT. Chat GBT also has that in the chat where you can do some deep thinking. And so you can use that if you really want to analyze something and you need that extended thinking, you can toggle that on and use it on any of the models. So when you turn it on, Claude takes extra time to think. It breaks down the problem into steps, it explores options and plans before giving you an answer. So it's doing a lot on the back end already. And that's why it uses so many tokens. Again, as a solo business owner, I wouldn't worry so much about tokens. If you were a programmer, then maybe you might need more tokens because you're doing a lot of hard, hard coding. But for the kind of work we do as solo business owners, we should be fine with the basic tier and be able to do lots and lots of work. So let me explain more about Claude Co work. Now, when you go to the browser, you can open up Claude and you can use the chat. You will not see co-work. What Anthropic has done is created an app that you can download to your computer. And then from your computer in your taskbar, you can pin it there and you can open it when you want to use Claude on your computer. So when you open Claude from your desktop, you will see all the same features you see on the browser, but a few extra. And one of them is co-work. It's a button at the top in the middle. So you can switch from co-work to chat, whichever one you want to use. And co-work really opened up a whole new way of workflow for me. So think of it as going from conversation to collaboration. It was made for office work. It was made to be able to do a lot of the back-end programming to give you exactly what you asked for. And I'm going to give you some examples in a second. So, Claude, once it's on your desktop and you open up the app, it can literally go to a specific folder that you designate and you give it permission. It can go to that folder. It could read everything in that folder and nested folders. So if you have a folder and you have subfolders, it could see everything in those folders. It can see transcripts. It can see screenshots. It could see documents where you have notes. It can see research that you've done. If you have a research folder and you have everything in there, it can see all of that data. So now you don't have to upload knowledge. In ChatGBT, in order for it to give you good output, you got to find all of that and upload it so that it has all that information. But in Claude, it's a little different. You give it permission to go to a folder and it can see everything in there. So here's how I decided to use it. I thought since it's going to open up one folder, I'm going to make my weekly content topical. And that way it can see everything that I have researched, my perspective on that topic, anything I've created as far as blueprints, or if I created maybe a lead magnet around that topic, if I created some kind of diagram or workflow, it could see everything related to that topic. So I could create something new. So once it has the folder and it has all the documents it needs to create, it's ready to go. So now what you need to do is decide what is it that I want Claude to create for me. Now, many of us repurpose content and I do the same thing. So what you can do to make this easier is for every piece of asset that you have, in other words, if you have an email newsletter, or if you have a blog that you create, or if you have a podcast you create, or maybe you create a LinkedIn newsletter, you would have a skill created for each one of those assets. A skill is like an expert. So that skill would know exactly how to format it. It would know the word count. It would know exactly the flow. If you want show notes for a podcast, that would be a separate skill. It would know how to deliver the content because you had given it the instructions. So that's what I did. I had spent probably, I would say, two weeks total to create, I don't know, 10 or 12 skills for the various things that I produce each week. So when I'm in the chat and Claude already has the folder to work with, I can say, write this week's Monday marketing memo. And it'll already know which skill to pull. I don't even have to name the skill. It intuitively knows from the context what I want. And then once I have that, it'll allow me to review it, save it to my computer, and then I can ask it to create a blog post. And it will already know intuitively which one of the skills creates a blog post. And it will take the content that we already have in all of those folders and it will create a blog post. So it's just like it's passing the baton to the next expert to create the output, and it makes it so much easier. The final thing I do, once I have all of that in that same folder, I have a skill for social media. And it includes pulling a quote, it includes creating the text for carousel, it includes creating the script for a 60-second reel, it includes creating a text-only post, it includes various types of posts that I want and it'll create the draft for me. Why is this a benefit for solo business owners? Well, if you're creating a lot of content that takes more time than it should, something else doesn't get done. And what it does to you internally is worse because you feel overwhelmed. You feel like you're never catching up. You feel like you can't take a breath. You can't have time to think about your next launch or your next promotion. Just having that weight taken off your shoulders is so much better. It's so healthy. Another thing it did for me is remove that distaste I had for social media because it's such a time drain, but this makes it so much easier to create content, better content on social media in a fraction of the time. And it takes all that cognitive overload out of the equation. So you can look at this as literally a smart assistant that not only can read your documents, but take initiative and not just answer a question. That's a big difference. This is where we start getting more into workflow and we begin to simplify the things that we do on a weekly basis. So you can give it a big job and it will break it down into smaller steps. It will ask you questions if you haven't clarified something, and it will run code behind the scenes if what you're asking requires it. For example, I can have all kinds of information in folders and say, you know what? I have a presentation coming up on this very topic. Can you create a PowerPoint slide for me explaining this topic and some practical steps? Let's keep it to maybe three steps. Create that, let me view it first before you save it to my computer. So it will do that and it needs to program so that it creates the PowerPoint. You can even go one step better and give it your brand kit with specific fonts, with your logo, with your brand colors, all of that, so that it can customize the PowerPoint slide exactly the way you want it. And I'll tell you, the output is phenomenal. It is very close to finished because when you go and look at it, there might be only a few little tweaks that you might want to do. Not much. It's pretty much like 95% done. And I found that to be a huge time saver. Plus, it allowed me to unsubscribe from another tool I was using that was just strictly for creating PowerPoint slides. So you can see how these tools, as they're getting better, were able to dial in and use all its features, leverage it in a way that's going to help and support us. And we're not using more tools, we're actually reducing our tech stack. Because some people think, well, I need a tool for this, I need a tool for that. In the beginning, yeah, we kind of did because the tools weren't as sophisticated as they are now. But I have a feeling in the near future, we're just going to need one, two, maybe three tools tops for our tech stack to be able to execute on a lot of the things that we need to do every week. That's how I feel because I've already seen for myself some of the things that I don't need anymore, that it's been replaced. And while we're talking about AI tools, I want to tell you a little bit about AI Lab for Solopreneurs. Inside AI Lab for Solopreneurs, you'll access on-demand trainings on Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, and more. Join monthly AI coaching calls so you never fall behind. Use custom GPTs built for your business, done for you Canva templates to save you hours, and a growing AI resource library. Plus many trainings that turn complexity into simplicity for solopreneurs. Try it risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to marissa shatter.com forward slash community. Claude isn't just another Chat GPT or another AI tool. If you're thinking, well, I'm already using Chat GBT, why do I need another AI? Or I've already trained this. It knows my voice. It knows everything about me. You can literally do a brain transplant. Isn't that crazy? You can go inside a Claude and there's a place in the setting where it will give you a prompt that you can paste inside of ChatGBT, and Chat GBT will produce all of the memory about you and your preferences, everything that it has, it'll produce it for you. You copy and paste it into Claude, and Claude is ready to go. It has the same knowledge as your other AI tool. So that is incredible because you don't have to start from scratch. So if you're wondering, should I test it out, you know, it's a fair question. And that depends on what type of work you do. What is your business? Because it may not be something that you need to explore. But if you're a typical solo business owner and you're creating content every week, either a YouTube video or a podcast or your blogging or you're creating newsletters or you're creating courses or workshops, any of those things, a tool like this can be really, really helpful. ChatGBT, for example, is excellent for brainstorming, for quick answers, for ideation, for conversational back and forth, for research. It has a lot that it can do to help you get clarity, especially if you're not sure which direction to go or you're between two options. It'll give you pros and cons. The images in ChatGBT have gotten so much better than they used to be that you can create images in ChatGBT. So it still has a purpose and is very valuable. Claude, however, is excellent for multi-step tasks, for working within your files and for producing finished output. So a way to look at this is ChatGBT helps you think. Claude helps you build and execute. That's the best way that I can explain it. Claude's coding strength, which it is by far number one in coding. That's why a lot of developers have used Claude. That strength that it has is why it can generate the slide decks, the diagrams, the PDFs, and all of the structured document, not just text. And that brings me to another tool that could be retired. There was another tool that created graphs and blueprints where they show a workflow or success path. So there's another tool that can be retired. So that's what I'm saying. People are thinking, oh my gosh, there's so much AI stuff out there. There's all these tools. I don't want to have five, six, 10 tools I have to use. Just be patient. I think when you're using Chat GPT and something like Claude, you're going to find in the near future that you're going to be using less tools because these other tools are getting so powerful. And I haven't even touched on Gemini yet. That's another one that is also competing for attention. But we'll have to do that in another episode. Now, here's what I want you to remember: these AI tools are not perfect. They do make mistakes. They're getting better at the output, but you have to review everything. So I like to be able to review things, read it through, and see if potentially it is hallucinated or if it's made a statement that is an absolute and asking it, where did you get this from? Was this from the research? Can you please cite this and tell me what was the source to this? Or it could also maybe use a word that doesn't quite describe something the way you would. So you want to be looking at the information and tweaking a word here and there. Like I said, a lot of these tools will get it 90-95% done for you if you set it up correctly. However, you do have to go back and make sure and edit like anything else. So a copywriting tip, what I used to do, even when I was writing articles, whether you have a Google Drive or if you use Microsoft Word, they have a read it allowed feature. And I will either read it, but I found that when I read it, if there's a missing word, I fill the word in in my brain, even though it's not on the document. And so I have a read aloud feature to read it to me so that I can make sure I am combing through the document and everything is as accurate as it can be. There's a little tip for you for that editing process. So many of these AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude specifically using cowork, it doesn't replace your thinking. It supports your execution, and that's a big difference. And really, once everything shakes down, you're not going to need more tools. You're just going to need the right tools, the right tools that a solo business owner needs to be able to grow their business. So where do you start? Here's a simple step. Look at each week's content as topical. And so now you're going to have folders that have topics in them. And everything is going to go in that folder for that particular week. And that way you're not looking at this topic and that topic. And I should talk about this and I should talk about that. Just focus on one topic. And believe me, a topic you can go so deep, you can look at it from so many different angles that it can be different when people are reading it or watching it. There's a variation to it. And so think of it as a topic, and you're going to be pulling pieces from that topic for the type of asset that you're trying to create. The next thing you can do is create your first skill for that one thing that you keep having to do every single week. Now don't let this freak you out. All you have to do is go to Chat GPT and ask it to help you write the prompt for the skill in Claude. And ChatGPT will do that. They're not in a competitive war. It will help you do that. And you can pop it in to Claude. Will you have to refine it? Of course. You'll have to refine it maybe a couple of times before you get it really dialed in. Might be something you forget to put into it, but you can at least use another AI tool to help you write it. And that's a real time saver too. I think you'll know after one session whether it's a game changer or not for you. Not every tool is for everyone, but I think that will give you an opportunity to at least assess it and make an informed decision if it's something for you. Here's a final takeaway for you You can't push AI to its full potential until you understand what it was built to do. Until next time, take care.