My last newsletter was in August.
That's 7 months of radio silence. If you're still here, merci 🙏! You didn't have to stick around and I appreciate it.
A lot happened since then, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it: everything changed.
My brand, my offer, my focus, and honestly, my life too.
So let me catch you up 👇
The life stuff first
Chilling with the Guideflow team at ATF
Since August, I:
Did 4 influencer launches with Guideflow (My main client of the past 6 months)+ flew to Florida for Above The Fold, pitched live, got people hands-on with the product. That was a ride under the sun ☀️
Co-planned the first We're Not Marketers event — a 4-day PMM retreat happening this fall. 175 on the waitlist, $80K in sponsorship raised so far. Eric, Zach and I are building something we've never done before 💀
Just became a dad a few days ago👶
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I fell in love with Claude Code (like many PMMs did as well recently). That's the part that changed everything professionally.
→ I’m writing this at 5am after a quick bottle feeding session btw
3 hours → minutes
I’ve been a full-time messaging consultant for 2 years.
That’s what pushed me to start the Messaging Sherpa, I just hiked Torres Del Paines W trek and thought it was fitting to help people at scale with a newsletter.
But there was two problems I’ve experienced early on:
I was getting clients from my LinkedIn content, but closing most of them on vibes, not an offer they couldn’t say no to
It was hard to charge retainers for messaging work, so I kept spreading myself too thin and just selling my time fractionally
When I started experiencing with Lovable, I built a system to help PMMs test their messaging and I was super proud of it. But it kept breaking, and what people found interesting on calls, didn’t lead to call with decision makers.
On paper, I had everything I needed to be successful, a clear offer, 1000+ people interested in my lead magnets, 20% reply to meetings booked rate.
But on calls, people kept stalling. They liked the concept. Couldn't see where it fit.
Nice-to-have. Theoretical. Next quarter, maybe. I did include my message testing with my clients on retainers, and I got some results, but felt like the value was short
I was touching the tip of the iceberg and couldn't show them what was underneath.
Then in September, Simon, a friend of a friend, showed me Claude Code.
He was building his own AI system. I started calling it what it actually was: employee zero. For $20/month, you have an employee who never sleeps, holds all your context, and executes.
So I fed all my message testing frameworks into a Claude Code skill.
What took me 3 hours? Minutes. Same thinking. Same standards. Systematic and repeatable.
That was the moment. Stop selling expertise by the hour. Start building systems that run it.
The Messaging Sherpa is dead
The Sherpa was guiding people to a destination. The Agentic PMM gives them the vehicle.
I stopped doing message testing as a service. I stopped selling frameworks. I started building AI systems for PMMs instead and I’m open-sourced all of it.
Here's what exists right now:
Everything PMMs need to ship with Claude Code
Here's what's in the repo:
icp-definition — build a layered ICP across 4 dimensions
positioning-audit — score your positioning, flag the debt
messaging-hierarchy — build a 5-layer messaging stack
message-market-fit — test your messaging against real buyer pains
voc-synthesis — synthesize VOC data into a Buyer Brain
competitive-landing-page — generate "You vs. Competitor" pages
All open-source and free. You can run most skills and get a clear output you can show stakeholders in less than 20 minutes.
The skills are free. The power is in your context — your business, your buyers, your data. That's what makes it an unfair advantage.
P.S. I’m posting about this on LinkedIn next week, so you’re getting this exclusively for being part of this newsletter
Why you should care
Most of you joined here because you wanted to get better at messaging, this is still a focus. But I would be doing yourself a disservice if I didn’t showed you how to make your messaging better with AI.
first nap with my son Eli
I'm currently into paternity leave but I didn't want to disappear for another 7 months without giving you something concrete first.
This newsletter has always been value-first (with too many words however). So here's what I'm doing:
Right now: the pmm-skillset repo is live. Install the skills with your LLMs. Run or break them. Tell me what's missing.
When I'm back in May: the full system goes live. You’ll know more on that soon 👀
But right now? The skills are yours, no catch or paywall. I just got tired of watching other PMMs waste time on bad prompts or vanilla skills.
→ Get the free PMM skills at pressxtomarket.com
Talk soon 👋
- Gab