Closer Method. 27 Claude skills for solo founders who bought Pro and still stare at an empty prompt box, plus a UGC side that helps creators price and negotiate brand deals. Built from ten years of enterprise sales at Criteo, Deel, and Bloomberg, converted into cold pitch, rate calculator, and objection handling. https://t.co/9eBSJrjc89
AI admitted to a SIGNIFICANT omission today. (screenshot)
I asked AI to help me with a script for a brand deal.
My instructions are specific, and I always begin with the ask of reading my dedicated notion frameworks and word for word examples for writing content.
Still, AI chose to prioritize output and speed instead of reading the instructions as stated.
This is an example of doing everything right and AI still getting it wrong.
Do not trust an AI output, always ask if it actually did the work or just “said it did.”
the brand approved the video. the creator sent the invoice.
then the brand changed direction internally and said it wouldn’t pay for the work it had already approved.
I hear UGC creators say this all the time.
what happens to your fee if a campaign gets cancelled after delivery?
I spent years selling
B2B software.
The price depended on what the customer needed, what was included, and the terms of the agreement.
Then I started looking at UGC
brand deals.
"Hey, love your content. Send rates?"
One message, and the creator is expected to price a project they haven't
the hardest brand to negotiate with is one you already love.
a creator described a $300 offer from an affiliate partner:
Video, raw footage, perpetual paid ads, possible whitelisting.
they wanted to keep the relationship.
would you counter the fee or the usage rights first?
some of these “UGC jobs” want you to film the videos, edit them, create a new TikTok account, post every day AND grow the account.
all for one monthly fee.
at what point did getting paid to make videos turn into being responsible for an entire brand’s social media? 😮💨
I don’t want my research system to return one answer.
I want:
CONFIRMED
SUPPORTED
POSSIBLE
CONTRADICTED
UNRESOLVED
And I want every label tied to evidence.
AI and my family research:
I’ve got historical records with Othmar, Ostty and Otto.
I’m trying to establish which references are to the same person.
When I search with AI, I make it keep the original spelling and show me the source page.
One helpful spelling correction could make me miss a connection I’ve spent years trying to find.
Another finding for UGC creators
One creator’s own website did show up in my AI search research.
She’d written an article explaining UGC rates.
AI cited her article when I asked about pricing. But when I asked which creators to hire, it didn’t recommend her.
I found that particularly strange because she was clearly knowledgeable enough to be used as a source.
5 questions before quoting your next UGC brand deal:
What exactly am I delivering?
Organic content or paid ads?
Which platforms?
How long can they use it?
Can they modify or reuse my footage?
The answers belong in the quote esp when a brand asks for “full usage."
I’m tracing an inheritance my grandmother never received after her father died in 1958.
AI helped me search the archives, but I caught something: it had read a document’s text while only sampling the scanned pages.
That matters when a single handwritten line can change the search.
Prompt I use now:
“Confirm what you can access: PDF text, page images, or both. Review 5 pages at a time. Log pages actually checked, names verbatim, handwriting and citations. Cross-reference earlier findings, flag contradictions and next leads. Mark anything unexamined UNCHECKED.”
Another finding for UGC creators
One creator’s own website did show up in my AI search research.
She’d written an article explaining UGC rates.
AI cited her article when I asked about pricing. But when I asked which creators to hire, it didn’t recommend her.
I found that particularly strange because she was clearly knowledgeable enough to be used as a source.
AI and my family research:
I’ve got historical records with Othmar, Ostty and Otto.
I’m trying to establish which references are to the same person.
When I search with AI, I make it keep the original spelling and show me the source page.
One helpful spelling correction could make me miss a connection I’ve spent years trying to find.
The weirdest result from that research🧐
I asked AI which UGC creators understand usage rights pricing.
It gave me eight sources and not a single creator’s name.
Just marketplaces and articles explaining usage rights.
Meanwhile there are creators negotiating paid usage and licensing terms every day.
I want to know why none of them showed up..
I asked AI to find UGC creators for six different brand briefs.
18 creators came up.
None were found through their own websites.
Four were named in a single article written by someone else.
I’ve spent so much time thinking about how creators can get brands to find them.
I genuinely didn’t expect one article to do more for those four people than their own portfolios did in this test.