THE AI-FIRST FIRM · ISSUE 2 · AUG 14, 2026 · ~6 MIN READ
What our AI hire did in his first 3 days
So I scheduled a YouTube video with a CTA that pointed to a tool I hadn’t finished yet. Then I handed the whole mess to somebody who’d been here for just 3 days.
That’s actually not the part I’m embarrassed about (even if I should be).
TLDR
→ I advertised a tool that wasn’t built, and my new hire fixed it in 3 days
→ A prompt that teaches Claude your voice from the edits you already make
→ Getting partners past AI resistance
→ Claude now leaves invisible fingerprints on everything it touches, even your own writing
→ I’m hiring the person who will own everything we publish
🔧 Behind the Build: the cost nobody puts on the invoice
I was building a QuickBooks Online review tool as a lead generation piece and I had the bones of it done but it was nowhere near ready to go live.
Which was fine, right up until I remembered that last Thursday’s video used it as the CTA.
Whoops.
So it became the first thing I handed our new AI hire. Not a thoughtful onboarding project or tutorial, just a deadline I’d created for myself and then forgotten about. I told him sink or swim…and he walked on water.
Was that fair? Absolutely not. Is he the kind of guy who thrives on exactly that, and did I know it before he started? Absolutely.
He got it done. PDF export feature added (which I was never able to do properly myself), 10 layout options cut down to one, CTA finalized in time for the drop, code cleaned up and secured.
He was also at his desk at 11pm doing it.
9 variants of one email. 1 went out.
And that’s the part I’m actually embarrassed about. I told him it wasn’t mandatory and I meant it, that’s not how we work here. He insisted anyway, and I didn’t stop him.
When I brought it up after, he told me every job before this one put him through weeks of onboarding before letting him near anything that mattered. He didn’t want that, he wanted the work, and if he wasn’t doing it for money he’d be doing it for fun.
He loved every minute of it. Which is great, but also not something I can build a plan on.
We were 3 days in and what came back told me more than any interview could have, and it’s rewiring how I think about this role. We’re changing things because of it and I’ll get into that in time…
If you’re about to make a hire like this, the thing that shows you what you’ve got isn’t the interview, it’s the first real deadline.
TOGETHER WITH QUANTO AND INTUIT
Claude 101 for Accountants
The free hands-on workshop with Quanto and Intuit in Toronto on September 17th filled all 50 seats in 4 hours.
I did not see that coming, so thank you! If you missed it, put your name on the waitlist and tell me which city to run the next one in, both at the same link.
Want to sponsor this spot? Just reply.
📋 Worth Taking #002: teach the skill what you actually changed
Last issue I showed you how to build your first Claude skill. This one is about the part almost nobody does afterwards.
What often happens is that you ask Claude to draft a client email and what comes back is close, but it isn’t you. So you rewrite it, send your version, and get on with your day.
BUT, you never told Claude you changed it so next time it hands you the same not-quite-you email, you fix it again, or worse, you don’t use Claude again because it “didn’t sound like you”.
Do this instead. Any time you rewrite something it gave you, paste your final version back in and say this.
This is what I actually sent. Compare it to what you wrote and list every change I made, including the small ones, word choices, where I cut things, punctuation, how I opened and closed it. Then update the skill so you write it my way next time.
4 of the 63 changes I made to one client email.
The small edits are the valuable ones. Anyone can tell it to be more concise but almost nobody tells it that they always delete the first sentence, or that they never sign off that way. Do that 4 or 5 times and you’ll see a real difference.
If you changed it, tell it what you changed. The version you actually sent is the best training data you own, and most people throw it in the bin.
💬 Reader Question: Sarah W. asks how you get partners past the resistance
Short answer, that’s the hardest part of all of this by far.
Explaining the why helps and it used to be enough on its own, and it isn’t anymore, because the why itself has changed. This stopped being about efficiency a while ago.
The reality is the work is changing. Less time producing, more time reviewing and deciding. That’s not a smaller job, it’s a different one.
What actually changed things for us is that I stopped doing it alone and started asking the team for their input vs. just showing them a demo at the end. Bring them in while it’s still half-baked and let them help shape it, so they watch it get better in real time and it’s partly theirs by the time it works.
Once they’re part of the process, and they can see the clear why, and they’ve seen the before and after on work they actually do, it stops being a debate. It becomes undeniable.
▶️ Now Playing
Yesterday I put up Use Claude AI Better Than 99% of Accountants. It’s 5 things inside the tool you’re already paying for rather than 5 new tools to go and buy, so there’s no budget and no dev team needed to run any of it. Watch the skills part in particular, because it’s the same loop as Worth Taking above and doing both together is what actually makes it stick.
📰 In Other News
Blake Oliver and David Leary raised something on The Accounting Podcast that’s a really important thought. They said “the productivity gains [of AI] might be a bit of a moot point”. AI takes the load off data entry, then pushes it onto review, and reviewers are the harder people to find. So is it helping, or is it just moving the bottleneck to the expensive end?
I don’t have a clean answer yet (I will), but I do think it’s a great question to ponder.
Anthropic is now watermarking what Claude produces. Text and files, invisibly, and it travels with the text when you copy and paste it. The EU AI Act forced it, in force since August 2nd, and Anthropic is applying it everywhere Claude is offered rather than only in Europe.
The part that’s interesting is that even if you have Claude do a final review of something you wrote, the mark comes back on the whole thing. It raises a lot of questions, starting with a simple one. Do you care if people know you use AI? Wild times…
Also, I’m hiring. Brand & Content Marketing Manager, remote anywhere, reporting straight to me. The YouTube channel, both newsletters, the decks, the workshop series and the sponsor deliverables all sit with one person, and that person makes the work rather than briefing someone else to make it. Idea to design to send in the same week. Design ability and daily AI use are the bar, and I know I’m asking for a unicorn. You’re probably not a marketer, but you might know one.
The seat I’ve been most excited to fill.
💬 Question For You
What’s the last thing you learned about someone on your team that an interview would never have told you?
Reply and tell me, I might feature your answer in the next issue.
See you in two weeks.
Mike
PS - I got Claude Cowork to take over my computer and go get me my fishing license. Me and the little man are big fishers these days, apparently.
Mike Libbey is CEO of YBL, a fully virtual Canadian accounting and VCFO firm. On YouTube (@MikeLibbey) he shows the tools he has built and what running a firm actually takes, and he posts every weekday on LinkedIn. He is quietly building TaxPilot for Canadian tax firms on the side. Reply to any issue, he reads them all.