I was watching a documentary. Then I built this

Welcome to The Real Work, weekly insights for high-performers and entrepreneurs who've outgrown their current success and are ready to rebuild from their authentic foundation.

I'm watching a documentary on YouTube, and the next video in the queue is about a new Claude feature called Claude Design.

I got five minutes into that video before I closed it and started building.

Here's why.

I've wanted to make carousel posts for LinkedIn for months. They get more engagement, they let you walk people through a process step by step, and they look like you hired a designer.

But I never made one because the time commitment felt stupid. Two hours of work for a post that might flop? No thanks.

So I opened Claude Design and decided to test it.

Seven minutes later I had a finished 10-slide carousel.

No formatting issues. No misspelled words. No weird line breaks. It looked like something I would have paid someone to build.

The first attempt worked.

Here's what I learned and exactly how you can do this yourself.

What you need

Claude Pro ($20/month) at claude.ai. The feature is called Claude Design. That's it.

The prompt that makes it work

Most people open an AI tool and type something vague like "make me a carousel about productivity." That gets you something vague back.

The trick is putting your design specs and your content into one prompt. Everything in one shot.

Here's a sample prompt you can steal and modify:

Create a 10-slide LinkedIn carousel PDF at 1080x1350px. Black background (#0a0a0a), orange accent (#c84b0c). Use bold uppercase headlines with a condensed font and clean sans-serif body copy. Dark cards with subtle borders. One idea per slide. 10-20 words max per slide. Large headline text, small supporting body copy. High contrast, premium editorial feel. Small wordmark in the bottom right corner of every slide.

Slide 1 (Hook): Headline: [YOUR HOOK]. Body: [Supporting line]. Slide 2: Headline: [POINT 1]...

Then list every slide with its headline and body copy. The more specific you are upfront, the less back and forth you do after.

The 6-step process

1. Open Claude Design at claude.ai
2. Know your specs before you start (1080x1350px portrait, 7-10 slides, PDF export, 10-20 words per slide max)
3. Write one big prompt with your dimensions, colors, fonts, and every slide's content
4. Describe your brand. Include hex colors, font names, and your vibe. Upload a screenshot of your website and say "match this"
5. Refine with plain language. "Make the font bigger." "More white space on slide 3." "Stronger contrast on the hook." No design vocabulary required
6. Export as PDF. Upload to LinkedIn. Click Add a Document when posting. LinkedIn turns each page into a swipeable slide automatically

Why this matters beyond carousels

If you wanted to post carousels consistently, you're looking at hundreds or even thousands per month in design costs.

And none of that guarantees results. If a post flops, you just burned money and time.

With this approach, you're doing it for $20/month.

If a post doesn't land, you can try again the next day. Adjust the hook, rework the slides, and publish a new version before lunch.

That speed changes everything about how you learn. You get your reps in faster, which means you figure out what works faster, which means your content gets better faster.

But here's the part nobody wants to hear.

Right now, someone with half your experience and a quarter of your insight is getting booked, getting featured, getting the opportunity you wanted.

Not because they're better. Because they packaged what they know in a way that made people stop scrolling.

That's the real cost of not figuring this out. It's not just lost impressions. It's lost deals, lost stages, lost clients who hired someone else because that person showed up with a carousel breaking down a process and you showed up with a text post that got 12 likes.

The bottleneck for most people was never ideas. It was the production time between the idea and the finished thing. That gap is closing fast.

Seven minutes from a YouTube video to a finished carousel that's now live on LinkedIn.

The people who figure out how to use these tools for real, practical output are going to pull away from everyone still treating content like a chore they'll get to eventually.

This is what I do. I find the practical use case first, then I share the process. Not theory. Just: here's what I built, here's how long it took, here's how you do it too.

You can check out a preview of the first carousel I made below and see it live now on LinkedIn.

One move

Open Claude Design this weekend. Pick one idea you've been meaning to share on LinkedIn.

Use the sample prompt above, swap in your own brand colors and content, and publish it.

The whole thing should take you less time than picking what to watch on Netflix.

Keep building,

Terry

PS - Want help learning how to do this, find speaking opportunities, or build AI systems for your business without adding to your workload? Book a session at everyexpert.com/terryrice.

One thing I love about this platform is that after our call, you automatically get a detailed roadmap of next steps based on our conversation. You don't just leave feeling good about what you learned. You leave with a plan to hit your goals.

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