We’ve been working together for over five years. And in case you haven't realized by now, we are extremely different.
Russell is the kind of person who genuinely enjoys exploring new tools, testing the edges of what they can do, and building systems around them. He'll disappear into Claude Caude or Codex for 15 hours and come back with "we should add this template into all our products."
Julia is a bit different. She uses technology when it solves a problem she actually has. If something requires her to spend four hours configuring settings and organizing context before getting to the useful part, there is a decent chance she will decide she has something more urgent to do.
This is probably why our dynamic works. We represent two different kinds of users. Russell is the person who wants to know what's possible. Julia’s the person asking whether a normal, busy person would actually use it. That matters because we are building for people who represent the entire spectrum of users – from technophobe to technophile.
The Setup
One thing we keep coming back to: the setup is almost always the most annoying and most valuable part. It’s Russell’s favorite part. It’s Julia’s least favorite part.
You can spend a few hours building a really good system — a template, a workflow, a set of reusable skills — and make the same task easier every time you do it going forward. Or, you can just get the task done immediately. The second option is faster today. The first one compounds.
It’s easy to choose instant payoff. If you need to write something or prep for a call, you don't always want to pause and build the perfect reusable system. You just want the thing done. This is very classic Julia behavior, so a lot of times, she will use Russell's setup as a template. It's like being in a group project with the overachiever who already made the shared folder, color-coded the doc, and built the spreadsheet before anyone else opened their laptop. You can roll your eyes, but you're absolutely going to use the spreadsheet.
A typical morning with Unprompted: Russell ships a new system. Julia sums up the last five years in one text.
The Setup is The Product
So here's what we’ve learned from our own working dynamic: the setup is the product.
Think about it this way. When a company gets Salesforce, it’s rare that people just start using it. You assign a point person internally to own it and train everyone, or you hire someone to configure it for your business — your pipeline stages, your fields, your automations, your reports. Same with HubSpot, same with any ERP. The software is the same for everyone. The setup is what makes it yours.
AI is no different. Claude and ChatGPT are all extremely powerful platforms. But out of the box, they're generic. Everyone has access to the model. The value is in the setup around it: the templates, the reusable skills, the context about your business, the workflows that make your past work compound into future output.
We’ve had a few calls with clients lately saying they love Claude and ChatGPT, but that they know they’re not using them to the fullest. Have you found yourself wondering the same thing?
If you want to know how your setup stacks up – show us yours, and we’ll show you ours.
Stay curious,
Julia & Russell
