The AI Golden Circle Coach skill for Claude

The problem the skill solves shows up in one symptom: you can explain perfectly well what you do, but not why anyone should come to you for it. Your website opens with your services, your pitch is a list, and at parties you notice people nodding politely and moving on. That is not a writing problem but an ordering problem. This skill forces the reversed order: first the reason you exist, then the principles you work by, and only last the list of what you deliver.

It is written for entrepreneurs and marketers looking for distinction: anyone entering a new market, rewriting their website copy, stuck on their About page, or noticing that clients do not understand what the business does. It is part of the skill library NL we make available for free from the AI and automation service, without an account and without a sales email afterwards.

One thing you should know beforehand: the skill formulates, it does not invent. The three Why variants are built from your own answers to the diagnosis questions. Give shallow answers and you get a smooth text that is not yours. Give real answers, including the uncomfortable ones, and you get something you recognise and dare to use.

The point is not that the What does not matter. The point is that the What is not distinctive. In every trade there are dozens of businesses delivering the same thing at a comparable price, and anyone who only communicates their What forces the client to compare on the one variable left over: price. The painting company from the skill's example was in exactly that position. Skilled, reliable and a fair price are not lies, they are interchangeable truths. Every competitor claims them too.

A sharp Why changes what there is to compare. Anyone who says what they stand for attracts clients who believe in that, and those clients do not compare on price but on trust. The How makes it credible, because every How line shows a choice that also excludes something: writing that you do not work for people who want to squeeze the price at the cost of quality also says something about who you do want to help. And the What then becomes the proof instead of the story.

In diff form, with lines from the skill's example: what goes out and what comes back in its place.

The file then explains the framework itself, including the basis in brain structure, and the working method follows. The file announces four steps and then works out five, because the feedback got its own heading: diagnosis, the Why, the How, the What and the feedback. The diagnosis consists of at most five fixed questions, including the two that in practice loosen the most: what would be missing from the world if your business disappeared tomorrow, and which decision have you made that was financially illogical but that you are proud of. If you have already given plenty of context beforehand, the skill skips this step or only asks about the missing pieces.

The Why step is the strictest. Every variant has to meet six requirements: no jargon, no trade terms, one sentence, starting with a verb, personal rather than corporate, and usable outside the office, tested by whether a friend would say it about you too. The format used as a base is Sinek's own, translated into: verb in the present tense, audience or world, so that, change or new reality. You get three variants, each with a short note on how the nuance differs. The How step delivers three to five principles that each show a choice, are repeatable in everyday decisions and are checkable by an outsider. The What step is deliberately the dullest: five to ten concrete items, without marketing language.

The feedback rounds it off with three communication patches: a homepage hero of at most thirty words in the order Why, How, What, a LinkedIn bio of at most fifty words and a sixty second elevator pitch with the Why at its centre. The whole thing closes with the Sinek test: people do not buy what you do, they buy why you do it, with the question of whether your formulation passes that test. The fixed output structure comes to six blocks in total. Want to learn how to write a file like this yourself, writing SKILL.md NL explains that structure step by step.

A striking number of rules are about language. It writes in the you form, avoids buzzwords such as seamless, effortless and groundbreaking, uses no emoji and varies sentence length. And it guards the definition: a Why that is actually a What, such as we make software for healthcare, gets rejected, as does a Why that is actually a result, such as we are growing to ten million in revenue.

Start With Why supplies the model itself: the three rings, the direction from the inside out, and the biological basis. Sinek argues that the limbic brain, where Why and How land, drives behaviour and loyalty but has no language, while the neocortex, where the What lands, processes language and analysis. That explains an experience every entrepreneur knows: a client who says it simply feels right, and a prospect who understood every argument and still did not call back.

Find Your Why supplies the method: the Why is not invented but dug up from real stories and moments. That is why the skill's diagnosis asks about the moment you decided to start and about the financially illogical decision you are proud of. Those moments hold the conviction you already have, and the skill only phrases it more sharply than you would yourself. The format contribution-so-that-impact comes from this same book, and the skill translates it into a Dutch form that does not sound stiff.

For anyone wanting to look beyond the brand story: the Golden Circle connects to more disciplines from the same library. For personal purpose rather than business positioning there is the Ikigai Coach skill, and anyone who has the Why and wants to build the complete customer story around it moves on to the StoryBrand Writer skill. The line of thinking is related, the output differs: the Golden Circle Coach delivers your positioning, StoryBrand your story structure.

Even without installing the skill, you can test your own text with the model: does your Why actually appear in it, does your homepage open with your reason for existing or with your list of services, and does every How principle show a real choice or is it a compliment to yourself?

After that, using it is simple: explain in two or three sentences what your business does, who your clients are and where your communication gets stuck, and let the skill ask its questions. Answer honestly, even when the answer is uncomfortable: it is precisely the decision that was financially illogical that gives the best material. New to skills and want to understand how this kind of file works first, the knowledge base has the wider explanation of working with AI.

And because the skill delivers three variants instead of one, it also works as a sparring partner alongside a brand session with your team: put the variants next to each other and see where the discussion starts.

If the question is not about your message but about how you make your money, the Hedgehog Concept Coach is the better entry point: it looks for the overlap between what you can excel at, where your economic engine sits and where your passion lies, and delivers a stop list of what to give up alongside it.

There are also situations where you are better off leaving it. What you get is positioning and text, not business strategy: whether you should specialise, which service to drop or which market to choose are decision questions for the Strategic Thinking skill NL, with the SWOT Analysis skill as the inventory beforehand and the PESTEL Analyst skill NL for the surrounding environmental factors. The Why tells you what you stand for, not which direction to take. That difference is often flattened in practice, and whole brand sessions get lost over it.

The biggest limit sits in the input. It digs into what you supply, and if there is nothing there, nothing comes out either. A brand new business with no clients, no history and no decisions made yet has little to dig into: then the Why becomes an intention instead of a conviction. That can work, but be honest about it. And do not confuse the output with the finish line: a Why on paper changes nothing until your homepage, your quotes and your conversations start sounding like it. The three communication patches are the beginning of that, not the end.

A sharp Why does its work at the moment somebody is on your site wondering whether you are the right fit for them. That moment has to exist in the first place. If you are barely being found on the subjects your Why is about, that is the first job. The free SEO scan shows in a few seconds where your site stands, and the improving SEO service takes it on structurally.