Most people use Claude like a fancy Google search.
That’s like buying a Ferrari and only driving it in a parking lot.
I build AI products every single day through Martell Ventures. Claude is embedded into everything: how I communicate, how I manage my calendar, how I analyze my business, how I build software.
Here are 7 things I actually do — with the exact steps to start today.
1. The Memory Import: Move From ChatGPT in 2 Minutes
If you’ve been using ChatGPT, you’ve built up something valuable: a model that knows your preferences and working style. You don’t have to leave that behind.
Here’s how to transfer it to Claude in two minutes:
- Go to Settings → Capabilities → Start Import
- Claude gives you a prompt — copy it
- Paste that prompt into ChatGPT
- Copy ChatGPT’s output
- Paste it back into Claude → Add to Memory
Done. Your preferences, history, and context all live in Claude now. It feels like Claude already knows you from day one.
2. The Model Selector (Stop Using One-Size-Fits-All)
Claude has three power levels. Most people never think about which one they’re on.
Here’s how to route your tasks:
- Haiku: Fastest and cheapest. Use it for high-volume, low-complexity work. Summarizing 50 meeting notes? Haiku. Done in seconds.
- Sonnet: Best all-rounder for daily tasks. Drafting emails, writing content, building replies. Fast, smart, and gives you options.
- Opus: Deepest thinker. Use it for pattern recognition, complex analysis, or hard strategic problems. Takes longer. Goes deeper.
Start routing on purpose. That’s when your output quality jumps.
3. The Gmail Connector (Stop Touching Your Inbox)
Here’s the move: you should not be in your inbox.
Connect Claude to Gmail in 30 seconds: Sidebar → Connectors → Gmail → Log In.
Now Claude can search threads, summarize conversations, and draft replies — without you ever opening the app.
And here’s what nobody talks about: Gmail’s built-in search is terrible. Getting Claude to search your inbox is a massive upgrade over Gmail’s own tools.
How I use it: My assistant and I share a Claude account with my inbox connected. She self-serves anything she needs — without interrupting me once. That single setup removes an entire category of back-and-forth from my day.
4. The Calendar Connector (Your AI Business Coach)
Most people think calendar integration means Claude can schedule meetings. That’s the boring part.
Connect it the same way: Sidebar → Connectors → Google Calendar → Log In.
You can say: “Add a 1-hour block before Friday to review our YouTube outline.” Claude finds the right slot, creates it, and explains why it picked that time.
But the real unlock is this: give Claude your quarterly goals, then ask it to analyze your calendar and email.
“Am I spending time on the things that will actually move the needle?”
It stops being a scheduling tool. It becomes a business coach looking at your actual behaviour, and showing you exactly where you’re leaking time.
I use this every time I feel busy but not moving forward.
5. Artifacts: Build Working Apps Inside the Chat
Artifacts are actual, interactive tools Claude builds right inside the conversation — that you can use and change in real time.
Try this prompt right now:
“Build me a spreadsheet with sample data. Make the columns editable. Include sales rep, sale status, product sold, and anything else relevant.”
Claude builds it. You interact with it. You iterate on it.
This is where “I need to hire a developer” becomes “I built it myself.”
Got an idea for a calculator, a tracker, or a simple tool? Describe it. Most of the time you’ll be stunned it works.
6. Interactive Visuals: Stop Leaving Claude to See Your Data
I used to pull data out of Claude, open another tool, and build charts there. Complete waste of time.
Now I stay inside the chat.
Claude builds live, clickable visuals like frameworks, data breakdowns, process maps, systems.
I asked it to visualize a short-form video framework we use internally.
It pulled context from our connected Slack and built me a clickable, interactive visual to walk through each step.
The whole thing stayed in the conversation.
The prompt is two words: “Visualize this.” Then describe what you want to see.
This is accelerated learning. Instead of reading something and trying to picture it, you see it and click through it.
7. Projects: Preloaded Context for Everything You’re Working On
Think of Projects as folders that are pre-loaded with everything Claude needs to know about a client, a product, or a campaign. Every time you open a project, Claude already has the full picture.
Setup:
- Sidebar → Projects → New Project
- Drop in your context (internal docs, PDFs, past chats, instructions, whatever’s relevant)
- It all lives in the Knowledge section
The outcome? Claude already knows.
How I use it: every coaching call I do gets transcribed. Those transcripts live in a project linked to my Google Drive. When I need a story, an example, or a specific client situation for content, I ask Claude to search all my transcripts.
It finds exactly what I need in seconds. That’s what feeds my entire content pipeline.
-DM