Your Marketing Source of Truth.
By Gareth Wray · yours to keep, bookmark this page
Three things on this page. The interview prompt is the fast route: copy it, paste it into ChatGPT or Claude, and answer the questions out loud. Half an hour. The template is for typing it yourself; the boxes save in your browser as you go, and the copy button turns the lot into one block of text you can paste into any AI tool first. The rules page goes at the end of either, and above your desk.
The interview prompt.
Copy the whole thing. Paste it in. Answer Round 1. It does the rest, one round at a time, and waits for you to correct each summary before moving on.
You are going to interview me about my business and then write my marketing source of truth: the one document you (and any other AI tool) must read before writing a single word of marketing for me. How the interview works - Six rounds, one round at a time. Ask four or five questions per round, then STOP and wait for my answers. - Rough, honest, spoken-style answers are fine. Do not ask me to be polished. Ask for the real answer, not the website answer. - After each round, write a short "Locked in from Round N" summary of what you now believe. Flag anything that contradicts an earlier answer or that you had to assume. Wait for me to correct it before asking the next round. - Keep my exact words wherever I say something in my own voice. Do not tidy my phrasing into marketing language. - If I skip a question, note it as an open decision rather than filling the gap yourself. Round 1: Scope and identity 1. What existing brand material, websites or old positioning should this document absorb, and what should it replace or ignore? 2. When someone at a barbecue asks what you do, what do you actually say? The real answer, not the polished one. 3. What is the goal of your marketing for the next twelve months: enquiries for a specific offer, an audience, authority, or a mix? Which comes first? 4. What is off limits: anything you will never say, sell, claim or do in public, and why? Round 2: The one customer 1. Describe the number one customer you are writing for. One, not five. Their size, sector, role and buying situation. 2. What do they struggle with most, in order? Where did you learn that (calls, reviews, lost deals, support questions)? 3. How comfortable are they with AI and with marketing generally? 4. Where do they actually spend time, and where are they not? 5. Finish this sentence as you would want a customer to say it to a friend: "You should talk to them, they are ______." Round 3: Promise and enemy 1. Finish this in your own rough words: "We help [who] [do what] without [the usual pain]." 2. What are you against? The behaviour, habit or type of competitor your business is the opposite of. 3. What can you say that a competitor could not copy and paste onto their own site? Three or four things. 4. Any scope decisions: local or national, one sector or several, one offer or a range? Round 4: Story and proof 1. Tell me the origin story beat by beat, including the honest bits. Tell me which parts are off limits publicly. 2. What results, numbers, testimonials or named customers can you publicly claim right now? Which of those still need permission or checking? 3. What are you credible enough to teach or explain today? Four to six topics. 4. What do you sell, at what price, and what do you give away free? Round 5: Voice 1. Take a common piece of advice in your industry and say it the way you would actually say it out loud to a customer. One or two sentences. (Keep my answer word for word: this is the voice sample.) 2. Three words or phrases you would never use. Three you say all the time. 3. How formal, how funny, swearing or not, emojis or not? 4. Anything you have seen AI write in your name that made you wince? What exactly was wrong with it? Round 6: Practical 1. Which channels exist today (site, email list, socials), which are dead, and which one matters most for the next 90 days? 2. Which tools do you use: email platform, CRM, booking, invoicing, AI tools? 3. How many hours a week can honestly go on marketing? Who else, if anyone, is involved? 4. What may an AI do for you without asking, and what must always come to you first? When all six rounds are done Write the complete document in plain markdown with these fourteen sections, in this order: 1. Brand at a glance (a short table: what it is, who it is for, the promise, what is for sale, the one-line persona) 2. Hard constraints (the never list, each with its reason and what would change it; mark anything that is private context and must never appear in public output) 3. Audience 4. Positioning (promise, enemy, differentiators, scope decisions) 5. Offer and commercial model (what is sold, prices, what is free, the single conversion event, what happens after an enquiry) 6. Story and proof bank (every claim tagged VERIFIED, NEEDS CHECKING, or NOT YET USABLE) 7. Voice guide (the north star phrase, the voice sample verbatim, dials, banned words, kept phrases, and the rule that anything reading like AI is off-brand) 8. Content pillars and engine (three to five pillars, cadence set by the honest time budget) 9. Channels (a status table) 10. Visual system (only what I told you; do not invent colours or fonts) 11. Tools and plumbing (platforms, who owns each login, anything an automation would depend on) 12. Operating rules for the AI (may do unasked; needs a human; never invent statistics, quotes, testimonials or stories; the checks before anything ships) 13. Legal and compliance (privacy, consent, sector rules, as far as I told you; flag gaps) 14. Open decisions and update log (every question I skipped or answered vaguely, plus today's date as the first log entry) Then, below the document, list every judgement call you made that I did not explicitly state, so I can accept or reject each one. Do not present a judgement call as a fact inside the document.
Two warnings from doing this myself. It will make judgement calls and present them as facts, so read the summaries properly and argue back. And it will get your voice slightly wrong the first time, which is worse than very wrong because you might let it through. Hold every draft against your Round 5 answer.
The 14-section template.
Type straight into the boxes. Each one shows a real line from my own document so you can see the level of specific it wants. A section you cannot fill in is the template finding the thinking you still need to do.
What you type stays in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
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01
Brand at a glance
The 30-second orientation any tool needs. What it is, who it is for, the promise, what is for sale, the one-line persona.
From mine: Face-forward personal brand. For time-poor B2B owners with 1 to 20 staff and no marketer. Marketing advice that is about actual leads and sales, not vanity metrics.
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02
Hard constraints (the never list)
Things the business will never say, sell, claim or do. Write the reason next to each one, and what would change it. Mark anything the AI may know but must never output as PRIVATE.
From mine: Never name a client without written permission. If the proof cannot be shown, it is not used.
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03
Audience
One customer, not five. Size, sector, role, buying situation. Their pains in ranked order and where the evidence came from. Their comfort with AI and marketing. Where they are and where they are not. The sentence you want them to say about you.
From mine: Pains, in order: time, expertise, budget, scepticism. Evidence: qualifying calls kept surfacing "yeah, we have got social media, but we rarely post."
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04
Positioning
The promise in one line, in your words first. The named enemy: what you are against. Three or four things a competitor could not copy and paste. Scope decisions, dated.
From mine: Position UK-wide, flavour it Suffolk. Bio says Suffolk-based; nothing in the content excludes a reader in Leeds. Decided 30 Aug 2026.
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05
Offer and commercial model
What is for sale, at what price, what is included and excluded. What is free and what the free things are for. The single conversion event and the number the whole system serves. What happens after an enquiry, who follows up, within what time.
From mine: Business model: none, deliberately. The only conversion event is an email address. The mailing list is the single KPI; every channel exists to feed it.
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06
Story and proof bank
The origin story, canonical public version, with off-limits parts marked. Then every claim, number, testimonial and case study, each tagged VERIFIED, NEEDS CHECKING or NOT YET USABLE, with permission status for anything involving a client.
From mine: 223% click uplift on one ad graphic. VERIFIED against the case study: clicks 1,257 to 4,063, CTR 4.94% to 8.74%. Agency-side work: NOT YET USABLE until the permission conversation happens.
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07
Voice guide
A north star phrase in your own words. Dials for formality, humour, swearing, emojis, jargon. Two or three verbatim voice samples from real speech. Banned words. Kept phrases. The rule that if it reads like AI wrote it, it is off-brand.
From mine: North star: "casual professional, not a corporate wanker." Banned: leverage, synergise, game-changer. Kept: "to be fair", "that kind of thing", "does my head in".
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08
Content pillars and engine
Three to five pillars, and which one is the light strand. What gets made first and what gets derived from it. A cadence floor set by the honest time budget. Where raw material comes from so the AI is never inventing topics.
From mine: Long-form first, repurpose downward: one recording on a weekend feeds the week. Cadence set by available evenings, a sustainable floor rather than a heroic ceiling.
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09
Channels
A status table: every channel, its handle, whether it exists, its role. Which one is primary for the next 90 days.
From mine: Email: live, the asset, everything funnels here. LinkedIn: primary B2B distribution. YouTube: source channel, to create.
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10
Visual system
Palette as hex codes. Fonts with named jobs. The one structural rule that holds it together. Signature moves. Where the asset library lives, and the rule to reuse before generating anything new.
From mine: Full bright multicolour, always outlined in black. Black does the structural work: colour is the party, black is the bouncer.
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11
Tools and plumbing
Every platform in the stack, who owns the login, what it is for. The IDs an automation would depend on: forms, tags, lists, automations, webhooks. What is connected to what. Known gotchas, written down once so nobody re-debugs them.
From mine: Every gated resource: one signup form, one subscriber tag, one delivery automation. Gotcha: the embed reports its height slowly, so the fallback height is set in CSS.
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12
Operating rules for the AI
What it may do unasked. What always needs a human. The invention ban. The checks before anything ships. Use the printable page below and paste it here, then edit.
From mine: Needs a human, every time: anything published, anything sent to a customer, anything with a price in it, any new claim.
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13
Legal and compliance
Privacy notice, lawful bases, retention promises, cookie position. Sector rules (financial promotions, health claims, professional body). Regulator registrations and what would change them. Consent on every capture point.
From mine: ICO fee: exempt, conditional on this being the only self-employed activity. Re-check the day that changes. Retention periods are published, so honour them.
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14
Open decisions and update log
Every question you skipped or answered vaguely, numbered. Strike them through with a date when closed; never delete. Then a dated log of every change, who made it, and why. Today is entry one.
From mine: 1. Newsletter name: G’s Marketing Letters (30 Aug). 2. Cadence: daily, weekdays (31 Aug, my call, against the recommendation on file).
garethrswray.com · the one document your AI reads first
Operating rules for the AI.
The page nobody writes until something goes out with their name on it. Paste it into section 12, edit the lists to fit your business, and print one for the wall.
OPERATING RULES FOR THE AI (Paste this at the end of your source of truth, and keep a printed copy.) MAY DO WITHOUT ASKING - Draft posts, emails, page copy and scripts from the source of truth. - Research, summarise and compare, citing where things came from. - Repurpose approved pieces into other formats. - Schedule drafts into a queue for approval. - Suggest a change to this document, dated, with the reason. NEEDS A HUMAN, EVERY TIME - Anything that gets published or sent to a customer, prospect or list. - Anything with a price, a discount, a guarantee or a deadline in it. - Any new claim about results, numbers or named customers. - Any change to the hard constraints or to this rules page. - Anything that names a person, a client or a supplier. NEVER - Invent a statistic, a quote, a testimonial, a case study or a story. Leave a placeholder marked [NEEDS REAL EXAMPLE] and say so. - Use the banned words. Use words the voice guide does not sound like. - Output anything marked private context in the source of truth. - Present a judgement call as a fact. BEFORE ANYTHING SHIPS 1. Does it contradict the source of truth? Then it is wrong, not the document. 2. Would it pass as written by a human who talks like the voice sample? 3. Is every number, name and claim in the proof bank and marked VERIFIED? 4. Is it inside the never list? 5. Did a human read the whole thing? WHEN SOMETHING GOES WRONG Write what went wrong into the update log with today's date, and turn it into a rule. The document gets better every time you say no.
Want it wired into your week?
A source of truth is step one of AI implementation. I build it with you, then connect it to the jobs that eat your week, so the AI does the first draft and you finish it.