Every small business has one job that follows the owner home. Answering the same question again. Moving numbers from one system to another. Building the same report every week. Chasing the follow-up nobody else remembers.

That's where automation starts.

How it works

  1. Pick one task. The most repeated, most mundane one. Not the most impressive. The one that would give you the most time back.
  2. Split it in two. Most jobs have a part that's the same every time, and a part that needs judgment. The same-every-time part gets a plain script. It's cheaper, faster, and it doesn't make things up. AI handles the judgment part: reading a message, deciding what it's about, drafting the reply.
  3. Set it up together. I build it with you, not for you behind a curtain. You see how it works.
  4. Start careful. Drafts before anything goes out. Access only to what it needs. A log of what it did. A way to switch it off.
  5. You run it. You learn how to check it and how to change it. When your business changes, you don't need to call me to change the automation.

Then we prove it works and pick the next one.

What this can look like

Real work, with names and details kept private.

  • A busy shop owner who has no time to sit down and explain what he wants. His assistant asks him short questions by email and turns his replies into standing instructions. He never opens a settings page. I wrote about it in You Don't Program It. You Talk To It.
  • Copying information between two websites, like a tracking number and a ship date that someone retypes by hand every day. A good first job for a script.
  • A weekly digest that groups a pile of email threads by who needs to act on them, so Monday starts with a list instead of an inbox.
  • My own business. I run an always-on assistant that watches my projects overnight, cross-checks things, and tells me what it found. It doesn't contact customers or publish anything on its own. That story is in The night watchman.

Assistants, not oracles

An AI assistant isn't a magic box that knows your business. It's closer to a new employee who's fast, never sleeps, and has to be told how you do things. The good news is you tell it in plain English. Most of what makes it useful is a handful of sentences you said out loud.

Remote or on-site

Most of this happens remotely, over a video call and a shared screen. If you'd rather I come to you, I can. You cover the travel time.

Who this is for

  • Owners who already know which job they want gone.
  • Businesses with a task that repeats every day or every week.
  • People who want to understand what's running in their business, not just pay for it.

Not sure which job to start with? Start with AI consulting.