Practical AI for small business. Real workflows. Real tools. This week.
A 90-minute hands-on workshop for non-technical small-business owners. Five real workflows you do every week (spreadsheet rescue, email drafting, voice-memo SOP, bulk FAQ writer, meeting actions), each with the exact prompt pattern, the right tool to use (Claude Artifacts, ChatGPT Data Analysis, Gemini in Google, Copilot in Office), and the two-minute verify habit that catches the common failure modes. Pick the workflow that solves a real problem on your plate this week, run the prompt, ship it before you leave.
Abstract
Five workflows. One you ship before the workshop ends.
Most small-business owners we work with are paying for ChatGPT or Claude already. They just aren't getting their money's worth, because nobody walked them through the workflows where AI actually pays back the subscription. This workshop is that walk-through.
Five workflows you already do every week: cleaning up a messy CSV export, drafting and triaging email, turning a voice memo into a written SOP, writing twenty customer FAQs in ninety minutes, and pulling decisions plus action items out of a meeting transcript. Each one comes with the exact prompt pattern, the recommended tool (Claude Artifacts, ChatGPT Data Analysis, Gemini Workspace, or Microsoft Copilot depending on where your work lives), and the two-minute verify habit that catches the common failure modes.
Format is hands-on, not a lecture. After the first concept block we walk through each workflow one at a time, then break for twenty minutes for you to ship one in your own tool, then debrief. You leave with a five-week plan: one workflow per week, the muscle compounds, by week five you're using AI in your daily work without thinking about it.
Outline
What the talk covers, in order.
If you can describe the task, AI can do the first draft
The skill is not prompt engineering. It is describing what you want clearly enough that a stranger could do it. That stranger is now inside every tool you already pay for.
The four tools that matter today
Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini in Google Workspace, and Microsoft Copilot in Office 365. What each is best at, where the free tier holds up, and when to pay. Pick the one that lives in the software you already use, then add one more for the gaps.
What changed: Artifacts and Projects
Side-panel preview of the file the AI is editing, plus shared workspaces with persistent context. This is the shift that makes the 'AI does the first draft, you do the final pass' workflow finally usable for non-developers.
Workflow 1 · The spreadsheet rescue
You exported a CSV from your bank, CRM, or POS, and it's a mess. Drop the file in, describe what good looks like in plain English, get a downloadable Excel back in three minutes. Includes the verify step that catches the rows the AI guessed at.
Workflow 2 · The email drafter
Forty unread emails, twenty minutes. Paste the email, give the AI three sentences of context, get three reply drafts back at different tones. Read the chosen draft aloud before sending. The read-aloud test is the cheapest way to catch the line that doesn't sound like you.
Workflow 3 · The voice-memo SOP
The five-step process in your head you've been meaning to document for six months. Talk through it on a fifteen-minute drive. Paste the transcript into Claude or ChatGPT with a clear format request. Read the output as if you were handing it to a new hire on day one.
Workflow 4 · The bulk FAQ writer
Two-pass pattern. Pass one: AI brainstorms the twenty most common customer questions for your specific business. You edit. Pass two: AI writes 2-3 sentence answers, leaving brackets where it would need to make something up. Never publish the brackets.
Workflow 5 · The meeting actions
Forty-five minute call, three decisions, five action items, nobody took notes. Paste the transcript, ask for decisions plus actions plus open questions plus follow-ups. Send the list back to attendees within an hour, the half-life of a misremembered action item is about two days.
Lab · Pick one, ship it now
Twenty minutes hands-on with the tool you already pay for. Pick the workflow that solves a real problem on your plate this week. Run the prompt pattern from the slide. Come back with the output and the verify step you did.
Pitfalls every owner hits in the first month
Trusting a confident answer. Pasting private data into a free account. Skipping the verify step 'just this once.' Defaulting to the biggest model for every task. One giant prompt instead of two clean passes. All preventable, all common.
Pricing: when free is enough, when to pay
A workable monthly budget for a solo founder is $20 to $50 / month across one personal subscription plus one workspace add-on. Set a hard spend cap on day one. The math on free vs paid for each common use case.
Five workflows, five weeks
Don't try to do all five at once. One per week. Build the muscle. By week five you're using AI in your daily work without thinking about it, which is the goal.
Key takeaways
Four things to remember.
Describe the task. Don't engineer the prompt.
Prompt engineering isn't a skill, it's a story. If you can write a clear brief for a contractor, you can write a clear brief for AI. Who, what, why, what good looks like, what to avoid.
Pick one primary tool. Add one for the gaps.
If you live in Google, Gemini Workspace is the lowest-friction win. If you live in Office, Copilot. If you live in your browser, Claude or ChatGPT. Two subscriptions, $40 to $50 / month, covers most owners.
Verify is the workflow, not extra.
Two minutes per output. Spot-check three details. Read it aloud before sending. The verify habit catches the same five mistakes every time: wrong names, wrong numbers, made-up policies, overconfident tone, and missing context.
Two clean passes beat one giant prompt.
Brainstorm pass with the AI, then you edit, then execution pass. Works for FAQs, marketing copy, SOPs, product names, anything generative. The edit in between is the whole game.
Closing
The point of this workshop is not that you leave knowing every AI tool. It's that you leave with five workflows you can run in your own business, the prompts to run them, and the verify habit to make sure the output is safe to send.
Pick one this week. Pick another next week. By the end of the month you'll have a working AI workflow inside your business that you actually use, and you'll have stopped paying for a subscription you weren't getting your money's worth from.
The tools will keep changing. The workflow patterns won't.
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