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Your First Five Minutes With AI

You use ChatGPT for a few emails and a better Google search. Past that, most of what you hear about AI is slop. Meanwhile a handful of owners ahead of the curve are clearing a week of work in an afternoon. How?

The gap is not talent or money. It is six ideas nobody showed you. This page is those six ideas.

A 5 minute read. 10 to 15 if you dig in.

A person taking notes beside an open laptop

Your first win, before the lesson

Copy the prompt below and paste it into a free AI tool. Nothing to fill in first: it starts asking you questions about your business, and ends by naming the jobs it could take off your week. That is what the rest of this page teaches you to get on purpose.

Steal This Prompt Works for any trade

Find where AI can actually help your business

It grills you about how you work, then names the jobs it could genuinely take off your plate, and the ones it should not touch.

Grill me to find out where exactly you can help my business.

Interview me first. Ask one short question at a time and wait for my answer before the next. Cover:
1. What my business does, who my customers are, and how they find me.
2. What a normal work week looks like, and which parts eat the most time.
3. What I do over and over, and what genuinely needs my judgment.
4. What I have already tried with AI, if anything, and how it went.

Push back when an answer is vague. If I say "paperwork", ask which paperwork, how often, and how long it takes.

Then give me:
1. The five jobs in my week you could genuinely take over, best first. For each: what you would do, roughly how much time it saves me, and what you would need from me to start.
2. The jobs you should NOT touch, and why. Be honest about this.
3. The one to start with this week, and the first thing I should type.

Rules:
- One question at a time. Keep them short.
- Use only my answers. Never invent details about my business.
- Do not flatter me and do not oversell yourself. Where AI is a bad fit, say so plainly.

Paste it into ChatGPT (free, no account) or Claude (free, quick sign-in).

One free tool. Take your pick.

ChatGPT chatgpt.com Free. No account needed to start typing. Claude claude.ai/new Free. A quick sign-in and you are in.

Either one runs every prompt on this site. Pick one, open it in a new tab, and keep it handy while you read.

Set it up once, so it sounds like you

Generic AI has a fingerprint. The long dash is the giveaway.

A machine writes

It is not magic—it is simply a tool that, used well, delivers.

You write

It is not magic. It is just a tool.

You can erase that whole fingerprint in about two minutes, and you only have to do it once. Both free tools have a settings page where you can save standing notes about yourself. Every chat after that starts already knowing you.

In ChatGPT

Click your profile picture, then Customize ChatGPT. You get boxes for who you are and how it should respond.

In Claude

Click your initials, then Settings. Look for the personalization box asking what preferences Claude should consider.

Here is what to put there. Four short notes, in your own words:

Notes about me

  • "I am John Smith. I run a two-truck landscaping company in Michigan."
  • "Most of my customers are homeowners who find us through Facebook and referrals."

When writing for me

  • "Keep it short. I text more than I email."
  • "Plain English, warm but direct. Get to the point in the first sentence."

Never use

  • "Never use em dashes."
  • "No words I would never say out loud: zesty, cohort, synergy."
  • "No fake-friendly openers like 'I hope this finds you well.'"

When responding to me

  • "Break long answers into short paragraphs. Use headers when it helps."
  • "Give me the answer first, the explanation after."

Or have it write yours for you

Do not fill in any of it yourself. Paste this in and it interviews you, then writes the finished notes for you to drop into the settings page you just found. Two minutes, once, and every answer comes back on your terms. 

Help me set up my AI so every answer sounds like me and fits my work.

Interview me first. Ask me one short question at a time, and wait for my answer before the next. Cover:
1. Who I am, what I do, and where.
2. Who my customers are and how they find me.
3. How I like things written: length, tone, and words or phrases I would never use.
4. Anything I always want (short answers, plain English) or never want (jargon, fake-friendly filler).

Then write "My AI setup": one block of text under 200 words, written in my voice, ready to paste into the personalization settings of ChatGPT (Customize ChatGPT) or Claude (Settings).

Rules:
- One question at a time. Keep them short.
- Use only my answers. Never invent details about me.
- When you need something I did not give you, ask instead of guessing.

Your AI asks you the questions, then hands you the finished notes. Copy those into the settings page and you are done.

Same tool. Four different asks.

Walk into a bookstore and ask for "a book" and you will get one. It just might not be one you want. AI works the same way. The more specific you are, the better what comes back. Watch it sharpen.

  1. "Recommend a book."

    You get a bestseller list. A thriller? A cookbook? Who knows.

  2. "Recommend a business book."

    Better. Now it knows the shelf.

  3. "Recommend a business book about marketing a small local company."

    Sharper. Now it knows the problem you are solving.

  4. "Recommend a business book about marketing for my two-person landscaping company. Under 250 pages, practical over theory, and here is what I've already read."

    Now it is your book. Picked for you, not for everyone.

Vague question, generic answer. Specific question, something you can put to work. That is most of the skill, right there.

The one rule

AI drafts. You decide. Never send anything to a client without reading it first.

Keep private details out of public tools. No client names, account numbers, or health details in a free public chatbot. Use general examples instead.

Check anything that matters. Made-up facts are far rarer than in 2024, but they still slip through. Verify names, numbers, and dates like your own writing.

AI that works in your files, not just in a chat

Everything so far happens in a chat window: you paste things in, you copy things out. The next level removes the copy-paste. Newer tools, like Claude's Cowork and OpenAI's Codex, can open a folder on your computer and do real work inside it, with your permission.

  • Sort 300 job-site photos into folders by client and date, and rename every file.
  • Read a folder of 40 invoices and build the spreadsheet that summarizes them.
  • Draft ten personalized thank-you letters as real documents, ready to print.

The difference is simple: a chat gives you an answer, these hand you the finished files. You go from doing the work to reviewing it.

The Full Page on AI in Your Files

Skills: Your Best Checklist, Saved

A skill is a set of instructions you write once and the AI follows every time, like handing a new employee the checklist you keep in your head.

A simple one

"How I write payment reminders." Your tone, your rules, your two-sentence limit, saved once. Every reminder after that comes out sounding like you on a good day.

Where it gets good

"New client onboarding." One skill drafts the welcome email, the intake checklist, the folder set up for their files, and the first invoice. All in your voice, all from one line: "new client, the Hendersons, kitchen remodel."

A skill written properly is deep instructions that interview you and end in a finished file, rather than a paragraph of guidance you have to act on yourself.

How Skills Work, in Full

Routines: AI That Shows Up Before You Ask

The same ideas, on a clock. A routine runs on a schedule and has its work waiting for you.

  • Every morning at 7, a short briefing lands: today's appointments, plus the emails still waiting on a reply from you.

  • Every evening, a journal entry gets written from yesterday's AI chats: what you worked on, what you decided, what is still open.

  • Every Friday, a draft social post about the week shows up, ready for you to approve or toss.

That middle one surprises people: a running journal of your work week, written for you, from chats you already had.

The Full Page on Scheduled Tasks

You know the ideas. Now put them to work.

Two good next steps, depending on how you like to start.

Read the Rest of the Series Six short pages, one idea each, in the order they build on each other. Start Here Have Us Set It Up The same ideas, working in your own business, without you doing the setup. See the Service