There's a free prompt on my site that turns ChatGPT or Claude into a prospecting researcher.
There's a free prompt on my site that turns ChatGPT or Claude into a prospecting researcher. No code, no signup. It interviews you first, then hands back short dossiers you can call from — five at a time, on purpose.
The part worth reading is further down the page: how to check its work.
Pick two of the five. Verify one fact on each yourself — open the site, dial the number. If either one is wrong, bin the whole batch and run it again rather than fixing it by hand. A model that made something up once has usually done it more than once, and the one you caught is not the one that would have embarrassed you.
A flat price is easy to publish. The useful part is knowing what moves it.
A flat price is easy to publish. The useful part is knowing what moves it.
Mine is on the page: one workflow, automated end-to-end, is $495 and goes live in about a week. Two or three workflows that talk to each other is $1,500.
What changes between those isn't how hard any single task is. It's the joins — the handoffs where one thing has to tell the next what happened, and both have to agree. That's where the work goes, and it's why "can we add one small thing" is rarely small.
Before you ask anyone for a price, count the handoffs, not the tasks.
The job that drove you mad in July is still broken — it's just not bothering you this week.
Around here the season just turned over. If your summer was flat out, the next few weeks are the quiet part.
Here's the trap in that. The job that drove you mad in July is still broken — it's just not bothering you this week. A problem that isn't bothering you doesn't get fixed, so it'll be waiting in June, exactly as expensive as last time.
So do the boring thing while you still can. Write down the three that cost you the most, in your own words. Not what you'd automate — what actually went wrong, and which part hurt.
You can fix it any time. You can only remember it now.
AI got very good at making the ad this year. It did not get any better at giving you something to say.
AI got very good at making the ad this year. It did not get any better at giving you something to say.
There's a free ad maker on my site. Among the layouts it offers are before/after, testimonial, and comparison — three formats that work, and every one of them runs on a fact the software doesn't have. A real before. A customer who actually said the thing. A comparison you'd defend out loud.
That's the half nobody automated. Making the thing got cheap this year. Having something true to put in it didn't move at all, and it was always the expensive half.
So if you're stuck on an ad, check which half you're stuck on. It usually isn't the design.
Every automation example on my site has three lines under it: the trigger, the workflow, and your part.
Every automation example on my site has three lines under it: the trigger, the workflow, and your part.
The third one is the one worth reading.
On the missed-call build, your part is to review the enquiry and call back. On the paperwork build, it's to review and approve the record before it goes anywhere.
That isn't hedging. An automation with no "your part" hasn't removed the judgment — it has moved it somewhere nobody is looking, and you find out which way it guessed months later.
So if someone is selling you one, ask what your part is. If there isn't an answer, that's the answer.
If you have never booked a free consult with anyone, it is fair to assume it is a sales call with a calendar invite on it.
If you have never booked a free consult with anyone, it is fair to assume it is a sales call with a calendar invite on it.
So here is the whole agenda for mine.
You describe one repetitive task — what gets repeated, how often, and which tools your team uses. You do not need a technical brief. Then we check the fit: what could be handled automatically, what needs a person, and whether your current software already does the job.
That last one is a real answer, not a courtesy. Sometimes the tool is already paid for and nobody turned the feature on.
Nothing is installed, signed or paid for during the call. Fifteen minutes.
There's a free calculator on my site that adds up what you pay for software and outside services every month. Part of it is built to make that number smaller.
There's a free calculator on my site that adds up what you pay for software and outside services every month. Part of it is built to make that number smaller.
It has a whole group headed "we'd tell you to keep paying for these." Your bookkeeper. Your accountant. Payroll. The software your trade actually runs on. You tap them so your total is honest, and they never show up as something to cut.
That's deliberate. If I talk you into cancelling something and it burns you, you never call me again. I'd rather hand you the shorter list and be right about it.
There's a five-question readiness check on my site, and four of the five questions have nothing to do with AI.
There's a five-question readiness check on my site, and four of the five questions have nothing to do with AI.
Do you have customer data. Do you have clear goals. Are you open to the tools. Does your team have basic digital skills. Is there a budget, even a small one.
Only the first is technical — and for most small businesses, "customer data" means the inbox and the invoices.
So "are we ready for AI" is usually the wrong question. You're ready. The real question is which job, and if you can't name the one you still do by hand every week, no checklist is going to find it for you.
I spent part of a morning going through this year's Best of Annapolis winners, looking for businesses that might need what I do.
I spent part of a morning going through this year's Best of Annapolis winners, looking for businesses that might need what I do.
Mostly I found businesses that don't. The ones I checked were already booking online, already answering, already sorted.
Which makes sense. An award list picks the best-run shop in each category, and best-run usually means somebody already bought the tool.
So if you're looking at a winner in your trade and feeling behind — that gap probably isn't how well you run the place. It's that nobody there has had a free week to hand off the job you're still doing by hand after everyone's gone home.
Fair question, and most software answers it badly: stop the subscription, lose the thing.
That isn't how a build works here. The automation is a flat fee — $495 for one workflow, live in about a week — and you own what we build. Plain-English handoff, running on the tools you already use.
There is a monthly and I'll name it: AI Partner, $295/month. Monitoring, fixes, priority support. Cancel anytime. Cancel it and the automation is still yours, because you already owned it.
Two businesses in the same trade, same county. One runs every booking through a platform. The other takes them by phone and text.
The easy read is that one is better run. It isn't. One of them has somebody at a desk. The other is in a van all day.
That's the split I keep finding — not big versus small, desk versus no desk. If you're the van, the question isn't which software to buy. It's what happens to the person who finds you at nine at night while you're finishing a job.
And if you already call everyone back within the hour and it works, don't fix it.
A question I see a lot: what is the 30% rule for AI?
A question I see a lot: what is the 30% rule for AI?
Here's the honest answer. It's a rule of thumb, not a law. Roughly a third of routine desk work is repetitive enough to hand off, and that's where to start looking. That's the whole of it.
Don't take the number literally. It describes an average business, and nobody runs an average business. A third of your week might be two hours, or it might be none.
So look at your own week instead. That's the only sample that counts.
The automations that die aren't the ones that break. They're the ones nobody can explain.
The automations that die aren't the ones that break.
They're the ones nobody can explain.
Six months in, the person who asked for it has moved on. Whoever is left doesn't know what it touches or how to switch it off — so they stop trusting it, and then they stop using it. Nothing failed. It just quietly went unused.
That's why everything I build comes with a one-page description of what it touches and how to switch it off. Not paperwork for its own sake. It's the thing that decides whether it's still running next year.
If your team can't explain it, they won't trust it.
Five questions — what the business is called, what's eating your week — and it comes back with a named automation, an illustrative capacity estimate, and what I'd charge to build it. The questions run in your browser. Business lookup and usage requests may be sent while you use the advisor; an email address is only shared if you enter it to request follow-up. Read the plan, close the tab, build it yourself if you like.
The assumptions are on the screen rather than buried: $32 an hour as a loaded staff cost, about 65% of the task absorbed, 50 working weeks a year. If it's a bad fit, it says so.
Four questions to ask before you sign an AI quote.
How many automations is that, exactly? "AI strategy" and "automation buildout" are phrases, not counts.
Which tools does it run on, and whose account are they in?
What counts as finished? If nobody wrote that down, the job ends when somebody gets tired.
What happens when it breaks, and who can switch it off?
A quote that can't answer those four was guessed, not scoped. Mine is $495 flat for one automation, about a week, agreed before any work starts — and you own what gets built, including the accounts it runs on.
Before you pay anyone to automate something, do the arithmetic.
Before you pay anyone to automate something, do the arithmetic.
Take the job you want to hand off. Count the hours it eats in a week. Multiply by what an hour of that person's time is worth.
If it takes two hours a week and the build is $495 flat, the arithmetic is quick.
If it takes ten minutes a week, do not automate it. Ten minutes a week isn't a problem, it's just something you do — and paying to remove it is how people end up with software they resent.
I'd rather you ran that number before you called me than after.
It's the first question I get and the least useful one.
There is no best one. For writing, ChatGPT or Claude. For connecting things together, Zapier or Make. For keeping track of anything, Airtable or the spreadsheet you already use. That's the honest answer and it takes about ten seconds.
The tool matters far less than picking the right job to point it at. Start with the one you still do by hand every week, and the tool question mostly answers itself.
None of that is a recommendation until I know what you actually do all day.
That's one of the things I actually build, and it's worth saying plainly what it is, because people picture something stranger.
No AI writes to your customer. It's the follow-up you already wrote, sent on day three if nobody has answered — the one that currently waits on somebody remembering.
You approve the wording once. After that it goes out on schedule, whether or not the week got away from you.
One task, about a week, $495 flat.
If you already chase every quote on time, you don't need this.
It's a fair question, and the answer should be no.
AI is confidently wrong sometimes, and it does not know it. So nothing I build goes to a customer without a person seeing it first, and nothing touches your money or your records without a rule around it.
That gets decided when the work is scoped — it isn't a switch you flip afterwards. It's also the difference between an automation you're still using in six months and one you quietly turn off after it embarrasses you once.
Anyone telling you to just let it run has not had to clean up after it.
Most savings calculators inflate the number. Mine has a section built to shrink it.
There's a calculator on my site that adds up what you're paying every month for software and outside services.
Most tools like it are built to make one number look as big as possible. This one has a whole section that shrinks it on purpose — accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, your industry software. You tap those so the total is honest, and they never show up as something to cut.
The interesting part is usually what's left: five separate bills and five logins doing one job.
Under a minute. No email, nothing saved, nothing sent anywhere.
Fifteen minutes is an odd length for a sales call. That's deliberate — it's long enough to work out whether there's something worth building, and too short to turn into a pitch.
The whole shape of it: you describe one repetitive task. I tell you whether it's worth automating. Sometimes the honest answer is no, or not yet, or that you already own a tool that does it. If it is worth doing, you get a flat number and a written scope before any work starts.
Nothing is installed, signed or paid for on the call. And when you call, you get me.
If you're collecting quotes for AI work, ask this before you ask about price: when it's finished, who owns it?
Plenty of automation gets built inside a vendor's own platform. It works — and it works exactly as long as you keep paying. Stop, and there's nothing to take with you.
So ask three things. Where does it live, whose account does it run in, and what am I left holding if the two of us never speak again? Either answer can be fine. Buying one and assuming the other is not.
Mine get built in your accounts, on tools you already own.
Think back over your week and find the message you sent more than five times in nearly the same words. The "we got your request." The status update. The appointment reminder. Most people find one without looking hard.
That's the first thing worth automating — not because it's clever, but because you've already written it, already tested it on real customers, and proven it repeats. Everything before that is guessing.
There's a five-point self-check on my site if you want the fuller version — data, goals, skills, budget.
Most people in my line of work won't put a number on a page
Most people in my line of work won't put a number on a page. You get "let's talk about your needs," and a number three conversations later.
Mine is on the website. $495 flat for one workflow, live in about a week.
That's not generosity, it's where the risk sits. On an hourly estimate, a job that turns out harder than either of us thought lands on your invoice. On a flat fee it lands on me — which is the right place for it, because I'm the one who's supposed to know how long it takes.
You pay once we've agreed exactly what we're building.
Your website is open all weekend. Your office isn't.
Your website is open all weekend. Your office isn't.
I read a lot of small business sites around here, and the contact form is nearly always the same: it takes the message and says nothing about what happens next. Which is fine at ten on a Tuesday morning. It's a different thing at six on a Friday evening, when the next human to see it won't be in until Monday.
Nobody's asking you to work weekends. But that person should know they're in the queue and roughly when they'll hear back, and that's a reply that can go out on its own.
Half this job is telling people they don't need me
Half this job is telling people they don't need me.
Last week I read sixteen small business websites in southern Anne Arundel County, looking for the gap I usually get hired to fix. Six of them didn't have one. Salons, a hair studio, a skincare clinic, a heating company — all booking online already, in real time, on software they clearly pay for and use.
The missed-call pitch every AI shop is running right now is aimed at trades that already bought the fix.
The businesses still doing it by hand are the appointment-based ones: dental, chiropractic, physical therapy, vets, marinas. You fill in a form, it promises somebody will be in touch, and no time is ever attached to that.
So if you already book online, you don't need me for that. If your form ends in a promise with no time on it, that's the one worth a free fifteen minutes.
I've been reading a lot of local business websites lately. Here's a setup I keep finding: one email address doing all the work.
Several locations — or several people who each handle a different thing — and a single shared inbox behind them. New customers, existing orders, and questions meant for someone else all land in the same place, with nothing marking which is which. Somebody sorts it by hand every morning before the real work starts.
That's not a software problem. It's a routing problem, and it's a boring one to fix: a short intake form that asks which location and what kind of request, sends it to the person who actually handles it, and confirms the customer while they're still on the page.
Most business owners I talk to don't need an "AI strategy." They need their Monday morning back.
Here's a prompt from our free library — paste it into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude as-is:
"Summarize my top 5 emails today into 3 action items with deadlines and owners."
That's it. No software to buy, no setup. It works because it's specific: five emails, three actions, owners and deadlines. Vague prompts get vague answers.
There are 52 more like it — organized by marketing, customer service, operations, nonprofits, and HR — free, no signup: tech-d-enterprises.com/free-prompt-guide
Want this kind of thing running in your business?
I build one workflow at a time, on the tools you already use. Flat fee from $495, about a week to build.