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THE WORKBOOK

How to Properly Use AI
In Your Company.

A working guide for $2M+ business owners. Where AI actually pays off, how to decide between building it yourself vs hiring, and the 30-day playbook for putting an AI specialist to work.

SECTION 01

The 5-minute diagnostic

Before you do anything else, find out where you actually stand.

Check every statement that applies to your business today. We'll tell you where you stand.

SECTION 02

Where AI pays off fastest

Forget the hype. There are 4 categories where AI consistently returns its cost in the first 60 days. Everything else is a research project.

When we audit operations at $2M+ businesses, the same four patterns keep showing up. If you have one of these leaks, fix it before anything else.

Every minute a lead waits for a reply is a coin-flip whether they go to a competitor. AI answers in seconds. Use cases: missed-call text-back, after-hours chat, quote follow-up sequences.

The math: the agency or business that responds first wins ~50% of inbound deals. Most teams take hours; AI takes seconds.

If anyone on your team is typing the same kind of thing more than 10 times a week (proposals, intake forms, status updates, reports), AI cuts that work by 80%+. The trick is templating with variables, not "use ChatGPT."

If your team copies data between your CRM, billing tool, project tracker, and email — that's the lowest-hanging automation fruit in any business. AI Operators ship this in a week.

If everything routes through one person (usually you), AI can pre-process: summarize threads, draft replies, flag what actually needs your attention. Hours back per week, every week.

YOUR TEMPLATES

Downloadable tools, ready to use.

Real spreadsheets and frameworks — not a PDF. Open each one, make a copy in Google Drive, and fill it out for your own business.

DELIVERABLE 1 · INTERACTIVE
AVAILABLE NOW

Operations Audit Template

List every repetitive task in your company. Auto-calculates monthly cost and ranks tasks by automation priority so you know exactly where to start.

Open Template →
DELIVERABLE 2 · INTERACTIVE
AVAILABLE NOW

AI ROI Calculator

Enter hours, hourly cost, and AI coverage percentage. Instantly see weekly, monthly, and annual savings. Save scenarios to compare side-by-side.

Open Template →
DELIVERABLE 3 · INTERACTIVE
AVAILABLE NOW

AI Use Case Prioritization Framework

Score your AI ideas on Business Impact × Frequency × Ease × Risk. Save multiple and compare side-by-side to see which one to build first.

Open Template →
DELIVERABLE 4 · INTERACTIVE
AVAILABLE NOW

AI Operator Job Description Builder

Fill in your company specifics, see the full JD update live, and export as Markdown or PDF — ready to post.

Open Template →

SECTION 03

ROI calculator

Two inputs, real numbers. Conservative defaults.

QUICK ROI ESTIMATE

Monthly saved

$3,000

Annual saved

$36,000

Assumes 4 weeks/month. Conservative — most teams find more hours once they look honestly.

How to read this: if the annual number is more than 3× the loaded cost of an AI Operator placement ($9k recruiting + ~$50k salary), the math is unambiguous. Most owners we work with see 5-10×.

SECTION 04

Build it yourself vs hire someone

Three honest questions. Answer them in order.

If yes, the DIY route works. Tools like Zapier, Make, n8n, and ChatGPT will get you 60% of the way to most automations. Budget 3 months to learn the patterns.

If no — skip to question 2.

An ops manager who's curious about tech, or a junior dev, can ship the same automations with structured time. Pair them with a half-day of coaching from someone experienced and they'll outperform a generic AI consultant.

If no — go to question 3.

If you have one automation to build, hire a freelancer for a project. If you'll keep finding more (you will), hire a full-time AI Operator. The economics of recurring builds beat one-off projects by month 3.

SECTION 05

Common mistakes (check the ones you've made)

Track them. The honesty is half the work.

YOUR PROGRESS0 / 7

SECTION 06

The 30-day playbook

If you do exactly this, you'll have a working automation shipped and adopted by day 30.

Not the hardest. Not the most exciting. The one that wastes the most hours. Document the current state in writing — every step, who owns it, how long it takes, what tools it touches. If you can't write it down clearly, you can't automate it.

What does the ideal version look like? Where does AI fit in (drafting, routing, summarizing, alerting)? What stays human? Sketch it on paper, then validate with whoever runs that workflow today.

Choose the simplest tool stack that can ship in a week. For most ops: Zapier or Make + a CRM webhook + ChatGPT/Claude API for the AI step. Don't perfect; ship something working end-to-end.

Keep the old process going. Run the new one alongside. Compare outputs daily. Tune the prompt, the routing, the templates. This is where 80% of the learning happens.

Stop running the old process. Watch the new one closely for a week. Document what changed. Calculate hours saved or revenue won. Pick the next workflow.

The trap: most owners stop after day 14 because v1 isn't perfect. Don't. Imperfect-but-running beats perfect-but-not-shipped every time.

SECTION 07

Prompts to start with

Copy these. Adapt them. They're the prompts we actually use.

WORKFLOW DOCUMENTER
You are an operations analyst. I'll describe a workflow my team runs. Your job:
1. Document it as a numbered list of steps
2. Tag each step as (manual / could-automate / must-stay-human)
3. Estimate hours/week spent on each step
4. Flag the 2 highest-ROI automation candidates

My workflow:
[paste your description here]
EMAIL CLASSIFIER
Classify this incoming email into ONE of these categories:
- new_lead (someone asking about our services)
- existing_customer (question about an active engagement)
- vendor (selling us something)
- internal (from a teammate)
- noise (newsletter, spam, automated)

Email subject: {subject}
Email body: {body}

Respond with only the category, nothing else.
MEETING NOTES → ACTIONS
From these meeting notes, extract:
1. Decisions made (who decided what)
2. Action items (who owns what, by when)
3. Open questions that didn't get answered

Format as three bulleted sections. Be concise — use the speaker's own words when possible.

Notes:
[paste notes here]

You don't have to figure this out alone.

We place dedicated AI specialists into companies like yours. They do everything in this workbook — and the things this workbook didn't cover. Refundable $500 deposit — For the month of this month, get your first search absolutely free. Candidates in 21 days.

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WEEKLY NOTE

Stay in the loop.

We send one note a week — what's working in AI operations, what isn't, and who's hiring.