AI starter for small business
Put two safe AI workflows into daily use within thirty days, hand them to somebody else in the business, and show what changed on the numbers you already track.
Privileged access
10 modules
30 days
12 to 16 hours
What you will learn
- Select AI use cases on value, data readiness, risk and a measurable baseline.
- Write reusable instructions that hold up across cases, and protect customer and business information.
- Improve marketing, sales, service and operations without inventing claims or removing accountable decisions.
- Build one no-code automation and one maintainable knowledge assistant.
- Measure impact with conservative assumptions, including review time and failure cost.
- Hand both workflows to somebody else in the business and decide what to keep, change or stop.
Your instructor
Course content
Method step 1, Choose
Find repetitive work where the information already exists and a person can check the result.
- Where AI pays in a small business
- Inventory ten tasks and choose two
- The workflow scorecard
Method step 2, Build
Write instructions that hold up on the fifth case, and decide what data may go in.
- Instructions that hold up
- Build and test one reusable instruction
- Reusable prompt patterns
Method step 2, Build
Use real customer evidence to say who you are for, and what you actually sell.
- Evidence before persona
- Build the customer and offer brief
- The brand context file
Method step 2, Build
One useful source asset, distributed properly, with a way to see whether it worked.
- One source asset, many channels
- Publish one cornerstone piece and distribute it
- The content calendar
Method step 2, Build
Answer faster without promising what the business cannot deliver.
- Faster answers, with judgment intact
- Build one lead-response or service workflow
- Common questions and support drafts
Method step 2, Build
Turn meetings, inboxes and recurring work into records with owners and dates.
- From conversation to record
- Document one process and build the action workflow
- The SOP and exception log
Method step 3, Use
Put the automation into daily use with approvals, retries and a log you can read.
- Triggers, actions and approvals
- Build a three-step automation and test the failures
- The automation test log
Method step 3, Use
Put your policies, products and procedures behind an assistant that cites where it got the answer.
- A source set worth answering from
- Build the assistant and test twenty questions
- The knowledge maintenance plan
Method step 4, Measure
Do the arithmetic honestly, including review time and the cost of getting it wrong.
- The honest arithmetic
- Complete the before and after review
- The keep, change or stop decision
Method step 5, Share
Hand both workflows to somebody else, and prove they can run and stop them.
- Make it somebody else's job
- Demonstrate both workflows and run the handover test
- A one-page AI use policy for your business
Requirements
- A business with repetitive work you can see, and the authority to change how it is done.
- Access to the email, calendar or customer tools you already pay for.
- Three to four hours a week for four weeks.
- One person who can take the handover at the end. The labs supply every template.
About this course
Most beginner courses are a list of tools. This one starts with business priorities, uses the smallest stack that will work, measures the before and the after, and leaves the owner with two workflows somebody else can operate.
Ten modules run across a thirty-day implementation window. Modules 1 through 6 choose and build, modules 7 and 8 put the automation and the knowledge assistant into daily use, module 9 does the arithmetic, and module 10 hands everything over.
The safety rules are practical rather than theoretical: confidential and customer information is excluded or handled only in an approved business environment, external messages and record changes pass a review, and financial or legal decisions stay with qualified people. Bookkeeping work is assisted rather than replaced.
The capstone is a thirty-day AI operating plan: two workflow charters with baselines, one customer-facing workflow, one internal workflow, the instructions and data rules behind them, edge-case tests, operating procedures, a before and after impact report, a handover test and a ninety-day roadmap.
Certification
Complete the course. Earn your certificate.
Complete every lesson to earn a shareable certificate of completion.
Your course certificate
- Your name
- Your full name.
- The course
- AI starter for small business
- Verification
- Verifiable online.
- Completion date
- When you finished.
Common questions
Privileged access has no course fee. Create one account to apply for Hybrid Filmmaking or join the waitlist for another course.
A course completes when your workflow runs live and you have measured it. You record a baseline in module 1, launch the workflow into a working environment, then measure the same thing again. That pairing is what makes the completion record worth sharing.
Hybrid Filmmaking accepts applications for the current intake. The other courses accept waitlist registrations for next month's intake.
Name, role, organization, and a few questions about the workflow you want to improve. It takes about a minute, and it is what lets the guided labs use your own workflow as the project.
One workflow you own, permission to change it, and the tools your team already uses. Applied AI infrastructure fundamentals also assumes a computer you can install software on, hybrid filmmaking assumes a phone or camera, and AI starter for small business runs on everyday business tools. Every course supplies sample data for the labs where your own material is restricted.
A one-page record inside the course. Before you launch, you note a baseline on time, cost, or quality. After you launch, you measure again. The sheet holds both numbers and the difference between them.
Instructor
Roan Weigert
Records all five courses
Hackathon judge and AI content creator, and host of the AI Insights San Francisco podcast. Writes this curriculum and records every core lesson.
Other courses
The other four courses
Each one takes a different kind of work through the same five steps. Pick the one closest to your job.
One permissioned campaign-to-pipeline workflow, built on your own data and measured after launch.
Combine traditional filmmaking craft with controllable AI production, then finish a hybrid film with a documented workflow.
Teaching and learning decisions first, then the policies, data rules and reviews that make them safe to adopt.
The whole picture of an AI system, taught to the depth one real deployment needs.
Join the waitlist
Choose the first two workflows
Join now and we will hold your place for the October intake.