AI Training Library · Module 02

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AI Library · Module 02

Five Starter
Workflows.

The five jobs you do every week — newsletter, customer follow-up, research, social posts, bookkeeping — with the prompts I'd hand a friend who just opened Claude for the first time.
What this module covers

Five things on a laptop.

These are the five demos I run live in Session 1 of the Small Business Shortcuts workshop — turned into copy-paste prompts you can run yourself in the next hour. Each one already has the five ingredients baked in. Swap the bracketed details for your business and go.

Workflow 01 Write the monthly newsletter
You're my marketing assistant. Help me write the [MONTH] newsletter for [BUSINESS]. Three things happened this month worth telling people about: 1. [THING ONE] 2. [THING TWO] 3. [THING THREE] Format: Subject line first, then four short paragraphs, then a P.S. about [UPCOMING EVENT or SALE]. Sign it from [YOUR NAME]. Tone: Friendly, neighborly. Plain words and short sentences — not corporate. Write like you'd talk to a regular at the counter.
The second turnThe first draft is rarely the final. After it comes back, push it once: "Make it shorter. And rewrite the opening — that one's a little stiff." Or: "Add a sentence about why we lost the asparagus to the frost — be honest, don't gloss over it." That second turn is where the output stops sounding like generic AI and starts sounding like you.
Workflow 02 The email you've been putting off
You're my customer service writer. You write the way I would if I'd had a full night's sleep and a chance to cool off. Help me write a reply to a one-star review I just got. The customer's complaint was fair — [WHAT HAPPENED]. But the way they wrote it was a little harsh. Write a public reply that does three things: 1. Takes responsibility for the part that's on us 2. Briefly explains what we did (or are doing) to fix it 3. Offers them something reasonable — without being a doormat Format: One short paragraph, four to six sentences total. Warm, professional, no defensiveness, no over-apologizing. Sign it [YOUR NAME], [TITLE/BUSINESS].
Variation: the vendor nudgeSame shape works for the email you've been writing in your head for two weeks. Swap the prompt to: "Draft a follow-up to [VENDOR or LEAD] who hasn't replied in two weeks. Keep it short and warm. Don't sound desperate. Give them an easy out — a yes/no question they can answer in one line."
Workflow 03 "Find me ___"
You're my research assistant. I run [BUSINESS DESCRIPTION] in [LOCATION/REGION]. Find me [WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR — e.g., five grant programs I should look at this year, three suppliers in the Upper Midwest who make [PRODUCT], the top three competitors in my niche and what their angle is]. Format: A numbered list. For each item, give me: - Name (and URL if you have one) - One-line description in plain English - Why it might be a fit for me specifically - The thing I'd need to verify before acting on this Be honest about uncertainty. If you're not sure something exists or still operates, say so.
Trust but verifyThis is the workflow that surprised me most — the kind of thing I'd have paid a consultant $5,000 to do five years ago. It also has the highest risk of confidently-wrong answers. Always double-check phone numbers, deadlines, and whether a program still exists before you act. The AI gets you 80% of the way to an answer in 30 seconds instead of 3 hours. That last 20% is your judgment.
Workflow 04 One conversation → a week of posts
You're my social media assistant. I run [BUSINESS]. We're heading into [SEASON / LAUNCH / EVENT — e.g., farmers market opening weekend, the holiday gift season, our 10-year anniversary]. Brainstorm a week of social posts — one a day, seven total. Mix: - Three behind-the-scenes posts (what we're actually doing this week) - Two customer stories or testimonials (or things customers have said) - One straight promotional post - One question/conversation starter Format: For each day, give me a one-line label (e.g., 'Monday — behind-the-scenes') and a 2–3 sentence post draft. Tone: Like a neighbor talking, not a brand performing. Use first-person where it fits.
The platform splitOnce you've got the seven, run a second turn: "Take post #3 and rewrite it as a Facebook post (longer, conversational, with a question at the end) and an Instagram caption (shorter, more lyrical, with a line break between sentences)." One coffee, seven posts, two platforms — a week of content done.
Workflow 05 The receipt pile
You're my bookkeeping assistant. You're not a CPA — neither am I — but you're great at the messy first pass. Below are [NUMBER] transactions from my business. For each one, give me: - The most likely category (use standard small business categories: cost of goods, marketing, software, travel, meals, owner draw, etc.) - A confidence rating (high / medium / low) - A flag if anything looks unusual or needs my eyes Format: A table with columns for date, description, amount, category, confidence, and notes. After the table, write me a one-paragraph note I can send my actual bookkeeper that says: 'Here's what I see for [MONTH]. The ones I'm not sure about are flagged. What am I missing?' Transactions: [PASTE TRANSACTION LIST — date, description, amount on each line. Do not paste customer names or any PII.]
Privacy firstPaste numbers and merchant names, not customer names. The point isn't to replace your bookkeeper — it's to make the conversation with your bookkeeper ten times faster. You arrive with categories already drafted; they spend their time on the 10% that's actually unusual.
What just happened Five things you couldn't reliably do a year ago

If you ran all five of the workflows above end-to-end with one cup of coffee — that's roughly a half-day of work in 2024 dollars, done in about an hour. Five years ago, three of these would've been freelancer line items. Now they're a Tuesday.

Two questions you might still have:

"Is this cheating?" No more than a calculator is. The judgment is still yours. Your name is still on what goes out. You're the editor at every step.

"Will this replace me?" No. It replaces the parts of your job you didn't want anyway — the blank-page dread, the second-guessing, the Saturday morning at the kitchen table trying to write three sentences.

What's next Make every answer better, forever

The prompts above work. They'll work better once you set up global instructions (Module 03) — six rules you paste into your AI tool one time that change every answer it gives you, on every prompt, from then on.

If you're already comfortable with the basics, skip ahead to Module 04 — Image Prompts or Module 05 — NotebookLM for the tactics most small business owners haven't found yet.