Prompts & Pliers
★ AI tutorials for people with real jobs ★ no jargon ★ no hype ★ no "synergy" ★ built for actual small businesses ★ Gary the robot approves this message ★ be home by 6 ★ 
FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS, NOT TECH BROS

Your competitors are using AI badly. Beat them politely.

Plain-English AI playbooks for the work that eats your week: customer emails, estimates, Google reviews, hiring, social posts. Copy the prompt. Do the thing. Go home.

Browse the playbooks → Get one free

Who this is for

You run a salon, a landscaping crew, a bakery, a three-truck HVAC outfit, a law office with one lawyer (you). You've heard AI can help. Every tutorial you've found assumes you have a CTO care about "vector embeddings."

We assume one thing: you have 20 minutes and a real problem. Each playbook is a specific scenario — "answer all my Google reviews," "draft my estimates" — with the exact prompts, the screenshots, and the part nobody else includes: how to check the robot's work before you trust it.

Never used AI? Start here. It's a 20-minute setup.

Every playbook assumes you've done these four things. Do them once, on a slow Tuesday, with coffee.

1

Get an AI assistant

Sign up free at claude.ai (our pick) or chatgpt.com. The free tier is plenty to start. No credit card, no installing anything — it's a website where you type and it types back.

2

Say an actual thing about your business

Skip "write me a poem." Try this instead:I run a [your business] in [town]. What are 5 tasks I do every week that you could help with? Ask me questions first.

The "ask me questions first" part is the whole trick.

3

Learn the one rule

AI gives back what you give it. "Write a customer email" gets you mush. "Write a 60-word reply to a customer asking why their fence quote went up $200 — friendly, no groveling, materials cost more now" gets you something you'd actually send.

4

Never trust, always verify

AI confidently makes things up — prices, policies, staff members you don't employ. Read everything before it leaves your shop. Every playbook includes a checklist for exactly this.

Done? Get your first playbook free →

The Playbooks

$19 each. Bundle of all six for $49. Written for humans, built around the problems real businesses actually have.

PLAYBOOK 00 · DO THIS FIRST

Set Up the Robot

The 20-minute starting point: get a free AI account, learn the one rule of prompting, and find out why you should never fully trust Gary. Every other playbook assumes you've done this.

PLAYBOOK 01

The Review Whisperer

Answer every Google review — the glowing ones, the unhinged ones — in your own voice, 15 minutes a week. Includes the "1-star from someone who's never been a customer" protocol.

PLAYBOOK 02

Quotes While You Sleep

Turn a voice memo from the job site into a clean, priced estimate before your coffee's done. Your margins stay yours; the typing doesn't.

PLAYBOOK 03

Inbox Zero-ish

The shared inbox is haunted. We can't fix that, but AI can draft 80% of the replies and flag the three emails that actually need you.

PLAYBOOK 04

The Social Media Stand-In

A month of posts in one sitting — in your voice, about your actual work, with zero stock photos of people high-fiving in an office.

PLAYBOOK 05

Hiring Without Crying

Job posts that attract humans, screening questions that filter politely, and interview scripts so you stop winging it. The robot reads the résumés; you meet the good ones.

PLAYBOOK 06

Where Did My Tuesday Go?

Follow-ups, scheduling, no-show reminders, "just checking in" emails — the admin sludge, automated. Reclaim one full afternoon a week. Use it for anything. Even a nap.

Meet Gary.

"Gary answered 31 Google reviews this week, drafted 14 estimates, and wrote a job post for a bakery in Ohio. Gary does not want a raise. Gary wants you to double-check his math, because Gary is a robot and occasionally invents a discount that does not exist." — Every playbook includes a "Check Gary's Work" section. This is why.

The Shop Manual — free, weekly, short

One real AI use-case for your business every Tuesday. Under 3 minutes to read, under 10 to try. Subscribe and get The Review Whisperer free while the shop is being set up.

No spam. Unsubscribing is one click and zero guilt.