Lesson 006Field guide · AI for Small Business
AI Workflow Audit Basics
Review how you work and find your top AI opportunities.
You'll learn
- How to run a time-audit of a typical working week
- How to score candidate tasks: frequency × time × repetitiveness
- Why the audit ends with one task, not a to-do list of ten
- How to write a one-page business AI plan you'll actually follow
01Section
From instinct to audit
This path started with a gut-check: spot one task that's frequent, wordy, and judgment-light. Since then you've built reply templates, a follow-up sequence, SOPs, and a marketing rhythm. Now you close the loop with the systematic version — instead of noticing opportunities, you audit for them.
An audit sounds heavy. This one isn't: it's one honest look at where a typical week goes, a simple score for each candidate task, and a one-page plan for the winner. You'll finish this lesson holding that plan.
Plain-language definition
Workflow audit — a deliberate review of the recurring tasks in your week, measured for how often they happen and how long they take, to find where a change — here, AI assistance — pays off most.
Checkpoint
02Section
Audit a typical week
You can't score what you haven't seen, and memory is a flatterer — it remembers the big jobs and forgets the fifteen small ones that actually filled Tuesday. So the audit starts with a list of what a real week contains.
Reconstruct last week: Walk through your calendar, sent messages, and receipts from the last full week. List every recurring task they reveal — including the five-minute ones.
Or log the coming week: More accurate if you have the patience: keep a note open for one week and jot each recurring task as it happens. No categories, just a running list.
Estimate, don't measure: For each task: roughly how many times per week, roughly how many minutes each time. Honest ballparks beat precise guesses.
Keep only the repeaters: Cross off anything that happens less than monthly. The audit hunts recurring time, not one-offs.
What usually surprises people
It's rarely the big visible jobs. It's the scattered writing — replies, quotes, reminders, re-explanations — that quietly adds up to hours across a week.
Checkpoint
03Section
Score the candidates
Now turn the list into a ranking. Score each task from 1 to 3 on three factors, and multiply:
Frequency
1 = monthly, 2 = weekly, 3 = most days. How often does it come up?
Time
1 = a couple of minutes, 2 = around ten, 3 = twenty or more. How long does one round take?
Repetitiveness
1 = different every time, 2 = a familiar shape, 3 = nearly identical each time. How much is routine versus judgment?
Scoring in action
Quote write-ups: most days (3) × fifteen minutes (2) × same structure every time (3) = 18. Monthly bookkeeping: monthly (1) × two hours (3) × judgment-heavy (1) = 3. The quotes win by a mile — even though bookkeeping feels like the bigger burden.
Notice what the multiplication does: a task scoring 1 on any factor can't rank high, no matter how strong the other two are. That's deliberate — it's the same three-question test from L-01, now with numbers. And a low repetitiveness score is doing safety work too: it keeps judgment-heavy tasks, the ones AI shouldn't lead on, near the bottom of the list.
Checkpoint
04Section
Pick the top one and plan it
The audit's output is not a to-do list of ten improvements — that list dies in a drawer. It's the single highest-scoring task, turned into a plan concrete enough to start tomorrow. A useful plan answers six things:
- The task: Named plainly: "writing quote emails," not "improving communication."
- Current process: How it works today, in two or three sentences — including how long it takes.
- AI-assisted process: The new version: what AI drafts, what you still do, where the human check sits.
- The prompt to use: The actual prompt, written once and saved — not "I'll figure out wording each time."
- The review step: What you check before anything is used or sent. This line is non-negotiable.
- How I'll know it's working: Something observable within two weeks: quotes going out same-day, the task no longer piling up, the evening backlog gone.
Key takeaway
One task, fully planned and actually adopted, beats ten opportunities identified and admired. You can rerun the audit next quarter for number two.
Privacy note: One rule holds throughout the plan: describe tasks and situations, never customer records. If the winning task touches customer details, the plan's review step is also where you strip them before anything reaches an AI tool.
Pause and think: Before running the exercise — which task do you predict will score highest? A surprise here is the audit earning its keep.
Checkpoint
Prompt exercise
Capstone: build your business AI plan
This is the path capstone — it produces a plan you keep. Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or whichever AI tool you have access to; the website doesn't run AI itself. Have your week's task list handy (or reconstruct it live), and describe tasks in general terms without customer details. When the plan is done, copy it somewhere permanent.
You're helping a small-business owner run an AI workflow audit and produce a one-page plan. Work in three stages, one question at a time. Stage 1 — audit: ask about my business, then help me list the recurring tasks in a typical week with rough frequency and minutes for each. Stage 2 — scoring: score each task 1–3 on frequency, time per round, and repetitiveness, multiply the three, show me the ranked table, and flag any high scorer that involves sensitive customer data or heavy judgment. Stage 3 — plan: for the top task only, produce a plan titled "My business AI plan" with exactly these sections: The task. Current process. The AI-assisted process. Prompt to use (write me the actual reusable prompt). Review step (what I check before anything is used). How I'll know it's working (something observable within two weeks). Keep the whole plan under one page so I can copy and keep it.
Reflection: You now hold the plan. The last step isn't in the chat: put the reusable prompt where you'll use it, and put a two-week reminder in your calendar to check the "how I'll know it's working" line against reality.
Quick check
4 quick questions — no pressure
There's no pass or fail here. Answer them all, and we'll show you the answers either way.