Your first week with a business brain

Most business owners try AI the same way. They open a chat, ask for a follow-up email, get something bland back, and decide it's overhyped.

We think they're half right. AI that knows nothing about your business is close to useless. The fix is giving it the context once, in one place, so you stop explaining yourself every time.

That place is a project. What you put in it is your business brain.

Day 1: Privacy first

Do this before you upload a single document. It takes four minutes.

• Turn off model training. Click your name in the bottom left, then Settings, then Privacy. Turn off the setting that uses your chats to improve the models. Look at your own toggle. Don't assume.
• Write down what never goes in. Social Security numbers. Full card or bank account numbers. Passwords. Identifiable patient records.
• Know what's usually fine. Your services, your pricing, your best emails, your proposals, your FAQ.

The test we use: would you keep this in Google Drive? If yes, it's usually fine here. If you wouldn't put it in either place, it doesn't go on a computer.

The full list of what never goes in

Day 2: Make one project

• Go to Projects, then New project. Give it a plain name. "My Business" works.
• Write the project instructions. Three or four sentences describing the assistant you want.
• Add one line that does the most work: ask me questions before you produce anything.

Here's an example you can adapt:

You are my operations and marketing assistant for a residential cleaning business in Winter Park. You know my services, my customers and how I write. Before you produce anything, ask me the questions you need answered to do it well. Match the length of what I give you.

Days 3 and 4: Load three files

You don't need everything. You need three files, done well.

• Who I am and what I do. One page. How long you've been at it, what you actually sell, and why someone picks you over the business down the street. Write it like you'd explain it to a friend.
• Who I serve. Your best customer, in detail. What's happening in her life when she calls you. What she already tried. What she says when she's frustrated. This file changes your results more than any prompt.
• How I sound. Ten things you wrote that worked. Emails that got replies. Posts people saved. Then a short list of words you'd never use.

Staring at a blank page?

Don't write these from scratch. Let Claude interview you:

I run a [type of business] in [city] and I've been doing it for [number] years. Interview me one question at a time until you have enough to write a one-page summary of who I am, what I sell, and who I serve. Ask at least eight questions before you write anything.

Answer honestly. Fix what it gets wrong. Save it as your first file.

Day 5: Two rules that decide whether this works

• Your best, not your everything. Upload every email you've ever sent and you'll get your average email back. Upload the ones that worked.
• Short and organized beats long and complete. When a project holds a lot, Claude pulls the parts that look relevant instead of reading every word. Clear headings help it find the right part. A tight two-page file beats a messy twenty-page one.

One habit to start now: when you paste in a long document, put the document first and your question last. Anthropic's own guidance says this order gets better answers. Almost everyone does it backwards.

Days 6 and 7: One real job, five times

Pick the job. Something you do over and over, that makes you money, and that you don't enjoy. Turning a phone call into a quote. The follow-up you keep forgetting. The newsletter you never send.

Do it inside your project. The first draft will be about half right. Tell Claude exactly what you'd change.

Do it again tomorrow. And the day after. You'll notice you're correcting less each time.

On the fifth round, ask for the shortcut:

That's what I wanted. Write me the prompt I should have given you at the start to get this in one try, so I can reuse it.

Save what it gives you. That's how you stop starting over.

What we'd tell you before you start

• This takes hours, not minutes. Anyone promising an AI that writes like you by lunchtime is selling something. You train it the way you'd train a new hire.
• Your expertise is the ingredient. If you don't know what a good quote looks like, Claude will find a generic one and hand it to you with total confidence.
• The brain is never finished. Prune it once a quarter, or last year's prices will keep showing up.
• We don't know which job will click for you. For some people it's quotes. For others it's the follow-ups. Week one is partly about finding out.

Where this goes next

Week one gets you a project that knows the basics. The next three weeks are where it starts doing real work.

Build Your Business Brain is four weeks, one session a week, with a small group of entrepreneurs and operators in the room.

• $997 per person, or three payments of $349
• You bring your own business and work on it in the room
• You leave with assistants that run your repeat jobs the same way every time

See Build Your Business Brain

Settings and menus were accurate as of October 2026. Anthropic changes both often. If a screen doesn't match this guide, trust the screen.