Five shapes that cover most of a business
These five recipes earn their keep in almost any one-woman business. Each comes as a blueprint (trigger → steps) plus the AI prompt where one belongs. Your apps will differ; the shapes won't. Build the ones whose pain you recognize — a working three is worth more than an aspirational ten.
1 · The content repurposer
When you publish something long (blog post, newsletter) → AI turns it into three platform-shaped captions → save to a drafts sheet (never auto-post — voice is brand).
From the article below, write 3 social captions: one for Pinterest (searchable, benefit-led, 100 words max), one for Instagram (conversational, ends with a question, 80 words max), one for LinkedIn (one insight, no hashtags, 60 words max). Plain language, no hype words like "game-changing". Return them numbered 1-3 with nothing else.
Article: {post content or link excerpt}
2 · The inbox triage digest
Every weekday at 7am (timer trigger) → fetch yesterday's unread/starred emails → AI writes a priority digest → one message to you. You read one summary instead of opening forty tabs. For your own eyes only, so it can run unsupervised — this is the intern-test passing with honors.
Below are email subjects and snippets from the last 24 hours. Return a digest with exactly two sections:
NEEDS YOU (max 5 items): anything requiring a reply or decision, one line each — sender, ask, urgency.
CAN WAIT: everything else in one sentence total.
No introduction, no advice, no sign-off.
Emails: {mapped email data}
3 · The lead greeter
When a form/inquiry arrives → AI classifies it (Lesson 4's classifier) and drafts a personalized reply → draft lands in your inbox, row lands in your tracker. You wake to warm replies 80% written, sent only after your eyes. Speed-to-lead, without a robot pretending to be you.
4 · The proof harvester
When praise arrives (a 5-star review, a kind email you label "praise") → AI extracts the single most quotable line → appends it to a "social proof" sheet with the date and source → drafts a two-line thank-you for your approval. Six months from now you'll have a sales page's worth of testimonials that harvested themselves.
From the message below, extract the single most quotable sentence of praise, lightly trimmed for clarity (keep their words, cut filler). Return ONLY two lines:
QUOTE: the sentence
CONTEXT: who it's from and what it's about, under 10 words.
Message: {review or email text}
5 · The Friday report
Every Friday at 4pm → pull the week's numbers (sales, subscribers, top page — whatever your tools expose) → AI writes a five-line recap → emails it to you. The point isn't the data, it's the ritual: a business that reports to its owner weekly gets decisions made weekly.
Write a 5-line weekly business recap from the numbers below. Line 1: the headline number and whether it's up or down. Lines 2-4: one observation each, plain language. Line 5: the one question the owner should think about this weekend. Calm tone, no cheerleading, no advice beyond line 5. This week's numbers: {mapped metrics} Last week's numbers: {mapped metrics, if available}
Repurpose, digest, greet, harvest, report. Every recipe is the Lesson 1 sentence plus one Lesson 4 thinking step plus a human checkpoint where it faces the world. When you invent your own — and you will — check it against that anatomy and you'll rarely go wrong.
Choose the recipe that made you exhale ("ugh, yes, THAT") and build it this week using the Lesson 3 ritual. One recipe, fully alive and watched for a week, graduates you to Lesson 6 — where you stop building one-offs and start designing your stack.