Build the employee that takes the one job you hate doing after the real work is done, the cleanup job, the one that lands on you at night. For most owners that is an intake or a briefing job: taking the mess from a conversation or a day of work and turning it into clean, organized information where it needs to live. Most owners who ask me this have already watched a dozen videos, installed something, and quit, the way Bill did before we worked together.
Why not a customer support bot
The common advice is to build a customer support bot first, and I think that is backwards for a small owner-led business. Support touches your customers directly, so the day it gets something wrong it costs you a relationship, and it is the hardest thing to get right. The back office is the opposite. It is repetitive, it has clear steps, and if it makes a mistake on the first pass you catch it before anyone else sees it. That is where you want your first one to learn.
How to pick yours
Look for a task that happens over and over, that has steps you could write down like a recipe, that eats time you would rather spend in front of people, and that carries low risk if the first version is rough. Ask yourself which task shows up after every sale or every job. Ask which one you put off until the end of the day. Ask which one you would hand a new assistant first if you could afford one. The answer to those three is usually the same task, and that is the one to build.
This is why we build the same employee together in the workshop, the one we call The Briefer. It reads the pile from a conversation or a day of work and hands back one clean brief of what happened and a short list of what needs you. It is the job almost every owner has, and it is the safest place to learn how this works, so once you have built one you can build the next one on your own.
The question under the question
People ask what to build first when what they are asking underneath it is whether they can build anything at all without being technical. You can. Bill is an insurance agent who called it damn near programming and still ended up with a tool that does his intake. Eric, a commercial contractor, does the same thing with his subcontract paperwork. You start with one job, you teach it in plain English, and you let it run that one job the same way every time. That should get you started.
See it in practice: Bill’s intake tool and Eric’s subcontract skill. When you are ready to build your own, the workshop walks you through it.
Written by Aaron Beauclair, owner of Highmark Ledger in Lincoln and Omaha.
Frequently asked questions
What AI employee should you build first?
Build the repetitive back-office cleanup job you already hate, the one that lands on you after the real work is done. It has clear steps and low risk if the first version is rough, so it is the safest place to learn.
Should your first AI employee be a customer support bot?
No. Support touches your customers, so a mistake costs you a relationship, and it is the hardest job to get right. Start with a back-office task where a rough first version is low risk.
How do you pick which task to automate first?
Pick the task that repeats after every sale or job, that you could write down like a recipe, that eats time you would rather spend with people, and that you put off until the end of the day. That is usually your first AI employee.