Four Things You Can Do With AI Before Lunch
Every one of these works on the phone in your pocket, in the free version of ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Use whichever app you already have. No coding, no setup. If you can send a text, you can do every one of these.
1. Turn a picture into a spreadsheet
Got a sign-up sheet, a stack of business cards, or a printed list you'd normally spend an hour typing? Snap a photo, attach it in the AI app, and say:
Turn this into a spreadsheet. One row per person, with columns for name, company, phone, and email.
Ten seconds later, it's typed. Ask for a CSV file and it opens straight in Excel or Google Sheets.
Where else this works: business cards from the last mixer, the sign-in sheet from your open house, receipts from the glovebox at tax time.
Spot-check the numbers. Smudged handwriting can trip it up, and a wrong digit in a phone number is easy to miss.
2. Talk your follow-ups instead of typing them
You finish a job, you're sitting in the driveway, and you know the quote should go out while it's fresh. But you're beat, and "tonight" turns into next week. Tap the microphone in the AI app and just talk, like you're telling a friend:
Just walked the Henderson job. Four hundred square feet, tear-out and re-coat, gave them a ballpark of twenty-two hundred. Write me a short, professional follow-up email to the homeowner.
Thirty seconds of talking gets you a clean, professional email before you back out of the driveway. You're not writing. You're just talking.
Read it once before you hit send. It's your name on it.
3. Translate the complicated stuff, both directions
Translate down. Contracts, policies, tax letters, inspection reports: your customers don't always understand the paperwork, and confused people don't refer you. Paste the dense paragraph in and say:
Explain this to my client like they're smart but busy. Plain English, friendly, under 150 words.
Translate up. Got rough notes that need to go to a client? Paste them in and say:
Make this sound professional but still like me. Keep it short.
4. Let it map your referral partners
Give the AI a list of the businesses you know (your networking group, your chamber directory, your phone contacts) and ask:
I run a [your business]. Based on this list of local businesses, who are my three best referral partners, why, and write me a one-line ask for each.
Some answers you'd expect. A plumber gets the water-damage restoration company, the realtor, and the house cleaner. A burst pipe is a water-damage job, and the cleaning crew is under every sink in town.
The good part is what you wouldn't expect. Run it for a jeweler and it comes back with the insurance agent, the financial advisor, and the family-law attorney. None of them buy jewelry. But the jeweler's real product is the appraisal, and insurance riders, estate plans, and divorce settlements all need one. That's a connection most people never make, done in ten seconds.
Bonus: draft the email you're dreading
The price increase. The past-due reminder. The "we need to part ways" note. Tell it the situation and say:
Write this firm but polite. Under 120 words. No groveling.
The thing you've been putting off for three days is done in thirty seconds.
You don't need to be technical. You need to be willing to try one. Pick the one that would save you the most time this week and do it before lunch.
Save this page (⌘P → Save as PDF) to keep the prompts handy.
Ready for more than quick wins?
These are the free, do-it-yourself tricks. When it's the systems your business runs on that need streamlining, book a 30-minute Sanity Check call. No sales pitch, just a straight conversation about what's getting in the way.
Book a Sanity Check