AI curriculum

Course outline for AI for the One-Person Company

A solo business can lose scarce owner attention to checking and repairing its automations. Organize reusable business context and simulate one rules-first, draft-only workflow using synthetic records. Measure total owner effort and keep changes to routines, customer communications, and financial actions under explicit review.

Technology: AI Strategy and Adoption
Duration: 6 hours
Modules: 3 · 2 hours each
Level: Level 2

About AI for the One-Person Company

AI for the One-Person Company Course Objectives

Prioritize repeatable work by consequence, reversibility, and net owner effort.
Organize reusable business knowledge with a project registry and source records; compare two supplied daily activity sources and mark conflicts or unknowns.
Apply deterministic rules before using supplied model drafts for ambiguous cases.
Specify customer-facing review, escalation, and operations checkpoints.
Use a weekly effort/failure ledger to simplify or stop an unhelpful routine.

Pre-requisites

AI capability and limitation awareness equivalent to Artificial Intelligence Foundations.
Workflow boundary, actor, state, and handoff competence equivalent to Workflow Foundations for AI Automation.
Familiarity with running or planning a small business and basic computer literacy; no coding is required.

Before this course

Complete the required courses or bring equivalent experience. Recommended courses add useful depth; they are not enrolment gates.

Required preparation

Recommended preparation

Can identify repeatable business work and AI limits before allocating owner attention, drafts, and checkpoints; coding is not required.

Find your place in the learning map

Lab Setup

Computer with a browser, document editor, and spreadsheet.
Use synthetic messages/business records, supplied model drafts, a calendar/log pair for a short daily-review comparison, and guided classification/effort worksheets; optional local scripts are not required.
No paid automation platform, code, customer account access, or real financial action is needed.

Detailed Course Outline

Module 1: Owner attention and reusable context

Personal automation: Rank recurring tasks by consequence, reversibility, and net owner effort; compare manual checklists, rules, and bounded assistance before automating.
Knowledge management: Organize reusable context with a PARA-style map, project registry, and source records; distinguish calendar plans from log evidence and mark conflicts.
Agents: Compare manual, scripted, and bounded agent assistance for a selected task; define scope and retain owner authority over consequential effects.

Practical outcome: Rank tasks by consequence, reversibility, and net effort; create a simple PARA-style information map, project registry, and source bundle. Compare a supplied calendar/log pair for one daily activity and mark conflicts or unknowns, then choose manual, scripted, or bounded agent assistance.

Module 2: Controlled customer-facing work

Workflow automation: Apply deterministic rules to clear cases and supplied drafts to ambiguous ones; preserve evidence and escalate uncertainty instead of forcing classification.
Sales: Design draft-only follow-up from synthetic business records; verify supporting context and owner review without sending messages or promising complete sales automation.
Customer support: Classify synthetic requests, prepare reviewed drafts, and route ambiguous or consequential cases; define escalation without granting autonomous customer-facing authority.

Practical outcome: Simulate rules-first inbox or invoice follow-up, use supplied drafts for ambiguous cases, and define review/escalation without sending messages or promising a complete sales/support system.

Module 3: Publishing, operations, and routine review

Content: Prepare publishing drafts with source context and review checkpoints; separate content preparation from authorized publication and retain decisions for the next session.
Operations: Track setup, checking, review, and rework in a weekly effort ledger; simplify or stop routines that consume more owner attention.
Human checkpoints: Locate owner decisions before customer communications, financial actions, and routine changes; preserve review capacity and verify unauthorized send or delete attempts produce no effect.

Practical outcome: Define publishing and financial-action checkpoints, preserve decision context for the next session, and use a weekly failure/rework ledger to propose an approved routine change or stop.

Practical exercise

Submit a synthetic inbox-triage or invoice-follow-up workflow, reusable context bundle, draft queue, and weekly owner-effort ledger.
Apply rules to clear cases and inspect supplied drafts for ambiguous cases; include missing evidence and an attempted send or delete without approval.
Classify every supplied record or explicitly escalate it, keep all customer-facing actions draft-only, and verify that no simulated send/delete effect occurs.
Include setup, checking, review, and rework in total effort; identify the fixture where automation costs more owner time and recommend a simpler routine or stop before making any change.

What you will produce

Design and review a draft-only solo-business workflow against total owner effort.

How the work is checked

Every synthetic record is classified or escalated with its evidence preserved; the daily-review pair records conflicts or unknowns without treating a calendar plan as proof of completion.
No supplied send/delete attempt creates an effect and all customer communications remain drafts.
The effort ledger includes setup, checking, review, and rework and correctly flags the net-cost case.
Routine changes require owner approval and the next-session context records the decision.

Six-hour noncoding simulation of one business workflow; no autonomous-business promise or complete sales/support implementation.

When another approach is better

A manual checklist or deterministic script is preferable when model review costs exceed saved effort.
Do not automate irreversible customer or financial actions without explicit authority and verification.
A recurring routine should stop or simplify when rework consumes more owner attention than it saves.

How we train

Ask about exercises, instructor feedback and the prior knowledge you need. Tool-specific courses marked provisional may become modules in a broader course.

Discuss your learning goals