Find Your First AI Automation

You know AI can save you time, but every time you open Claude you stare at a blank chat and think "now what?" The problem isn't the tool. This one prompt turns Claude into your personal business consultant: it interviews you, finds the gaps, and tells you exactly where to start automating.

What You'll Learn

• The exact prompt template (copy-paste ready)
• How the AI interview process works
• What the automation audit looks like
• How to turn results into real automations

Why Most People Never Start

You've seen the AI videos. You know it can save you time. You might even have Claude or ChatGPT bookmarked. But every time you open it, you stare at a blank chat and think "now what?"

The problem isn't the tool. The problem is you're trying to figure out what to automate before you've mapped out where you're wasting time. That's backwards.

The fix is simple: stop trying to come up with ideas yourself. Let AI interview you about your business, find the gaps, and tell you exactly where to start. That's what this prompt does.

The Prompt Template

Copy this prompt and paste it into Claude (or ChatGPT). Don't change anything. It's designed to pull specific information out of you that most people wouldn't think to share.

I want to use AI to automate parts of my business, but I don't know where to start.

Here's what I need you to do:

1. Interview me. Ask me every question you need about my business, my role, my daily
tasks, my biggest pain points, and my current workflows. Don't hold back. Ask as many
questions as you can so you have a complete picture of how I work.

2. After I answer everything, analyze my responses and give me a prioritized list of
automation opportunities, ranked by impact (time saved, money saved, or errors reduced).

3. For each opportunity, tell me:
- What the current manual process is
- What the automated version looks like
- What tool or approach I'd use
- How hard it is to set up
- Estimated time saved per week

Start by asking your questions. Ask at least 15. Go deep. The more you know, the better
your analysis will be.

Why this works: most prompts give you generic output because they have generic input. This prompt forces Claude to gather detailed, specific information about YOUR situation first. The result is a custom automation roadmap, not a cookie-cutter list of AI tools.

How The Interview Works

After you paste the prompt, Claude will ask you 15 to 20 questions. Answer them honestly and with as much detail as you can. The better your answers, the better the audit.

Questions Claude will ask:

• What does your business do and who are your customers?
• What does a typical workday look like for you?
• What tasks eat up the most time every week?
• Where do things fall through the cracks?
• What do you do repeatedly that feels like it should be automated?
• How do you handle client communication, follow-ups, and onboarding?
• What tools and software do you currently use?
• Where are you spending money on tasks a tool could handle?

These aren't generic questions. Claude tailors them based on your first few answers. If you say you run an agency, it asks about client management. If you say ecommerce, it asks about inventory and fulfillment. The conversation adapts to you.

What The Audit Looks Like

Once you've answered everything, Claude analyzes your responses and returns a prioritized list of automation opportunities. Here's what a real output looks like for a marketing agency:

1. Client onboarding (HIGH): Currently manual emails and forms. Automate with a templated
   onboarding sequence. Tool: Claude + email automation. Setup: Easy. Saves 3 hrs/week.

2. Weekly reporting (HIGH): Pulling data from 4 platforms manually. Automate with
   AI-generated summaries. Tool: Claude Code. Setup: Medium. Saves 5 hrs/week.

3. Invoice follow-ups (MEDIUM): Manually checking who hasn't paid. Automate with
   scheduled reminders. Tool: Accounting software + AI trigger. Setup: Easy. Saves 2 hrs/week.

4. Content repurposing (MEDIUM): Rewriting blog posts for social manually. Automate with
   Claude rewriting per platform. Tool: Claude. Setup: Easy. Saves 4 hrs/week.

Every item includes what you're doing now, what the automated version looks like, what tool to use, difficulty level, and time saved per week. You walk away knowing exactly what to tackle first.

Turn Results Into Action

The audit gives you a ranked list. Here's how to actually act on it without getting overwhelmed.

1. Pick the top easy win. Find the highest-impact item marked "Easy" setup. This is your first automation. Don't start with the hardest one. Start with the one that saves the most time with the least effort.
2. Ask Claude to build it. Take that one item and tell Claude: "Help me set this up step by step." It will walk you through the entire implementation: what tool to use, how to configure it, what to test.
3. Run it for a week. Let the automation run for 7 days. Note what works and what needs adjusting. Most automations need one or two tweaks before they're dialed in.
4. Move to the next one. Once your first automation is running, go back to the audit list and pick the next item. Repeat. You're building a system, one piece at a time.

The key insight: you don't need to automate everything at once. One automation per week adds up fast. After a month, you've reclaimed 10 to 15 hours per week. After three months, your business runs differently.

Go Deeper

• Printable PDF version of this guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lgp_qTFi7YUE4Npl62Fbbaa4yzh2f30A/view?usp=drivesdk

Want the whole system installed live, with Cooper on the call? Build Your Own AI, the two week sprint runs the first two weeks of August.

Or get a new working tool every Monday inside The AI Operator community on Whop.