Cover of AI Without the Hype: Real Workflows for Busy Business Owners

AI Without the Hype · For small business owners

Real Workflows for Busy Business Owners

What would you do with ten extra hours a week?

AI won’t run your business for you. But used well, it can give you back the hours you lose to emails, posts, paperwork, and follow-ups, so you can spend them on the work only you can do.

One task.One tool.One week.

Available in Kindle, paperback and hardcover.

Is this book for you?

Written for you if…

  • You run a small business without a tech team
  • Emails, posts, paperwork and follow-ups eat up your week
  • You want practical help, not hype or jargon

This plainspoken guide follows seven small businesses, from a bakery to an HVAC company, as they put AI to work without hype, jargon, or a tech team.

Inside you’ll discover

What you’ll be able to do

  • One task. One tool. One week. — the method that makes AI stick
  • Ready-to-use prompts for emails, reviews, posts, and proposals
  • How to automate follow-ups without losing the personal touch
  • Guardrails for privacy, accuracy, and the FTC’s fake-review rule
  • A 30-day rollout plan built for a full calendar

What’s inside: 8 chapters

One practical skill in each, with prompts you can use the same day.

  1. Getting Started
  2. Customer Communication
  3. Marketing
  4. Back Office
  5. Sales and Leads
  6. Hiring and Your Team
  7. Guardrails
  8. Your First Week

Try two prompts from the book

Replace anything in [brackets] with your own details. AI drafts; you decide.

Find your first task“I run a [type of business] with [number] people. Here’s a rough list of what I did this week and about how long each task took: [paste your list]. Which three tasks are the best candidates for help from an AI chat assistant, and why? Keep it practical, and assume I have no technical background.”
Reply in your own voice“Here are three emails I’ve written to customers: [paste them]. Study my tone, my word choice, and how I open and close. Then draft a reply to this customer message in the same voice: [paste the message]. Keep it under 150 words, and don’t add anything I haven’t told you is true.”

Free with the book

The Busy Owner’s AI Prompt Pack

34 ready-to-use prompts organized by chapter, a guide to filling in the blanks, and the one-week tracker.

A free printable PDF. Tell me where to send it.

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    Leland Root

    About the author

    Leland Root spent more than thirty years in IT, mostly in business analysis: standing between new technology and the people who have to use it, and asking what it’s really doing for them. He writes plainspoken guides that skip both the hype and the fear. He lives in Arizona.

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