Start with a useful result
You may already have the beginnings of a side business: a skill people ask you for, a recurring problem you understand, or a process you have improved at work. AI can help you turn that knowledge into a clear offer and a deliverable. The first question is who needs the result enough to make time for it.
Choose a service you can describe in one sentence
For example: review one onboarding journey and deliver three prioritized improvements with annotated screenshots. Name the intended customer, required inputs, number of screens, delivery format, and revision limit. This makes a small pilot easier to buy and easier to finish.
Ask about the last time the problem happened
Speak with two or three relevant founders. Ask where new users get stuck, what the team has tried, and which decision they need to make next. Take notes with permission. Interest in AI is not the same as interest in your service; listen for a costly or frustrating job they already want done.
Make one convincing sample
Use your own product or a clearly labeled fictional example. Ask AI to help organize observations, compare possible explanations, and draft an action list. Inspect the actual journey yourself. Show what the customer receives, including the reasoning behind each recommendation, without presenting invented client outcomes.
Build the delivery routine before adding features
Create an intake brief, evidence folder, review checklist, report template, and handoff note. Use the same sequence for the first pilot. If the work needs a website, start with one page that explains the audience, deliverable, boundaries, and next step. A complex portal can wait.
Invite a bounded pilot
Offer a specific scope and agree on price, timing, and responsibilities before starting paid work. Ask the customer what would make the report useful in their next meeting. Keep records of time spent on discovery, production, review, revisions, and administration so you can see the real delivery cost.
Improve the offer from the handoff
After delivery, ask which recommendation they used, what remained confusing, and whether the next action felt feasible. Permission to quote a customer is separate from permission to do the work. Refine the scope around the parts that helped them make a decision.
A brief you can use today
Write five lines: the person I want to help; the task they struggle with; the smallest result I can deliver; the evidence I will collect; and the time and money I will put into the first test. Ask your AI tool to challenge what is unclear before it drafts a plan. Keep decisions and source material together so you do not have to reconstruct the project in every conversation.
Keep the tool stack small
Begin with a tool you can access and one place to organize the work. Add hosting, a database, a domain, or specialist creative tools only when the experiment requires them. Subscriptions are not evidence of progress. Your first useful output may be a document, a prototype, or a manual service that helps you learn what should be automated later.
Learn the process by building something small
In Two Mondays, Ashley will build a product and show the steps from validation and planning through design, coding, testing, and marketing. Bring a small project and practice the workflow. The workshop meets October 26 and November 2, 2026, from 7–9 p.m. Eastern, on Zoom with a West Palm Beach in-person option. The $99 ticket covers both Mondays and optional setup help and office hours. Paid software and hosting are separate; you can follow the demonstrations without buying every tool mentioned here.
Want this applied to your business? The Growth Fix is one fixed-price session to find where your customers drop off and fix the part that matters most.
