What you'll be able to do
- Understand what automation is, in plain English, and decide whether it is for you.
- Know what other tools exist and when they matter.
- Build a personal 90-day plan.
- Know how to keep learning without getting overwhelmed.
The big idea
The people who keep getting value from AI are not the ones who learned the most. They are the ones who kept a small habit going after the class ended.
By the end of this module
You have a written plan for the next 90 days, you understand what automation is and whether you need it, and you know how to keep learning after this room empties.
What automation actually means
So far, everything you have done required you to be there - you typed, it answered. Automation means work happening without you present.
A plain example: every time someone fills in the contact form on your website, an AI writes a personalized first reply, saves the person's details to a list, and adds a reminder for you to follow up in three days. You did not open anything. It happened.
You build these with connector tools - services that link your apps together. The common ones are Zapier and Make. You do not write code; you pick 'when this happens' and 'then do this' from menus.
Honest assessment: it is a real step up in effort from what you have been doing. It is worth it when a task happens often and follows the same shape every time. It is not worth it for something you do twice a month.
Remember this
The test for automation: does it happen at least weekly, and does it follow the same steps every time? If no to either, keep doing it by hand.
Three automations worth having
New enquiry reply. Form submission comes in, a personalized acknowledgement goes out within a minute, details get saved. This is the highest-value one for most small businesses, because speed of first reply matters more than polish.
Weekly summary. Every Friday, your week's notes, sales, or emails get summarized and sent to you. You read it in three minutes instead of reconstructing the week from memory.
Content scheduling. Your batched posts get queued and published on a schedule. You do a month in one sitting and forget about it.
The other tools, briefly
Claude - what you learned on. Strong writing, handles long documents well, good for thinking through problems.
ChatGPT - the most widely known. Very similar to use. Worth trying so you can compare.
Gemini - Google's. Convenient if your work already lives in Google Docs and Gmail.
Image tools - these generate pictures from a description. Useful for social posts and mockups.
Transcription tools - these turn recorded audio into text. Excellent for meetings and interviews.
Honest advice: do not spread yourself across five tools. Get genuinely good at one. The skill of asking well transfers to all of them; the time spent learning five interfaces does not transfer to anything.
Remember this
One tool used daily beats five tools tried once.
How to keep learning without drowning
The AI world moves fast and most of the noise does not matter to you. You do not need to keep up with everything. You need to keep using one thing.
A sustainable approach: use it daily for real work, add one new prompt to your library each week, and once a month spend 20 minutes trying one thing you have not tried before.
Avoid: news feeds about AI, hype threads, and anyone selling a secret prompt that will change your life. Nothing in this course was a secret. It was just practice.
When you get stuck, ask the AI itself. 'I'm trying to do X and getting Y. What am I doing wrong?' It is a surprisingly good teacher about itself.
Your 90-day plan
Days 1-30, habit. One routine, daily. Prompt library grows to ten. No new tools. The only goal is that it becomes normal.
Days 31-60, depth. Build your templates out. Batch your content. Teach one other person - teaching is the fastest way to find the holes in your own understanding.
Days 61-90, leverage. Now look at automation, if and only if you have a task that passes the weekly-and-repeatable test. Otherwise, go deeper on what already works.
Write the plan down in this workbook today. A plan you did not write is a wish.
If you want to go further
Some of you will want to go past personal use into changing how your business actually runs - connected systems, automated workflows, AI built into your operations rather than sitting beside them.
That is a different kind of work, and it is what Purple Heart AI Consulting does. If that is where you are headed, there is a conversation available whenever you are ready. No pressure, and nothing in this course depended on it.
Most of you do not need that. Most of you need to keep doing what you learned here, every week, for three months. That alone will put you ahead of nearly everyone you know.
Remember this
You came in thinking you were behind. You are leaving having actually used it. That's the whole difference.
Words worth knowing
You will hear these. Now you can use them.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Automation | Work that happens without you present. |
| Connector tool | A service that links your apps together. Zapier and Make are the common ones. |
| Trigger | The event that starts an automation. 'When a form is submitted.' |
| Action | What happens next. 'Send an email.' |
| Workflow | The full chain of trigger and actions, start to finish. |
| Transcription | Turning recorded speech into text. |
Your turn
Write in this book. The people who write things down are the people who still use this in six months.
Exercise 5.1 - Does anything pass the test?
10 minutes- List tasks in your week that happen at least weekly AND follow the same steps every time.
- If your list is empty, that is a legitimate answer. Write 'not yet' and move on.
Exercise 5.2 - Your 90-day plan
20 minutes- Fill in each phase with specific, small commitments. Specific beats ambitious.
Days 1-30 - my daily routine will be:
Days 31-60 - templates I'll build / who I'll teach:
Days 61-90 - what I'll automate, or go deeper on:
Exercise 5.3 - Your number
10 minutes- How many hours a week has AI actually saved you since Module 1? Honest number.
- What will you do with those hours? Be specific - hours that aren't claimed get absorbed.
Exercise 5.4 - Who are you teaching?
10 minutes- Name one person you will teach one thing from this course, and when.
- Teaching is how you find out what you actually understood.
Check yourself
Tick each one honestly. Anything unticked is the thing to go back to.
Before the next module
- Start day 1 of your plan tomorrow, not Monday.
- Teach your person within seven days.
- Put a reminder in your calendar for day 30 and day 60 to check your own plan.
- Come back to Module 1 in three months and read what you wrote about your fear.
Stuck on anything?
Email gripent@babystepswithai.com and say exactly where you got stuck. Nobody gets left behind in this course.
Module 5 quiz
Five questions. Pass with 4 of 5.
Checking…
Retake it as many times as you like.