When I worked at my brother's electrical company, our work orders lived on paper in manila folders. If I needed something, I went digging through the cabinet or asked the office. Today you can take a photo of that stack and have AI turn it into a spreadsheet.

Most people still use AI to write, and in my opinion that is the least interesting thing it can do. Here are six other jobs it can do for a small business, with a prompt for each one you can copy.

Read the full transcript if you would rather not watch.

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AI can do a lot more than write

Gallup surveyed more than 22,000 working Americans in May 2026. Among the ones who use AI in their jobs, the most common use was writing and editing, at 51% (Gallup, published July 2026). I am sure those people use it for other things too, but if writing is what most of them reach for first, they are leaving most of it on the table.

AI can see, count, read, ask questions, and build things, and its reasoning goes well beyond fixing spelling and grammar. The way I think about the six jobs below is as small reasoning tasks: the little decisions and lookups a business owner makes all day that take judgment, and that you can now hand off one at a time.

1. Paper to spreadsheet

Take a photo of a stack of paper work orders, receipts, or forms, and ask the AI to put everything into a spreadsheet. Even Google Drive can scan a document from your phone now, and there are tools built specifically for this. The important part is that you set the rules: which columns you want, and what to do when it cannot read something. Take a little time to set it up once, or have someone set it up for you, and it can save a lot of retyping.

2. Photo of the equipment

If you are a mechanic or an HVAC tech, you can photograph the nameplate on a unit and have the AI help you work out what it is, what a label or error code means, and what to check first. Before and after photos of your work are also good cover if anyone ever questions the job.

I used this at home. My dishwasher had an unusual drain pipe that was not a standard part, so I took a picture of all the ID numbers on the machine and gave it to the AI. It found the exact part, and I ordered it online for very little. Think about where a process like that in your business could save labor.

3. Ask your own numbers

Give it your own data, such as a sales export, and ask questions about it: which jobs make sense to pursue, which customers have gone quiet, which kind of work brings in the least for the hours it takes. This one takes more setup, because you are giving it rules and layers of reasoning along with the data, but the shape is the same.

Connected to something like your CRM, it could flag the email you never answered, the follow-up you promised in three months and forgot, the person who went silent after showing interest, or the past clients you have not talked to in two years.

4. Check the contract

Nobody likes reading contracts, and everybody has to know what they are signing. Give the AI your rules, the terms you care about and the things you will not accept, then the contract, and have it flag anything that is not in your favor. When it understands who your company is, it can also help you think through what to ask for instead. There are tools built for this already, and it can be extremely helpful.

5. Interview me for the SOP

A lot of owners are running constantly and putting out fires, and the way the business actually works lives in their heads. Getting it out is the hard part. Instead of sitting down to write a procedure, tell the AI you want to create one for a specific process and have it interview you, asking one question at a time while you answer out loud.

When it has enough, it writes the procedure. By my estimate it does most of the legwork, often 70 to 80 percent, and you edit the rest. ChatGPT can do this, and so can plenty of other tools.

6. Build a tiny tool

Sometimes you want one small feature, and the only way to get it is to pay for a whole product. You can often build that one thing yourself instead: a job price calculator, a free estimate calculator for your website, or a reminder to send clients a birthday gift card. The more specific you are about what it should do, the better the result.

Before you paste anything in

It is your business, so privacy is a fair concern. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini each have a setting that stops your conversations from being used to improve their models, and it is worth turning on. For work with truly sensitive information, an open-weight model that you run yourself keeps the data under your control.

And do not paste in Social Security numbers, invoices, or other sensitive information.

Six prompts to start with

Copy one and change the details. They will not take you all the way, but they are a good starting point.

  1. Paper to spreadsheet (attach the photo): "Turn these work orders into a table: date, customer, job, materials, hours. If you can't read something, mark it with a question mark instead of guessing."
  2. Photo of the equipment (attach the photo): "What is this machine, and what does this error or label mean? What should I check first, and when should I stop and call a pro? Tell me what you're not sure about."
  3. Ask your own numbers (attach your export): "Today is [date]. Which customers haven't ordered anything in the last 90 days? Which type of job brings in the least per hour of labor? Show me how you worked it out."
  4. Check the contract (paste both): "Here are my rules, then a contract. Flag anything in the contract that breaks one of my rules, and quote the exact line."
  5. Interview me for the SOP: "Interview me about how we close out a job, one question at a time. When you have enough, write it as a step-by-step checklist a new hire could follow."
  6. Build a tiny tool: "Build me a simple job price calculator: labor hours, hourly rate, materials, and a markup percent. Show the total and let me change the numbers."

Hand it the paperwork

Stop using AI only to write. Pick the paperwork that actually piles up, or any specific process you want solved, and talk to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever you use about it. It does not have to be one of the six above.

Inside Norsoft we talk about our bottlenecks and what small tool would remove each one. This is the same idea at a smaller scale: find the micro bottlenecks in your week and see which ones AI can take.

The prompts work much better when the AI knows your business, which is what why context matters when you use AI covers. If you want your team doing this together, that is our AI training, and when a bottleneck needs more than a prompt, we build it into the systems you already use.

If you have questions about any of this, reach out.

Full transcript

What I said in the video, start to finish. It is unscripted, so it reads like talking. Each timestamp opens that moment on YouTube.

0:00 When I worked at my brother's electrical company, our work orders were on paper, you know, in manila folders and whatever. So if I needed something, I had to go digging through the cabinet or talk to the secretary or whatever. And what's crazy is now you can snap a photo of that stack of documents and the AI can turn it into a spreadsheet, right? The number one way people really right now are using AI is just for writing. And honestly, that's the least interesting thing in my opinion it could do. I mean, it's interesting, but not that great.

0:34 So here are six other things it can do for your business. Here's how it works. I'm quite sick of people using AI just to write LinkedIn posts or their emails. And it's just, it's so evident these days when people are using it. And you have your notorious signs of like em dashes and phrasing and stuff like that. AI can do way more than just writing, right? And I wanted to give you six examples of ways you can use it to help you run your business like just practical stuff and on a high level really what's going on here is these are micro reasoning tasks that you can hand off to AI right so let's let's jump in here so what can AI do for

1:18 you you know the number one way people are using AI at work right now is writing Gallup in May of this year in 2026 said about half of the workers who use AI use it for writing and editing like that's insane there's so much more to it like I I'm sure they use it for other stuff but that if that's the majority that's crazy to me it can you know it can see it can count it can read ask and build and its reasoning goes way beyond just fixing your bad spelling or grammar so what I want to do I want to put something together for business owners in a way that they can use AI or start getting the juices flowing of and ways to get AI involved right so let's let's jump in the first one is

2:05 paper to spreadsheet so like right now even in Google Drive you can take a photo and it'll scan a document your receipt or whatever and you can use that to turn it into an actual spreadsheet right and there are there are tools out there that will help you with that that's what like Excel and Lido do but i just wanted to kind of just show you on a high level you scan can scan this thing and it can categorize all of it appropriately. And coming back to what I said earlier, it's a, it's a reasoning factor, right? So you just have to tell it, hey, like everything in this document, I want put into a spreadsheet. And you set up the rules to it and then it'll do it.

2:45 It's really not hard. And this could save you a ton of time if you take a little bit of time to set it up or have someone set it up for you. Photo of the equipment. Now, this is a good CYA. Let's say you are like a mechanic or an HVAC guy, right? You can take a photo of a nameplate. You can take a before and after picture of the work you've done, but it can look up stuff for you.

3:13 It can assist you in that. And there are products out there that help you identify that already, right? And so if you need something specific, it can help you out with that. through a little animation together just to kind of show you high level but this this is like a really valuable way right like just take a picture of a name plate or like just any any plate on a piece of equipment that has all the ID numbers and stuff very helpful I actually for myself my dishwasher my home had a very specific drain pipe right like not a standard one so I took a picture of the all the IDs of the the machine gave it to AI and it found the part the very niche part for me and I got it online for like

3:59 barely anything it saved me so much time and so things like this very useful and maybe you have a process in your business where this could be implemented and save you a lot of labor so the next one is you can ask it your own numbers you know so you can feed it a bunch of data let's say on your sales like what's going on in your sales cycle and you can ask it to evaluate it and ordering you know what job makes sense to pursue what doesn't this this one could be this would be a more in-depth process but like it's it's the same type of thing um there's layers of reasoning right and rules and and whatnot that you want it to do and then you give it a set of data to do that

4:42 task with and it gives you the output just think like you could you could feed it or access to your CRM, let's say, and it could it could flag you know hey you haven't responded to this person's email or you said you're going to reach out to this person in three months and you never did or this person went silent after being interested or like for some reason you just didn't respond to this person it seems like you just forgot like it could it could be very helpful or it could be like hey like these people you know you you could set up a thing where it's helping you categorize people who you have haven't talked to in two years who are already your clients or something, you know, like, whatever, whatever it is, right?

5:25 Micro reasoning. Think of it that way. Let's jump on to the next one. You can have it check the contract. Okay, this is a fun one. So you can give it the rules of like keywords and stuff you're looking for or how you want it to help you, right? Nobody likes reading a contract, but it's all necessary and like we all have to be very aware of what we're signing. And there's tools out there that are already here to help you with it. But just imagine it understands your company.

5:50 who you are and it'll help highlight terms and conditions in a contract that are not in your favor and it can help you negotiate new terms and conditions this one could also be extremely helpful so interview me for the SOP so I know a lot of entrepreneurs they're full of chaos and always running away like running constantly putting out fires you know it could be two in the morning they're talking to their phone right so you know that you need to externalize what's in your head. So how do you do that? Well, you tell the AI, hey, I want to create an SOP for this process of what I'm doing.

6:25 And you just interview and you talk to it, go back and forth, have it ask you questions and have it pull up what competitors do for SOP, right? And there's tons of tools out there that can help you with this already. And the AI can, like lots of, like ChatGPT could help you with this. But it could be going back and forth. And then the final product is an SOP that you just have to sit there and edit a little bit. but it does 70 to 80% of the legwork just based off of a transcript of it asking you questions and you telling it what you think. Like, come on, that's phenomenal.

6:55 Like, what, what day and age are we in? This is, this is incredible. So, anyway, I'm talking too much about that, but let's do, let's talk about building a tiny tool. So in sales, right, for example, right? There's little things that I, I want. And I, I could pay a lot of money for access. to a sales tool just for that one little thing or I could just build it myself right um you could have it build a job calculator for your website or I don't know like a reminder to send people birthday

7:32 gift cards for your company or whatever so there's lots of stuff that you can use it for calculators is an easy thing for like your website right like you could give people a free estimation calculator but just think of it as a way like there are in life as a business owner we make lots of micro decisions that take our reasoning right and how can we outsource that or um use AI to take over that one little segment the more specific it is the higher quality of an output and result you're going to get please stop using AI only to write like you guys are smart if you're watching this you've got to be curious so like hand it the paperwork that actually piles up like talk talk to it about you know a specific

8:18 process in your business that you want solved right? Pick something you're like it doesn't have to be the stuff i listed it could be anything i'm sure something's popped up in your mind and talk talk to the ai about it ChatGPT or Claude or whatever you use and you know one thing i want to point out too since it's your business and you might be a little concerned about privacy you can turn off the training aspect of these models so if you're using Google Gemini or Claude or whatever um there's a way in all of them that you can go in and turn off um improving the models but like if if what you're doing is very there's

9:02 sensitive information you can use and it's called it like an open weight or open source model right and um that way you control everything when it comes to data and privacy. So, but you can do little things like that. And please don't share Social Security numbers, invoices, like sensitive information with AI, please don't do it. So another thing, you can pause the screen right now if you want and take a screenshot or whatever. Here are some suggested prompts just to kind of get you going.

9:39 This will not take you the whole way, but it'll be a good starting point if this is something new to you. so did you get it okay good Hand it the paperwork you know just think of it like almost like a lightweight operational builder for you like I don't know like internally we we we talk about our bottlenecks and how can we build a tool to solve that bottleneck right and that's essentially this what are these micro bottlenecks that AI could help you solve so Thanks for watching. If you want, you should check out this video about context.

10:20 I don't remember where I'm going to put it. It's somewhere here. Check it out. It's really important if you're trying to learn how to get better results from AI. And my name's Tim. I'm a partner over at Norsoft. We build custom software. Thanks for watching. I have no idea what I'm doing. So this is fun. And I hope you find it helpful.

10:42 All right, peace.