Topic
Operations
Plain-English insights on Operations for the people running a business.
- PlaybookSeptember 10, 2026
The Letter on the Counter You Do Not Understand
Nine days of dread, four minutes of work. What it says, what it wants, what the deadline is, and what happens if you ignore it.
Read· 2 min read - PlaybookSeptember 9, 2026
Reply to the Reviews You Have Been Ignoring
The reply is not for the person who wrote it. It is a sample of how you behave when something goes wrong, posted where every future customer reads it.
Read· 1 min read - PlaybookSeptember 8, 2026
Six Questions to Ask a Contract Before You Sign It
This is not legal advice. It is the list of things to ask the person who gives it. Six specific questions, each answered with the exact line it came from.
Read· 2 min read - PlaybookSeptember 7, 2026
The Receipt Pile, as a Spreadsheet
You will not do them all in January. One photo of six receipts, one prompt, and a four column table you can hand to your bookkeeper, with the unreadable ones flagged instead of guessed.
Read· 1 min read - PlaybookSeptember 4, 2026
Talk the Quote. Do Not Write It.
The quote has sat for three days because you do not want to write the email, not because you do not know the number. Say it out loud once and get a sendable estimate back.
Read· 1 min read - PlaybookSeptember 3, 2026
Photograph the Job Notes You Are Never Going to Type Up
Three weeks of handwritten notes in the glovebox, and the follow ups inside them are worth real money. One photo and one prompt turns them into typed notes and a task list.
Read· 1 min read - PlaybookSeptember 2, 2026
The Email You Will Regret by Thursday
One prompt, sixty seconds, before the angry email leaves your outbox. Keeps the deadline and the consequence intact, removes the sentence you would have winced at.
Read· 1 min read - PlaybookSeptember 1, 2026
What the Free Version of ChatGPT Actually Gives You
Nobody selling you AI tells you where the free version stops. Here is the honest map, tested this week: what is unlimited, what is capped at three a day, and the one silent limit that will quietly give you a wrong answer.
Read· 1 min read - BriefingAugust 31, 2026
Your Chatbot's Promises Are Legally Binding. Air Canada Found Out the Hard Way.
A tribunal ruled that a company owns what its chatbot says, even when the chatbot invents the policy on the spot. The lesson is not that AI is dangerous. It is that the real deliverable in any customer-facing AI build is the scope limits, the escalation path, and the written record of what it is allowed to promise.
Read· 4 min read - BriefingAugust 17, 2026
Google Sheets Canvas: How to Turn a Spreadsheet Into an App (5 Prompts)
Google shipped Sheets canvas on August 13. You describe what you want in plain English and your existing spreadsheet becomes an interactive app, and anything you change in the app writes straight back to the sheet. Here are five mini-apps worth building for a service business, with the exact prompt for each.
Read· 5 min read
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