You open a new chat, ask about a quote, close it. Tomorrow you explain your whole business to it again. That's where many contractors are with AI right now. One chat, one job, and it forgets everything the second you close it. Building a Company Brain fixes that, and it's simpler than it sounds. First, create a separate project for every department: marketing, accounting, operations, estimating, field, and sales. Then give each one an instruction set describing its role. The estimating project gets told it's an estimator. The field project gets told it's writing for the guys on site, not the office. Then write the MD files. How a job gets estimated. How something gets written up in the field. How a project gets closed out. Once those exist, you're not re-explaining your business every time. You're just asking the question. Keeping each department in its own project means the answers fit how that department actually works, instead of one answer trying to cover everyone. Comment below. If you only had time to build two of these this month, which two would you build?

Today I sat down with Jake at Double AA Roofing to get his company set up. We didn't open our app for the first ten minutes. Jake already used AI. When I asked what for, he said: "just to help me with emails rather than type out three or four paragraphs, or quotes." About a month in. One chat window. One job. That's where nearly everyone starts, and it's where nearly everyone stays. So before we set up anything of ours, we set up his properly. Four things, in this order. First, we turned off training. Settings, then Privacy, then switch off the toggle that lets your conversations improve their models. Jake's answer was immediate: "rather not." Do this before you paste a single customer name, price, or job number into anything. Two clicks, once, and you never think about it again. Then we got him out of the chat window. Every new chat starts from zero. It doesn't know your pricing, your customers, how you word a scope, or anything you told it last Tuesday. You re-explain your business every single time. A project fixes that. It's a folder that remembers. Anything you tell it, upload to it, or decide inside it is still there next week. We built Jake three: estimating, CRM, and customer communication. Every quote conversation now happens inside estimating. Over a few weeks that project learns his line items, his markup language, the way he writes a scope. The outputs get better because the context builds. In a plain chat it never does. Pick the three things you do most in a week. Those are your three projects. Then we stopped him typing. I asked Jake what actually slows him down. "Biggest pain is typing out an email." So we installed Whisper Flow. Hold one key, talk, and it types, then cleans up the grammar and cuts the filler. Works in email, in texts, in the AI, anywhere there's a cursor. It isn't our product and we don't make a dollar off it. You speak roughly four times faster than you type. I've been doing it long enough that I'm closer to eight. And it keeps score, so you don't have to take my word for it. By the end of our session it had us at 159 words a minute, 29 grammar fixes, and 12 dictionary corrections. That was one meeting.

If you're new here, the question we get more than any other is "how do I even start with Claude?" Start by teaching it about your business. Claude doesn't know your trade, your process, your pricing, or how you talk to customers until you tell it. The more context you give it upfront, the better everything it does for you gets, from quotes to emails to job descriptions. Attached is a PDF called "Teach Claude Your Business." It has 3 prompts you can copy, paste, and run right now to start building that context with Claude. Grab it, run the prompts, and let us know what Claude gives you back.

WEEK 17: Automate Lead Intake From Inquiry to Booked Quote with Claude The full session and the Lead Intake plugin (v1) are attached. Download the plugin, drop it into Claude, and run it on a past inquiry before you try it on a live lead. A new lead comes in by text or email, and it sits until you're between job sites and can find ten minutes to write back, check your calendar, and book the quote. A free Claude plugin can run the whole hand off for you. In this week's call, Claude read a text inquiry about a bathroom remodel, checked real calendar availability, drafted a Gmail reply that referenced the exact project details, booked the confirmed time on the calendar, and logged the lead in an Excel tracker, without us touching a keyboard. 🧠 What you'll learn: - How to load the free Lead Intake plugin into Claude Cowork and connect Gmail and Calendar - A live demo turning a text inquiry into a booked quote start to finish - How Claude drafts replies that reflect back a client's exact project details - Setting connector permissions so Claude only does what you approve - Building a self updating lead tracker in Excel that logs every quote automatically Getting started: 1. Download the Lead Intake plugin (v1) attached to this post 2. Open Claude Cowork, select your project folder, and upload the plugin 3. Prompt "load this plugin" and answer its onboarding questions about your availability, buffer times, and how you track leads 4. Connect Gmail and Google Calendar in Claude's connector settings if you haven't already 5. Test it on a past inquiry first, then run it on a real lead when you're ready 6. Drop your feedback in the comments. What worked and what needs a tweak. We'll fold it into the next version. 📁 Resources mentioned: Claude: claude.ai Gmail: gmail.com Google Calendar: calendar.google.com Google Sheets: sheets.google.com Want us to build something specifically for your business? Start with the End State Audit: scelta.ca/ai-for-contractors/audit

Meeting Link: https://meet.google.com/hwd-zxzj-tmy Our AI For Contractors Weekly Call. Every step from inquiry to in person quote booked and communications sent to the client Bring your questions about AI, the Scelta team will be present to answer them. See you all tonight!