01
It sounds like everyone else
You can hear the AI in it, and so can your customers. Generic output isn't just bland — more than half of consumers think less of a brand once they can tell.
00Agentic Practices for small business
An AI that knows your business
An AI that knows your business
as well as your best employee.
Not out of the box, and not by itself. Over eight sessions you teach it your voice, your rules and your customers, you learn to tell good work from confident nonsense, and you build the thing you've been meaning to get to since March. Your business is on the screen the whole way.
For owner-operators who want a better business, not a bigger one. With Stephan Swart.
Free open class · Wednesday 12 August · 19:30 SAST
Come and see what it actually does.
Two hours, no charge, nothing to buy on the night. You'll throw a real, messy request at Claude, watch what comes back, then watch what changes when you tell it what you actually meant. By the end you'll have built your first small tool. Anyone can come — you don't have to do the programme afterwards, and plenty of people won't.
01Why you're here
“I don't know how, and there is nobody to teach me.”
A small business owner, quoted in a US Federal Reserve survey. It's the most common thing owners say about AI, and it's the whole reason this exists.
02
You can't tell if it's right
So you either send it and hope, or check every line yourself and wonder what you saved. Most owners never settle on a third option.
03
Five tools, none of them yours
The average small business now runs about five AI subscriptions. Not one of them knows your rates, your clients, or the thing you never say in writing.
04
The list that never moves
The quoting system. The onboarding pack. The report you build by hand every month. Only you can do it, so it never gets done.
02Who it's for
Owners who've been at it a while and want the business to run better.
This is for you if…
- →You've run the business three years or more and it works. Consultancy, agency, practice, trade, shop, small product business.
- →You're not technical, and you've already tried AI and been quietly underwhelmed.
- →You have something real to work on — a job you repeat, a thing you keep quoting out, a process held together by you.
- →You'll put your own work on screen in front of eleven other owners.
This is not for you if…
- ×You want it built for you. That's a different service and I'm happy to point you at one.
- ×You want to become a developer. This isn't a route into software.
- ×You want to watch. Every session is you working on your own business.
- ×You're chasing a 10× productivity number someone posted online. I can't sell you that, and neither can anyone else.
03What you leave with
Five things you'll have, not five things you'll understand.
Each one is checkable. On the last day you either have it or you don't.
01
A Claude that knows your business
Your voice, your house rules, your customers, and the claims you must never make. Written down once and used every time.
02
Something you built, in use
Working, in your business, doing a real job. Not a demo and not a certificate.
03
A way of checking its work
What needs your judgement, and what a machine should check every single time. Written down, and one you'll actually keep using.
04
Your repeated jobs, made reusable
Two or three of the things you do over and over, turned into something that runs the same way every time.
05
Boundaries you decided on
What may run without you, what needs a check first, and what must never happen unattended. Your call, made deliberately.
04The sessions
Eight sessions over five weeks. Twenty hours live.
Online · weekday daytime, all times SAST · 12 people a cohort · recorded. Dates below are preliminary and get confirmed at the free class.
01
Mon 24 Aug · 14:00–16:00
What it's actually doing when you ask
What's happening under the surface, why long conversations get worse rather than better, and the three settings that change the answer.
You leave with: one real job done, and the setting that made the difference
02
Thu 27 Aug · 14:00–16:00
Teaching it your business
The session that fixes output sounding like everyone else's. What it should always know, what it should look up, and what should stay out of the way.
You leave with: your house rules written down, and your first reusable tool
03
Mon 31 Aug · 12:30–14:30
Decide it before you build it
Look at the thing before you commit to it. Including everything nobody thinks about until it breaks in front of a customer.
You leave with: an approved design and what it must do, in your own words
04
Wed 2 Sep · 14:00–16:00
Build it
From the design to a working thing. Then Claude opens a real browser, clicks through it, and tells you what actually happened — instead of telling you it went fine.
You leave with: a working thing and a check that runs against it
05
Fri 11 Sep · 13:00–15:00
Knowing when to trust it
Which decisions need you, and which should be checked the same way every time. Plus how to find out why something went wrong instead of guessing and rewriting.
You leave with: a review routine and a checking routine, both running on real work
06
Wed 16 Sep · 09:00–11:00
Turn a job into a button, and let it run
Making the repeated things reusable, connecting Claude to what you already use, and deciding what's allowed to happen without you watching.
You leave with: a working tool, a connected job, and your own rules on unattended work
07
Mon 21 Sep · 09:00–12:00 · three hours
Build clinic one
Your thing, your screen, me in the room. Small groups, and I move between them. No new material.
You leave with: most of it built, and a written plan for the rest
08
Wed 23 Sep · 15:30–18:30 · three hours
Build clinic two
Finish it, check it proper, and show it to the room. Then work out what you're doing with this next month.
You leave with: the thing working, in your business
05The two clinics
“Six hours where you build your own thing and I'm there when it goes wrong. This is the part a free video cannot do, and it's the part people remember.”
Stephan Swart · Lead facilitator, Agentic Practices
Two three-hour sessions at the end. You say what you're building and where you expect to get stuck, then you work — in small groups, with me moving between them and taking screen-shares from anyone who's hit a wall. Nobody watches me build. I sit with you while you do it, which is slower and is the entire point. If you're short of an idea, these are the shapes people usually land on.
Quotes
consistent and on-brand
Onboarding
a pack that builds itself
Reports
first draft written for you
Enquiries
drafted, hard ones flagged
06What it won't do
The part most people selling this leave out.
You've probably been sold an AI course before. Here's what I'm not claiming.
01
It won't replace your judgement
It'll produce more, faster, and confidently wrong sometimes. Deciding what's good enough to send stays yours. Most of what I teach is how to make that decision quickly.
02
It won't sound exactly like you
It gets much closer, much more consistently, and stops sounding like nobody. Anyone promising output indistinguishable from a human is overselling it.
03
I can't promise you hours back
It depends entirely on what you bring and what you do afterwards. Anyone quoting you a number hasn't looked at your business.
04
You'll still check its work
Forever. The difference is you'll know how, and it'll take minutes instead of redoing the whole thing. That's not a caveat — it's most of the value.
07Price
One seat, one price, no upsell at the end.
A seat
One owner, one business
$1 800ex-VAT · the whole programme
- 20 hours live, in a cohort of 12
- Six teaching sessions and two build clinics
- Recordings and a workbook you keep
- Everything you build is yours
- The free class on 12 August, whether or not you go on
Come to the free class first
The sensible way round
$1 550ex-VAT · for anyone who attends
- Everything above
- You've seen how I teach before you pay
- Booking link handed out on the night
- Open for one week afterwards
The promise
If you do the work and it isn't working, you keep your seat in the clinic.
Come to the sessions, do the work between them, and if the thing you set out to build still isn't running by the last clinic, you keep coming to clinics until it is — at no extra cost, for up to 60 days after the programme ends. I'd rather carry that than sell you eight sessions and a folder of notes.
Prices are ex-VAT. South African buyers are charged 15% VAT on top at checkout — R12 075 for a seat, R10 350 with the free-class rate. This is the first cohort, so it's an introductory rate and it goes up after this one. You'll also need a Claude subscription, which starts around $20 a month and is paid to Anthropic, not to me. Card or EFT.
08About
Who's running it.
Stephan Swart
Lead facilitator · Fractional CTOI've spent five-plus years getting AI tools into the daily work of real teams, and the last two doing the same for people who don't write code. I run Leadership Nomad and I'm CTO at Firefinch. I teach the way the evidence says people actually learn — you do the work, you compare what you got, you decide what good looks like. I don't do watch-me-be-clever demos, and I'll tell you plainly if this isn't for you.
Connect on LinkedIn
09Questions
The ones people actually ask.
No. Claude does the typing. Your job is to say what you want clearly, check what comes back, and decide what's good enough to use — which is what running a business already teaches you. You will spend time in a terminal window, and it will feel odd for about a session and a half.
Those are good and you should do them. They teach you the tool in general. This programme runs against your business specifically, with me in the room when it goes wrong — including two three-hour clinics where you build your own thing and I help. That's the part a video can't do.
A computer, a reasonable internet connection, and a Claude subscription — around $20 a month at the entry tier, paid to Anthropic, not to me. We get everything installed at the free class, before the first paid session.
Sessions are recorded and you get the workbook, so you can catch up. But this is a working programme rather than a watching one, so missing more than two will hurt. Tell me in advance and I'll help you catch up before the next one.
Claude runs on your own machine and works on the files you point it at. We cover what should never go near it, what your subscription tier does with your data, and how to set boundaries so it can't wander somewhere it shouldn't. If you handle sensitive client information, that's a session-two conversation and we have it properly.
Most people arrive with a vague itch rather than a project, and that's fine. By session three you'll have picked something. If you're stuck, I have a list — a quote calculator, an onboarding pack that assembles itself, a report that writes its own first draft. What won't work is arriving with nothing real in your business at all.
10Save your spot
Start with the free class on 12 August.
Two hours, no charge, nothing to buy on the night. Leave your details and I'll send the joining link and a short setup note so you're ready to work rather than watching.
- → The joining link and a calendar invite
- → A 20-minute setup guide, written for non-technical people
- → The programme details, if you want them afterwards