The Business Brain — AI With Tom

First — why AI keeps giving you rubbish answers

It isn't the AI. It's that you're asking a brilliant stranger for advice about a business they've never heard of.

Think about how you'd brief a new employee. You wouldn't say "write a post for us" on day one and expect anything good. You'd tell them what you sell, who buys it, how you talk, what you're trying to achieve. Then their work would be useful.

AI works exactly the same way — and almost nobody does it. They ask a cold question, get a generic answer, and decide AI is overhyped.

The gap between a useless answer and a genuinely good one is almost always context — not the prompt.

That's the whole idea. Write your business down once. Give it to the AI at the start of a conversation. Everything it produces from that point is about your business instead of a generic one.

How to use it

Fill it in

Twenty minutes.
Be honest.

Paste it in

Top of any
new AI chat.

Ask your question

As normal.

Try this first

Ask your AI a question cold — "write me an email to win back an old customer." Notice how generic it is.

Now start a fresh chat, paste your Business Brain, and ask the identical question.

That gap is the entire point of this page.

The template

Eight sections. Each says why it matters — read those. They're the actual lesson. Understand why a section works and you'll write a better one than any template can give you.

01 · What this business is

One or two sentences. What you do, for whom, where.

Why it matters — this is the anchor. Everything gets filtered through it. Be specific: "a marketing agency" tells it almost nothing. "A five-person agency doing social media for independent gyms in South Wales" tells it a great deal.

02 · What you actually sell

Your services or products. Include prices if you're comfortable.

Why it matters — AI will happily suggest things you don't sell. Listing your real offer stops it inventing work for you, and lets it spot when an idea doesn't fit.

03 · Who you serve — and who you don't

Your best customer. Then the ones who waste your time.

Why it matters — the second half is the one everyone skips, and it's the more useful one. It stops the AI suggesting you chase bad-fit customers. It's also the fastest way to make it sound like it understands your business, because knowing who to say no to is what experience looks like.

04 · How you sound

Formal or casual? Do you swear? Use emojis? What words would you never use?

Why it matters — this is why AI writing sounds like AI writing. Left alone it defaults to bland corporate: "elevate", "leverage", "in today's fast-paced world". Tell it how you actually speak, and give it two or three phrases you'd never say. That one instruction removes most of the tell.

05 · Where you are right now

Honestly. How many customers? Roughly what revenue? What's genuinely hard? What are you short of — time, money, people?

Why it matters — advice that ignores your constraints is worthless. An AI that doesn't know you're a one-person business will confidently tell you to "assign this to your content team".

This is the section people fudge. Don't — nobody else reads it.

06 · What you're working toward

What does the next 12 months need to look like? A number beats a feeling.

Why it matters — it turns the AI from a task-doer into something that can tell you when a task isn't worth doing. If it knows you need £50k, it can say "this'll take three weeks and won't move that."

07 · How to work with me

Short answers or detail? Should it challenge you, or just do the task? Ask questions before starting?

Why it matters — most people never set this, then feel quietly annoyed at every reply. If waffle irritates you, say "keep answers short, no preamble." If you want pushback, ask for it — otherwise you'll get agreement, which is useless when you're deciding something.

08 · Things it must never get wrong

Your business name spelled right. Real prices. Claims you legally can't make. A competitor you must never be compared to.

Why it matters — your safety net. AI is confidently wrong sometimes. Writing the non-negotiables down means you catch it before a customer does.

A worked example

Fictional business — but this is the level of detail that works.

01 What this business is

A three-person plumbing and heating firm covering Cardiff and the Vale. Mostly domestic — boiler servicing, repairs, bathroom installs. Been going eleven years.

02 What you actually sell

Boiler servicing (£90), emergency callouts (£120 first hour), boiler replacement (£1,800–£3,200 fitted), bathroom installs (£4,000–£9,000). Installs are the profitable work; callouts mostly keep the diary full.

03 Who you serve — and who you don't

Homeowners 40+ in Penarth, Llandaff and Cyncoed. They want it done properly, aren't shopping purely on price, and they refer.

Bad fits: landlords wanting the cheapest fix, anyone ringing round to beat a quote down, new-build developers — they pay late and squeeze the margin to nothing.

04 How you sound

Straightforward and friendly. Plain English, no jargon unless the customer uses it first. Never salesy. Never say "solutions", "bespoke" or "state-of-the-art".

05 Where you are right now

Around £210k a year, three of us including me. Diary's full six weeks out — sounds good, but it means turning away installs to do £90 services. Real problem: I quote in the evenings after a full day on the tools and I'm slow getting them out. I reckon we lose jobs to whoever replies first.

06 What you're working toward

Shift the mix toward installs. £280k next year without hiring a fourth person — fewer low-value callouts, quotes out same-day.

07 How to work with me

Short answers. I'm reading this on my phone between jobs. Don't pad it. If you think I'm wrong, say so — I'd rather be told than agreed with.

08 Things it must never get wrong

Gas Safe registered, number on all documents. Never imply we do commercial work — we don't. Never promise a same-day callout, we can't guarantee it.

Notice what makes that useful — the honest bits. "I quote in the evenings and I'm slow" is worth more than any polished description, because now the AI can help with the real problem.

Make it better every week

Your first version will be about 70% right. That's fine — it's supposed to be.

Here's the habit that compounds. At the end of any AI session that went well, ask this:

"Based on this conversation, what did you need to know about my business that wasn't in the context I gave you? Write it as an addition to my Business Brain."

Paste the answer in. Two minutes.

Do that for a month and you'll have something no template could have given you — because it's built from the questions you actually ask.

A system that improves every time you use it beats a perfect system you set up once and never touch.

Most people build the second kind, then wonder why it goes stale.

Where this goes next

Right now this is a document you paste in by hand. That's genuinely enough — most business owners never get this far, and you'll get most of the value from it.

The next step, when you're ready, is your AI reading this automatically, every session, without you pasting anything — plus knowing where your files live and being able to work on them directly. That's when it stops being a chatbot and starts being useful.

But get this bit working first. Everything else builds on it.