Most tradies have tried AI for emails and as a glorified search engine. That is the chat side and I do not find it that useful. The useful side is AI working alongside you, reading your reports, checking your figures, drafting your month-end summary, holding your own instructions. I build with it every day, on real trade books. So I can tell you where it earns its place and where it is best left to a human.
I work with Claude — a paid subscription, one project per client, guardrails and double checks on everything.
Not a programme. We pick the piece that fits what is bugging you this month, do it together on your real jobs and figures and you take it home.
We pick one thing that costs you time every week, quotes, reporting, chasing debtors, month end — and set AI up to help with that one thing. Nothing else until that works.
An AI project set up for your business, carrying how you work, your coding conventions and the lean rule. It answers like your business, not like the internet.
Nothing is filed, paid or sent on AI’s word alone. I show you the guardrails I use myself: what to check, what to tie back to Xero, what never goes in.
I am not a cybersecurity expert and I do not replace your IT person. What I will do is talk through reasonable best practice: how to stop AI using your data for its training, how to keep your files in your own systems rather than on the AI, simple agent use with guidelines and the notes to keep from any AI system.
Illustrations of the kind of work that happens in a session, described by trade. Free mentoring through Business Mentors NZ is confidential, so these are examples, not case studies.
AI has only ever been used for emails. It gets set up to read the business data instead and trends and opportunities show up that would have been missed. The owner starts assessing the wider potential himself.
The question is how AI could fit operations and reporting. The start is one use: Xero management reports read by AI each month, working properly before anything else is added.
AI is already building the website. The next step is becoming AI native across the business: using it to stay on track, design the systems and structure the next steps.
I help trade businesses use AI where it genuinely saves time or improves decisions and leave it out where it does not.
I am inside trade workflows every day as a bookkeeper and I build and use AI on them. That is the only way to know where a small trade business gains from the new ways of working and where it does not, you have to be on the ground using it. So Exploring Tradie has no prescription. We explore, one piece at a time and keep what works.
Volunteer mentor with Business Mentors New Zealand for seven years. Handouts on this thread are coming, free.
Try this. Ask your own AI about me. Download the briefing pack and ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini can talk you through what I do, what it costs and whether I am a fit for your business.
Download the AI briefing packTell me what is bugging you this month and we will spend two hours on it.
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