Small(One-Person) Business.
How to set up Claude for Small Business as a solopreneur (so your back-office finally runs itself).
The solopreneurs I talk to every day quietly switched.
The creators. The coaches. The consultants. The agencies of one. One by one, they stopped fighting their inbox and started running their entire back-office through Claude.
Because Anthropic released Claude for Small Business last week.
I’ve been writing about AI for years. Long enough to know when a launch actually matters, and when it’s just noise. This one matters.
If you’re the only person doing the work in your business, the game just changed. You now have a back-office assistant that reads your tools, drafts your follow-ups, briefs you every morning, ranks your leads, reviews your contracts, and stops before it does anything irreversible.
For $20/month. In ten minutes of setup.
This is the guide I wish someone gave me before I spent months duct-taping AI workflows together across six different apps.
Save this guide and block 20 minutes this week to install and test it.
Send it to anyone still running their one-person business on brute force and copy-paste.
The plugin is marketed for small business. It’s actually for solopreneurs.
Anthropic’s positioning points at brick-and-mortar SMBs. QuickBooks bookkeeping. Payroll planning. Month-end reconciliation.
Look past that.
The same 31 skills work for a creator invoicing sponsors. A coach managing prospect emails. A freelancer chasing overdue payments. A consultant reviewing client contracts. An agency of one running a launch.
If you make money and you’re the only person doing the work, this is for you. And the reason it’s so effective for solopreneurs specifically is simple: solopreneurs are drowning in the exact kind of small, repetitive, judgment-adjacent work Claude handles best.
Reply drafts. Lead triage. Contract review. Campaign assembly. Cash forecasts. Weekly briefs.
None of these are hard. They’re just endless. And they eat the day.
1. Claude for Small Business (the plugin).
What it is (in 10 words):
31 pre-built AI workflows inside the tools you already use.
Why it matters:
You’ve cobbled together ChatGPT prompts, Zapier automations, and half-broken workflows across five apps. I know you have.
Claude for Small Business is different. It’s one plugin. One install. 31 pre-built workflows that reach into your existing stack: QuickBooks, Gmail, Google Drive, HubSpot, DocuSign, Canva, Microsoft 365.
Every workflow has a slash command. You type it. Claude does the job. Nothing sends without your approval.
The whole thing runs inside Claude Cowork (the desktop app for people who don’t write code, in case you missed my earlier newsletter on it).
How to install (takes 5 minutes):
Go to claude.ai/download. Download the Cowork desktop app.
You need a paid Claude account. Pro is $20/month. Max is $100/month. If you’re serious about this, get Max.
Open the app. Click the Cowork tab at the top.
Click Customize at the top of the panel. Then click Browse Plugins at the bottom.
Type “small business” in the search bar. Click the plugin. Click Install.
The plugin loads into your sidebar. You’re operational.
But you’re not done yet.
Now click Manage.
Most people skip this button. Don’t.
The Manage view is where you actually see what shipped with the plugin. Every skill. Every slash command. Every connector.
The Manage view shows the 31 skills organized across six categories:
Finance (cash, invoicing, payroll, month-end close, tax prep)
Sales (lead triage, customer pulse, campaign attribution)
Marketing (campaign launch, content workflows)
Operations (project setup, workflow automation)
HR (hiring packet builder, onboarding)
Customer service (support triage, sentiment analysis)
Every skill has a slash command. /monday-brief. /lead-triage. /review-contract. /run-campaign. /plan-payroll. /close-month. /customer-pulse. And 24 more.
Or you can describe what you want in plain language. The plugin picks the right skill on its own. Both methods work.
Slash commands are faster once you know them. Plain language is friendlier when you don’t.
2. Customize (the step that decides everything).
Skip this step and every skill runs on Anthropic’s defaults.
Your daily brief comes back generic. Your lead triage uses a framework built for nobody. Your campaign drafts copy aimed at no one in particular.
Fill it in and every skill produces output specific to you. Same skills. Different starting context. Different output.
How to customize (takes 10 minutes):
Click Customize on the plugin itself. A panel opens with a series of fields.
Fill in: who your business is, who your customer is, what you sell, what counts as a qualified lead in your world, what your weekly rhythm looks like, what your business pulse thresholds are.
Save.
That’s it.
Now every skill knows your definition of qualified. Your follow-up rhythm. Your voice. Your customer.
Pro tip: connect a Cowork project first.
If you already have a Cowork project set up with your ABOUT ME files (about-me, anti-ai-writing-style, my-company), the plugin reads from those and prefills most of the customization for you.
If you don’t, do that first. The plugin is only as sharp as the context you feed it on day one.
(If you haven’t set up your ABOUT ME folder yet, that’s a separate guide worth reading before you touch this plugin.)
Tool swaps.
Customize is also where you tell the plugin what tools you actually use instead of the defaults.
If you use Notion or a Google Sheet for your customer database instead of HubSpot, name it.
If you sign contracts with a tool other than DocuSign, name it.
If you take payments through Stripe instead of PayPal, name it.
The plugin adjusts its skills to match your actual stack. No dead references.
Ten minutes that separate a useful back-office from a generic one.
3. Your first task: /monday-brief.
Don’t ask the plugin to draft you a marketing campaign on day one.
It hasn’t earned that yet.
Type /monday-brief into a new task. Hit enter.
What the brief contains:
Today’s meetings from your calendar (including the ones you haven’t prepared for)
People waiting longest on a reply from you
Leads ranked by priority
Three things that actually need your attention before noon
If accounting is connected: your cash position and overdue invoices
The whole thing lands on one page in under a minute.
First time you see it, you’ll notice it caught things you would have missed.
That’s the moment.
Once you trust the brief, you trust the plugin. Once you trust the plugin, you start handing it the work you’ve been avoiding.
Run this every morning for a week. That’s it. That’s the entire onboarding.
4. Four prompts to run in your first week.
Once you trust the brief, you’re ready to stretch. These are the four I’d start with.
The inbox triage (/inbox-triage).
The Small Business plugin doesn’t ship with a dedicated inbox-triage skill.
So I built one.
It’s free inside my community (linked at the bottom of this article, along with my master prompt list and every other artifact I share here). Drop the folder into your Cowork session folder and you get a /inbox-triage slash command.
Ask it to triage every email older than three days that’s still waiting on a reply from you.
The skill reads your inbox and sorts each thread into three buckets:
Replies that need your judgment.
Items it can handle on your behalf.
Noise you can archive.
It drafts responses to the first bucket in your writing style. You read each draft. You edit if you want. You press send.
Nothing leaves your inbox without you pressing the button.
(If you don’t have a writing-style file yet, comment on this post and I’ll send you a template.)
Lead triage (/lead-triage).
Rank every open lead in your customer database by fit and urgency.
The plugin pulls from your CRM, your inbox where the inquiry came in, and the context you saved during Customize.
You get a ranked list with reasons:
This one matches your ideal customer and asked a specific question.
This one went cold three weeks ago and needs a re-engagement.
This one is new this week and worth a same-day reply.
Ask for follow-up drafts. They land in your inbox ready to send.
The plugin doesn’t decide who to prioritize. It surfaces who’s worth your attention next, with a reason attached.
Contract review (/review-contract).
Drop a contract in. Ask the plugin to review it.
You get:
A plain-English summary
Severity-rated red flags on the clauses that matter
Suggested redlines exported as a Word document
Payment terms. Termination. Exclusivity. Intellectual property. Anything that would normally require a careful hour with the document and a fresh coffee.
Creators reviewing sponsor deals. Coaches reviewing engagement agreements. Freelancers reviewing scope-of-work docs. Service businesses reviewing vendor contracts.
The plugin doesn’t tell you whether to sign. It tells you what you’re signing.
Campaign launch (/run-campaign).
This one is worth its own section.
The skill was originally built for slow-season offers. Same machinery launches any campaign you’ve been putting off.
Here’s the exact prompt I typed on Sunday morning:
Use last quarter's three best customer outcomes from my Google Sheet to launch my new course.
Draft a five-day email sequence: a launch announcement on day one, a transformation story on day two, a customer case study on day three, an FAQ on day four, and a final-call email on day five for the cart-close deadline.
Draft one LinkedIn post per day with specific customer numbers.
Save everything in a Google Doc labeled launch week.
Twenty seconds later I had a full launch draft in Drive.
Five emails, each written for the specific day of the sequence
Five LinkedIn posts with real customer numbers embedded
Every piece saved in one Google Doc, ready to review
Every draft came back ready for me to review. The plugin does the assembly work. I make the editorial calls.
(Cost me roughly 6,000 tokens. On the $20 plan that’s pocket change. On the free plan you couldn’t run this. On the $100 plan I stopped counting.)
The mindset shift.
If you’re coming from ChatGPT, this next part matters.
ChatGPT trained you to write better prompts. Longer prompts. Cleverer prompts. You have a folder of saved prompts you barely open.
Forget that.
Claude for Small Business runs on slash commands + Customize context. You type a five-word command. The plugin reads the context you set once. The output comes back specific to you.
The game is no longer “how do I write a better prompt.” The game is “how well did I fill in Customize on day one, and how sharp are my ABOUT ME files.”
Prompt quality still matters for the custom prompts (the /run-campaign example above needed real detail). But for the daily workflows, the prompt is almost invisible. You type /monday-brief. You get your brief.
That’s the shift. From prompting AI to configuring AI.
Where Claude for Small Business falls short.
I promised honesty. Three things you should know.
1. The plugin does not run on its own.
Every action that touches the outside world stops and asks for your approval.
It drafts an email, you press send.
It proposes a calendar invite, you confirm.
It generates a welcome packet, you approve before it goes to the client.
Fine for most tasks. Slower if you were hoping to walk away and let it run your business overnight.
If someone tells you they have an AI that fully runs a business with no oversight, they’re selling you a demo, not a working product. The technology isn’t there yet. People who pretend otherwise end up with damaged client relationships and finance mistakes that take a week to clean up.
I’ll take the extra second of pressing send.
2. It only sees what your existing tools already show Claude.
Whatever Claude could see in QuickBooks before the plugin installed is exactly what Claude can see after. If a Drive folder was private, it stays private.
No new access. No quiet expansion. The plugin uses the keys you already gave Claude.
That’s the right design. But it means if you haven’t set up your connectors properly, half the skills won’t have the data they need. Fix that before you install.
3. Data privacy is nuanced (read this carefully).
Anthropic doesn’t train Claude on your business data if you’re on a Team or Enterprise plan. Full stop.
If you’re on a Pro or Max plan (which most solopreneurs are), check your account settings. There’s a training toggle that defaults to on. Turn it off before you connect your books, your CRM, or anything sensitive.
Read Anthropic’s policy yourself before you connect anything you wouldn’t want in a training set. I’m giving you the shape. Verify it for your own peace of mind.
Your first 20 minutes with Claude for Small Business.
Open your calendar. Block 20 minutes this week.
Minutes 0-5: Install.
Go to claude.ai/download. Download Cowork if you don’t have it. Sign in with your Claude account.
Inside Cowork, click Customize > Browse Plugins > type “small business” > click Install.
Minutes 5-8: Manage view tour.
Click Manage on the plugin. Scroll through the 31 skills.
You don’t need to remember them all. You just need to see what’s in the box. Note the slash commands for the ones that matter to your work: /monday-brief, /lead-triage, /review-contract, /run-campaign.
Minutes 8-15: Customize.
Click Customize on the plugin. Fill in every field.
Who your business is. Who your customer is. What counts as qualified. Your weekly rhythm. Your business pulse thresholds.
Take the full time. Every prompt you’ll ever run leans on what you type here.
(Bonus points if you dictate your answers using Wispr Flow instead of typing. You’ll say more, faster, and it’ll sound like you.)
Minutes 15-18: First brief.
Open a new task. Type /monday-brief. Hit enter.
Wait for the page to render. Read it carefully.
Notice which item you would have missed if the plugin hadn’t caught it.
Minutes 18-20: Save this article.
Come back to it tomorrow when you’re ready to run /inbox-triage or /lead-triage for the first time.
You just installed a back-office. Congratulations.
The real reason to install this.
You now have something most solopreneurs don’t.
A back-office that reads your tools, drafts your follow-ups, briefs you every morning, ranks your leads, reviews your contracts, and stops before it does anything irreversible.
The bar for what one person can run alone just moved.
Ten minutes to install. Ten more to customize. Then a slash command whenever you need one.
That’s the whole thing.
The solopreneurs who install this in the next 30 days are going to move differently than the ones who wait six months.
I don’t pick sides. I don’t get paid to write this newsletter. I don’t care which AI you use, as long as you use one that actually saves you hours a week.
I’m sharing, every week, how the AI stack for one-person businesses is changing (very fast). If you’re one, keep up. That’s the whole point.
If this article helped you, be that person for someone else and share it.
Sharing does not cost you anything. And it supports my work.
If someone did send you this, thank them and subscribe for free.
Free /inbox-triage skill (plus my master prompt list and every artifact I share in this newsletter):
I put all of it in my free community. Join here: AI Made Easy on Skool
Work With Me: guneytopcu.com