AI Automations for Business

AI and automation can transform a small business. Done badly, they can cost you money, expose your data, or land you in legal trouble. Noel shares the five pitfalls he sees most often, and the ones with the biggest impact on the businesses that fall into them. Buying the solution before you understand the problem (and why that "million pound AI funnel" on Instagram won't work for a...

The ads are everywhere. Come up with an app idea, build it, and launch it, all in a single day. Katie's seen them across every platform and now they've made it into her inbox too, and she's calling BS. So she put it to Noel, who's been building apps for himself and for clients for years. His answer starts as a yes and no, and becomes a flat no the moment Katie clarifies these a...

Every major AI lab in America has agreed they should slow down frontier development. Even Musk's xAI signed up to it. Sounds like a big deal, and for the labs it is. But Noel's take is that for the vast majority of business owners, it changes precisely nothing. The agents most of us are running aren't operating anywhere near the pinnacle of what AI can do. They're writing conte...

If your AI content sounds generic, it's because you're feeding it generic input. Katie gets on her soapbox this week about the "1000 viral hooks" and "500 content prompts" downloads flooding everyone's feeds, and why they'll never work: they were written by AI in the first place, thousands of other people have the same file, and the moment you feed them into...

Right now, over 90% of websites have no way for an AI agent to actually use them. That's about to become a problem. In this episode, Noel explains WebMCP: a way of exposing tools on your own website so AI agents can search, filter, book and buy directly, instead of scraping your page code and guessing. He compares it to the moment the iPhone launched and everyone scrambled to make their sites...

There's nothing more frustrating than getting excited about an AI agent, only to find it's either way above your technical level or far too basic to do what you need. In this episode, Noel breaks the agent landscape into three tiers and matches each one to a skill level. Agent systems like Cowork and ChatGPT Work are the beginner starting point, already included in your subscription, but...

There's a lot of misinformation flying around about Anthropic's new AI watermarking, so Noel breaks down what it actually is. It isn't hidden code you can delete. The watermark is the words themselves and the statistical order they come out in, which means copying your text into a Google Doc and pasting it elsewhere won't shake it off. Noel explains how it works, why it's...

Do you actually need to pay for ChatGPT or Claude? A listener asked when it's time to stop using a free account and upgrade, so Noel and Katie go through both platforms feature by feature. What you get free on ChatGPT (which is more generous than most people realise), what Claude holds back on its free tier including projects, extended research and the ability to top up your usage, and which...

Most people open Claude, start typing, and never touch the settings that would make it ten times more useful. Answering questions from a few listeners, Noel walks through how to set up a Claude account properly as of August 2026. He starts with the instructions box hidden in your general settings (the single change that makes the biggest difference), then covers how the memory system now works and...

Tired of explaining your business to AI over and over again? In this episode, Noel answers a listener question from Fee in Perth, Australia: how do you set up Claude to handle every part of running a membership, social media, emails, content, community and customer service without re-entering the same information every single time? He walks through Projects and their instructions, how Claude Skill...

Would you trust a Chinese AI model with your business data? In this episode, Noel and Katie dig into Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI and Alibaba's Qwen 3.8, the new Chinese models that have snuck into the gap between GPT 5.6 Sol and Fable 5, at a third of the price. Noel explains what they're brilliant at, from stunning 3D websites to acing the Clyde Bench with a perfect score, and the data sec...

Could OpenAI's latest updates be enough to tempt a die-hard Claude fan away from Anthropic? In this episode, Noel and Katie break down every major OpenAI update from July 2026: the new GPT 5.6 models (Sol, Terra and Luna), ChatGPT Work for creating documents, presentations and dashboards from your business data, the new browser control features, Sites for building internal tools, and GPT Live...

Why do AI agents work brilliantly for some people and fail completely for others? After spotting a viral LinkedIn post claiming AI agents "confidently fail" every time, Noel breaks down the five real reasons agents go wrong and how to build one that actually works. From choosing the right platform (and why Make.com beats n8n for reliability) to picking the correct AI model as your agent&...

What if you could set up an AI agent for your business without any technical experience? In this episode, Noel reveals Clyde, the AI agent he built from scratch to help any business owner automate their operations. From creating specialist sub-teams to connecting your favourite apps, Clyde handles everything through a simple chat interface that feels just like using ChatGPT or Claude. They also co...

What would happen to your business if you completely switched off for two weeks? In this episode, Katie and Noel share four practical automations that let you step away from your business without everything grinding to a halt. From AI-powered out-of-office emails that actually help your customers, to automated invoice chasing that stops you from awkwardly emailing clients from the beach. They also...

What happens when the most powerful AI model you've ever used gets switched off overnight? In this episode, Katie and Noel break down the Fable 5 shutdown Anthropic's most powerful public model pulled by the US government with zero warning, globally, just a week after launch. They cover what happened, why it was turned off, what Anthropic have said about the same vulnerabilities existing...

How do you actually decide what AI tools are worth paying for? In this episode, Katie and Noel flip the format and answer the question they get asked most, how they choose what AI platforms, tools, and automations to use in their own businesses. They cover picking your core AI platform, why they left ChatGPT for Claude, how to avoid the hype and FOMO trap, and why building your own tools can cost...

Is your website ready for AI customers? In this episode, Katie and Noel break down Google's biggest AI announcements of the year from the new Gemini 3.5 Flash model and its hidden token cost trap, to the Gemini Spark AI agent with its Agent Payment Protocol that could change how products are bought and sold online. They also cover Google Flow's multimodal video creation, the controversia...

Can you even remember what AI was like a year ago? In this episode, Katie and Noel look back at how dramatically AI has changed in just 12 months from eight-fingered images and constant hallucinations to building entire apps hands-free and AI that remembers everything. They cover ChatGPT's explosive growth from 400 million to 800 million users, the rise and fall of AI browsers, why vibe codin...

What if AI could actually understand your business the way you do? In this episode, Katie and Noel walk through how to train AI to know your business from the inside out. They cover Claude's memory feature, setting up projects with your company documents and processes, and connecting your business apps for live data, plus why downloading someone else's "100 viral hooks" will ne...

Where do you actually start when AI feels overwhelming? In this episode, Katie and Noel break down the three things every solopreneur should focus on when getting started with AI. They cover why the first step has nothing to do with AI tools at all, why committing to one platform beats dabbling in five, and how even a basic no-code automation can change how your business runs plus the shiny object...

What if the smartest AI move you can make is knowing when not to use it? In this episode, Katie and Noel go through five things AI should never do in your business. They cover refunds and customer complaints, sales conversations, community management, hiring, and client and supplier relationships breaking down exactly where AI can help with the setup but where humans need to take over. They also d...

What if you could have an AI business partner that actually keeps your data safe? In this episode, Katie and Noel properly introduce Project Clyde an AI agent platform Noel built from scratch after losing trust in the alternatives. They walk through how Clyde builds and manages teams of sub-agents through simple conversation, why it sandboxes file access and encrypts everything via Supabase, and h...

Think you need to be a developer to build an AI agent? Think again. In this episode, Katie and Noel walk through exactly how to build a working AI agent from scratch using Make.com — no code, no JSON, no command line. They cover choosing the right no-code platform, planning your agent on paper first, structuring system prompts with clear roles and goals, and connecting business tools via MCP serve...

How do you qualify leads without spending 20 minutes Googling every single one? In this episode, Katie and Noel break down how to automate the entire lead qualification process using AI and no-code tools. They walk through website scraping, Instagram profile checks via Apify, LinkedIn company data, and even Companies House lookups for UK business revenue all running automatically in the background...