Playbook 004 · 00 · Start here
Write Any Business Email in Under 5 Minutes Using AI
Draft any of the eight emails a small business sends most, in under five minutes, and still sound like you wrote it.
Who it’s for · Anyone who writes their own business emails and keeps putting off the awkward ones — trades, retail, professional services, hospitality, agriculture. No AI experience needed.
- First result
- About 5 minutes
- The whole thing
- 6 modulesAbout 38 minutes all up
- What it costs
- Free
- Last verified
- 2026-09-22Version 1.0
The problem
There is a particular kind of email that sits in your drafts folder for four days. The quote follow-up. The one where you have to tell someone the job ran late. The invoice that is three weeks overdue and you have started to feel rude about it.
None of those are hard to write. They are hard to start. That is the actual problem this Playbook solves: it removes the blank page, so the job goes from twenty minutes of avoiding it to five minutes of doing it.
Eight prompts, covering the eight emails a small business actually sends. They are written to be pasted into any AI tool, filled in with your real details, and edited before sending. Nothing here needs a paid plan, an account setup, or any AI experience at all.
Outcomes
5, by the end
What you’ll be able to do
- Draft any of eight common business emails in under five minutes
- Know the one rule that stops an AI email sounding like everyone else's
- Write subject lines people actually open
- Know which emails should never be handed to AI
- Build your own prompt for an email type that isn't in here
The method
5 steps, same every time
How to use this Playbook
Find the email you need to send. They are in modules 02 and 03, four in each.
Copy the prompt and replace everything in [square brackets] with your real details. The more specific you are, the less editing you do afterwards.
Paste it into a new chat in Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.
Read the draft. Add one detail only you would know. Check the sign-off sounds like you.
Send it. Then keep the prompt somewhere you can find it again — that is the part that compounds.
The hard rules
They hold whatever the prompt says
What never happens
The rules that hold whatever the prompt says. If one of these is about to break, stop and do it by hand.
- AI never writes emails for legal disputes, employment matters, formal complaints, debt-recovery escalation, privacy issues, or emotionally sensitive situations without a human writing or heavily reworking the draft.
- AI never sees private client, staff, medical, financial or legal information unless you have a reason to share it and the right to.
- AI drafts never get sent without being read. Every time.
Before you start
The modules
8 parts · 38 minutes
Where everything is
6 modules to work through, about 38 minutes all up. Start at 01 — they build on each other.
- 01 · The one rule, and how these prompts workWhy most AI emails get spotted instantly, and the thirty-second habit that fixes it.5 min
- 02 · The first four: follow-up, quote, bad news, check-inThe four you will reach for most. Each one is a prompt you can paste as-is, plus what to change when it does not quite fit.8 min
- 03 · The other four: welcome, decline, review request, overdue invoiceThe four that people put off. Two of them protect the relationship; two of them protect your time and your cash.8 min
- 04 · Subject lines, and what keeps it sounding like youSix subject-line shapes that work, and the short list of habits that separate a human email from an obvious AI one.6 min
- 05 · Build your own promptThe eight cover most of it. This is how you write the ninth without starting from scratch.5 min
- T · When things go sideways6 min
- D · What done looks like—
- C · Close—
§ TAKE IT WITH YOU
Want the printable copy in your inbox?
The Playbook stays free and open on this page either way — the email version is just a copy you can keep.