I met the owner of SLO Landscaping at Scout Coffee on Monday morning. After my first consultation on Friday, I've come up with a much better way of leading these meetings. I began by explaining how chatting with Claude works at a basic level. I created a system prompt (which can be found in the materials section) that interviewed the owner, focusing on gathering context about what a typical day looks like and what some of his challenges might be. This was very effective in facilitating a natural conversation about his business goals and what some of his pain points are. With the assistance of Claude, I ran an effective discovery session. His business focuses mainly on commercial maintenance. As the founder and owner, he spreads himself pretty thin – delegating employees, growing relationships with customers, managing finances on QuickBooks, creating marketing content, and occasionally visiting job sites.
The owner started SLO Landscaping in 2017: "After my wife and I had my son, I wanted to do something that gave me more autonomy in my schedule – this can be difficult when you're working for someone else." He grew up in LA working with his father who also owned a landscaping business. During the discovery session, Claude asked questions about his general thoughts around AI. He has heard about "the ChatGPT thing" from his son, but doesn't have good feelings about AI: "I don't have positive feelings about AI. We're letting something do everything for us, making us dumber." He also said that part of his disconnect from the AI/tech world is due to the nature of the landscaping business: "There is not a lot of advancement from a tech standpoint in our industry…there are now robot lawn mowers though!" When I started Main Street AI, I was looking forward to interacting with clients like this. Those who, through no fault of their own, have been on the outside of the AI echo chamber.
Claude was able to identify two areas where the owner could see immediate productivity gains: business communications and marketing. The need for assistance in these areas was confirmed by the owner: "I actually did use AI once recently in an email. Writing is not a strong suit of mine, so it helped me a lot. It was able to rewrite my email and I liked that version more." I prepared a casual landscaping communication beforehand so I could demonstrate how Claude can respond to emails: "Hey Sarah - took a look at ur backyard today. Think we can do something really nice with it - clear out those old bushes, put in a nice patio w some built in lighting. Prob looking at 8-10k range depending what stone u want. Can get started next week if ur interested. Lmk if u wanna meet up tmrw to go over details." I prompted Claude by giving it the persona of a "communication specialist skilled in email writing and tone adaptation." He was pleased with the results that we received and found great use in Claude's ability to understand tone: "I don't understand tone. I'm older, I didn't grow up texting. I can't tell if someone is mad, happy, or just fine." I'm sure we all have parents who face similar challenges when texting. I know for myself, sometimes it feels as if I'm not communicating with my dad, but rather some type of call center robot texting machine. I think it is taken for granted how, like learning a language, you develop a fluency in deciphering digital messages when you grow up texting. This is similar to becoming an effective prompter, and why I advise everybody to start communicating with AI systems ASAP.
After this, I showed the owner how we could feed Claude data from his QuickBooks and create useful visualizations. I demonstrated this feature by asking Claude to analyze over 10,000 rows of sample sales data. He was surprised by the speed at which Claude was able to create a dashboard highlighting sales by region, sales by customer segment, and most popular service. The owner had this to say about marketing: "We use yelp and home advisor. I don't see results from Google ads. We paid someone for social media but it was hard to monetize it. I'm not paying anyone for that now but I know it's important, but it is time consuming." This is when the importance of context clicked with the owner. At this point, Claude already had a solid understanding of the business, so creating relevant marketing messages was just a prompt away. Claude was now essentially a SLO Landscaping employee (just without the shovel skills). I also showcased Claude's computer use capabilities by asking it to navigate to the contact section of the SLO Landscaping website. He was able to see how the repetitive tasks he completes through QuickBooks could soon be automated.
"If I had to give you any advice going forward as you keep doing this, lead with why you're doing this. Tell people why you're calling them out of the blue and offering to help them for free. That's not normal in today's society." That was part of the closing exchange between myself and the owner of SLO Landscaping. Earlier in the consultation, he stopped to ask why I was doing this; he wanted to know what my angle was, or if he was being sold anything. I explained that I'm genuinely interested in promoting the adoption of this technology that's changing the way we work and, more importantly, the fabric of society as a whole. I pointed him to this website (which was built with the assistance of Claude) and showed how I'm documenting this journey. As we reached the end of our 30 minute session, I asked if his outlook on AI has changed and if he will begin to use these tools: "I know I have to evolve with the times, so I'm glad to have gained a better understanding about how AI can help me." The owner plans to experiment with Claude, incorporating both the web and mobile versions into his workflow. It was a beautiful morning in San Luis Obispo; I'm grateful that the owner gave up his time to grab a cup of coffee and talk about AI.