Seven free AI guides for UK small businesses — released today
We published seven free PDF field guides covering where AI helps, how to run a pilot, data privacy, prompt writing, vendor vetting, and setting up your own agent. Here's why they exist and how to use them.
Today we published seven free PDF guides for UK small and medium businesses. They are on the new guides page, they cost nothing, and all we ask is your email so we can send you the download link. No spam, no newsletter, no follow-up sequence — just the guide.
This post explains why we wrote them, what is in each one, and how to use them in the order that makes sense.
Why free, and why now
We talk to UK business owners every week about AI workflow automation. The questions are always the same, in roughly the same order. Where does AI actually help? How do I test it without breaking what works? Is it safe to put our data in? Why does ChatGPT give me rubbish? What should I ask the vendor who just gave me a demo? What is an AI agent and do I need one? Can I set one up myself?
We were answering the same seven questions on calls, in emails, and in proposals. So we wrote the answers down once, properly, and made them public. A business owner should be able to get a straight answer to these questions without booking a discovery call first. If the guides answer your question completely and you never need us, that is a good outcome for us too — it is how you build a reputation in a market that has been burned by AI theatre.
What is in the collection
Seven guides, eighty-nine pages total, each one answering a single question.
Guide 01 — Where AI Actually Helps is the starting point. It gives you a scoring framework for deciding which tasks are worth automating and which are not. It includes a worked example that ends in "stop", because sometimes the right answer is not to build. Twenty-six pages.
Guide 02 — The 30-Day AI Pilot is a day-by-day plan for testing AI on one task alongside the way you do it now. What to measure, when to stop, and how to make the go/no-go call. Twelve pages.
Guide 03 — Your Data, Your Rules answers the question everyone is afraid to ask: can I put business data into ChatGPT? It covers what the ICO expects, a four-tier way to classify your data, and a checklist to run before you type anything into an AI tool. Ten pages.
Guide 04 — Writing AI Instructions That Actually Work explains why vague prompts produce vague output, and gives you a six-part structure that turns inconsistent results into reliable ones. Ten pages.
Guide 05 — The AI Vendor Interrogation Kit is twenty questions to ask any AI vendor before you sign, a scoring card to rate their answers, and a walk-away threshold. Eight pages. Read it before the next demo.
Guide 06 — Your First AI Employee explains what an AI agent actually is (not a chatbot), what it can automate, what it costs, and the permission ladder that keeps it safe. Twelve pages.
Guide 07 — Set Up Your Own AI Agent is a no-code walkthrough of installing Hermes, an open-source agent that runs on your own machine. The install, the first job, the guardrails, and the honest cost. Eleven pages.
Why they are useful
Three reasons, and none of them are "because we wrote them".
First, they answer the question you actually have, not the question a vendor wants you to have. Each guide is scoped to one problem. You are not reading a brochure, you are reading an answer.
Second, they are honest about limits. Several guides include worked examples that end in "don't build this". A guide that tells you when AI is the wrong answer is more useful than one that tells you it is always the right answer.
Third, they are written for UK businesses specifically. That means ICO guidance, UK GDPR, pound Sterling costs, and examples from trades, salons, cafes, and service firms — not Silicon Valley case studies.
How to use them
Start with Guide 01 if you are not sure where AI fits. Start with Guide 02 if you already know and want to test it. Jump to Guide 05 if a vendor is asking you to sign something. The full collection, with a description of each guide, is on the guides page.
Every guide is a print-ready A4 PDF. Enter your email, grab the link, print it, pass it to a colleague, write in the margins. That is what field guides are for.
What this means for you
If you read all seven and decide you do not need us, you have saved yourself a discovery call and we have earned a bit of trust. If you read them and want a named person to build the first system with you, that is what we do — and we will tell you on the first call if the guides are all you need. Either way, the answers are now public, free, and yours to keep.
