What We Built in September

Three workflows and a voice agent for increasing your ROI.

Hi friend,

Grab a coffee. This one is a look back at what we built together in September, and a few things I have been thinking about since.

September was a quieter month for publishing than August, but some of my favorite work came out of it. One piece was my first experiment with voice agents. Using the xAI voice beta, I built a voice bot called Sage. Sage interviews you about your business and helps you find what is slowing it down. Then it sends you an organized summary you can use to design a tech stack that saves you time and money. You'll find it below.

Something else happened this month that I care about a lot. I submitted a proposal for a business accelerator for 18 to 24 year olds who want to join the workforce or start their own business. If it is approved, the 12-week program begins in March. Each participant will take a real business process, improve it, and apply AI to it. Along the way, they will learn to spot opportunities in the market and become fluent in AI, beyond simply being familiar with it.

I have been here before. In 2021, I designed an accelerator for solopreneurs hit hard by the COVID lockdowns. I learned from more than 100 businesses, and their stories taught me something I keep coming back to: when desperation and inspiration arrive at the same time, people discover capacities they never knew they had.

I see that same moment forming now. This time the lockdown is quieter. AI is repricing the work many of us spent decades mastering.

That thread runs through everything I wrote in September. Building has become the easy part. What makes the build worth anything is knowing what the work is, what it costs you, and which decisions stay with you.

Something I put together for a few of you

Until October 15, I am offering my paid subscription at half the price, $58.50 for a full year of premium content, AI skills and agentic hacks, plus adding a one-on-one session with me (which I only did this with the $360 plus founder subscription). We can use this time to set up my content engine for you, or to work through a project you are stuck or have been putting off. Think of it as a virtual coffee where you leave with something built. The subscription also includes more than 200 prompts and my content engine plug-in to get your content on auto-pilot.

I can only give this kind of time at this price to a small group, so I am capping this offer at 20 people. If those spots fill before October 15, I will close it early. If interested click below. You will get a link to setup our session.

Now, here are September's four pieces.

1. Sage: The Voice Agent That Helps You Find What Is Causing Your Operational Drag

September 10

Most owners already sense where the drag is. What they are missing is a way to finish the thought, so I wrote the method down and built a voice agent to walk you through it.

What you'll learn:

• How to pick one room of your business and one recurring task, using a real recent example.

• How to map who and what that task depends on, where it breaks, how often, and how many hours it costs.

• How to mark every step as a chore or a judgment call. Pricing, fit, saying yes, and hitting send stay with you.

• How to test one fix on five live items. You leave with a written picture you can hand to your team or a consultant, or use as the spec if you build the fix yourself.

2. Your Business Already Has a Product Manager. It May Be You.

September 15

AI now lets nontechnical owners build their own systems. The part you cannot hand off is deciding what to build and why, and most owners are already doing that job without the title.

What you'll learn:

• Why my newsletter agent had the research ready and then stopped, waiting for me to choose the topic.

• The four decisions to keep: the outcome that matters, the real constraint, where preparation ends and judgment starts, and what "better" means.

• The question I now ask of every system: what could the machine prepare before you arrive, and which decision should stay yours?

3. AI Made Building Easy. It Did Not Make Choosing Easy.

September 17

Turning an idea into something that works has become much cheaper. Deciding which idea deserves the work has not, which makes it easy to spend a week building something that does not matter.

What you'll learn: Five questions to ask before you build:

1. Who has the problem?

2. What happens today?

3. What does it cost?

4. What judgment must stay human?

5. What is the smallest version that could teach you something?

Then you test that version on one real invoice, one proposal, or one client meeting.

4. Your Business Should Prepare the Work Before You Arrive

September 22

Many owners are overwhelmed less by the number of decisions than by the state they arrive in. Each one shows up half-built, so they do the gathering before they can do the thinking.

What you'll learn:

• The founder-wait test and the decision-ready brief.

• How to pick one recurring decision that keeps landing on your desk unfinished, and describe what a decision-ready package would contain. That description becomes the start of a spec for a system.

• A simple scoreboard to measure it: preparation time, turnaround, corrections, and conversion.

The system gathers and prepares. You still decide fit, price, promises, and risk.

In 2021, I watched more than 100 owners rebuild their businesses with nothing but pressure and a willingness to try. Many of them did not have a plan. They had one process they were willing to fix, and the courage to fix it before they felt ready.

Every piece this month comes back to that same idea. The machines can now do the gathering, the drafting, and the building. What they cannot do is decide what matters to you, what you will charge for it, and which promises you are willing to keep. That part is still yours, and it is worth more today than it was a year ago.

So here is my invitation. Pick one thing this week. One task that drags, one decision that keeps arriving unfinished, one idea you have been circling. Run it through one of the pieces above and see what you learn.

If you want company while you do it you can take my 50% off paid subscription offer. You will get more than 20 prompts, my content engine plug-in and a we will have a session together to work on the project of your choice. You can claim your spot here.

Talk soon,

Juan