Automate Basics

Free short course

AI for Small Businesses

For the owner who is also the whole back office

Enquiries, quotes, marketing, reviews, suppliers and admin. The jobs that eat your evenings, done in a fraction of the time.

Rahul Arora

Founder, Automate Basics

Start free
Level
BeginnerBuilds on an earlier course
Lessons
9Plus one practice brief
Content
2hRead at your own pace
Price
FreeNo exam, no certificate

What you’ll be working on

  • Small business
  • Marketing
  • Admin

Freeto read, all of it

The first lesson needs no account. A free account opens the rest — no card, nothing to cancel.

Start freeRead the syllabus

What this course includes

  • 9 lessons · 2h
  • One practice brief on your own work
  • No exam and nothing to pass
  • Nothing locked, nothing gated
  • No subscription — this site does not have one

Where this leads

Module 2 leaves you with four things you now do by hand every week: the reply templates, the marketing batch, the chase emails, the standing brief. AIA-300 is where the ones that genuinely repeat stop needing you at all, using free-tier connector tools with no code, with a human check before anything reaches a customer and an alert when it goes quietly wrong.

AIA-300: AI Automation

Who this is for

  • You run something small and do every job in it yourself
  • Marketing gets done at 10pm or not at all
  • You are not paying for another subscription to find out whether this helps

Recommended after Prompting That Works. Nothing is locked, so if you already have the skills, start here.

What you'll be able to do

This is what the course covers. Nothing else is claimed, and none of it is assessed.

  • Handle enquiries, quotes and follow-ups faster without sounding like a robot
  • Produce a month of marketing in one sitting, in your own voice
  • Deal with reviews, complaints and awkward customer messages calmly
  • Know exactly what customer information must never go into these tools

Where this leads

AIA-300 · AI Automation

Module 2 leaves you with four things you now do by hand every week: the reply templates, the marketing batch, the chase emails, the standing brief. AIA-300 is where the ones that genuinely repeat stop needing you at all, using free-tier connector tools with no code, with a human check before anything reaches a customer and an alert when it goes quietly wrong.

  • Everything in AIA-300 is free to read, and the assessment is free to sit.
  • Pass it and the certificate is yours for $149, once — never a subscription.
  • Verifiable by anyone, with no account and no login.
  • No renewal, no expiry, no annual fee.
See AIA-300How verification works

Automate Basics

Certificate of Competency

AIA-300

This certifies that

Your name

has passed the final assessment of the AI Automation certification.

The holder declares the course’s lessons and live applications complete; the assessment result above is machine-marked by the issuer.

Assessed competencies are published with this credential at automatebasics.com/verify

Credential ID

AIA-300-2026-·······

Verify at automatebasics.com/verify

The curriculum

Every module, every lesson and every duration, before you decide. All of it is free, and there is nothing to buy on this course.

Modules
3
Lessons
9
Practice briefs
1
Total time
about 2h
  1. 1

    The customer-facing work

    Enquiries, quotes, follow-ups and reviews: the writing that directly makes or costs you money.

    3 lessons · 30 min

    1. 1.1Enquiries, quotes and the follow-upYou can turn one of your own past replies into a reusable enquiry template, and send a quote a customer can decide on instead of haggle over12 min
    2. 1.2A month of marketing in one sittingYou can write a post nobody else in your trade could have written, and plan a month of them in one sitting10 min
    3. 1.3Reviews, complaints and difficult messagesYou can draft a public reply to a bad review, and a private reply to an angry customer, that neither grovel nor argue8 min
  2. 2

    The back office

    Suppliers, admin, policies and the paperwork that accumulates while you are doing the actual job.

    3 lessons · 31 min

    1. 2.1Suppliers, chasing and negotiatingYou can send a chase that gets a date rather than an apology, and pull the five clauses out of a supplier contract that decide what leaving costs10 min
    2. 2.2The paperwork nobody has time forYou can brief a first draft of the policy you are missing, and mark the parts that must go to somebody qualified10 min
    3. 2.3Getting time back, deliberatelyYou can write the standing brief that stops you re-explaining your business, and rank your admin by time saved per hour of setup11 min
  3. 3

    Customer data, cost and limits

    The rules that keep you out of trouble, and an honest account of what this does not do.

    3 lessons · 18 min

    1. 3.1Your customers' informationYou can rewrite any customer situation so it keeps everything you need help with and nothing that identifies anybody8 min
    2. 3.2What this costs, honestlyYou can decide whether a subscription is worth paying for from the hours it removes, rather than the features it lists3 min
    3. 3.3What it will not do for youYou can name the jobs in your business this never touches, and recognise a confident invented answer when you are the one being told it7 min

Practice brief

A brief completed against your own work with a published rubric. Free, like every lesson.

  1. Build your small-business kit

    40 min

    The four assets, plus a note on one real use of each and what you changed afterwards.

No exam, no certificate

This is a short course. It is free, there is nothing to pay and nothing to sit, and it does not issue a credential.

It leads to AIA-300, AI Automation.

See AIA-300

Start AI for Small Businesses

First lesson is 12 minutes and needs no account.

  • Your place is kept — pick up on your phone where you left off on your laptop
  • Lessons you have finished stay finished, even if you clear your browser
  • Assessment results are recorded against you, permanently

Free account, no card, nothing to cancel.

Start free