I ran my whole business from my head, until it broke
I ran my whole business from my head, until it broke
Okay, I've got to be honest with you. I'm one of those people who genuinely thought I could keep my whole business, and how everything connects, in my head.
For a while, it actually worked. But then it stopped, because there was just too much of it. The clients, the content, all the follow-ups. The ideas I'd have at 11pm and completely forget by the morning. All of it was either rattling around in my head or scattered across about six different apps that never talked to each other.
I was the one holding every bit of it together, all the time.
Then it caught up with me. I started forgetting things and missing deadlines. I'd redo work I'd already done, because I had no idea I'd done it. And honestly, it burned me out.
So I stopped. And I built one system that actually holds the whole thing for me now. That's what the latest episode of my podcast, Ahead of the Algorithm, is really about. It was only ever going to be an episode where I talked through the idea. Then I ended up filming the whole thing anyway, because I wanted people to actually see it.
Watch the full walkthrough - exactly what I use and how it fits together
The two tools that run everything
People love showing off their setup and then never actually telling you what they use. So here it is, all of it.
Two tools run my entire business. A free app called Obsidian, and an AI called Claude. That's it. There's no coding, and no expensive agency. No stack of forty apps I signed up for in a panic and never opened again.
Obsidian is where everything lives now. Every client, every bit of content, every running note, all in one place I can actually look at. Claude's the part that does the work on top of it. The tools are the easy part though. What made the real difference was how I put the two together.
The whole system, zoomed all the way out. Everything in one place, where I can see it.
Your AI can only work with what it can see
This is the part most people get wrong with AI, and it's honestly not their fault. Nobody explains it.
Your AI can only help you with what it can actually see. If your business is spread across your inbox, your phone, a few apps and your own memory, you're only ever handing it a piece of the picture. So that's all it can hand back to you.
The moment it all sat in one place, both of us could finally see the whole thing at once. That one boring change did more for me than any clever automation I've ever set up. Nobody makes a flashy demo about putting your stuff in one folder. But it's the bit that actually worked.
Hire the jobs before you automate them
Most people open up AI and ask what it can do for them. I did it the other way round, and that's the whole difference.
I sat down and described the jobs first, exactly like I was hiring real people. The job title. What the role actually needed. What a good result looked like. Then I handed each one over, one at a time, and let it earn its place before I gave it the next.
Each part of the business, handed over like a real role.
How to start this week
You don't need to buy anything today. And you don't have to be techy. I'm not. I just test and try and test and try again until it works.
- 1Get it all out of your head. Write down everything living up there or spread across apps. The clients, the content, the follow-ups you keep meaning to send.
- 2Put it somewhere you and your AI can both see. Mine's Obsidian, and it's free. It doesn't matter which tool. It matters that there's only one.
- 3Describe each job before you automate it. Give it a title, say what the role needs, and be clear on what a good result looks like.
- 4Hand one job over at a time. Let it earn its place before you give it the next one. That's how you end up with a system instead of a mess.
What a morning looks like now
Here's the part I still find a bit funny, given where I started. I can sit down in the morning, open one Telegram message with a full overview, and see my whole business in about 10 seconds. From one app, which is free.
No more scrolling six places to work out where things are at. No more waking up with that jolt of what have I forgotten. It's just there, waiting. And it's right, because everything feeds into the one place.
The honest version
I'm not going to oversell it. Obsidian is genuinely free, and you can start there today for nothing. Claude has a free version too, but the way I use it, running the heavier stuff across the whole business, I'm on a paid plan. Most of what I've described you can start on the free versions, and only pay once it's already earning its keep.
And it took me a while. I didn't sit down one clever afternoon and build a perfect system. I built it because the old way had already broken, and I was tired of being the one holding every piece together. This is just what came out the other side.
If you want the actual tools I use to run all of this, I keep them in a little free library. It's the real stack I run on, not some random list of forty apps you'll never open.
