Chapter 4: Run Your Small Business with Muse

You now have the skills. This chapter puts them together on the everyday work of running a small business. If you do not run a business, use your own work, a club, a side project or a volunteer group. The tasks are the same: follow-ups, reminders, plans and messages.

4.1 Start a side chat for this chapter

Open Muse and create a new side chat named "Chapter 4: Small Business". Do the examples and assignments in this chapter there, so they stay in one place and apart from your main chat. Run your example tasks from this chapter there. Your real business requests can keep going in your main chat.

4.2 Find the work to hand off

Not every task belongs with an agent. Sort your tasks into three piles:

• Hand off. Repetitive, clear, and low-risk if it goes slightly wrong. Examples: summarizing email, drafting routine replies, tracking prices.
• Do together. Important, but your agent can do the heavy lifting while you decide. Examples: a customer follow-up, a growth plan, a proposal.
• Keep. Sensitive, personal, or where your judgment and relationship are the whole point. Examples: a difficult conversation with a customer, hiring decisions, anything involving money moving without your approval.

List ten tasks from your last week. Put each one in a pile. Then pick two from the first two piles to try in this chapter.

4.3 Put Muse to work on everyday tasks

Use the habits from earlier chapters on each task. Start with the result you want and what done means, use approval cards for anything important, and draft, review, edit and approve before anything goes out.

A morning of small business work might look like this:

• A customer asked about a delayed order. Your agent drafts a reply, you review it, edit one line, and approve it.
• You told a client you would follow up on Friday. Your agent sets a reminder so it does not slip.
• You asked for a growth plan. Your agent delivers it as a document you can open, read and ask it to revise.

Make a rule for anything that goes to customers: your agent drafts messages and plans for your approval and sets reminders for follow-ups so none slip. Customers should never receive something you have not seen, and they should be told when an agent sent it, as you set up in Chapter 2.

Simulator: Run the Business Day. Approve a drafted customer follow-up, review the numbers, and accept one idea.

Now do it in your own Muse with your two chosen tasks. Keep your daily watch running, and check what it tells you. When a task works well, ask your agent to remember how you like it done, and save that as a standing preference.

4.4 Keep standing preferences current

Your standing preferences were written for the work you were doing at the start. Your work changes, and your preferences should too.

Review your standing preferences every so often. Ask Muse to list what it remembers about how you like to work. For each one, decide whether to keep it, change it, or remove it. A rule that made sense for a beginner, such as "ask me before every single step," may be too strict once you trust your agent with a task. A rule that protects you, such as "label everything you send as sent by my agent," should stay.

Do this review now. Make at least one change you can explain.

4.5 Look back at your goal

Return to the goal you set in Chapter 1. Open the Goals tab and look at what your agent has tracked. Then compare it with your definition of done.

• Did you reach it? If yes, mark it complete and say what worked.
• Partly? Say what is left and whether to keep going.
• Not at all? Say what changed, and decide whether the goal or the plan needs to change.

Any of these is a good result if you can say why. Knowing what you would do differently next time is part of the skill.

4.6 Your Learner Profile

Your learner profile is now complete. It describes you as an experienced Muse user, replacing the beginner description from the first chapter, and it lists everything the course covered as skills you can do, not skills you are learning: finding your way around Muse, turning off sharing your chats to improve AI, giving clear instructions with an outcome, setting goals, saving standing preferences, connecting apps, running daily watches, reading approval cards, handing off website work, the draft, review, edit, approve routine, choosing, building and publishing an app, and running everyday business tasks. It also carries all the rules you set for your agent, from drafting first to showing working versions to drafting customer messages for approval.

The profile now says that you are proficient, so an agent reading it will not re-explain the basics or stop to ask about things you have already mastered.

It also lists the full set of skills from the course in one line, so the whole course travels with you.

Copy the final profile from the learner profile panel. It is not tied to Muse, so you can paste it at the start of a chat with any AI agent, and that agent will know how you work.

4.7 Tell Muse you've finished the course

During the course, you may have asked Muse to explain things step by step or to check in more often. Now that you are finished, update Muse so it treats you like any other experienced user.

1. Paste the final learner profile into your main chat, not a side chat, and tell Muse: "I have finished the Hire Your First Agent course. This is my final learner profile."
2. Save a standing preference that says you have completed the course and are an experienced user. Ask Muse to confirm what it saved.
3. Review what is left over. Ask Muse to list any standing preferences or instructions that were only for learning, such as extra explanations or reminders about course tasks. Remove them, and keep your rules about drafting, approvals and labeling messages.
4. Check the result. Give Muse a small task and see whether it skips the beginner steps and still asks you before important actions.

If Muse still explains too much or asks too often, tell it exactly what to stop doing, and save the correction.

4.8 Keep working with your agent

The course ends, but your practice should not. The people who get the most from an agent are the ones who keep handing it real work, a little every day, in the main chat. Each task you hand off, check and approve makes you a better manager of your agent, and it makes your agent better at working for you.

Look at what you have now: Muse set up and working for you, a goal you worked on, a daily watch, an approved draft routine, and an app you shared. You also have a way of working that you can use with any agent: give clear instructions, check carefully, approve what matters, and keep teaching your agent how you like things done.

Some next steps:

• Add a second daily watch once the first one is reliable.
• Pick a new goal and give your agent instructions the same way.
• Improve the app from the feedback you received.
• Hand off one more task from your "do together" pile.

4.9 Summary

You sorted your work into tasks to hand off, do together and keep, and ran real tasks through Muse with clear instructions and approvals. You reviewed your standing preferences, judged your goal, completed your learner profile, and told Muse you have finished the course. You started as someone who used AI like a search box. You are now someone who can hire an agent.