Boring AI Advice: Five Practical Uses for Your Business or Career
There's a policy document I needed to put together not long ago. Nothing fancy. A clean layout, a professional look, the kind of thing that says "this person knows what they're doing" before anyone reads a word. I knew exactly what I wanted to say. Getting it to look right was a different problem entirely.
I've used Word and Excel for years the way most people do, just enough to get through whatever I had to get through. In IT, you don't always live in those types of applications. You use them when you have to. Because of that, I've never been good at the design aspect of documents. Color theory, layout, spacing, whatever makes something look clean instead of thrown together, that was never my world.
So I thought I'd give it a try with AI. I described what I needed. Not vaguely. In detail. I told it what the document was for, who would read it, what tone I wanted, what I was trying to communicate before anyone got to the content. And it produced a clean-looking doc any department would be proud of.
That's when things started to click.
You've probably played 20 Questions. Someone thinks of something, you ask yes or no questions, and if you're good at it, you narrow it down fast. The whole game depends on asking the right questions in the right order. In a way, it's kind of amazing.
AI works like that game, but in reverse. Instead of you asking the questions, the AI is trying to figure out what you need. And just like 20 Questions, the more detail you give it, the faster it gets there. Type two vague sentences and you'll get a generic answer that doesn't quite fit. Give it context, tell it who you are, what you're trying to do, who's going to see the result, and what matters most, and it starts to feel less like a search engine and more like someone who actually understands what you want.
The more detail you give, the better it gets.
Some people who try AI for the first time and walk away unimpressed made one mistake: they didn't give it enough to work with. That's not a knock on them. It's not immediately clear what to do. You open the app, type something, and expect it to just know. But it doesn't. It needs the 20 questions worth of detail.
Here's something worth knowing before you dive in. Most AI tools let you set standing instructions, a set of filters that apply to every conversation before it even starts. One of the most useful things you can put in those instructions: tell the AI that whenever it's about to guess at something, it should stop and ask you clarifying questions first. That one change turns a guessing game into a real back-and-forth. It's the difference between an AI that produces something generic and one that produces what you are asking for.
Whether you're just getting started, trying to keep up with your own growth, or just looking to get some time back, the tips below are for you. And the best part: most of them are free.
One thing before we start. Most free AI tools may use what you type to improve their models. Don't paste anything sensitive, client financial details, account numbers, confidential agreements, into a free tier. Most paid tiers run $15 to $20 a month if you need that protection regularly. That's the only warning. Now for the good stuff.
Start Here
These five things work today, for free or close to it, no setup required.
1. Voice memo to clean email
How many times have you thought of exactly what you wanted to say, at exactly the wrong time? Driving, walking around the office, halfway through an entirely different task. By the time you sit down to write the email, the thought is gone or the moment has passed. Poof.
Here's the fix. Record a voice memo on your phone, say everything you want to say in whatever order it comes out, and let AI turn it into a clean email draft. No outline required. No sitting down to write. Just talk.
What you need: Your phone's built-in voice recorder. iPhone users on iOS 18 or newer get automatic transcription for free inside the Voice Memos app. Android users on a Google Pixel get the same thing inside Recorder. Then either ChatGPT or Claude (both free to start).
How to do it:
Open Voice Memos on your iPhone, or Recorder on your Android.
Hit record and say what you want the email to cover. Don't worry about order or wording. Just brain dump.
Stop the recording when you're done.
Tap the memo to see the auto-transcribed text.
Copy the transcript.
Open ChatGPT or Claude in your browser or app.
Paste the transcript and type one line above it: "Turn this into a short, friendly email." (or whatever intention you may have)
Read the draft, fix anything that sounds off, and paste it into your email.
Warning: Like most voice to text, the transcript will get names and numbers wrong. Always read the draft before you send it and never trust a dollar amount or date without checking it yourself.
2. Meeting notes that write themselves
You know the feeling. A long meeting wraps up, everyone leaves, and within an hour you're trying to remember who said they'd handle what. By the end of the day it's a blur. If it's Friday, it's gone.
AI meeting notes solve this completely. The tool records your call, transcribes it, and when it's over hands you a summary and a bulleted list of action items with owners assigned. Not a wall of text. Actual, usable notes.
You can revisit the whole conversation at your own pace, catch what you missed, and respond thoughtfully instead of on the spot.
What you need: Fathom (fathom.video), free for up to 5 AI summaries per month. Works with Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams. If you need more than 5 summaries a month, Premium is $16 a month billed annually. If you're already using Microsoft Teams at work, check whether your plan includes Copilot or Teams Premium. If it does, you already have this built in.
One thing to know: Fathom joins your call as a visible participant named "Fathom Notetaker." Everyone on the call can see it. For most internal meetings that's fine. For sensitive client calls, it's worth a heads up beforehand.
How to do it:
Go to fathom.video and sign up with your Google or Microsoft account.
Connect the calendar you use for meetings.
Start your next call as normal. Fathom joins and records.
When the call ends, check your email or the Fathom app for your summary and action items.
Copy the action items into your task list or paste them into a follow-up email.
Note: Always tell the other people on the call that you're recording. Some states require two-party consent before recording starts.
3. Client email replies in your own voice
Every inbox has one. The email you've read three times. You know exactly what you want to say, but finding the right way to say it is going to take more energy than you have right now.
This is one of the most practical things AI does well. Give it the email you received, tell it who you are, the tone you want, what you are trying to say, and it hands you a draft. Not a finished email, but a solid starting point that takes the intimidation out of a blank page.
What you need: Claude (claude.ai), free to start. Claude is a good default for anything client-adjacent because it handles sensitive context carefully on the free tier.
How to do it:
Go to claude.ai and sign in or create a free account.
Copy the email you received from your client.
Paste it into Claude.
Add three lines underneath: who you are and what you do, the tone you want (friendly, firm, apologetic, professional), and what you actually want to say in rough bullet points.
Hit send.
Read the draft. If it sounds too formal or generic, tell Claude: "Make it shorter and more conversational."
Once it sounds right, copy it into your email reply.
Fix any names, dates, or details before you send.
Tip: Claude doesn't know your recipient. It will fill in gaps with reasonable guesses, and those guesses are sometimes wrong. If you get results that sound wacky, give the AI more context. You can just use plain language. Try explaining what you're trying to do like the AI is a 5 year old.
4. Clean product photos without a studio
If you sell anything physical, you might have run into this problem. Your product looks fantastic in person. Your phone photo looks like you took it on a potato. A white background, clean lighting, and a professional presentation is the difference between a product and a Facebook Marketplace post. Hiring a product photographer doesn't make sense for every item. And most of us aren't going to build a lightbox in the garage.
“Your product looks fantastic in person. Your phone photo looks like you took it on a potato.”
Photoroom removes the background from your product photo in seconds and drops in whatever you need. A clean white background for your Etsy or Amazon listing. A simple color that matches your brand. It's not magic, but it's close enough that most people won't know the difference.
What you need: Photoroom (photoroom.com or the mobile app). The free tier gives you 250 exports per month, but note that Photoroom's free tier is for personal use only, not commercial listings. If you're putting these photos in your shop, you'll need Pro. Pro is $7.50 a month billed annually, or $12.99 month to month. If you just need background removal and nothing else, Pixelcut (pixelcut.com) is a genuinely free alternative with no watermarks and commercial use allowed, though it's primarily a mobile app.
How to do it:
Take a photo of your product on any background. Even lighting helps, so near a window beats a dark corner.
Go to photoroom.com or open the Photoroom app.
Upload your photo.
Photoroom removes the background automatically in a few seconds.
Pick a clean white background, or choose a solid color that fits your brand.
If the edges look rough anywhere, use the touch-up brush to clean them up.
Export and upload to your shop.
Tip: The AI lifestyle backgrounds, fake wood tables, fake kitchen counters, usually look fake on close inspection. Stick to a plain white or solid color for your primary listing photo. Save the fancy backgrounds for secondary shots if you want to experiment.
5. Getting answers from a long document
Some documents are just not meant to be read by humans. Equipment manuals. Vendor contracts. Insurance policies. Lease agreements. You get it. You'll need one specific piece of information and the only way to get it is to dig through sixty pages of language that seems specifically designed to make you sleep.
AI can read it for you. Upload the document, ask your question in plain language, and get the answer pulled directly from the text. No searching, no skimming, no reading the same paragraph four times trying to figure out what it actually means.
What you need: Google Gemini (gemini.google.com), free with a Google account. Gemini handles long document uploads well on the free tier, which makes it a good default for this.
How to do it:
Go to gemini.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
Click the paperclip icon to attach a file.
Upload your document. PDFs work well.
Type your question in plain English. "What does this say about cancellation fees?" or "What are my obligations if I want to end this early?" works just fine.
Read the answer. Gemini will reference the part of the document it pulled from.
Go find that section in the original document and confirm it yourself before you act on it.
Warning: AI tools will sometimes give you a confident answer that isn't actually in the document. Always go back to the original and verify before making any decision that has legal, financial, or contractual weight. Use this to find the section faster, not to replace reading it. We've actually written about this.
One More Thing
Before you go download six apps and sign up for four free trials, one more thing. There is a whole slew of companies dedicated to selling you a stack of AI tools you don't need. Twelve subscriptions, each solving a slightly different version of the same problem, none of them talking to each other, all of them billing you monthly. Most people who try to build an AI workflow give up within a few months, not because AI doesn't work, but because they collected tools instead of actually using them.
The best way to know what kind of AI tools will help your business is to just start. Pick a tool from this list and give it a try. They all work the same way underneath. Using plain language, you can finally tell your computer what you want it to do. And it generally does it.
And here's something I didn't expect. The more I used it, the more I learned. Not because I was studying, but because explaining what I needed forced me to understand it better myself. The more I tried to write better prompts, the more I actually learned about the thing I was asking for help with.
If you try one of these and it clicks, I'd love to hear which one. And if you've already been using AI in your business in a way I didn't cover here, tell me about it. I'm always interested in hearing real world examples.
Joel · joel@freshfromcache.com