Five Prompts for People Who Run a Business

The overdue invoice you've been meaning to chase for three weeks. The price increase you've delayed telling anyone about. The contract sitting in your inbox that you're going to skim and sign.

Every business has the same short list of things that get pushed to Friday, then next Friday.

Below are five blocks of text that handle five of them. Copy them somewhere you'll find them again — a note on your phone, a doc you can search. When one of these comes up, you paste it in and answer a few questions.

They work in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever you already have open. Free versions included.

1. The overdue invoice

You've done the work. They haven't paid. You've been putting this off because you don't want to sound like a collections agency.

Why this beats writing it yourself: you're not annoyed at it. Left alone you'll write the version you actually want to send, then soften it, then second-guess it. This gets you a reasonable draft in one pass.

Copy everything below this line

Help me write a message chasing an unpaid invoice.

Ask me these one at a time before you write anything:
- Who is the customer and what's our relationship like
- How overdue is it, and have I chased before
- What was the work and the amount
- Do I want to keep working with them after this
- Anything going on that might explain the delay

Then write the message. Match how firm it should be to what
I told you about the relationship and how late it is. Keep it
short. No guilt, no legal threats, no apologising for asking
to be paid for work I did.

Then ask if I want it firmer, softer, or shorter.

2. The price increase

The one nobody wants to send. Usually delayed until it's awkward, then sent badly.

The trap this avoids: over-explaining. The instinct is to justify at length, which reads as guilt and invites negotiation. State the number and the date and stop.

Copy everything below this line

Help me tell an existing customer I'm raising my prices.

Ask me one at a time:
- How long have they been a customer and how much do they
  spend with me
- What's the current price and what's the new price
- Why am I raising it, honestly, even if the honest reason
  is just that my costs went up
- When does it take effect
- How badly do I want to keep them

Then write it. Be direct about the number and the date. Don't
over-explain or over-apologise. Don't invent reasons I didn't
give you. If there's something I could reasonably offer to
soften it, suggest it separately rather than putting it in
the message.

3. The contract you're about to skim and sign

You've been sent an agreement. It's twenty pages. Be honest about what was going to happen next.

What this is and isn't. It's not legal advice and it doesn't replace a lawyer. What it does is turn twenty pages into five specific questions, so you're paying for twenty minutes of a lawyer's time instead of two hours of them reading it cold. That's the real saving. (Same boundary we drew in what AI is actually bad at: use it where you can spot a mistake, not where you can't.)

Be careful what you paste. A signed agreement has your counterparty's name, your pricing, and your terms in it. Free AI tools process that on their servers under their terms. For a standard supplier agreement most owners will accept that. For a major client contract, anything under an NDA, or anything with personal data in it — don't put it in a free chat window. That's a real limit, not a disclaimer.

Copy everything below this line

I'm going to paste a contract. I'm not a lawyer and I want to
understand what I'm looking at before I talk to one.

Give me:
- A plain summary of what this agreement actually commits me to
- Every date, deadline, and renewal term, in a list
- Anything about payment, penalties, or who's liable if
  something goes wrong
- Anything unusual or one-sided compared to a standard
  agreement of this type
- The five things I should specifically ask a lawyer about

Do not tell me whether to sign it. Flag anything you're
uncertain about rather than guessing.

4. Rough notes into a quote you'd actually send

You looked at the job. You've got four lines of shorthand. Turning that into something presentable takes forty minutes you don't have.

The part that matters: exclusions. Most disputes come from something the customer assumed was included. Being made to answer that question up front is worth more than the time saved writing.

Copy everything below this line

I'm going to give you rough notes from a job I looked at.
Turn them into a quote I can send.

First ask me:
- Who's it for and what do they already know
- How do my quotes normally look — formal or plain
- What am I including and what am I explicitly not including
- What's the price and how do I want it broken down
- Any timing or conditions they need to know about

Then write it. Clear enough that a customer with no
knowledge of this work understands what they're buying and
what they aren't. Be specific about exclusions. Don't add
anything I didn't tell you.

Then ask if I want it more detailed or more brief.

5. Talking instead of typing

This one's different, and it's the one I'd use first.

You don't type anything. Paste the prompt, then hit the microphone button and talk. Every one of these tools has voice input built in. Most people have never pressed it.

Where this earns its place: walking out of a site visit, right after a customer call, notes from a meeting, or anything you've been meaning to write down for three weeks. Talking runs about 150 words a minute. Typing runs about 40.

Copy everything below this line

I'm going to talk through some rough notes. It will be
messy, out of order, and I'll repeat myself.

Turn it into a clean written document. Keep everything I
actually said. Organise it sensibly. Fix the rambling but
don't invent anything or add detail I didn't give you.

At the end, list anything that sounded unfinished or
unclear so I can fill it in.

Ask me what kind of document this should be before you start.

How to actually keep these

Don't bookmark this page. You won't come back to it.

Paste all five into a note on your phone, or one document you can search. When you need one, you copy it, paste it in, and answer the questions.

The setup happens once. The benefit repeats. Prompts you have to go find again are prompts you stop using by the second week.

If you want a deeper cut on one process — not just a draft, but a map of what's broken and the one fix worth making first — try the business process audit prompt next.

— Aristotle Taylor, CEO & Co-Founder, Levron Labs

What to do with this

Pick the one item on your Friday list that's been there longest. Paste the matching prompt, answer the questions, and send or save the result before you close the tab.

If the real bottleneck is that these tasks keep landing on your desk in the first place, start with a free ops assessment — we'll map where follow-up, quoting, and admin work are leaking hours and what a system could own instead of you.