A 30-Day SMB AI Rollout That Stays on One Workflow
Pick one workflow. Run four weeks: source text, draft, shadow, limited live. Leave with a weekly cadence — not a second tool login.
“Two workflows in week one is how you get zero workflows in week four. The boring shop that finished one thing is the one that still uses it in November.”
What you'll learn
Most AI rollouts die in week two because week one started three jobs. This lesson is the opposite: one workflow, four weeks, a Friday review that fits in a coffee. You will leave with a dated SOP and a cadence. You will not leave with a second login.
Tools (pick one to support the workflow):
- FAQ Bot Builder if the workflow is “answer the same five questions”
- Prompt Generator + content QA if the workflow is “weekly captions or follow-ups”
- Policy Generator only as a draft mill for the one-page policy
Artifact: 30-day-rollout-sop.md
The one-workflow rule
Until day 31 you may have:
- One customer-facing or office-facing job
- One primary tool
- One named owner
- One backup person
- One Friday review
You may not add a second chatbot, a second model subscription, or “while we’re at it” image generation. While-we’re-at-it is how November finds you with five tabs and the same inbox.
If you cannot name the job in one sentence, you do not have a workflow yet.
Good one-sentence jobs:
- “The site answers hours, area, and booking without inventing a price.”
- “Dana drafts the Friday Facebook caption from the week’s completed jobs; someone else runs the delete pass.”
- “Invoice follow-ups go out Wednesday using a saved prompt and our real balance.”
Bad jobs:
- “Get the company on AI”
- “Content and support and a little bookkeeping”
- “Build agents”
Pick the workflow (day 0)
Use the readiness worksheet. If three or more traps are traps, your workflow is “write the missing SOP,” not “embed a bot.”
Default recommendation if you are undecided: honest FAQ on the site. It is visible, it is bounded, and the no-invent lesson already has the seed format.
Write this at the top of the SOP:
Workflow: ________________________________
Owner: ________________________________
Backup: ________________________________
Customer or office?: ____________________
Done looks like: ________________________
Out of scope until day 31: ______________“Done looks like” must be observable. “Bot is live with 8 approved answers and a refusal row, and we have not had a wrong-hours complaint” is done. “We’re more efficient” is not.
Week 1 — Source text only (days 1–7)
No public launch. No new paid tool if a free one will do.
Monday–Tuesday: Gather the source pile. Tickets, price list, hours, the last good email. Put them in one folder named workflow-source. If a fact is not in the folder, it does not go in a prompt.
Wednesday: Write the eight-line voice card if any text will be public. Write the traffic lights if more than one person will paste into a model.
Thursday: Draft the seed, the prompt pack, or the SOP body from the folder. Use the copy-paste prompts in the matching lesson. Do not invent to fill holes. NEED FACT is a successful Thursday.
Friday review (20 min):
- What facts are still
NEED FACT? - Can the backup person find the folder?
- Did anyone start a second workflow? Kill it.
Copy-paste prompt: week 1 inventory
We are staying on ONE workflow for 30 days.
Workflow in one sentence: [sentence]
Here is what we already have (file names or pasted text):
[list]
Tell me:
1. Which facts are present enough to write an approved answer or prompt?
2. Which facts are missing (NEED FACT)?
3. What should we refuse to automate because it needs a human?
Do not suggest other workflows. Do not suggest software we did not name.Week 2 — Draft in the tool (days 8–14)
Build the thing in the chosen tool. Still not public, or public only to staff.
- FAQ: load the builder, include the refusal row, run the five nasty questions from that lesson.
- Captions / email: generate, then run the QA checklist on every piece. Save the kept prompts in the prompt sheet.
- Policy: cut the generator output to one page. Hold the 20-minute standup.
Friday review:
- Backup person performs the draft path while the owner watches without talking for ten minutes.
- List every invented fact that appeared. Delete the source of the invention (the prompt or the row), not just the output.
- Still one workflow?
Week 3 — Shadow mode (days 15–21)
The workflow runs on real incoming work. A human sends or publishes. The tool does not speak to a stranger unsupervised.
FAQ: staff use the seed to answer. The embed can be on a staging page or a hidden URL.
Captions: draft with the pack, delete-pass, then post as you already do.
Keep a tally:
| Date | Incoming item | Tool used? | Invention caught? | Human still required? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
If the tally shows invention more than twice, you do not go live in week 4. You fix the seed. Live is not a reward for completing a calendar. Live is a reward for a clean tally.
Friday review: read the tally out loud. If the backup person cannot explain a row, the SOP is still in the owner’s head.
Week 4 — Limited live + cadence (days 22–30)
Limited means one channel, one audience, one escape hatch.
- FAQ embed on the real site, with the refusal row first or second
- Captions on the one network you already use, not a new one
- Policy in the shop, printed, not a handbook rewrite
Escape hatch: who turns it off, and how fast. For the FAQ builder, removing the embed is the off switch. Write that in the SOP. A tool without an off switch is not limited live.
Friday of week 4 (the keep/kill meeting):
- Did “done looks like” happen?
- Any customer or staff harm (wrong hours, wrong price, a sent draft with an invented number)?
- Keep, fix-in-place, or kill.
- If keep: write the ongoing Friday cadence (below). If kill: say so without a post-mortem novel. Killing a bad workflow is a successful 30 days.
- Do not start workflow two in this meeting. Put it on a list dated day 31 or later.
The ongoing Friday cadence (artifact)
After day 30, this is the whole meeting. Fifteen minutes. Same agenda every week.
FRIDAY AI CADENCE — one workflow
Date: ________ Owner: ________ Backup: ________
1. What ran this week (count): ______
2. Inventions or wrong facts caught: ______
— rows/prompts we changed:
3. NEED FACT still open:
4. Backup person ran it without the owner? yes / no
5. Kill / keep / fix:
6. Out of scope items that tried to sneak in (park them):If you skip three Fridays, treat the workflow as unowned. Unowned tools drift into invention.
Model names so the SOP does not rot
Date the SOP. If it says “use GPT-4o” or “Claude 3 Opus” or “Midjourney V6,” it is already stale as of August 2026. Write “ChatGPT (GPT-5.6 Terra is enough)” or “Claude Sonnet 5” or do not name a model at all — name the job. Jobs outlive model stickers. Cards: Tools.
Finished artifact
A filled 30-day SOP with:
- One-sentence workflow
- Week-by-week dates
- The Friday agendas
- A keep/kill line at the end of week 4
If the SOP describes three workflows, tear it up and start from the one-sentence box.
When this lesson is done
Day 31 you still have one workflow, a backup person who has run it, and a Friday slot on the calendar. If you have a new vendor instead, you did not take this lesson. You took a shopping trip.