Last month, 100+ people drove through a storm to spend a Thursday talking about AI at the Hawaiʻi Island AI Summit.
The most common question wasn't "What model should I use?" or "Is AI going to replace my team?"
It was simpler:
"Where do I even start?"
I've had that conversation maybe fifty times this year.
And here's what I've noticed:
The answer is almost never about AI. It's about the business.
Specifically — the processes, the knowledge, the "how we do things here" that lives inside one or two people's heads... and nowhere else.
That's the real risk.
Your team's best thinking disappears a little at a time. Someone leaves. Someone gets too busy to train the new person.
The way things get done just... drifts.
Here's what's changed:
You can now teach AI how your business works.
Not in some complicated, technical way. In a way that looks a lot like writing a short document.
People in the AI world call these "skills."
But before they become technical, they're just this:
Writing down how you do something well so it can be repeated.
Your brand voice. Your onboarding steps. The way you format a proposal. The checklist your best front desk person runs every shift.
When it's written down, three things happen: AI follows it consistently. New hires can learn from it. That knowledge stays and is consistent.
I've been building these for my own work.
One that helps write this newsletter (yes, really). Several that power my client work — turning messy discovery calls into scored opportunities, roadmaps, and blueprints.
They're just text files.
But they changed how I work. Writing them down forced me to get clear on what I was actually doing and why — and then I never had to re-explain it again.
And here's the part most people miss:
This is actually easier for small businesses.
Because you're closer to the work.
- The hotel GM who knows exactly how shift handoffs should run? That's a skill.
- The nonprofit director who formats grant reports the same way every quarter? That's a skill.
- The consultant who scopes projects a certain way? That's a skill.
The question isn't whether AI matters to your business.
It's whether the way your business works is written down anywhere — or just living in someone's head, evaporating a little more each day.
Quick Win: Build Your First Skill in 15 Minutes#
Here's what this actually looks like.
Below is a simple brand voice "skill" for a fictional local coffee farm:
That's it. This is how skills start.
Try This This Week#
Take 15 minutes and write this for your business: Who we are. How we sound. What we never say.
Write it like you're explaining it to a smart new employee.
Then test it.
Open Claude or ChatGPT and paste this:
This is our brand voice guide. Follow it exactly in everything you write.
[Paste your document here]
Now rewrite this message to match our voice: [Paste a real email or message]
Compare the result to what you would have written.
If it feels close — you're on the right track. If it feels off — refine the document. That's the work.
In more advanced setups, this gets saved once and reused automatically — so you're not copying and pasting every time. If you have Claude Pro ($20/month), you can save it as a permanent "skill" that loads on its own whenever you need it. But the free version of Claude or ChatGPT works fine too — just paste it at the start of each conversation.
Don't worry about the advanced stuff yet.
The important step is this one: writing down how your business actually works.
If you try this and want help turning it into something reusable, just reply and let me know what you're working on.
What's Coming Next#
Next issue, I want to show you what happens when you go beyond one skill — when you start chaining them together. One request in, finished deliverable out. That's where this gets really interesting.
That's where this gets really interesting. But it starts with what you did today.
Want help figuring out which processes at your business are worth capturing first? That's exactly what ClearStart is designed to do.
Try it free → ClearStart
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— Michelle Kealani Solutions · Hawaiʻi Island kealanisolutions.com · LinkedIn
