Your AI Business Stack
The AI Lean Builder
The most common mistake new AI builders make is not using too few tools.
It is using too many.
There is something seductive about a new tool. The promise of it. The demo video where everything works perfectly and the founder explains how it is going to change your life.
The feeling of possibility when you sign up for the free trial.
And so the average solo builder trying to use AI in their business ends up with seventeen browser tabs, six subscriptions, three tools that do roughly the same thing, and a workflow that is more complicated than the manual process it was supposed to replace.
This is not a productivity strategy. It is procrastination dressed up as optimisation
The AI Lean Builder operates differently.
The goal is not the most impressive stack. The goal is the leanest stack that covers everything- the minimum set of tools that, connected correctly, runs your entire business without friction, without redundancy, and without a learning curve that never ends.
After working through what actually moves the needle for solo operators, the answer is almost always the same.
Five tools. Five functions. One complete business.
The Five Functions Every Business Needs
Before we name the tools, let us name the functions, because the tools matter less than understanding what each one is for.
Every solo business regardless of niche, needs to do five things reliably:
Think and Create - producing written content, ideas, strategies, copy, scripts, emails, and offers.
Research and Know- understanding your market, your competitors, your clients, and the information relevant to your work.
Automate and Connect- linking your tools together so information flows between them and tasks happens without manual triggers.
Communicate and Sell- managing your email list, your outreach, your follow-ups, and your sales conversations.
Deliver and Support- getting your product, service, or content into your client’s hands and handling what comes after.
Most solo builders either have no tool for one of these functions which creates a bottleneck or they have three tools competing for the same function. No gaps. No overlaps. Everything connected.
The Stack
Here is the core AI Lean Builder stack. These are not the only tools that work but they represent the clearest, most integrated path to a fully functioning solo business in the shortest time.
Tool 1: Claude or ChatGPT- Your Thinking and Creation Layer
Function: Think and Create
This is your primary AI, the one you will use every day, for almost evrything.
Writing first drafts. Brainstorming offers. Developing frameworks. Editing your own work. Building sales copy. Structuring courses. Preparing for clients calls. Generating ideas when you are stuck. Thinking through decisions when you need a sounding board.
The question of which one Claude tends to produce or ChatGPT matters less than people think. Both are exceptional. Claude tends to produce more nuanced, naturally readable long-form writing. ChatGPT tends to be faster for structured outputs and has a broader plugin ecosystem.
Pick one. Learn it deeply. Do not switch back and forth.
The most important skill in your entire AI stack is not knowing which tool exist, it is knowing how to prompt the tool you have chosen. A mediocre prompt produces a mediocre result. A precise, well-structured prompt produces something you can use immediately.
We will dedicate a full issue to prompting in a later month. For now, know this: the quality of your AI output is almost entirely determined by the quality of your output.
Tool 2: Perplexity AI- Your Research Layer
Function: Research and Know
Your primary AI is brilliant at creating. It is less reliable at knowing because its training has a knowledge cutoff, and it will sometimes produce confident-sounding information that is simply wrong.
Perplexity solves this. It is an AI-powered search tool that pulls real-time information from across the web, cites its sources, and synthesizes findings into clear, readable answers.
Use it for: market, research, competitor analysis, finding statistics for your content, understanding what your ideal clients are searching for, staying current on trends in your niche, and verifying anything your primary AI tells you that needs to be accurate.
The combination of a generative AI for creation and a research AI for knowledge covers the full spectrum of intellectual work in a solo business.
Tool 3: Make or Zapier- Your Automation Layer
Function: Automate and Connect
Your tools do not talk to each other by default. Without an automation layer, you are manually copying information between systems, triggering processes by hand, and doing repetitive work that a three-minute setup could eliminate forever.
Make(formally integromat) and Zapier both connect your apps and automate the flows between them. A new subscriber joins your list and your CRM updates automatically.
A client fills in an onboarding form, a welcome email sent, a task is created in your project tool, and a calender invite goes out. A new post is published, it gets shared to three social platforms simultaneously.
This is the layer that individual tools into a system.
Make is more powerful and flexible for complex workflows. Zapier is simpler to set up for straightforward automations. Start with Zapier if you are new to automation. Graduate to Make when your workflows need more sophistication.
Tool 4: Kit(formerly ConvertKits): Your Communication and Sales Layer
Function: Communication and Sell
Your email list is your most valuable business asset. It is the only audience you truly own- no algorithm, no platform, no external decision can take it from you.
Kit is built specifically for creators and solo builders. It handles your list, your broadcast emails, your automated sequences, your lead magnet, your landing pages, and your paid newsletter or product sales all in one place.
The reason Kit over other email platform is simple: it is built around the way a content-lead solo business actually works. Tags, segments, automations, and sequences are intuitive. The subscriber experience is clean. And it connects cleanly with the rest of your stack.
Your email list, nurtured well and grown consistently, will generate more revenue for your solo business than any other single channel. Kit is the tool that manages it.
Tool 5: Notion-Your Delivery and Operations Layer
Function: Deliver and Support
Notion is your business brain. It is where everything lives, your content calender, your client information, your SOPs, your course materials, your meeting notes, your project tracking, and your knowledge base.
For delivery, Notion works as a client portal, a course platform, a resource vault, and a documentation system. Clients get a shared Notion workspace with everything they need. Course students access their materials there. Your own systems and processes are documented and searchable.
Notion’s AI features- built directly into the platform let you summarise notes, generates content, translates documents, and query your own database in your natural language. Your business knowledge becomes something you can talk to.
It is the one tool that, once you have built your systems inside it, makes your business feel genuinely organised for the first time.
How the Stack Connects
Here is how these five tools work together as a single system.
You use Claude to write a newsletter issue.
It goes into Notion where your content calender lives.
Kit sends it to your list. Zapier or Make automatically shares the public post to your social platforms.
New subscribers who come through social go into Kit, where an automated welcome sequence starts.
When a subscriber clicks through to your offer page, they fill in a form that triggers a Make automation updating your Notion CRM, sending a confirmation through Kit, and booking a call if it is a service offer.
Perplexity sits alongside all of this, ready whenever you need to research something quickly or verify a claim before it goes out.
Five tools. One loop. Everything connected.
The Download
Alongside this issue, I have put together a one-page AI Lean Builder Stack Reference Guide.
It lists all five tools, their primary function, the free versus paid options, how they connect, and the first thing to set up in each one when you are starting from scratch.
It is the reference card I wish I had when I started- the one that prevents the seventeen-tabs mistake before it happens.
Paid subscribers can download it directly below.
What This Stack Costs
Transparency matters. Here is the real monthly cost of running this stack at the level a lean solo business needs:
- Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus: $20/month
-Perplexity Pro: $20/month
-Zapier Starter or Make Core: $9-$16/month
-Kit Creator: Free up to 10,000 subscribers, then $25/month
-Notion Plus: $10/month
Total: approximately $75-$90 per month
That is running cost of a complete AI-powered solo business infrastructure. Less than a single hourly rate for a freelancer. Less than a monthly gym membershipin most cities.
The ROI conversation does not need to be had. The numbers make it for you.
A note on what is not in the stack
You will notice there is no dedicated social media tool, no separate SEO platform, no project management software beyond Notion, no CRM that is not just a Notion database.
That is deliberate.
Every tool you add to your stack adds complexity, cost, and a learning curve. Before you add anything beyond these five, the question to ask is: “does my current stack genuinely not cover this-or am I just excited about a new tool?”
Most of the time, the honest answer is the latter.
Build the core stack first. Master it completely. Add only when a genuine app is undeniable and the new tool solves a specific, real problem- not a theoretical future one.
This Week’s Action
Audit your current tool situation honestly.
Write down every tool you are currently paying for or actively using in your business. Then put each one into one of three categories:
“Keep”- it covers one of the five core functions and I use it regularly
“Replace”- it covers a core function but something in the lean stack does it better
“Cut”- it does not cover a core function, I rarely use it, or it duplicates something else
Most people find two or three tools in the Cut category immediately- subscription that made sense when they signed up and have been quietly draining their account ever since.
Cut them. Simplify. Start building the lean stack.
Coming Up in Issue
Next week: How to audit your business for AI leverage in 30 minutes - the exact process for identifying where AI creates the biggest return in “your specific business”, so you know exactly where to start.
See you next week.