LeanToAI
@leantoai.bsky.social
Practical AI for small business. We find the tasks AI can take over, set up the tools, and train your team. Run by Keith Myers, 25+ years in IT.
www.leantoai.com
www.leantoai.com
The lawyer in Mata v. Avianca thought he had checked. He asked ChatGPT if Varghese v. China Southern Airlines was real. It said yes, and that it could be found on Westlaw and LexisNexis. It could not. Nor could five others in his brief. A federal judge sanctioned him in June 2023.
October 5, 2026 at 4:31 PM
The lawyer in Mata v. Avianca thought he had checked. He asked ChatGPT if Varghese v. China Southern Airlines was real. It said yes, and that it could be found on Westlaw and LexisNexis. It could not. Nor could five others in his brief. A federal judge sanctioned him in June 2023.
Claude on a Free, Pro or Max plan has one training switch: Settings, Privacy, "Help improve our AI models". Turning it off covers new chats only. Chats already in a training run that has started stay in that run. Flagged chats can still train its safety models.
October 2, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Claude on a Free, Pro or Max plan has one training switch: Settings, Privacy, "Help improve our AI models". Turning it off covers new chats only. Chats already in a training run that has started stay in that run. Flagged chats can still train its safety models.
Before any rollout I ask who already uses AI on their own time, unpaid, for their own work. If the answer is nobody, training will not fix it. If it is two people, those two write the first set of instructions and the rest of the team learns from them, not from me.
October 1, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Before any rollout I ask who already uses AI on their own time, unpaid, for their own work. If the answer is nobody, training will not fix it. If it is two people, those two write the first set of instructions and the rest of the team learns from them, not from me.
If your team shares a custom GPT, the replacement plugin does not inherit the sharing. Migrated plugins start private and your existing users get no access. Instructions and knowledge files come across; Actions may need rebuilding. Custom GPTs stop working 11 December.
September 30, 2026 at 4:31 PM
If your team shares a custom GPT, the replacement plugin does not inherit the sharing. Migrated plugins start private and your existing users get no access. Instructions and knowledge files come across; Actions may need rebuilding. Custom GPTs stop working 11 December.
Every chat has a limit on how much text the model can hold at once. Run one long enough and the start falls off. The rule you set in the first message is no longer in front of it. Nothing tells you. When answers stop matching your instructions, open a new chat and restate them.
September 29, 2026 at 4:31 PM
Every chat has a limit on how much text the model can hold at once. Run one long enough and the start falls off. The rule you set in the first message is no longer in front of it. Nothing tells you. When answers stop matching your instructions, open a new chat and restate them.
"Write a reply about the delay" gets you a letter to nobody in particular. Most prompts name the task and leave the reader out. Say who reads it: a tenant who is angry and wants a date, a bookkeeper matching an invoice number. Same facts, different letter.
September 28, 2026 at 4:31 PM
"Write a reply about the delay" gets you a letter to nobody in particular. Most prompts name the task and leave the reader out. Say who reads it: a tenant who is angry and wants a date, a bookkeeper matching an invoice number. Same facts, different letter.
Ask a chatbot the same question twice and the answers differ. Fine for a draft email. Not fine for your refund rule, where two people asking get two different policies. Anything that has to come out the same every time needs a written source the tool quotes back to you.
September 25, 2026 at 4:41 PM
Ask a chatbot the same question twice and the answers differ. Fine for a draft email. Not fine for your refund rule, where two people asking get two different policies. Anything that has to come out the same every time needs a written source the tool quotes back to you.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is now called Microsoft Copilot. That is also the name of the free consumer app. On a work account, prompts and Graph data are not used to train the models. On a personal account it is one switch: Settings, Privacy, Training on conversation activity.
September 24, 2026 at 4:31 PM
Microsoft 365 Copilot is now called Microsoft Copilot. That is also the name of the free consumer app. On a work account, prompts and Graph data are not used to train the models. On a personal account it is one switch: Settings, Privacy, Training on conversation activity.
Most of what people want AI to fix in their inbox is a form problem. One box marked Details, and every request arrives in a different shape. No tool sorts what was never captured. Add the four fields you always end up calling people back for, then point automation at it.
September 23, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Most of what people want AI to fix in their inbox is a form problem. One box marked Details, and every request arrives in a different shape. No tool sorts what was never captured. Add the four fields you always end up calling people back for, then point automation at it.
One email, never clicked, was enough to make Microsoft 365 Copilot leak internal files to an outside server. Aim Security called it EchoLeak. Microsoft patched it in 2025. An assistant that reads your inbox is also reading instructions from whoever mails you.
September 22, 2026 at 4:31 PM
One email, never clicked, was enough to make Microsoft 365 Copilot leak internal files to an outside server. Aim Security called it EchoLeak. Microsoft patched it in 2025. An assistant that reads your inbox is also reading instructions from whoever mails you.
A tool that lets you chat with your documents is not reading them all. It searches for passages that look relevant, then writes from the few it found. A file that was never indexed, or a page the search missed, becomes a confident guess. Ask it to quote the passage it used.
September 21, 2026 at 4:30 PM
A tool that lets you chat with your documents is not reading them all. It searches for passages that look relevant, then writes from the few it found. A file that was never indexed, or a page the search missed, becomes a confident guess. Ask it to quote the passage it used.
I installed an LLM on a Raspberry Pi 4 this week with only 2GB of RAM. First model was 3 tokens/s Qwen3-0.6B got just over 20/second. Not really usable for anything beyond chat but a fun little experiment
September 19, 2026 at 11:17 PM
I installed an LLM on a Raspberry Pi 4 this week with only 2GB of RAM. First model was 3 tokens/s Qwen3-0.6B got just over 20/second. Not really usable for anything beyond chat but a fun little experiment
Give the assistant the draft you already wrote and dislike, then say what is wrong with it. Too long. Too apologetic. The repair date is buried in paragraph three. It fixes those and keeps your voice, which is the part a draft written from nothing never had.
September 18, 2026 at 4:31 PM
Give the assistant the draft you already wrote and dislike, then say what is wrong with it. Too long. Too apologetic. The repair date is buried in paragraph three. It fixes those and keeps your voice, which is the part a draft written from nothing never had.
Gemini on a personal Google account keeps every chat for 18 months by default. The switch is Keep Activity, under Gemini Apps Activity at myactivity.google.com. Turned off, your chats stop training Google's models. Human reviewers can still read a sample of them.
September 17, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Gemini on a personal Google account keeps every chat for 18 months by default. The switch is Keep Activity, under Gemini Apps Activity at myactivity.google.com. Turned off, your chats stop training Google's models. Human reviewers can still read a sample of them.
The first job I give AI in any business is one the owner can check by eye in ten seconds. Renaming scanned invoices by vendor and date. Sorting a shared inbox into four folders. A month of getting those right earns it the jobs nobody can check at a glance.
September 16, 2026 at 4:30 PM
The first job I give AI in any business is one the owner can check by eye in ten seconds. Renaming scanned invoices by vendor and date. Sorting a shared inbox into four folders. A month of getting those right earns it the jobs nobody can check at a glance.
Paste a 40 row expense table into a chatbot and ask for the total. The number comes back plausible and often wrong. These models predict text; they do not add. Ask for the formula instead and let the sheet do the arithmetic. A formula you can read. A total you have to trust.
September 15, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Paste a 40 row expense table into a chatbot and ask for the total. The number comes back plausible and often wrong. These models predict text; they do not add. Ask for the formula instead and let the sheet do the arithmetic. A formula you can read. A total you have to trust.
ChatGPT is the product. GPT is the model underneath. Copilot, Gemini and Claude are the same: one name on the app, another on the model. Whether your chats are kept, reviewed or used for training is decided by the product and the plan you bought, never by the model name.
September 14, 2026 at 4:30 PM
ChatGPT is the product. GPT is the model underneath. Copilot, Gemini and Claude are the same: one name on the app, another on the model. Whether your chats are kept, reviewed or used for training is decided by the product and the plan you bought, never by the model name.
Before asking an assistant for a draft, ask it one thing first: what do you need from me before you start. Then answer the list. The questions it asks are the ones a new hire would ask on day one, and the draft comes back built on your answers instead of its guesses.
September 11, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Before asking an assistant for a draft, ask it one thing first: what do you need from me before you start. Then answer the list. The questions it asks are the ones a new hire would ask on day one, and the draft comes back built on your answers instead of its guesses.
If your team uses ChatGPT on personal accounts, open Settings, then Data controls, and look at "Improve the model for everyone". It is on by default on Free, Plus and Pro. Business and Enterprise plans have it off and cannot turn it on. That one switch is most of the difference between the tiers.
September 10, 2026 at 9:32 PM
If your team uses ChatGPT on personal accounts, open Settings, then Data controls, and look at "Improve the model for everyone". It is on by default on Free, Plus and Pro. Business and Enterprise plans have it off and cannot turn it on. That one switch is most of the difference between the tiers.
Copilot and ChatGPT both run about $30 per user per month, and Copilot needs a Microsoft 365 license under it. In a 20 person company, five to ten people need a paid seat, not everyone. www.leantoai.com/articles/microsoft-copilot-or-chatgpt-small-business.html
Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT for a small business: which one, and when neither
Copilot suits work already in Microsoft 365; ChatGPT suits open ended drafting and long documents. Often neither seat is worth buying yet.
www.leantoai.com
September 10, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Copilot and ChatGPT both run about $30 per user per month, and Copilot needs a Microsoft 365 license under it. In a 20 person company, five to ten people need a paid seat, not everyone. www.leantoai.com/articles/microsoft-copilot-or-chatgpt-small-business.html
Point an AI receptionist at the calls you miss after hours. It takes the name, number and reason, texts the caller back, and drops a note in your inbox. Roughly $50 to $100 a month. Give it a fixed script and no ability to quote prices.
September 9, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Point an AI receptionist at the calls you miss after hours. It takes the name, number and reason, texts the caller back, and drops a note in your inbox. Roughly $50 to $100 a month. Give it a fixed script and no ability to quote prices.
Start AI in a property office with maintenance triage: sort each request by trade, flag water, gas, heat and lock failures for a person. Two or three seats run about $75 a month. Never let it close a ticket. www.leantoai.com/articles/ai-for-property-managers.html
AI for property managers: tenant emails, maintenance triage, lease summaries
Where AI actually helps a small property management office, what it costs per month, and the decisions to keep away from it.
www.leantoai.com
September 8, 2026 at 4:31 PM
Start AI in a property office with maintenance triage: sort each request by trade, flag water, gas, heat and lock failures for a person. Two or three seats run about $75 a month. Never let it close a ticket. www.leantoai.com/articles/ai-for-property-managers.html
A contractor spends 30 to 45 minutes writing a quote by hand. An assistant that turns a voice memo into a written estimate takes two minutes, at $20 to $30 a month. It uses your prices, never sets them. www.leantoai.com/articles/ai-for-contractors-and-trades.html
AI for contractors and trades: the three jobs worth automating first
Quotes from voice memos, follow-ups on unsigned quotes, and receipt filing, for under $100 a month.
www.leantoai.com
September 7, 2026 at 4:30 PM
A contractor spends 30 to 45 minutes writing a quote by hand. An assistant that turns a voice memo into a written estimate takes two minutes, at $20 to $30 a month. It uses your prices, never sets them. www.leantoai.com/articles/ai-for-contractors-and-trades.html
A 15 person company running AI properly spends about $300 to $450 a month: assistant seats, meeting notes, document search, one automation tool. At $40 an hour loaded cost, that has to save ten hours a month to break even. www.leantoai.com/articles/what-ai-actually-costs-a-small-business.html
What AI actually costs a small business per month
Real monthly numbers for a 15 person company, plus the setup and training time nobody budgets for.
www.leantoai.com
September 4, 2026 at 4:30 PM
A 15 person company running AI properly spends about $300 to $450 a month: assistant seats, meeting notes, document search, one automation tool. At $40 an hour loaded cost, that has to save ten hours a month to break even. www.leantoai.com/articles/what-ai-actually-costs-a-small-business.html
Add AI draft replies to your support inbox. It writes the first reply from past tickets; staff edit and send. About $20 to $60 per agent monthly. Keep auto-send off; a wrong refund answer goes out in your name. www.leantoai.com/articles/what-ai-can-actually-do-for-a-small-business.html
What AI can actually do for a small business
Practical tasks AI handles well in a small business, what they cost, and where to keep a human in the loop.
www.leantoai.com
September 3, 2026 at 4:36 PM
Add AI draft replies to your support inbox. It writes the first reply from past tickets; staff edit and send. About $20 to $60 per agent monthly. Keep auto-send off; a wrong refund answer goes out in your name. www.leantoai.com/articles/what-ai-can-actually-do-for-a-small-business.html