Session 2 — Developing Your Business Idea

1 Session Overview

This session focused on developing your business idea — whether you have one already or are still figuring it out. You covered the business fundamentals that AI can't shortcut for you, then used that grounding to build AI agents that will help you clarify your idea, brand, and audience step by step.

Part of the session	What you covered
Business Foundations	Business types (service, SaaS, physical), B2B vs B2C, knowing your audience, why brand is more important than ever, and the power of genuine relationships
Building the Agents	Live demo of the Prompt Writer agent using the Prompting 101 guide. Introduction and logic behind all four agents: Prompt Writer, Business Mentor, Brand Director, Customer Avatar
Your Homework	Four specific tasks before Session 3: answer the four business questions, refine your agents, create your customer profile, and produce initial brand assets

What you're building towards

💡

Clear Business Idea

A precise answer to what you do and who you serve

🎨

A Brand That Connects

More than a logo — purpose, values, emotional connection

🚀

A Working MVP

Something real you can put in front of people

2 Key Takeaways

Know your business type before you build anything. Service, SaaS, and physical product businesses go to market very differently — and so do B2B and B2C.
Start by looking in the mirror. The best business ideas usually come from a problem you've experienced yourself. That's exactly where the gym tracker app came from.
Brand is not your logo. It's your purpose, your values, the emotional connection you build, and how consistent you look across every platform people see you on.
People buy people, then they buy a feeling. Safe, confident, relieved, excited. Know what feeling your business creates and build everything around that.
If you market to everyone, you market to no one. The more specifically you speak to your ideal customer, the more they feel you're talking directly to them.
Relationships beat shortcuts every time. Stay in touch, be genuine, offer value first. The long game is the one that wins — as the Andy story shows.
Brand is now your real competitive advantage. It's never been cheaper to build software. Anyone can copy a product — they cannot copy you.
Don't write your own prompts. Let AI do it. The Prompt Writer agent handles this and powers every other agent you build after it.

💬 Mat's Andy story — the long game in action

Mat stayed in touch with a contact for 2–3 years. No reply most of the time. When Mat finally launched his business, that contact called two days later and became his first client. Genuine persistence + real care = the relationship that started everything.

3 Business Foundations: Know Before You Build

Before you ask AI to help you build anything, you need at least a rough answer to these four questions. The agents you build will help you refine them — but you need something to start from.

The Four Questions

Question	What you're working out	Example
What do you do?	What is the actual product or service? Be specific.	"A gym tracking app that logs workouts from a voice note" — not just "a fitness app"
Who do you serve?	Who is the specific person who needs this?	Gym-goers who train alone and hate carrying a notepad
What's the value?	What do you save them — time, money, stress? Put a number on it.	2 hrs/week saved × £50/hr = £100 back per week
What's the cost?	Cost to deliver, price to charge, sustainable profit?	API credits + your time = delivery cost; what's the margin?

Business Types — Know Which One You Are

Type	Example	Key consideration
Service business	The AI Guys — training & builds	Relationships are everything; harder to scale but high trust
Digital product (SaaS)	Gym tracker app	Scalable; brand builds the competitive moat
Physical product	Clothing, goods	Margins, fulfilment, and competition are the challenges
B2B	Selling to other businesses	Longer sales cycle; higher deal value; relationships critical
B2C	Selling direct to consumers	Partnerships can dramatically accelerate reach

A Brand Isn't a Logo

Your brand is your purpose, your values, and the emotional experience people have when they encounter you. Consistency across platforms builds trust — especially for digital businesses where someone you've never met is deciding whether to trust you.

🎯

Purpose & Values

Why does your business exist beyond making money?

👁

Vision & Mission

Where are you going, and how are you getting there?

💬

Tone of Voice

How do you speak? Confident? Warm? Direct? Technical?

❤️

Emotional Connection

What do people feel when they encounter your brand?

The Niche Rule

The riches are in the niches. If you speak to everyone, no one feels spoken to. The more precisely you define your ideal customer — age, situation, specific problem — the more effective every piece of marketing you produce will be.

4 The Four Agents You're Building

These agents work together. Build them in order — the Prompt Writer powers everything else. Each gets better as you feed it more context about your business.

1

Prompt Writer

Uses your Prompting 101 guide to write all your prompts for you. Never write a prompt from scratch again.

Build this first

2

Business Mentor

Clarifies your idea, challenges your assumptions, identifies gaps. Can draw on books you admire (e.g. Jim Collins) as its knowledge base.

Use Prompt Writer to set it up

3

Brand Director

Defines your why, vision, mission, values, and tone of voice. Will ask about brands you love and hate, and who your ideal customer is.

Feed it your Mentor outputs

4

Customer Avatar

Simulates your ideal customer. Run ideas, messaging, and campaigns past it to see how they'd land before you go to market.

Define using Brand Director

Where to build them — it's the same logic everywhere

Platform	What to use
Claude	Projects (Mat's recommendation for best results)
ChatGPT	Custom GPTs
Gemini	Gems
Microsoft Copilot	Copilot Agents (via studio.microsoft.com)
Perplexity	Pages

💡 Why agents beat single chats

When you hit your context window, all the work you've built up in a conversation is gone. An agent remembers its instructions every single time. Build it once — use it forever.

🔁 Mat's process for training an agent

Use Claude to write the prompt → test it → if the output isn't right, bring it back to Claude and say "I don't like this because..." → ask Claude to revise the prompt → return to your agent with the new prompt → repeat until it gives you what you want.

5 Your Homework This Week

Complete all four of these before Session 3. Come back ready to share what you built — Mat wants to see your brand and your agents in action.

Answer the four questions. Write down your answers to: what do you do, who do you serve, what's the value, what's the cost? Rough answers you can refine are better than perfect answers you haven't written yet.
Build your Prompt Writer agent. Open Claude Projects (or your preferred platform). Use the Prompting 101 guide as the knowledge base. Ask Claude to write the agent's system prompt for you using the one-shot template. Test before saving.
Use the Prompt Writer to build your Business Mentor and Brand Director. Ask it to write both agents' prompts. Run your business idea past both — answer their questions honestly. See what they push back on.
Create your customer profile and initial brand assets. Use your Brand Director to define why, values, tone, and ideal customer. Then generate some logo concepts and colour options using an image AI (Midjourney, Ideogram, or similar).

📌 Session 3 preview

Validating Ideas and Defining Your Unique Value Proposition. Bring your brand foundations — we're testing them. All resources at aru.module.aiguys.app — code: AIGUYS-2026-LEARN

6 Ready-to-Use Prompts

Use these as starting points. Replace anything in [brackets] with your own details.

Start your Business Mentor

Try this prompt ↓

# Role You are an experienced business mentor. You draw on the principles of Jim Collins (Good to Great, Great by Choice) and push founders to think clearly about their idea, audience, and value. # Task Help me clarify and strengthen my business idea. Ask me questions one at a time to understand what I do, who I serve, what value I provide, and what makes me different. # Specifics Challenge my assumptions. If something sounds vague, say so. Don't let me off the hook. Always ask follow-up questions. # Context My business idea: [describe your idea here — even if rough]

Start your Brand Director

Try this prompt ↓

# Role You are an expert brand strategist. You help founders define the why, vision, mission, values, and tone of voice behind their brand. # Task Ask me about brands I love and hate, and why. Ask about my ideal customer and what feeling I want them to have. Then help me define my core brand elements: why, vision, mission, values, tone of voice. # Notes Remind me: brand is not a logo. It is what people feel when they encounter me. Push me to describe the emotional experience of my brand, not just the aesthetics.

Ask AI to find the best business email option for you

Try this prompt ↓

What is the most cost-effective business email platform so that I can use my own web address for my email address? I want to compare free and paid options and understand the trade-offs.

Build your Prompt Writer agent (ask Claude to write the system prompt)

Try this prompt ↓

I am building an AI agent that will write all of my prompts for me. I want you to write the system prompt for this agent. The agent should have access to my Prompting 101 guide [upload your guide here] and choose the best prompting technique for whatever I am asking. If the agent does not have enough information to write a great prompt — for example if I have not told it enough about my context or goal — it should ask me clarifying questions before producing the prompt. Please review the one-shot prompt template below and write me the system prompt for this agent. [Paste your one-shot template here from the Prompting 101 guide]

7 AI Builder Tools — Quick Reference

A snapshot of platforms mentioned in the session.

Tool	Best for	Cost	Notes
Bolt.new	Website & app building	Free tier	Good all-rounder; free tier is generous; ~$20/mo paid
Lovable	Website design	Free tier	Very strong on visual design
Google AI Studio	Lowest-cost builds	Free	Slightly more technical to deploy; save to GitHub then Netlify
Netlify	Hosting & deployment	Free for basics	Deploy from GitHub; one free site at no charge
Replit	App building & hosting	Higher cost	Mat's personal favourite; most capable; worth it for serious builds
Gamma	Quick landing pages	Free	Simple and fast; use a custom domain instead of the Gamma URL
Zoho Mail	Business email	Free (1 domain)	Solid free option for one domain
Google Workspace	Business email	~£6–7/mo	Best option if budget allows

💡 AI model recommendation from Mat

For building agents and getting the best results from complex prompts — Claude. For quick drafts and general tasks — GPT-4o. Don't pay for multiple subscriptions when you're starting out. Pick one and learn it well.

8 Next Steps & Resources

Resource	Details
Course portal	aru.module.aiguys.app — all session materials, transcripts, and an AI you can ask questions to. Code: AIGUYS-2026-LEARN
Prompting 101 guide	Available on Canvas and in the portal. Your reference for all six prompting techniques and the one-shot template.
Session 3	Validating Ideas and Defining Your Unique Value Proposition. Bring your brand foundations — we'll be testing them.
Questions?	Email the team — one-to-one support may be available; contact Omkar or Catherine for details.
The AI Guys	theaiguys.co.uk — AI training, automation builds, and tools for your business