Set Up Your Assistant the Right Way

Set Up Your AI Assistant The Right Way

Most people meet AI and start every single chat from zero. "I run a plumbing business in Edmonton, we serve the north end, our after-hours fee is..." — retyped, again, for the hundredth time. It's like training a new hire every morning and firing them at lunch. No wonder the answers feel generic. You've never actually told the thing who you are.

There's a fix that takes ten minutes once and pays off on every reply after: give your assistant a standing brief about your business.

The One-Time Brief That Changes Everything

Nearly every serious AI tool has a spot for background instructions — a profile, custom instructions, a "memory," a saved system prompt. Whatever it's called, it's the same idea: a permanent note the AI reads before answering anything. Fill it in once and it stops writing like a stranger.

What goes in it? The handful of things you're sick of re-explaining. Your trade and your town. The voice you want — blunt and short, or warm and chatty. And your hard rules, the lines that must never be crossed in a customer reply.

Picture Dave, an Edmonton plumber. He bakes two rules straight into his profile: after-hours calls are a flat $150, and he only serves north Edmonton. Now no draft ever quietly promises a job across the river or forgets to mention the fee. The AI stops making the exact mistakes that used to cost him. He didn't get a smarter tool — he gave the one he had the context it was missing.

Write It Like You'd Brief A New Hire

Think about what a sharp new employee would need to not embarrass you on day one. Who you serve, what you charge, how you talk, and the "never do this" list. You don't need paragraphs — a tight set of plain-English lines does more than a polished essay. Specific beats fancy every time.

And keep it honest and current. If your rates or your service area change, update the brief, or it'll confidently repeat last year's numbers. The assistant only knows what you told it, so stale instructions produce stale answers.

What The Brief Can't Do

A standing brief makes AI sound like you and respect your rules — it does not make it right about live facts. It'll happily state a price or a permit rule that fits your voice perfectly and is still wrong. So the brief handles tone and boundaries; you still verify anything factual before it reaches a customer. That division of labour is the whole game: let AI own the wrapper, you own the truth.

Set up this way, AI stops being a clever stranger you re-introduce yourself to every morning and starts being an assistant that already knows the shop.

Inside the lesson we give you the exact fill-in-the-blanks brief — the 4 to 5 lines worth saving — plus copy-paste prompts and practice with Alta, the AI coach, so your setup is done in one sitting. Start free and try it on your own business.