The AI Executive · a mini-MBA in AI
The work that eats your week is the same work every week.
You run a business. The repetitive part of it — the invoices, the inbox, the same answer typed for the ninth time — is the part a model is genuinely good at. This is the sequence that hands it over, and it is the one path in the school where you never open a terminal.
Your week, as a ledger
Cost the repetition before you buy anything
Tick what you or your staff actually do every week and put real hours against it. Everything below that line is arithmetic — no forecast, no case study, no promise. The last column is the class on this path that addresses that particular chore.
Hours per week, your figures
| Operation | Hrs / wk | Addressed by |
|---|---|---|
| Automate Your Email operate a no code automation that calls a model | ||
| Automate Your Email produce a reusable system prompt | ||
| Automate Your Email parameterise an agent persona | ||
| Automate Your Email transform a transcript into a structured record | ||
| Context Engineering design a recursive summariser for oversized documents | ||
| Custom GPTs design a packaged assistant over your documents |
48 weeks assumes four off. Change the hours, not the weeks.
Arithmetic, not a forecast
That share is your estimate, not our promise. Nobody here has seen your invoices. Set it low, then argue with yourself.
Which class is on the hook
The path is not free of time either. It costs an estimated 166 hours — 58.6 hours of video, 381 exercises charged at a quarter hour each, and two live hours per class. At the recovery you set, that is 61 weeks of recovered time before you are square, and yours after that.
In money it is $250 suggested — about 6.2 hours of your own time at the rate you just entered.
The deliberate omission
There is no code on this path, and that was a decision
Agent Engineering used to sit in this sequence. It came out — not because it is weak, but because it wants Python, a terminal and git, and every other step here is a browser and an account. A path that is no-code for five steps and then quietly is not is a path people abandon at step three.
A programming language
Nothing on this path is written in one. The automation step is a builder; the assistant step is a form and a set of uploaded documents.
A repository
No git, no branches, no pull requests. Your work lives in the tool that runs it, which is also where you edit it when it goes wrong.
One honest exception
Step one includes running an open model on your own machine. That is an installer and a download rather than a codebase — but it is the closest this path comes to infrastructure, and you should know that going in.
The sequence
Six classes, in this order
Costing before building, building before packaging, packaging before scale, and then the two that stop somebody taking it all off you. The order is curated; each step stands on the one before it. It tops out at systematic complexity (order 12) — the level at which you are designing the system rather than following one.
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01Syllabus
Control AI Spending
- run an open model locally
- segment text into tokens and cost it
What you get: 2 recordings, 3.1 hours, 12 exercises and a syllabus. There is no workbook app for this one. It is here first because everything after it costs money per token, and you should be able to price a job before you automate it.
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02Reference
Automate Your Email: No Code AI Automation
- operate a no code automation that calls a model
- parameterise an agent persona
- produce a reusable system prompt
- transform a transcript into a structured record
The workhorse. 10.8 recorded hours and 34 exercises — this is the class that takes the invoicing, the triage, the scheduling and the data entry off your week, and the one most of the calculator above points at.
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03No app yet
Custom GPTs
- operate a hosted assistant over uploaded documents
- design a packaged assistant over your documents
- design an interaction protocol for responsible use
- parameterise a prompt template
- produce a rubric a model can apply
- verify a rubric against independent graders
Be warned: this class carries more capabilities than any other on the path (6), but it has no workbook and no app — 7 recordings and 9.0 hours, 6 exercises, and the live session. It is not on the calendar right now, so what you buy today is the recordings and the seat when it next runs.
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04Guided app
Context Engineering
- segment text into tokens and cost it
- configure inference hyperparameters
- design a recursive summariser for oversized documents
The heavy one. 35.7 of the path's 58.6 recorded hours and 329 of its 381 exercises are here, plus the one fully guided app on the path. Budget for it: it is roughly 120 of the path's 166 estimated hours on its own.
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05Reference
Scam and Fraud Home Defense
- operate a callback rule against incoming contact
- classify an incoming contact as genuine or pretext
No recorded video at all. What you get is the live session and the Six Roses reference — a checklist you work through on your own accounts rather than a course you watch. This is the one that teaches you to spot an invoice that is not real.
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06Reference
Digital Identity Defense
- configure recovery that survives losing the device
- falsify your own account recovery by attempting it
- classify an incoming contact as genuine or pretext
- operate a callback rule against incoming contact
No recordings here either. Same shape: two live hours and the same reference. It goes further than the class before it — you set up recovery that survives losing the phone, then try to break into your own account to find out whether it holds.
The two nobody expects
A pretext invoice will cost you more than the inbox ever did
Two of the six classes on this path are security classes, and they are not padding. Business email compromise and account takeover are how a small business actually loses money: someone emails an invoice that looks right, or takes over a login and waits. The sums involved are not the sums you save by automating your calendar.
There is a second reason, specific to this path. Automation increases the number of messages your business acts on without a person reading them properly. That is precisely the surface a pretext attack aims at. Handing the routine over and never learning to spot a forged instruction is the one way this sequence could leave you worse off than it found you, so the sequence closes by teaching you to spot one.
Both classes are two hours, both are on the calendar, and both share the same reference: /x/six-roses.
- configure recovery that survives losing the device Concrete · order 9
- operate a callback rule against incoming contact Concrete · order 9
- classify an incoming contact as genuine or pretext Abstract · order 10
- falsify your own account recovery by attempting it Formal · order 11
What is actually in the box
Counted, not rounded up
58.6 hours of recordings
44 clips across four of the six classes. This path is genuinely video-led — the recordings are the product, not a bonus.
Two classes have no recordings. They are the security pair, and they are live plus a reference.
381 exercises
Distributed very unevenly on purpose: 329 of them belong to Context Engineering, 34 to the automation class, 12 to spending and 6 to Custom GPTs.
3 apps, 1 fully guided
- /x/automation-blueprint — reference for Automate Your Email: No Code AI Automation
- /x/context-workbench — guided app for Context Engineering
- /x/six-roses — reference for Scam and Fraud Home Defense and Digital Identity Defense
Six Roses serves both security classes, so the measured count across the six is 4.
The recurring hour
- Outbound Hour — GTM — Mon-Thu at 9:00 Pacific, led by Spencer
- Make & Do — Mon-Thu at 9:00 Pacific, led by Neek
Carried by Founding Federation and Market Your Thing.
Where the 18 capabilities sit
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model behavior5
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security4
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system construction3
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evidence and verification2
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data shaping2
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interaction and interface1
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infrastructure1
Who this is not for
Two people should buy something else
You want to build the systems yourself
If the appeal is the machinery — writing the agent, owning the code, running it on your own infrastructure — this path will feel like it is holding the interesting parts back. It is. Deliberately.
The AI Builder →You are starting something, not running something
This sequence assumes there is already an operation with repetition in it. If the problem is that nothing exists yet, the ordering you want puts the offer before the automation.
The Founder →The close
Hand the repetition over
Six classes. 18 capabilities. 58.6 recorded hours and 381 exercises to work through at whatever pace the business allows. No code, and two hours near the end that make sure nobody walks off with what you have built.
Pay what you can from $100. Any single class is $60 if you would rather start with one — the automation class is where most of the calculator above points.