How to start using AI in your Moncton business.

Start with the right question.

Most business owners in Moncton who haven’t started using AI are asking the wrong question. Not “can I use AI?” — the answer to that is almost always yes. The question worth asking is: what would I rather not be doing?

What’s the part of your day that takes the most time, requires the least judgment, and nobody would notice if the machine did it instead of you? That’s where you start. Admin tasks. Intake forms. Follow-up email templates. Meeting summaries. File organization. The behind-the-scenes work that doesn’t require relationship or creative spark. That’s what AI does best — and it’s where most small businesses in New Brunswick are leaving the most time on the table.

The first thing to understand about AI.

AI is not trained to know anything about you, your business, or your clients. It’s a large language model. It takes whatever information you give it, builds from that, and gives you an output based on what you provided. Which means the first response you get is almost never the final answer — it was built without the full picture, because you hadn’t given it the full picture yet.

The single most common mistake Nicolas sees: business owners paste a question into ChatGPT, take the first answer, and treat it as done. The second and third pass are where the value lives.

One more thing worth knowing: AI will agree with you when you push. If you’re wrong and you insist you’re right, most models will eventually cave. That’s not intelligence — that’s a machine doing what it was built to do. The human has to hold the judgment.

How to actually prompt.

The prompting rule that changes the most for most people: start with the end goal, not the task.

Not “write me a follow-up email.” But:

“I need a follow-up email for a property management client in Moncton whose tenant hasn’t responded to a maintenance request in a week. The tone should be firm but professional. Here’s what the email needs to accomplish. Here’s what the client already knows about the situation.”

Then — before you send anything — add this line at the end:

“Please ask me any clarifying questions you may need before building this.”

That one habit closes most of the gap between generic outputs and useful ones. The AI asks what it doesn’t know. You fill in the gaps. Then it builds with the full picture.

The framework in sequence: objective first → context second → let it ask clarifying questions before it builds.

The 10/80/10 rule.

Ten percent of the work is you getting your idea into the machine clearly. Eighty percent is the machine executing. The last ten percent is you reviewing, correcting, and making the call.

The front and back ten percent never get handed off. That’s where your judgment, your context, and your knowledge of the client live. If you’re handing off all 100%, you’re not using AI — you’re abdicating. The machine handles the execution. You stay in the seat.

The best use case for a small business in Moncton right now.

Admin. Paperwork. The behind-the-scenes tasks that eat your afternoons.

Property management is a good example. Tenants, leasing, maintenance, new inquiries, calls — agents are on the go dealing with people all day. And in the background, the paperwork sits. Intake forms, follow-up emails, reminders, maintenance request templates — all of that can now get done with AI. It doesn’t require judgment. It doesn’t require a relationship. It just requires the right prompt and a few minutes to review the output.

For automation beyond single tasks, Nicolas recommends Claude Co-Work — Claude’s automation layer, comparable to Zapier or Make.com. You tell it what you need done, connect it to your tools, and it executes. He used it to reorganize all the files on a new computer in five minutes.

Which tools to use.

• Claude (claude.ai). The best all-around tool for writing, strategy, and execution. Claude Co-Work is built in for automation. If you’re only going to use one tool, use this one. Claude Pro is around $25–30 CAD/month. The Max plan (with full Co-Work capabilities) is around $140–160/month.
• Gemini (Google). Best for image generation and anything in the Google ecosystem — YouTube analysis, Drive, budgeting. Nicolas uses it for quick questions and image work.
• Don’t stay locked in ChatGPT. It’s where most people start, and it’s not where most people should stay. Different tools are better at different things. Use at least two.

What AI won’t do for you.

Client relationships. Emotional judgment. The phone call someone actually picks up. The brand story only you know. The follow-up that checks in on someone and actually cares about the answer.

AI-generated marketing all looks the same because it’s built from the same inputs. At first, people were excited. Then they started to notice that everything looked and felt identical — the websites, the logos, the strategies. The uniqueness — the thing that makes a brand feel like something — still comes from the human. The machine handles the behind-the-scenes work. You do the thing nobody else can do.

Nicolas puts it simply: “AI does not have emotion. It can’t create a human connection. What we do best is human interactions, forming relationships, building trust, working together. Now that we have tools to automate the tedious tasks, we can focus on what actually matters.”

If you’re starting a business today.

Get Claude. Even just Claude Pro to start. Use it to draft your business strategy and your marketing plan. Be specific about what business you’re starting, who your clients are, and what market you’re in — Moncton, New Brunswick, Atlantic Canada. That context matters. Then, once the plan is in place, ask Claude to build you a 30-day schedule to stay on track.

Important: you’re working with Claude to build the plan. You’re not letting it build the plan for you. The ideas come from you. Claude is the backbone, the second opinion, the research assistant. The vision is yours.

What to do this week.

Pick one admin task that eats your afternoons. Write two paragraphs: what you need, who it’s for, what “done” looks like, and what the context is — your business, your city, your client. Paste it into Claude and end with: “Please ask me any clarifying questions before you start.”

Work through the questions, then let it run. Treat what comes back as the 80%. Spend your energy on the last 10% that only you can judge. That’s one session. See where the time went.

If you want someone to come in, find the specific AI problem in your business, and build the solution with you, that’s exactly what Nicolas Michaud at Technica I Solutions does. He’s based in Moncton, works with businesses across New Brunswick, and you can reach him at technicaisolutions.com or at 506-878-0521.