- To use Claude to run your business, you connect it to a second brain it can read and write to, give it repeatable skills so it never loses context, and stand up routines that run on a schedule without you.
- The standard to build toward is 92/8. AI does 92% of the work, you do the 8% only you can do.
- The fastest test of where to point Claude next is the vacation test. Whatever stops the moment you stop touching it is a hole in your boat.
- This is the system I taught a client who went from zero to shipping real software in three sessions, and it is the same system running my own business today.
How do you use Claude to run your business?
If you want to use Claude to run your business, the move is to stop treating it like a chatbot you ask questions and start treating it like an operator you give a brain, a set of skills, and a schedule. You connect Claude to a single source of truth it can read and write to, you build repeatable skills so it never loses the thread, and you set up routines that fire every day on their own. That is how the work keeps moving when you step away.
I learned this the hard way and then lived it. A client told me he was leaving for two weeks and was scrambling to get everything in a good place so he could actually unplug. I know that feeling. A week earlier my allergies knocked me down for a few days, and being people wired the way we are, I do not sit still. Getting forced out of the work exposed something. If a part of my business stops the second I stop touching it, that is not a vacation problem. That is a design problem. So I started asking a different question. Where could Claude support me so this keeps moving without me? That question is the whole game.
What does it mean to run your business with Claude instead of just chatting with it?
Most people open Claude, ask a thing, get an answer, and close it. The knowledge they just created evaporates. That is using it like a calculator.
Running your business with Claude means the opposite. Every useful thing you create gets captured somewhere Claude can return to. Every repeatable task becomes a skill. Every daily job becomes a routine. You are building an operator, not asking a genie for wishes.
The standard I hold for this is 92/8. Ninety-two percent of what I do is done by AI, eight percent is done by me. It is a standard you build toward, not a switch you flip. You will not hit it on day one. You hit it by closing one hole at a time.
The vacation test tells you which hole to close first. Picture yourself gone for two weeks. What stops? That thing, whatever it is, is where you point Claude next. Being away stops being the obstacle and becomes the map.
How do you stop Claude from losing context in a long chat?
Here is the problem every founder hits. You are deep in a single task with Claude, you have been going for a while, and it starts to slow down and get dumber. You see a message about compressing the conversation. That is the model telling you the whiteboard is full.
Think of every new chat as a blank whiteboard. The more you write on it, the more it fills up, until Claude has to compress everything down to summaries to keep going. The moment you see that compression happen, that is your trigger to start fresh. As a rule of thumb, somewhere around twenty to twenty-five exchanges you are getting close to that window.
The fix is a skill I built called the checkpoint. I do not have a developer's background, so I needed something simple I could run every time. When a chat gets near the compression point, I ask Claude for a checkpoint of everything we have done plus a handoff prompt. The handoff is a block of text I paste into a brand new chat that references the old one and carries every nuance forward by design. I even version my chats, V1 to V2 to V3, so the thread of work is unbroken.
This matters because losing context is the number one way people stall out. If you want to use Claude to run your business, a checkpoint and handoff routine is non-negotiable. You can create your own Claude skill for this in an afternoon.
Why does Claude need a second brain to run your business?
The single biggest shift is this. The number one thing AI needs to succeed is context. Claude is only as good as what it knows about you, your business, and your goals.
That is what a second brain gives it. I have written down every conversation, every podcast, every coaching moment for sixteen years straight. The reason a second brain exists is so you do not have to remember. In the AI era that same documented knowledge becomes the fuel Claude runs on. Imagine everything you have ever done, written down in a way Claude can read and write to. That is the difference between a smart assistant and an operator that actually runs things.
I built mine as a second brain in Notion, connected to Claude through its MCP connection. Two buttons and Claude can read and write to it directly. The first thing I built was a build tracker. When I am ideating and it turns into a real, shippable something, I just say send this to my build tracker in Notion, and it is logged. Then I built field notes, so every thing I create with AI gets packaged into something I can hand to a client.
Should your business knowledge live inside Claude or somewhere Claude can reach?
This is where most people will lose, and it is worth being clear about. Your knowledge should not live inside Claude. It should live in a system Claude can reach.
Be tool agnostic. If Claude goes away, if ChatGPT goes away, if Gemini goes away, it should not matter to you. The knowledge sits in Notion, the AI talks to it. If everything you build lives trapped inside one model, it is not scalable, and scalability is the entire reason you are playing this game.
When I pointed a newer, more capable Claude at my AI-First Dream Business, I had it fill out all seventy-eight folders and link every build, idea, playbook, and field note into one connected brain. That is compounding intelligence. So when a client says they are going on vacation and do not want everything to stop, the answer is simple. The data and the infrastructure are already there, because we designed step by step what lives where. That structure becomes the brain that operates no matter what happens. If you want the bigger picture on this, I wrote a full guide on building an AI operating system for your business.
How do Claude routines actually run your business while you sleep?
This is the agentic layer, and it is where using Claude to run your business gets real. Claude Code has a feature called routines. A routine runs a prompt or a task on a schedule, every single day, without you.
The first one I designed is my CEO brief. Every morning it reads my second brain in Notion and outputs what I created, what is still outstanding, my top three things for the day, and one big idea. I designed it once on the front end and it has run on its own ever since. I have another that goes out and finds speaking opportunities, five a day, dropped straight into a database. Done, without me.
You build these by talking. You describe the job, Claude helps you shape the routine, and from then on it runs. This is the same path as learning to build AI agents, and you do not need to be technical to start. If you can use Claude Code as a non-developer, you can stand up your first routine this week.
The concept underneath all of it is growth loops. You start something, then you close the loop so it runs without you. Routines plus loops are how I am going on vacation turns into ten routines that run no matter what. One important caveat. Routines work far better when the second brain architecture exists underneath them. No architecture, and the agentic layer underperforms.
What is the simplest way to start using Claude to run your business?
You do not need to know any of the technical tools to start. I spend no time inside Notion, GitHub, Cloudflare, or n8n. You just need Claude to have access to it all, and it goes, here is your infrastructure. The whole GitHub thing is a ninety-second free signup, and once Claude knows it exists, it routes everything there for you.
Here is the order I would run it.
- Build a checkpoint and handoff skill so you never lose context in a long chat.
- Set up a second brain in Notion and connect it to Claude through MCP.
- Start a build tracker, then add field notes for everything you create.
- Run the vacation test and write down what stops when you stop.
- Turn the most painful one of those into a Claude routine that fires daily.
- Repeat until more of the work runs without you and you climb toward 92/8.
I watched a client go from zero to shipping real software in three sessions doing exactly this. We built a website out of nothing, turned a screenshot into a working app, and made his first Claude skill from a pencil sharpener sitting on his desk. None of it was hard. He just did not know it was possible until someone showed him. That is the only thing standing between most founders and an AI that runs their business.
The bottom line
Using Claude to run your business comes down to four moves. Give it a second brain it can read and write to. Build skills so it never loses context. Stand up routines that run on a schedule. Aim everything at the 92/8 standard so more of the work moves without you.
This is the worst it will ever be, and it already works. The founders who build the architecture now are the ones whose businesses keep moving while they are on a beach for two weeks. The ones who wait are the ones still wondering why AI is not working for them.
Start with one routine. Close one loop. Then do it again.
Want the system, not just the idea?
The Gold Vault is where I put the actual builds, skills, and routines I use to run my business with Claude, including the checkpoint skill, the second brain setup, and the routines that run on their own. If you want to install this system instead of figuring it out from scratch, that is where to start.
