Here's something I don't talk about much. I have an Etsy shop that mostly runs without me.
I sell printables, and one of my steadiest sellers is a 33 page Final Wishes Estate Planner. It moves one or two copies a month without any promotion. Not life changing money, but it's quiet and consistent, like a vending machine in the back of a building nobody visits very often.
The one complaint I kept getting from customers was the same question every time. Can I type into this instead of handwriting it?
Reasonable question. I had tried to make it a fillable PDF a couple of times before and gave up. It was tedious, finicky work for a product making me about $5 a month. So I kept putting it off.
This week I finally sat down and explained the whole situation to Claude. Not just the technical problem, but the context. The product, the customer complaint, what I'd already tried, why I'd stopped.
Claude came back with three solutions immediately.
Option one was a Notion template. Option two was a Google Form. Option three was a standalone HTML file the customer downloads and uses directly on their own computer, no account needed, no app required, nothing to learn.
The first two options had the same problem. They required the customer to already know how to use those platforms or to create an account somewhere. For someone filling out an estate planner, that's friction they don't need. The HTML file won.
What happened next is the part I want to be honest about.
I expected Claude to produce perfect code on the first try. It didn't. When I tested the file, there were glitches. My first reaction was that familiar worry, the one that whispers "this isn't going to work." Claude rewrote the code four times before everything functioned exactly the way I wanted. Thirty minutes of coding, testing, adjusting, and testing again.
The final product worked beautifully. And I was genuinely proud of it, which is not something I expected to feel about an HTML file on a Tuesday afternoon.
Here's the part that surprised me most though.
While we were working through the solution, Claude flagged something I hadn't considered at all. A printable planner is automatically private. You print it, you fill it in, it sits in a drawer. But a digital fillable document that lives in someone's cloud storage or gets emailed around? That's a different situation entirely.
For a grocery list, that's fine. For a Final Wishes Estate Planner that holds account passwords, financial information, and end of life instructions, it really isn't.
The HTML file solves that problem too. It lives only on the customer's computer. Nothing goes anywhere. Claude brought up the security angle and I hadn't even thought to ask about it.
I set out to fix a customer complaint. I ended up with a better product, a stronger selling point, and a price I feel good about. The printable was selling for around $5. The digital fillable version with built in privacy? I'd comfortably charge $15 or more.
All of that from explaining a problem honestly and letting the tool do what it's good at.
Your turn. What's a small problem in your business that you've been putting off because it seemed too technical or too tedious? Open Claude, explain the whole situation, and see what it suggests. You might be surprised what comes back.
The AI assist this week: Claude for problem solving, solution comparison, HTML coding, and customer instructions I could never have written on my own.
The honest take: It wasn't perfect on the first try. It took four rewrites and thirty minutes of real work. But the end result solved my customer's problem, added genuine value, and changed what I think the product is worth. That's a pretty good return on a Tuesday afternoon.
See you next Wednesday. — Kelly
P.S. Haven't grabbed the free NotebookLM Quick Start guide yet? Five prompts that show you exactly what this tool can do for your content. Grab it free right here.