From the wish
Dear Sir or Madam,
We hereby inform you of the additional costs that have arisen. Additional costs are costs that were not included in the original quote. The costs amount to [amount].
We trust that this has informed you sufficiently.
Your team learns to work with AI themselves.
Workshops of one, two or three days, at your location, on your own work. After that they can do it without us.
The wish
Just write a quick email about those extra costs.
A wish becomes a brief
- 01RoleYou work in customer service at a wholesaler.
- 02TaskWrite an email to a customer about a rush delivery.
- 03ContextThe customer wants delivery as early as Tuesday. That wasn’t in the quote.
- 04Material€185 excl. VAT, delivery Tuesday before 12:00.
- 05RequirementsFriendly and short, ask for approval by email.
- 06OutputA subject line and at most 120 words.
- 07CheckList below it what you assumed or aren’t sure of.
Drawn byAI
Checked byyou
AI is a fast apprentice who has read everything and has never set foot in your company. You give it a clear brief and you check its work.
Same AI, different brief
The difference isn’t in the AI. It’s in what you ask. Give it a wish and you often get the email on the left. Give it a brief and you get something like the one on the right.
From the brief
Rush delivery on Tuesday: your approval, please
Hi Mark,
You asked for delivery on Tuesday. That wasn’t in the quote, so we’d like your approval first. The rush delivery costs €185 excl. VAT. You’ll then have it on Tuesday before 12:00.
Is that OK? If so, please let me know by email by Friday.
Assumed: the contract says nothing about rush orders.
Not sure: whether Friday is early enough for the driver.
You read it through. The “Not sure” line tells you where to look.
Demo data: we wrote both emails to show the difference.
What stays when we’ve gone
People who can do it themselves
More than half of the time they work themselves, on their own work.
A standing assistant per person
For work that keeps coming back, made in the AI tool you already have.
Agreements on one A4
A traffic light for what may go in, and six working agreements, for all staff.
Checking is a craft
It matters more than asking well. Of everything AI makes, your team asks five questions:
- 1
Is it right?
Facts and figures held up against the source.
- 2
Is it made up?
Names, dates, amounts, rules: copied or invented?
- 3
What’s missing?
What would you add that AI couldn’t know?
- 4
Does it sound like you?
Would you say it like this to this customer?
- 5
Would you sign it?
If not, it doesn’t leave the building.
Three formats, with the price right there
All prices exclude VAT, for up to 12 participants.
How it goes
Now
An introduction
A free talk. We see whether it fits and which format you need. If it does, you reserve the dates.
2 to 3 weeks ahead
The intake
A half day with the client and two key people, or an hour for the first day. Which work comes back, which tools are there, who handles privacy?
After that
The preparation
We build your anonymised examples into the exercises. You test the logins.
The days themselves
The workshop
On site, 09:00 to 16:30, consecutive or spread out. Short demos, then hands-on with their own work.
Within a week
The paperwork
The agreements for everyone, the certificates digitally, and a report: which assistants exist, who the champions are, what’s still open.
After 30 and 90 days
Coming back
Everyone shows what their assistant does now. Then we choose the next step: more people, a second assistant or a real automation.
Yellow is what your team does themselves
More than half of the time they work on their own work. The full programme
Day 1Seeing differently
- 09:00The promise: you’ll learn to do it yourself
- 09:15One task you never want to do again (Hands-on)
- 09:45Heavy lifting and craft, and what AI is and isn’t
- 10:45Trust is built in: the story of the automatic lift
- 11:30Live: a job from the room, from wish to brief
- 12:00Your first brief for the apprentice (Hands-on)
- 13:15The seven lines of a good brief
- 14:00Write your own brief and check it together (Hands-on)
- 15:00Your task map: what do you lift, what is your craft? (Hands-on)
- 16:15One job, fifteen minutes: the assignment for afterwards
Day 2Learning to work with AI
- 09:00Looking back: what worked, what needed steering?
- 09:45Six things you do with AI, and checking as a craft
- 10:45Reading and writing: demo and practice round (Hands-on)
- 11:45Live steering: “where did you get that from?”
- 13:00Talking and looking: with your phone at hand (Hands-on)
- 14:00Calculating, sorting and searching: no source, no fact (Hands-on)
- 15:15Your three best briefs in the shared folder (Hands-on)
- 16:00Which job do you hand over on day 3?
Day 3Letting it do the lifting
- 09:00Today you build your own assistant
- 09:30Live: from brief to standing assistant in five minutes
- 09:50Build your standing assistant (Hands-on)
- 11:30The test: ten cases, and a colleague who tries it (Hands-on)
- 13:00The traffic light, working agreements and AI literacy
- 13:40The market: try each other’s assistants (Hands-on)
- 14:40The next step: arranging the work differently
- 15:15How it sticks: champions and team meetings
- 15:30Your 90-day plan (Hands-on)
- 16:10Closing and certificates
The programme was first written for a construction company. In the intake we replace the examples with ones from your sector.
Four thoughts, revised
All four are reasonable, and they come up in every group. A sceptic who finds a mistake is a gift: that’s when we show how to steer.
Thought: AI isn’t for our kind of work.
Revised: A lot of time leaks away between the shop floor and the office: retyping, searching, chasing.
Thought: AI makes mistakes, so it’s useless.
Revised: An apprentice makes mistakes too. That’s why you check.
Thought: I first need to understand how it works.
Revised: You learn it by doing it: fifteen minutes a day.
Thought: AI will take our jobs.
Revised: Some work will go, that’s the honest answer. The question is who chooses which. Here, you do.
Who you learn from
Laurens van Riel builds AI workflows at Van Riel Online Services in Rotterdam that run every day: texts in a company’s tone of voice, purchase invoices held against the price list, a phone line that answers in Dutch. He gives the workshops himself.
We work this way ourselves
This isn’t demo data. These workflows run at our company, at fixed times, and a person keeps the last word.
- weekdays 08:00Morning briefing via WhatsAppLaurens reads
- weekdays 20:30One question: which work could be automatic?Laurens answers
- FridayWeekly overview of all projectsLaurens reads through
- Sunday 19:00Two or three proposals for new automationsLaurens chooses
What keeps coming back at your company?
An introductory talk is free. Together we look at which work keeps coming back, which AI tools you have and which format fits.
Email us
- 010 360 20 34 office
- 06 49 12 98 55 mobile