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While I share money-making strategies, nothing is “typical”, and outcomes are based on each individual. There are no guarantees.
I just asked my new AI business partner to analyze the latest market trends for AI automation agencies and draft three killer cold email subject lines. It spit them out in less than 60 seconds.
The crazy part? That AI business partner didn’t exist 20 minutes ago. I built it from scratch, with zero code, for next to nothing. In this video, I’m going to show you exactly how you can, too.
You know how overwhelming it is to start a business, right? You’re the CEO, the marketer, the salesperson, the data analyst… you’re all of it. What if you could actually clone yourself? What if you had a partner who never sleeps, plows through the grunt work, and gives you game-changing strategic insights whenever you ask? Most people think that’s science fiction, or that it costs thousands of dollars and a team of developers. They’re wrong.
In this guide, I’m showing you the exact step-by-step process to build your own AI business partner that can do your research, draft your emails, and manage your tasks. And we’re going to do it all in the next 20 minutes. You don’t need to write a single line of code, and you don’t need a computer science degree. You just need to follow along.
The Toolkit & Roadmap
Alright, let’s get into the build. Trust me, this whole thing is way simpler than you think once you see the pieces. We only need three tools in our toolkit. First, a no-code platform called Make.com. This is going to be the central nervous system that connects everything. Second, an OpenAI API account. This is our partner’s brain. And third, a simple Google Sheet. This will be our command center and the AI’s memory.
Our game plan is simple, and I want you to burn this framework into your brain because you can use it to build any kind of AI agent. First, we give our AI its brain with OpenAI. Second, we give it knowledge with a dedicated file, so it actually knows our business. And third, we give it tools to take action using Make.com and Google Sheets. Brain, knowledge, tools. That’s the secret sauce. Let’s put 20 minutes on the clock and make it happen.
The 20-Minute Build
Okay, timer is on. First up: the brain. Head over to platform.openai.com. On the left menu, you’ll see a tab called “Assistants.” This is where the magic happens. Click “Create” to spin up a new assistant. Let’s call it “AI Business Partner.”
Now for the most important part: the instructions. This is where you give it a personality and a purpose. You have to be specific. I’m typing in: “You are an expert business strategist and operations manager. Your name is ‘Astra.’ Your primary function is to analyze data, identify market opportunities, generate strategic recommendations, and automate repetitive business tasks. You are analytical, concise, and always focused on providing actionable, data-driven insights. Do not be conversational; be professional and direct.”
Giving it a name and a sharp role is critical. It turns a generic chatbot into a specialist on your team. For the model, we’ll pick GPT-4—it’s the powerhouse for complex reasoning. Now, here’s a pro-tip that changes everything: enable the “File Search” tool. This lets our assistant read and analyze any document you give it. Click save, and just like that, the brain is born. Step one, done.
Next up, Step Two: giving it a knowledge base. An assistant is only as good as the info it has. Let’s say I want my partner to help me with some competitive analysis. I’ve got this PDF report on my main competitor’s marketing strategy. Under the “Files” section for our new assistant, I’m just clicking “Upload” and adding that PDF.
Boom. Our AI Business Partner can now read and understand that entire file. It’s not just pulling from the generic internet anymore; it’s using my private data to shape its answers. You can upload sales data, customer feedback, financial reports—anything. This is how you make the AI your business partner. It now has context that no other AI on the planet has. Two steps down, one to go.
Alright, on to Step Three. This is the most involved part, but it’s also where the real power gets unlocked: giving our AI the tools to take action with Make.com. Make is a visual workflow builder that connects apps without code. Think of it like digital plumbing.
We’re creating a new “Scenario” in Make. Every scenario needs a trigger. Ours will be “Watch New Rows” in a Google Sheet. I’ve set up a dead-simple sheet with two columns: “Prompt” and “Response.” When we type a command in the “Prompt” column, it’ll kick off the whole thing. I’m connecting my Google account and picking the spreadsheet.
Trigger’s set. Now for the action. Add a new module and search for OpenAI. Make has a slick built-in integration. We’ll choose the “Create a Message” action. This will send our prompt from the Google Sheet straight to the AI assistant we just built.
Next, we add another OpenAI module: “Create a Run.” This is the part that tells the assistant to actually process the message and start thinking. We just select our “AI Business Partner” from the dropdown.
But genius takes a second. So, we add a “Sleep” module for about 15 seconds. This little pause gives the AI time to work its magic before we try to grab the answer.
After the pause, one more OpenAI module: “List Run Steps.” This fetches the response our assistant came up with. And for the grand finale, we add a Google Sheets “Update a Row” module. We set it up to take the AI’s output and paste it right into the “Response” column in our sheet, on the exact same row as our prompt.
And that’s the entire workflow. So let’s just quickly run through what we just built: A new row in Google Sheets triggers the workflow. The prompt gets sent to our AI partner. The AI thinks for a few seconds, using the knowledge from our PDF, and cooks up a response. Make.com then grabs that response and pops it right back into our Google Sheet. We’ve just built a complete, closed-loop communication system with our AI.
The Final Test & Victory Lap
And… done! Check the clock. We built the entire thing in under 20 minutes. Now for the fun part—the victory lap. Let’s see if our new partner is ready for its first day on the job.
I’m jumping into our Google Sheet to give it a real task. I’ll type this into the “Prompt” column: “Using the provided competitor analysis file, identify their top 3 marketing channels and suggest one specific, actionable counter-strategy for each channel that our startup could implement with a small budget.”
Now, this isn’t a simple request. It requires the AI to read a file, understand its nuances, analyze the data, and then generate creative, strategic ideas from scratch. This isn’t just a lookup.
I hit enter. The Make.com scenario instantly fires up. We can see the little bubbles zipping along the workflow. The prompt goes to OpenAI, the run is created, it sleeps… and now it’s sending the data back.
And boom. Just like that, the “Response” cell fills itself in. Let’s see what it came up with. “Analysis Complete. Competitor’s top channels are:
1. SEO via long-form blog content. Counter-strategy: Target their long-tail keywords with short, impactful video content on YouTube Shorts and TikTok, as this is a lower-cost, higher-engagement medium they are currently ignoring.
2. Paid ads on LinkedIn targeting enterprise clients. Counter-strategy: Launch a hyper-targeted cold email campaign to the same audience, offering a free, high-value micro-tool or report to capture leads at a fraction of the cost.
3. Influencer marketing with large tech influencers. Counter-strategy: Partner with 10 smaller, niche micro-influencers in the AI automation space whose audiences have higher trust and engagement, providing them with affiliate deals instead of large upfront fees.”
Are you kidding me? This is incredible. The advice is specific, it’s actionable, and it’s directly based on the private document I provided. It didn’t just summarize the doc; it synthesized the information and created a brand-new strategy. That right there is a business partner.
And there you have it. A fully functional AI business partner, ready to work for you 24/7. It can analyze reports, draft marketing copy, summarize your meetings, process data—the possibilities are endless, because you can always feed it new knowledge and build new workflows. This isn’t just another automation; it’s a force multiplier for you and your business.
The real power here comes from customizing it. Steal this exact framework and point it at your biggest headaches. Buried in support tickets? Train it on your help docs. Struggling with content ideas? Feed it your best-performing articles and have it generate a month’s worth of new topics.
This is the single most powerful automation you can build for your business right now.
