By Tim Freed, Book That In

When I was growing up, my parents ran their own business.

I remember watching my mum work through the night, doing her VAT return by hand. She’d be there with her massive paper ledger, poring over handwritten receipts, looking utterly frazzled.

When I was about 17 (we’re talking back in the 90s here!), I discovered Excel – and I saw there was a much better way for her to be doing this.

So I built her a spreadsheet.

Suddenly, the maths was instant. The errors disappeared. And she got a good night’s sleep.

That was my first taste of automation, and I’ve been addicted ever since. Not because I’m a tech wizard (I’m really not), but – if I’m completely honest - because I’m a bit lazy and hate doing boring stuff.

If you’d rather not being doing admin, this article’s for you.

Because when you’re running a children’s activity business, you’ve got enough on your plate already. And AI is hands-down the best opportunity we’ve ever had to save time, reduce stress, and scale faster without cloning ourselves.

First up: What AI is great at (and what it’s not)

If we’re going to make AI part of our team, we need to understand its strengths and weaknesses.

It’s really good at:

* Repetitive tasks: Give it a routine job, and it’ll do it a thousand times without blinking.

* Speedy content creation: Emails, blogs, captions, flyers - it spits them out in seconds.

* Idea generation: Stuck for a blog topic or class name? It’s a brainstorming machine.

* Data crunching: It can scan, sort, and summarise data much faster than we ever could.

* Personalisation at scale: Custom messages for hundreds of people? Easy.

* 24/7 availability: It doesn’t sleep, doesn’t get sick, and doesn’t ask for holidays.

* Following instructions: If you’re clear and specific, it’s shockingly efficient.

* Working across platforms: It can plug into tools, CRMs, websites, and more - automating tasks from end to end.

But it isn’t perfect.

It’s bad at:

* Understanding context: It doesn’t know your business priorities, values, or long-term goals. Even if you tell it all that stuff, it will never understand your perspective on those things.

* Strategic thinking: Because of the point above, AI can’t make decisions about what matters most or what to do next.

* Empathy and emotional nuance: It doesn’t actually feel anything - even if it pretends to.

* Human connection: It can mimic tone, but – because it can’t feel - it can’t truly connect, build trust or develop relationships like you can.

* Originality: AI can remix ideas well, but it doesn’t invent or innovate in a truly human way.

* Accuracy: It often gets facts wrong (but it’ll say them with full confidence).

* Judgement: It doesn’t know when to be bold, funny, subtle, or sensitive - unless you tell it.

Here’s what I really want you to take on board: AI doesn’t have a soul.

It doesn’t care about anything – about your customers, your mission, or whether your brand sounds like you or a teenager with a thesaurus.

So there’s a real risk that if you rely on AI too much – especially if you use it poorly - you’ll end up pumping out the same bland content as everyone else.

And your uniqueness – the magic that makes you – disappears.

Your personality, your stories, your tone of voice – these are the things that make people trust you, connect with you, buy from you.

So yes, use AI to get started. To speed things up. To handle the boring bits.

But always bring the human back in.

Because being human is your superpower. And in a world drowning in AI sludge, it’s how you’ll stand out.

With that said, let’s get in to some ways in which AI can work wonders – when you use it right:

1. Free Up Your Time with a Custom GPT Assistant

Custom GPTs are like supercharged interns you train once, then they work 24/7.

Actually, scratch that. They’re better than interns.

Imagine hiring a VA to:

1. Write emails in your voice
2. Summarise meeting transcripts in different formats
3. Critique adverts, check dimensions, and suggest better headlines
4. Analyse spreadsheets
5. Write your blog posts (that actually sound like you)

That used to involve multiple hires, months of onboarding, and a chunky wage bill.

With Custom GPTs, you can train one assistant in about 15 minutes, and it’ll do all of the above instantly. No complaints. No coffee breaks. No payroll.

Well, you will need to pay for Chat GPT Pro – but at £20 p/m, that’s a no-brainer in my opinion. The value you get FAR exceeds that cost.

And the best bit? You can make as many as you like. One for emails. One for summarising support calls. One for sales. One for your franchisees. It’s game-changing.

Want to try this?

I’ve created a step-by-step guide that walks you through how to create a Custom GPT that will write an article in your tone of voice (I used it to write this article, in fact).

It will take you about 15 minutes to set up.

You’ll need to review the articles is writes, request changes, tweak bits by hand to polish it and make sure YOU are present behind the article (I’ve done that too).

But the Custom GPT will do all the heavy lifting – and, as long as you give it a good prompt that has your stories and lots of details in it - it will generate an excellent first draft in moments.

➡️ Download my free step-by-step guide to creating your own Custom GPT

2. Boost Your Marketing with AI-Generated Images and Videos

Whether you're creating a flyer for a new class or a meme for social media, AI tools can now do things that would have taken you (or a designer) hours.

They can:

1. Create stunning, professional-looking designs
2. Add your text in fonts and layouts that actually make sense
3. Draw illustrations of your brand mascot or character in different poses and styles
4. Build entire adverts or memes based on a single prompt

Here are a couple of examples of graphics I created in Chat GPT:

AI can even create videos for you now.

Tools like Sora and Hailuo AI can take a simple text prompt like “primary school children at a dance class” and turn it into a short video clip in seconds.

That exact prompt generated this video.

You can also animate an existing photo, making the characters move or talk, or even combine an image of someone’s face with a text description to create an eerily lifelike video of them in action.

It’s still early days — sometimes the outputs are weird (I’ve had my own face swapped for a stranger’s before!) — but the potential is huge.

Imagine being able to storyboard an ad, create a social reel, or bring your mascot to life with just a sentence.

Here are a couple of examples:

1. Toddle About Monkey Mascot surfing
2. Tim as a superhero, rescuing a business owner from a burning building.

Even better – tools like AdCreative.ai will:

• * Build full ads from scratch
• * Write the script
• * Add voiceovers
• * Output multiple versions

It’s pretty impressive. And it’s only going to get better.
Here’s an example I created to promote our new CRM tool, Book That In AutoMate.

3. Convert More Leads with Smart Automation

This is where the money magic happens.

Because you can have the best classes in town – but if you’re not following up properly, you’re leaking leads.

Most small business owners are terrible at follow-up. Not because they don’t care – but because they’re doing everything. Who has time to send four follow-ups?

And that’s the number to remember: most sales happen after four or more touchpoints.
But most people give up after two.

A CRM solves that.

It will do things like:

1. Managing WhatsApp, SMS, and email conversations in one place
2. Sending confirmations, reminders, and follow-ups
3. Booking meetings & calls
4. Scheduling your social media
5. Building chatbots
6. Using AI to answer common messages

A CRM can even show you what’s working, what’s not, and gives you the data you need to grow.

One tool. One login. Huge time – and money - savings.

There are hundreds of CRM tools out there to choose from – I can recommend you check out Keap, Capsule, HubSpot, as I have personal experience or recommendations of all these.

And, in case you’re interested, we’ve just launched our own CRM: Book That In AutoMate.

It does all the above and more.

If you downloaded my guide on creating a Custom GPT above, that was all handled in AutoMate – the form, the delivery of the guide by email, the notification by SMS, AND the follow up through WhatsApp.

It’s a simple automation, but demonstrates to effectiveness of a CRM system pretty well – I recommend you try it out.

4. AI Agents: Tiny Workers, Big Potential

So, what’s the difference between a Custom GPT and an AI Agent?

A Custom GPT is like a specialist assistant. You tell it what to do, and it does that one thing very well.

An AI Agent is more like a junior team member. It thinks for itself, plans its next steps, and can do multiple tasks in a row.

For example:

• * You say,"Write a blog post, upload it to my website, then post about it on LinkedIn."
• * An AI Agent will plan the steps, generate the content, login to your site, publish the
  post, write a social post in your tone, and post it to your account.

It’s early days – and sometimes they still get stuck.

But this changes everything.

Because suddenly, the AI isn’t just helping you do tasks.

It’s doing them for you.

On autopilot.

Check out this video from ChatGPT which introduces you to their new Agent tool.

Final Thought: Play. Tinker. Try Something.

You don’t need to overhaul your business overnight.

Just start somewhere.

Build one GPT. Create one image. Write one email using AI.

And always – always – add your human magic on top.

Because your greatest USP isn’t your pricing or your programme or your mascot (even if they can surf).

It’s you.

Till next time,

Tim

About The Author

Tim Freed is the Co-Founder of both Toddle About and Book That In.

Having built and managed a 50-strong team of door-to-door sales people in his early 20s, he joined the corporate world and built a multi-million pound recruitment team. Then Tim turned to entrepreneurship - founding Toddle About in 2010, which is now a thriving franchise business. He went on to launch Book That In in 2017 with his business partner, Alec Wadey, which is now one of the fastest growing online booking systems in the UK.

Tim is always learning and striving to improve and loves nothing more than sharing his hard-won knowledge and experience in sales, marketing, leadership and entrepreneurship with other business owners to help them on their own journeys.