Stop Prompt Engineering. Let AI Interview You Instead. | Craig Mooney

From Scale from Here | Business Growth & Scaling Strategies for Small Business Owners · 39:48

Show by Scale from Here

Text us your comments or topic ideas for future shows.AI is in every corner of your business, and if you sell for a living, you have almost certainly been asked whether it can replace the human part of the job. In this episode of Scale From Here, Corey Harlock sits down with Craig Mooney, founder of Auto Build Solutions, to answer a more useful question: where are you actually in your AI journey, and what is the next step that will not blow up your business? Craig helps component manufacturers and LBM suppliers escape reaction mode with automated, connected systems that improve visibility and cut manual work. He brings a framework he calls RACE, and it is the clearest breakdown of AI sales implementation this show has produced. Review your workflows. Architect what they would look like automated. Confidently launch. Enhance and evolve, because AI never stops moving. The word confidently is deliberate: most owners launch before they are ready, with no guardrails and no plan. Before you implement anything, Craig says you need to know which car you are driving. He maps five levels of AI maturity using a vehicle metaphor that sticks. The wagon is no AI at all, the Oregon Trail of business operations, and he compares it to insisting on the fax machine while everyone else moved to email. The Model T is using AI as a search engine, which is where most people start. The daily driver connects AI to your email, spreadsheets, and MCP connectors to summarize and draft, and that is where roughly 72 percent of businesses sit today. The sports car is building with AI, creating artifacts, dashboards, estimating tools, and lightweight CRM solutions, with real power and real security risk. The self-driving race car is AI embedded in your systems, understanding your workflows and working while you sleep. Then they get tactical on inbound sales automation. An email arrives with a bid request. The agent finds the contact in your CRM, pulls the company’s buying history and past margins, ranks the priority, drafts the quote, and lands it in your inbox for review, all before you have finished lunch. Craig also shares the shift that matters most for owners who are not technical: stop trying to engineer the perfect prompt and instead tell ChatGPT or Claude to interview you about your process. Corey adds the brand document approach that came out of rebranding this very show, plus his own rules for keeping AI honest, truth mode and red teaming so it tells you when your idea is bad. On outbound, both agree AI has made the noise unbearable, and that relationships, video DMs, and actually sitting down for lunch are winning again. As Craig puts it, the goal is not eliminating people. It is replacing the work that does not make you money. You have built a real business. The next question is, how do you scale from here? KEY TAKEAWAYS Know which car you are driving: Craig’s five levels run from the wagon with no AI, to the Model T using it as search, to the daily driver where about 72 percent of businesses sit, to the sports car where you build tools, to the self-driving race car with AI embedded in your systems. Confidently launch, do not just launch: the C in RACE is deliberate, because an AI rollout without an AI handbook, guardrails, and a strategy is how small businesses create problems they did not plan for. Your team may already be leaking company data: employees using personal AI accounts with company logins and company data expose your business, so move to team or business plans and write the handbook before you scale. LINKS & RESOURCES Connect with Craig Mooney on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-mooney-86b9924a/Connect with Corey Harlock on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyharlock/ Learn more about Scale From Here: https://www.scalefromhere.com Join the Member’s Area for Free: https://www.scalefromhere.com/members Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scale-from-here-business-growth-scaling-strategies/id1643962763 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1FT9oqXSek3jMfiKrZPLQs EPISODE CHAPTERS 6:06 - The RACE framework and the self-driving sales system 7:13 - Level one: the wagon, running your business without AI 11:12 - Why every company needs an AI handbook and guardrails 12:22 - The self-driving race car: agents that handle bid intake 14:04 - Inbound versus outbound, and why outbound stays personal 19:37 - Stop prompt engineering and let AI interview you 21:07 - Connecting your CRM and ERP to build your own dashboards 23:14 - The brand document: giving AI the context it needs 26:48 - Start small, self-learning agents, and the roofing quote story 30:49 - Truth mode, red teaming, and talking instead of typing 36:11 - How to scale from here: map it, then confidently launch

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