I run a joinery business in Sydney. I built my own cabinet drawing software. I built my own website. I replaced my agency. Here's exactly what I used.
Honest recommendations. Affiliate link marked clearly.
The Core Two
You don't need 12 AI tools. You need one that can think and one that can build. Everything else is noise.
This is the one that changed everything for me. I'm not a developer. I've never written
production code in my life. But I used Claude Code to build a full cabinet drawing application —
it takes room dimensions, calculates cabinet widths after panels and fillers, and produces
2D plans and elevations. Something that would have cost me thousands in custom software,
or hundreds per month in subscriptions. Built it myself in a few afternoons.
Claude Code doesn't just autocomplete — it reads your whole project, understands
what you're trying to do, and builds it piece by piece. You describe what you want
in plain English. It writes the code, runs it, fixes the errors, and keeps going.
I needed a tool that calculates cabinet widths for a given room run — accounting for panels, scribes, and filler sizes — and outputs a 2D top plan and front elevation drawing. I described this to Claude Code. It asked clarifying questions. Then it built it. No developer. No agency. No $400/month SaaS subscription. Just me and the tool.
Cowork is what I'd point anyone at who wants to use AI seriously but isn't technical.
It sits on your desktop, connects to the tools you already use, reads your files,
and actually does work — not just chats about it. You can build documents, manage projects,
generate content, and run complex workflows all from one place.
I used it to add all the context for my joinery business — services, pricing, suburb areas,
client types, the lot — and now when I need a service page, a quote template, or a suburb
landing page, it already knows everything it needs. No briefing. No back and forth.
Just results.
I built the full InsideOut Joinery website using Cowork — service pages, suburb landing pages, FAQs, meta descriptions, the works. What my old agency charged thousands for (and took weeks), I now do myself. I also use it to build a full cost breakdown for every project type: materials, labour, margin, GST, the whole picture. Took one afternoon to set up. I use it every week.
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The 5 inputs Claude gets wrong every time you ask it to price a job — and the exact fix you load before every quoting session. Built from real joinery quoting work.
The honest bit
There's a whole industry built around telling you that you need a different AI tool for every task. One for writing. One for images. One for video. One for SEO. One for scheduling. Before you know it, you've got eight subscriptions, none of them doing what you actually need, and you're spending more time managing tools than running your business.
Claude does almost all of it. Writing, research, coding, analysis, strategy, content, documents — one tool, one subscription, genuinely capable of most things you throw at it. Claude Code handles the technical builds. Cowork handles everything else.
I'm not saying other tools don't exist or aren't useful. I'm saying most people would be better off going deep on two tools than shallow on eight. Learn what they can actually do. Build prompts and workflows that work for your specific situation. That's where the real leverage is.
And if something comes along that genuinely does something these don't? I'll tell you. That's the whole point of this — honest, specific, real.
Automation
When you've got a workflow that works, automate it. These are the tools I use to connect apps and remove repetitive steps.
Make lets you connect apps and automate workflows visually. I use it to connect form submissions, notifications, and AI tools into single automated flows. Replaces hours of manual work every week.
Referral link — I use this tool.
I use ElevenLabs to generate every voiceover on this channel. Josh voice, Turbo v2.5. The difference between AI voice and human voice is smaller than most people think — ElevenLabs closed that gap.
Affiliate link — I earn a small commission at no cost to you.
Every business decision, content plan, and project brief I have lives in Notion. The AI assistant inside it is genuinely useful for drafting and summarising. It replaced my scattered notes, docs, and spreadsheets.
Link coming soon.
50 prompts for power phrases, client attraction, building your business, and the insider stuff most people never find.
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