Claude AI6 min read

Get Seen, Get Sales, Get Paid: Claude Code for Small Business

How small businesses and one-person companies can run marketing, sales and invoicing as repeatable Claude Code recipes, with a person checking everything that leaves.

Haojun See

Founder & Director, On The Ground

Updated 3 November 2026

What "Get Seen, Get Sales, Get Paid" means

Get Seen, Get Sales, Get Paid is a simple way to sort the work that keeps a small business alive: being found by customers, turning interest into signed work, and collecting the money. Each track is made of small, repeatable jobs, and each job can be written down once and run with Claude Code whenever it comes round again. We call our own version of this Ground Control. It isn't software you buy. It's the way we run our own business from the terminal, written up as recipes: plan next month's posts, turn call notes into a quote, chase an overdue invoice. This series explains the method so you can build the same thing for your business. The three tracks matter because most owners don't lack ideas for using AI. They lack a place where AI can do whole jobs on their real files, the same way every time.

Why use Claude Code as the harness, not a chat window

A chat window answers questions; Claude Code works inside a folder on your computer, where it can read every file in the job, follow written rules and save the finished output next to the inputs. That difference is what turns AI from a fancy search box into something that does a job end to end. In practice it means: • All your files at once. The tender pack, your price list, last year's invoices: it reads the folder rather than a handful of uploads. • Rules it follows every time. A CLAUDE.md file in the folder holds your standing instructions, such as "never invent a price" or "invoice numbers come from numbering.csv". See Anthropic's memory documentation. • Saved procedures. A recipe becomes a skill you can call by name, so the method doesn't live in your head. • Permission prompts. By default Claude Code asks before it edits files or runs commands. The permissions guide explains how to keep it that way for anything risky. If the harness idea is new, start with our guide to Claude Code as a workflow harness.

The anatomy of a recipe

Every recipe has the same seven parts, so anyone in the business can run it and check it. Writing it down is most of the work. Once it's written, the recipe can be turned into a Claude Code skill. • What it does: one line, in plain words. "The client said yes. Invoice them now, correctly." • Ingredients: the files and facts needed before starting, such as the accepted quote, the invoice template and the numbering file. • Method: numbered steps, each something you type or check. • What you get: the output files, named the same way every time. • Check before use: what a person must look at before anything leaves the building. • Safe data: what must never go in, such as NRIC numbers or a client's confidential files. • Time: a before-and-after estimate, replaced with a measured number after the first real run. The "check before use" line is the one people skip, and it's the one that protects you.

What each track covers

Get Seen covers marketing, Get Sales covers everything from a lead to a signed quote, and Get Paid covers invoicing, chasing and the books. Here is a starter set of recipes in each. Get Seen • A month of posts, planned and drafted in your voice. • One recorded talk, cut into short clips with captions. • A visibility check: how Google and AI assistants describe your business, and what to fix first. Get Sales • Pipeline tidy-up: every lead gets a stage, a next step and a date. • A quotation drafted from call notes, using only your own price list. • Tender triage and a first-draft proposal. • A follow-up sequence so nobody you spoke to goes cold. Get Paid • Accepted quote to invoice, with the next number taken from one numbering file. • Polite payment reminders, on time, every time. • A monthly receivables report and a receipts-to-ledger run for your accountant.

What it looks like in our own work

We only teach recipes we run on our own business first. Tender triage is the clearest example: using this method, Haojun screened and drafted first responses for 11 tenders in about half an hour, with every bid decision still made by a person. Event admin is another. After an evening event, the post-event report used to be a slow job of pulling sign-ups, check-ins, attendance and photos together. Now the event folder holds the guest list exports, the programme and last time's report, and Claude Code drafts the new report from them. It leaves a gap where it has no data, such as a missing photo, rather than inventing one. Neither job is impressive because the AI is clever. It works because the files, rules and checks are in one place.

Where people stay in charge

AI drafts; a person decides, signs and sends. That rule runs through every recipe, and it's what makes the method safe for a small business with no compliance team. • Prices, bids and commitments are human decisions. A recipe may only use prices from your own price list. • Sending stays with you. Ask for a *draft* reply, never a reply: one word is the difference between a note you review and an email that has already gone. • Personal data follows the PDPA. Keep customer lists on your own machine and only contact people you have a basis to contact. • Numbers live in files, not in a chat. A chat window can't hold a ledger, so invoice and quote numbers come from one numbering file that the recipe updates. For a fuller picture of the data side, see our PDPA guide for AI use.

How to start with one recipe

Pick the job you do at 11pm, write it down as a recipe, and run it with Claude Code for one week. One recipe that runs every week beats ten that you set up once and never touch again. 1. Choose a job that repeats weekly or monthly and has clear inputs, such as invoicing or a weekly post. 2. Make a folder for it and put the ingredients in. 3. Write the method as numbered steps in a README.md, then add your standing rules to CLAUDE.md. 4. Open the folder in Claude Code and run it, checking every output. 5. After three runs, fix what kept going wrong and turn it into a skill. New to the terminal? Our Terminal basics guide covers setup in five commands. Come and talk it through in person. Our year-end OTG Christmas Gathering is on Monday 28 December in Singapore: an evening of networking, dinner and a gift exchange with the people we've worked, learnt and built with this year. Bring the one job you'd most like to hand over, and we'll show you how we'd set it up. Register on Luma.

This is the main guide in our series on running a small business with Claude Code as the harness. Each guide below takes one track and shows the recipes in detail. • Get seen by AI, not just Google: a month of content in your voice, and a check on how ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity describe you. • From call notes to quote: pipeline tidy-ups, quotes from your own price list, and follow-ups that go out on time. • Quote to invoice to paid: invoices copied from the accepted quote, polite payment chasing and a monthly receivables view. • A weekly Claude Code routine for a one-person company: how the three tracks fit into one week when you are the whole team.

Frequently asked questions

Can a small business use Claude Code without coding?

Yes. Claude Code runs in the terminal, but you work with it in plain English. You need to open a folder, start a session and read what it proposes before approving it. The skill is writing clear instructions and checking the output, not programming. Most owners are comfortable within a few sessions.

What is the difference between Claude Code and the Claude chat app?

The chat app answers questions inside a conversation and works on the files you upload. Claude Code works inside a folder on your computer, reads every file there, follows written rules in CLAUDE.md, saves outputs next to the inputs and can run saved procedures called skills. That makes it suited to repeatable jobs.

What should a small business automate first with AI?

Start with a job that repeats weekly or monthly, has clear inputs and a checkable output, and that you dislike doing. Invoicing, payment reminders, a weekly social post or drafting quotes from call notes are good first picks. Avoid starting with anything that commits money or makes promises without review.

Is it safe to use client data with Claude Code?

It can be, with rules. Keep client files on your own machine, leave out data you don't need such as NRIC numbers, follow the PDPA on consent and purpose, and keep permission prompts on so nothing is edited or sent without approval. Check your plan's data-use terms before using confidential material.

What is Ground Control?

Ground Control is On The Ground's name for its method of running marketing, sales and invoicing work with Claude Code in the terminal. It is a way of working written up as recipes, not proprietary software. Each recipe is a short procedure with set inputs, steps, outputs and the checks a person must make.

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