Build With AI · 12 week course
Stop reading about AI. Spend twelve weeks building with it.
A live, taught course for small businesses, in Worthing or online. Not prompts and theory. Every session, a real system gets built on screen in front of you: something that logs in, holds your data, pulls in live numbers and runs jobs overnight.
The job being built is one somebody in the room has named, from their own business. You watch every step, including the bits that go wrong, you ask questions all the way through, and you take the written brief away so you can do the same thing for your own business.
- Twelve weekly sessions of two and a half hours
- Only 20 places per session, so your business gets talked about
- A system built live on screen every week, from a real job in the room
- No coding, and nothing to build on the night. Watch, ask, then do it yourself
- Attend in person in Worthing, or live online
Next in person course
Wednesday 26 August 2026
Wednesdays, Central Worthing, West Sussex
Next online course
Friday 28 August 2026
Fridays, Live on Microsoft Teams or Zoom
Two times a day
3:00pm or 6:00pm
Each session runs two and a half hours
Your place
£595 + VAT
All 12 sessions, or pay monthly
You have heard what AI can do. Nobody has shown you how to make it do it.
Most small businesses have had a play with ChatGPT, written a few emails with it and quietly gone back to doing everything by hand. That is not a failure of AI, it is what happens when nobody shows you the step between a chat window and a system that actually runs part of your business. This course is that step, and by the end of it three things have changed.
Time back
The jobs nobody enjoys stop eating your week. Data entry, chasing, copying between systems and rebuilding the same report every month.
Capacity without hiring
The same team handles more work. Businesses that do this well do not shrink, they stop needing the next hire quite so soon.
Work brought back in-house
Jobs you currently pay somebody outside the business to do become things you can sensibly do yourself again.
This is not about replacing people. It is about removing the work they dislike and getting the time back to grow.
What you will know by the end
Five things, taught in plain English, with every piece of jargon explained the moment it appears.
What AI can and cannot do for a business
Where it is genuinely useful, where it will let you down, who makes the main models and how to choose between them without picking a side.
How to spot work worth automating
A method for going through your own week and separating what to delete, what to simplify and what is genuinely worth building.
How to describe what you want built
The single most valuable skill on this course. Get this right and the building itself is straightforward. Get it wrong and no amount of clever software saves you.
How software connects to software
APIs, keys, databases, hosting and domains, in plain English, with no code to write and nothing left unexplained.
How to keep it safe and affordable
What it costs to run, how to protect your keys and your data, and who keeps the thing working after the course has finished.
What you leave with
Not a folder of notes and a certificate. Each of these gets built on screen in front of you during the course, and you leave with the written brief that produced it, so you can build the same thing round your own business between sessions with help whenever you get stuck.
A system on your own domain
Not a chat window. A working system at your own web address that you and your staff log into from anywhere.
Live data from your own systems
Connected to your accounts, your suppliers or your spreadsheets, so the numbers on screen are today's numbers.
Jobs that run without you
Overnight refreshes, morning summaries and alerts that tell you when something needs attention or has not happened.
Written instructions for every build
Every system built during the course comes with the brief that produced it, so you can point it at your own data afterwards.
Learn live in person or online, during the day or evening
Same course, same live builds, same chance to ask about your own business. Pick the one that fits round your work, then choose the afternoon or the evening. There are 20 places in each.
In person, Worthing
The venue is confirmed when you book your place.
- Starts
- Wednesday 26 August 2026
- Times
- 3:00pm to 5:30pm or 6:00pm to 8:30pm Pick whichever suits you when you register
- Then
- Every Wednesday for 12 weeks, finishing Wednesday 11 November 2026
- Where
- Central Worthing, West Sussex
Online, live
Same course, same live builds, same questions. Joined from wherever you work.
- Starts
- Friday 28 August 2026
- Times
- 3:00pm to 5:30pm or 6:00pm to 8:30pm Pick whichever suits you when you register
- Then
- Every Friday for 12 weeks, finishing Friday 13 November 2026
- Where
- Live on Microsoft Teams or Zoom
The twelve sessions
Twelve weeks, fixed, so you know exactly what you are committing to. Sessions nine and ten are not decided in advance: they go to whatever the businesses in the room actually need, counted up in session two.
What AI is, who makes it, and what it costs
The four labs, the difference between plain automation and an AI step, and the two bills you will actually pay.
Finding the work, and writing the brief
Going through your own week, sorting it into four piles, and writing the brief that gets built.
APIs, keys and OpenRouter
How software talks to software, where keys live and how to keep them safe. Live data pulled in, with the cost shown on screen.
Building your first system
Three working screens, built from nothing in front of you.
Putting it on a domain with staff logins
Published to a real web address, with two logins that work.
Databases and getting your data in
A deliberately awful spreadsheet turned into working screens.
Adding AI steps to your systems
An AI step that reads, sorts and extracts, priced live so you see what it really costs.
Scheduled jobs, alerts and email
An overnight refresh, a 7am summary, and email that sends itself.
Your choice: a module this room votes for
Money and invoicing, quotes and paperwork, enquiries and follow-up, bookings, stock and suppliers, or bringing outsourced work back in.
Your choice: a module this room votes for
The second most wanted from the same list. We skip anything nobody in the room actually has.
Staff, rollout and house style
Getting the people around you to use the thing you built, which matters more than any of the technical content.
Security, cost, maintenance and handover
Keeping it safe and cheap, an AI usage policy, and your showcase.
The rest is decided by you
In session two we collect everybody's list of jobs and count up what this particular room actually has. The categories most people named get taught in sessions nine and ten. Anything only one business needs gets solved in the clinic instead, rather than in an evening that bores everybody else.
Money in and out
Invoicing, chasing, reconciling and reporting
Quotes, documents and forms
Retyping, paperwork and rebuilding the same templates
Enquiries and follow-up
Slow responses, lost leads and chasing quotes
Bookings and job diaries
Scheduling for service businesses and trades
Stock, suppliers and orders
For businesses that hold product
Bringing outsourced work back in
Jobs you currently pay somebody else to do
A job that is not written down does not get taught. Bring your list.
What an actual session looks like
Two and a half hours. Some of it you spend listening, and a good deal of it you spend talking: about your own business, the jobs eating your week, and what could realistically be handed over to software. The biggest part of the evening is the build, where a real job somebody here has named gets made on screen while you watch how it is done and ask why at every step.
What worked this week
We start with what people tried at home since last time, what worked and what did not. This turns out to be the most useful twenty minutes of the evening.
Two teaching blocks
Short, plain English, with a break in the middle. You get asked questions rather than talked at, and your own business is the example as often as anyone else's.
The build, on screen
A real job from somebody here, built from nothing to something that works while you watch and question it. You are not typing along on a laptop: your job is to understand every decision, and the brief that produced it comes home with you.
Questions, then the clinic
Questions before we finish, then twenty minutes afterwards for anyone who wants to stay with something they are stuck on at home. Leaving on time misses nothing.
Only 20 places in each session, and there is a reason for that
A room of eighty is a lecture. The whole point of this course is that when you describe a job from your own business, it gets built in front of you rather than noted down for later, and that when you go home and try it yourself, there is somebody who already knows how your business works to help you get it going. That only survives in a small room, so each session is capped at 20 people and places go in the order they are registered.
Your job gets built
Name a job from your own business and it becomes the thing built on screen that evening, not just somebody else's.
A group between sessions
Where the building actually happens. Ask when you get stuck on your own version during the week, and everyone sees the answer.
The clinic afterwards
Stay behind for twenty minutes with the thing that will not work at home. Free, no booking, first come first served.
Nothing here requires hiring us
If you would rather we came in and built it with you, that is available. Most of you will not need it.
What a place costs
One price for all 12 sessions, whether you come to Worthing or join online. Pay it in one go, or spread it across the course.
Pay in full
£595
plus VAT, for the whole 12 weeks
Or spread it
£199 + VAT a month
3 monthly payments across the course
That works out at under £50 a session for two and a half hours of live training and a system built in front of you.
Reserve your spotEvery place includes
- All 12 live sessions, two and a half hours each
- A live build in every single session
- The written brief behind every system built
- A one page summary after each session
- Handouts: the brief template, cost control, key safety
- The shared notes document, sent round every week
- The group chat between sessions
- The twenty minute clinic after every session
- Two of the twelve sessions chosen by your room
- An AI usage policy template you can actually use
One thing that is not included, and we would rather say it now
You will need your own AI accounts to build with, which come to roughly £30 to £40 a month all in. That is not paid to us, it goes to the companies whose models you use, and we show you how to put a hard ceiling on it so it can never run away with itself. Full details in the section below.
What you need before we start building
None of this is needed on the night, because the building on screen is ours to do. It is what you will want at home, once you start doing it for yourself. Nothing has to be set up before the first session either: we walk through all of it on screen at the end of session one, and everybody gets the written version afterwards, so nobody arrives at session two behind.
A paid AI plan
Around twenty dollars a month to start with, installed on the machine you would actually use. This is what lets you build.
A small amount of credit
What the systems you build spend when they call a model. Twenty dollars covers most people for months, and when it runs out, it simply stops.
Your list of repetitive jobs
Every computer job in your business that takes more than an hour a week, broken into its steps. This is what decides what we build.
A laptop, if you have one
For notes, and to get your accounts set up alongside us in session one. You are not building on it during the sessions, so it genuinely does not matter if you would rather not bring one. Everybody gets the written instructions either way.
What this course is not
Better that you know all of this before you pay than find it out in week six.
It is not a coding course
You will not read or write code. You describe what you want, and you judge whether what comes back is right. That is a different skill, and it is the one that matters.
It does not make you a developer
A developer would build something more robust. What you build here is excellent for internal systems, and not the right tool for anything critical running unattended.
It is not about cutting staff
Every technique on this course is aimed at removing work people dislike, not at removing people. We cover the conversation to have with your team, because failed internal systems are almost always socially ignored rather than technically broken.
It does not run itself forever
Anything you build needs about an hour a month of attention. Session twelve covers exactly what that hour involves and how to hand it over.
If any of that is a problem, far better to know now than in six weeks.
Taught by people who build this for a living
We are Samson Web Design, a web and software company in Worthing. We build websites, online shops, bespoke web applications and business dashboards, and we run the AI systems behind our own company: the enquiry handling, the reporting, the content, the lot.
That is the difference between this course and a slide deck about AI. Everything taught here is something we use every day in a real business, with real customers and a real bill at the end of the month. When we say a step costs a fraction of a penny, it is because we have the invoice.
Builds during the course run on a demonstration business we control, so nothing depends on your systems and we will never ask for access to your files, your accounts or your customers.
Reserve your spot
Tell us which course suits you and we will come back to you within one working day to confirm your place and answer anything you want to ask. You are not paying anything here and nothing is charged until you have spoken to us.
- Takes about a minute
- No payment now, and nothing to sign
- Places offered in the order they come in
- Only 20 per session, across four sessions a week
Would rather talk it through first? Call 01903 368559.
Questions people ask about the course
No, and most of the room will not be. You will not read or write a single line of code on this course. What you learn is how to describe what you want clearly enough that it gets built correctly, and how to judge whether what comes back is right. If you can use a website and write an email, you can do this.
No, and that is deliberate. Every session, we build a real automation on screen, for a real job that somebody in the room has put forward, and you watch the whole thing happen and question every decision as it is made. Trying to type along at the same time is how people end up staring at their own broken screen instead of following what is going on. You take away the written brief that produced it, and you build your own version for your own business between sessions, with the group chat during the week and the clinic afterwards to get you unstuck.
Only if you want one, and plenty of people do not. It is useful for notes and for setting your accounts up alongside us at the end of session one, but nothing in a session requires you to have one open. Anyone without a laptop gets the same written instructions to work from at home and is not the slightest bit behind.
A place is £595 + VAT for all 12 sessions, whether you come to Worthing or join online. You can pay it in one go, or in 3 monthly payments of £199 + VAT across the course. Nothing is charged until you have spoken to us.
You will need your own AI accounts, which come to roughly £30 to £40 a month: a paid plan of about twenty dollars that lets you build, and about twenty dollars of prepaid credit that the systems you build spend when they use a model. That money goes to the AI companies, not to us. The credit is prepaid on purpose, so when it runs out the systems simply stop rather than running up a bill.
It happens, and it is not a problem. You get the shared notes and the one page summary from every session either way, the group chat is there during the week, and the clinic after the following session is the place to catch up on anything you have missed.
Yes. Same material, same live builds, same questions from the room, same clinic afterwards, same price. It runs live on Teams or Zoom, not as recordings, so you can interrupt and ask about your own business exactly as you would in the room. The only difference is the day it runs on.
Because the builds come out of the room. When you describe a job from your own business it needs to become the thing built on screen that evening, and there has to be time for everybody's questions while it happens. In a room of eighty you would be watching somebody else's job every single week. So each session is capped at 20 and places are offered in the order they were registered.
The work happens between sessions rather than during them, which is the honest answer. In the room you are listening, questioning, arguing about whether a step needs AI at all, and describing your own jobs so they can be built. At home you take that week's brief and do the same thing for your own business, and you bring what happened back to the next session. People who do that come out of twelve weeks with several working systems. People who only turn up come out understanding how it is done, which is still worth having, but it is not the same thing.
Central Worthing, and we confirm the exact venue when you book your place. There is parking and it is reachable on foot from the town centre.
That is the first question in most rooms, so it gets raised on the first night rather than avoided. The aim is capacity, not headcount: the freed-up time goes into faster responses, work you currently turn away, and jobs you currently pay somebody outside the business to do. Businesses that use this well tend not to shrink, they stop needing the next hire quite so soon. Session eleven covers the conversation to have with your team, and that matters more than any of the technical content.
Tell us before the course starts and you get your money back, no argument. After that, come and talk to us. We would rather sort out whatever is not working than have somebody sitting through eleven more weeks unhappy.
Yes, that is our day job. We build websites, bespoke web applications and business dashboards for companies who would rather not build it themselves. Nothing on the course requires you to hire us, and most people who take it will not need to, but the option is there if you would rather we came in and did it with you.
The next course starts Wednesday 26 August 2026
Twelve weeks, 20 places a session, in Worthing or online. Reserve your spot and we will come back to you within a working day.