“Masterclass” is one of those words that can mean anything from a genuinely useful workshop to four hours of someone else’s slides. So before you give up a working day, even a free one, you deserve to know exactly what you’re signing up for.

Here’s the honest, hour-by-hour version of what happens at our AI Automation Masterclass in Manchester.

First, the one question everyone asks

“Is it technical? Because I’m not.”

No. And this isn’t the reassuring-brochure version of no: the whole event is designed on the assumption that you run a business and have never written a line of code. Everything is explained in plain English. The tools we use are the point-and-click kind. If you can use email and a spreadsheet, you have every skill the day requires.

What you do need: a laptop (with its charger), and a job in your business you’re sick of doing. That’s the entire kit list.

10:00 · Arrive and meet the room

Coffee and name badges at the GM Digital Security Hub in Heron House, two minutes’ walk from St Peter’s Square tram. The room is capped at 50 seats, and it fills with Manchester business owners: trades, agencies, shops, professional services. That mix is deliberate. The person next to you has probably already automated something you’re struggling with, and vice versa.

10:30 · Live demos: automation doing real work

We’re Sam, Adam and Nelson. Sam and Adam build AI products that real businesses use every day (QS Quoter, AGMM Roof Quotes, and TradeDay), and this session is where we show you automation running in the wild, not in a slide deck.

You’ll see real systems doing real jobs: quoting, follow-ups, admin, missed-call handling. And you’ll see the unglamorous parts too: what these things cost to run, where they fall over, and which popular tools we think aren’t worth your money. The point of this hour isn’t to impress you. It’s to recalibrate what you think “AI for business” actually means, using working examples instead of hype.

11:15 · The workshop: build one for your business

This is the heart of the day, and it’s why you brought the laptop.

You pick one task from your own business (chasing invoices, answering repeat enquiries, turning site notes into quotes, booking follow-ups), and you build the automation for it, live, with us walking the room. Not a demo version. Not a template you’ll customise later and never touch again. A working automation, connected to your actual business, running before lunch.

Stuck is fine; stuck is expected. There are three of us moving around the room for exactly that reason. The people who get the most out of this session are usually the ones who arrive certain they’ll be the person who can’t do it.

13:00 · Your implementation plan

Building one automation is satisfying. Knowing what to build next is what changes your week.

In this session you map your own business: where the wasted hours actually are (most owners find 5–10+ a week once they look properly), which tasks are worth automating in what order, which no-code tools fit each one, and, just as useful, which jobs you should leave human. You leave with a written plan specific to your business. Something you can open on Monday morning and act on, not a souvenir.

14:00 · Lunch and connections

Food’s on us, and the last hour is deliberately unstructured. Every event like this, the same thing happens: the conversations over lunch turn out to be worth as much as the sessions. Fifty local business owners who’ve just spent the morning solving the same category of problem is a genuinely useful room to be in.

By 15:00 you’re done. Half a day, out the door with working automations and a plan: the whole promise in one sentence.

The practical details

  • When: The first masterclass is Thursday 13 August, 10:00–15:00. We’re running these regularly after that, not on a fixed monthly slot, so check the events page for the next date.
  • Where: GM Digital Security Hub, Heron House, 47 Lloyd St, Manchester M2 5LE. Two minutes from St Peter’s Square tram; there’s no on-site parking, so the tram genuinely is the easy option.
  • Cost: Tickets are normally £20. This one’s free, a limited-time offer to launch the series. Loyalty discounts for returning attendees, and a referral discount when you bring another business owner.
  • Seats: Capped at 50. That’s a real cap: it’s a working session, not a lecture, and the format breaks past that size.
  • Bring: A laptop, a charger, and one task you’d pay to never do again.

Who shouldn’t come

Straight answer: if you’re a developer looking for a technical deep-dive, this isn’t it: you’ll be bored by design. And if you want someone to promise that AI will run your entire business while you sit on a beach, we’ll be the wrong hosts, because we won’t say it.

But if you run a business, you’re losing hours every week to work a machine should be doing, and you’d rather build the fix than read about it, this is exactly your afternoon.

Reserve your seat for 13 August. It’s free, there are 50 of them, and when they’re gone, that’s the room full.