BR Academy

AI for Business Builders: LLMs, Prompting, Agents and Automation

Learn to build AI automations, agents, and workflows without hiring engineers. Ship faster, cut costs, scale your team.

Beginner23 lessons6 hoursCertificate

About this course

You’re running a small company. Your team is drowning in repetitive work-lead scoring, email drafts, customer support tickets, research-and you can’t afford to hire engineers.

AI can do this work. But LLMs are confusing. Which model? How much will it cost? How do you actually build something that works?

AI for Business Builders is a practical operating course for founders and operators. You’ll learn how LLMs work (enough to be dangerous), write prompts that reliably produce output, build automations with Zapier and Make, deploy AI agents that do research and outreach, and establish guardrails that keep your data safe.

The course moves through six modules: how LLMs actually work (tokens, context, cost trade-offs), prompt engineering patterns that hold up under real use (chain-of-thought, few-shot, structured JSON output), no-code automations connecting LLMs to your CRM, email, and Slack via Zapier and Make, AI agents that do research, lead qualification, and customer support, evaluation and guardrails (accuracy, bias, cost monitoring, human-in-the-loop review, GDPR and compliance), and a capstone where you write your own AI operating plan.

By the end, you’ll have a 2-3 page AI operating plan for your company: which tasks to automate, which tools and models to use, how to measure ROI, and how to keep data private and compliant as you scale. Most students ship their first automation within a week, and the course pays for itself in 1-2 weeks of automation savings.

Who this is for:
– Founders and operators (non-technical) who run 1-20 person companies
– Marketers and sales leaders who want to automate outreach and lead scoring
– Anyone who wants to reduce manual work without learning to code deeply

What you’ll do:
– Evaluate LLMs by cost, speed, and capability
– Write prompts using proven patterns (chain-of-thought, few-shot, structured output)
– Build a no-code automation connecting LLMs to your CRM, email, or Slack
– Deploy an AI agent for research, qualification, or support
– Audit data privacy and compliance for AI workflows
– Write an AI operating plan for your company

Prerequisites: None. You don’t need to code. Bring a task you want to automate. Pass all module quizzes (70%+) and submit a capstone that scores 3+ on the rubric to earn your certificate.

What you will be able to do

Can explain how LLMs work (tokens, context, temperature, cost trade-offs) well enough to choose the right model for a task
Can write prompts that reliably produce usable output using proven patterns (chain-of-thought, few-shot, role-play, structured output)
Can build a no-code automation (Zapier/Make workflow) that connects LLMs to your CRM, email, or Slack
Can deploy an AI agent (using OpenAI Assistants, Claude API, or Anthropic Workbench) to do research, lead qualification, or customer support
Can evaluate AI outputs for accuracy, bias, and cost; set up monitoring and human review loops
Can audit data privacy, compliance (GDPR, SOC 2), and security for AI workflows
Can write an AI operating plan for your company: which tasks to automate, which tools to use, and how to measure ROI

Curriculum 6 modules · 23 lessons

1How LLMs Work (and Why It Matters)4 lessons

How LLMs work: tokens, training, context windows Preview15 min
Model costs, speed, and quality: GPT-4, Claude, Llama 15 min
Choosing the right model for your task 15 min
What LLMs can't do: hallucinations, reasoning, real-time data 15 min

2Prompt Engineering That Works5 lessons

Prompt structure: role, task, context, format 15 min
Chain-of-thought and step-by-step reasoning 15 min
Few-shot prompting: teaching by example 15 min
Structured output: JSON, XML, and parsing 15 min
Testing and iterating prompts: metrics that matter 15 min

3No-Code Automations (Zapier, Make, Integrations)4 lessons

Zapier and Make: building workflows without code 15 min
Connecting Claude/GPT to your CRM: lead scoring, follow-ups 15 min
Email and Slack automations: drafting, routing, summaries 15 min
Error handling, retries, and monitoring workflows 15 min

4AI Agents That Do Work4 lessons

What are AI agents? Tools, memory, loops 15 min
Building a research agent: web search, summarization, reporting 15 min
Lead qualification and outreach agents 15 min
Customer support agents: FAQ, escalation, handoff 15 min

5Evaluation, Guardrails, and Safety4 lessons

Evaluating accuracy, bias, and hallucinations 15 min
Monitoring costs and optimizing spend 15 min
Human review loops: when and how to add them 15 min
Data privacy, GDPR, and compliance for AI workflows 15 min

6Building Your AI Operating Plan (Capstone)2 lessons

Audit your company: which tasks to automate 15 min
Capstone project: write your AI operating plan 30 min

Taught by Block Relations

Research & Education · Built for a founder, operator, or marketer (non-technical) who runs a small company (1-20 people), ships products, and wants to reduce manual work through AI-without learning to code deeply. They have $500-$5K/month to spend on tools and need to ship results in weeks, not months.