Real answers to the questions people actually ask before their first session, their first workshop, or their first Claude Cowork build.
Local, hands-on training for small businesses and teams across OC.
Yes. Susan Trudeau Francis offers hands-on AI training right here in Newport Beach and across Orange County. One-on-one coaching sessions happen at your location or locally in the Corona del Mar and Newport Beach area. Small group workshops are held at venues like HanaHaus in Lido Marina Plaza and Newport Beach Public Library on Avocado Avenue. Team training can be scheduled at your office anywhere in OC, from Irvine and Costa Mesa to Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, and beyond.
Online courses teach you about AI in general. In-person training with Susan teaches you how to use AI on your actual work. You bring your real business problems, your real tools, and your real workflows to the session. Susan works with you side by side to set things up, troubleshoot in real time, and make sure you leave with skills you can use that same day. You'll also learn how to build AI employees in Claude Cowork, one of the biggest trends in small business right now. These are AI agents that handle real tasks on a schedule, like processing leads, drafting reports, or managing follow-ups, so you're not just learning AI, you're building systems that work for you while you sleep. There's no substitute for having an expert in the room who can see your screen and walk you through it.
Yes. Team training is one of the most popular options. Susan comes to your office anywhere in Orange County and builds a custom session around your team's roles, tools, and goals. Half-day and full-day options are available. She'll find every repeatable task your team does, the ones they hate doing but that make the business money, and show them how to automate those workflows with AI. Teams leave knowing how to use AI on the tasks that eat their day, and they start saving real time the same week. Past team trainings have been held in Newport Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, and across the OC area.
Susan works with small businesses and professionals across all industries in Newport Beach and Orange County. She specializes in service businesses: med spas, dental offices, real estate teams, property managers, insurance agencies, mortgage brokers, wealth managers, law firms, accounting practices, wellness practitioners, chiropractors, therapists, home service companies (plumbers, electricians, HVAC, landscapers, contractors), restaurants, salons, fitness studios, coaches, consultants, marketing agencies, interior designers, photographers, and solo entrepreneurs. If your work involves anything you do on a computer, from email and scheduling to invoicing, client communication, proposals, follow-ups, reporting, or data entry, those tasks can be automated with AI. If it's repetitive and runs your business, Susan can teach you how to hand it to AI.
The AI tool that turns you from a question-asker into a work-delegator.
Claude Cowork is a powerful AI workspace from Anthropic that goes far beyond chatting with AI. Instead of copying and pasting between a chat window and your work, Cowork reads your files, connects to your tools (Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, Slack, and more), and completes multi-step tasks on your behalf. It can organize files, draft reports from raw data, automate weekly summaries, and run scheduled tasks while you focus on other things. Learning Claude Cowork means learning how to delegate real work to AI, not just ask it questions.
ChatGPT is a conversational AI that works inside a chat window. You type a question, get an answer, and copy it somewhere else. Claude Cowork works directly on your computer, reading and writing your actual files, connecting to your business tools, and completing multi-step tasks without you having to copy and paste anything. Think of ChatGPT as asking a colleague a question. Think of Claude Cowork as handing a colleague a project and getting back finished work. Susan trains on both tools and helps you understand when to use which one.
Claude Cowork can handle a wide range of business tasks: drafting and formatting documents and reports, organizing and renaming files, researching and synthesizing information from multiple sources, creating spreadsheets and presentations, drafting emails and follow-ups, processing data exports, building content calendars, automating weekly or monthly reports on a schedule, and connecting to tools like Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, and Slack to work across your existing systems. It's especially powerful for tasks that are time-consuming but not complex, the kind of work that eats your day without moving your business forward.
Skills are reusable instruction sets that teach Claude Cowork how to handle specific tasks for your business. Think of them as recipes. You create a skill once, describing what you want done and how you want it done, and then you can trigger it anytime with a simple command. For example, you might build a skill that drafts your weekly client update, one that processes incoming leads, or one that turns meeting notes into action items. Skills can also be scheduled to run automatically. Susan teaches you how to build, test, and refine skills so Claude Cowork works the way you work.
Yes. Claude Cowork connects to many of the tools small businesses already use, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Notion, Slack, and more through built-in connectors. It can also connect to additional services through MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations. This means Claude can read your emails, check your calendar, pull files from your Drive, update your Notion workspace, and work across all of these tools in a single task, without you copying and pasting between apps.
You'll need a paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise) and the Claude Desktop app on your Mac or Windows computer. From there, you enable Cowork in settings, grant access to a folder on your computer, and connect the tools you already use like Gmail, Google Drive, or Notion. The first-time setup downloads a small virtual machine that takes a few minutes. Susan's training walks you through the entire setup, including configuring global instructions, folder structure, and the context files that make Cowork work like a team member who already knows your business.
The questions everyone has before their first session.
Not at all. Most of Susan's students have zero tech background. If you can type an email and use a web browser, you can learn AI. The training is designed for real people doing real work, not engineers or developers. No coding required, no technical jargon. You'll be using AI tools on your actual business tasks by the end of your first session.
If you've ever thought "I should probably learn this AI stuff," you're ready. There's no prerequisite. You don't need to have used AI before, and you don't need to understand how it works. The only thing you need is a willingness to try something new. Susan's training meets you where you are, whether that's never having opened ChatGPT or already using AI and wanting to go deeper with Claude Cowork and automation.
Susan teaches Claude (including Claude Cowork, Claude Chat, and Claude Projects), ChatGPT (including Custom GPTs), and the broader AI ecosystem including automation tools like n8n and Make.com. She's one of a handful of trainers globally who is licensed through an OpenAI training partner and has deep expertise across both the Claude and ChatGPT platforms. Workshops cover everything from AI foundations for beginners to advanced topics like building AI agents, prompt engineering, and workflow automation.
Yes, that's the whole point. Susan's training teaches you to build and manage your own AI systems so you're never dependent on a consultant. You'll learn to create Claude Cowork skills, set up scheduled tasks, connect your business tools, and build workflows that run on their own. Most students are building their own automations by the end of their second or third session.
What to expect and what it costs.
One-on-one coaching is $499 per hour, with sessions tailored to your specific business and goals. Small group workshops are $599 per person for a two-hour hands-on session with up to 10 people. Team training is custom-priced based on your team size, location, and goals. Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute strategy call so you can see if it's the right fit before committing anything.
It's a 30-minute conversation, not a sales pitch. You tell Susan about your work, your business, and where you think AI might help. She'll ask a few questions, share what she'd recommend, and map out a starting point. If it makes sense to work together, she'll explain your options. If it doesn't, she'll tell you that too. No pressure, no obligation, no homework beforehand. Just a conversation about what's possible. Book yours here.
How AI can work for your business around the clock.
An AI employee is an AI system that handles specific business tasks the way a dedicated team member would. This could be an AI voice receptionist that answers every call in under two seconds, an AI chatbot that handles customer questions 24/7, or an AI agent built in Claude Cowork that automates weekly reports, processes data, manages email follow-ups, or runs entire workflows on a schedule. Unlike a human hire, AI employees work around the clock, never call in sick, and scale without additional overhead.
AI handles the busywork so your team can focus on the work that requires human judgment, creativity, and relationships. Think of it as giving every person on your team a capable assistant. The work still needs human oversight: someone to review, approve, and add the personal touch. Most businesses that adopt AI see their people become more productive, not redundant. The real risk isn't that AI will replace your team. It's that businesses using AI will outpace those that aren't.
The fastest way to figure out what AI can do for your specific work is a conversation. Book a free 30-minute strategy call and get real answers, not a sales pitch.