Day One Diaries

Jesse Cummins

Found Kitchens & Joinery  ·  June 2026

Jesse was wearing every hat in his business, with a hundred things competing for his attention. He knew AI mattered — he could see people all around him accelerating with it — but with so much to prioritise, he simply did not know where to begin.

The situation

A lot of great work, sitting unused.

Over the years, Jesse had quietly built all sorts of processes, operational systems and sales and marketing collateral — much of it genuinely detailed, but a lot of it never seeing the light of day.

He wanted to get on the front foot with AI and learn it quickly, so he could clean things up and build — and actually implement — new systems and processes fast.

How we designed the day

Start with the real problem, not the theory.

Two weeks earlier I ran a discovery call with Jesse, and he shared a huge amount about his business. The thing I picked up on most was a real need to better qualify his inbound leads — that, and a stack of software subscriptions, maybe half of which were genuinely being used or adding value.

So we built the day around two things: getting Jesse genuinely confident and self-sufficient with AI in the morning, then putting it straight to work on a real problem in the afternoon.

What we did — hour by hour

Foundations in the morning. Building by the afternoon.

  1. 1

    Set up ChatGPT and Claude

    Got both up and running, side by side, so Jesse could see the landscape and where each fits.

  2. 2

    Instructions inside Projects

    Set up Claude Projects with standing instructions — the engine room that makes every chat smarter.

  3. 3

    Built an 'About Me' brief — AI-generated

    Let Claude write its own instructions from a rough draft, then refined it. The AI optimising its own brief.

  4. 4

    Connected Mail, Calendar and Drive

    Plugged Claude into Jesse's own world. We even troubleshooted live on his iPhone using screenshots — which leads to the rule of the day…

  5. 5

    Claude Design — a new logo test run

    A quick, fun win to show what's possible visually.

  6. 6

    Started a 3-year business strategy

    Used Claude to begin shaping the bigger picture — loading Jesse's own documents in via the Drive connection so it worked from his real context.

  7. 7

    2:00pm — into Claude Code

    About four and a half hours in, Jesse was confident and ready to build. We moved into Claude Code to create his first real tool.

  8. 8

    5:30pm — built, shipped and live

    The first code project kicked off in GitHub at 3:03pm. By 5:30pm his very own tool — a lead enquiry form, aimed squarely at his number-one need of qualifying inbound leads — was built, deployed and running live, ready to use the very next morning.

When you get stuck, the rule of the day: "Just ask it." Claude will talk you through almost anything — including its own setup.

The tool we built needed a proper little stack — all set up on the day:

GitHub — where the project lives Resend — email notifications Vercel — hosting Supabase — database & dashboard
The end-of-day whiteboard showing everything covered on Day One

The end-of-day whiteboard — everything we covered.

How Jesse felt afterwards

Supercharged — and holding a tool that works.

Jesse was supercharged. We hit a few first-time roadblocks in the setup — GitHub, Vercel, Supabase and Resend (the tool we chose needed all four) — but those are one-off hurdles he will not face again.

"I felt really good about the day and learnt SOOOO much — I didn't think we would cover off on so many things in the one day together. I was absolutely stoked to have my first functional and valuable tool to go away and implement ASAP. Mark was great; he didn't end the day until we had it ready, and was even willing to help me tie off a few more items the following day."

— Jesse Cummins, Found Kitchens & Joinery
Mark Calabro with Jesse Cummins at the end of Day One

Mark with Jesse at the end of Day One.

Would Jesse recommend AI Ignite?

"Yes, definitely! This is perfect for anyone like me who is so busy. Spending a day out of my business learning the theory of this would have frustrated me even more — I'd have to go back and then find time in my business to implement it."

— Jesse Cummins
The parking lot

The bigger projects — now well within reach.

Not everything belongs in one day, so we deliberately "parked" the bigger projects for another time:

Here is the real shift, though: these are no longer daunting unknowns sitting on a someday list. Jesse now has the tools, the foundations and — most importantly — the confidence to power through them himself, with AI working alongside him every step of the way.

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