Use AI to plan your last quarter (a 30-minute prompt walkthrough)

September has a way of sneaking up. One minute you're doing the winter sport run, the next someone mentions Christmas trading hours and your stomach does a small flip. The last quarter of the year is the busiest stretch for a lot of small businesses, the quietest for others, and badly planned for most of us either way.

This year, try something different. Set aside 30 minutes, open ChatGPT or Claude, and walk through the five prompts below in order. You'll finish with a written plan for October to December that fits your actual business, because you built it around your real situation instead of someone else's template.

A quick note before you start. The prompts work in either tool. Copy them as written and fill in the square brackets. Rough notes beat polished ones here, because rough notes tend to contain the true stuff.

Step 1: Give it the lay of the land (5 minutes)

The main reason AI gives generic advice is that it knows nothing about you. Fix that first.

I run a [type of business] in [town or suburb]. My customers are mostly [who they are]. The last three months of the year are usually [flat out / dead quiet / a bit of both] for me because [reason]. I want to plan October to December properly this year instead of winging it. Before you help me plan, ask me five questions, one at a time, that you'd need answered first.

Answer the questions honestly, including the awkward ones about money and time. As we found writing "I Feel Smarter, Not Dumber" (slug unconfirmed — verify at upload), the thinking stays yours. The tool just asks better questions than a blank page does.

Step 2: Look backwards before you look forwards (5 minutes)

You already have the best planning data there is: what actually happened this year. Dump it in, dot points and all.

Here's what happened in my business this year so far: [paste rough notes: what sold, what flopped, busy periods, quiet patches, anything you tried]. What patterns do you see, and what do they suggest I should do more of, less of, or differently in October to December?

Read the answer with your own knowledge switched on. It will spot some patterns you already knew and, usually, one or two you'd stopped noticing.

Step 3: Pick one goal, not seven (5 minutes)

Most quarterly plans die of ambition. This prompt forces a short list.

Based on everything above, suggest three realistic goals for my last quarter: one for revenue, one for customers, and one for getting some of my time back. For each one, tell me what would have to be true by Christmas for me to call it a win.

Pick the single goal that matters most. The other two can wait for the new year, and your plan will be better for it.

Step 4: Build the month-by-month plan (10 minutes)

Now the part you'd normally put off for a rainy Sunday.

I'm choosing this goal: [paste it]. Build me a month-by-month plan for October, November and December to get there. Keep each month to three or four actions in plain language. Assume I have about [number] hours a week for this on top of running the business, and that December falls apart after [date] because [school holidays / Christmas rush / shutdown].

That last sentence matters. A plan that pretends December is a normal month isn't a plan, it's a wish.

Step 5: Turn it into a Monday-morning page (5 minutes)

A plan you never look at again is just a nicely formatted guilt trip.

Turn that plan into a simple weekly checklist I can glance at every Monday morning. One page, plain language. If any week has more than three things on it, cut it back to the three that matter most.

Print it, stick it near the kettle, and you're done. Thirty minutes, one goal, twelve weeks mapped.

One last thing before you act on any of it: check the output against what you know. AI is confident even when it's wrong, so sanity-check any numbers and dates it hands back, the same habit we bang on about in "Safe Setup" (slug unconfirmed). These five prompts also lean on the same reusable habits from "The Only ~10 AI Skills a Small Business Actually Needs" (slug unconfirmed), so if the walkthrough felt useful, that's the deeper version.

If you'd rather grab prompts like these ready to go, that's exactly what the Small Biz Prompt Shop is for: tested prompts for real small business jobs, written in plain English. Have a look at the shop here: