Our FU Café manager asked: "Frank, can you create some instruction papers for cocktails? With photos? Staff keeps asking about recipes."
Classic request. Print recipe cards, laminate them, done.
But the moment someone asks me to make "papers," my brain goes: there is definitely a better way.
- Hours in Canva designing printable cards
- Sticky within a week
- Reprinting every time a recipe changes
- Cards get torn, lost, or ignored
- Interactive cocktail database
- Search by ingredient, filter by difficulty
- Step-by-step instructions on any device
- Updates instantly, never gets damaged
Instead of opening Canva, I asked Claude to help me build a proper solution. Fed an enhanced prompt plus our menu to Genspark.ai.
One hour later:
The manager's reaction: "This is exactly what we needed. How long did this take?" One hour. "Seriously?"
"Most business owners are solving 2024 problems with 1990s solutions because that's what they can picture."
"Make papers" is easy to visualise. "Build a custom database" sounds complicated. But what is actually complicated? Printing, reprinting, updating, and replacing paper systems that get damaged immediately.
This pattern repeats across all my businesses:
The difference between businesses using AI tools and businesses making laminated cards is not technical knowledge. It is just whether they think to ask a different question.
Next time someone asks you to "make papers," pause. Ask these three questions first:
The reframe before you build
What are they actually trying to accomplish? Not what they asked for, but the underlying need.
What would the ideal solution look like if there were no constraints?
Can we just build that instead? The tools exist right now.
Anyone else building real solutions when people ask for paperwork?