Your first AI employee.
A field manual for hiring your first AI employee. The same playbook from the workshop, written down so you can stand one up at your own pace.
No code. No prerequisites. Just a method — work unit → role → workflow → asset — and the vocabulary to describe what you want clearly enough that the AI does the right thing the first time.
First
AI
Employee
Owners. Operators. Builders.
You don't need to be technical. You need to be willing to write down what you want, in plain English, and then hand it off.
A small-business owner
Drowning in admin and lead follow-up. Can't afford another full-time hire. You'll learn how to stand up an AI that handles the work without managing it like a person.
A solo operator
Wearing every hat and tired of it. The book shows you how to define the role you wish you could hire, then put an AI in it — at $20/month instead of $4,000.
A team lead
Curious about AI but burned by the hype. The DOE method gives you a sober, practical framework you can hand to your team and say: "build one of these by Friday."
The DOE method.
One framework — Directive, Orchestration, Execution — running through every chapter. Build any AI hire by following the same three-step spine.
Decide the job.
What outcome do you want? In your words. What good looks like, what bad looks like, and what the AI is allowed to do on its own. The clearer your directive, the cleaner the work that comes back.
Wire it to the work.
Connect the AI to your accounts and tools — email, calendar, social, your CMS — so it can actually act. The book covers role specs, escalation rules, and a sample guardrail sheet.
Let it run.
Watch it work, audit the output, tune the directive. The book ends with a chapter on how to evaluate whether your AI hire is actually pulling its weight — and what to change if it's not.
Not another AI book.
Three things this book has that most AI books don't.
Real specs you can copy
A fully written role spec for a Lead Follow-Up Assistant — name, owns, doesn't own, inputs, outputs, prompt, escalation rules, success metric. Not theory. Lift it and run.
Receipts and stories
Real workshop attendees. Real Russellville businesses. The $26K-in-2-days story, the contractor who replaced his $2,200/month social manager, the AI that calls Taco Villa.
Plain English
Written the way Tal teaches — like a mechanic with the hood up. No jargon. If a term is invented (work unit, bleeding work, DOE), it's defined the first time it shows up and never gets fancy.
Be the first to know when it ships.
The book's in final revision. When it goes live, the people on this list hear first — plus a lower launch-week price.