Teardown No. 56 · Local service

Day 0, 3 and 10: the follow-up and post-shoot routine Greg Harding built for his one-person studio

Greg Harding runs Greg Harding Photography + Video on his own. For years the admin ate into his shoot days. He has now been using Claude as an office assistant for just over two months. After each job he runs a five-part prompt he calls the Wrap Sheet. It turns one job into a LinkedIn post, Instagram captions, a case study blog post and a client follow-up email, and he reads and approves each one. It also nudges him to ask for a Google Business Profile review while the job is fresh. Around that he has built: - research on new enquiries - a CRM in Gmail and a Google Sheet that sends follow-ups on its own - a morning briefing that shows his cash position from Xero - scheduled posts to his Google Business Profile His verdict on time saved: "Roughly broke even so far."

Greg HardingVerified Oct 25, 2026Markdown copy

The problem

He has no studio manager, no account handler and nobody else answering the phone. “Every enquiry, quote, invoice chase and follow-up email lands on my desk right alongside the actual photography and video work.”

He aims for three shoot days and two office days a week. Admin, invoicing and chasing people “never got their own block.” He describes the result as “a week that should have had three shoot days and two office days had somehow flipped.”

He wanted help with “the repetitive scaffolding,” but did not want it “publishing copy I hadn’t read.”

The blueprint (as he describes it)

  1. Audit what you already have. On day one Claude did not build anything. It reviewed his existing assets and found work he had paid for but was not using:

    • a sector portfolio that had never gone out in a sales response
    • published work never cited in a pitch
    • client reviews with no quotes pulled into an email
    • years of finished films with no way for a prospect to find the right ones for their sector

    The instruction that came back: “use what you already have before producing anything new.”

  2. Run a Wrap Sheet after every job. The Wrap Sheet is a five-part prompt that covers:

    • the brief
    • the project’s story
    • the images
    • any video
    • a quick summary of how the job went

    From that one input he gets a LinkedIn post, Instagram captions, a case study blog post and a client follow-up email. All of them are “drafted and waiting for me to read, edit and approve.”

  3. Ask for the review while it is fresh. The Wrap Sheet also nudges him to ask for a Google Business Profile review while the job is still fresh, “rather than three weeks later when it’s gone cold.”

  4. Research new enquiries first. Each new enquiry gets a bit of research on the company, roughly what sector and scale it is, and “a first read on whether it’s worth chasing hard or handling at arm’s length.” This happens before he has properly opened the email.

  5. Build the CRM from scratch in Gmail and a Google Sheet. He built it with Claude rather than adapting an off-the-shelf tool.

    • Enquiries and jobs run through Gmail and the “GHP+V Management Dashboard.” The sheet has tabs for clients, jobs, live enquiries, archived enquiries and completed work.
    • Claude drafts quotes, updates rows and keeps notes current.
    • A signed booking agreement goes out before he holds a date for anyone.
    • A deposit is requested automatically once a job crosses a certain size or involves travel.

  6. Let follow-ups fire on their own. “Enquiry and aftercare follow-ups (day 0, 3 and 10 nudges) fire off on their own.” He adds that “A check every couple of hours through the week keeps it all in sync.”

  7. Start the day with a briefing. Every morning a short briefing he calls the Life Dashboard shows where his cash sits, using Xero. It also flags anything that looks obviously off.

  8. Put Google Business Profile posts on a schedule. He has “a routine that posts to my Google Business Profile on a schedule.” Before this, keeping the profile updated was “the thing I always meant to keep on top of.”

  9. Give Claude a second brain. This step is from Part 2. Through the Google Drive connection he keeps a wiki covering:

    • standard operating procedures
    • rate decisions
    • client and tool notes
    • open questions

    Because of the wiki, every Claude session starts out knowing how the business runs. It took “a solid two to three days of focused work to build it out to the point where I trusted it.”

  10. Personalise the skills and remove the ones that don’t fit. This step is also from Part 2.

    • He built a brand voice skill from a full review of his site and YouTube channel. Its rules: write in first person and never say “we”; never use a bare superlative without a real proof point; avoid the stock phrasing that makes AI-drafted copy sound AI-drafted.
    • He had also installed a finance skill that turned out to be built for US companies, with conventions that do not hold for a UK sole trader.
    • He asked Claude to review everything he had installed. After that review he disabled and uninstalled a handful of skills, including the finance one.

Stated results

  • Time: “Roughly broke even so far.” He won’t “call it a clear win yet.” He expects that to change because the setup cost was one-off and “the weekly saving isn’t.”
  • Most useful piece: he names the second brain wiki, “ahead of the content workflow, the CRM.”
  • Traffic: he reports growth in organic sessions and in referral traffic from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude, but gives no figures.
  • Business results: none stated. There are no counts of posts published, enquiries handled, bookings or revenue.

Caveats

  • This is his own blog on his business website. It is Part 1 of a three-part series. Part 2 is used here as a secondary source. Part 3, which covers what went wrong, was not in the source text.
  • The source does not sell a product, course or kit. Claude is named throughout, and no partnership is stated.
  • He is just over two months in, having started at the beginning of July. He built it during a quiet summer spell.
  • His position is that nothing publishes without his read: he did not want it “publishing copy I hadn’t read.” The Wrap Sheet outputs are drafts he approves. However, the source does not say whether he reviews the automatic day 0, 3 and 10 follow-ups or the scheduled Google Business Profile posts before they go out.
  • The time saving is his own estimate, and he does not give hours.
  • Handles: LinkedIn greg-harding-photographer and Instagram @gregharding (verified 2026-10-25: linked from gregharding.co.uk). YouTube @greghardingphotovideo and Vimeo ghpv (linked from his site). Not tagged: gregharding.bsky.social (no name or bio) and TikTok @gregharding (nothing links it to him); no X or Threads account found.

Sources

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