I built a business using only Claude. Here's what happened.

For a while I tried to build my own thing to compete with Claude. A desktop app. A command line tool. A web app I built from scratch that lasted about two or three days before the bugs and problems piled up.

Then it hit me. Why am I trying to compete with a billion-dollar company's tool when I can just make that tool better for business?

When I recorded this in March, that's exactly what I had done. I built my whole business with Claude, then built a layer on top of it so Claude knows it's working for a business. Let me show you what that looked like, and what it means for you.

Claude is general purpose. Your business is not.

Here's the problem I kept running into. A lot of people have Claude Code and don't know what to do with it. All the business stuff, you have to customize yourself. Build it from scratch. You basically have to be a developer.

But most businesses only need a handful of things:

• Google Workspace, for email, docs and sheets
• Something to send email and check email
• Something to post to social media for you
• A website people can find

The big AI companies won't niche down that far. They want to appeal to everybody. I said back then they might come out with a "Claude business" one day, and that it would be generic. In May, Anthropic launched Claude for Small Business. So there you go.

So I built the layer myself. Back then it was called Kiyomi Max: a slash command inside Claude Code. Type it, and Claude loads up already knowing it's running a business.

Memory is the difference

The first thing you notice is it said "Hey, Richard." I didn't type anything. It knew me.

Out of the box, Claude remembers things through files. That's why your Claude always forgets things. I gave it persistent memory, so when it loaded, it showed me the clients I was working with, my open loops, and where revenue stood against what I was aiming for each month. Then it asked, what are we working on today?

That's the difference between a chatbot and something that works your business. It knows you.

One prompt, one plumber

I'd talked to a plumber, a barber, and an enterprise business in the last day or so. I went with the plumber, because people need to get into the trades and plumbers need the basics: a simple website, invoices, email.

So I made up a client. Cowboy Plumbers, a one-man company in the Atlanta area. I typed, in plain language with my atrocious spelling, that he needs a simple but very nice-looking website where potential clients can find him, see his services and charges, and fill out a form to get a quote.

It built it. Services, pricing, why us, get a free quote. Was it perfect? No. It wrote a tagline I didn't like at all, "Honest plumbing, no bull." He'd need to change that. But the page was there, and it looked good.

Then I asked for an invoice. A sample job: he came out and snaked my shower drain. Make a nice professional invoice PDF and put it on my desktop. Done. Then I said, email that invoice to me. Regular Claude can't just send an email. This could, because it was connected. I checked my inbox and there it was. "Please find your attached invoice from Cowboy Plumbers."

Website, invoice, email sent. Plain language. No code.

It went everywhere Claude went

The other piece was a connector, an MCP server, so the same tools showed up inside claude.ai and the Claude desktop app, not just Claude Code.

On claude.ai I asked it to check the last email I got and tell me about it. It loaded the tools and told me: an invoice from Cowboy Plumbers for shower drain snaking. On Claude Desktop I asked it to post a tweet that said "Test." I went to my X profile. There it was.

And because it lived inside Claude Code, it worked on Windows too. Wherever Claude Code runs, it runs. Before that I'd been running things through a Telegram bot that had a whole lot of problems and errors. Building on the foundation fixed that.

What I'd tell you about the journey

Somebody commented that I change things all the time. Fair. In a little over a month I went through a lot of versions. But that's the journey of a one-person startup, and I'd rather be upfront about it. Apple made a lot of changes too. You build, you learn, you move.

The lesson I'd keep is simple. Don't fight the foundation. Build on it. Claude is the engine. Your business knowledge, your memory, your connections, that's what goes on top.

What this means for you

You don't need a custom product to do what I did for that plumber. You need Claude, the right connections, and somebody to show you how to set it up around your business.

That's what the RMDW Platform is for. It teaches AI starting with Claude, with lessons built around your own business from a 10-minute assessment, new lessons every month, and a monthly group Q&A with the RMDW team.

Then go get your first website, your first invoice and your first email out the door. One prompt at a time.