Anthony Whitaker

I built The Mid-Market AI Playbook 2026 with Claude.

A guide for operations leaders who want to understand how to use AI to structure, accelerate, and run their business without a 12-month consulting project that ends in a binder.

Because in 2026, the job of running a mid-market company is changing fast.

The leaders who win won't be the ones who used AI occasionally.

They'll be the ones who built real AI-augmented operations.

It's no longer just about running:

→ Sales and pipeline
→ Service delivery
→ Finance and reporting
→ Ops and supply
→ Your team's capacity

The real question is: How do you build an AI-augmented operation that your board can actually see results from?

Not to replace your team.

But to help them move faster, cut the busywork, catch problems earlier, and turn the same headcount into more output.

In this guide, I cover:

→ How the operator's role is changing with AI
→ Where AI delivers real ROI in mid-market (and where it's just hype)
→ How to find the one or two processes worth automating first
→ How to build a board-ready AI ROI story
→ How to ship a production workflow in 90 days, not 12 months
→ How to measure the return so it holds up to scrutiny
→ The mistakes that kill most AI projects
→ The frameworks and prompts to start this week

The best mid-market leaders won't be replaced by AI.

They'll be the ones who built systems their competitors can't see and can't catch.

I documented all of it in a practical guide.

To get it free:

1. Like this post
2. Comment "PLAYBOOK" below

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The AI + Excel Playbook for Finance Teams

Everything your finance team needs to stop building models cell by cell in 2026.

👉 Comment "EXCEL" and I'll send it over. Free.

Most finance teams are using Copilot at about 5% of what it can do.

They open it, ask for one formula, get a suggestion, and close it. That's not AI in finance. That's a slightly faster autocomplete.

Here's what changes when a finance team uses Copilot the way it's actually built to work:

You write one plain-English prompt. Copilot builds the model. Tables, formulas, linked statements, sensitivity analysis. Minutes, not the afternoon you blocked off for it.

I watched a team stand up a 5-year, three-statement SaaS model from a single conversation. Revenue build. Cost of product. Headcount plan. Financials. Management dashboard. One prompt chain.

The playbook walks through the exact workflow:

1. Build a revenue model from scratch → specify role, products, pricing, drivers → Copilot generates MRR, ARR, growth metrics, editable inputs
2. Audit the model before you touch it → ask Copilot to find the errors first → review the proposed changes, approve selectively
3. Build the 5-year financials → income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, all linked → each tab built in sequence, connected
4. Consolidate what already exists → 12 monthly tabs into one clean view → pivot by product and month, automatically
5. Build the management dashboard → EBITDA, waterfall, sensitivity maps → ready to drop into the board deck

One line I repeat with every team I work with:

Speed isn't the same as correct.

Copilot gets you to 80-90% in minutes. Your judgment gets it to 100%. The teams that win treat AI as leverage on the analyst, not a replacement for the review.

This is the same workflow logic behind the production systems we ship in the 90-Day Sprint.

👉 Comment "EXCEL" and I'll send the playbook

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