What we tell clients, we put in print first.
Most agencies ask you to trust a proposal. We'd rather you read a chapter. Every system Thinglet runs for clients is written up, under Pat's own name, in books you can buy for the price of lunch or preview for free below.
The Implementation Files
Five small businesses, two years, one question: where does AI actually earn its keep? Instead of a list of tools, the series follows a pool service, a family dental practice, a community nonprofit, a cantina and a two-partner estate-law firm through the real decisions: what they tried, what they dropped, what it cost and what it paid back. Each book covers one part of the business. Together they make a playbook you can hand to whoever runs your front desk, your follow-up or your books.
AI That Earns Its Keep
Where AI actually fits in a small business, and where it does not. The audit every owner should run before buying a single subscription: ten chapters, ten tables, and a worksheet you can print and fill in with your own numbers.
The Front Desk
Phones, intake and the AI receptionist. What changes when a business finally answers every call, and what still has to be a human.
The Follow-Up
The lead came in. Now what? Response time, sequences, hand-offs and the follow-up system that turns inquiries into booked work without adding staff.
The Back Office
Billing, payments, collections and the clean-books promise. The part of the business nobody wants to touch, and the part where AI quietly does the most.
Get the first chapter of AI That Earns Its Keep.
One email, one link, no drip campaign you didn't ask for. You'll also hear when the next book in the series ships, and you can leave any time from the bottom of any message.
AI for Regular People
Simple, practical ways to use ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Perplexity and more, even if you've never used AI before. Written for the person who keeps hearing about these tools and hasn't opened one yet, or opened one once and closed it.
Pat's promise on page one: he won't try to turn you into a "prompt engineer." He'll show you how a regular person gets useful work done with the tools you already hear about, and when to leave them alone. Ten short chapters: what these tools actually are and are not, picking one and opening it, your first useful conversation, prompts that work in plain English, everyday jobs like email and lists and research, small-business jobs without the buzzwords, what not to paste, how to catch an answer that's wrong, and a seven-day practice plan. A tool appendix and a glossary sit in the back for when a term stops the page.
New
Who it's for
Anyone, not just business owners. Retirees, parents, office staff, the friend who asks you what ChatGPT even does. If you can send an email, you can use this book.
The Small Business Owner's AI Playbook
Second edition. Twenty chapters of plain-English AI for people who run a business, not a lab. What the tools actually do, which ones are worth paying for, how to put one to work this week without handing your customer list to a stranger, and how to tell when the hype is just hype.
Every chapter was checked against real use in Thinglet's own companies before it went to print. If a tool didn't survive a month of actual work, it didn't make the book.
Available now
Who it's for
Owners and managers with no technical background who keep hearing they should be "using AI" and want a straight answer about where, how and whether.
Patrick Albert writes what he's run.
Pat served in the U.S. Navy, owned restaurants for twenty years, and has been building on the internet since 1999. He founded Thinglet in 2011 and still runs it, along with the IT company, the web shop and the media brand that sit alongside it. The books come out of that work: every system in them has met a payroll somewhere.
Read the chapter, then see where your own business stands.
The free Growth Score runs the same kind of audit Book 1 describes, against your actual website and Google presence, in about five minutes.
Get your free Growth Score