70 prompts for the freelancer who also does their own bookkeeping

#entrepreneur #productivity #ai #writing

I run a one-person Python shop. That means I'm also the head of sales, marketing, support, accounts receivable, and (most days) the person who cleans the coffee maker.

This is the prompt kit I built to keep the business side from eating the engineering side.

What's in it

70 prompts across 8 categories:

Email — cold outreach, follow-up, "bumping this up," invoice reminder (4 levels of escalating politeness), proposal send
Support — first reply, scope-explainer, "have you tried turning it off and on again" without the condescension
Social — LinkedIn post (3 templates: humble brag, hot take, story), Twitter thread opener
Sales — discovery call prep, pricing pushback response, "let me think about it" follow-up
Ops — weekly review, monthly metrics, project retrospective
Strategy — competitive teardown, feature prioritization (RICE), "should I build this" decision tree
Freelancing — scope creep detector, contract red flag finder, rate negotiation script
Finance — invoice chases, expense categorization, "can I afford this" calculator

Why a kit

Like most solo founders, I spent the first 18 months writing every email from scratch. Then I spent 6 months saving the ones that worked. Then I turned them into prompts so the AI could draft them in my voice, with my specifics, and I'd just edit.

The "invoice reminder" prompt has 4 versions:

Friendly (day 1 past due)
Firm (day 7)
Final notice (day 14)
"We need to talk" (day 30, before collections)

Each one escalates in tone but stays professional. I just paste "client X, invoice #234, day 14" and the prompt fills in the rest. I read it, tweak the opening, send.

The prompts that save the most time

Three prompts earn their keep every week:

"Scope creep detector" — paste the original SOW + the current Slack thread, get a list of new work that wasn't in the contract. I use this before every weekly client call.
"Cold email" — give it the prospect's website + my angle, get a 4-sentence email with a specific ask. Send rate is ~40%, reply rate ~12%.
"Weekly review" — paste my calendar + last week's completed tasks, get a 3-paragraph Friday recap I can skim on Sunday.