Claude Cowork: The five stages of wonder

By Peter Springett · 12 August 2026

I’ve now run about 20 training sessions for businesses, getting them set up on Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. These people have used AI in the past, but mostly for search, or to complete a stand-alone task: drafting an email, writing a short article, or crafting a CV.

What they’ve never done is point AI at an existing file or folder and ask it to work with these assets. And they’ve never seen the results: Several days saved a month. Tens of thousands of pounds added to their margins.

Each session unlocks unique benefits for that user. But there are five moments of wonder that are consistent for all. I’m using the example of a builder and his pricing spreadsheet, but the same thing occurs with nearly all my clients and their digital assets.

1. Seeing

Point Cowork or Work towards a complex pricing spreadsheet. Ask what it can see. The builder was astonished not just by the description of a ‘construction pricing spreadsheet’; Claude also came back with an overview of the builder’s business (logo and address on the spreadsheet) and his projects from the past 18 months.

2. Optimising

We asked Cowork to build a new pricing template that eliminates inaccuracies, broken formulae, and duplicate information.

At this point the builder rocked back on his chair. Wow. He’d been using this document for years, and in three minutes Cowork had come up with a much better version.

3. Enhancing

The builder thought quickly. What could he add that was missing from the original spreadsheet? The kind of thing he’d put off for months because of the time required to set things up.

In this case it was adding date-stamped incremental client payments. He told Claude what to do, and a couple of minutes later there were the new rows, columns, formulae. At least half a day saved already. It gets better.

4. Populating

This is where it gets really cool. I asked the builder to drop all of the files about a recent client into the Claude project folder: supplier estimates, architect plans, council PDFs, client briefs. Claude read everything, including room measurements from a PDF, and used this to populate the new spreadsheet.

Now the test: I asked the builder to compare the spreadsheet with the original manual version.

There were some discrepancies. But here’s the thing. When we quizzed Claude on its pricing methodology, it was usually more diligent and accurate. A few minutes of back-and-forth and the new spreadsheet was complete.

5. Maximising profitability

Of course, a sense of wonder only gets you so far in business. So the real kicker was when we asked Cowork to find ways of saving time, money and boosting margins. Claude found ways of reducing the costs on this £100k project by at least 5%.

The TLDR

In a couple of hours, the builder learned how to save a day a week by pricing up jobs with an automated spreadsheet. And opened the door to boosting margins by more than £50,000 a year.

As I said at the beginning. Most people are using AI for one-off tasks. Incremental steps that don’t add real value apart from saving a few minutes a day. If you’d like AI to help run your business, rather than chip in once in a while, get in touch.