New here? See the academies · See the records · Book a free call
Claude · Copilot · Gemini · Meta AI

AI TRAINING,
FILED UNDER THE DESK
YOU ACTUALLY SIT AT.

Not a course about AI. A course about your Monday.

Month-end close. The three-way match. The reorder report. The weekly report. We take the work that is already on your desk and show you how it gets done with Copilot, Claude, Gemini or Meta AI — step by step, in the words your job actually uses. No coding, no jargon. If you can send a text message, you can do this.

Find your desk →
Records from $49 — one-time, yours for life. Every update included. Plus The B-Side: Windows to Mac, free with any record.
HR & team leaders: new hires trained without your help. See how · Live one-on-one & group training
Real workflows · Not theory · Built for teams & individuals
Self-paced AI trainingfor people with a real job to do
Nine coursesfour platforms, four job-based libraries and the Control Room
From $49one payment, yours for life, plus the free B-Side
No tech backgroundif you can send a text message, you can do this
For HR & Team Leaders

New people come and go. The training stays — without your help.

Give every new hire the same proven AI training from their first week. They log in, start at Step 1 and work at their own pace, so you never schedule a class, chase a trainer or repeat a session every time someone joins.

01

Onboard anyone, anytime

A new hire can start the day they join. Same material, same rules, and nothing on your calendar.

02

No trainer needed

Step by step, in plain language, built for people with no technical background. If you can send a text message, you can do this.

03

Always current

We check every academy each month and refresh it as the tools change, at no additional cost. Your people never train on last year’s version.

04

A rollout plan to follow

The HR Adoption Handbook gives you the decisions to make first, a one-page usage policy to adapt, and a 90-day plan.

Start with the HR Adoption Handbook. Plain English, printable, and ready to use the same afternoon. Each person you train gets their own seat, and we will set up team pricing with you.
Read the Handbook →Ask about team seats
Consulting & Team Enablement

AI management consulting for small and medium‑sized businesses — on a budget.

Most firms your size are told to hire a consultancy that bills like one. We work the other way: a short engagement, on your real work, with your own people doing it by the end — so the capability stays after we leave.

01

Consulting on the tool you already pay for

Copilot, Claude, Gemini or Meta AI — hands‑on with your actual work, not a slide deck. Usually you are already licensed for more than you are using.

02

Training built around your team’s week

Not a generic course. We take the jobs your people actually repeat and teach those, in the words your business already uses.

03

Custom bots and agents

Including Copilot Studio builds, connected securely to your own data, scoped to one clear job and handed over documented — yours to run.

04

Governance and adoption

Who is allowed to build what, what it is allowed to reach, and how you get people genuinely using it instead of quietly ignoring it.

Start with a free call. Half an hour, no pitch — we look at what your team does every week and tell you honestly where AI helps and where it does not.
Book a Free Call →
Live Virtual Training

One-on-one or for your group — at your pace, on your budget.

Prefer a real person to learn with? We set up a live session by video, on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or whichever you already use. You tell us what you want to learn and when, and we take care of the rest.

01

One-on-one

A private session built around your own work. Bring a real task and leave knowing how to do it.

02

For your group

Your team learns together, on the tools and tasks your people actually use.

03

On your schedule

Pick a time that suits you. We set the appointment and send the meeting link.

04

Budget friendly

Priced to fit what you can do. Tell us your situation and we will find a way to make it work.

Ask about a session. Tell us who the training is for and what you want to learn. We will set up the session, send the meeting link and take care of the details. Prefer email? Write to jimmyk@vinyl-academy.com.
Ask About a Session →
Find your desk

WHATEVER YOU DO ALL DAY,
THERE'S A SESSION FOR IT.

The libraries aren’t filed by software — they’re filed by the job. Not a pile — the ones worth running. Pick a desk and read a real one, word for word, exactly as it ships. These samples run in Copilot and Claude. Gemini and Meta AI each have their own full academy.

Click any desk to read a real session

Money DeskMicrosoft Copilot

Explain a variance to a non-finance manager

Turn a confusing budget variance into a plain-English note an operations manager will actually understand.

The prompt, exactly as it ships 
Goal: Write a short plain-English explanation of this month’s freight cost variance
Context: Freight came in $38K over budget; I need to explain it to our ops manager who isn’t a finance person
Expectations: 3-4 sentences, no jargon, name the likely drivers (rates, volume, expedites), and one suggested action
Source: The variance report I have open and last month’s freight summary
Also on this desk
  • Automate month-end close checklist
  • Analyze monthly P&L variance
  • Spot duplicate invoice payments
  • Design a cash-application automation
Sales & CustomersMicrosoft Copilot

Build a weekly retailer scorecard

Turn raw retailer POS data into a weekly performance scorecard the buyer will actually read.

The prompt, exactly as it ships 
Goal: Build a weekly retailer scorecard for our top 5 accounts
Context: Distributed every Monday to sales leadership
Expectations: 1 page per account — units sold this week vs last week vs last year, top 5 SKUs by velocity, any out-of-stocks reported, promo lift if running, action items. Color-coded.
Source: The retailer POS export and the promo calendar
Also on this desk
  • Build a pipeline health view
  • Build a proposal drafting agent
  • Analyze a customer complaint pattern
  • Build a customer KPI scorecard
Buying & ProductsClaude

Compare quotes from three suppliers

Normalize three supplier quotes to true landed cost so you compare apples to apples.

The prompt, exactly as it ships 
Goal: Compare three supplier quotes and tell me which is genuinely cheapest
Context: Three quotes for the same canned tuna SKU, with different Incoterms, pack sizes and minimum order quantities
Expectations: Normalize all three to landed cost per retail unit in USD (freight, duty, pack differences), show a comparison table, name the winner and the non-price factors I should weigh
Source: The three quote PDFs I am attaching
Also on this desk
  • Build a price negotiation prep doc
  • Analyze landed-cost drivers across lanes
  • Flag a suspicious price change
  • Build a price analyst agent
Supply Chain & WarehouseMicrosoft Copilot

Generate a reorder report

Auto-flag items below reorder points in Excel and generate a purchase recommendation.

The prompt, exactly as it ships 
Goal: Create a reorder recommendation report
Context: Pre-purchasing meeting review
Expectations: Table — item, current stock, reorder point, recommended order qty, estimated cost. Sort by urgency.
Source: The inventory Excel file I have open
Also on this desk
  • Build a freight-audit agent
  • Build a shipment-exception tracker
  • Identify slow-moving stock
  • Build a daily warehouse stand-up
Reporting & BIClaude

Translate a stakeholder complaint into a fix

Turn "the numbers look wrong" into a concrete investigation.

The prompt, exactly as it ships 
Goal: Turn "the revenue number looks wrong" into a structured investigation
Context: A stakeholder says the revenue number on a report looks wrong, and I want to confirm the cause with evidence before I change anything
Expectations: The questions to ask them, the usual culprits (filter context, date range, duplicates, a measure summing where it should count or average, currency or units), and the order to check them
Source: The report and data model I have open
Also on this desk
  • Audit a dashboard portfolio
  • Diagnose a slow report
  • Audit someone else’s measure
  • Architect a multi-page report standard
IT & SystemsCopilot & Claude

Write a runbook for a routine task

Document a procedure so anyone can follow it.

The prompt, exactly as it ships 
Goal: Write a clear runbook for a routine admin task
Context: [the task, e.g. onboarding a new server or the monthly patch process], and it must be good enough for a new hire to follow
Expectations: Ask me the steps first, then give a numbered procedure with the exact commands, how to confirm each step worked, what to do if a step fails, and who to escalate to
Source: Only the steps I give you. Flag anything you are inferring
Also on this desk
  • Build an incident response runbook
  • Build a knowledge-base from past tickets
  • Build a server hardening baseline
  • Build a patching habit
Network & InfrastructureCopilot & Claude

Plan a network change safely

Make a change without taking everything down.

The prompt, exactly as it ships 
Goal: Plan a network change so it does not take everything down
Context: [the change, e.g. re-IP a subnet, replace a switch, change firewall rules]
Expectations: A change runbook with pre-checks, order of operations, what to verify after each step, the rollback, the blast radius if it goes wrong, and go/no-go checkpoints
Source: The current diagram and configs I paste below
Also on this desk
  • Configure firewall rules correctly
  • Capture and read network traffic
  • Decide what’s actually worth monitoring
  • Audit and improve existing monitoring
Meetings & NotesMicrosoft Copilot

Turn a recap into a follow-up email

Convert AI meeting notes into a clean, send-ready summary.

The prompt, exactly as it ships 
Goal: Draft a follow-up email to attendees of a Teams meeting
Context: The meeting had Facilitator turned on, and AI notes can misattribute
Expectations: Decisions made, action items with owners, the next meeting date, and a reminder for me to verify names and commitments before I send
Source: The recap and notes from that meeting
Also on this desk
  • Add Facilitator to a meeting
  • Build a meeting summary table across the week
  • Audit how meetings are run
  • Build a meeting-notes operating standard

Goal, Context, Expectations, Source. Every session in every academy is built on that frame — the part you keep long after the tools change.

Also filed by desk
  • Quality & Safety
  • People & Legal
  • Security & Access
  • Data & Analysis
  • Automation & Scripts
  • Helpdesk & Support
  • Writing & Email
  • Research & Summaries
  • Planning & Projects
  • Numbers & Formulas
  • Creative & Content
  • Everyday Admin
The headline track · Ship it

Build it in Claude. Let people without Claude use it.

Once a procedure works, wrap it in a single web page. A colleague or a client opens the link, uploads their own files, and downloads a finished result, with nothing to install. If the page itself uses Claude’s AI, the viewer signs in and it counts against their own limits. Who can open the link depends on how you share it.

See the Claude Academy →
  1. Prove the skill on test data
  2. Wrap it in a page
  3. Share the link
  4. They upload a file and export the result
The Catalog

NINE COURSES.
ONE FOR YOUR DESK.

Each one is a complete, self-paced training course built for a specific job — or for a specific AI. Buy the one that fits your work, own it for life, and we refresh it every month at no extra cost. Eight are below; the ninth, the Control Room, follows them.

A wall of hanging brass bells, the cover of The Trading Desk THE TRADING DESK Finance & Deals Pitch books, models, memos and pipelines — hours of manual work turned into minutes, tuned to how deal teams actually run. $99Look inside → A studio mixing console, the cover of The Microsoft Copilot Academy MICROSOFT COPILOT Microsoft 365 · every desk Chat, Cowork, Notebooks and agents — the tool already on your desktop, finally earning its keep. The full course on film, plus real sessions sorted by department. $89Look inside → A turntable with the needle down, the cover of The Claude Academy CLAUDE Claude · every desk Projects, Artifacts, Skills and agents that reach into your own systems. The full course on film, plus real sessions sorted by department. $89Look inside → A drummer mid-hit on an acoustic kit under stage light, the cover of Rock & Roll ROCK & ROLL Every desk The one that started the label — more agent builds than any other academy, the best scenarios and the prompt vault. $89Look inside → A full orchestral score, every instrument part stacked, the cover of The Data Desk THE DATA DESK Analysts & BI Reporting, BI and the data clean-up nobody volunteers for — scenarios, agent builds and a 28-prompt vault. $69Look inside → A road-worn four-string bass being played, the cover of The Geeky Nerds THE GEEKY NERDS IT & Tech Troubleshooting, systems, scripting and security — the work that keeps the lights on, with a 24-prompt vault. $69Look inside → A wall of vintage guitars, the cover of The Gemini Academy GOOGLE GEMINI Gemini · every desk Gems, Deep Research, Canvas and notebooks in Gemini — the full course on film, plus real sessions sorted by department. $49Look inside → A museum wall of framed gold records, the cover of The Meta AI Academy META AI Meta AI · every desk The assistant already sitting inside the apps you use all day — the full course on film, plus real sessions sorted by department. $49Look inside →
Free with any purchase · never sold The B-Side — Windows to Mac Not a macOS tutorial — a translation dictionary. Twenty years of Windows habits mapped straight onto the Mac: the pointer, where your files actually live, why Finder is not Explorer, and why the Dock is not the taskbar. Yours with whichever record you buy. Included — no extra charge

Buy an academy once and keep it for life. We check every academy each month and update it at no extra cost, so there is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel. Team pricing is arranged separately: subscribe, or own the system outright.

A rack of studio outboard gear, the cover of The Control Room
The ninth record

THE CONTROL
ROOM.

The other eight each do one thing. This is the only room where all four platforms live together — Copilot, Claude, Gemini and Meta AI, each with its own complete course — on top of selected sessions across the technical desks for the people who have to know everything.

Bought separately
  • Microsoft Copilot$89
  • Claude$89
  • Google Gemini$49
  • Meta AI$49
Four records apart$276
The Control Room, together$149

Not a bundle of everything we sell. The Control Room holds the four platform courses, and it is priced under their combined total because they belong together.

Look inside the Control Room →
Why Now

This is the biggest shift of our working lives — and it’s still early.

AI is moving into nearly every job, and it only gets more capable from here. The people who learn to work with it now won’t just keep up — they’ll be the ones everyone else turns to. Waiting is the only losing move.

01

Become the indispensable one

While others guess, you’ll get real results from AI — and your value to any team climbs with it.

02

Win back your hours

The right prompts and workflows turn afternoons of manual work into minutes. That time is yours again.

03

Stay ahead as it evolves

You won’t just learn today’s tools. You’ll learn how to keep adapting as they change — which they will.

Run The Numbers

What Could AI Save Your Team?

Enter your own numbers. This is an illustration of what that time could be worth once your team actually knows how to use AI — not a forecast.

Estimated Annual Value Back
$36,000
Sample team — change the numbers to match yours
720 hrsHours Reclaimed / Year

Estimate only. Math: people × hours saved/week × hourly cost × 48 weeks. Adjust the inputs to match your team — the result updates live.

Turn This Into Reality — Book a Call →
★ Your Always-On Learning Hub

Your Forever AI Hub.

AI changes every week — your team’s training should keep up. The Vinyl Academy is built to be your company’s ongoing learning hub: train the team you have today, onboard every new hire tomorrow, and stay current as AI evolves. Affordable, flexible, and always fresh. Individuals buy an academy once and keep it for life. Teams can subscribe or own it.

For Businesses · Teams

Team plans: subscribe, or own it

Train the team you have today and onboard every new hire from the same place. Subscribe monthly, or buy a system outright and make it yours — we price both on a short call, once we know what you need.

  • One place for the whole team to learn Copilot, Claude, Gemini and Meta AI
  • New hires start on day one with the same material as everyone else
  • Progress stays on each person’s own device
  • Updates appear on the academy pages automatically
Subscribe or own it — your whole team, one hub.
Book a Consultation →
For Individuals

Professional Training

New to AI and need it for your job? Get hands-on training that puts you a step ahead of everyone around you.

  • Guided, practical lessons — plain language, no jargon
  • Copilot, Claude, Gemini and Meta AI from the ground up
  • Real workflows you’ll put to use the very same day
  • A clear path from "nervous beginner" to confident operator
Buy an academy once, own it for life.
Step Into the Academy →
Any pace

Learn when it suits you

Real work

Practical, no filler

Monthly Updates

Checked every month

New-Hire Ready

Onboard anyone, anytime

Surprisingly affordable — a fraction of the time and money AI saves you. Run your own numbers in the calculator
Hi! I’m your Vinyl Guide. Ask about the academies — or I can book you a free call.