Built for Business Users
No coding. No IT background needed. Every module assumes participants are business professionals — and builds from there. If you can use email and documents today, you're ready.
Claude Foundations Course
Your Team Has Claude.
Your Team Has Claude.
Now Learn to Actually Use It.
Claude Foundations is NovoCircle's two-day training program for business professionals — a hands-on curriculum that builds the habits, workflows, and configurations that turn Claude access into Claude capability. Private cohort. Customized to your team. No coding background required.
Now available in-person — Denver / Fort Collins & Seattle / Bellevue / Everett. Virtual everywhere else.
Your team is capable. Your tools are ready. So why is so much of the week still consumed by work that should already be automated?
The Problem
The Solution
Your team has heard of Claude — but isn't really using it.
Claude is available to your team today. But without structured training, it stays a curiosity — something people try once, get a mixed result, and set aside. The capability is there. The gap is knowing how to deploy it on real work, reliably.
Claude Becomes Part of How Your Team Works
The course moves Claude from a curiosity to a deployed capability — providing structured, hands-on training on real work, so the tool your team already has access to is actually used.
Your best people are doing work below their pay grade.
Proposal drafting. Status updates. Data formatting. Meeting notes. Research. These tasks consume hours every week — hours that should be going to decisions, relationships, and strategic work. Claude can handle most of it. But only if your team knows how to use it well.
High-Value Work Gets the Attention It Deserves
It teaches your team to offload repetitive tasks like proposal drafting, data formatting, research, and meeting notes to Claude — freeing up capacity for strategic work and decision-making.
The window to build an AI-capable team is now.
The organizations that invest in structured AI training today will have a compounding advantage over those that wait. It isn't about having better technology — everyone has access to the same tools. It's about building the habits and capabilities that make those tools stick.
Your Organization Builds a Compounding AI Advantage
Instead of just providing access to a tool, the program builds AI-native habits through a private cohort-based curriculum — giving your organization a compounding competitive advantage.
You don't have a clear path from curiosity to real capability.
Most teams know Claude could help. Few have a structured process for learning which tasks to delegate first, how to set Claude up for their specific context, or how to build automations that actually run reliably.
A Structured Path from Awareness to Real Automation
The course provides a clear framework for identifying which tasks to automate first, how to configure Claude for your team's specific context, and how to build workflows that handle real business problems reliably.
This Course
A Private Training Program Built for Business Professionals — Not Developers.
Claude Foundations is a 9-module, 2-day curriculum designed for non-technical professionals who are ready to put Claude to work on real business problems. Every module is hands-on. Every exercise uses real workflows. Every participant leaves with something functional — not just knowledge.
The program is delivered as a private cohort for your team, with a dedicated instructor, customized to your organization's industry and workflows.
Private Cohort Delivery
Your team only. No shared cohorts with other organizations. Content is customized to your industry, workflows, and the specific business problems your team faces every day.
Nine Hands-On Modules
Two full days of practical work. Every module ends with something participants can use. No theory for its own sake. Participants build real automations on real work during class — not homework, not exercises on fake data.
The Curriculum
Two Days. Nine Modules. Everything Built During Class.
No fluff. No theory for theory's sake. Every module ends with something participants can use.
Day 1 — Foundation & Orientation
Module 1
Intelligent Automation for Business Users
Sets the foundational mindset for the two-day program. Participants learn how to think about automation — what it is, where it applies, and how to recognize the work in their own day that should be handled by AI. Establishes realistic expectations and introduces the ROI lens for business time.
Module 2
Intelligent Automation Fundamentals
Introduces the 80/20 Rule of Information Work: 80% of information work can be augmented or automated; 20% requires genuine human judgment. Covers how AI differs from rule-based automation, how they work together, and how work changes in an AI-augmented environment. Includes AI literacy basics — how large language models work, what hallucinations are, and how to handle data privacy.
Module 3
Introducing Claude
A practical orientation to the Claude product lineup — Claude.ai, Claude Code, Cowork, and Claude in Chrome. Covers licensing, plans, and a direct comparison to Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini. Participants leave knowing which tool to use for which job and how Claude fits into the tools they already use.
Module 4
Navigating Claude: Chat, Cowork & Code
Deep dive into Claude's three primary surfaces. Participants learn the decision framework for choosing between Chat, Cowork, and Code — and why it matters. Includes live walkthroughs and demos of each interface with real business use cases.
Module 5
Setting Up Your Claude Environment
The most critical setup module. Participants configure their personal grounding context — the persistent instructions that teach Claude who they are, how they work, and what they care about. Covers Claude's memory model, data hygiene, and how to set Claude up for long-term reliability. Participants leave Day 1 with a fully configured environment ready for Day 2.
Day 2 — Doing the Work
Module 6
Working in Claude Chat
Practical mastery of Claude Chat. Covers model selection, context windows, Projects for organizing work, file uploading and analysis, and the prompt patterns that get consistent results for business tasks. Participants build and refine prompts using their own real work.
Module 7
Working in Claude Cowork
The deepest hands-on module. Participants learn what makes Cowork different from Chat, how to structure projects for repeatable use, and how to install and use Skills. Covers planning agentic tasks, Claude's consent model, and how to correct course when Claude goes sideways. Participants leave with a configured, working Cowork project tailored to their role.
Module 8
Prompt Engineering for Business Users
Structured prompting technique for business contexts. Covers the anatomy of effective prompts (role, context, task, format, constraints), business-specific patterns for summarizing, analyzing, drafting, comparing, and extracting, and how to build a personal prompt library. Participants leave with 3–5 reusable prompts they will use immediately.
Module 9
Claude Code, Computer Use & Windows Applications
What Claude Code is and how it differs from Chat and Cowork. Computer use: Claude operating Windows applications directly. Covers four business scenarios (data collection, report production, form processing, cross-application workflows), the four-question test for identifying good automation candidates, and the safety principles that keep humans appropriately in control. Closes with a look ahead at where AI capabilities are heading.
Pricing
Choose the Format That Fits Your Team
All programs are private — your team only. No shared cohorts. Founding pricing available for a limited time.
| Format | Delivery | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| 2-Day In-Person Cohort ★ Recommended | 2 full days · ~9 hrs of instruction · at your location | $12,000 |
| 2-Day Virtual Cohort | 2 full days · delivered via video conference | $10,000 |
| Conference / Offsite Intensive | 2 full days · conferences, offsites, or tight timelines | $11,500 |
Up to 10 participants per cohort. Flex seats for 11–15 participants at $400/seat. On-site travel quoted separately.
Founding pricing is available for a limited time. Ask us during the discovery call.
Book a Discovery Call
Your Instructor
Jerry Schmierer
AI Educator, Mentor, and Coach | NovoCircle
Jerry Schmierer is an AI Educator, Mentor, and Coach at NovoCircle with a career-long track record of helping working professionals adopt technology to solve real problems. Over three decades as a University of California Cooperative Extension Advisor, Jerry became known as a leader in bringing information technology into the hands of people who had never thought of themselves as tech users — using education, mentorship, and hands-on coaching rather than theory.
That same philosophy drives his approach to AI. Jerry designed the Claude Foundations curriculum specifically for business professionals with no coding background, building every module around hands-on practice, real workflows, and a simple principle: the goal isn't to learn AI — it's to stop doing work that Claude can do for you.
In addition to his Plant Science degrees, he holds a graduate certificate in Management Information Systems from California State University, Chico.
Background
- 30+ years teaching technology adoption to non-technical professionals
- University of California Cooperative Extension — Senior Advisor
- Graduate Certificate, Management Information Systems — CSU Chico
- Automation Delivery Lead — NovoCircle
Frequently Asked Questions
Claude Foundations is a private, cohort-based AI training program from NovoCircle that teaches business teams to use Claude to eliminate repetitive work, automate workflows, and free up time for higher-value tasks. It is a 9-module, 2-day curriculum designed specifically for non-technical professionals — no coding or IT background required. Claude Foundations is the flagship Claude course in NovoCircle's AI Training for Business Users suite.
Participants need access to Claude — a free account is sufficient to follow along, though we design for the Pro plan, which unlocks the full feature set including Projects, extended context, and priority access. We'll discuss what's right for your team on the discovery call.
The standard delivery is two consecutive full days (9:00 AM – 4:00 PM), totaling approximately 9 hours of instruction plus breaks. There is also a between-days assignment where participants run one real work task in Claude on their own before Day 2 — typically 30–60 minutes.
Standard cohorts accommodate up to 10 participants. We can flex to 15 at an additional $400 per seat. Cross-departmental cohorts work well — participants often find that building automations across functions increases impact. We've run cohorts with operations, HR, finance, and client services teams together.
Yes — and this is a core part of how we deliver. Before the program begins, we take time to understand your team's roles, the tools they use, and the workflows they want to improve. Module 5 specifically teaches participants to configure Claude with their own professional context, so the tool is set up for their actual job by the end of Day 1.
No. Claude Foundations is an independent training program delivered by NovoCircle. We are not affiliated with Anthropic and don't receive referral fees for tool recommendations. The curriculum is built around Claude because it is an exceptionally capable AI assistant for business professionals — but our focus is on your team's outcomes, not any vendor relationship.
Most AI training is conceptual — it explains what AI is without teaching people to do anything with it. Claude Foundations is entirely practical. Every module ends with something participants built during class, using their own real work. We also configure Claude specifically for each participant's role and context during the program — so they leave with a tool that already knows how they work, not a generic setup they have to figure out on their own.
Participants leave with all course materials, their personal prompt library, and a fully configured Claude environment tailored to their role. The final session closes with a 30-day action plan where each participant commits to specific next steps — so the training has a clear runway into daily practice. NovoCircle also offers ongoing advisory support for teams that want help expanding what they built.
Where Does This Fit in Your Journey?
The Define · Build · Train Framework
1
Define
Assess & plan before you build
2
Build
Design & deliver the solution
3
Train
Build internal capability