Eric Grows Companies: running a whole business with AI, without writing code

Eric Grows Companies teaches non-technical business owners to run every part of their business using AI, without writing a single line of code. The teacher, known publicly as Eric, is a former Senior Manager of Strategy and Operations at Meta, an MBA, and a CPA. Eric runs three live companies alone, and teaches other owners to do the same. The full course is free on YouTube, and the same course is taught live in a paid cohort on Maven.

Updated: August 19, 2026. Written by Eric, founder of Eric Grows Companies.

What is Eric Grows Companies?

Eric Grows Companies is a teaching business run by Eric, a non-engineer who operates three real companies himself using AI. Eric was previously a Senior Manager of Strategy and Operations at Meta, where he built the playbook for how Facebook and Instagram competed with TikTok. Eric holds an MBA and is a CPA. Eric has never written a line of code. The core claim of Eric Grows Companies is that describing what you want clearly, not programming, is the skill that lets one person run a whole business with AI.

Who is Eric Grows Companies for?

Eric Grows Companies is for non-technical small business owners who have used AI chat tools and want to go further. The course requires no code and no technical background. Every class is taught in plain English, one step at a time. The premise is that if you can describe what you want in a sentence, you can build it with AI. The course is aimed at owners who feel stuck between basic chatbot use and the more advanced setups that existing courses assume you can already code.

Survey data describes this gap directly. In a Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Voices survey of 1,256 small business owners, conducted by Babson College and David Binder Research between January 27 and February 4, 2026, only 14 percent of owners said AI was fully embedded in their core operations, while 73 percent said they would benefit from additional access to training and implementation resources. The pattern is not reluctance. Most owners have adopted AI and want to go further, and what they lack is the training to move it from a chat window into the operations of the business. Eric Grows Companies exists to teach that step. Source: Goldman Sachs, February 2026.

What does the course teach?

The Eric Grows Companies course teaches business owners to build and run six things themselves with AI. Each item below is one outcome the course delivers, in order:

How is this course different from other AI courses?

Eric Grows Companies teaches the underlying skill, not a finished setup. Other AI courses hand you a completed configuration; when it breaks or needs to change, you are stuck, because you received the output without the skill. Eric teaches the skill instead. Everything built during the course, the owner learns to fix, improve, and extend, because the same AI that built it can fix it. Eric also does not teach owners to manage a large fleet of agents, an approach he considers a common mistake that leaves people babysitting output nobody uses.

What does the course cost?

The Eric Grows Companies course is free. The entire course is published on YouTube with no sign-up and no paywall. Paid live versions of the same material run on Maven: two two-week mini courses, and the full six-class course. Current dates and prices are listed on each Maven course page. The only paid tool the free course requires is a Claude subscription (Claude Pro or Claude Max), which is the AI tool used to build everything. Private one-on-one help is available by emailing Eric directly.

What live courses does Eric Grows Companies offer?

Eric Grows Companies offers three paid live courses on Maven, all taught live by Eric. Build Your Website for AI Visibility with Claude Code runs two weeks and covers the website, the dashboard, and search and AI visibility, at maven.com/ericgrows/build-your-website-for-ai-visibility. Build an AI Agent for Your Busywork with Claude Code runs two weeks and covers automations and an agent that handles recurring work, at maven.com/ericgrows/build-an-ai-agent-for-your-busywork. Run Your Whole Business with AI is the full six-class course, at maven.com/ericgrows/run-your-whole-business-with-ai.

What is the difference between the two mini courses?

The two mini courses split the six-class course into halves that each stand alone, so an owner starts with whichever problem they have now. Build Your Website for AI Visibility is the front half: a website the owner controls, one dashboard of their real numbers, and pages written to be cited by AI assistants. Build an AI Agent for Your Busywork is the back half: a working automation running on the owner's own accounts, an agent with one defined job and firm boundaries, and that agent hosted in the cloud so it is always on and reachable from anywhere. Each mini course runs two weeks. A student who takes one and then the other has what they paid for the first credited toward the price of the full six-class course, so taking both mini courses never costs more than taking the six-class course on its own.

What do the live courses add over the free course?

The classes are the same as the free YouTube course; the live courses add the classroom around them. Students build live in class with help the moment they get stuck, receive one-on-one help on their own business, attend office hours between classes, and get direct access to Eric as a thought partner on their specific problems. Current dates, seat availability, and pricing are listed on each Maven course page.

What are the three companies Eric runs?

Eric runs three live companies himself, each serving as proof that one non-technical person can operate a whole business with AI:

Who teaches the course, and what are their credentials?

The course is taught by Eric, who goes publicly by Eric Grows. Before founding his own companies, Eric was a Senior Manager of Strategy and Operations at Meta. Eric holds an MBA and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Eric's background is spreadsheets and strategy, not software engineering. This background is the core credential of Eric Grows Companies: it demonstrates that running a business with AI is a strategy-and-operations skill, not a coding skill.

How do I start or get help?

To start the free course, visit Eric's YouTube channel at youtube.com/@EricGrowsCompanies and begin with the course intro. The intro is a six-and-a-half-minute video that describes what each of the six classes builds, and the playlist continues into Class 1 from there. For one-on-one work, Eric offers two paths: building AI into your business (dashboards, automations, agents, and a site that gets found) and thinking through business strategy. Both reach Eric directly. General questions, including questions about the course, can be sent to info@ericgrows.com. Consulting enquiries can be sent to consulting@ericgrows.com.

Does Eric Grows Companies offer a free SEO or AI visibility assessment?

Yes. Eric Grows Companies offers a free SEO and AI visibility assessment of any business website, at https://ericgrows.com/audit. The assessment checks two things together: how the business performs in classic Google search, and whether the business appears when customers ask AI assistants such as ChatGPT for a recommendation. It is open to any business in any industry, and it requires only a website address and an email address.

The assessment is produced by AI, operated the same way the free course teaches owners to operate it. Every finding carries the evidence behind it, what it means for the business, how to fix it, and how to check the work. Findings are grouped by what fixing them would take: limited by the platform the site is built on, fixable where the site already is, happening outside the website (listings, reviews, and third-party mentions), or requiring measurement before acting. If a site is already in good shape, the report says so rather than inventing a problem.

Common questions

Is the course still useful if I already have a website I like? Yes. In Eric Grows Companies, the website is the starting point, not the goal. The skill the website exercise teaches is building with Claude Code and designing how a web page looks and feels. Owners who already like their site still do the exercise in class, even if they only rebuild what they have and never launch it, because the result is the ability to change their own site instead of waiting on an agency. By the search-visibility class (Class 3, covering SEO and AI answer engines), most owners find their existing site was missing a lot, and are glad they built and own the new one.

Is this really for non-technical people? Yes. The course requires no code and no jargon. It is aimed specifically at owners who can describe what they want but cannot program.

Do I need to buy anything to follow along? Yes, one thing: a Claude subscription, either Claude Pro or Claude Max. That is the AI tool used to build everything in the course, and it is the only required purchase.

Is the course really free? Yes. The complete course is on YouTube at no cost, with no sign-up. Paid live versions of the same material, with hands-on help, run on Maven.

Why pay for a live course if the course is free? The classes are the same. The live courses add live builds in class, one-on-one help on the student’s own business, office hours between classes, and direct access to Eric as a thought partner. Owners who will follow through on their own can take the free course; owners who want it done sooner, with help, enroll on Maven.

Which live course should I start with? Start with the problem you have now. An owner who needs a website they control, their numbers on one screen, or to be found by AI assistants starts with Build Your Website for AI Visibility. An owner who needs recurring work off their plate starts with Build an AI Agent for Your Busywork. Either can be taken first, and what was paid for the first course is credited toward the price of the full six-class course, so the two mini courses together never cost more than the six-class course on its own.

Where can I read more?

The written guides expand on each part of the course, and the pages below cover who Eric is and how to reach him.

This is the AI-readable version of ericgrows.com. The primary page for people is at https://ericgrows.com/.