I wasn't "anti-AI" in the early days. I was just uninterested. The models felt buggy. There was too much "ghosting," too many artifacts, and a lot of plain-old wrong information. They weren't stupid, exactly, but they weren't intelligent yet either.

That has clearly changed.

I'd be lying if I said AI hasn't been life-changing for my daily workflow. And I'm not a developer. I'm not a tech founder. I'm a former TV news anchor who now runs a media consulting business, a real estate business, a podcast, and a newsletter. I'm the guy who used to read teleprompters for a living. If I can make this work, you can make this work.

The One-Person Show Problem

When I ran my first business, the biggest challenge was the "one-person show" grind. I was the CEO, marketing director, sales manager, and lead engineer all at once. Sound familiar? If you're a solo operator or running a small team, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The problem isn't that any one of those jobs is too hard. The problem is context switching between all of them, all day, every day. You're answering client emails at 7 AM, writing marketing copy at 9, doing project management at noon, handling bookkeeping at 3, and by 5 PM you're too fried to think strategically about any of it. The important work gets pushed to "later," and later never comes.

That's the problem AI solved for me. Not by replacing me. By giving me a thinking partner who never gets tired, never forgets the context, and can handle the grunt work while I focus on the decisions that actually need a human brain.

How I Actually Use AI Day to Day

I want to be specific here because most "how I use AI" articles are vague to the point of being useless. Here's what my workflow actually looks like.

The Morning Briefing

Every morning, I get an automatic briefing on all my projects. Think of it like a chief of staff walking into your office with a summary: here's what's due today, here's what's pending from yesterday, here's what needs your attention. Before AI, I was spending the first 45 minutes of every day just figuring out where I left off. Now that context is waiting for me when I sit down.

Research and Analysis

I do a lot of market research for my real estate work and competitive analysis for my consulting clients. Tasks that used to take me half a day — pulling comparable sales data, analyzing market trends, summarizing lengthy reports — now take a fraction of the time. I'm not getting less informed. I'm getting more informed, faster, which means I can spend more time actually talking to clients instead of drowning in spreadsheets.

Writing and Content

Let me be clear: AI doesn't write my newsletter. I write my newsletter. But AI helps me organize my thoughts, catch structural problems in a draft, and handle the tedious formatting work that used to eat up hours. When I have a brain dump of ideas for a newsletter section, I can talk it through with AI the same way I'd talk it through with a colleague. It's like having an editor on call at midnight.

Building Tools

This is the one that surprised me most. Using Claude Code paired with Visual Studio Code, I've been able to build custom tools for my workflow. I'm not writing code from scratch — I'm describing what I need and collaborating with AI to build it. Need a client intake form that feeds into a tracking system? Done. Need a tool that pulls Houston real estate data into a format my clients can actually read? Done.

A year ago, each of those projects would have required hiring a developer. Now I can prototype and build functional tools myself. The learning curve exists, but it's nowhere near as steep as learning to code from scratch.

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Started

If you've been holding back on AI, I get it. Here's what I've learned that I wish someone had told me from the beginning.

Start With the Tasks You Hate

Don't try to reinvent your entire workflow on day one. Pick the one thing you do every week that makes you want to gouge your eyes out. For me, it was organizing project notes and keeping track of deadlines across multiple businesses. Start there. Get one win. Then expand.

Be Specific in What You Ask

The quality of what you get from AI is directly proportional to how specific your request is. "Help me with marketing" gets you generic garbage. "Write me three subject lines for an email to Houston homeowners who listed their home in the last 30 days and didn't sell" gets you something useful. Treat it like briefing a new employee: the more context you give, the better the output.

Don't Trust It Blindly

AI gets things wrong. It can present incorrect information with complete confidence. I learned this early, and it's why I was initially uninterested. The key is understanding what it's good at (organizing, drafting, analyzing patterns, brainstorming) and what it's bad at (facts that require real-time accuracy, nuanced judgment calls, anything where getting it wrong has serious consequences). Always verify the important stuff.

It's a Coworker, Not a Replacement

The biggest misconception about AI is that it's coming for your job. For most professionals, that's backwards. It's coming for the parts of your job you hate — the repetitive, tedious, soul-crushing administrative work that keeps you from doing the creative, strategic, human work that actually matters. Let it handle the grunt work. You focus on the relationships, the decisions, and the vision.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started

If you're ready to try this, here's how I'd approach it if I were starting over today.

1. Download Claude from claude.ai. Start with the free version. You don't need to pay for anything yet.
2. Identify your most painful recurring task. Something you do weekly that takes more than 30 minutes and makes you miserable. Write it down in detail.
3. Describe that task to Claude the way you'd explain it to a new hire. Include what the end result should look like, what information you usually need, and what format works for you.
4. Iterate. The first result probably won't be perfect. Tell it what to fix. "This is good but make it shorter." "Add a section on pricing." "Make it sound less corporate." Each round gets closer to what you need.
5. Save what works. When you get a workflow that clicks, save the instructions so you can reuse them. This is the beginning of your personal system.
6. Expand gradually. Once you have one win, try another task. Then another. Within a few weeks, you'll have a fundamentally different relationship with your daily workload.

If you want to go deeper, Anthropic's learning resources are excellent. They break down how to get the most out of AI in ways that even a non-technical person can follow. I found them genuinely helpful when I was starting out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to know how to code to use AI effectively?

No. Most of what I use AI for requires zero coding knowledge. You just need to be able to describe what you want clearly. If you can explain a task to another person, you can explain it to AI. The coding side (like Claude Code with Visual Studio Code) is optional and more advanced, but even that is more accessible than you'd think.

Is my data safe when I use AI tools?

This depends on the tool and your plan. Read the privacy policies. Most major AI platforms don't use your conversations to train their models on paid plans. Don't paste sensitive client data, social security numbers, or financial account information into any AI tool. Use common sense the same way you would with any cloud-based service.

How much does it cost?

Claude has a free tier that's more than enough to get started and see if it fits your workflow. Paid plans give you more capacity and access to more powerful models. For what it replaces — in terms of time saved and tasks you'd otherwise need to hire someone for — the cost is negligible. I spend less per month on AI tools than I used to spend on a single freelancer invoice.

What if I try it and the output is bad?

It will be, at first. That's normal. The output improves dramatically when you get better at describing what you want. Think of it like training a new employee: the first week is rough, but by week three, they're producing real value. Most people give up in week one. Don't be most people.

The Bottom Line

If you've been holding back on AI because it felt too technical, too unreliable, or too much like hype — I hear you. I was there. But the tools have caught up to the promise, and the gap between "people who use AI" and "people who don't" is widening fast.

You don't need to become a tech person. You just need to find your signal in the machine. Start with the tasks you hate. Be specific about what you need. Don't trust it blindly. And give it more than one try.

It's the best coworker I've ever had. And it never steals my lunch from the break room fridge.