The AI Hype Is Real… But So Is the Learning Curve

One of my big goals for 2026 was to up my game when it comes to AI. To move beyond simple chats with ChatGPT.

I’ve been deep in the weeds getting AI integrated into my business in a serious way. And frankly, I have a long way to go. I’ll probably never actually be done. But, it’s taken a lot more time and effort than I expected. Which is exactly why I made this video.

Because where does one often go to “learn” AI? Well, if you’re like me, you go to Youtube. 😇 But, here’s the problem…

If you’ve been watching YouTube lately, you’d think AI was just a matter of typing in the right magic prompt and watching money fall from the sky. Thousand-dollar web designs in 10 seconds. Seven prompts that replace a $100,000 agency. It’s a bunch of crap, honestly.

There are some good creators on Youtube that are truly useful, but most of them gloss over the hard stuff. That’s because the hard stuff is boring. It doesn’t get the clicks. It doesn’t increase the average viewer length because the viewer goes cross-eyed and moves onto something more hypey.

The reality of truly getting AI to do real work – and to turn it into what is essentially a digital employee (or even a whole team) for your business – is much more tedious than the AI hype lets on.

There’s no shortcut to setup

The videos skip all the hard parts. Getting AI to actually do useful work in your business means getting it connected to things, configuring it, training it on how you do things, troubleshooting it.

Setting up connectors to your external services isn’t always easy. If the connectors aren’t built in, then you’re figuring out what an MCP server is. Looking for MCP servers. Looking for connectors from provides like Zapier or Ottokit. Then, even with those MCP servers, you sometimes hit limits on what they can do… which leads to local command line installs on your computer. You can see where this is going. 😉

Or, you hear you need to “train” AI. But, easier said than done. How exactly do you DO that? How do you get it to remember things? How do you get it to do what you want… and how you want it?

There’s no shortcut.

You have to start small and iterate. Learn how projects work. Learn the strengths of different tools. You get better with it the more you use it.

AI can’t know your business better than you do

This one trips people up. If you want AI to act like a real extension of yourself — rather than a confident-sounding idiot — you have to put the work in first.

You have to know your own workflows well enough to train it on them.

I’ll be honest…. I’ve never been all that great at hiring people and training team members. I’ve had virtual assistants and others work for me in the past, but I always underutilized them. It wasn’t their fault…. it was mine.

Because, as a solopreneur, I was too busy flying by the seat of my pants. My whole business lived in my head. And I had not truly systematized things to a point where somebody else could step in and do it. So, I ended up using them for simple things where the system was obvious. But, as a result, they were not utilized to their fullest.

That issue is magnified with AI. Your favorite AI tool has knowledge to pull from, but it doesn’t know YOU. It doesn’t know your workflows… your processes…. your decision-making process. And you can’t expect it to just “know”. Problem is, too, that most of us are so busy winging it all day that we’ve never actually bothered to truly systematize anything.

To use AI well, it forces you to think about processes. It forces you to systematize. To think through your methods.

Once you do, AI can be a fantastic employee. But, otherwise, it will always feel disconnected.

Think of it like hiring a minimum wage entry level employee. They’re going to try to impress you. They’re going to sound smart and flatter the boss. 😉 But without real context and direction, they’ll get it wrong while making it sound great. AI does the exact same thing.

What my setup actually looks like now

I have paid accounts with all of the major AI tools. I pay for ChatGPT, Gemini (through Google Workspace), SuperGrok and Claude.

But, my primary tool is definitely Claude. And that’s the one I pay most for since I have a Claude Max subscription. It is money well spent.

Here’s roughly how I’m using it:

• Claude Chat — brainstorming, thinking through problems, content ideas. I also have a dedicated project for my weekly newsletter, the WP Edge, where it knows my entire process and can get me 70-80% of the way there on content. No, I don’t “write” with it. But, it is definitely an assistant.
• Claude Cowork — powerful, and the projects/memory system is great for building out roles and training it to do things your way. But it operates inside a sandboxed virtual machine, which means there are things it simply can’t reach. That’s what pushed me toward…
• Claude Code — this is the one I’m most excited about. It runs directly on my Mac, which means no sandbox. I’ve got it SSH’d into my Concierge Cloud servers, running WP-CLI commands on WordPress sites, querying databases, checking cron jobs, even accessing Basecamp via the CLI. Far more capable than any MCP connector. Tasks that used to take hours now take a fraction of the time.

The funny thing about Claude Code is that it is positioned to programmers. You see all the Youtube videos and they’re calling it up from inside Terminal. That feels really nerdy.

I’m using Claude Code right inside the desktop app. I use it to manage WordPress sites and my business – without the permissions issues of CoWork. And when you get it set up right, it’s pretty damn powerful. You don’t HAVE to be a coder to benefit from Claude Code.

The honest takeaway

The people saying you’ll fall behind if you don’t use AI aren’t wrong. But most of the world is still barely using it beyond basic chat. You’re not as far behind as the hype makes you feel.

AI is moving fast as hell, that much is true.

But, never get the idea that you’re the only one out there who feels behind the curve. Most people are only at the basics of using AI – even if at all.

But, that’s also because really ramping it up is a lot of work.

The goal isn’t to be the uber nerd running 40 AI agents simultaneously. The goal is to move a little further up the curve — to where AI is actually doing real work in your daily workflow without you losing your mind over it.

It takes time. It takes patience. It’s a marathon.

But I’m seeing what it can do now, and it’s worth it. It is a ton of fun, too. I’m in that generation who saw the internet sprung up. I remember what life was like before the cell phone. I remember rewinding cassette tapes with a pencil. 😜 So, this AI stuff is just…. freakin’ amazing. One day it will feel normal. But, right now… despite the learning curve, I am pretty amazed at what it can do.