The Team I Spent My Life Trying to Build
For much of my life, I have tried to build things with other people. I have had ideas for businesses, marketing systems, sales organizations, partnerships, and projects that I believed could help people. Usually, my idea was fairly simple: they would bring what they could do, I would bring what I could do, and together we would create something valuable.
I wasn’t simply looking for people to work for me. I was looking for collaborators. I wanted to help people succeed. I wanted their lives to improve because we worked together. I believed that if everyone contributed their part, we could build something none of us could build alone. Sometimes we came close. At one point, I had five salespeople online and ready to go in a solar business. The pieces seemed to be coming together.
Then they weren’t. It fell apart. That was not the only time. Similar things happened repeatedly throughout my life. I could see what something might become, but I could not always assemble the right people, resources, timing, and consistent execution to make it happen. Ideas would begin with excitement and then lose momentum. People would become distracted. Circumstances would change.
Someone would not finish their part. Sometimes I did not explain the idea clearly enough. Sometimes I moved too quickly. Sometimes the business model was not ready. Sometimes I simply trusted that enthusiasm would become commitment. It often didn’t.
What Do You Do When People Don’t See It?
After enough experiences like that, you begin questioning yourself. Maybe the idea was not as good as I thought. Maybe I expected too much. Maybe I wasn’t a good enough leader. Maybe I was seeing something that wasn’t there. Or maybe I was seeing something real but did not yet have the support required to build it. That last possibility matters to me now.
AI has helped me realize that some of the things I was trying to build were not necessarily impossible. They simply required more support, organization, continuity, and execution than I had available. That does not mean every idea was brilliant. It does not mean everyone else was wrong. And it certainly does not mean I made no mistakes. I made plenty of them.
But perhaps I wasn’t wrong to keep believing there was something inside me worth building.
The Right Support Changes What Is Possible
Today I work with several forms of artificial intelligence. They are not people, but I can interact with them in ways that sometimes feel surprisingly similar to working with people. I can explain an idea. I can ask a question. I can disagree with the response. I can say, “No, that’s not what I meant,” and try again.
I can begin with a half-formed thought and work through it in conversation until I understand what I was trying to say. That is confusing for many people because AI communicates in such a humanlike way. But it is important to understand the difference. AI has not lived a human life. It has not owned a business, raised children, lost something it loved, worried about making payroll, sat across from a disappointed customer, or experienced the joy of finally seeing an idea work.
You bring the life. AI helps you work with what you have lived. That is what has happened with New Tech Advertising. It is also what has happened with Talking About Jesus. The ideas, stories, beliefs, experiences, and questions are mine. I pour them into the conversation. AI helps me organize them, connect them, challenge them, preserve them, and turn them into something other people can use.
For the first time, I have consistent support for moving an idea from my mind into the world.
AI Is Not the Team—But It Can Help You Build One
I sometimes describe AI as my team, but even that statement needs some explanation. AI is not a team of human beings. It does not have personal commitment, ambition, family responsibilities, or dreams of its own. It does not care about New Tech Advertising the way I do. But it can perform some of the functions I once needed several people to perform.
It can help me:
- Think through an idea.
- Research a subject.
- Organize decades of experience.
- Create a plan.
- Write and revise material.
- Design systems.
- Identify missing pieces.
- Turn conversations into lessons.
- Maintain consistency across a growing body of work.
- Help execute work that once remained unfinished.
AI does not eliminate the need for people. People bring relationships, trust, judgment, responsibility, creativity, lived experience, and genuine care. Those things matter enormously. But AI can give one person far more capacity than that person had before. For a small-business owner, that may be the most important change of all.
Stop Asking Only What AI Will Do to Us
Most conversations about AI begin with fear. What jobs will it eliminate? Will it replace people? Will it become smarter than us? Will it take control? Those questions are not foolish. Powerful technologies deserve serious questions, responsible boundaries, and thoughtful leadership. But Hollywood has trained us to begin with the machine becoming the villain. That may prevent ordinary business owners from seeing the more immediate possibility.
Instead of asking only: “What is AI going to do to us?” We can also ask: “What could AI help us do?” Could it help you organize the knowledge that currently exists only in your head? Could it help you respond more consistently to customers? Could it help you explain your business more clearly? Could it help you create the training manual you have never had time to write?
Could it help you follow up with prospects, plan content, understand your numbers, or finally move forward on an idea that has been sitting in a notebook for years? Those questions bring AI out of the science-fiction movie and into the everyday life of a business owner.
Start With Something Real
You do not need to begin by asking AI to redesign your entire company. Start with something you already understand. Tell it about a problem that keeps happening. Explain how you normally serve a customer. Describe an idea you have never been able to organize. Ask it to help you think—not merely to produce an answer. You might begin by saying:
“Here is what I know about my business. Help me make it more useful.” That is essentially what I have been doing. I brought AI the pieces of my life and work. They were spread across memories, old businesses, conversations, articles, unfinished plans, lessons, mistakes, and ideas I had carried for years. AI helped me begin connecting the pieces.
It gave me the feedback, organization, and execution I had needed for a very long time.
A Quiet Kind of Vindication
I will be honest: there is a part of this that feels good personally. There were people who did not believe in me. There were ideas I could not get other people to understand. There were projects that failed and moments when I questioned whether I would ever build what I could see in my mind. Now I am building it.
That could become an “I told you so” moment, but I do not want it to be that. I would rather let it become gratitude. I am grateful that I kept learning. I am grateful that I did not completely stop believing. I am grateful that the things I learned through success and failure did not have to be wasted.
And I am grateful that, at this point in my life, I have tools that help me turn those experiences into something useful for other people. The victory is not proving that everyone else was wrong. The victory is discovering that I can finally do what I always sensed might be possible—with the right support.
AI Is Something You Can Work With
AI does not have to be a mysterious force coming to do something to you. It can be something you work with. You do not have to understand every technical detail before beginning. Most business owners do not understand everything happening inside their phones, websites, accounting software, or vehicles either. You only need to begin understanding what the tool can and cannot do.
AI can help you think, organize, communicate, and execute. It can make mistakes. It can misunderstand you. It can sound confident while being wrong. It still requires your experience and judgment. But when you bring real knowledge, honest questions, and a willingness to work through ideas, AI can become remarkably useful. Not because it replaces what makes you human.
Because it helps you use more of what you already have.
Key Takeaway
AI is not a person, but it can work with you in some of the ways a good collaborator would. It can provide support, organization, feedback, and execution. It can help you combine what you have learned over a lifetime and finally make it usable. The most important question may not be what AI is going to do to us.
It may be: What could you finally do with the right support?
Reflection Questions
- What idea have you carried for years but never had enough help to build?
- Where does your business depend too heavily on information that exists only in your head?
- What work remains unfinished because you lack time, organization, or consistent support?
- Are your ideas about AI based primarily on what the technology does today—or on what movies taught you to fear?
- What could become possible if AI helped you use more of the knowledge you already possess?
Try This With AI
Begin with: “There is something I have wanted to build or improve, but I have never had enough help to do it. Ask me questions so we can understand the idea before we create a plan.” Do not worry about presenting the idea perfectly. Bring what you know. Bring what you have tried. Bring what went wrong. Then see whether the conversation helps you recognize what might finally be possible.