Tears, tech bros and terror.

Hi Non-Techies,

It’s a big week, I won’t lie. My new course, Become an AI Trainer, is now live and kicking. If you want to launch a profitable AI training business in 12 weeks, click the button below:

It’s no exaggeration to say that AI changed my life. Today I’m going to talk about how I went from crying my eyes out for a whole fortnight (officially known as The Fortshite) to founding AI For Non-Techies.

A Genuine Non-Techie

I’ve never been one of those people who camp outside of Apple stores for the latest release. In the innovation adoption lifecycle, I’m usually standing right on top of the hill. It’s all about the view, after all.

But, as an agency owner back in 2022, I found myself using AI to help a client. They sold a $10m product and wanted to personalise their content to widen their top-of-funnel marketing.

After a quick Google, I picked a tool called Crystal, which uses AI to analyse people’s personalities (I use Humantic now, btw. It does the same thing but it’s cheaper for individual users).

It went really well. We drove $60m in sales for that client, and then used it again to generate an additional $15m in sales for other clients.

This AI thing was generating proper results. It still required loads of human input (note to self: do a newsletter about how to use AI to automate a sales pipeline), but still, it was the appetiser to ChatGPT, which would come out just a few months later.

The Birth of ChatGPT (and AIFNT)

On November 30th, 2022, the day of ChatGPT’s release, two thoughts occurred to me as I tried it for the first time:

1) This is awesome. I’m excited.

2) This is awesome. I’m terrified.

The fear was real. Even when wielded by a quintessential Non-Techie, ChatGPT’s most primitive version was mind-blowingly good at pretty much everything my agency did.

On the other hand, very few people were talking about it in the places I hung out (like LinkedIn). 98% of the use cases, criticism and content about ChatGPT came from tech bros. It wasn’t for Non-Techie people like me.

Bursting at the seams with stuff to say, I started this newsletter as a hobby. AI For Non-Techies was my Frankenstein’s monster, pieced together with chunks of spare time, pieces of frustration and an insatiable desire to learn more about this new technology.

The Death of My Agency

People quite liked reading my rambles about my new AI discoveries. The newsletter turned into LinkedIn posts, the LinkedIn posts turned into resources, the resources turned into speaking opportunities, and before I knew it, I had accidentally become an AI consultant.

At the same time, things weren’t working at my agency. It was my first ever business, and I loved it dearly, but a tough landscape for small agencies was just too much for it.

I cried for two weeks straight. What could I do? How would the mortgage get paid?

Luckily for me, AI had thrown me a life ring.

Going All In

You know that scene in Indiana Jones, where he has to take a leap of faith onto the invisible bridge?

That’s sort of like how it feels when you decide to pivot your business.

I did a total rebrand, and leaned so hard into AI that I’m pretty sure you can still see the outline of my silhouette pressed against its side.

I’m so pleased I did. AI For Non-Techies is already more profitable than my agency ever was, and I love seeing people light up as they learn that AI will change their lives, just as it changed mine.

We’re still very early in the AI timeline, which means there’s a conspicuous lack of qualified AI trainers, but a huge and growing demand for them. That’s partly why I built my new course - to address this imbalance. To learn more, just click here.

See you next week,

Heather