You have probably opened ChatGPT at least once. Maybe you typed something in, got a response that was fine but not quite right, and closed the tab feeling like you had missed something. Like everyone else had figured out a trick you hadn’t.
You haven’t missed the trick. There isn’t one. The problem is where most people start.
The question everyone asks first is the wrong question
“What can AI do?” feels like a reasonable place to begin. It isn’t.
Asking what AI can do is a bit like walking into a hardware store and asking what all the tools are for. The employee could talk to you for hours. You could leave with a cart full of things. And none of it would matter if you hadn’t started with the actual problem at home that needed fixing.
The pattern I see again and again with the founders I work with is this: they start with the tool and work forward. They ask ChatGPT to impress them, or they watch a demo, or they read a list of “101 ways to use AI in your business.” And then they feel more overwhelmed than they did before, because now there are a hundred options and no clear reason to choose any of them.
That’s not a knowledge problem. That’s a sequencing problem.
Start with what you resent, not with what the tool can do
Here is the question that actually unlocks this: what task in your business do you do every week that you hate doing?
Not what’s hard. Not what’s strategic. What’s tedious. What takes an hour that feels like it should take ten minutes. What do you do on a Friday afternoon when your brain is gone and you just need to get through it.
For one client of mine it was writing follow-up emails after sales calls. She knew what she wanted to say. She just couldn’t face the blank page after her fourth call of the day. She was spending about three hours a week on something that felt like administrative work dressed up as communication.
For another it was summarising the notes from his team’s weekly meeting into something he could actually action. For another it was turning a rough set of bullet points into a client-ready proposal.
None of these people started by asking “what can AI do.” They started by naming the thing that was quietly draining them. And then they handed that one thing over.
That’s it. That’s the whole first move.
What “handing it over” actually looks like in practice
Let’s say your tedious task is the follow-up email. Here’s how this works in practice.
After your next call, open ChatGPT or Claude (two of the main AI tools most people have access to — you don’t need to know the differences yet) and type something like this: “I just had a sales call with a potential client. Here are my notes: [paste your notes]. Write me a warm, professional follow-up email that summarises what we discussed and confirms our next step.”
The first draft probably won’t be exactly right. That’s fine. Read it, tell the tool what to change, and read it again. You are not replacing your judgment. You are skipping the blank page.
Most people who try this once report the same thing: it saved them time, but more importantly, it removed the resistance. The task stopped feeling heavy.
That is a real outcome. It doesn’t sound as exciting as “AI transformed my business,” but it’s the thing that actually sticks.
Once you have one task working, you’ll start to notice the next one. That’s how this builds. Not in a single afternoon of deciding to go all-in on AI, but in a series of small handovers that compound quietly over a few months.
The one move worth making this week
Before you download anything, subscribe to anything, or sit through another demo: write down the three most time-consuming tasks you do that don’t require your unique expertise or your relationships.
Look at the list. Pick the one that costs you the most energy for the least reward. That is your starting point.
Then, and only then, open a tool and ask it to help with that specific thing. Not “what can you do” — “can you help me with this.”
You don’t need to know how AI works. You don’t need to understand the technology. You need to know your own business well enough to find the first thing worth handing over. And you already do.
