A service business owner with 14 employees built his first AI assistant two months ago. Its one job was drafting customer follow-up emails.
It worked. Kind of.
The emails came back polished, professional, on-brand. He read one, nodded, hit send.
Three days later a customer called, confused. The email had promised a "priority scheduling window" that doesn't exist anywhere in his business.
He had no idea it said that. He'd skimmed it, decided it "sounded right," and moved on.
That's the whole problem with AI right now. It's really good at sounding right.
Here's the habit I'd hand him. It's the one I use every time an AI explains something I can't quite follow.
Instead of nodding along, I ask six words:
"Can you help me understand this?"
It flips the AI out of report mode and into teaching mode. And it puts the accountability back where it belongs.
You can outsource the thinking.
You can't outsource the understanding.
Most people are nodding along right now with NO idea what the heck the AI just told them. Harsh? Yes. But it's true.
That matters for the system you've been trying to build. You don't need the perfect prompt that spits out a finished workflow on the first try. Nobody writes that prompt.
You build it the way you'd build anything you actually understand. Every time the AI hands you a term or a step you can't picture, you stop. You make it explain that part in plain English before you go one line further.
That's the real bridge between the system in your head and the one that runs your business. Not a coding class. A habit of refusing to move on confused.
🎁 Thirst Trap Thursday: The No-Nodding Build
Copy this into ChatGPT or Claude before your next build session:
"I want to build [describe what you want, in plain English]. Walk me through how you'd do it, no jargon. Every time you use a term I might not know, stop and explain it in one sentence before you keep going. When you're done, ask me: does this match what I'm picturing, and where does it miss?"
Next time an answer doesn't sit right, don't nod and hit send.
Ask the six words.
Matt
PS, I teach this exact build-it-while-you-understand-it approach inside Delegate to Dominate. The next cohort starts mid-November. Reply "D2D" and I'll send you the details.
🏆 Client win: "It's in my voice. It sounds like me. It's not AI script."
Chris, owner of four schools and about 45 employees
Ready For More?
If this newsletter helped you, I'd love to keep sharing practical AI strategies every week.
