I Was Letting AI Run My Business (Here's What I Changed)

I’ve spent the last few years telling business owners to keep their marketing simple.

And for most of this year, my own business was anything but.

This is the honest version of what went wrong, and what I did about it.

How it got complicated

It didn’t happen all at once.

It never does.

I’d have an idea for a new offer, open up AI, and an hour later I’d have a page, a plan and a price for it.

Then another idea.

Then another.

AI never once said “hang on, do you actually need this?”

It just said yes, and got on with it.

Which felt BRILLIANT at the time.

Look at all this stuff I’m building!

But, stuff isn’t the same as progress.

By the end of the summer I had more offers than I could explain in one breath, projects that were nearly done and stuck there, and three different versions of my own voice guide sat in three different folders.

(Three. Of my own voice. I’m meant to be the one who makes this stuff easier.)

I was going round in circles.

I was busy every day, but not much was actually getting put live.

The mistake

Here’s what I got wrong, and I think a lot of people are getting it wrong right now.

I was letting AI decide what got built.

Not on purpose.

But, every time I asked it to help with something, it helped, and helping is what it does.

It doesn’t know your business.

It doesn’t know which of your ideas is the good one.

It doesn’t have to live with the mess afterwards.

You do.

AI is brilliant at doing.

It’s rubbish at deciding.

And if you hand it the deciding as well, without even noticing, you end up with a business that grows sideways instead of forwards.

What I changed

At the start of September I stopped building and started stripping back.

1. I wrote it all down, once

I wrote down who I help and what I sell, with the prices.

Then how I talk, right down to the words I’d never use.

All of it in plain English, in one place.

That one place is now the first thing AI reads before it helps me with anything.

So I’m not explaining my business from scratch every time, and it’s not guessing.

It’s exactly what you’d do with a new member of staff.

You wouldn’t put someone on the phones on their first morning without telling them who your customers are.

2. I decide first, then AI helps

Every week starts with me deciding what matters.

Not AI, not a to-do list someone else wrote, me.

Then AI helps me get it done faster.

That’s the right way round.

AI as the assistant, me as the boss.

It sounds daft written down, it’s so obvious.

It took me most of the year to actually do it.

3. I cut what wasn’t working

Anything that hadn’t brought in work, or wasn’t going to soon, got stopped.

Not deleted (I can’t bring myself to delete anything), just put to one side so I can’t see it every day.

What’s left is a business I can explain in a sentence:

I make marketing easier for service businesses, so the work keeps coming in while you get on with the job.

What this means for you

You don’t need to be using AI to have this problem.

Swap AI for a marketing agency or that freelancer who says yes to everything.

Same thing happens.

If nobody’s deciding, the tools end up steering.

So here’s the bit to actually go and do.

Write down everything you’re doing for marketing right now. Every tool, every account, every half-started thing.

Put a tick next to anything that’s brought you work in the last six months.

For everything else, ask: would I start this again today? If the answer’s no, stop it.

Then, before you open ChatGPT or sign up for anything new, write one sentence:

“This week, the one thing I need is…”

Only ask for help with that.

Version one is always better than version none, and a simpler version one beats a complicated version nothing every time.

Want more of this?

I write a short email every day called The Marketing Memo.

One idea, plain English, something you can actually do that day, written for service business owners who want marketing to be easier.

It’s free, and you can get it here: Get The Marketing Memo