I use AI in my business.
I also use spreadsheets, calculators, keyword research tools, analytics platforms, transcription software, and a frankly unreasonable number of browser tabs.
AI is a tool in that same sense.
I think of it a little like a CPA using a calculator. The calculator helps them do the work. It does not make them a CPA.
The same is true here.
Whether I’m writing a blog post, conducting an SEO audit, building a strategy, or creating something for a client, my work starts with me.
Quite literally, most of it starts with my Apple Pencil and a fresh Notability document.
My thoughts. My questions. My judgment. My experience.
Then I use technology to help me do certain parts of that work better or more efficiently.
I don’t ask an AI tool to “do SEO” for a client and hand over whatever comes back.
SEO requires context, judgment, interpretation, and decisions about what actually makes sense for a particular business.
Those decisions are mine.
AI may help me organize information, analyze data, research a question, work through an idea, create a first draft, troubleshoot something technical, or execute a clearly defined task.
It can be very good at those things.
But the strategy, conclusions, recommendations, and final decisions come from me.
Depending on the project, I may use AI tools to help with things like:
I primarily use the paid versions of Claude and ChatGPT.
I also use software that incorporates AI into specific features. Canva is an obvious example. Increasingly, “using AI” doesn’t necessarily mean opening a chatbot. AI-assisted features are becoming part of the ordinary software businesses use every day.
AI sometimes participates in my writing process.
It does not get the final word.
Ideas typically begin as my handwritten notes. I may use AI to help organize those ideas, poke holes in an argument, find a better structure, edit something I’ve written, or draft language for me to react to and revise.
Anything published under my name on this website has been thoroughly reviewed and edited by me.
I stand behind it as my work.
If there is an error, a bad recommendation, or an opinion you strongly disagree with, you can blame the human. That would be me.
The same principle applies to the work you hire me to do.
You are hiring me for my SEO expertise, judgment, experience, and ability to understand your business and figure out what matters.
AI may support that process.
It does not replace it.
For example, I may use AI to help me analyze information, organize research, investigate a technical issue, work with a large dataset, or execute a task after I have determined what needs to be done.
I review the work I deliver and take responsibility for the recommendations I make.
You are not paying me to type your website into Claude and send you the answer.
That would be a considerably cheaper business model.
I take the same care with client information when using AI that I do with the rest of the software in my business.
I use paid accounts for Claude and ChatGPT and have my accounts configured so that the information I provide is not used to train their models.
I do not intentionally provide sensitive or confidential client information to an AI system when it is not necessary for the work I am doing.
Some parts of my business also use AI-powered third-party tools. For example, I use Fathom to record, transcribe, and summarize certain calls and client sessions.
I only record calls with the consent of the people involved.
My use of AI does not change the privacy commitments I make elsewhere on this website or in my client agreements.
One of the reasons I use AI is that it can make certain kinds of work faster.
It also gives me the capacity to do kinds of analysis that would otherwise be difficult to take on as a solo consultant.
I can work through larger amounts of information, compare patterns across datasets, test different angles, and dig further into a question without needing a team of analysts behind me.
That does not mean I assume its output is correct.
AI can misunderstand context, make unsupported assumptions, produce inaccurate information, write mediocre copy with tremendous confidence, and occasionally come up with something so bizarre that you wonder what conversation you were having in the first place.
So I check it.
I edit it.
I challenge it.
And I decide whether the output belongs in the work at all.
I’m neither anti-AI nor interested in pretending I don’t use it.
It’s useful technology. I use it often.
But tools are only as useful as the person deciding what problem needs to be solved, what information matters, what questions to ask, whether an answer makes sense, and what to do next.
That’s the work you hire me for.
And that part is still very much human.
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