A New Kind of Partnership: Volume 2

Welcome back and thanks for supporting my AI education journey. Today, I want to focus on a major theme that guided me through uncharted territory while building the mechanisms of the website. I’ve never built a website and didn’t fully understand what I was getting myself into. In my head, all I had to do was buy the domain name, start adding pages and voilà, the website would be functional. Well, I was wrong. I’m going to walk you through a major aspect of the website build where I had to use AI to close my knowledge gap and build sustainable functionality into MindOverMoney.ai. 

A Major ‘Aha’ Moment: Domain & Email Routing:

In The Business of Prompting, I shared the master prompt that kicked off the brainstorm session to turn my idea into an actionable roadmap. One of the first action items suggested by ChatGPT was to set up the foundational domain routing and DNS settings. As a website novice, this was like reading a foreign language. But the process was laid out in a logical and succinct manner. I was able to follow the provided instructions and successfully set up the foundation for my website routing. Researching and learning the correct steps would’ve required time and effort, likely leading to frustration and a slower turnaround time for completion. This type of collaborative interaction with AI starts to unlock potential that otherwise would’ve taken significant mental investment to learn. 

The next task was more challenging, but equally as rewarding and educational. The task started with a simple scope to configure email to be sent from admin@mindovermoney.ai, but evolved into several domain configurations. This was another example of my naivety in this space, not understanding the complexity of the build out. The theme of this interaction was troubleshooting. I began executing the tasks, one by one, but eventually ran into errors during deployment. Initially, I was too focused on completing tasks and not prompting the AI at my comfort level for execution. This was a gap in understanding that created challenges during the deployment of the correct configurations. My mindset shifted when I started simplifying the interaction and creating a process to make changes at my pace. I also tempered my expectations to avoid frustration when errors in the process would arise. This was a time-consuming process, but nothing compared to how long it would’ve taken me to complete without an AI partner. And that is the key shift needed to learn and build with AI. This isn’t just a technology; this is a partner to help you accomplish your goals and build a better future. A partner with access to ALL information relevant to the problem you’re trying to solve. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies and overcomplicate things we’re not familiar with. Luckily, you can learn from my mistakes and short-sightedness to accelerate your own growth with AI. 

You can read through my entire conversations with ChatGPT on this week’s edition of Under the Hood. This will give you more context on the success and failures related to these activities. 

Learnings for You to Implement: 

• Use AI as your business partner and SME to close knowledge gaps and accelerate education.
  •  If you don’t know something or need help connecting dots to a topic you’re unfamiliar with, that’s ok. 
• Give AI clear roles and responsibilities. 
  • This will help your AI partner know where their expertise lies and how they can best assist.
• Build structure in your conversations with AI.
  • I’ve noticed ChatGPT and Gemini will quickly build out all tasks needed to complete the assignment. 
  • I find it easier to work, execute, and validate success one task at a time.
  • Tell your AI business partner exactly how to respond and at what pace to move.
• Ask for clarification and/or additional instructions.
  • If the original response was not enough, ask for more details and clarification.
  • Own your engagement, and don’t be afraid to change course and ask for help. 
• Be patient and share failures/issues as they arise.
  • AI makes mistakes, just like humans. Continue to probe and share errors until you’re satisfied with the results.
  • Just think, ‘Imagine if I had to troubleshoot these issues all by myself.’. That is when you start to experience the power of AI, through failures and challenges.

Goals & Milestones:

In the spirit of transparency, I plan on sharing updates related to my goals. This has been a challenge since I don’t really know what to expect when it comes to subscription growth, but socializing goals will help me stay accountable throughout this journey.