You Don't Need to Understand AI to Use It Well
Asked a room of investors a question back in January. “How many of you know how to drive a car?”
Every hand went up.
“How many of you actually know how the electrical system inside your car works?”
Maybe two hands. Out of sixteen people.
And that's the analogy I keep coming back to when I talk to business owners about AI. We all drive cars. Every day. We commute, we run errands, we take road trips. We get enormous value from driving. And almost none of us know how the engine actually works. We don't need to. We just need to know how to operate the thing.
AI is the same.
The “I'm Not Technical Enough” Problem
There's a misconception floating around right now that you need to be technical to use AI well. That you need to understand how large language models work. That you need to know what tokens and embeddings and fine-tuning mean. That you need to be able to code.
You really don't.
I say this as someone who uses AI every single day for high-value work. Drafting content. Researching prospects. Automating follow-ups. Building workflows. And honestly… I don't know on the technical level how these LLMs work. Not really. I know enough to use them well. That's different from understanding the engineering.
It's the same way I know enough about my car to fill the gas tank and check the tire pressure. I don't need to rebuild the transmission.
The Gap Nobody Talks About
Here's something that surprised me. If you spend time on AI Twitter or YouTube, you'd think everyone already gets this. You'd think every business owner is building agents and automating workflows.
They're not. Not even close.
I had a conversation with a friend who runs a marketing community. He pointed out the massive gap between what the tech crowd knows and what actual business owners know. Smart, successful people who are busy running companies… and they barely know how to write a basic prompt. They don't know what a custom GPT is. They've never heard of Claude or Lindy.
When you're stuck in the AI bubble, you assume everyone knows these things. But the reality is there's this huge middle ground of capable people who just need someone to show them the basics.
What I See at Workshops
Taught salon owners at Sirius Business last month. Three sessions. All standing room only. These aren't developers or tech workers. They're people trying to fill chairs, post better photos on Instagram, and manage appointments.
Most had never opened ChatGPT before walking in.
By the end of the session, they were using it. Not because I taught them how neural networks function. But because I showed them how to do one specific thing they already needed to do… just faster. Sort product photos. Write captions. Draft responses to reviews.
The barrier was never technical ability. It was fear. People think they need to be experts before they can start. They don't. They just need to try one thing.
The Three Levels (And Why Level One Is Enough to Start)
I teach AI in three levels. Level one is AI-assisted… you use tools like ChatGPT to help with tasks you already do. Level two is workflows… you start connecting tools so things happen automatically. Level three is agents… AI systems that work semi-independently.
Most people haven't even started Level One. And that's fine. Level One alone can save you hours every week.
You don't need to jump to building agents. You need to learn to drive first.
Start Here
Pick one thing you do every week that takes too long. Maybe it's writing emails. Maybe it's summarizing meeting notes. Maybe it's researching prospects.
Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Describe what you need. See what comes back.
That's it. That's how everyone starts.
You'll get better fast. Not because you'll suddenly understand machine learning. But because you'll learn what to ask for and how to ask for it. Just like driving… you get better by doing it, not by studying engine diagrams.
The car doesn't care if you know how it works. It just drives.
