AI fluency for
small business owners
The four skills behind using AI without losing what makes the work yours
I help you put AI to work with confidence that it's safe, effective, ethical, and still sounds like you.
For a decade I was Creative Director for Seth Godin, and from 2015 to 2024 I ran the altMBA, building the systems that scaled its workshops to thousands of students across 109 countries. I've worked with Amazon, Microsoft, and Nike. These days I help you use AI well: I teach the skills, coach you through real work, and build the workflows with you, up to a full AI assistant.
What I care about is the same thing you do: getting real help from these tools, and feeling confident that whatever goes out is right and still sounds like you.
The four skills behind confident AI use
Delegation: decide what to hand off
Not every task wants AI, and some never will. The repetitive, low-stakes work is the easy stuff to hand off. The work that runs on your judgment, or touches anything you'd never want leaked, stays close. You choose the line. The tool stays on your side of it.
Description: ask for what you actually want
AI does its best work when you tell it who to be and what good looks like. Give it a role. Give it your context. Give it an example. The clearer your ask, the less you have to fix on the way out.
Discernment: judge what comes back
The first draft is a starting point, not an answer. Read it the way you'd read a new hire's work. Does it sound like you? Is it true? Would you put your name on it? When something is off, you say what and ask again. That back and forth is the whole skill.
Diligence: stay responsible for what goes out
Whatever goes out under your name is yours. Check what's true before you trust it. Be upfront about where AI did the work. Keep yourself in the loop on anything a client or your audience will see. The tool helps you move faster. You own where it lands.
Two tools that do the work with you
Not worksheets. Paste the first into Claude and it interviews you, then builds a short brief about your business that you save and reuse. Paste the second and it walks any real job through all four skills, from what to hand off to what to check before it goes out.
Learn how AI can help your business, and where it can't
Book a free 20-minute call with someone who's done it before. Bring one real job, and we'll find where it saves you the most time, and where to be careful.
Or get my best thinking on AI in your inbox a few times a month.
About the framework
The four skills are drawn from the AI Fluency Framework developed by Prof. Rick Dakan (Ringling College of Art and Design) and Prof. Joseph Feller (University College Cork), released under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. I completed Anthropic Education's AI Fluency for Small Businesses course, where this framework is taught.