The first slide I put up was a screenshot of the org chart.
I’d been asked to lead an AI workshop at Muse Group. I had a lot to show: tools I’d built, workflows, real examples from my daily work. But I spent most of my prep time thinking about something else. How to present all of it to a room full of people who were in very different places with AI. Some were already doing sophisticated work. Some hadn’t started. Some didn’t want to.
I opened with the org chart because I wanted every person in that room to see themselves. Not their title. Their reason for being there. Years of experience. Judgment built through real work. Expertise that took time to develop. “You were hired because you know things, you see things, and you make decisions that only come from doing the work.”
That was the foundation of the entire talk. Before I showed a single tool or workflow, I needed that to land first.
Why I started there
Everyone in that room was reading the same headlines: Companies laying people off and pointing to AI as the reason. Whether those stories are overblown or not, the fear is real. People wonder if they’re next. People wonder if the thing they’ve spent years building expertise in is about to become irrelevant.
I understand that. And I understand what it’s like to stare at the screen and not know where to start.
When I first opened ChatGPT in late 2022, I didn’t know what to do with it. I had a Python book sitting behind me that I’d been working through, and on a whim, I asked it to write a script I needed for work. Something simple: I had data on one end, I needed a report on the other end, and I knew Python was the glue, but didn’t yet know how to write it well. ChatGPT wrote the script. It worked. That was the moment it clicked for me, but it clicked because of what I already knew. I knew what the data meant. I knew what the report needed to look like. I knew whether the output was right.
From there, I kept building. Simple things became more complex things. A Python script became an editorial operations platform. A content performance question became an NLP-based headline grading system. A 25-year-old idea for a music discovery site became Bassists.com, a fully custom WordPress site with API integrations, an interrelated content taxonomy, and caching strategies, all informed by years of scoping and building this kind of architecture.
When I finished Bassists.com, I said to my wife, “Well, that was easy.” She said, “You know, not many people could have done that.” And she was right. Claude Code didn’t build that site. I built that site because I gave it the scope. The years of leading development teams, designing taxonomy, and thinking through how content relates to other content. That’s what went into it. The tool was the accelerant. The experience was the engine.
Everybody’s on a different path
That’s my story. But the workshop wasn’t about me. It was about helping people find their own version of that moment.
I know what it looks like when somebody is resistant to AI. I managed an editorial team through it. There was anxiety. There was skepticism. Some people felt like it was a threat to what made their work theirs. I understood all of it because I’d had my own version of those feelings early on. The difference was I’d come out the other side and could see what was possible.
So I didn’t mandate anything. I worked with each person individually. I built tools that protected their voices and their expertise. I showed them how AI could improve their work without replacing what made it theirs. I was patient. I didn’t rush anyone. And over time, every one of them came around on their own terms. They’re using it now because they want to, not because they were told to.
That’s the approach I brought to the workshop, too. I acknowledged up front that people were in different places. I said: Some of you are doing more advanced work with AI than I am. Some of you are just starting out. The rest are somewhere in the middle. All of that is fine. Here’s where I started, and here’s what it looks like now.
The advantage isn’t AI. It’s AI plus experience.
Here’s my view: AI is not a replacement for expertise. The companies cutting experienced people and keeping the AI are cutting the very thing that makes AI valuable. AI knows what it knows because of humans. Everything it’s learned came from people with real experience doing real work.
But here’s the other side: the people who embrace AI, who learn how to use it well alongside their expertise, have a significant advantage. Two people with the same experience, same knowledge, same judgment. One is using AI effectively. One is not. The one using it is faster, reaches further, and has leverage the other doesn’t.
That’s not a threat. That’s an opportunity. And it’s an opportunity that only works because of the experience behind it.
I didn’t open the workshop with a demo. I didn’t show them how to set up Claude Cowork. There are dozens of posts like that in everyone’s LinkedIn feed already, and they never get into the why. I opened with the org chart because before anyone could hear what AI could do for them, they needed to hear that what they already bring is the thing that makes all of it work.
Experience is still the best prompt. AI just gives it more reach.
