Now I Use AI For Everything

In a Nutshell:

• I spent years writing off AI as hype. Now I use it to run my business, write faster, code smarter, and live healthier.

• ChatGPT helps with emails, contract reviews, real estate analysis, automations, and even diet planning.

• Tools like Codex, N8N, Make.com, and Airtable have replaced dozens of hours of work each week.

• AI doesn’t just save time—it gives me insight, clarity, and breathing room.

• Everyone—including kids—needs to learn how to prompt AI well. This is the new baseline skill.

Let me back up and explain how I got here.

From “This Isn’t Real” to “I Can’t Function Without It”

I’ve been in tech since the late ’90s. For most of that time, AI was a myth that never showed up. People stopped talking about it.

By 2023, I was confident it was going nowhere. I even said:

“AI isn’t real. You don’t need to worry about it. Your kids don’t need to worry about it. It’s not going to matter anytime soon.”

Then OpenAI released ChatGPT. For the first time, the tool understood what I meant—not just what I typed. It responded with nuance, clarity, and usefulness. That was the moment I changed my mind.

📩 How AI Took the Stress Out of Email

I almost never write an email without using ChatGPT now.

The most recent example? For our first client at the property management company I’m launching, we needed to send over a formatted contract—along with a friendly, professional note summarizing it.

Normally I’d spend a couple hours trying to get that wording just right. Instead, I fed the contract into ChatGPT and asked it to draft a welcoming letter that highlighted the high points and expressed appreciation.

Two minutes later, it was done. Friendly, clear, and ready to send. That used to be an afternoon.

🔍 From Cluttered Searches to Clean Answers

I used to rely on Google for everything. But now? I can barely tolerate it.

There are too many ads, too much noise, and I never know if I’m seeing something useful—or just something paid for.

With ChatGPT, I get instant clarity. Whether I’m asking:

• What’s going on with crime in Omaha

• Who owns Boeing stock

• Or why Jane Fonda won an Oscar for Klute…

…I get clean, direct answers. And when I want more, I just ask a follow-up.

That’s the game-changer: every response is a jumping-off point for deeper learning. There’s nothing else like it.

🔍 AI Agents that work for me

It took a quick minute to get my head wrapped around how Agentic AI works but now I use a bunch of them and that just seems to be growing every week. As an example here's an AI agent that I'm building for my property management company.

It answers basic questions about rent, portal access, vendor payments, lease structure, and assessing maintenance issues, and how to onboard as a new customer.

It took me about 90 minutes to build and test.

I now use 6 of these across my various work. All of them available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They never get bored or don't show up to work.

📄 How I Reviewed a 20-Unit Deal in 30 Minutes

Recently, I had a 20-unit apartment building under contract. Normally, reviewing three years of P&Ls, leases, and financial records would’ve taken me a full week.

Instead, I uploaded the documents to ChatGPT and got:

• A clean Excel spreadsheet with year-over-year comparisons

• A written breakdown of what stood out

• And red flags I wouldn’t have caught on my own

The inspection report for 20 units across 5 buildings was quite long, so I just did this:

And ended up with this. A nice clean spreadsheet with a unit by unit breakdown of issues:

For example, ChatGPT noticed strange patterns in how utilities were billed. That led me to uncover problems in how rent and utility costs were being misaligned.

That one catch made me walk away from the deal. Without AI, I probably would have missed it—and regretted it later.

⚙️ The Day I Almost Hired a Bookkeeper

Managing multiple LLCs means handling tons of small monthly tasks: account reconciliations, credit card statements, expense tracking.

It was getting so bad I seriously considered hiring a remote bookkeeper.

Instead, I built a system with:

• N8N + Make.com to handle flow logic

• ChatGPT for interpretation and context

• Airtable + Google Drive for tracking and file handling

This is the Make.com scenario that reconciles my credit card statements:

I have these for most of the mundane tasks. Everything from renaming/structuring statements to reconciling account data. What used to take hours now happens in minutes.

The most time consuming part these days is gathering the statements since I don't have a way to automate that....yet. ;)

Now, 90% of my bookkeeping is automated. I check in here and there—but the mental load is gone.

It’s not just the time savings. It’s the freedom from having to think about it.

What used to wreck my end-of-month flow now just happens in the background.

👨‍💻 I Asked for a Loan Calculator. It Built the Whole App.

I’m using Codex to build a deal analysis app—and it’s doing almost all the work.

One example: I asked it to build a loan calculator for both interest-only and fixed-rate loans. I gave it the basic requirements—loan amount, down payment, rate—and it:

• Wrote the class logic

• Created a user interface

• Integrated it with other app sections

• Even built out a standalone calculator view

All I had to do was compile it and test. Every tweak I needed? Just more prompts. I haven’t had to write a single line of code myself.

It’s like having a full-time engineer who takes direction once, then gets the job done while you go make coffee.

🥦 Real-Time Diet Help That Changed My Life

This one’s more personal.

I’ve got some health issues that require me to stick to a strict FODMAP diet. That means constantly checking ingredient lists when I shop.

Now, I just:

1. Snap a photo of the label

2. Upload it to ChatGPT

3. Ask if it’s safe for my diet

   
   

Within seconds, I get a clear answer.

It’s not just a time-saver—it’s made my life easier. I’m no longer playing guessing games or trying to memorize every dietary restriction. That’s quality-of-life improvement, not just convenience.

🧰 My Real-World AI Stack

This is what I use every day:

• ChatGPT Pro – writing, research, decision support

• Make.com + N8N – background automation

• Slack – alerts, summaries, and bots

• Google Drive – document storage and file flows

• Gmail + Outlook – monitored by bots for email triage

• Codex – full-stack app development

• Airtable – my structured backend for data and tasks

Together, they form the quiet, invisible team running my day.

📚 What We Should Be Teaching Kids

If I were redesigning a school system today, I wouldn’t focus on memorization.

I’d focus on how to prompt AI.

Using ChatGPT to write an essay isn’t cheating—it’s like using a calculator to do long division. You still need to understand the logic, but you don’t need to grind it out manually.

AI lets students:

• Explore history interactively

• Organize ideas faster

• Ask better questions

• Validate what they’re learning

  
  

We should be teaching kids to think critically and communicate clearly. Prompting well is the new baseline skill. The sooner they learn it, the better prepared they’ll be.

Final Thought

I used to think AI was overhyped. Now I think ignoring it is like refusing to learn how to use a computer.

It doesn’t think for you—it clears the runway so you can take off.

If you’re curious, just start small. Try it for one thing you do every week. You’ll see what I mean.

AI isn’t a shortcut. It’s a lever. Learn how to pull it.