When I first started using AI, I didn’t really understand much about it.

There was a lot of hype around it at the time. People saying you shouldn’t use it, that it would take over work, replace jobs, and make people lazy.

But honestly, I just thought it was pretty cool. I wasn’t worried about it taking over the world. I was mostly excited that it could fix a sentence without me calling my mum first.

Almost overnight, it gave me something I didn’t realise I’d been holding back on for years. Confidence.

I’ve always loved writing and sharing stories. It’s what helped me grow my first business back in 2008. I simply started blogging about my own health and fitness journey, and through sharing those stories I made a lot of connections with people who could relate. It wasn’t really called a following back then, and I wasn’t doing it intentionally to build one. I just loved sharing what I was learning along the way.

That part has never been the issue. But grammar was never my strength, and it slowed me right down. As my business grew, I got more and more concerned about my grammar and my lack of ‘official’ writing skills. Honestly, my writing was a lot like how I speak. Sometimes I wouldn’t take a breath for three sentences, so full stops were definitely a bit sparse. When I started getting asked to write regular articles for major fitness magazines, it honestly freaked me out. So before I’d share anything publicly, I’d send it to my mum, my mother in law, or my husband. They’re all great at that stuff, but the process broke my momentum. By the time it came back, the energy was gone. The moment had passed. And sometimes, the post never went out at all.

So when AI came along and suddenly I could write something, tidy it up, and hit publish, it felt like a game changer. It was like having someone quietly check my work in the background, without having to wait days for a reply or feel awkward about asking.

And I think that’s where most people start with AI.

Fix this email.

Help me write this post.

Make this sound better.

You play with it. You’re blown away. You think, wow, this is incredible.

And then, not long after, you get frustrated.

Because it spits out something random. Or generic. Or completely off the mark. And you think, wow, this is crap.

That swing from excitement to disappointment is incredibly common. And it’s exactly why I wanted to write this.

I’ve been using ChatGPT for nearly three years

I started using ChatGPT not long after it became publicly available.

In that time, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat again and again. Excitement. Confusion. Disappointment. Abandonment. And eventually, understanding.

What I’ve learned is this.

AI isn’t inconsistent. Our expectations are.

Once you understand what AI actually is, and just as importantly what it is not, everything starts to make sense.

What AI actually is, in plain English

For most small business owners, when we talk about AI, we’re talking about tools like ChatGPT.

There are many different types of AI tools, but when it comes down to it, a lot of them use LLMs, which stands for large language models.

In very simple terms, an LLM is trained on huge amounts of text. Books, articles, websites, conversations. It doesn’t understand any of that content the way a human does. It looks for patterns.

When you type something in, the model predicts what word is most likely to come next, then the next one, and the next one again. That’s how it builds a response.

So it’s not thinking. It’s not reasoning. And it’s definitely not making decisions for your business.

AI doesn’t think. It doesn’t know things. It doesn’t make decisions.

It predicts the next most likely word based on patterns in data.

That’s it.

It’s incredibly good at language. It’s fast. And it’s confident. But it doesn’t understand your business unless you tell it. It doesn’t know your goals unless you explain them. And it doesn’t have judgement unless you build that in.

This explains why AI can feel brilliant one minute and completely useless the next.

Why AI feels so hit and miss

One of the biggest misunderstandings I see is that people expect AI to understand intent.

It doesn’t.

AI responds to inputs, not meaning. It can’t guess what you meant. It can only respond to what you actually said.

Think of it a bit like telling your partner, “I just want a nice day for my birthday,” and assuming they’ll magically read your mind and understand what a nice day actually means.

Sometimes you have to spell it out. What that day looks like. Whether it’s a quiet lunch, time to yourself, or something planned. I’ve learnt this one the hard way and now know the more detail you give, the closer the outcome is to what you had in mind.

AI works the same way. If you’re vague, it will guess. If you’re clear, it behaves much better.

Small changes in how you ask something can lead to very different results.

On top of that, most people treat AI like Google. Google retrieves information. AI generates responses. That’s a very different interaction.

Then there’s the biggest issue of all. People jump straight to output.

Write me a post. Create an email. Fix this.

With no background. No context. No tone. No rules.

That’s not an AI problem. That’s a briefing problem.

If you handed that instruction to a new team member, you’d expect pretty average results too.

What AI is not, and why this matters

A lot of frustration comes from expecting AI to do things it was never designed to do.

AI is not a strategy engine. It is not a decision maker. It is not a mind reader. It is not a replacement for your judgement.

It doesn’t know your customers. It doesn’t know your risk tolerance. It doesn’t know what should come first.

So when someone tells me AI gave them rubbish, what usually happened is simple.

The question was vague. The context was missing. The role wasn’t defined. The expectations were unrealistic.

Not because AI is broken, but because it was being asked to do something it cannot do on its own. The exciting part is, it can be trained.

This is where things changed for me

Once I understood how AI actually works, I stopped using it as a quick fix.

And that’s when I started getting amazing results. It’s been a game changer for my business productivity.

Instead of one off prompts, I started building context. Instead of random requests, I gave it rules. Instead of asking it to just help, I gave it a role.

I’ve now built AI buddies inside my business that know my tone, understand my offers, are familiar with my clients, and work within clear boundaries.

The difference in output is huge.

It’s no longer about fixing an email here or there. It’s about creating systems that support how the business actually runs.

But that’s for another blog.

Why this matters for small business owners

So many business owners have tried AI, felt disappointed, and written it off.

Not because it isn’t powerful, but because no one explained how to work with it properly.

AI isn’t magic. It isn’t a shortcut. And it isn’t a replacement for thinking.

It’s an amplifier.

When you give it clarity, it gives you leverage. When you give it structure, it gives you consistency. When you give it rules, it gives you better results.

Once you understand that, everything changes.

A simple prompt to try this week

If AI has felt hit and miss for you, try this before you ask it to do anything.

Copy this and adapt it to your business.

I run a small business that offers [what you do].
I mainly work with [who you help].
My customers usually come to me because they feel [their main problem or frustration].

I want you to act as a practical business assistant.
Keep the language clear, friendly, and human.
Avoid marketing jargon and hype.

Can you help me with [the task], making it easy for my customer to understand and take action?

You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need fancy prompts. Just stop asking AI to guess.

That one small shift alone will dramatically improve the results you get.

Before you give up on AI

If AI feels frustrating right now, it doesn’t mean it won’t work for your business.

It usually just means you haven’t been shown how to work with it yet, or you haven’t set up the right systems and context to make it useful in your world.

The first step is simply understanding what AI is and how it works. From there, you can build tools and little systems around it that actually support you, instead of giving you random results.

And honestly, AI has become so normal in my day to day that my husband jokes he’s starting to feel a bit irrelevant. If I’m renovating something around the house, I’ll take a photo and ask AI before I ring my dad for tips. It’s been a complete game changer.

So don’t give up on it just yet. Learn a little bit more, practise how you communicate with it, and you’ll be blown away by the impact it can have, both in your business and in your personal life.