Scrolling LinkedIn last night, I found a post that made me properly laugh out loud.
You've seen the type. “Comment CLAUDE.” “Comment PROMPT.” “Comment AI.” Someone's cracked the secret to booking 25 meetings a week, writing perfectly researched proposals in seconds, and building a million-pound business in 30 days — and they're giving it away free, if you just comment the magic word.
The post I saw put it best: once 5,000 people are all doing exactly the same “secret,” it stops being an advantage. It's just noise with extra steps.
I get why people are cynical about AI right now. Half of LinkedIn is trying to sell you a shortcut to a brain transplant. But here's the thing — cynicism about the hype shouldn't mean throwing out the tool. So let me tell you what AI actually looks like in my business, on an ordinary Tuesday, with no magic beans involved.
Four Years of Wearing Every Hat
I've been self-employed for four years. That means I've had to become the marketing department. The customer service department (that one, at least, is my actual skill set). The photographer — which, if you've ever tried to photograph resin, you'll know is an absolute nightmare, because it reflects everything and hides nothing. I had to learn social media, web design, copywriting, poster design, and how to actually find customers — still working on that last one, if I'm honest.
When you're self-employed, you wear every hat. It's exhausting. It's lonely. And there's no marketing budget to hand any of it off to someone else.
What Twenty Minutes Actually Bought Me
This week, in a lot of pain, on the couch, running on not enough sleep, I wrote a blog post, edited it, and had it live on my website in about twenty minutes — using Claude, connected to my website, Canva, and Google Drive.
Without AI, that's not a twenty-minute job. That's a week. Draft it. Walk away from it. Come back with fresh eyes. Edit again. Format it for the website. Write the social posts to actually get eyes on it. Write the email to subscribers. Maybe build a whole automation workflow around it, which is its own separate headache.
Twenty minutes instead of a week means my time goes back into the ten other things on my list — instead of the whole day disappearing into one blog post.
The £700-a-Month SEO Quote
Around the same time, I had a quote from an SEO and metadata company: £700 a month, minimum 12-month contract, to review and improve the SEO across my sites.
I pay Claude £20 a month. While I was out and about running errands, Claude went through the SEO on both of my websites — around 300 products between them — and gave me suggestions to review and approve. I'm still the one with oversight. Nothing goes live without me. But work that would genuinely have taken me weeks, maybe months, because it's the kind of task that's mind-numbingly tedious, got done in the background of my day.
I want to be fair to that SEO company — they're good at what they do. But let's be honest about who can actually afford £700 a month for 12 months when you're a small business. Most of us can't. That's not a criticism of them. It's just the reality AI is changing.
Would You Hire a Ghostwriter? Then What's the Difference?
Here's the question I keep putting back to people who turn their nose up at this: would you hire a copywriter? A ghostwriter? A marketing company? A web designer? A personal assistant?
If the answer's yes to any of those, then what's the actual difference between paying a person to do it and using AI to do it?
Because here's the truth nobody wants to say out loud: when you hire a person, you have no idea what you're actually going to get. People can talk a very good game. They can market themselves brilliantly and deliver next to nothing. I fell into that trap myself — paid someone £2,000 to build me a website, because in my head, you pay the going rate, you get the result. Instead I got something awful, and I never saw that money again.
In theory, hiring a specialist should get you an excellent result. In theory. But this is the real world, not some blue-sky utopia where everyone delivers what they promise. Sometimes what you're buying is hype, not substance. And you don't find that out until the invoice is paid and the damage is done.
With AI, you're still in the driving seat. It has the skill set — but you're the one steering it, checking it, approving it. You're not hoping a stranger's talent and integrity line up. You're not gambling £2,000 on a website that might turn out to be a disaster with no refund. You're in control of the whole process, every step of the way.
The Bit Nobody's Honest About
Here's where I'll disagree with some of the AI hype: there are people using AI to think for them instead of with them. Handing over their voice, their judgement, their standards, and just publishing whatever comes out. I don't expect a lot of those businesses to last. If you don't teach the tool your own thinking, your own voice, your own way of doing things, all you get back is generic — because generic is what it defaults to.
But if you treat it as a tool instead of a replacement, it works. Case in point: I wrote this post lying in bed, gone ten at night, dog beside me, eyes half shut, dictating my rambling thoughts out loud. I have ADHD — I lose the thread of my own point constantly. Claude doesn't write this for me. It doesn't put words in my mouth. It just catches me when I wander off, and hands me back my own thoughts in a shape other people can actually follow.
That's the whole difference. Not “comment CLAUDE and multiply your income by 37,528.8% working 1.73 hours a week.” Just — a tool, used properly, buying back the hours that self-employment usually eats alive.
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