Years ago I hired my first assistant.
I was convinced my problems were over. I had finally done it. Someone else was going to take work off my plate.
A week later I was ready to fire her.
Everything she touched came back wrong. Emails sounded nothing like me. Tasks came back half done. I remember thinking I had wasted my money.
Then my mentor asked me a question that embarrassed me.
He said, What exactly did you tell her to do?
I had told her almost nothing. I gave her my desired outcome, not the process by which she could get there.
The problem was never the assistant. The problem was the hiring.
I simply hired too fast.
And now AI is making that problem 1000X times worse!
That’s because …
AI is the fastest hire you will ever make.
It starts immediately. It never sleeps. It costs less than a coffee. And most people fire it within a week because it gave them garbage.
But AI does not fail because it is dumb. It fails because it was hired badly.
If you are getting underwhelming results from AI, consider narrowing how you use it.
Here are three jobs I give it, and how to hire for each one.
The research assistant.
Most people ask AI questions. Employees do not answer questions all day, they do jobs.
So stop asking and start assigning. Have it summarize a book. Have it compare two business models. Have it find the gaps in your plan. Give it a job, not a question.
The first draft machine.
AI is spectacular at first drafts and terrible at final ones.
That is not a flaw, it is the whole point. Let it produce the ugly version, then you do what only you can do: make it sound like a human who has actually lived. It writes, you decide.
The honest critic.
Before I launch anything, I ask AI to argue against it.
Find the weak spots. Tell me why this fails. It is the cheapest second opinion in business history, and it has saved me from more bad decisions than I want to admit.
Notice what these three jobs have in common.
The skill is not using AI. The skill is DIRECTING it.
The person who wins with AI is not the person who types or talks the fastest.
It is the person who gives the clearest instructions.
Same lesson as my first assistant, twenty years apart.
So here is my challenge for you this week.
Pick one task you keep putting off. Hire AI to do it, and this time write the instructions like you are briefing a brand new hire on their first day.
Context, goal, examples, what success looks like.
If it comes back wrong, do not fire the hire. Fix the briefing.
Because a tireless assistant who thinks with you - and works for less than lunch - is a beautiful thing indeed.
Charlie
P.S. If you act now you can get me to build your entire business for you and save 75% in the bargain. Read that again please … I do ALL the work, you save 75% and when sales start rolling in YOU keep 100%. You gotta see this.