When AI Becomes a Tool, Not a Toy
Last week I was a lot less active on social media because I was virtually attending Alicia Lyttle’s most recent AI summit. It was impactful to say the least. The guest list alone was ridiculous. From ET to Myron Golden, I was blown away by the amount of firepower present. But what really stuck with me was the way they explained how they’re using AI. We all know we’re entering that era, but seeing how people are actually leveraging it for personal and business gain was both inspiring and validating based on how I’ve been using it lately.
We’ve all seen someone say that AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity shouldn’t be used as just a glorified search engine. But once you really tap in!? Mannnn, there’s some serious power there. Power to make life easier. Power to make your goals more attainable. Power to remove friction from the things that normally slow us down.
A few ways I’ve been using AI lately:
1. Content Creation
I’m a fan of ChatGPT. Not here to debate which LLM is “the best”.. Use what works for you. For me, ChatGPT has become a legitimate creative partner. When I started using it, I asked for the basics: build a posting schedule, tighten this caption, rewrite this paragraph, etc.
But things changed when I started building personalized GPTs.
More than just helping me refine a post, I built a GPT that takes a full Urban Profit blog article and automatically generates posts for all my platforms—Instagram, Threads, Substack, you name it. Quotes, comments, hooks, hashtags. Does it need tweaks sometimes? Of course. But it removes a huge mental tax and dramatically increases my speed to post.
I also built one that lets me share breaking financial or economic news, verifies it across trusted outlets, explains the impact for everyday people, and suggests content angles I can create around it. That’s clutch when you’re trying to keep up with the daily chaos and help your audience make sense of it.
2. Budgeting Support
You don’t need to dump your full financial life into AI. And honestly, I’d caution against that. But you can give general scenarios and get strategic guidance to help your money situation make more sense.
Things like:
“I have a lot of credit card debt. What repayment strategies should I consider?”
“Budgeting never sticks for me, what am I missing?”
“How should I prioritize savings vs debt vs investing?”
AI can help you think through it, build templates, suggest systems, and point you to additional resources (like The Urban Profit, haha). A little goes a long way in this category.
3. Stock Research Assistance
If you’ve followed any of my posts about investing, then you already know my number one rule: please do your research before investing.
Know what you’re buying.
Know why you’re buying it.
Know what success looks like for you.
Don’t fall into the trap of:
“I saw someone post about it so I bought it” or “I use this product so I should invest in it.” As the good brothers of EYL recently pointed out, you might love Nike, but loving the brand doesn’t automatically mean it’s a smart investment. The business still has to make sense.
One of the GPTs I built pulls together the basics on any company I’m researching. Financials, competitive moats, major risks, competitors, news catalysts, etc. It’s not a replacement for human research, but it’s an excellent starting point that saves me time before I go deeper.
Why This Matters
I’ll get into the monetization conversations from the summit in a future post, because that was a whole game in itself. But if nothing else, here’s my takeaway from last week:
AI is powerful when you feed it your ideas. Not when you let it think for you.
It’s still technology. It’s still early. I wouldn’t just hand it the wheel. But as a co-pilot? As an assistant? As a force multiplier? It can be that and more. Let it hold the map while you’re on your next trip. I’ll workshop the analogies later, but you get the point.
If You Want to Try It Yourself
Here are a few places AI can genuinely make life easier:
Use AI for:
✓ Content workflows
✓ Money planning
✓ Market research
✓ Learning new skills
✓ Administrative tasks
✓ Drafting ideas & templates
Start with one. You’d be surprised how much time gets freed up.
If you want to see how I’m using AI to talk money, wealth, and mindset, stick around. This is just getting interesting.
