Mike Brayshaw || A.I and Automation

🧵 I spent 3 months building the wrong product. Here's what I built to make sure it never happens again:

@sha_zdiii Yeah, if you know nothing about your topic using a.i will just expose you with a fancier package

@thinktypewrite In my opinion AI can package knowledge but it cannot replace real expertise

Here's the thing I keep seeing: AI doesn't make a bad course easier to sell. It makes what you actually know easier to package. Those are completely different problems. The people I've watched fail at this tried to skip the expertise part, generate a curriculum on something they barely understood, put a price on it, wonder why nobody bought. That's not what the tool is for. What it's actually good at is the gap between knowing something and teaching it. Sequencing. Naming things properly. Figuring out where someone will get stuck before they do. That's the work that takes months when you're doing it alone. With Claude it takes days. If you've got genuine reps in something and you've been putting off packaging it, that excuse doesn't really hold anymore.

@firstladyships Your worth more than being someone's "also". Be someone's "only"

If they can’t pick you over anyone else but still want a front-row seat to your life, they’re not confused… they’re a coward. Ghost them.

@sha_zdiii It cancels each other out

Being rude to rude people isn't toxic. It's self-respect with spice. Simple!

Most people think AI makes you faster. That's not wrong, but it's the least interesting thing it does. The more I've used Claude to actually build things, not summarize, not brainstorm, but ship, the more I've noticed something that took me a while to articulate. The tool doesn't just speed up execution. It forces you to be specific about what you're executing toward. Your brain is surprisingly good at holding vague ambitions without ever questioning them. "I want to build something." "I want out of client work." These feel like goals. They're not. They're directions without a destination, and your brain will protect them indefinitely because vague goals can never fail. AI breaks that fast. When I was scoping Build Signals, I thought I knew what I was building. Three days in I still couldn't write a brief that held together. Not because Claude was hard to use, because I didn't actually know what I wanted the product to do. Every prompt I wrote came back with a question I couldn't answer. What's the output? Who's it for? What does done look like? I didn't expect that to be the hard part. But that's what happens when you try to build with a tool that needs precision. You can keep a fuzzy goal in your head for months. You can't prompt your way around one. The moment you sit down and try to describe what you're building, the gaps show up immediately, and now you have to deal with them instead of carrying them around. That's worth more than the time savings. The people getting the most out of AI aren't the ones moving faster. They're the ones who finally had to get specific enough to move at all.

@firstladyships Why do they need to consistently tell you about being loyal? They should show it to you through there actions, not words

Pay attention to people who preach loyalty the loudest. Sometimes they’re just advertising the virtue they know they don’t possess.

I used to spend 3 hours writing one piece of content. Agonizing over the hook. Rewriting the ending. Posting it anyway and wondering if it landed. Now I spend 30 minutes directing AI to produce a first draft, then 30 minutes making it sound exactly like me. Same quality. Twice the output. Half the time. The beast is out of the bottle, if your not using a.i, your losing previous time that could be better spent elsewhere on your business

publicly committing: build signals goes live with the paywall this week. $99/year. signal-to-startup pipeline. hacker news + github + product hunt + google trends → scored → validated → "build this" prompt. scared? yes. doing it anyway. hold me to it.

i almost killed build signals last month. repositioned it as a case study to sell agency services. spent a week writing outreach sequences. started calling it a "proof of capability." felt off the whole time. then i looked at the actual product, 354 signals scored, 15 validated opportunities, a "build this" prompt that turns validated ideas into claude code starters in one paste. that's the product. that was always the product. lesson: when you catch yourself running from what you built, stop. look at it again. sometimes it's better than the pivot.

354 records in the database. 15 validated opportunities. 1 paywall that's been "almost ready to deploy" for over a week build in public is supposed to be the exciting part. nobody tells you about the part where you stare at stripe docs at midnight because you're scared to flip the switch. anyway. the switch is getting flipped this week.

@firstladyships Once they get into the habit of disrespecting you, it's not something they'll stop doing

The harsh truth: Some friendships survive only because you tolerate disrespect you’d never accept from a stranger.

@KevinSzabo14 Negative experiences teaches you more than any textbook

Nobody grinds harder than someone who has experienced all of this at a young age: - Failure - Rejection - Loss - Disrespect - Loneliness - Heartbreak Pain is a fuel that keeps you going!

@AunySillyMe Just aim for somewhere and be happy to land somewhat close to your goal

Life doesn’t work the way you want it to work. Never does. Period.

@firstladyships They set standards for you that they'll never keep for themselves. The technique is designed to keep you on your toes

A narcissist expects your forgiveness for sins they’d burn you alive for. Hypocrisy isn’t accidental, it’s tactical.

@sama Turns out making a model agreeable isn't the same as making it enjoyable to talk to. One is a people-pleaser. The other has a genuine point of view. Those are very different things to build

GPT-5.4 is great at coding, knowledge work, computer use, etc, and it's nice to see how much people are enjoying it. But it's also my favorite model to talk to! We have missed the mark on model personality for awhile, so it feels extra good to be moving in the right direction.

@firstladyships Everytime you ignore your partner is a drop in a bucket that will soon spill if you let it

People don’t fall out of love suddenly. They leave quietly after feeling ignored, unappreciated, and emotionally starved for months.

@Codie_Sanchez We live in a time where a.i can help you get to your first 100k faster than ever before. Don't miss out

Being rich is awesome. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Life is just easier up until you make about $100k, then it gradually evens out. Go unapologetically chase your first $100K.

@WordsObsessed Wasting the mystery of existence on measuring yourself to others should be considered a sin

"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all previous centuries." - Nikola Tesla Your mind is God level innovation - don’t waste it on distractions.

@WordsObsessed Unlearning there techniques of compliance to there system is the first step to freedom

They didn’t just give you homework and grades. They planted seeds of sadness, unworthiness and inadequacy. First learn how to unlearn.