They're Not All Vanilla
What my wife taught me about AI this week.
Tonight, like a lot of nights lately, my wife and I caught up with each other. She recently made a major move and left her corporate career in the healthcare industry to chase a dream. When Chris and I decided to start Wild Pines AI, like every other adventure that could impact both of us, she encouraged me to go for it. She’d been weighing an opportunity of her own — a chance to grow and expand an evolving med spa — but the immediate cost was walking away from the annual salary she’d worked incredibly hard to earn.
After watching her pour years of her energy, her time, and a piece of her sanity into that career, I got to witness her realize something I don’t think a lot of people ever get to experience. I had my version of this moment years ago, and it’s almost like in one second, everything your mind has been overworking and overcomplicating becomes very, very simple.
Someone else said this better than I can, so I’ll be resourceful:
You have two lives, and the 2nd one starts only when you truly understand you only have one.
Watching my wife go through that moment felt like I was going through it again. We’ve shared a lot in this life. We’re no strangers to grief or loss. We’ve got the awareness to know when we’re in the middle of something that’s going to become a memory. And now we share a mindset — we only live this life once, and we’re done hesitating.
She has always been an incredibly hard worker — the kind of person who gets things done with limited resources and broken systems. So at the end of the day, we spend time talking about the things we’re building or discovering on our separate journeys. She’s found great use in ChatGPT, like a lot of people have. It’s boosted her confidence in written communication, helped her organize her thoughts, and honestly, it’s opened up the way she approaches problems.
Tonight I was running through my highlights of the last few days — more specifically, using agents and testing different automations with open source tools that ended up improving something Chris and I had been working on. I’d say my wife retains maybe 15% when I talk AI. Before tonight, I would’ve told you it was 70%. But she asked me something tonight that was more important than she probably realized — it pulled me out of the weeds of AI and back up above the tree line.
I’d told her I thought she was ready for something a little more than the standard ChatGPT chat window. I suggested Claude Code — maybe even a trial of tokens for a month — and she looked at me like I had six heads. Then she asked if I could explain the difference between the AI systems I’d been referencing, and she added, “When I hear AI, I just kind of think it’s always about the same thing.”
I felt like I called for a pass and somehow the ball hit me in the back of the head.
To me, my week with AI had been like Baskin-Robbins. I tried six new flavors, enjoyed the two I love and am comfortable with, and still had some of that tried-and-true vanilla (ChatGPT, in case you were guessing) — although lately, honestly, it’s been tasting a little sugar-free, and they’ve been handing it to me with a fork.
One long analogy later, my next move for Wild Pines became very clear.
We’re all at different levels of using and understanding AI, and the technology is changing daily. For Wild Pines AI to really find the customers we know we can help, we also have to be teachers. We have to stay mindful that if Baskin-Robbins never explained what the 31 flavors were, you might walk in assuming they’re all variations of vanilla.
My wife will be trying Claude Code for the first time this week. And in one month, this thing that felt daunting is going to become a catalyst for her success. (It also helps that she’s married to her own personal help desk.) I can’t wait to watch her business grow, and I can’t wait to find more opportunities to help other people chase down their own goals the same way.
If you’re reading this and you just need someone to explain how any of this AI stuff actually works — email me. I won’t try to sell you anything. And I might even eat some ice cream while we talk.