And those few steps are the ones I'll walk with you.
For about twenty years I knew I was capable of more than I was doing. I had the ideas. I had 30-odd years in IT behind me. What I didn't have was the bit in the middle — the bit between knowing what to do and actually finishing it.
Turns out I've got an ADHD-pattern brain. High on the fact-find. Brilliant at the quick start. And not great, if I'm honest, at the follow-through. For years I thought that was a character flaw. So I did what a lot of us do — went to the event, felt pumped, came home, bought the next course, and quietly went back to old patterns. Round and round. I call it the oscillation loop, and it was the enemy.
Then AI landed properly, and something clicked. Not because it's magic — I smell B.S. on most of the hype — but because, set up right, it does the one thing I could never reliably do alone: it closes the gap between knowing and doing. It holds the thread when my attention wanders. It's the scaffold. For a brain like mine, that's not a productivity hack. It's genuinely a superpower.
But here's the thing I learned the hard way: it only works when it's built around you. Most AI advice is written for some imaginary tidy-minded person who does everything in order. That person isn't me, and I'd bet they're not you either. So I stopped fighting my wiring and started building AI around it. That's the whole idea behind the Signal Stack — and behind everything here.
I've had two kidney transplants. These days I compete in the British Transplant Games — which, when I write it down, still feels a bit ridunculous. That experience left me with a line I keep coming back to: healed to be a help. Not just the kidneys — every wound, every twenty-year stretch of being stuck, every failure I'd rather not mention. They're the reason I can actually sit with someone who feels behind and mean it when I say: you don't need to be where I am. You just need the next step.
I've run an escape room business, coached at Toastmasters, delivered 200+ AI trainings since 2024, and broken more late-night terminal sessions than I'd care to admit. I'm not a guru. I'm a guide who's a few steps up the path, turning round to give you a hand.
Three hours teaching AI who you are beats a thousand clever prompts. Get the input right and the output looks after itself.
Not a confession. The way your brain works isn't the problem to fix — it's the thing to build around.
Anyone can start. The value is in finishing — the hard, human, specific bit at the end that everyone else abandons.
I'll tell you the real costs and the real caveats. No "fire everyone, it's £0.70." Just the realistic path, walked together.