Sunday from the Porch

Ready? Steady. Go!

I was sitting with my coffee this morning, reading about updates to Canva’s AI system, watching designs materialize on the screen in seconds, when something a client said to me a few weeks ago came back.

“You’re in a race against AI.”

I remember the words landing strangely. Not because they stung. Though they did, a little. But because my first instinct wasn’t defensiveness. It was something closer to relief. I looked at the screen. I thought: I’m so glad people have access to this. So I don’t have to do all of that rushed, silly stuff anymore.

Those two reactions arriving almost simultaneously told me something: I’m just still working out what.

I didn’t respond well in the moment. I said I didn’t think of it that way. They said, “You look surprised.” I said I was.

The truth is more complicated: I have located my value in the output for most of my professional life, actually. Designs. Deliverables. Things you could point to, pull up, send over. I know how to do that. I’m good at it. And for a long time, being good at it was enough of an identity to carry me through.

What I’m sitting with now and what I have been sitting with for a while is the recognition that it’s a fragile place to stand. When clients, partners, or even I stake the majority of my value in creative output, it flattens the work I care most about: the connection-making, the thinking, the architecture. The conversation and soft skills that come to serve as the mortar for what we’re actually building. The relationship stops being interesting and, from there, I start going through the motions until the pleasure drains out of it. Slowly, completely, and all at once.

I’ve been trying to retrain myself away from needing the output to be the proof. It’s slow work. But the comment landed in the middle of it, which is maybe why it landed the way it did. So I took it to a handful of other clients just to see. The responses ranged from shock to flat disbelief. Not one of them outright agreed with the framing.

All of this took me back to working retail in high school. Self-checkout was being installed and the two dozen cashiers on staff were convinced it was going to replace them. Nobody wanted to bring it up with management. So I did.

After that conversation, I was the only person in the room who raised their hand to learn the system. To run it.

I think about that version of myself sometimes. Not because I’ve always been fearless around change. I haven’t. But because that instinct is still in there somewhere, that is who I am, underneath the performance anxiety and the need to prove. Something in me knew then that what I was attached to wasn’t going anywhere. The machine wasn’t the threat.

I’m trying to find my way back to that clarity.

Here’s what I actually thought, watching the Canva ad this morning: Thank god this exists. Because now I can build my own things the same way everyone else is.

That’s the shift I’m reaching for. The technology isn’t replacing the work I value. It’s releasing me from the work I don’t. Hours of production that kept me from thinking. Deliverables that kept me from creating. If there’s a race I’m running, it’s the same one everyone is—or should be—running: figuring out how to use what’s available to do more of what actually matters to you.

People often ask me how I use AI across the different ways I serve as a co-founder, creator, and coach. The honest answer is that the use cases are completely different in each context, but the intention is the same: I use it with guardrails to support the things that interest me. I’m also paying attention to what it’s doing at a larger scale. To the culture. To the quality of what we make and say and gather around.

Because here’s what I keep coming back to: the more creative output gets automated, the more human involvement is going to mean something. The more people try to use AI to shortcut connection or manufacture impact, the more real presence is going to stand out. The signal gets clearer as the noise gets louder.

To lead is to always be subtly pivoting but, right now, I’m pivoting with pride. Toward less creative output, more strategic partnership. Less building websites, more real-world gathering. Less deliverable, more presence.

I don’t know if that’s wisdom or just exhaustion talking. Probably some of both. But it’s where I’m pointed — and for now, that’s enough.