Yesterday I stopped in a General Store—like, a real live General Store—and I bought a coffee and the bill was $3.16 and I handed the girl $4, and then she gave me a dollar back and said:

"I'll just take the sixteen cents from the penny dish. Have a nice day!"

And I looked at her like she had just flashed me. 👀

I had forgotten how things were around here. It's an innocence. Even though she probably thought I was just some jabroni from New Jersey (I wear black in extreme proportions), her nature is still "save somebody the dollar."

You don't find that everywhere.

Small kindnesses like these are one of the reasons I have been...fulfilled by, or at least fascinated by, my decision to purchase the farmhouse, out here, out in the middle of the Pennsylvania countryside. But, I'll admit: it makes no sense that me—long-time digital native, Macbook maven, tech queen, traveler, liberal—being here, in the woods, galloping into a General Store, using cash, for god's sake. Cash??? Who uses cash???

I look around and see so much opportunity.

Do you know I still can't even pay the sewer bill to the township without writing a check? Yes, they're still making me write checks! (Something I had to, errrr, order.)

And then I come home to my absolutely hilarious farmhouse, with 5-feet-tall tomato plants outside, and a baby deer who sleeps in my hydrangea bushes, and very, very clean gutters (thanks to me getting up onto AN ACTUAL LADDER last week), and then suddenly?

Once I pull in the driveway and walk in that door?

I transform from "guileless General Store gal out for a crisp morning walk at the park" into "online tech shark building internet worlds while eating motherfucking goat cheese."

Yes, motherfucking goat cheese.

You don't find it on any pizza around here, I assure you.

So. Much. Opportunity.

It's what I see everywhere. Not just here. Everywhere. I have spoken for years about the internet being a great equalizer—imagine if my mom, with her severe social anxiety, had been able to build an online business??? how that would have changed our lives???—but now, the tools we have are like the internet x 1,000,000,000.

Do you know what I've used AI to accomplish this week?

• I had Claude go into Quickbooks and categorize all of my 2026 transactions (something you can set up as a recurring task, hello game changer, NOBODY LIKES GOING INTO QUICKBOOKS EVER).​
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• I gave Claude Cowork permission to act as me on my Macbook, and find all of the testimonials I had screenshotted over the past year, and upload them into Senja.
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• I made a SEXY brand-new, beautiful website using Claude Design in under an hour (here's my on-demand class on how to do this—you can have a seriously amazing new brand this weekend)
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• I'm making another new site on Ghost to host all of the content I've written over the past 17 years, using Claude + Claude Design to create a custom theme that doesn't look like anybody else's
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• Used Claude Cowork to take 24 emails I had written for a new sales campaign, go into my Kit account, upload them into a new sequence, make sure they are all formatted perfectly, and adjust the timing and settings as I dictated
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• Used Wispr Flow to dictate EVERYTHINGGGGGGGGGGG—even instructions to Claude. (Average typing speeds are 40 words per minute, I'm dictating at 111 words per minute.) (The only time I can't use this is while writing. Like, actual writing. Like this post. Because writing is not the same as speaking. Writing = thinking, and that can only happen slowly).
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• Used Apify to pull all Reddit comments around a new topic I am researching for voice of customer data (so I can use it in my copy and "speak the customer's language")
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• Had it go into a course I had made, review all the videos, and compile a step-by-step guide for exactly how to do what I did in the videos. Now an awesome downloadable.
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• Had it organize and clean up my whole drive, desktop, Macbook. Because, whoa. Creative people be messy. 🤣

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And! I got this super email from a student after she took my Design With Claude class:

☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️

Powerful as hell.

Opportunity everywhere.

But still, no one is going to plop this knowledge into your lap. No one's going to plant it into your brain. You don't accidentally learn technology. You learn it by using it.

Because whether you're a knowledge worker, or a skills worker; whether you live in the city or the country; whether you're a digital native or a digital virgin; one thing is true:

The technology isn't going away.

It's only going to grow.

Smart people will continue to be smart people, and will continue to improve these products forevermore. And, not to mention that we've got an entire generation of digital native users who will be shaping our technology for next 50 years, building things we couldn't even have dreamed of.

So you can either adapt and use it to your advantage.

Or, you can remain frozen in time—on purpose.

Like the General Store where I get my coffee.

Because that's an opportunity, too. To stand still. To preserve today's way of life. To remain unaffected. And, to do so intentionally.

The old American Dream was two acres and a fence. The next one might be a cash register that still dings. A girl who covers your sixteen cents. A store where nobody has ever once said the words "scan the QR code."

Once everything can be automated, the rarest product in America will be a place that never bothered.

And if you're that place? You get to charge for it. You get to create unique experiences for jabronis from New Jersey.

Once the world has forgotten...

...how to do things themselves.