When people ask how I got comfortable building with AI, they usually expect me to point to a course or a certification. Something official. Something that sounds credible on a resume.

The truth is messier than that.

It started with a business that never became what I thought it would.

The $99 course and the dream of passive income

A few years ago, I spent $99 on an online course. The promise was straightforward: use AI to build a Shopify store that makes money while you sleep. At the time, ChatGPT, DALL·E, Midjourney, and Make.com were just starting to become accessible to everyday creators — not just developers. The course showed how to generate artwork with AI, place those designs onto print-on-demand products, and automatically publish everything to Shopify.

I already had a small shop called CopperBoom with about twenty products. I remember thinking: if this works, I can build something real.

So I went all in.

I built automations in Make.com that generated artwork, created product listings, and published them without me touching anything. I expanded from canvas prints into phone cases, apparel, home décor — anything print-on-demand would support. I was learning as I was building, which is my favorite way to learn. And the store grew.

5,000+
Products in the CopperBoom store AI-generated. Automatically listed. Almost entirely unbought. It turns out that filling a store with thousands of products doesn't automatically create customers. Who knew.

From a business standpoint, CopperBoom never became the passive-income machine I imagined. The maintenance outweighed the revenue. The automation worked; the business model didn't. Eventually I stopped chasing the dream of a fully automated e-commerce operation.

But something much more valuable happened while I was failing.

What I was actually learning

Here's the thing about building a complicated thing that doesn't work: you still learned how to build the complicated thing.

While I was trying to build a business, I was quietly developing a set of skills I didn't yet have words for:

How to think in workflows instead of individual tasks. How to automate with Make.com — connecting tools, building logic, handling errors. Prompt engineering, long before most people were calling it that. How to connect AI tools together to solve a problem end-to-end. How to design systems instead of doing things manually over and over.

None of that showed up in the revenue numbers. But it showed up in everything I built afterward.

As new AI capabilities kept emerging, I kept experimenting inside CopperBoom. I used AI to design original t-shirts rather than just generating abstract art. I experimented with AI-generated product photography and virtual models. I wrote product descriptions, marketing copy, and social campaigns with AI. Each experiment added another layer of fluency I wouldn't have developed any other way.

CopperBoom stopped being a business and became a laboratory.

And a laboratory that teaches you something with every failed experiment is more valuable than a business that runs on autopilot.

The reframe that changed how I thought about the whole thing

Where those skills showed up next

I didn't know it at the time, but the months I spent building and breaking CopperBoom were laying the foundation for everything I do now. The skills weren't transferable in a resume sense. They were transferable in a thinking sense.

Khloe and the executive dashboards — built on the same workflow logic I learned trying to automate product listings.
The migration automation work — six reusable workflows connecting AI to live systems. Same pattern, different problem.
Coach M and Hannah — designing systems around how people actually operate, not how you wish they did. That's a systems-thinking skill.
The workshops I teach — helping people build their first AI workflows. I know how to teach this because I learned it by breaking things, not by reading about it.
The consulting work — helping organizations rethink how work gets done with AI. The fluency that makes that credible came from a failed t-shirt store.

Ironically, almost none of that has anything to do with selling t-shirts.

What CopperBoom is now

The store still exists. But it serves a completely different purpose than the one I originally built it for.

Instead of chasing thousands of AI-generated products, I create designs that actually mean something to me — things I'd wear, things I'd give to someone I care about, things that make me smile when I look at them. It's become a creative outlet rather than an income experiment. And honestly? I like it better this way.

The business I imagined never materialized. The skills I developed while trying to build it are behind almost everything I do professionally today.

The lesson I keep coming back to

Don't judge an experiment only by the outcome you expected. Sometimes the most valuable return isn't the product you build — it's the capabilities you develop while building it. The $99 I spent on that course didn't teach me how to run a print-on-demand business. It taught me how to think in systems. That turned out to be worth considerably more.

If you're sitting on an experiment you haven't started because you're not sure it'll work — start it anyway. Build the thing. Break the thing. Learn from the breaking.

Sometimes the most important things you'll ever build are the ones you build while failing at something else entirely.

Want to start experimenting?

AI Without the Overwhelm

You don't have to build 5,000 products to start learning how AI works. My beginner workshop is designed for exactly the kind of curious experimentation that eventually becomes fluency — practical, low-stakes, and built around what's actually useful in your life. No failed t-shirt stores required, though I'd recommend one eventually.

Learn about the workshop Let's connect