Thank god I can snag 10 minutes to myself, lazing in our backyard hammock, before the after-summer camp stampede begins.
(Hanging this thing, by the way, is my best decision of 2026 so far.)
Don't even THINK about selling these feet pics! They're just for Reader.
I'm lying here, watching the butterflies flit around the pink powder puff blossoms on that Mimosa tree. My shoulders are finally starting to unwind.
Until my thoughts start traveling down this well-worn road:
…is it going to rain this week? …the drought is worse this year than last, right? …last summer the river never even got deep enough to raft. ...what if the river just dries up? …will my kids be able to lay in a hammock to de-stress in 20 years? …Will there still be butterflies? …Will there even be trees?
Fucking hell.
Because I’ve just read four things that, admittedly, flatten me.
The first is from Vulture: The Feed Is Fake. Buttloads of contractors are getting paid buttloads of cash to manufacture trends. Every viral moment you've seen – Justin Bieber's Coachella performance, political movements – potentially staged. Journalists are getting fooled by their own feeds, and so are we.
Then the Cloudflare CEO, who had predicted that bot traffic would outpace human traffic in 2027, says it's already happened. 57.5% of internet requests. His own words: "Welp, that happened faster than I predicted." Dead internet theory is, ironically, alive and kicking.
Stop using AI? Delete all social media accounts? Quit the internet altogether??
Doesn't it feel like this timeline could end up with either Universal Basic Income...
...orrrr mass class warfare while 7 trillionaires control the planet.
Like – AI might 100% solve climate change...
...orrrr we end up all battling it out in hand-to-hand combat for a spot on the last ship to Mars.
The internet is collapsing under the weight of AI and manufactured content, and yet here we all are, using the thing that's helping break it.
And sure, maybe logging off forever is an option. For me, in my business – it's not.
Every solopreneur I know is using AI (including me). Yet no one will say so out loud.
In their content, their social media, their business.
And damn, I get it.
AI data centers – the toll they take on water supplies, on energy, on the communities where they're being built – is a mindfuck. People are losing their jobs due to AI, and it is training on our work.
And beyond all that nightmare-fuel, AI-generated content is obvious. Some people have admitted to me: "Ok but I write my Instagram captions with AI and mine are actually really good and no one can tell."
(Babe… we can tell 👀)
I even look back on blog posts I wrote with AI in November 2023 and Reader – do I ever cringgggge.
I don't think linearly, and one thing AI is genuinely good at is helping me organize and communicate ideas that otherwise would be all over the place.
I have chronic illness and don't have the same weekly hours that chronically healthy people have. Plus as a parent during chaos of summer childcare, I can spend more time delivering top-quality client work if a robot is doing the grunt work for me.
So the question for me isn't black-and-white, should we use it or not – it's how should we be using it? And what do we need in place first?
And of course I can't answer the Big Questions about AI and tech. But I can give you the same answers I give clients all the time.
Here's my decision flowchart when clients ask about AI for their website 👇
The number one question I ask before anything else:
Do you have branding, messaging and positioning, ideal audience, website goal, and offers locked in?
Because if you don't, any output AI gives you will be generic. AI is set up to skew toward the middle.
In this trust recession, looking and sounding like everyone else does not help inspire trust in you and your business, so you're not going to get any traction.
(Psssst This is exactly why I’m bringing back the free Get Your Site Together Challenge in August! For free. We work through your brand bio, social proof, visuals, offers, and website goal – together. That's the foundation that makes every AI decision below actually answerable. Join the waitlist →)
Ok, so you have those in place. Should you use AI to build your site instead of a CMS (like Squarespace, Showit, or Wix)?
If it's a short-term minimum viable project: sure.
Testing a new offer, a standalone page – yes. If you only need it for a short bit, and won’t need to make any edits over time.
If it's a business site you want to use and maintain for more than three years: no.
Making updates means going back to the chat repeatedly (which saves you exactly no time!), CMS platforms handle security that you'd otherwise own yourself, and in two years it'll look like every other AI-built site. So you’ll end up rebuilding. (Like my blog posts 🫠)
Can you use AI to write copy, do keyword research, or develop brand or website strategy?
If you're looking at info synthesis or manual execution tasks: go for it.
As in: anonymized research to ask it questions about your audience, keyword ideas to then verify yourself, or a copy brain dump to hand off and organize into a streamlined flow.
For anything strategic: no.
AI has been trained on the entire internet. It knows what the average version of everything looks like – and that's what it produces.
But your brand, your clients, your unique positioning? None of that lives on the internet yet, boo.
So when you ask it to develop strategy for your business, or a design spec, you get the output that could apply to anyone. Which, we all know, works for no one.
That includes page structure and conversion flow, color palettes (AI has no nuance plus regularly misses accessibility), font pairings, and messaging that sounds like you. You can ask it to brainstorm ideas, but the creating and the decision-making need a human brain.
Look, I don't have all of this figured out either.
Every time I open a chat window, I'm making one small call inside a much bigger conversation I'm constantly having with myself.
I’d love to have that convo with you too, Reader.
→ How are you feeling about using AI right now? → What are you using it for, and what's frustrating you?
Hit me back and tell me. (The bullshit-free answer, I mean).
Keep on keepin' on,
P.S. In Website Wayfinder, I've built and shared Claude skills for writing metadata, alt text, renaming images, and optimizing images – the kinds of tasks you'd give a trained intern. And I'm building (and sharing) more all the time.
Want, like, specifics on how I'm using AI in my workflow? Just hit reply and ask bb. I’m an open book.
PPS For the record, while I can;t log off forever, I am logging off for 20 minutes at a time. In the hammock. With the butterflies. Who (for what it's worth) have no opinions on AI whatsoever.
Take a quick peek into the studio:
📚 Reading:
For Big Thinking on AI, I turn to Ethan Mollick, professor at the Generative AI Lab at Wharton. I highly recommend reading his substack. This week's article is about the next phase of AI: Co-existence.
🏃🏻♀️ On my way to:
My other business buddy, copywriter Maddy Aucoin is hosting a free positioning workshop Wed 6/17 to teach you how to reposition yourself to land better-fit clients and be known for something. This is for you if you're really good at what they do, but you're not quite getting the referrals, recognition, or clients you want.
🌱 Launched:
In May, launched two client sites – I've been waiting until I had published case studies to share them, but gah who knows when that will be. Take a peek til then:
Erin Rue – jargon & judgement-free small business tax accountant
Wanna work together?
🌊 Website Wayfinder
A guided, small-group program to build and launch your strategic, client-ready Squarespace website. Your site, finally done right – with a web pro in your back pocket.
Step by step to the website you've been waiting for.
A targeted tune-up for existing Squarespace sites that are mostly there – but not quite working.
Rather than starting from scratch, I refine what’s already there so your site looks more intentional, works better for visitors, and is easier for you to manage behind the scenes.
