How to use AI for dummies

GM! Paperboy here 🗞️

Overwhelmed by AI and have no idea where to start? Same.

Outside of tinkering with AI tools, I figured the fastest way to learn more was to bring together the smartest people I know and have them show me what they’re doing. So I decided to make an event out of it.

This Friday (tomorrow) at 4pm EST, I’ll bring together founders from 3 well-known Shopify apps, a landing page agency owner, and ~50 brand operators.

You’ll see what others are building, what tools actually work, and have some time at the end for Q&A.

It’s free. I have no affiliation with any of the people sharing. And I’ve asked all the speakers to make it focused on helping others learn.

Work at a DTC brand and want in? Reply with context on your brand and what you want to learn to get in. The event has a limit of 100 people so don’t wait (my Zoom plan can only go so far).

Apologies to agency/consultants on my list — we're heavy on service people already and want to keep pitching to a minimum.

What I’m doing with AI now

I’m not qualified to speak on this topic as an expert (that's why I made the event above), but I am able to share what’s worked for me so far from a beginner’s point of view.

I’m going to share the tools I’m using, what I’m using them for, and the difficulty level of each one.

ChatGPT for Research & Prompt Creation (Start here)

Research: ChatGPT does a great job researching the web. When I start with a new client, want to learn more about a topic or have questions about things day-to-day, it typically outperforms other models for me.

Prompt Gen: For all of the tools shared below, I ask GPT to help me write prompts for them or provide step-by-step walkthroughs. Based on my first point, I find ChatGPT gathers up-to-date context on AI tools really well and helps me build prompts for these tools that get me really close to where I need to be.

Hack: If you are new to prompting, just ask ChatGPT to help you! Give it a prompt and ask it “rate this prompt on a scale of 1-10” then ask it to re-write it.

Claude for Copywriting (Beginner)

I’ve tried Gemini, GPT, Grok, and a few other tools for copywriting. Claude takes the cake.

Projects for different tasks: You want to have different Claude projects built out for every type of copy you write in your emails. Subject line generators, body copy generators, text-based email generators.

Projects for every client: We have projects with context for every client with all of the client’s context AND agency-specific formatting, writing styles and inspo we like.

Brainstorming & iteration: Claude has yet to replace any of our copywriters. We use it primarily for brainstorming and iterating on ideas. The stage of selecting ideas, developing them and putting the finishing touches is owned by a human. The goal of this tool is to make our copywriters more efficient and solve the blank page problem.

Google Gemini for Concepting (Beginner)

If your company is on G Suite, you probably get Gemini for free. You want to make sure the “Pro” option is selected for what I’m about to share. If your company is on a tight budget, you can probably just use Gemini instead of GPT & Claude and get a decent result.

Hero image concepting: Sometimes when I write copy for an email, I fear whether the designer will understand my vision. In the past, that just meant sharing a bunch of moodboards and inspo. Now you can just throw your copy into Gemini, give it a few product pics and tell it to generate a mock hero section.

Section redesigning: Sometimes a designer sends you something and it feels a little bit off. Instead of asking them, "can you try a few different button colors?” just do it yourself with Gemini first. The below is a VERY simple example, but I use this feature for product and section layouts quite often.

Claude Code for a lot of things (Intermediate)

Now we’re getting more advanced.

Warning: If you aren't familiar with basic coding, this will be very confusing for you. If you are, this will make you feel like a god (no exaggeration). To my coding beginners, you should probably watch a course like this.

Claude Code is an AI coding assistant that lives inside your development environment and can write, edit, and run real code, 100x faster than a software engineer.

Connecting to tools: Claude Code can hook up directly into a bunch of software you already pay for, and analyze everything inside it for you.

Connecting to Shopify: I recently hooked up Claude Code to a Shopify store’s entire backend to bulk generate discount codes for a unique promotion we were running. In theory you could use it to manage most of the task for an ecommerce manager’s role.

Connecting to Notion: I hooked up Claude Code to my entire Notion so that I can easily build on top of my client CRM, client content calendars, SOPs and more.

Building Mini Tools: I can build random tools and host them on a server or locally for getting tasks done. I’ll share examples of this below.

Claude Code + N8N for ongoing automations (Intermediate)

If you’re not familiar with n8n, it's basically a much more powerful and affordable version of Zapier for the AI era. I suggest watching a YouTube video on how to hook it up to Claude Code.

Claude Code can build your automations in n8n in minutes (would usually take hours).

I haven't built many use cases for this into Klaviyo yet, but I’m working on it. Here are a few projects I’m planning and some I’ve already built:

Klaviyo campaign level reporting: I will eventually have n8n pull every campaign 48 hours after it sends, and DM me how it did. If it spots something strange when it’s queued and sent, it will also notify me that something might be wrong.

Klaviyo flow reporting: I will have n8n pull a weekly summary of all our flows, and metric discrepancies, email level performance and perspective on which products/links are being clicked the most.

Klaviyo AB test results: I will have my Klaviyo split tests report performance in real-time against Shopify order data, not Klaviyo's attribution. This is how 8-figure+ stores should be running tests, and tools like this will make it much easier.

Receipt tool: I built a tool that lets me slack myself receipts and it will automatically rename them and file them into a correct folder for upload to accounting software.

Candidate scoring: I built a tool that lets me screen job candidates and check if their applications were written with AI, if they properly followed instructions, and schedule follow-up tests/interviews where needed. This helps filter out the 90% of noise in hiring and allows me to only focus on screening good candidates.

OpenRouter for creative generation (Advanced)

OpenRouter gives you one API that lets you access a bunch of different AI models in one place. Confusing, I know.

Here’s an example I know big DTC brands are executing right now for static ads at scale.

• Start with an idea by typing in your static ad concept prompt.

• OpenRouter will ask one AI model to research the audience, angles, and past results.

• OpenRouter will ask another AI model to write the hooks, main text, headlines, and CTA.

• OpenRouter will ask a different AI model to create the image prompts and visual direction.

• OpenRouter will ask one final AI model to review and improve everything before launch.

All that work will be done from one single creative prompt. In <1 minute you can have 20 ad creatives made using a structured creative framework. That is not an exaggeration.

Why so many AI models? Different models are good at different things.

Overall, I think for ads this is a great use case because you can iterate and AB test stuff very fast. With email, it’s much harder to spin up an entire creative and have it be right from the start. There's so much nuance with products, copy, narrative, etc.

Clawdbot for autonomous agents (Advanced)

With great power comes great responsibility.

Sorry for the cringey quote, but I need your attention.

If you are thinking about using this, be very very very careful. Read this article if you don’t believe me.

If you haven't mastered all the tools I previously shared, you're not ready for this. Seriously.

Ok enough warnings.

Clawdbot is an autonomous AI agent running 24/7. You give it a goal and send it off to do it. You can have it act like an employee in your Slack, you can have it continuously monitor your site for improvements and launch AB tests without permission, you could even have it manage all your emails and your calendar. Heck, you could have it be your CEO.

Where it goes wrong is that this bot has access to the whole internet and all your stuff. It also has permission to make decisions on its own. You can see how that can quickly get dark.

The future is here and once big companies figure out how to safely deploy these bots, I suspect the balance of the workforce will dramatically shift. I watched a recent podcast with the Stripe founders and one of them said, “We may look back in a few years at Q1 2026 and say This was the beginning of singularity”. This newsletter isn’t meant to be me speculating on the future of AI, but I'm sharing this just to give you a feel for the power & risk of these tools.

If any of this is news to you, you are behind.

To put it into context, big tech cos are monitoring their employees to make sure they are utilizing a minimum level of AI. They are forcing people to use AI to get more efficient at their jobs. Adoption of these tools is accelerating.

Crazy times.

Scared of AI?

You're not alone.

Most of the content being pushed by algos is either super cynical or optimistic about the future of AI. It’s hard not to be freaked out.

In reality, nobody knows what will happen.

All you can do for now is learn the tools, integrate them into your systems and continue to evolve.

What I can say: we are using these AI tools in our business in real-time and they are making meaningful improvements to the quality of our work. We’re making higher quality emails that drive stronger engagement and more revenue.

Figure out what your goal is with AI and start working toward it. Getting 1% better every day is easier than you think.

Meme of the Week

That’s all for now,
Paperboy 🗞

If you need help with email & SMS, click here to learn about my agency. My team and I help scaling ecommerce brands.