This week I attended three different workshops; one on cybersecurity, one on AI strategy, and one on marketing. They were well-run, informative, and delivered by people who clearly knew their stuff.
And yet, all three ended the same way: with a pitch to buy a $99 manual, a course, a step-by-step guide, or a playbook of some kind.
And that’s when I had my ‘aha’ moment.
With AI, especially tools like ChatGPT, we can now access the same information for free. More than that, we can ask AI to:
- Explain it in plain English
- Summarise the key points
- Compare options
- Tailor it to our exact situation
- Help us act on it
That $99 PDF? AI can build it for you: in minutes.
So what does that mean for those of us who’ve built expertise the traditional way?
It means the value of experts is no longer about owning information — it’s about making sense of it. It’s about judgement, curation, ethics, and context. It’s about helping people see what matters in a tidal wave of free content. That’s why I give away so much of what I do for free.
Yes, I care about helping not-for-profits. But I also believe information wants to be free and that part of my role is helping people realise that, and use it well.
For example:
If you’re a small NFP and you get a dense 12-page grant guideline, you can now paste it into ChatGPT and ask, “Summarise this in 3 bullet points. What should I focus on?”
That’s not cheating, it’s smart.
This shift is already underway. And it’s not bad news. It’s just a new way of thinking about value.
As AI gets better at giving us answers, human experts will shine brightest by helping us ask better questions.
That was my moment of clarity this week.