I started using ChatGPT at the very beginning, back when I did not really know what I was doing with any of it. I was trying to build the advertising for my wife’s real estate company, and I had no real playbook. So I made one up, and it was about as low-tech as a high-tech thing can get.
Here is what I actually did. I would go into Google Ads, or the Google Business local setup, or my Leadpages area where my landing pages lived, or my DNS settings. I would take a screenshot of whatever was in front of me. Then I would carry that screenshot over to ChatGPT and ask it, in plain English: what’s the next step? Where do I need to look? And it would tell me.
Slow, but it worked
It was slow. I am not going to pretend otherwise. Screenshot, paste, read, go back, change one thing, screenshot again. But that slow loop is exactly how I figured out a lot of things, and more importantly, how I learned them. It walks you through. You do not just get an answer dropped on you, you get walked from where you are to where you need to be, one step at a time.
The thing that made all of this possible was the image recognition. Just being able to show the AI what was on my screen and have it understand the layout, the buttons, the fields, where I was stuck. That alone is incredibly helpful, and at the time it felt close to magic.
I would screenshot whatever was in front of me and ask ChatGPT, what’s the next step? Where do I need to look?
Why I upgraded, and never looked back
Because it was such a slow process, I burned through what the free account would give you pretty quickly. The free one will not let you keep doing that for long. So I upgraded. And on the paid account, I never ran into the limits. I could keep going as long as I had the patience, and I had a lot of patience back then because I was learning.
That is a big part of why I have an enormous loyalty to ChatGPT. It is the tool that taught me. When you learn something on a tool, building real things that matter to your family’s business, you do not forget that.
What I love, and what drives me crazy
The image manipulation and image creation model is awesome. That is not a small compliment from me. And in general it gives me solid answers, just about all the time.
Now, here is the honest part. Any AI is sixty to eighty percent at best, most of the time. There are always aspects it does not fully understand. But I have come to believe that is how most human writing is too, if we are being real about it. Either you are being too brief, or there is not enough time in the day to get it all down right. The AI is working with the same limitations we are.
My real gripe is the front door. That first landing page, the initial screen where you are supposed to lay out your prompt. I cannot stand it. It is so busy, there is so much crap in it, and it makes it hard to just sit down and write a clean opening prompt. If I am going to keep using it, I have got to figure out a way to get rid of all that clutter. It is the one part of the experience that has never gotten out of my way.
Leaving, but not closing the door
So that is where I am. Even though I am moving on, I still love the tool, and I may be back if a reason pops up. There is no bad blood here. ChatGPT got me from knowing nothing to running real advertising for a real business, and I will always give it that.
I am going to write another blog on how I left and moved over to Claude. How I chose Claude, and why. That is the next chapter. This one was just about where it all started, screenshots and all.
Written by Brad Rowland — IT Infrastructure and Operations leader, automation builder, and AI implementer.
