I’m writing this from my couch.
Not figuratively — literally from my couch, on my phone, with no laptop open, no office to go to, and a half-dozen active business projects running simultaneously. And it’s working. Not perfectly. Not without friction. But it’s working well enough that I want to start documenting it publicly, because I think what’s possible right now — with the AI tools available today — is significantly ahead of what most people in senior roles have actually tried.
So here’s the setup.
I’m Jesse Stay. It’s author of 13 books (including Canva For Dummies), former Senior Social Media Advisor to the LDS Church (800K+ following), and one of the earliest developers on Facebook’s platform — back when it had fewer than a million users and you could still call Mark Zuckerberg on the phone. I mention all of this not to impress you, but because context matters: I’ve been at the early edge of technology shifts a few times now, and the pattern is always the same. The tools arrive before most people are ready to use them seriously. The window to build expertise is short. And then it closes.
That window is open right now with AI. And I’m not waiting.
Here’s what I’m actively running from my phone:
transkrybe.com — A MusicXML transcription SaaS I’m building. It takes audio or MIDI input and produces professional-grade sheet music output. I’m handling product decisions, debugging, customer support setup, and go-to-market planning — almost entirely through Claude and a set of custom workflows I’ve built in Cowork.
A GoFundMe campaign — I’m managing donor communications, updating campaign copy, analyzing what’s resonating, and scheduling posts across channels. I’m using AI to surface patterns in donor behavior and draft responses that feel personal, not templated.
A job search automation pipeline — I’m not just applying for jobs. I’ve built a system that monitors postings in my target space (AI-forward executive roles, CMO/CRO, fractional leadership), surfaces the best matches, drafts tailored cover materials, and tracks my pipeline in a structured way. More on this in a future post.
A Canva course — I literally wrote the book on Canva. Now I’m turning that into a structured course product, using AI to scaffold the curriculum, draft module outlines, and even generate some of the visual examples.
A Slack agent pipeline — This one is probably the thing I’m most excited about right now. I’ve built a set of agents that live in Slack and handle monitoring, summarization, and task routing across my different projects. Instead of checking five different dashboards, I get a single morning digest and can respond to most things in a few taps.
I’m going to be documenting all of this as it happens — what I build, what breaks, what surprises me, what I’d do differently. This isn’t a course. It’s not a consulting pitch. It’s notes from inside the experiment.
If you’re an executive, a recruiter, a founder, or just someone who’s curious about what it actually looks like to run an AI-first operation without a team — I think you’ll find this useful.
Next week: I’ll walk through my GoFundMe campaign management workflow in detail — including the specific way I’m using agents to analyze donor patterns and draft outreach that’s converting.
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Jesse Stay is CEO of Stay N’ Alive Productions and the author of 13 books on social media and technology. He lives in the Salt Lake City area and runs his operation from wherever he happens to be sitting.
