The AI Tool Overwhelm Is Real
Your feed is full of it.
"This tool changed my life."
"You NEED this AI tool."
"I can't imagine running my business without it."
Meanwhile, you're sitting there thinking: Cool…. but which ones actually matter for MY business?
Everyone wants to know what AI tools to use.
And I get it.
There's a new one every five minutes.
The noise is relentless, and the overwhelm is real.
But here's what I've learned as an AI consultant and educator working with small business owners: most people don't need more tools. They need the right ones, working properly.
Let me be honest about something: I try a lot of AI tools. It's literally my job to know what's out there. But even I don't use most of them. And if I wasn't doing this work, my actual stack would be even smaller.
So let's cut through the noise. I'm going to walk you through the AI tools I actually use every single day—the ones I'd genuinely notice if they disappeared tomorrow. I'm also going to tell you about the ones I've ditched, the ones I paid for and quietly walked away from.
Here's My Hot Take:
A lot of these tools are startups. Some of them won't exist in a year, or five years.
So rather than chasing every shiny new thing, get really good at the tools that are going to stick around and solve specific problems for your business. That's the move.
The Non-Negotiables: Tools I Open Every Single Day
These are the MVPs. The ones that actually move the needle.
ChatGPT and Claude: My Thinking Partners
I flip between both. It's a bit chaotic, but honestly, they serve different purposes.
Claude wins on writing. Hands down. I love its writing style—it gets tone and language nuances in a way that feels natural. And if you're doing any coding? It's 100% better than ChatGPT. I use it to help me build technical stuff in N8N and Lovable, and I trust the output.
ChatGPT is my brainstorming partner. I use it for thinking through problems, content planning, and bouncing ideas around. Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, okay, this is really dialed in," and I'll go back to it for writing too.
I treat them like team members. I'll open one up and think out loud: What do I need to do today? What's the priority here?
Which One Should You Pick?
Honestly? You could get both and be happy. Or pick one and be equally happy.
If you have budget for just one, pick one. It's going to do most of what you need, if not all. The real magic is in setting up custom GPTs (in ChatGPT) or Projects (in Claude) with solid system prompts. This is how you create these AI team members that know their job and do it really well.
And they're not going anywhere. These tools are backed by big players.
They're only getting better.
N8N: My Automation Brain
I started on Make.com, but I've fully switched to N8N. And here's why: debugging.
Automation is 80% problem solving. Something breaks, doesn't connect, and you need to figure out why.
With Make, I found it genuinely hard to troubleshoot. I'd think something was possible, and then it would just... not work. The interface felt restrictive.
With N8N? So much easier. I love the canvas layout. I can actually see what's happening. And when it throws an error, it throws it in JSON—which is how computers talk to each other. You can grab that error in a really clean format and drop it into Claude or ChatGPT to solve it.
I open it every day. All of my backend automations run through N8N—automations that take a podcast transcript and automatically create an email announcement, show notes, a blog post, social carousels, threads.
For my membership, it handles everything: it grabs transcripts from co-working sessions, posts replays in the portal with summaries, builds content workflows. All of it.
I'm genuinely obsessed with it.
Notion and Notion AI: My Business Brain
I'm not a Notion power user by any stretch. But I use it for all my dashboards, and it plays really nicely with N8N.
Notion AI has been super helpful because I can just describe what I want, work through it with the AI, and it updates things for me. You don't need to be a power user to build solid dashboards.
It also talks beautifully to Slack—where members of my community chat. My business essentially lives in Notion.
Not fancy. But it works.
Fathom: The Notetaker I Actually Use
Fathom is a call recording and transcription tool. I love it because it grabs all my transcripts automatically, which means I can do stuff with them in N8N.
But here's the real win: I don't have to scribble notes while I'm trying to be present with a client. It captures everything.
I can go back to it later. I can auto-generate proposals. I can actually be present on the call instead of frantically writing.
That presence with clients? It's everything.
Gamma: From Brain Dump to Polished Slides in 30 Minutes
All my presentations and workshop slides are done in Gamma. I genuinely love how fast it is.
Here's my workflow: I have a conversation with ChatGPT about planning a workshop, bring the ideas together, and ask it to summarize into slides.
Then I take that into Gamma. I go from absolute brain dump to polished presentation in about 30 minutes. Not hours.
I also set it up so my brand colours and fonts live in there permanently. It creates really nice AI images too, on-brand and ready to go.
Notebook LM: Sleeping on This One
People are sleeping on Notebook LM and I don't know why.
You can use it for infographics, slides, and if your team is on Google Workspace, you can create resource hubs where people chat with your documents—your SOPs, training materials, whatever.
I've created some really nice on-brand case study decks from client testimonials. And here's the thing: it won't hallucinate because it only uses the sources you upload. If I want to use only testimonials from my AI workshop, I untick the others.
If it doesn't know the answer, it says so. Instead of making something up from nothing.
That's powerful.
Teller: Simple Screen Recording
All my screen recordings are done on Teller.
It's simple, it's clean, and it does exactly what I need. No fuss.
Blotato: Social Automation That Actually Works
I use Blotato to schedule all my social media. But the real magic is the automations I've built around it—all in N8N—that keep my content authentic and consistent.
Basically, I create one good piece of content, and it gets reposted and repurposed.
I show up once, and it does its thing. Again, all orchestrated through N8N.
I don't have to be a social media machine. I just have to be strategic once.
The Tools I've Ditched (Or Quietly Stopped Using)
Make.com: Not Bad, Just Not for Me
Make is a solid tool. It's not bad.
But when things broke, I found it genuinely hard to troubleshoot. N8N just makes more sense for my brain.
I've switched and I haven't looked back. I don't even know if I still have a subscription.
Opus Clip: Overhyped for Video Shorts
Everyone was raving about this for cutting long-form videos into shorts.
I tried it. Didn't love it. Maybe it's improved since. It just didn't click for me.
Gemini: Google's LLM (That I Mostly Ignore)
Gemini is actually a really amazing model. But I'm in the habit of using ChatGPT and Claude all the time. I could take it or leave it.
The main reason I keep across it? As an AI consultant and educator, I need to know what's out there so I can help clients navigate it.
But if I wasn't doing this work, I probably wouldn't be paying for it. It's got a solid free plan anyway.
Lovable: Great, Just Not for Me Daily
Lovable is brilliant for making interactive lead magnets—and they genuinely perform really well.
I just haven't found heaps of ongoing use cases for it beyond that. I'm not opening it daily.
That said? If you're thinking of building your own app or something more complex, Lovable or Bubble are awesome. Super beginner-friendly now, especially with Lovable Cloud. People are doing incredible things with these tools.
Just not me. Not daily, anyway.
What You Actually Need vs. What You Want
The Core Stack I'd Never Give Up
If I had to summarise my actual daily AI stack in one sentence: ChatGPT and Claude for thinking, N8N for automating, Notion for organising, and Fathom for remembering.
That's it. That's the non-negotiable core. Everything else is a nice-to-have.
The Startup Problem
Here's the thing about a lot of these AI tools: they're startups. VC-funded. Burning cash. Some of them won't exist in a year or two or five.
So my advice? Don't build your whole business on a tool that might disappear.
Get really comfortable with ChatGPT or Claude (or Gemini if that's your vibe). They're backed by the big players. They're not going anywhere. They're only going to keep evolving and getting better.
Same with N8N. It's open source. It's got a really strong community. It's built to last.
Everything else? Be aware of it. Play with it. If it solves a real problem in your business, then yes, adopt it. But you don't need to adopt every new thing that launches. You can have awareness of something and be like, "I'm going to keep an eye on that", without feeling pressured to use it.
It's all just noise at the moment. And you don't have to use everything. That's allowed. You don't need to feel overwhelmed either.
The Tool Audit You Need to Do
Here's what I want you to do this week. It doesn't have to be a massive overhaul. Just a glance.
What AI tools are you actually using every single day?
What's collecting dust?
Is there anything you're paying for that you've forgotten exists?
That last one? I confess to this constantly.
I'll mass-subscribe to AI tools on free trials, lose track, and then get charged. ADHD tax is real. I do try to set calendar reminders, but do I actually follow through? Sometimes. Which is why I'm confessing publicly—to hold myself accountable.
Check your subscriptions. Cancel what you're not using. And here's the real insight: you don't need more tools. You need the right ones working properly for you.
Most founders I work with discover that when we go deep on the tools they're already using—like ChatGPT—they realise they have no idea what they can actually do with them. They think they're using it to its full potential, and then we dig in, and they're like, "Oh my God, I had no idea."
So rather than adding extra tools, just get really, really good at the ones you're using.
Your AI Foundation Starts Here
You don't need a sprawling tech stack. You need strategic foundations.
The tools that solve real problems. The ones that let you automate the repetitive stuff and stay present for the important stuff.
Start with ChatGPT or Claude. Master it. Build custom projects within it. Then add N8N if you have repetitive workflows to automate. Add Notion if you need to organize. Add Fathom if you're on calls constantly.
That's your foundation. Everything else? Optional.
If you want help building this without frying your brain or spinning your wheels, the AI Dream Team Workshop walks you through exactly how to build a strategic AI setup that actually serves your business—not the other way around.
But first? Do the audit. See what you've got. Then decide what actually stays.
FAQs
Do I really need both ChatGPT and Claude, or can I just pick one?
You can absolutely pick one and be happy. Both tools handle most of what you need. If budget is tight, choose one and go deep with it using custom GPTs or Projects. The bigger win is mastering whichever tool you pick rather than spreading yourself thin across multiple LLMs.
What if I don't have technical skills? Can I still use N8N for automation?
Yes. N8N has a visual, canvas-based interface that doesn't require coding. When you run into problems, the error messages are clean and easy to troubleshoot with ChatGPT or Claude. Start with simple automations (like connecting tools together) and build from there.
How do I know if a new AI tool is worth trying or just hype?
Ask: Does this solve a real problem in my business right now? If the answer is no, skip it. You can be aware of new tools without using them. Only adopt something if it genuinely fixes friction or saves time. Most new tools are just noise.
I'm already using a different automation tool (like Make or Zapier). Should I switch to N8N?
Not necessarily. If it's working for you, keep it. N8N is my preference because debugging is easier for me, but the "best" tool is the one you'll actually use and maintain. If you're struggling with troubleshooting though, N8N's JSON error system makes problem-solving much faster.
What should I do if an AI tool I rely on suddenly shuts down?
This is exactly why you should build your core stack around established tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, N8N). They're unlikely to disappear. For secondary tools, keep your data portable and don't automate critical workflows around startup tools that could vanish. Stay diversified on the non-essentials.
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