be like Apple 🍏

Every founder I know obsesses over the thing they’re building: the tool, the workflow, the product.

But here’s the part most miss: the first product isn’t the thing.

It’s the language you wrap it in.

Think of Apple.

They didn’t sell “a portable MP3 player with a 5GB hard drive.”

They sold “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

That shift in language wasn’t just clever copy. 

It was the product. 

It was what people bought into.

The same rule applies to you.

…Recently, I was working with Valeriya, our brilliant AI consultant, on our new AI Consultant Certification programme.

At first, we called it “T-shaped consultants” and “vertical depth with horizontal breadth.”

Sounded smart on paper. But let’s be honest: it’s the kind of phrase that belongs in a McKinsey deck, not in the mind of a client.

And then we hit on “AI Skills Bridge.”

And suddenly it made sense.

You could see it, almost picture it in your head.

A bridge from what you already know to what AI makes possible.

That’s what good language does.

It doesn’t just describe - it creates. It makes something ownable.

How I engineered the shift with AI

This wasn’t me sitting around waiting for inspiration. I used AI to push the language into shape.

Here’s roughly how I did it (and you can steal this):

1. Spot the problem – where your words sound too corporate, too generic, too dead.

2. Define your voice – for me: blunt, practical, entrepreneurial, human-first. Don’t sound like McKinsey. Sound like Apple.

3. Set constraints – cut the jargon, keep it scannable, tie everything back to time, clients, money, credibility.

4. Anchor it in identity – the words have to feel like yours, not like a bot.

5. Apply & repeat – don’t do this once, do it every time you smell PowerPoint language creeping in.
   
   

That’s how “T-shaped” became “AI Skills Bridge.”

Not a slogan… but a framework people can actually use and remember.

Here’s a Quick Strategy for you:

– Name the shift you create.

– Make it visual, human, and easy to repeat at the pub without notes.

– Use metaphors that stick.

… Because once you do this, you’re no longer “another freelancer.”

You’re the person who invented the bridge, the ladder, the vault, the engine.

And people pay more to cross a bridge than to sit through “horizontal breadth.”

The truth is:  your business doesn’t grow at the speed of your hustle.

It grows at the speed of the language and systems you give it.

And that’s where AI is different from every tool that came before.

It doesn’t just make you faster — it gives you new ways to frame, name, and structure what you do, so it becomes a system people actually value.