What if the only skill you actually need is the willingness to try?

<p>In this episode of the Beyond Technology Podcast, Shawn Freeman sits down with Christa Hill, CEO of Tacit Edge, to talk about what happens when everyday people start building with AI instead of just talking about it. From sales teams in Alberta's industrial companies to chamber of commerce leaders, Christa is watching non-technical people build real automations every week, and she has strong opinions about what keeps everyone else on the sidelines.</p><p>Christa shares the story of a student who built a system that scrapes competitor pricing overnight and delivers a punchy voice memo to the whole sales team every morning. She breaks down the most chronic mistake she sees in startups: spending $150,000 to learn what $15,000 could have taught you. And she explains why AI adoption has to start with leadership literacy, why safety right now is a moral compass and not a policy, and why our relationship to time has to change when a 20-day quote becomes a 20-second one.</p><p>As Christa puts it: your idea brought you into the arena, but your customers grow the arena for you. And it is way more fun to be rich than it is to be right.</p><p></p><p>What You'll Learn:</p><p>- Why "the try is the skill," and the skill-before-the-skill myth keeping people out of the game</p><p>- The overbuilding trap: why fear of looking unprepared craters more capital than anything else</p><p>- How to test whether a problem is a "jugular gusher" or a paper cut before you spend a dollar</p><p>- Why non-technical people can build real AI automations after a two-week vocabulary on-ramp</p><p>- How technical language has been used to gatekeep, and why that power is slipping away</p><p>- Why leaders need to become builders before they can set AI expectations for their teams</p><p>- Why AI safety today lives in your moral compass, not in policy or frameworks</p><p>- The daily tool stack Christa runs a global education company with as one person</p><p>In This Episode:</p><p>00:00 Welcome and what Tacit Edge does</p><p>01:05 Building a lifestyle, not an empire</p><p>02:09 The sales team that wakes up to AI voice memos</p><p>05:15 The $150K mistake: overbuilding before the market speaks</p><p>07:30 "I'd rather be rich than right"</p><p>08:11 Jugular gusher or paper cut: testing problems for free</p><p>11:48 The RV office, voice tools, and leaning into your gifts</p><p>15:23 The skill before the skill is a myth</p><p>16:58 How technical language gatekeeps the business</p><p>18:40 Why a chat b