EP 75: Get Messy, Make Mistakes: Miss Frizzle Was Right
Get Messy, Make Mistakes: That's How You Learn
- Technology breaks for everyone. It is not you. The best thing you can do is stay calm, stay curious, and know that getting through it is how you learn to help others through it too.
- The e-design business model is quietly declining. Clients who used to hire for affordable virtual design are now turning to AI tools directly. That market is shifting fast.
- A new opportunity is emerging: designers who can fix what AI gets wrong. The "AI correction" client category is real and growing.
- Building your own community off the algorithm is not just possible now, it is worth it. AI Social Club exists because Jenna got tired of the internet telling her who to be.
- Even the best AI models will lie to you and tell you everything looks fine when it does not. Always verify, always test, and never fully trust a confident AI response without checking the output.
Two Years of Building, Three Weeks of Chaos
Episode 75 is a behind-the-scenes look at what it actually takes to build something big and come out the other side knowing more than you did going in. Field Day just launched. New clients are onboarding. Apps are being built. And in the middle of all of it, things happened that were not in the plan. But that is exactly how the best learning works, and Jenna is here to talk about it.
The AI Social Club app has been two years in the making. Not because the idea was not there it was. The tech just was not ready. There were multiple rebuilds, multiple platforms, and multiple iterations before Claude finally got good enough to look at the full body of work, understand the goals, and help build something that actually felt right. Community. Learning center. Live stream center. AI App Studio. Lead pipeline. CRM. All in one place, built for professionals only, off the algorithm.
If you have been wondering where Jenna went for the past few weeks, this is it. Heads down, building, fixing, launching, and learning. The DMs are piling up. She sees them. She will get there.
It's Not You. It's the Tech.
One of the most important things Jenna says in this episode and repeats in almost every class she teaches is this: when technology does not work, it is not a reflection of your intelligence. It is a reflection of how the technology was built. And it was probably not built for you.
She starts every class by saying tech issues will happen. Not might happen. Will. And the reason she can say that with so much calm is because she has been through it enough times herself that it no longer surprises her. It just becomes the next problem to solve.
Even Jenna, who has been living inside technology since 2015, hit a wall this week. The difference is she has enough experience to know it is temporary, fixable, and always worth it on the other side.
If you have ever felt like technology hates you, you are in good company. The goal is not to become someone who never has tech problems. The goal is to become someone who knows how to move through them.
Where the Industry Is Actually Heading
The e-design market that launched and sustained so many virtual design businesses over the past decade is shrinking. The clients who used to hire for affordable, remote design help are now opening Chat GPT, dropping a photo of their hallway, and asking what color to paint it. They are not doing it because they think it is as good. They are doing it because it is free and fast and close enough for their budget.
That shift is real and it is not reversing. But it is not the end of the story for designers. What is emerging in its place is something worth paying attention to: a new category of client who tried AI, got the wrong answer, and now needs a professional to come in and fix it. The AI correction consultant. The designer who specializes in cleaning up what the algorithm got wrong.
Chat GPT does not know what your lighting looks like. It does not know what is in the adjacent rooms. It does not know your lifestyle. It makes confident suggestions without any of that context. And someone has to fix what it gets wrong. That someone is you.
At the mid-to-high tier, things look different. Those clients are not going to Chat GPT. They want a professional. They want expertise they can trust. They want someone who has done this before and knows things they do not. That market is not going away. It is just becoming more distinct from everything below it.
Building a Community Off the Algorithm
AI Social Club did not start as a business decision. It started as a frustration. The internet as it exists right now is staged, algorithmic, and increasingly disconnected from any kind of authentic exchange. Facebook is full of AI-generated content being absorbed and reshared as truth. Instagram has become the same. The feeds are not showing what matters. They are showing what performs.
Jenna wanted a place that worked differently. No algorithm deciding what gets seen. No performance pressure. Just a community of design professionals who can show up, ask questions, share work, meet people from other parts of the world, and actually talk to each other. That is what AI Social Club is built to be.
Field Day members are in there. Certificate members have been testing it for months. And now it is open, it is growing, and it is off the grid in all the best ways.
Miss Frizzle Was Right
Jenna closes the episode with something that has stuck with her since she was a kid watching Magic School Bus: get messy, make mistakes. That is how you learn. It is not a productivity hack. It is not a reframe. It is just true.
The designers who are going to be standing and thriving in a few years are the ones who got in early, figured things out, and built something that works the way their brain works. The mess is part of it. The mistakes are part of it. And every hard week teaches something the smooth ones never could.
Balance matters too. Jenna is heading off the grid for Father's Day weekend river cabin, dogs, campfire, no Wi-Fi. She schedules disconnection the same way she schedules everything else, because staying connected to what actually matters is what makes the work worth doing.
Jenna is the go-to educator for design professionals who want to use technology without losing their creative edge. A designer turned tech advocate, she's a nationally recognized speaker, podcast host, community builder, and custom app builder based in Charleston, SC.
Her previous company, eDesign Tribe, was acquired by Mydoma Studio in 2021. She started teaching AI to designers at the end of 2023 and has not stopped since.
AI Social Club is Jenna's community platform built exclusively for design professionals. It includes a no-algorithm community space, learning center, live stream access, the AI App Studio, and more.
It was built because the major social platforms are no longer serving designers who want real connection, real tools, and a space that works the way a creative business actually works.
Disclaimer: This blog was written using AI as a recap from the recording then edited by the author for accuracy and details.