How I Used AI to Turn a Rejection Season Into Real Skills and Income

Six years ago I got rejected from a Big 4 firm. Last week, my interviewer sat next to me in first class.

So...how did we get here?

Honestly, I chose to turn my rejection season into skills and income, using AI for speed all the way through.

Here's what that actually looked like.

I Used AI as My Personal Teacher to Transition Into AI Engineering

By the time AI tools became serious, I already knew how to code. However, didn't know how to build *with* AI. RAG pipelines, multi-agent systems, LLM-powered applications. There's no clean roadmap for that transition, and I wasn't going back to school for it.

So I used AI itself as my own. personal tutor. I'd build something, hit a wall, and instead of just asking for a fix, I'd ask it to explain the architecture, the tradeoffs, the reasoning behind the approach.

That's how I went from software engineer to someone who could build a RAG pipeline on a podcast transcript library, design a multi-agent codebase with Planner, Builder, and Reviewer agents using MongoDB Atlas as the memory layer, and work with LLM-powered applications at a technical level.

If you want to use AI the same way, here's the prompt framework I used:

I am a [current skill level] [your role] trying to learn [specific concept or technology]. I don't just want the answer, but to actually understand it. Teach me like a patient professor would. Start with the core concept in plain language, then show me how it works in practice, then explain the tradeoffs and when I would or wouldn't use this approach. After each explanation, give me one hands-on exercise I can complete today to reinforce what I just learned. If I get something wrong, correct me and explain why.

Use that prompt and keep going back. The compounding effect of learning this way is real.

I Used Workshop Data and Claude to Find My B2B Opportunity

Once I had the AI engineering skills, I started running online Claude Code workshops. However, instead of just running them and moving on, I treated them like a product I was iterating on.

Before and after every workshop, I had participants fill out surveys. Confidence ratings, knowledge gaps, what they came in knowing, what changed. After collecting those results, I put them directly into Claude and asked it to help me identify the patterns. Where the biggest skill gaps were, which types of participants saw the most transformation, and where the clearest B2B opportunity lived.

Claude helped me see that the people getting the most out of the workshops weren't random individuals. They were knowledge workers at organizations who needed practical AI fluency fast. That was the insight that changed my pitch.

I took that analysis, started posting about the workshops on LinkedIn with that specific framing, and began getting hired to teach at conferences. Including Black Is Tech Houston, where 92% of attendees came in at a confidence level of 1 or 2 and 93% left at a 4 or 5.

If you have expertise you want to turn into income, here's a prompt to help you figure out where to start:

I am a [job title or professional background] with expertise in [topic]. I want to figure out if I can turn that expertise into a workshop or training offer that companies would pay for. Help me identify: 1) Who would be most likely to pay for this knowledge inside an organization. 2) What problem it solves for them. 3) How I should position it as a B2B offer. Ask me questions if you need more information about my background or expertise.

I Built an AI Advisor That Keeps My Future Self in the Room

The most personal way I've used AI is something I call my FutureMe GPT. It's a custom GPT I built inside ChatGPT.

I fed it my income goals, my vision for my life, the opportunities I was working toward, and the person I was trying to become. Now when I go to it for guidance, it answers from the lens of what will get me closest to my goals. It functions as a daily advisor that already knows where I'm trying to go.

The results have been concrete. Conversations with Future You have led me to securing five-figure deals, making the decision to relocate, and signing up for opportunities I might have talked myself out of, like being accepted to study AI at Oxford this summer.

It's not magic, rather, the compounding effect of consistently making decisions in alignment with where you're trying to go, instead of where you currently are. Having a tool that holds that vision for you, especially on the days when you can't hold it yourself, changes the quality of your decisions over time.

I have a full prompt template for building your own Future You GPT. You can find it on my Substack: theblackfemaleengineer.substack.com

The Through-Line

Year one out of corporate I made around $20K. By year two I crossed six figures. By year three, I was experiencing priveleges I'm still hoping my nervous system gets adjusted to.

The gap between those numbers is a blend of skill acquisition and smarter decision-making, not "hustle". I used AI to learn faster, build real things, and stay locked in on the goals that actually moved the needle.

Every income stream traces back to something I built or something I could demonstrate. AI was the accelerant.

If you're in your own rejection season, I highly advice using AI to actually build something.