My Story · Julia Druck · Women Love AI

Who I am

Turning complex ideas into things people actually use

Before AI, I spent over ten years as a senior product manager in fintech, insurance and other regulated industries, leading product and the commercial side around it. I was product lead for AXA's motor insurance brand, Moja, and the customer journeys behind it. I even shipped an AI-powered advice product back in 2017, so this is not new ground for me. And before all of that, I started my career in the Royal Navy.

What connects it all is simple. I take something complex and make it work for real people and real businesses. That is exactly what I do with AI today, as a certified AI agent developer and trainer. Underneath all of it, I am always a product manager.

Some of the organisations I have worked with and for

The spark

I started small, and got hooked

I am not an engineer. I came at AI from the business side, so I started small: playing with low-code and no-code tools, doing a few bootcamps, building little things to see what was possible. Fifteen agents on MindStudio, automation flows in n8n, quick prototypes in Replit and Lovable. It hooked me fast.

The realisation

I could see what was coming

The more I built with AI and used it, the clearer one thing became. This was not a passing trend. AI was going to change how businesses work, all of them, and most were nowhere near ready for it.

And it was bigger than work. I have a son, Alex, growing up in a world this will reshape completely. I wanted him to have a head start with it, real access to the skills, maybe even a route into a job one day if that is what he needs. I could not give him that while standing on the sidelines myself, so I stopped standing on them.

The leap

So I left, and started something of my own

So I made the call. I left my contract role and started Serpin with my husband Scott. It was a real leap, walking away from the safety of a contract to build something of our own. It felt like the right thing to do, for me and my family, and it was genuinely exciting.

Going all in

The way to get good is to keep learning and building

You do not get good at this by reading about it. You get good by building.

And the timing is on your side. The people who build now do best as work changes.

Confidence

You stop wondering whether you could, and find that you can.

What works, and what does not

You see what holds up once it meets the real world, including the things that fall over.

The real limits

You learn the genuinely hard parts of working with AI and the tools around it.

It does not have to be a real product

A personal app A small workflow A skill A productivity tool

Start with something small that solves a problem of your own. Anything you actually use will teach you more than another course.

One tip

Tell the AI you are not a developer. It changes how it explains things and how it builds, so you are never left behind.

What I've built

Now I build with Claude Code

I use Claude Code, though the tool is not really the point. It could be Codex, or whatever comes next. It is how I bring AI into my own business and help others bring it into theirs, from brainstorming and research through to designing and building.

Automating my own business

My business OS & brain

The system that runs my whole consultancy, projects, clients, tasks, content and research, all in one place. Over 100 custom skills do the work behind the scenes, from my morning routine to client prep, running client projects and designing new training.

Claude CodeObsidianMCPsBasesQMD search

The Morning Brief

A fully autonomous agent that runs in the cloud overnight and sends one brief to my phone at half past seven each morning. It pulls together my calendar, the emails that need a reply, today's tasks and where each project is up to, then writes it all into a single digest. My day is triaged before I open my laptop.

Cloudflare WorkerGitHub ActionsSupabaseClaude APITelegram

AI Radar

A daily sweep across Substack newsletters, YouTube, Reddit, X, the business press and live web search. It scores every signal, drops the noise, and writes me one briefing of what matters to me and the businesses I work with. It is how I stay ahead in a field that moves every week.

Exa CLISubstack MCPReddit APIYouTubeNotebookLM CLI

Solving problems for other businesses

Here the order matters. We start with the problem, never the tool, and only build once we know it is real and worth solving.

Lead qualification

Sorting and scoring inbound enquiries so the right ones reach a person fast.

Tender responses

Drafting and assembling first-pass answers to long, repetitive tender documents.

Client onboarding

Taking a new client from signed contract to fully set up, without the manual chasing and admin in between.

How I work

AI works two ways

1

Alongside me

A thinking partner for the everyday work. It helps me brainstorm, pushes my ideas further and does the research, so I reach a better answer than I would on my own. Anyone can do this part.

2

I build with it

When something is worth it, I build for it. Sometimes that is a skill that plugs into MCPs and CLIs, sometimes a workflow, an agent, or a full product. The right shape depends on the problem.

Building with AI is product work, the same thing I have done for ten years, now with new tools. A build usually goes like this:

1Start with the opportunity or problem. An idea, a chance to do something better, or something I do over and over.

2Think it through with AI. Get it to ask you questions about your idea, help you work out where it can help and where it cannot, and sketch what a first build might look like.

3Build small and test. The simplest version that could work, checked with a human in the loop and refined.

4Ship what fits, then keep improving it. A skill, a workflow, an agent, or a full product. I check in, gather feedback, and keep making it better.

The judgement stays mine.

Serpin today

What we do now

All of it rolls up into Serpin, the consultancy I run with Scott. We help businesses find where AI actually helps them, before anyone builds anything. Then we build it properly, with governance and quality built in. And because the hardest part is usually the people, not the technology, we train teams to use AI with confidence.

Find where AI helps

We start with discovery, mapping where AI fits your business and where it does not, so the effort goes where it pays off.

Build it properly

Agents and workflows with governance and quality built in, built to hold up in real day to day use.

Train your team

Hands-on training that makes AI accessible to non-technical people, so the capability stays with you.

The real shift

The barrier has gone

For years, building anything meant developers. I spent a decade in that world, and I saw the cost up close.

Then

You needed a developer, or a whole team. Even a simple first version of an app could cost tens of thousands of pounds.

Now

You can build it yourself, in days, for a fraction of the cost. The only limit is how big you let yourself think.

We can be creative, we can build, and it does not cost a fortune. This page is one small example. I wanted a home for my Women Love AI workshops, so I built it.

So go and play, with your eyes open

Be curious and experiment. Break things, get plenty wrong. There has never been a better time to learn. Keep it to yourself while you learn, keep client data out of it, and put it in front of a team or a client only once you trust it.

It can make things up It can be biased It will agree too readily It may store what you type

You can build one of my tools

The sales brief is one example of all of this. Have a play with it, and come and say hello on LinkedIn.

Build the sales brief Connect on LinkedIn

From using AI to building with it