AI coding – Carol Merlo, a 73-year-old entrepreneurship coach in Dallas, went from hesitating to press “enter” while learning AI-based coding to building her own website with far lower costs. Her son, Kevin Masterson, an AI mentor from Lewisville, guided her through Claud
When Carol Merlo typed something into her computer and reached the moment of truth, she hesitated at the keyboard—scared of what might happen if she clicked “enter.” She remembers that fear as clearly as the screen itself: she’d already put the words in. Now what?
Merlo, 73, is an entrepreneurship coach in Dallas. Her son, Kevin Masterson, 41, is an AI mentor from Lewisville, Texas. Their lessons started face-to-face. then shifted into email and video conferencing—because for Merlo. learning to “code” with AI wasn’t just technical. It was personal, tied to whether her family could build things without being locked into a paid platform forever.
The spark came from a moment that made Merlo’s world feel suddenly possible. She had used ChatGPT for personal tasks. including figuring out “what supplement should I take for this?” and what was “wrong” with a bush. Masterson laughed at that bush story: she “totally doctored up a bush and brought it back to life with AI.”.
That early comfort with AI tools turned into a deeper project. When Merlo talked about building a website, she didn’t want to be dependent on Weebly. Masterson didn’t jump in to take over the keyboard. He offered to walk her through it: “Do you want to learn how to do it yourself?. I can walk you through stuff. I’m not going to be on the keyboard. I’ll just say words.”.
Before AI. Merlo said she’d been building websites “for as long as we’ve had the internet.” She described WordPress as “really hard and labor-intensive. ” then said she switched to Wix for a minute and Weebly. She and her husband also have multiple sites—“a third website for something else.” But the specific anxiety that drove her to seek change came in an email that landed “a month or two ago.” She was told they were going to make her pay “for two years. ” and that “they were raising my rate.”.
That was when Merlo turned to her son with a simple question: “What can I do so that I’m not having to pay so much for a website?”
Masterson started with an ideation phase. He asked what she wanted, what it would look like, and “what it’s feel like,” and he sat with her through “a long conversation.” The lessons were “in-person,” with Masterson sitting in the corner of the room while Merlo worked at her computer.
At the beginning, Masterson said, “it’s so important to have a face.” The sessions were more structured, with “more handholding” than she expected—especially when Merlo began running into the language of coding.
Merlo said one of the most challenging parts was acronyms. When Masterson talked, she often felt lost: “What the heck is he saying?. Like, what’s a CLI?” She told him she needed the terms “dumb… down” for her. Sometimes, she went into “regular Claude” to ask what the terms meant so she could get context.
Even the smallest moment—pressing a key—became part of the learning curve. She said she’d “be hesitant to click ‘enter.’” Her question wasn’t abstract. It was practical and anxious: “I’ve typed this thing in. Now what?” Masterson’s answer was meant to remove the fear of breaking something. “Click ‘enter.’” Then he added reassurance: “You’re not going to break it. and you can go back to the original. so you don’t have to worry about it being wrong.”.
Merlo said what mattered most was encouragement for someone learning. “Many people are worried about it being wrong, especially when you’re learning something,” she explained—and that reassurance helped.
She also described why AI-based coding felt different from drag-and-drop website builders. The difference. she said. is that it’s “all words.” To do it. you have to “be able to type the words of the thing you want.” In her view. patience isn’t optional. She said she uses ChatGPT because it “doesn’t need to speak in complete sentences. ” and she still relies on ChatGPT for images. Claude. she added. is “great for human language. ” saying it’s “not stilted.” But she argued that learning coding with AI demands a kind of patience people may not want to practice.
“People don’t have the patience for it,” Merlo said. She also said people struggle to learn from clips and short videos—because in her experience, “you need a clip. How are you going to learn this in a clip?” Her takeaway was blunt: “So, people have to learn patience and the willingness to do it.”
Masterson noticed that hesitation from the start. Merlo. he said. was “a little timid at times. ” worrying she might be bothering him with another question: “I don’t want to bother you. but I’ve got another question.” He responded with the role he wanted to play—he was there for those moments. “That’s what I’m here for!” he said.
He also pointed to how small interruptions prevent bigger problems. Sometimes, he said, “thirty seconds can save her an hour of headache.” As the training progressed, it became more “back-and-forth.” Merlo sent emails, and they did “a bit of video conferencing,” not just in-person sessions.
One of Merlo’s own tools is a Word document she developed to guide her through the process. She described it as telling her “what to do here, what to do there,” and even “what this word means.” For someone coming from reading and academics, she said that kind of written structure matters.
“I’m old, so I come from the world of reading,” she said. “I’m highly academic, and everything I do is words.” That approach shows up in how she now thinks about the limits of learning. After her lessons, she said the biggest shift was mindset.
“What Kevin taught me is that there’s no limit,” Merlo said. “Whatever you can envision, you can ask Claude Code to do for you.” She described the change in plain terms: she’s “no longer limited by knowledge; now I’m only limited by my imagination.”
That shift also came with a clear financial result—something that matters in a business coach’s life as much as in her family’s.
Merlo said she’s paying “way less”: “$9.99 a month for another platform that works using Claude Code.” She contrasted that with what she disliked about higher-cost services. “Now I have this thing. and nobody’s going to upsell me or do things that are going to cost me money that I don’t want to spend.”.
Her website is not finished, and she doesn’t pretend it is. “Right now. the website is basic. ” she said. adding that she’s “going in and doing refinements.” She described previous work on other sites and said the new process makes room for things that are “more fun and not as boring as the one I have.”.
“It’s great, it’s just not spiffy. I’m spiffing it up,” she said.
Taken together. the story is less about a single app and more about control—control over what she builds. how she learns it. and what she pays. Merlo’s fear of pressing “enter” didn’t disappear because the risks vanished. It eased because someone guided her through each step until the click felt ordinary.
Now the work continues: a basic site under refinement, a monthly cost she can live with, and a new confidence she can measure in the moment she no longer pauses before trying again.
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