How I've changed my mind about AI... and 3 ways we are using it...

Using AI ethically, as a human-forward company.

I think I’ve held out on AI longer than almost anyone I know.

I watched people wake up and decide to become “AI experts” out of nowhere.

Outsourcing their entire client experience to automations and robots.

Relying on AI to say the right words, create the content, come up with the IP for them.

🚩🚩🚩🚩

This had me seriously concerned about where things are headed.

I couldn’t get behind it. I STILL can’t get behind it.

I am, by nature, already a slow adapter when it comes to “trends.”

Most are a massive waste of time and send people down the path of shiny objects that DON’T drive any sort of meaningful result.

So while the whole internet was screaming that you would get left behind if you didn’t AI-ify every corner of your business, I sat back for a hot sec.

I don’t do the crazy fear based thing, so ANYTHING that makes the market feel behind is an immediate red flag.

Instead, I thought about what growth actually requires in this market.

While everyone is moving toward AI, I was observing in real time that it wasn’t AI that was moving the needle.

It was relationships.

High ticket deals getting done as a direct result of having face time with your ideal clients.

In person curated rooms, networking events, masterminds, personal introductions…

Human to human selling.

It wasn’t the bots that were doing the heavy lifting.

AI wasn’t the “magic pill” everyone thought it’d be, in fact it’s a major distraction for most.

But what I quickly learned observing my own team begin to adopt AI into their processes was that if we use AI the right way, if we allow it to free up time on repetitive, nonessential tasks, we have SO many more hours to spend on the things that actually matter.

Having conversations with the market.

With our clients.

Building relationships.

Creating real, quality high value content that can ONLY come from the mind of a REAL person, created in God’s image.

So today, I want to let you in on a little behind the scenes of what we actually (and transparently) are using AI for (and some areas that are off limits).

But first: the things we will NEVER outsource to AI…

We will NEVER be an AI-first company.

We help people make sales, consistently, every single day, through the power of RELATIONSHIPS first… so they can build businesses that make an impact.

That is who we have always been and who we will always be.

I believe that our businesses are our ministry in the marketplace and a vehicle for doing good in the world.

We will never let AI create our content.

We use it to repurpose, never to originate intellectual property.

We will never automate our customer service conversations.

We will never create content using an “AI twin.”

And we will never delegate our brand to AI.

Everyone is sprinting to remove the human touch from their companies.

So what becomes the actual competitive edge?

The people who double down on the opposite:

HUMAN connection.

Relationships.

Real human customer service.

The personal voice note you send to a client. The livestream you do on a random Tuesday for your audience instead of scheduling out content for months at a time and NEVER showing up fully present.

An MIT study last year found that 95% of corporate AI initiatives produced no measurable return.

Meaning that almost everyone pouring money into “AI everything” is getting nothing back. Not because AI is useless. It is going to eventually become a standard practice, just like the internet.

But instead, because they’re using it to replace the wrong things.

The shift for me…

AI can not be strategic.

AI can’t think like you.

That’s an us job.

But what it can do, is help you build systems that free up time, gather the right data, and use that time and information to maximize your RELATIONSHIPS.

We call it scaling the unscalable.

You can’t “scale” a personal relationship. But if you can hand the busywork to a system, you can go build more, deeper relationships, and more presence than you’ve ever had time for.

And you can either fall down the rabbit hole chasing faster and easier, or you can decide that you want to show up, serve humans, employ humans, and create like a human… and use AI to help you create more time to do just that.

That is how WE are using AI in our sales and growth process.

And before we get into the tactics of what we are building, before I walk you through how my team is creating systems that allow us to make more space in our calendars for relationships, you’re going to want to upgrade your subscription because next month, we are releasing our full Substack Claude Skills Library and ALL paid subscribers will get access!

These are the actual skills we use to create content for Substack, and we will be hosting a 90-minute follow up training to walk you through what each one does and how/when to use it (so you don’t have to figure it out on your own).