“How are you using AI?”
We've probably been asked this in every new client conversation for the last 6 months. And it’s almost never the real question.
What they actually mean is:
What can AI do for my business—and can you tell me how to use it without hiring anyone?
We asked a handful of our clients the same question, the results were surprising -- they barely use it!
But it's a fair question. AI has been marketed as a miracle: faster, cheaper, smarter, and somehow able to replace entire teams if you just prompt it correctly. The reality is much less dramatic—and much more useful.
First, AI isn’t a strategy. It’s a tool. And it’s rarely the tool.
Most of the time, getting AI to actually work for a business involves stitching together systems. One platform triggers an AI to generate something. That output gets passed to another service. Algorithmic logic checks it, reshapes it, routes it somewhere else, triggers more AI prompts and output, and eventually turns into something real—content, creative, data, or a live feature.
A lot of that isn’t AI at all. It’s just software.
AI is best at very specific things: pattern recognition, summarizing, classifying, generating drafts, transforming inputs into outputs, and it really loves code, (I guess it loves itself). It’s great when the task is clear and the rules are tight. It’s terrible at judgment, taste, and knowing when to stop. Which is why letting it run unchecked is how brands end up looking, sounding and behaving like everyone else.
The value doesn’t come from “using AI.” it comes from knowing where it fits—and where it absolutely doesn’t.
The companies doing this well aren’t trying to replace their teams. They’re trying to get more out of them. Same people. Same hours. More output. More experiments. More launches. More room to grow without burning everyone out.
That’s the part that gets missed.
AI doesn’t eliminate work. It compresses it, improves it and validates it. And that extra time gets reinvested into expansion, not headcount reduction.
So when someone asks how we’re using AI, we don’t lead with tools or platforms or demos. We talk about leverage, boundaries, and systems. About connecting the dots. About using AI quietly, deliberately, and in service of something bigger than efficiency and cost cutting.
Because AI on its own isn’t impressive.
What your teams can build with it is.