A Grounded Approach to AI

Not in work. Not in competition. In headlines.

"AI Will Replace Your Entire Marketing Team by 2027."

"This New Tool Changes Everything."

"You're Already Behind If You Haven't Adopted [Insert Acronym]."

Each one designed to make you feel like you're missing something urgent. Each one competing for your attention with the subtlety of a car alarm. And each one pulling you further from the thing that actually grows your business: focused, intentional execution on what matters.

Here's what I've learned after eight years of building marketing systems—and the last two years of watching AI transform from research curiosity to daily headline fodder:

I talk to business owners every week who are paralyzed. Not because they don't understand AI—but because they understand just enough to feel behind.

They've bought tools they don't use. Started projects they didn't finish. Attended webinars that promised transformation and delivered confusion.

And the pattern is always the same: reactive adoption.

Something sounds important. They scramble to implement it. It doesn't integrate with anything else they're doing. It gets abandoned. Repeat.

This isn't a technology problem. It's a strategy problem.

The businesses I've seen thrive through every platform shift, algorithm change, and "revolutionary" new tool share one thing in common: they know what they're building before they pick up new tools to build it.

Here's the filter I use—for myself and for the businesses I work with:

If you don't have a system—a clear, intentional architecture for how your marketing creates growth—then every new tool looks like the answer. Because you're searching for something to believe in.

But if you do have a system, evaluation becomes simple:

If yes to all three, explore it. If not, it's noise—no matter how impressive the demo looked.

Let me demystify something.

When I talk about AI-powered marketing, I'm not talking about replacing your team with robots. I'm not talking about letting ChatGPT write your brand strategy. And I'm definitely not talking about chasing whatever tool launched on Product Hunt this morning.

I'm talking about leverage.

The unsexy kind. The kind that saves your marketing coordinator four hours a week on reporting. The kind that turns one piece of content into six without losing your voice. The kind that lets a small team operate like a team twice its size—not by doing more, but by eliminating the work that shouldn't have been manual in the first place.

That's it.

Here's what I recommend to every business owner feeling the pressure to "figure out AI":

Before you add anything new, understand what's working. What's not. Where the bottlenecks actually are. Most businesses have more opportunity in fixing their existing systems than in adopting new technology.

What's the path from stranger to customer? What happens at each stage? Where do leads fall through the cracks? Where are you over-investing? Under-investing?

You can't automate your way out of a strategy gap. And you definitely can't AI your way out of one.

Once you have clarity on your architecture, then you can evaluate tools intelligently. Not "is this cool?" but "does this solve problem X that we identified in step one?"

The businesses that win long-term aren't the ones who adopted the most tools. They're the ones who built systems that compound—where each improvement makes the next one easier.

Novelty fades. Systems endure.

I'm not anti-AI. Far from it. I spend a significant portion of my week building AI workflows, testing new capabilities, and figuring out what's actually useful versus what's just impressive in a demo.

But I do this so my clients don't have to.

That's the job. To live in the noise so you can stay focused on your business. To separate signal from hype. To translate "what's possible" into "what's practical for your specific situation."

Because here's what the headlines won't tell you: the fundamentals haven't changed.

AI doesn't change any of that. It just raises the stakes on getting it right.

Next time you see a headline that makes you feel behind, try this:

Instead of asking "Should we be doing this?"—ask "What problem would this solve that we've already identified?"

If you can't answer that clearly, you're not behind. You're just being sold to.

And that's noise you can safely ignore.