Your AI Strategy Starts with a Person, Not a Platform

I was on a call last week with an employee of one of our clients.

Not the owner. Not someone on the leadership team. Just someone trusted with an important responsibility she handles exceptionally well every day.

She had just finished a four hour crash course on using Claude through one of those large lead generation webinars.

I was curious about what she had learned, so she was kind enough to hop on a Zoom call with me and walk me through it.

What she said next is the exact thing separating businesses making real progress with AI from those still spinning their wheels.

It is worth hearing before you spend any more time wondering where to start.

I work with interior design studios, architecture firms, and other project-based businesses every day, and I have never had a call quite like this one.

She walked me through everything she had learned.

Then she told me what was still missing.

She wasn’t dazzled.

She wasn’t dismissive either.

She understood AI had to be introduced realistically, with clear steps and everyone moving in the same direction.

I sat there nodding because I already knew where the conversation was headed.

By the end of the call, we weren’t a vendor and a client anymore.

We were two people who saw the same vision and wanted to help bring it to the rest of the team.

I don’t get many calls like that.

When I do, they make my whole week.

Every Business Has the Same Three People

That conversation reminded me of something I see almost everywhere.

When AI comes up, there are usually three types of people in the room.

• One believes it’s mostly hype and not very useful for real business.

• One believes it’s basically magic and everyone’s job will soon be done for them.

• One understands it takes real work to set up, the results aren’t magic, but the payoff is absolutely worth it when it’s done well.

I call that third person the Opportunity Aware Realist.

Here’s the uncomfortable part.

Most businesses either don’t have one yet, or they don’t realize they already do.

That’s the gap.

Not the technology.

Not the platform.

The person.

It’s funny, in a not so funny way, that a business’s direction with AI often comes down to whoever happened to get curious enough to experiment after hours.

That’s not a strategy.

That’s a coin flip.

The Cost Nobody Puts on the P&L

Most businesses know what wasted advertising costs.

They know what a bad hire costs.

This cost rarely appears anywhere, even though it can be just as significant.

Testing a bunch of tools just to see which one fits is expensive.

Implementing it poorly, abandoning it, and starting over is expensive.

Reinventing the same process from scratch over and over just to make it a little more efficient is expensive.

Spending eight, nine, or ten hours behind a screen while repetitive work could have been handled in minutes is expensive.

Not having the right answer when the momentum matters the most is very, very expensive.

Businesses watch revenue.

They watch expenses.

Very few measure this.

Yet it is often one of the biggest hidden leaks in the business.

What This Looks Like Inside a Project Based Business

If you manage a studio, you already know the feeling.

Half your team is buried in renderings, client meetings, and revisions.

The other half is juggling schedules, vendor communication, purchasing, invoicing, and keeping projects moving.

Ask each of them about AI and you’ll probably hear three completely different answers.

That’s not a training problem.

It’s a coordination problem waiting for the right person to own it.

So What Do You Actually Do?

First, find that team member.

Or help them grow into the role.

Not the loudest voice in the room.

Not necessarily someone with a leadership title.

Find the person who already thinks realistically about implementation, alignment, and practical outcomes.

Give them one objective.

Bring one improvement to the team that feels immediately useful.

No lengthy training.

No complicated rollout.

Just something that makes everyone’s day a little easier.

Second, raise your expectations of your technology partner.

If your IT company only keeps computers running and fixes Acrobat when it won’t open, the bar is too low for where business is headed.

The partners creating the most value today understand how your team actually works.

They know your workflows, your people, and where AI can help remove friction instead of simply adding another complication.

Third, choose a platform and give it enough time to succeed.

Based on what I’ve seen across dozens of businesses like yours, that platform is Claude.

Here’s why.

Claude can be trained on your business the same way you would train an exceptional new employee.

Your values.

Your mission.

Your history.

How you communicate with clients.

How you move a project from the first conversation to the final walkthrough.

How do you bring in revenue.

You wouldn’t hand a new employee your biggest client without any context.

Don’t hand your team an AI platform without teaching it how your business works.

Once it’s trained well, it becomes something even more valuable.

It helps onboard future employees faster, answers questions consistently, and reduces the need to explain the same things over and over again.

None of this is magic.

Someone still has to do the teaching.

AI is only as useful as the quality context you give it.

What’s Actually Waiting for You

Picture your entire team participating.

Not just the one curious person experimenting during lunch.

Imagine everyone bringing ideas about where AI can genuinely improve the way your business works.

You probably think you already know where AI belongs.

You’re probably right about some of it.

You’re probably missing quite a bit too.

Your team sees friction you never experience.

They’ve simply never had a reason to bring those ideas forward.

That’s the real opportunity.

Not just saving time.

Building a business where good ideas surface faster, knowledge spreads more easily, and everyone gets stronger together.

Most businesses are still asking where they should start with AI.

The businesses pulling ahead answered a different question first.

Who owns it?

Find that person.

Get the right partner in the room.

Train the platform.

Everything else gets much easier from there.