Everyone's talking about AI. Your competitors mention it in their marketing. Your board asks about your "AI strategy." LinkedIn is a fever dream of people who became experts overnight.
And you're sitting there thinking: Do I actually need this? Or is this just hype I'm supposed to pretend to understand?
That's a fair question. Let's answer it honestly.
First: What AI Actually Is (No Jargon)
Forget the sci-fi stuff. For business purposes, AI is software that can:
- Read and write text that sounds human (emails, reports, summaries)
- Analyze patterns in data faster than your team can
- Answer questions about documents, products, or processes
- Automate decisions that follow predictable logic
That's it. It's not magic. It's not sentient. It's a tool that's very good at certain tasks and completely useless at others.
Signs You Might Actually Need AI
AI makes sense when you have:
- Repetitive knowledge work. Your team spends hours doing the same type of task—summarizing, sorting, responding, formatting. A human has to do it because it requires "thinking," but it's the same kind of thinking every time.
- More information than humans can process. Customer feedback you never read. Documents nobody searches. Data that sits in spreadsheets untouched.
- Bottlenecks around communication. Customers waiting for responses. Internal questions that require hunting down the right person. Knowledge trapped in people's heads.
- Scaling problems. What worked with 10 customers doesn't work with 1,000. You need to do more without hiring proportionally more people.
If none of these sound familiar, you might not need AI yet. And that's fine.
Signs You Don't Need AI (Yet)
AI is probably not your answer if:
- Your processes are broken. AI amplifies what exists. If your workflows are chaos, AI will create faster chaos.
- You don't know what problem you're solving. "We should use AI" is not a strategy. What specific outcome do you want?
- Your data is a mess. AI needs information to work with. If your customer data lives in 47 spreadsheets and three people's inboxes, start there.
- You're chasing competitors. Just because they announced an "AI initiative" doesn't mean it's working. Most AI projects fail quietly.
The Honest Test
Ask yourself this:
If I could hire one person who works 24/7, never gets tired, and is extremely good at one narrow task—what would I have them do?
If you have a clear answer, AI might help you build that "employee."
If you don't have a clear answer, you don't need AI. You need clarity on your business first.
Where to Start (If You Want to Explore)
Don't hire a consultant. Don't buy software. Do this instead:
- Use ChatGPT for a week. It's free (or $20/month for the better version). Ask it to help with real work tasks. Summarize a document. Draft an email. Brainstorm ideas. See what clicks.
- Notice where you waste time. Track the tasks that feel repetitive, boring, or bottlenecked. Write them down.
- Ask: "Could a smart intern do this with clear instructions?" If yes, AI can probably do it too.
This costs you nothing and teaches you more than any strategy deck.
The Bottom Line
AI is a tool. Like any tool, it's useful for specific jobs and useless for others.
You don't need to be an expert. You don't need to understand how it works under the hood. You just need to know what problems you have and whether this tool can help solve them.
If the answer is "not sure yet"—that's fine. The hype will die down. The useful stuff will remain. You can figure it out at your own pace.
And if the answer is "yes, I think there's something here"—then let's talk about what that actually looks like.
Want a second opinion on whether AI makes sense for your business? We'll tell you honestly—even if the answer is no.