What Six Months of AI Taught Me
- Ellie Boulstridge
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Over the last six months, I’ve probably spent more time researching AI than any other subject in my career.
Like many business owners, I’ve oscillated between excitement and fear. I’ve spent evenings and weekends testing tools, reading, experimenting and trying to understand what is probably the biggest technological shift of our lifetime.
In the last month alone, I’ve tested around twenty AI tools. I’ve hired an AI consultant to work with us, invested heavily in subscriptions and spent a frankly ridiculous amount of time trying to answer one question:
What does the advancement of AI actually actually mean for founder-led businesses?
The six conclusions I’ve come to are mainly optimistic.
AI is here to stay.
Whether we love it, hate it or feel conflicted about it, I simply do not think pretending it will disappear is a sensible commercial strategy.
At the same time, I think the conversation around AI is becoming increasingly unhelpful.
One side thinks it will solve every problem. The other thinks it will replace every job. I don't believe either. I also think we have become slightly obsessed with the technology itself.
The most useful thing AI has taught me has very little to do with AI. Instead it has taught me about systems.
I thought six months of research would show me what technology could do. Instead, it showed me the gaps in my own business.
→ You cannot automate a process that does not properly exist.
→ You cannot build sophisticated workflows on top of disorganised information.
→ You cannot connect AI tools if there is no meaningful system for them to connect to.
→ There is such a thing as too many tools; this can lead to inefficiency, rather than the other way around.
In fact, one of my strongest conclusions is this:
Most founder-run businesses do not have an AI problem. They have a systems problem.
The Silicon Valley version of AI churning out endless tools often assumes businesses are beautifully organised.
The reality I see working with founder-run businesses is rather different:
A newsletter list in a spreadsheet.
A Mailchimp account nobody remembers the password for.
One freelancer doing social media.
An SEO agency doing something mysterious in the background.
A website that gets updated once a year, at best.
The founder writing the occasional LinkedIn post.
No dashboard.
No joined-up reporting.
The idea that these businesses are about to connect multiple different tools together and automate everything is, in my experience, unrealistic.
Instead, the foundations usually need attention first.
AI is only as good as the people using it.
Or perhaps more accurately:
→ AI exposes what already exists. Then it amplifies it.
→ Poor systems become poor systems faster.
→ Good systems become better, and potentially, excellent.
→ Weak marketing becomes weak marketing delivered more efficiently.
→ Strong strategy becomes easier to execute.
I don't think AI is replacing expertise, I think it’s amplifying expertise and ramping up the speed of delivery.
This is also why I don't believe AI is going to replace marketing agencies.
Not because agencies are somehow protected from technology, but because AI still needs people who know:
- Which tools to use
- When not to use them
- How to implement them
- Whether the output is any good
- How different parts of a marketing ecosystem fit together
We also still need people who are responsible for creating and executing strategy.
The more we use AI, the more people are going to crave what's human.
This feels particularly true in travel and hospitality.
People want real hotels, real places, real photography, real expertise, real experiences and real opinions.
I do not believe AI-generated imagery is going to replace genuinely beautiful travel photography or lived experiences anytime soon.
If anything, my view is the opposite: the more AI-generated content there is, the more valuable authentic human content becomes.
This is already happening with the backlash against AI-created content on social media and advertising.
I don't think the answer is to use AI for everything simply because it exists.
Especially at the expense of something else that already works.
You don't have to make everything more efficient, even if AI companies try and make you feel this is the case.
The invention of the aeroplane didn’t remove travel by boat, car and train, it simply created another option. AI should be treated in exactly the same way.
The question is not:
Can AI do this?
The better question is:
Should AI do this?
I don't think the future belongs to businesses that reject AI.
I also don't think it belongs to businesses that automate everything.
I think the future belongs to businesses that combine extraordinary technology with judgement, expertise and human experience.
We recently created a custom-made dashboard for a client showing their key four metrics to cut the confusion, reduce overwhelm and show them what really mattered. Read more here.
That has also shaped how I'm thinking about Chiron.
We're not trying to become an AI agency.
We're becoming a marketing agency that harnesses specific AI tools (less really is more), used by people who know how to use them, to do the best possible work for founder-run travel and hospitality businesses.
For us, AI is brilliant at:
- Repetitive work
- Research
- First drafts
- Organisation
- Project management
- Workflow improvements
- Image enhancement
It allows us to spend more time on the things that humans are still uniquely good at.
Strategy. Creativity. Relationships. Judgement.
The final thing I've realised over the last six months is that founders should not have to work all of this out by themselves.
I've spent a huge amount of time researching these questions because I genuinely find them fascinating, and because I think they are going to shape the future of founder-run businesses.
Out of this research, our approach to AI has become two fold:
1) Using AI for our internal systems and client work.
2) Working with clients on AI-proofing their businesses and marketing - whether that be strategic systems, marketing strategy, SEO / AEO, newsletters, blogs, social media management, paid ads or graphic design.
We help you set up systems so that you can do the work you want to be doing.
If you're trying to work out where AI fits into your marketing or wider business, I'd be very happy to have that conversation.
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