🔌You’re Using AI Like a Vending Machine

Last week, one of my clients opened a call with something I hear a lot...

"We already have automations. A proposal gets signed, and a bunch of setup steps fire off. So where does an AI employee fit in?"

Fair question.

But my answer surprised them a little.

Automations are not AI.

I love a good automation.

But an automation only does exactly what you set it up to do. “When this happens, do that.” Same steps, every time.

AI is different.

You tell it about your business and what you're trying to get done, and it figures out the steps.

Some tools can even watch how your work flows and decide what to do next, without you wiring up every "if this, then that."

Businesses get more value from AI when they intentionally decide what work it should do, how it should operate, and who should use it.

That's what this week's newsletter is all about.

🧭 The Gap Right Now

Lots of business owners have heard about AI agents.

Very few are actually using one.

That's good news if you're willing to spend a little time setting one up.

Where small businesses stand with AI agents right now:

👀 Aware, Not Using - 79% of U.S. small business owners know about AI agents, but only 16% have deployed one. 🔗
⏱️ Using It to Save Time - 78% of those same owners say AI saves them time every week. 🔗
📬 Using Consumer AI Agents - More than 3 million people were using Meta's Muse AI agent weekly just three weeks after launch. Muse handles everyday tasks like sending emails, booking travel, and negotiating bills. 🔗

🪣 Start With Your Buckets

Before you pick a tool, sort your work.

This matters because the bucket a task lives in tells you what kind of AI help it needs.

Once-in-a-while work is a good fit for a chat you sit down and focus on.

Everyday work is where an AI assistant that keeps running on its own pays off.

I'll walk through both in a minute. But first, sort your work into three buckets:

🗓️ What happens once in a while
📆 What happens once a week
🔁 What happens every day

Say your email is the problem. That's the first thing that came up on my client call.

Each day, you fall a little further behind as new emails pile up.

It starts to compound and feels less like a task and more like a weight on your shoulders.

That's an everyday problem.

And it's a perfect fit for agentic AI.

Which is a fancy way of saying AI with agency. That means AI that can do things instead of waiting for your next question.

🧾 Rendering vs. Consuming

Now here's a distinction that changed how everyone on my client call was thinking.

Think about how you take meeting notes.

→ Option one. You open your AI, feed it the call, ask it to write a recap, tighten it up, and send it.

→ Option two. The recap is already sitting there when the call ends. You check it, add your spin, make sure it's right, and send it.

Same outcome. Two very different jobs.

In the first one, you're rendering. In the second, you're consuming something that was already built for you.

I'm pretty relaxed about AI-written recaps.

Some of your clients might not be.

Either way, the human part stays the same.

Tighten it up, put your voice on it, check it for accuracy, and use your judgment. Then send.

Email has the same fork.

Do you want to tell an agent exactly what to do because you want control? Or do you want it to say, 'Here's what matters today, and the rest is filed if you need it'?

There's no wrong answer, but knowing the difference will change how you use AI, and the results you get.

💬 The Session vs. the Running Assistant

This is the part I spent the most time on when chatting with my client.

A session works like this.

You have a task.
You open a new chat.
You get some value out of it.

If you don't like it, you throw it away.

If you do, you keep going.

Before long, you have a pile of threads.

That's how most of us use Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and others.

A running assistant works like an executive assistant you're on the phone with every day.

One long conversation. "Hey, can you handle that? Oh, and what about this?"

That's the shift that completely changed how my client approached AI, and I think it will do the same for you.

🎯 Sessions, done with intention

If you own a business and want real value out of chat, it takes a little setup.

You build a project that knows everything about the business, or one client, or one effort. Then every time you open it, you're working inside that context instead of starting cold.

The key is that you chose to sit down and work on something.

🤖 The running assistant

Now picture doing your email that way.

New chat.
Explain everything.
Get help.
Close it.

Tomorrow... repeat. 😩

You'd lose your mind.

I wrote about that exact amnesia a few weeks ago in The End of the Prompt Era. 🔗

A running assistant doesn't reset.

You give it access, tell it your priorities, and it starts making suggestions on its own.

Things like:

"Busy day. Want a one-sheet before your first meeting?"

You can say no, ignore it, or you can say "yes please" and walk away while it pulls everything together.

Remember that client who was behind on their email? That's exactly why I pointed them to Muse.

In my opinion, it's the closest a consumer app has come to that Jarvis-from-Iron-Man idea we've all been waiting for.

It runs on its own virtual machine, so it keeps working after you close the app, and you choose which apps it can touch. 🔗

It's U.S.-only (for now).

I have it running on my own inbox. It catches dates buried in emails and puts them on my calendar.

That's work I used to hand to a person... and now that person gets to do better work.

My advice for getting started was simple.

Connect your email first. Then talk to it.

Something like:

"I'm overwhelmed with my inbox. What can you learn? What can you get rid of? Help me make sense of this."

Would it unsubscribe from stuff on command? Absolutely. If it has the access and capability, it can.

🧩 Business, Personal, or Both

Before anyone on the call bought anything, I asked a question:

Do you want AI to support your business, or would something closer to a personal assistant help more right now?

Picture grabbing your phone and saying, "I've got a lot of meetings today. Scan what's coming up. Also, don't let me forget to pick up that thing for the house, and fit in the errand I promised to run."

That's a life request as much as a business one.

You can have both.

Just set them up as separate efforts, because each one asks for its own mindset.

Whichever you try, give it time.

Do you like it today? A week later? Two weeks later?

That's the real test.

👥 Before You Buy Seats for Your Team

Then came the big question: Should they upgrade to a team plan?

My answer was yes... but only with buy-in.

Set up seats for everyone and walk away, and people open it and go, "I don't know what to do with this."

Then they text the owner with questions.

Without buy-in, it's one more expense. With buy-in, you'll feel the jump in output.

The price isn't the scary part.

The real investment is time.

Spend a little of it getting the North Star of the business in one place.

What are we doing?
Where does everything live?

Then sit with each person and get specific.

Ask questions like: "You do this every week. Would it help if...?"

👉 Whatever you do for a living, sit with these:

Which of your automations would work better if it could make a judgment call?
What recurring piece of work could show up ready for your review?
Which of your AI chats would you hate to re-explain tomorrow?
If your team got AI seats tomorrow, what's the first thing you'd want each person using it for?

✅ Try This, This Week (10 Minutes)

Sort your work into 3 task lists:

Once in a while.
Once a week.
Every day.

Pick one item from the every day list.

Then open whatever AI you already use and push it further than you think you should.

Start with this:

"Here's a task I do every day: [TASK]. Ask me five questions about how I do it today, one at a time. Then tell me which parts you could handle on your own, which parts you'd need my approval for, and what I'd need to connect or set up so you could start tomorrow."

Stick with the tool you're already comfortable with because everything else has a learning curve.