How to Make AI Your Business Advisor, Not Just Another Tool

There are now plenty of AI tools being marketed specifically to tradies now.  

Some promise to help with quoting, invoices, customer communication, documents, job management and even answering questions on site. Others offer more complete AI systems designed to automate parts of the business.  

There can absolutely be a place for these tools. 

But before you start paying for another piece of software, I think there’s a more important question: 

Have you actually taught the AI you already have how your business works? 

Most business owners I speak to are already using AI in some way. They’ll ask it to write an email, tidy up a document, create a social post or answer a question. 

That’s useful, but it’s really only scratching the surface. 

The bigger opportunity is to give AI enough information about your business that you can start having much better business conversations with it. 

Imagine your AI already understood who your best customers are, which jobs are most profitable, your average job value, where your leads come from, your team structure, your competitors, your biggest challenges and where you want the business to be in 12 months. 

Now the questions can become very different. 

Instead of asking: 

“Write me a Facebook post.” 

You could be asking: 

“Based on our most profitable jobs and the customers we want more of, where should we be focusing our marketing?” 

Instead of: 

“Write a job ad.” 

You could ask: 

“Based on our current team structure, workload and growth plans, what position should I be looking to recruit next and why?” 

Or: 

“Here are our sales figures, quote conversion rates and sales forecast. What patterns can you see and what questions should I be asking?” 

That’s where I think AI starts getting interesting for a business owner. It moves from being something that helps you write things faster to something you can use to challenge your thinking, analyse information, identify problems and help you make better decisions. And you don’t necessarily need a different AI tool for every part of your business to start doing this. 

You need to train the AI you’re using properly and keep giving it relevant information about your business. 

That doesn’t happen in five minutes! Just like a new employee, the more useful information and context you give it about your business the better the conversation can become. 

This is something I’m spending a lot more time working through with trade business owners. 

Not simply “how do I use AI?” The better question is: 

“How could I use AI to help me run this business better?” 

That answer is really different for every business. 

If you’d like some help working out what that could look like in yours, get in touch. 

Hugh Bowman
ActionCOACH Geelong