When artificial intelligence started becoming something everybody was talking about, I wasn't sitting around waiting for it. Actually, I resisted it. I was already retired. I really didn't want to go back to work. But I needed to work. So I started exploring AI. I didn't know where it was going to lead. I certainly didn't have New Tech Advertising figured out.
I just started using it. And something happened that I didn't expect. AI started helping me connect things I'd been learning my entire life. That's when I began to understand something important: AI didn't give me my experience. It gave me an affordable way to put a lifetime of experience to work.
The Experience Was Already There
By the time AI came along, I'd already spent decades working. I'd worked retail. I'd sold business to business. I'd sold advertising. I'd been involved in wholesale. I'd tried building different businesses. I'd worked with customers. I'd worked with employees and salespeople. I'd watched businesses succeed. I'd watched businesses struggle. I'd had successes of my own. And I'd had plenty of failures.
I'd also spent years studying businesses simply because I was interested in how they worked. AI didn't teach me those things. Life did. Work did. Customers did. Business owners did. Mistakes did. People did. AI gave me a different way to use what I'd learned.
At First, I Thought AI Was About Answers
That's how a lot of us were introduced to it. Ask AI a question. Get an answer. That was interesting. Then I discovered it could write. It could research. It could help create images. It could work with websites. It could analyze information. It could help with marketing. It could help solve technical problems. Every few weeks it seemed like there was something else it could do.
But eventually I discovered something much more useful to me. I could talk to it. Not just ask a question and get an answer. I could have a conversation. I could explain what I was thinking. I could give it background. I could tell it about something I'd tried 20 years ago. I could disagree with what it gave me.
I could say, "No, that's not what I mean." Then I could explain it again. And somewhere in that back-and-forth, I would often understand my own thinking better. That's when AI became much more than an answer machine for me.
It Helped Me See Connections
I had accumulated a lot of pieces over the years. Marketing. Sales. Retail. Wholesale. Customer service. Advertising. Technology. Websites. Cash flow. Employees. Business owners. Human behavior. Some of those things had lived in separate compartments in my mind. AI helped me put them on the same table. I could talk about a website problem and suddenly see that it was really a communication problem.
I could talk about marketing and realize the real issue was follow-up. I could look at a customer question and see an article, a video, a sales conversation and a training opportunity hiding inside the same question. I could talk through something I had learned decades ago and realize it applied to a problem I was working on today.
AI didn't create those connections for me out of nothing. It helped me see them.
Experience Changes the Questions You Ask
This is something I think we're going to understand better as AI becomes more common. Two people can use exactly the same AI and get very different value from it. The difference isn't necessarily the AI. It's what the person brings to the conversation. If you've spent 30 years working in plumbing, you know things about plumbing that AI doesn't learn by showing up at a jobsite.
If you've run a restaurant for 25 years, you know things about customers, food costs, employees, suppliers and Saturday-night chaos that aren't contained in a clever prompt. If you've spent your life selling, you've learned things about people. If you've spent years repairing equipment, you've learned to notice things somebody else won't notice. Experience changes what you see.
And what you see changes the questions you ask. That's where I think AI becomes particularly powerful. It can work with what you know.
The Knowledge Inside a Business Matters
This changed the way I started looking at businesses too. Every business has knowledge inside it. The owner knows things. The employees know things. The person answering the phone knows things. The technician who's been going into customers' homes for 15 years knows things. The waitress who talks with regular customers every week knows things. The salesperson knows what questions people ask before they buy.
The customer knows things too. But a lot of that knowledge disappears. A conversation happens and it's gone. Someone solves a problem and nobody records how they solved it. An employee answers the same customer question for the hundredth time, but nobody thinks to turn that answer into something the next hundred customers could use. A business can know an enormous amount without having any real system for remembering what it knows.
AI made me start thinking differently about that.
What If the Business Could Remember?
That became a fascinating question for me. What if we could capture what the owner knows? What if we could capture useful things employees learn? What if customer questions didn't disappear after somebody answered them? What if a good sales conversation could teach us something about the website? What if something learned in the field could become training?
What if one good idea could become an article, a video, an email, a social post or an answer for the next customer who asks the same question? What if the business could keep learning from itself? That's a much bigger idea than asking AI to write a Facebook post. That's where I began seeing the possibility of a Digital Growth Office.
AI Still Needs Judgment
I don't believe AI should make every decision. I've seen it be wrong. I've seen it misunderstand what I meant. I've seen it give me something that sounded good but wasn't right. Sometimes I've had to correct it several times. That's part of working with it. The fact that AI can produce something quickly doesn't mean the result is good.
Someone still has to look at it. Someone still has to ask whether it makes sense. Someone still has to know the business. Someone still has to say: That's not us. Or: That's exactly what I was trying to say. That's judgment. And judgment comes from somewhere. A lot of mine came from years of doing things the hard way.
You Don't Have to Become an AI Expert
This is another thing I've learned. A small-business owner doesn't need to become an artificial-intelligence expert. You already have a business to run. What matters is learning enough to understand what AI can help you do. Then start with what you already know. Tell it about your business. Explain how you work. Talk about your customers. Ask questions.
Challenge the answers. Correct it when it's wrong. Give it more context. See what it helps you notice. The goal isn't to become more like AI. The goal is to make AI more useful to you.
Start With What You Already Know
We talk a lot about learning AI. And yes, there's plenty to learn. But I think we sometimes start in the wrong place. We start with the technology. Maybe we should start with the person. What have you spent your life learning? What do you understand that someone new to your business wouldn't understand? What have your customers taught you?
What mistakes have you made? What questions have you answered a thousand times? What do you notice that other people miss? What do your employees know? What knowledge is walking around inside your business every day and disappearing because nobody is capturing it? That's where I'd start. Because the most valuable thing in the conversation may not be the artificial intelligence.
It may be you.
AI Didn't Give Me My Experience
AI has changed the way I work. It's changed the way I learn. It's changed the way I build. It's even changed the way I think through things. But it didn't give me the experiences that made those conversations valuable. Those came first. Almost 70 years of living. Decades of working. Businesses I tried. People I met. Things that worked.
Things that failed. Questions I asked. Mistakes I made. And a lifetime of watching. AI gave me a new way to bring all of that together.
NTA Point of View
Don't start by asking what AI knows. Start with what you know. Your experience matters. Your employees' experience matters. Your customers' questions matter. Your mistakes matter. Your conversations matter. Artificial intelligence can help capture, organize, connect and use that knowledge. But the knowledge has to come from somewhere. AI didn't give me my experience. It helped me finally put that experience to work.