Start With One Job, Not One Tool

Most small businesses shop for AI the way they shop for office furniture: they walk in, look around, and buy the shiniest thing. Then it sits in the corner gathering dust.

Flip it around. Don't start with a tool. Start with one job — one specific, repetitive task that eats your team's time every week. Answering the same five customer questions. Summarizing long email threads. Turning meeting notes into a to-do list.

Pick the job first, then find the smallest tool that does that job. If it works for thirty days, keep it. If it doesn't, you've lost very little, because you started small on purpose.

This is how I think about all systems work: the tool serves the process, never the other way around. In my federal grants compliance days, we never bought software and then looked for a problem to feed it. We mapped the work first.

One job. One tool. Thirty days. Then decide.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.