At some point in the last few weeks, somebody told you that you need to be using AI in your business.
Maybe it was a podcast. Maybe it was a post. Maybe it was someone in a group you are in, talking about all the tools they have set up and all the time they are saving.
And you felt a small pull of panic. Like you are already behind.
Here is what I want to say to you today:
The most useful thing you can do right now is get very clear on the difference between what genuinely helps and what just feels like it should.
How Steve Jobs thought about focus
Steve Jobs is one of the most studied figures in business history.
When he returned to Apple in 1997, the company had dozens of products across a sprawling, confusing lineup.
His first major move was not to build more. It was to cut. He killed roughly 70 percent of Apple’s product line.
He said later that he was as proud of the things Apple chose not to do as the things it did.
Focus, to him, was not about working harder. It was about saying no to almost everything so you could say yes to the one thing that truly mattered.
That is not the message most people are sharing about AI right now.
Most of what you see is about doing more. Creating more content. Automating more touchpoints. Building more systems.
Jobs’s instinct points in the opposite direction.
AI is only useful if it creates space. If it is adding complexity, it is not serving you. It is running you.
For a service founder, this matters more than almost anyone else.
Your business runs on your thinking, your relationships, and your judgment.
The moment you use AI to fill every gap with more output, you start diluting the very thing people are paying you for.
Is it novel? Or it it usable?
Most founders are asking the wrong question when it comes to AI. They are asking: what can this do?
The better question is: What does my business need?
There is a difference between novelty and usability.
Novelty is what gets shared online.
Usability is what gives you two hours back on a Tuesday so you can spend them on something that actually matters.
The founders using AI well are not the ones experimenting with the most tools.
They are the ones who identified one or two specific bottlenecks in their business and found tools that address exactly those things.
Writing first drafts. Summarizing calls. Preparing outlines. Turning bullet points into full emails.
A few specific places where something takes longer than it should. One tool for each. That is the whole system.
Everything else is optional until you feel the gap yourself.
Where AI actually earns its place in a service business
There are three areas where founders consistently find genuine, repeatable value..
Writing you do over and over. Proposal outlines, follow-up emails, social captions, newsletter drafts. AI gets you to a rough first draft fast.
You still edit it in your voice. You are just not starting from nothing. For most service founders, this is the single fastest win available right now.
Summarising and organising. If you are spending an hour after every call writing up notes and action items, AI can handle that.
Tools that transcribe and summarise meetings are among the most practically useful things available for coaches and consultants.
You get off the call and the summary is already waiting for you.
Repurposing content. If you have already said something well in a video, a podcast, or a training, AI can turn that into a newsletter section, a social post, or part of a proposal.
You have already done the thinking. AI just helps it travel further.
If a tool does not help you write faster, process information faster, or extend work you have already done, it is probably not worth your time right now.
The TIM Framework: How to map AI to the right tasks in your business
There are only three types of tasks in your business that AI is genuinely useful for. Everything else is noise.
T — Tasks you repeat
These are the things you do more than once a week that follow roughly the same pattern every time.
Writing follow-up emails. Drafting proposals. Creating social captions. Summarising discovery calls.
These tasks eat real time and they do not require your full thinking every single time. AI can take the first 70 percent of that work off your plate.
Your job becomes editing and adding your voice, not starting from scratch.
I — Input-heavy tasks
These are the tasks that require you to process a lot of information before you can do anything with it.
Reviewing a long email thread. Listening back to a recorded call to pull out action items. Reading through notes from multiple client sessions to spot a pattern.
AI is exceptionally good at digesting large amounts of information and pulling out what matters.
It does not replace your judgment. It gets you to the point where your judgment is actually needed, faster.
M — Multiplying what already works
This is the highest-value use of AI for a service founder. You have already done the thinking.
You have a training, a talk, a workshop, a podcast episode. Something where your best ideas are already captured.
AI can help you extend the reach of that work without you thinking it through again from scratch.
A training becomes a newsletter. A workshop becomes a series of social posts. A discovery call framework becomes a guide you send to every new prospect.
Your action steps
- Write down the three tasks in your business that take the most time relative to the value they produce. Not the ones you enjoy least. The ones that eat time without growing your revenue or deepening your client relationships.
- Put each one through TIM. Is it a task you repeat, an input-heavy task, or something that multiplies work you have already done?
- Pick the one task that fits most clearly and find one tool that addresses it. Set it up this week.
- Use it for two weeks before adding anything else. At the end, ask: did this create space, or did it just give me something new to manage?
- Only keep it if the answer is clear.
Let’s build it together
If this newsletter landed for you, the next step is to come build it with us in real time. I am hosting a live webinar on the 28th of March specifically for coaches and service founders who want to know exactly where AI is worth their time and where it is not.
We will walk through the specific tasks in a service business that AI handles well, the tools worth using right now, and how to set something simple up without adding more complexity to manage.
Seats are limited. This will not be recorded.
How Did We Do?
If this gave you a perspective you haven’t heard before, share your thoughts in the comments below. I read every comment — your feedback helps me create content that truly moves you forward.
Love. Ajit
