A lot of leaders, they're buying artificial intelligence hoping that it's going to fix their operations. But automating a broken process, that does not solve your problem. All it's going to do is make your bad process happen faster. Research from like Gartner and MIT Sloan suggested that 70 to 80% of AI implementation fails. And it fails to deliver the ROI, which is the return of investment. Usually that comes from AI being deployed onto messy data and undocumented workflows. It's not generally because the software is broken. But before we get into this conversation, I want to take a minute to connect something. Because season one, that was personal. We talked about fear and perfectionism, self-trust, hesitation, validation, your vision, and the things that happen inside of us that affect how we move. And in season two, it's going to sound a little bit different. We're going to talk about business, leadership, money, technology, systems, and even AI. But honestly, I don't want you to get caught up in that because the conversation has not changed a bit. Because a business does not operate separately from a person that's leading it. The way that you think shows up in the decisions that you make. The way that you communicate shows up on your team. How you handle fear is going to show up in what you delay. The way you see yourself is going to show up in how you charge. It's going to show up in what you tolerate, what you're building, and what you believe that you're capable of leading. And let's talk about vision because your vision is going to show up in whether you are making intentional decisions or if you're just reacting to whatever's happening around you. So season two is really about taking everything that we talked about in season one and putting it to work. It is execution time. Because awareness, it is powerful. But eventually, awareness has to become action. And at some point, we have to connect the dots between who we are, how we move, and the results that we keep producing. And that includes how we run our businesses, how we lead people, how we're using our time, how we're spending money, how we're responding to change, and how we use technology. Because technology may change the way that we the work gets done, but it's not going to remove the human out of the work. It doesn't remove fear. It's definitely not going to remove poor communication. It's not going to remove your unclear vision or bad decision making. So I'm not turning this into a technology podcast. I'm still talking about people. I'm still talking about growth. And I'm still talking about what keeps us stuck and what it takes to move differently. But we just have to go a little bit deeper in how things are affecting our work, our business, our leadership, and our money. So I want to start season two with AI because right now everybody is talking about it. Everybody wants it. But almost nobody is slowing down, taking the time to ask themselves whether they're actually ready for what they are trying to implement. And that's where I want to start. And that's where we will begin. Because you have access to the most powerful technology in the world. But if your vision is unclear, your communication is broken. Your process are inconsistent, and your people do not understand what's happening. Technology is not going to save you. It's going to expose everything that you've been avoiding. So are you ready? Let's talk about it. You know what I've been noticing lately? Everybody wants AI. Business owners want AI, leaders want AI, employees are using AI. Whether the company has officially approved it or not, everybody's using it. People are buying subscription after subscription, attending workshops, downloading prompts, adding chatbots, text testing automations. And honestly, I understand it. I do it myself. But nobody wants to feel like they're behind. Nobody wants to wake up two years from now and realize that the entire industry changed while they were still trying to decide whether AI was just another trend or if it was the devil. But here's the part that I want to talk about that nobody else is talking about. A lot of businesses, they're trying to add AI to operations that are already confused. And now they're frustrated because the AI isn't producing the results that they expected. The problem is not the AI. The problem may be what you gave it to work with. I want you to pause right there for a minute. Because this is bigger than choosing the right software. This is about how your business actually operates when nobody's standing over it. When I first started using AI, I looked at a process and I thought, oh, I can automate this. And technically, I could have automated it. But then I started asking questions like, where is the information going to come from? Who's going to check this? Who's going to monitor it? Who is going to own this? How do we even know if this is complete? And somewhere within all of those questions, it became obvious to me that we did not have an automation problem. We had a clarity problem. The processes that we were coming up with, it made sense in everybody's head. It did not make sense on paper. And it definitely was not ready to be handed over to AI. And that is what I'm seeing right now. On the surface, it looks like businesses are struggling to adopt AI. But underneath of all of that, businesses are struggling with their systems. They don't have a system. They're struggling with communication and ownership. They're even struggling with inconsistent information. And sometimes I see that they're struggling with leaders who want the team to change without clearly explaining what they're actually changing, why it even matters to change, or how the change is supposed to help everybody. So I hear leaders saying my team is resistant to AI. They don't want it. Maybe that's true. Sometimes your team is not resisting AI. Sometimes they're resisting another half-explained idea being dropped on top of an already overloaded workload. Who wants to do extra work? That's what it sounds like to people who are not tech savvy, who are being introduced to AI and don't have a clue of how to use it. So imagine somebody walking into your office on Monday morning, right? And they're saying, we're using this new AI tool now. Okay. What are you using it for? What problem are you solving? What should I stop doing? Many times people are going to ask, Well, what am I going to be responsible for? Is this going to monitor me? Is it going to replace my job? What information am I able to put into it? Who's going to check it to make sure that it's working? And what happens when it is wrong? Those are not negative questions. Those are responsible questions. But when leaders aren't able to answer them, people are going to begin filling in the blanks for themselves. And then guess what happens after that? Fear sets in. And fear loves a blank space. That is where rumors are going to start, and that's where many of the rumors where people are talking about AI taking over jobs and things of that nature. That's where employees are secretly going to test the tools without telling anybody. You're going to see people using AI for everything. And then you'll see others refusing to touch it. We see that right now. Somebody else copies the confidential information into a free tool because nobody ever explained what was safe. So now you don't have AI transformation. You have AI confusion. And this is where the personal development side of this conversation matters. Because technology, it does not remove human behavior, it exposes it. AI is going to expose whether you have a clear vision, whether you can communicate consistently, whether you whether your team is going to trust leadership. AI will tell you if people understand their roles. It's going to even tell you if the business knows how it makes money. That's why I keep saying that business problems are really just problems. People build the business. People communicate the instructions. They make the decisions, they avoid the uncomfortable conversations, they hold information in their heads. People keep doing things that are hard because that is how we've always done it. And then when you go out and buy a tool and you expect the tool to correct the behavior that leadership has been tolerating for years, it's not going to work. AI cannot create your vision for you. Do you understand that? AI is not able to create your vision for you. It can help you organize it or research it or analyze the possibilities, but you're still going to have to decide where you're going. That is vision. AI cannot give your business an identity. It can imitate a tone if you give it one. It can generate a logo. Yes, I've done that plenty of times before. It can even write your mission statement, but it's not going to decide what your organization stands for. That's identity. It cannot fix a mindset that treats every new tool like a shortcut. And I know that probably sounds uncomfortable because some people are not looking for AI to improve their work. They're actually looking for AI to rescue them from learning. So now you got people walking around using AI and don't even know what type of work they're actually supposed to be doing. So what am I saying? A tool cannot replace your understanding. AI cannot repair poor communication by itself. You can automate a follow-up email, yes, you can. But somebody has to decide what the email is going to say. You can create an AI assistant, no problem. But somebody has to decide what information that AI assistant can access. You can automate reports, but again, somebody's going to have to decide which numbers matter. And then you got money. Because everybody wants to talk about the money that AI might save you. And that's fair. But we also had to talk about what bad implementation costs. You're paying for tools that nobody is using. Paying for consultants to automate the wrong processes. You're losing customers because a chat bot gives the wrong answer. Did you think about that? Wasting staff hours correcting unreliable outputs. And then I see a lot of people who create new systems. You got three new systems that don't even communicate with the five systems that you already had. All of that money adds up, but the bigger cost may be trust. Because once employees believe leadership is chasing every new trend, they're going to stop changing seriously. They're going to just look at you and be like, well, I ain't, I ain't doing that. I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing. Once your customers start to receive inaccurate or impersonal communication, they're going to look at you and be like, oh, this is fake. I don't want to do, I don't want to deal business with you because I want to talk to a human. You know how it is when you call into online and you get an automated system and you're like, look, I need to talk to somebody. I don't want to talk to a computer. You don't understand what I'm saying. But what I am saying is once you automate a broken process, the broken process is going to spread faster than it ever did manually. And that's why I don't believe every business needs to rush into more AI. I believe every business needs to become ready to make better decisions about how they're going to use AI. And that's a big difference. AI readiness does not mean that you understand every tool, okay? So don't think that I'm saying that you got to be an AI guru before you start using it. Nobody understands every tool. I don't even understand most of the tools that I have. But I guarantee you a new AI probably came out just while I'm recording this. So what does this mean? AI readiness means that you understand your business. You know it well enough to know which tool belongs in your business. It means that you can identify the real problem before choosing a solution. You can process clearly, you can process enough that any human being can follow up. It means that when people are affected by the change, they are also a part of the conversation. And somebody is going to own the result. It means that you have to decide how success will be measured before you start another monthly subscription. So there's a few things that I want you to think about before Wednesday. First, you have to stop asking yourself, what AI tool should I use? You need to start changing that question to what problems keep repeating in my business. Is it lost information? Is it delayed follow-up? Your follow-up game poor? Is it your reports taking hours to create? Are your employees answering the same conversation, the same questions over and over again? Start with the problem. Don't start with the tool. The second thing is pay attention to where business, your business depends on memory. Because when a process works, because one person remembers to do it, that is not a process. That is a huge risk. I know a couple people who are in business right now. They have everything in their head. And if they were to get sick or they had to go on vacation, their business stops until they get back. Because everything is in their memory bank. Nobody else can pick up from where they left off. So if you have your employee, let's just call her Tanya, and she has to remember to check the inbox. And if Marcus has to remember which spreadsheet gets updated, if you have to remember which customers need a callback, your business may be operating on people's mental sticky notes. AI is not going to be able to safely automate what has never been clearly defined. And the third thing, you have to ask the people doing the work. Not just the person that's buying the software. It's not just about you. You need to ask the people who are going to be doing the work with this AI. Ask them if you have employees, you need to ask them where do you lose the most time? Where do your mistakes happen the most? What information are you constantly, repeatedly have to search for or have to type in? Because leadership is being willing to hear that the problem that you thought you had is not the problem that your employees are experiencing. And I had to learn that because I was falling in love with all kinds of solutions before I fully understand the problem. Once you have already decided what you want to buy, what you want to build, or what you want to implement, every conversation starts becoming evidence for the decision that you've already made. And that's dangerous. Especially when money, people, and customers trust are involved. So my challenge for you is before you download another tool, purchase another plan, or tell your team that AI is about to change everything, can you clearly explain what needs to change right now? Not what looks impressive, not what your competitors are doing, not what everybody was trending, not what you saw on a 60-second TikTok video. What specific results does your business need? Where's your breakdown? And you have to be clear who is it affected by it? And what has to be true before your technology can approve it? Because everybody wants AI. But wanting AI and being ready for AI, as you have heard for the past what, 20 minutes, those are two different conversations. And readiness is going to begin when you stop looking outside the business, when you're able to tell the truth about what's happening inside of your business. So on Wednesday, we are going to be going over how to build your AI readiness blueprint. We're going to do that together. It's not going to be complicated. We're going to look at how your business currently operates, identify one repetitive process that you want to improve. We're going to decide whether AI is actually the right tool for you and create a simple 30-day implementation plan. We're not going to use 12 tools, not a complete digital transformation. We're just going to stick to one process and one decision and one plan that you can actually execute. Remember, in this season, it's execution time. Until then, look around your business and ask yourself Are we ready for AI? And if you're already using AI, what problem are you solving?