Where should a business start with AI?

"Where do we start?" is the question I hear most from business owners. Here is the framework I use.

1. Map the leaks

List the places where time or money leaks every week. Be concrete: "Sales spends Monday morning updating the CRM", not "sales could be more efficient".

2. Rank by payback

For each leak, estimate two numbers:

• Hours per week it costs today.
• Weeks to build a first version of an agent that removes most of it.

Divide the first by the second. Start with the top of the list.

3. Build where the data already lives

The best first agents sit inside systems you already use — your CRM, your shared inbox, your messaging channels. No new app to adopt means no adoption problem.

4. Keep a human in the loop — at first

Let the agent draft; let a person approve. Once the approval rate is consistently high, widen what the agent can do on its own.

Start with one agent. Make it boringly reliable. Then add the next.