The fastest way to fall behind
is buying the wrong AI in a hurry.
Every AI pitch in your inbox says the same thing: everyone else is already doing it, and you're falling behind. The fear is real. But rushing is how you end up with AI that burns cash instead of growing doors. The operators pulling ahead aren't buying more tools. They have someone who knows which technology calls to make.
What buying in a hurry looks like
A mid-market health insurance company doing phone AI had 67% of their connected calls transferred to the sales team. Amazing numbers. The real number was under 8%. The Director of Ops fired 20 people based on numbers that were a lie.
Read the whole storyWhy You're Here
You already have the feeling, and you're right.
You know AI is something you need. You also might not fully trust it. That instinct isn't paranoia.
Whatever AI you choose, it reports on itself. The numbers you see come from the AI. The vendor who sold it to you is the one who told you to trust those numbers. And the vendor gets paid whether the numbers are true or not.
So there's a question nobody answers: is the AI doing what was promised, or is it showing you numbers you can't easily double check?
You don't have to become a technology expert to answer that. You need someone who reads the instruments for you, and who has no reason to lie to you, because they are on your team.
I do things differently. As your dedicated technology leader, I'll show you where your AI is costing you money. You'll get clear on which technology grows your doors and which just burns cash. I'll tell you what to fix first and what to ignore.
Cameron O'BrienWhat You Need
You need a technology mind that sits next to you. You are great at running your business, it's your genius. You were never meant to become a technology expert on top of it.
My expertise is in helping non-technical owners, founders and CEOs get technology and AI right. Your missing piece is a leader who owns the technology decisions and the outcomes of those decisions.
You need someone who doesn't sell software, who doesn't take a cut from any vendor, and who you can trust that what they tell you is for your business and nobody else's.
- You'll see exactly where AI helps and where it burns your cash
- You'll stop chasing five vendors, and have one person accountable
- You'll have a technology expert on your team
- You'll have clear decisions and direction, so your team stays on track
A True Story
The AI was lying. Nobody was checking.
Most firms run thousands of calls a month, leasing, maintenance, after-hours, across their whole portfolio.
A mid-market health insurance company brought me in to look at the AI running their calls. An operations manager had stood it up himself, the way a lot of people do now, because the tools make it sound easy. They put in the platform with the best-sounding voice and let go of their twenty person call center within a month.
For a while it looked incredible. 67% of calls connected to live people were transferred to the human sales team. 2 out of 3 connected calls were marked as successes, beating the old team by a mile. The only complaint was the AI felt a little slow to pick up.
So I showed them where to look. It turns out the AI couldn't tell a voicemail from a person. Every time it hit a voicemail, it counted it as a live transfer. The real rate was under 8%. One in twenty calls, maybe. Quarterly reporting hadn't caught up with the vendor dashboard.
They let twenty people go on the strength of a number that was a lie. Nobody was checking it. They trusted the output, because the vendor told them they could.
The real story was sitting in the data the whole time. 98% of their calls went to voicemail. 80% of their closed deals came from voicemail callbacks, not from AI transfers. They'd bought an agent that sounds human, when what they needed was a system that makes them money.
Nobody could have caught that from the dashboard. That's the point.
The Wrong Direction
They built AI nobody wanted.
Another company had already built a custom AI tool for their customers. They'd put real money into it, about a third of their development budget, all pointed one direction. Then it hit them. The direction was wrong, and their customers didn't even want what they were building.
So they asked me to show them where AI actually belonged in their product and where it didn't, so they could stop guessing and make a clear call instead.
AI is good at some things and a waste in others. Knowing which is which, for your business, is the difference between money well spent and a third of your budget pointed the wrong way.
Your Blind Spot
You can't see this one from where you sit.
Maybe you've already got AI running and something feels off. Maybe you're about to pull the trigger and you want to get it right. Either way it's the same problem. The one part of your business that reports on itself is the one part nobody is checking.
AI isn't going anywhere. The operators who get this right are pulling ahead. The ones who don't pay for it slowly, in money they can't trace, on decisions they made from numbers that were never real.
Let's Talk
Finally, someone on your side of the table.
Every vendor in your inbox is selling you something. I don't sell the AI, I don't take a cut from the people who do, and I'm not here to talk you into more of it. The only thing I'm looking out for is your vision, and supporting that vision through technology.
You don't need more AI. You need someone who knows where it belongs, and where it doesn't.
If something feels off, or you're about to make the call and want to get it right, reach out.
Want a read on where you stand first? Grade your tech.