Introduction
“AI is coming for your job and your business.”
You hear this bandied about a lot.
Bit of scaremongering. Bit of clickbait. And massively misunderstood.
AI companies aren’t your enemy
Claude, OpenAI and Google will never know or care about the 5.7m SMEs in the UK.
They’re not building models to replace them. They’ll never launch a competitor. And they’ll never get to the granular level of understanding what you and your business actually do.
AI companies won’t damage your business directly.
The agencies, competitors and people who understand what AI can do — integrate it, become more efficient and start to dominate you — will.
The gap most people miss
The gap between using AI as a chat interface and integrating it across everything your business does, so it self-improves, is vast.
Richard and I are obsessed with this gap. We love speaking to companies who still don’t realise what they’re missing out on.
The clickbait problem
Clicking one button for an off-the-shelf “10 AI members of staff 10x’ing your business” is the clickbait people want you to believe — and the thing damaging AI’s reputation.
The real unlock
Understanding exactly how a person and a company actually works — when they do things, how they do them, what systems they use, what team members they have, what they’re trying to achieve — is the unlock.
Building the layer over the top of that, so it doesn’t feel like AI — just something that’s always two steps ahead — is the growth lever.
How we run Woodlark
It’s how we run Woodlark Associates. Putting our money where our mouth is.
A simple version of what yours could look like is below — fake data, but a real shape of the surface we build over the top of your existing tools.
Final thoughts
Have a go at building your own. Or drop me a message if you want to see what we can do for you.