AI Is an Operating Decision, Not an IT Project with Brandon Powell at HatchWorks AI

Almost every CEO I talk to tells me their people are using AI.

My question is: What has fundamentally changed in your business because of it?

Are you growing revenue? Improving margins? Serving customers better? Or are you simply giving your people new tools to do the same work?

My wife jokes that I have a mistress named Claude. I use AI every day. But after 18 years of coaching more than 3,000 CEOs and leaders, I’ve learned that having the latest technology means very little if it doesn’t produce results.

Years ago, I hired Jack Daly as my COO. He spent 60 days listening to 160 salespeople and discovered they were selling our services 160 different ways.

Today, AI can analyze every sales call, identify what the best performers do differently, and help coach the entire team.

That’s not just doing things faster. That’s changing how your business operates.

In this episode of Make BIG Happen, I sit down with Brandon Powell, CEO of HatchWorks AI, to discuss what it really takes to turn AI into a competitive advantage.

Brandon shares how one commercial real estate firm used three AI agents to go from needing one support employee for every two brokers to supporting six brokers per employee. He also explains why so many AI initiatives never deliver a measurable return and what CEOs need to do differently.

Because AI transformation isn’t an IT project.

It’s a leadership decision. And it belongs to the CEO.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• Why AI is an operating decision, not an IT project
• How AI agents can fundamentally change the way work gets done
• Why organizational change is often the biggest obstacle to AI success
• How one company went from two brokers per support employee to six using AI
• Where AI can drive revenue growth, not just cut costs
• Why so many AI pilots fail to deliver measurable ROI
• What every CEO should accomplish in the next 30 days and 12 months

KEY TAKEAWAYS

00:00 Why the biggest AI opportunity isn’t better tools. It’s building a better business.

04:22 Moving beyond ChatGPT to AI agents that actually do the work.

06:42 What every CEO needs to understand about AI agents.

09:28 Freeing your best people to focus on higher-value work.

12:23 Why AI transformation fails when your people don’t come along.

22:11 Turning your company’s data into a competitive advantage.

30:47 Building AI governance and security into your strategy from day one.

33:51 How three AI agents helped a real estate firm move from two brokers per support employee to six.

38:09 The revenue opportunities hiding in unanswered customer calls.

44:18 How to identify AI opportunities, measure ROI, and scale what works.

49:01 What every CEO should accomplish in the next 12 months.

51:49 Your next 30 days: identify your biggest opportunities, establish success measures, and prepare your people.

53:33 Why the CEO must lead AI transformation.

Here’s the bottom line.

The companies that win BIG with AI won’t be the ones experimenting with the most tools.

They’ll be the ones willing to rethink how their businesses operate, make the difficult decisions, and hold their teams accountable for measurable results.

The question isn’t whether your company is using AI. It’s whether AI is helping you build a better business.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

HatchWorks AI, Brandon’s AI firm, which builds AI agents and solutions for companies and helps their teams adopt them.

https://hatchworks.com

HatchWorks AI Agentic Opportunity Finder, a free tool that helps you find AI agent use cases for your business after answering a few questions about it.

https://hatchworks.com/agentic-opportunity-finder/

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