Insights into AI, automation, and the future of work

It’s clear that artificial intelligence is reshaping the way businesses operate, from automation and data analysis to decision-making and leadership. And while AI itself is often represented in broad, futuristic strokes, its immediate impact is actually quite tangible—saving time, enhancing creativity, and driving efficiency in ways we couldn’t have imagined even a few years ago.

To dive deeper into AI’s real-world applications, challenges, and opportunities, I sat down with Todd Brook, the founder and CEO of Envisionit. Todd has spent over 20 years at the intersection of marketing and technology, making him a sought-after voice on AI’s business implications.

5 key takeaways about how AI is transforming business:

1. AI as a tool for freedom: AI has the potential to free up time, energy, and resources, allowing professionals to focus on creative and strategic work.
2. Early adoption challenges: Implementing AI isn’t an instant time-saver; there’s an initial investment of learning, testing, and refining workflows.
3. Leadership & AI adoption: CEOs must champion AI adoption, positioning it as a top business priority rather than relegating it to IT.
4. The power of prompting & bots: AI can significantly enhance productivity when leveraged through effective prompting, automation, and digital agents.
5. Balancing AI with human wisdom: AI is a powerful tool, but it lacks human judgment, experience, and creativity—the best results come from human-AI collaboration.

Watch the video interview, or read the full transcript below.

JE: Hello everyone and welcome to the conversation. My name is Joe Eisenhardt. I’m here with Todd Brook, the founder and CEO of Envisionit, a strategic growth and digital marketing agency known for its forward-thinking approach to technology and innovation. 

Todd is a 20 year plus veteran in the technology and marketing industry and a highly sought-after speaker and visionary in the world of AI. And he has positioned himself at the forefront of helping businesses navigate artificial intelligence, transforming not just how companies operate, but also how they innovate and grow. 

Todd brings a deep understanding and enthusiasm for AI’s potential. Today, we’re going to explore his insights on AI adoption, his practical approach to implementation, its impact on leadership and workplace efficiency, and the challenges and opportunities that come with integrating AI into business operations. Welcome, Todd. Thank you so much for joining.

TB: Thanks, Joe.

JE: So to start, AI is a term that’s everywhere in the business world—with applications ranging from automations, data analysis, insight generation, and so much more. AI means different things to different people. So what do you immediately think of when you hear AI?

TB: Well, when you say the term AI, what I immediately think of is the good old Terminator movies from back in the day. But the reality is, to me, when I consider what AI is, it really represents an opportunity for people of all different experience levels to tap into a technology that will give them freedom—freedom of time, freedom of energy—and remove all sorts of waste and allow them to spend more time really leaning into those things that make them genuinely unique or that really give them that recharge of their battery and give them that energy and excitement towards what’s ahead.

JE: So as a business leader, what has been your experience with AI?

TB: So for me, when AI first emerged… My experience was really around the old machine learning methodologies. I’ve been dabbling with AI since really 10 years plus back, whether it’s through what we’ve done and what we’ve seen in terms of data and analytics to unique projects with different software companies that I’m involved with. But what really changed for me with AI was the ability, and it goes back to where I started. It really gave our team the ability to invest more time into creative thinking and more time to engage with each other and less time in those repetitive actions. 

What really shocked me about the technology though was the fact that so much of what we’ve identified in terms of our own abilities and we’ve seen as part of our own value in the world, a piece of technology is able to do so much of. And at first I think it was a little scary.

I actually saw it as this asteroid heading towards our world of the way we work and the way we behave. But today I couldn’t be more excited about what it represents. Just like with any technology, there’s plenty of bad that comes with it. But on the amazing side, we are gonna see advancements. We’re gonna see savings and efficiencies that we could never have expected before this.

JE: It’s come a long way even in the last couple of years. Jeff Bezos has called modern AI a horizontal enabling layer, suggesting that it’ll be used to improve everything and that it’ll be incorporated into everything, like electricity and computing before it. So how do you interpret that statement as a CEO?

TB: Yeah, so when I think of the horizontal enabling layer, what that really says to me is we are going to be in a time where regardless of background, regardless of what our experiences have been and what we’ve had access to up until this point, suddenly we will have a technology that’s going to be interwoven with our world and with our day to day that means that everybody can have access—within reason obviously—but can have access to knowledge, to experience, to information, and to capabilities that if you were to ask this even a year two ago, no one could have imagined. It seemed like something out of a future movie from hundreds of years from now. But instead what I’m seeing is this mass transformation. 

And it’s very energizing what it represents, but it’s scary because everything that has been so stable for so many years suddenly is shifting and it’s shifting real time and we’ve got to be ready for it.

JE: And AI isn’t just shaping the macro level, it’s also redefining the way executives manage their time, make decisions, and lead teams on more of a micro level. So how has AI changed your personal workflow? And what were some of the stumbling points that you experienced along the way?

TB: Yeah, so I mean, for me, I’ve been systematizing the predictable anywhere I can. Anything that is a routine procedure, something that I do over and over again, I’ve been putting real effort towards using this technology to help. I’m also using it to help solve problems for me. 

When I need an analysis or I need to understand the performance of something, I can simply explain to this technology who it is, what it knows, and how to behave and utilizing any of the many products online, I’m able to very quickly get that answer. And in the past, I wouldn’t have been able to. Even on legal reviews, I have found my need to tap outside legal support and guidance has gone down. It’s not eliminated. I still want the art and wisdom side of something. And I don’t believe AI offers it. 

So you ask the stumbling block. When I consider what are those stumbling blocks that I may have run into, it’s really three things that are very important to recognize. Number one, it doesn’t save you time right out of the gate always. In fact, there is an investment of capital, mental, time, or real cost to do something that very first time. But once you do, again, the results are pretty astounding.

The second thing that I learned in terms of going through this is that it doesn’t always get it right. It makes stuff up. The term we’ll often hear is it hallucinates. And that is definitely true. It does, in fact, hallucinate. But there is a reason for that and a way to work around it. But I didn’t know that at first. So often I’d be given information and then I’d have to get it.

And then the third one also ties into something I said earlier, which is the idea of wisdom. And I don’t want to underestimate that. When we talk about creative thinking, we learn a lot from what doesn’t work, the mistakes that we make. I would say those are being able to assess and learn from that is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. And yet when I go ahead and I look at this technology, it doesn’t have that wisdom. It doesn’t have that same ability. It hasn’t been and seen those mistakes that a human has. And so being able to lean into that human experience is absolutely critical. And so if I guess I put it on the line of the stumbling point, it is important to understand the role it plays and it’s going to get better and better. 

But, a human that’s been through something before can warn you of those things that they actually saw, felt, and know versus just the details, the facts based on what is written and the correlations between what was written and what is understood.

JE: So what AI tools and processes have had the biggest impact on improving your internal office functions, efficiencies, and productivity?

TB: Yeah, and for me, it really falls into a few camps. On one side, the simple act of being able to understand prompting. I mean, we’re talking using products like ChatGPT or Gemini or Co-Pilot. It’s been wonderful. It allows me, as I said earlier, it allows me to synthesize information very quickly. 

It’s a tech that will review my writing or even I’ve taught it my writing style through prompting. But the problem with it is it doesn’t remember after I leave. Yeah, as long as I’m in the conversation it does, but then it forgets. That right there has at least freed up 15 to 20% of my time just getting great at that. And I still only consider myself good compared to where I can be. 

Now, the second level is the idea of bot development. The easiest way to explain bots. Imagine a piece of technology that you give it these instructions, these prompts. You give it the files, you tell it who it is, what it knows, how to behave. You give it that persona so it knows its name or role in your organization or outside of it. And by giving it those pieces of information, now when I chat with it. It doesn’t forget those things. It knows it right away. And I look at that type of tech in terms of helping, whether it’s with project planning, helping to organize things. 

Again, it’s pretty amazing what it is able to do when given that information, that framework and that knowledge. So, and those instructions. So that right there has probably, again, saved me quite a bit of time. And then the third piece of time saving that I see is really that around agents, and think of an agent as something that interacts with something else. So all sorts of stuff where I had to go into document one, look it up, write a couple notes on it, plug it into document two, we’re utilizing simple products and in a matter of an hour, maybe plus or two, we are able to link things together in a way where it’s able to do all that for us.

So I would have to guess about 40 to 45%, maybe even 50% of my time has been saved through the adoption personally of this technology.

JE: So beyond personal adoption, what is the role of the CEO in the proliferation and organization wide adoption of AI?

TB: Great question. And when I think about the role of, for a CEO in terms of the adoption of AI, where I’m forced to go is where I believe AI goes to die. And I’m going to say this and it’s going to offend someone, but it is, my belief is that AI goes to IT to die. It’s not because IT is not the most valuable player at a point in time, but not yet. It would be like starting a deal that you’re trying to sell through, but going to procurement. It’s the wrong spot to start that conversation, yet a critical role in the process. 

I believe the CEO’s role is to establish a vision. To me, I believe passionately. It is on so many levels, the decisions I’ve made are around this belief.

I believe that AI, and I’m gonna get rid of the word AI for a moment. I believe that technology is transformed to a point where it is gonna have such an astounding impact on how we behave, how we work, the threats to our organization, that to not say it is one of our top five priorities for the year, for me personally, would be a huge misstep. I started today talking about that asteroid that I saw.

To me, I feel that not recognizing that my industry is gonna change because of this, and it’s gonna change fast. It is going to be something where it feels gradual until a step occurs, and then you will look back and wonder how we got here so fast. And I believe the things that we are doing today are so critical. 

So going back for a minute, I believe the CEO’s job is to be a visionary for the organization, to be able to say, believe that this is one of the most important things we can be focusing in on, and then to work with the team to see it through. 

It’s scary. It is an uncomfortable spot. It is a lot of unknown that we have never dabbled with before and the team will resist it. And so to me, that is what is so important.

JE: So how are you training or upskilling your team to work alongside AI effectively?

TB: Well, and this is really, when I consider how I’m training the team, it really comes down to bringing in expertise that can go ahead and guide and coach us. It really is why we started an organization called Unchained. For me, I saw this need and I recognized that to really be best in class and really to understand where this technology is going, the only chance we had in doing that was leaning into experts. And so about a year, just over a year and a half ago, I formed a team of leaders in AI and technology to come together so that they could be our sounding board. They can guide us in terms of how to train our team, what kind of practices make sense. 

Now, the reality is what we’ve done within our walls is we do regular quarterly training. We go ahead and we measure. Are we actually making that progress? We encourage every employee to find 5 % time savings by the end of the quarter. That takes a real investment of time, but we have a partner that we can ask questions to. So to us, it has really been all around making certain that we have done an effective job at giving our team access to the right skills, access to the right thinking.

So that when they ask a question of, “Is this possible?”, we can go ahead and help to work with them on a solution.

JE: So, what are then the biggest risks that an organization could face in adopting AI without a clear strategy?

TB: Well, it becomes the Wild West. I believe in any business, intentionality is one of the greatest qualities an organization could look for. It’s that clarity in vision, clarity in direction. If everyone goes and does their own thing, you don’t get any shared learning and there’s so many tools. AI isn’t one thing and that’s the interesting part. If you talk about an HR platform, of course HR owns that. Or a finance platform—well, pretty clear where that lives. If you look at different departments, there are tools that have natively been with them. Photoshop, pretty easy to say where that is. AI, it’s all of those things. It plugs into each capability. So it’s so important that you don’t look at it as just a creative tool or just a finance tool or just a writing tool, but you look at it as technology enablement. 

And so to me, the shared understandings, what the creatives are doing might impact another team. We have everyone document: here’s exactly what I want to have be true at the end of the 90 days, where I think it will go by the end of the year. We push them to think to avoid that pitfall. And you want to avoid the Wild West of technology where that efficiency you’re trying to gain never is realized. And I don’t want to waste money. And it’s very easy to waste money on products that look amazing, but really don’t bring any meaningful value.

JE: So, what advice would you give to a CEO that’s just beginning to integrate AI and just stepping into that process?

TB: I love the word Kaizen. I love the approach of small incremental improvements over time. Don’t go for the jugular. Don’t go for the silver bullet. Don’t go for that one thing that you think will change everything. Instead, your team is your greatest asset with this. Turn to them, tell them your vision. Tell them what you want to achieve, but empower them each within their own departments to consider ways. Have people approach this with curiosity. 

I love “Yes, And” meetings, I do not like “Yes, But” meetings. A “Yes, But” meeting goes something like yes, but here’s the reason that won’t work. Those meetings won’t guide you anywhere, but to sit with your team and have a “Yes, And” meeting and encourage them to where you’re just building an ideas right down the ones that stick, that’s where the value is. Small little things that you can remove systematically that have a big impact. And number two, don’t be afraid. There’s things that you gotta look out for. There’s security considerations.

But don’t be afraid, this is not a hard tack to adopt. Once you get people comfortable and get their toe in the water, it picks up. It’s like that flywheel that will move faster and faster until we look back and we’re blown away by what we’ve achieved.

JE: That’s perfect. Todd, thank you so much for your time today. I really do appreciate it. I’m sure everyone else appreciated hearing what you had to say.

TB: Thank you. Been a pleasure.

Unlock AI’s Full Potential with Envisionit

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