How to Use AI in Your Business in 2026

AAlex Hormozi
경영/리더십마케팅/광고창업/스타트업컴퓨터/소프트웨어

Transcript

00:00:00Last year my company did over 250 million dollars in aggregate revenue. I've been in business for
00:00:03over a decade and a half. In this video I'll show you how we use AI to make our business better,
00:00:07cheaper, faster, and less risky for our customers. I'll also walk you through some real examples of
00:00:11every department. Number one, how do we actually make the business better? So if we think about
00:00:16each of the functions of the business you're going to be turning raw attention into some sort of
00:00:20profit. Right, like if we look at businesses though it's a manufacturing belt. And the first,
00:00:25I think, misconception that people have around implementing AI to their business is they think
00:00:28they must become an AI business, which is not true at all. And so the easiest analogy I can give is
00:00:32the internet. Right, so almost every business is on the internet. You don't have to be an internet
00:00:38business. You just use the internet as one of the many tools that you use to deliver whatever it is
00:00:42that you sell. And so I think the first mistake that I'm seeing businesses make is assuming that
00:00:48either they have to become tech companies. Now there's a component of being tech forward,
00:00:51but like are you tech forward for having a web page? Not anymore, but you used to be. And the people who
00:00:57got there first got disproportionate returns. The second kind of big thing that is being a mistake
00:01:02is assuming that like one of the tech nerds is going to do it for you. Now one of the big
00:01:07advantages of the thing that I've had that's led to some disproportionate outcomes for me has been
00:01:11what I'll consider cloud to dirt knowledge. So like vertical integration of knowledge. So being able to
00:01:16do the high level strategy, being able to handle the people stuff, communication, marketing, all the way
00:01:22down to the granularity of like, how do we connect this API to this other API? And the reason I think
00:01:27that cloud to dirt understanding of all systems within the business is valuable is because you're
00:01:32the only one who's going to understand what is possible. So even if you have some tech nerd,
00:01:37right, who's next to you, you would then ask them, well, what is possible? And they're going to answer
00:01:41within their limited context of business. And so if you know your business better than them,
00:01:44which you should if you're the owner, then you can see how different pieces if applied together
00:01:49would be really valuable. They won't see that inherent value. And so they're going to default
00:01:53to things that they've seen before that people have done, which largely will be what I consider
00:01:57commoditized automations, right? And so where you get the true alpha or the true kind of big
00:02:03improvements in the business are going to come from your business acumen getting overlaid on top of
00:02:09technical acumen. Now you probably don't consider yourself to be a tech person. I certainly don't.
00:02:14In fact, I would say that I don't even like saying it, but I largely dislike technology. But I see it
00:02:20as a necessary evil being emphasis on the necessary part, which is that you've got to get good at the
00:02:26shit. So I'm going to give you a couple of things that you can do, and then I'll give you some
00:02:28examples of stuff we've done. But things that you can do today right now is there's a zillion
00:02:34videos on YouTube on how to automate a specific thing or task within a business. They exist. You
00:02:38can find them on your own time. What I would encourage you to do is take the link, take the
00:02:43transcript, and then say, "Hey, I want help building this thing." And then plug that into
00:02:48whatever AI you want, and then follow the directions. And when you get stuck, take a
00:02:54screenshot of the page and say, "What do I do now?" And put it in the chat. And do that over and over
00:02:59and over again. So from a marketing perspective, we have an AISDR right now who's matching our human
00:03:07team. Okay. Now, one of the big mess-ups though is that people will install, business owners will
00:03:13install a half-built function of AI into their business, compare it to something that's been
00:03:20optimized over the last six years or 10 years or 20 years, and say, "See, it doesn't work as well.
00:03:26John Henry wins again." Right? For those who don't know that, well, you were born probably after 2000.
00:03:31Anyways, so the idea here is you have to do an apples to apples comparison, which is how long
00:03:38did you work on training and putting all the SOPs together? Okay, great. Well, then you have to apply
00:03:43that same methodology to the AI. So let me give you a different example of this. So the reason that I
00:03:48think that people who have sales called sales AI agencies will struggle is that you have to know
00:03:55more than just tech and just how to sell in order to implement sales into different businesses. And
00:04:01as somebody who's been very good at acquire customers via checkout page, via webinar,
00:04:05via in-person sales, via phone sales, most of the ways that you know how to acquire customers,
00:04:10we've gotten pretty good at over the years, and it's just probably maybe an obsession of mine.
00:04:13But the thing is, is that if I were to go into a company and they say, "Hey, Alex,
00:04:17can we use your AI setter to apply to my whatever XYZ business?" I would say, "Well, it's not going
00:04:23to be like a simple drag and drop." It would be like saying, "Hey, can I take one of your sales
00:04:27guys and put them in my business?" The first shot, you think they're going to be good? Of course not.
00:04:31They're going to suck. They're going to be terrible. And you're going to be like, "How is
00:04:34that good?" Now, it's even worse if you don't even have a very good sales process as is, and then
00:04:39saying, "Oh, now that I have an AI salesperson or AI setter, I'm going to run an ad and then have the
00:04:43AI setter call every single person who opts in." Well, would you have a human call every single
00:04:48person that opts in? You can then make the argument, "Well, it'd be cheaper." It's like, "Yeah, but would
00:04:51it be effective?" Most times, there's a certain amount. There's a sales motion. There's a sales
00:04:55process. AI will make the things that you're doing right now easier and faster. It doesn't
00:05:00mean that you still don't have to do them. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage
00:05:05roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple
00:05:10times. And so, I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages, as headcount increases,
00:05:15that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the
00:05:19business, what the constraint feels like, what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it,
00:05:24and then what steps we actually took to graduate. And we've done this across software, physical
00:05:28products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you.
00:05:34It's absolutely free. And so, the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap.
00:05:38Just enter your info, and it'll spit it right back to you, all free. So, humans aren't going to change.
00:05:43Our ability to be persuaded, the things that we find interesting and important, those aren't going
00:05:48to change. The psychology of humans is largely going to remain unchanged. And so, whatever you
00:05:52do in order to persuade people will still have to happen. It's not that all of a sudden, all the
00:05:56rules of persuasion are broken. And to the same degree, if your business now starts using AI,
00:06:00I wouldn't advertise that you're using AI. No one cares. They just care that they get their stuff
00:06:05faster, that they get it cheaper, that they make it better, and that it's risk-free. And so, let's just
00:06:10hit those ones really quickly. So, from a risk-free perspective, how can AI reduce the risk in a
00:06:16business? Now, on a global level, right, I think PayPal reduced its fraud team by a gigantic amount.
00:06:22And more importantly, they've reduced their fraud losses by $700 million in a single year just by
00:06:28having AI start recognizing patterns faster. Now, to the same degree, on a human savings level,
00:06:34JP Morgan had Coin, which was their AI engine for, I think, credit agreements and something like that.
00:06:41But it basically saved 350,000 lawyer hours, which they were able to just basically do 12,000 credit
00:06:47agreements in seconds, rather than having these lawyers review them over and over again. That is
00:06:50another use case. Now, some of these seem like these big global companies, but you're like,
00:06:53"How the hell am I going to do this in my smaller business? Will Klarna replace 700 customer service
00:06:59agents with AI and save $40 million in a year?" For us, when we did our book launch, this before
00:07:03people were talking about agents as much, we spun up five agents that handled, I think it was like,
00:07:10somewhere in the neighborhood of like 120,000 support tickets. And it was mostly just like,
00:07:16"Hey, can you tell me where I get the free stuff?" But we were able to resolve 90% of all tickets
00:07:21without any human intervention. You have to find a time, and maybe that's weekends, maybe that's
00:07:27evenings, maybe that's early mornings, maybe that's middle of the day, whatever that thing is for you,
00:07:30that time period is for you, where you have to fully dedicate yourself and actually go soup to
00:07:35nuts, click to close, beginning to end on just automating one portion of your day. That is my
00:07:40only ask. Now, people have an incredibly hard time with this for two reasons. One, because everyone's
00:07:46afraid of AI, which by the way, if you're watching this and you have workflows, who do you think would
00:07:50be best served to automate the workflow? Someone else or you? You should automate your workflow,
00:07:57because then that will give you time to figure out what else you can do that's more valuable.
00:08:01Now, every single time you think about your workflow, whenever you want to put what I'll just
00:08:06call magic or mysticism in, it's where you say, well, I just kind of know, or I have a gut feeling,
00:08:11or I have intuition or instinct or whatever you want to call it. I just want you to think
00:08:14pattern recognition, because that takes all of this magic away from it. Because you are an organism
00:08:21that has been exposed to different stimuli, and then you had reinforcement cycles that occurred,
00:08:25where you realize that this, like when we say, oh, I think that looks cool, it's because we've seen
00:08:29things that look similar to that. We generalize this pattern and then describe it as cool.
00:08:35That's how it works. And so, if you can just erase your romanticism around whatever niche,
00:08:40specialized knowledge you believe to have, and believe me, I'm somebody who thinks for a living,
00:08:45I would be the most threatened by AI. You still have to approach it with an observable lens,
00:08:51which is what are the actual behaviors that I do in order to get this outcome?
00:08:55And so, even something as simple as like, okay, I have to think of a cool idea for this YouTube
00:09:01video. We have different ways. I'm sure you have some ways where you're like, okay, well,
00:09:05I think about what I did that week. Okay. So, could a bot look at your calendar? Okay. Step one.
00:09:13Step two, can you record all of the calls that you take and have those transcribed? Okay. That's
00:09:18now more interesting, because now I have a bot that not only sees the calendar, they also know what all
00:09:23the conversations were. Okay. Can I then ask that bot to say, hey, any interesting situation or
00:09:29decision that came up over the last week? I want you to put the top five most interesting ones into
00:09:34a document for me. And then run it. And then great. Now you've got the five most interesting moments.
00:09:39What does it also create? True stories and narratives, which is do epic shit,
00:09:44talk about the epic shit you did, right? So, you don't have to make stuff up. The big difficulty
00:09:49that people will have in the world of AI content creation is proof. That's the issue. That's the
00:09:55problem. And so, there will be endless amount. Now, on the consumer side, they won't be as
00:10:01sensitive. On the B2B side, it still matters. Imagine tomorrow there's a B2B AI avatar, right?
00:10:09For sure. Why do I think that that won't work that well? Because the same reason it doesn't work for
00:10:14other people who don't have any proof. The first thing that's, again, human psychology is not going
00:10:20to change. People are still going to wonder, why should I listen to you? Why should I listen to this
00:10:24AI bot? Well, if that AI bot has no proof about why it is good or what it's achieved or what real
00:10:30world outcome it's had, it's just words. It's just GPT words, right? And so, what would then happen
00:10:36is it has to be backed by somebody who has done some extraordinary thing. Maybe you see an e-commerce
00:10:41store. Maybe you're an amazing trader. Maybe you're really good at real estate investing. Maybe whatever
00:10:45your thing is, right? You have to have the proof. And so, in a consumer world, it is easier because,
00:10:52and this is, I mean, again, psychology doesn't change. If you have a beautiful AI avatar,
00:10:57talking about skincare, people are going to see the beautiful AI avatar. And then the way the avatar
00:11:01looks gives proof to the thing. Now, we can be clear that obviously it's just purely pixels and
00:11:06generated, but I think that the human psychology part, I don't think that's going to matter,
00:11:11right? But on the B2B side, I still think it will. And so, I use all these examples to say,
00:11:15and hopefully drive home a single point, which is that the internet is here. It's just
00:11:2325, 30 years later and it's AI. And your business doesn't have to become an AI business, but you do
00:11:32need to use AI in your business. You don't need to advertise that you use AI, just like I don't
00:11:36advertise that I use the internet, right? I just use it, just like you do. And so, we use the tools
00:11:45to get the outcomes. We don't advertise the tools we use. I don't talk about my CRM. I don't talk
00:11:49about what call service we have or what specific training I'm doing for a specific rep. Probably
00:11:54not. I don't talk about that because no one cares. They just care about the outcome. And whether I'm
00:11:59good at it is whether they buy again. And that will come down to your skill. And so, my big
00:12:03encouragement is that you are not too busy to do this. You have other things that are less important
00:12:07and you need to start prioritizing this. Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage
00:12:10roadmap from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple
00:12:16times. And so, I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages, as headcount increases,
00:12:21that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the
00:12:25business, what the constraint feels like, what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it,
00:12:30and then what steps we actually took to graduate. And we've done this across software, physical
00:12:34products, service businesses, brick and mortar, all of this, and it works. And it's my gift to you.
00:12:40It's absolutely free. And so, the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap,
00:12:44just enter your info, and it'll spit it right back to you all free. So, the AI equivalent of the web
00:12:50page in the internet era is a different type of response because the internet was all about
00:12:57connection. And so, the website became a calling card, right? It was a means for people to contact.
00:13:02So, it was really, it was in some ways single faceted. From an AI perspective, anything a human
00:13:10touches, an AI can interact with at a basic level. And so, if we think about the departments, right,
00:13:18there's going to be AI that's going to be involved in marketing. But let me give you some examples of
00:13:23many different ones that small businesses use. You can have an AI that helps you create the ideas
00:13:29behind your marketing. You can have an AI that helps you script and package the ideas, meaning
00:13:34the headlines, the thumbnails, even the topics themselves, right? It's a little bit kind of like
00:13:38the ideas. You can have AI run the tests for different thumbnails automatically that it
00:13:45generates and then creates a skill based on what it sees over time of what's winning. That's on the
00:13:51organic side. Now, again, you can also include trend research there. What are the trending formats? What
00:13:55are the trending hooks? What are the trending visual hooks, not just verbal hooks? And then
00:14:00take all of that information and then cross-reference it with past content or subject matter that you
00:14:05would show your AI that you associate with, which means AKA brand, right? And so, you say, okay,
00:14:11these are trending formats, hooks, intros, visuals, and this is what I do. Come up with the Venn
00:14:17diagram, the cross pollination of those things and give me 10 of those. And of those 10, you'll pick
00:14:21the one you find interesting. You click that button and now it starts generating the idea, the headline,
00:14:24the scripts, whatever. That is on the content side. On the ad side, this is where it gets very
00:14:31interesting too, is that you can create self-licking ice cream cones, which means that I can make content
00:14:37and I can have the content immediately get overlaid with the CTA, which immediately gets put directly
00:14:43into an ad campaign that launches every single day with yesterday's content. You can create endless
00:14:47amount of statics, static images off of different data sets. So, for example, if you run a community
00:14:53on school, you could have, hey, I have one tab where people list their wins. Great. Any new win
00:14:58that gets added to that immediately gets transferred over and then runs through six visual templates
00:15:04that we know are high converting. And then we will run those as ads towards Vantage, which is
00:15:10our million dollar plus community that we have there, right? All of that automated. Pretty slick,
00:15:16right? And so, all of these things like, and that's, again, all of those examples are just marketing,
00:15:21right? Sales, you can apply all the way across the bat too, which is like, how can I enrich the leads?
00:15:25How can I respond to them quickly in terms of, can I send an automated voice note? Can I send
00:15:30an image or text that's obviously personalized their business, which we can dynamically pull?
00:15:34Yes, of course you can. Can you do that via DM on Instagram? Yes, you can, right? All of that's just
00:15:39on the nurture side, right? On the scheduling, can we do more dynamic scheduling because we have one
00:15:43AI who hands off to another AI? Yeah. Is availability less of an issue? Sure. Does that mean speed to
00:15:48content goes through the roof? Yes. Now, the thing is, is that we've got 18 months. We have about 18
00:15:52months where there's just a huge amount of wealth that can be created by people who have nothing.
00:15:56It's a very big opportunity. And so, no matter where you're at right now, if you had an army of
00:16:03these agents working on autonomous tasks for you, you could get a lot more done than you currently
00:16:08are. And I think you should do that. But I mean, it works across the board. My legal team, like I
00:16:16can have one general counsel that instead of having a hundred paralegals run all the different stuff
00:16:19that we have for deals and lawsuits and whatever else that we have going on, she can just run it
00:16:25all through different agents that have different tasks, right? First response, second response,
00:16:29cease and desist, all that stuff that we have to do every day.

Key Takeaway

Businesses must integrate AI as a tool for operational speed and risk reduction, applying it systematically to existing processes rather than attempting to become purely tech-centric companies.

Highlights

AI is a tool for business delivery rather than an end in itself, similar to the role of the internet.

Paypal reduced its fraud losses by $700 million in a single year by using AI to recognize patterns faster.

AI models resolved 90% of 120,000 support tickets during a book launch without human intervention.

JP Morgan's AI engine saved 350,000 lawyer hours by processing 12,000 credit agreements in seconds.

Business owners must approach AI implementation with an observable lens by documenting the specific behavioral steps required to achieve a desired outcome.

High-performing AI automations require a 'cloud to dirt' understanding where technical implementation is guided by deep, owner-level business acumen.

Timeline

Strategic AI Implementation

  • Businesses do not need to become AI companies to derive disproportionate value from the technology.
  • Effective AI integration requires deep knowledge of business systems from high-level strategy down to API-level execution.
  • Technical teams often default to commoditized automations, missing the unique opportunities identified by owners with deep domain expertise.

The internet serves as the primary analogy for AI; it is a tool utilized to deliver products, not a business model itself. Owners gain a competitive edge through 'cloud to dirt' knowledge, enabling them to see value in combining system components that a tech specialist might overlook. To get started, owners should use AI to build automation workflows by plugging transcripts and technical documentation into models and iteratively troubleshooting through screenshots.

Optimizing Business Functions with AI

  • AI agents must be trained with the same rigor and standard operating procedures applied to human employees to achieve comparable performance.
  • AI significantly reduces risk and overhead by identifying patterns faster than human teams.
  • Klarna replaced 700 customer service agents with AI, resulting in $40 million of annual savings.

Owners frequently fail by comparing nascent AI functions to long-optimized human processes, leading to unfair performance assessments. Success requires applying the same methodology to train AI that one would use for a human sales rep or support agent. Global examples like PayPal's fraud reduction and JP Morgan's document processing demonstrate the massive scale of efficiency gains achievable through automated pattern recognition.

Operationalizing Patterns and Proof

  • Business success relies on observable behavior and pattern recognition rather than gut feeling or 'magic'.
  • B2B AI implementations require verifiable proof of real-world outcomes to earn market trust.
  • Marketing workflows can be fully automated by cross-referencing trending hooks with established brand identity data.

Removing romanticism from specialized knowledge allows for the systematic deconstruction of workflows into repeatable, observable steps. Automated systems can now monitor calendars, transcribe meetings, and distill top decisions into narrative stories for content. In marketing, AI generates high-converting ad assets by linking real-time wins from communities to tested visual templates, creating a self-sustaining cycle of content creation and lead nurturing.

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