The last two months of work have been the most fun I have had in a long time. We took two education businesses - Sodiq School and Seven School - and rebuilt their operations around AI. Not as a gimmick. As a real working system.
What actually changed
- Marketing is fully handled. No competitor can outrun us digitally anymore.
- Headcount was cut significantly. Costs saved.
- Reporting is automated - numbers show up in leadership hands every morning.
- The system keeps learning. The more it runs, the better it gets.
- The agent talks like a person, not a chatbot. Customers don't bounce off it.
- The parts of the work that are pure number-checking? The system watches them.
How I got here
I have been deep in automation for about a year and a half. A year and a half ago, when the first Replit AI launched, I paid $100 to be one of the first to test it with a real developer. I have not stopped since.
That head start mattered. Most people are still using AI to chat. I use it to ship work. The difference is the documentation - the brief, the spec, the success criteria. AI is not magic. It is the most powerful junior you will ever hire, and like any junior, it needs clear documentation to produce senior-level output.
The lesson
Do not use AI to chat. Use it to work. Give it the right documentation, the right brief, the right goals, and it becomes your strongest employee. The teams that figure this out in 2026 will be uncatchable by 2027.