You keep hearing you should be using AI. Nobody's told you where to start.
I build AI systems for a living and run several in my own business. Here's the honest version: what's worth doing, what's a waste of your money, and how to tell which is which for a business like yours.
If you've been told you're falling behind, you've probably also noticed that nobody selling you the solution can explain what it would actually do on a Tuesday morning in your business. That's the gap this page is for.
I'm Mark. I've been building for the web for twenty-five years, which means I've watched a few of these waves arrive and seen which parts stuck. This one is real, and most of what's being sold on the back of it is not. Those two things are both true and they're not in tension.
There are two wrong answers, and most people pick one of them.
The first wrong answer
Sprinkle AI on everything and hope
A generic chatbot that knows nothing about you and helps nobody. Blog posts written by a machine that read like blog posts written by a machine. A tool bought in January that nobody has opened since March. This is where most of the money spent on AI by small businesses has gone, and most of it bought nothing. It's also why the phrase has started to sound like a warning rather than a promise.
The second wrong answer
Wait until it settles down
Understandable, and still wrong. Not because you'll miss some revolution, but because the businesses beating you aren't doing anything dramatic — they're replying in four minutes instead of two days, and quoting on the same afternoon. Small compounding advantages. By the time it has settled down, that gap is a habit their customers have formed.
The useful position is in the middle, and it's unglamorous: work out which two or three things would genuinely help your business, do those properly, and ignore the rest with a clear conscience.
Start here: where would it actually help you?
Eight plain questions about how your week actually runs — no jargon, nothing you need to look up. At the end you get the specific places it would help in your business, or the specific reason it wouldn't yet. About two minutes.
It is genuinely willing to tell you to do nothing. That answer costs me work, and it's the reason the other answers are worth reading.
Take the AI checkThe five places it actually pays for a business like yours
Not an exhaustive list of what the technology can do — a list of what's been worth the money for small New Zealand businesses I've built for. Each one comes with the line where it stops being worth it.
Work that repeats itself
The same details typed into a second place. A job sheet photographed and then re-keyed. A supplier invoice becoming a spreadsheet row by hand. This is the most reliable win available and the least exciting one — it's mostly plumbing, with a bit of AI at the edges doing the reading.
Only worth it if the work genuinely repeats. Twice a month isn't a system, it's a Tuesday.
Being found now that search has changed
Google's AI Mode and ChatGPT now answer a large share of the questions that used to end in a click to your site. Being the source those answers are built from is a real and current piece of work — clear, specific, well-structured pages that a machine can quote accurately.
This is SEO with a new shape, not a new product. Be suspicious of anyone selling it as a separate thing.
An assistant that genuinely knows your business
Not the generic bot everyone's been annoyed by. An assistant that knows your services, your process, your hours and your stock down to the spec of an individual item, because it reads from your own content and keeps itself current as that content changes. It answers in your voice, admits it when it doesn't know, and hands straight over to a callback or a booking instead of dead-ending someone at 11pm on a Sunday. Built like that it earns its place. Bolted on generically it doesn't.
Fix a vague services page first. An assistant in front of an unclear offer just spreads the confusion faster and more fluently.
Content, without sounding like everyone else
Not a button that writes your posts. A process where the raw material is yours — your jobs, your photos, your actual opinions — and the tooling handles the tedious shaping. The distinction stopped being philosophical the moment your competitors got the same button.
The generic version now actively costs you. Average writing used to be invisible; it's now a signal.
Knowing what's in your own records
You already hold the answers — in old quotes, past jobs, email threads, files nobody can name. Being able to ask your own records a plain-English question is one of the genuinely good things available right now, and it needs no new information from you.
Needs your records to be somewhere, in some order. If they're in a shoebox, that's the project.
The part nobody selling this will tell you
And where it doesn't pay at all
I turn down more AI work than I take. These are the reasons, written down, so you can check your own situation against them before anyone quotes you.
As a substitute for a business that works
If enquiries are down because people can't tell what you do or what it costs, no amount of clever tooling fixes that. It just makes the confusion faster and more expensive.
A generic chatbot standing in for a clear website
The off-the-shelf kind, trained on nothing in particular, bolted on because the site didn't answer the question. Answer the question on the page instead — it's cheaper, it works for everyone, and Google can read it. A real assistant that knows your business is a different thing entirely, and it belongs on top of a clear site rather than in place of one.
Writing your website copy wholesale
The one place I'd argue hardest. Your site's job is to sound like the person the customer will actually deal with. Generated copy sounds like every competitor's generated copy, which is the opposite of the job.
Anything where the underlying process isn't agreed
If two people in the business do the same task differently and both think they're right, automating it just picks a winner at random and makes the disagreement permanent.
Replacing judgement you're actually paid for
The thing your customers pay you for — reading a situation, knowing what matters — is the last thing worth handing over, and the first thing the sales pitches promise.
If you recognise your business in that list, the most useful thing I can do is say so early — and I will, on a free call, before either of us has spent anything.
I'm not talking about this theoretically
Most people offering AI advice have never had to keep one of these running after the invoice was paid. I have — for clients, and for my own business, where the consequences of building it badly land on me.
How this works
Get an answer first. Build second, if it's worth building.
Most people don't need a project. They need someone to look at their actual business for an hour and a half and tell them the truth about where this would help, what it would cost, and what to ignore.
If you'd rather just talk first, that's free and always will be. Ring me on 021 385 895 or book a consult. I'm in Whangaparāoa, so a coffee works too.
AI Clarity Session
$450 +GST
Credited in full against any build that follows.
- 90 minutes on your actual business, not a generic overview
- A written one-pager: the two or three things worth doing, and the five that aren't
- Rough costs and effort for each, so you can decide without another meeting
- A straight answer if the honest recommendation is to do nothing yet
Not sure it's worth $450 yet? Take the free AI check first — it'll tell you if there's nothing here for you.
Read up before you spend anything
Everything I've written on this, in the order I'd read it. Free, no email required.
The questions I actually get asked
It depends entirely on which tool and how it's set up, which is why it's worth asking before you sign up to anything. The short version: information you paste into a free consumer chatbot may be used to improve that product, while the business tiers of the established providers contractually don't. When I build something for a client I use established providers like Google's Gemini models under business terms, your data isn't used to train anyone's model, and I'll tell you in plain English where your information goes before we start.
Tell me what you want your website to do.
The first consultation is free and no-obligation, and a fixed-price quote follows if it's a fit. You'll get straight answers either way, from a local you can actually ring.