You open ChatGPT because you want to attract more clients and need to decide where to focus your marketing. Should you spend more time on LinkedIn, organise a webinar or reconnect with people in your network?
Twenty minutes later, you have six possible strategies, plenty of interesting ideas and a detailed action plan for each one. The advice sounds reasonable, and you can see how several suggestions might work. But you're still unsure what to do.
Perhaps you've explored some of these approaches before. You know that publishing more content takes time, organising a webinar requires preparation, and reaching out to people in your network could lead somewhere. You just don't know which activity deserves your attention right now.
I see entrepreneurs struggling with this regularly. AI can make the situation more complicated because it makes almost every option look achievable. A strategy that would once have taken hours to develop can now appear on your screen in seconds, complete with an action plan and suggested timeline.
But you still have to choose.
Your list of possibilities keeps growing. Your clarity doesn't.
Let's say you want to attract three new clients over the next two months. That's a clear commercial goal, but before deciding whether LinkedIn, a webinar or networking deserves your attention, there's something worth investigating.
What's currently preventing you from attracting those clients?
Perhaps you're reaching plenty of people, but your message doesn't explain clearly enough why they should work with you. Perhaps your positioning is strong, but too few potential clients know you exist. Or perhaps you regularly have promising conversations, but they rarely turn into paying clients.
Those are three different business problems, and they require different responses.
If the problem is your positioning, publishing more LinkedIn posts may simply expose more people to a message that isn't working. If you already have a strong network of potential clients, launching an entirely new marketing channel might be an unnecessary investment. And if you're attracting plenty of interested prospects but struggling to convert them, your next priority may have very little to do with marketing visibility.
This is why I believe AI becomes particularly useful when you give it enough context to examine what's happening in your business. You can use it to investigate the situation, identify assumptions and evaluate your options before committing your time and resources.
Sometimes that process reveals an opportunity you hadn't seriously considered.
I've seen this happen with a client.
A client who joined my Signature AI program wanted to attract more clients consistently. He was already using AI to explore marketing ideas, but his assistant knew very little about his business, his strengths or how he had attracted clients in the past.
He asked a straightforward question: "How can I attract more clients consistently?"
Within seconds, AI suggested five different approaches. Some were worth exploring, but none really reflected his particular strengths or the way he naturally built relationships with potential clients.
So we approached the conversation differently. He started explaining more about himself and his business, including what he enjoyed doing, how he connected with potential clients and which activities had produced good results in the past.
One of his biggest strengths was building relationships. He was good at connecting with people, earning their trust and having meaningful conversations. As we examined his previous experiences, one story stood out.
He had spoken at an event before, and it had gone very well. He enjoyed being on stage, the audience responded positively and the experience had created valuable conversations afterwards. Yet that previous success hadn't influenced AI's initial recommendations.
Now we had something interesting to investigate.
He instructed AI to explore potential speaking opportunities, research relevant events and examine prospects within his existing network. With that additional context and direction, AI identified several opportunities worth investigating, including the possibility of speaking at a conference.
That's when the light bulb went on.
Speaking played directly to his strengths. He enjoyed it, had experience with it and already had relationships that could help him pursue the opportunity. He decided to take action, used his network to secure a speaking engagement and presented at the event.
The result? Three new clients.
What I find particularly interesting about this example is that the opportunity was already within reach. He had the experience, the relationships and the ability to make it happen, but those pieces hadn't come together until we examined his business more closely.
And notice how the conversation developed. The first five marketing suggestions weren't necessarily bad. They were simply based on limited information. Once AI had a clearer picture of his strengths, past experiences and business goals, its recommendations became more relevant to his actual circumstances.
Of course, speaking at an event doesn't guarantee new clients. The audience, your offer, the relationships you build and how you follow up all matter. But this experience illustrates why understanding your business is so important when using AI to evaluate opportunities.
Sometimes the best next move is an opportunity you're already well positioned to pursue.
You just need to recognise it.
Of course, having more context doesn't automatically make every recommendation correct. You still need to question the reasoning and verify important assumptions. But it gives AI a stronger foundation for examining your particular circumstances and helping you identify what deserves your attention.
In my Signature AI program, participants build what I call a Principal Strategist. It's a personalised AI thinking partner configured with information about their business, expertise, clients, positioning, goals and priorities.
They use it to examine opportunities, pressure-test ideas and work through strategic decisions. Because the relevant business context is already organised and available, they can spend less time explaining the basics and more time examining the decisions that matter.
Your involvement remains important. Business priorities change, new information becomes available and the knowledge your AI uses needs to be kept up to date. You remain responsible for evaluating its recommendations and making the final decisions.
If you'd like to build this foundation for yourself, I've written a practical guide called How to Make AI Understand Your Business (So You Can Stop Explaining Everything Again).
It explains five things your AI should know about your business and includes a simple AI Business Brief you can create in 15 minutes. With that information in place, you can make your next AI conversation more relevant to your actual circumstances.
You can start improving the quality of your decisions even without a fully developed AI system. A few changes in how you approach your conversations can make a meaningful difference.
Here are three habits I recommend.
1. Identify the problem before exploring solutions
Imagine your LinkedIn posts aren't attracting potential clients. Your first instinct might be to ask AI for better post ideas, a content calendar or a new LinkedIn strategy.
But before producing more content, examine why your current efforts aren't working.
Is your message clear? Are you reaching the right people? Does your content address problems your ideal clients care about? Are people engaging with your posts but not taking the next step?
You could ask AI:
"Help me identify why my current marketing isn't attracting enough potential clients. Ask me questions about my positioning, audience, content, previous results and sales process. Then help me identify the most important problem to address first."
This gives the conversation a more useful purpose. Instead of immediately generating solutions, AI helps you examine the situation and uncover the factors that might be holding you back.
You may discover that your content is reaching the right audience, but your positioning isn't clear enough. Or that your message is strong, but you're publishing too infrequently to build recognition. Perhaps the problem is further down the sales process, and your marketing is actually doing its job.
Understanding the problem gives you a much better basis for deciding what to do next.
2. Compare options against your actual circumstances
Let's say you've narrowed your marketing options down to three possibilities: reconnecting with former clients, organising a webinar or becoming more active on LinkedIn.
All three could work, but you have five hours a week available, a limited marketing budget and a goal of signing two new clients within six weeks. Those constraints should influence your decision.
Ask AI:
"Compare these three marketing options against my goal, available time, budget, existing relationships and previous results. Explain the likely benefits, risks and assumptions behind each option. Where would you recommend I focus first, and why?"
AI can help you examine the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Reconnecting with former clients might lead to conversations relatively quickly if you've maintained good relationships. A webinar could help you reach new prospects, but it also requires preparation and a way to attract the right audience. LinkedIn may support your visibility over time, although the results can be difficult to predict.
You can take the analysis further by asking AI to challenge its own recommendation. What would make the preferred option ineffective? Which assumptions haven't been tested? What information would change the decision?
You don't need a perfect prediction. You need a clear enough understanding of the trade-offs to make a sensible choice.
And remember that AI can confidently recommend something without reliable supporting evidence. Use its analysis to organise your thinking, then check important assumptions against your own experience, marketing data and conversations with real customers.
3. Finish with one decision and a practical next step
I've seen entrepreneurs have genuinely useful AI conversations and still finish without taking action. They've discussed the problem, considered several approaches and learned something new, but they haven't decided what to do next.
Two days later, they're thinking about the same question again.
One way to prevent this is to make the final stage of your conversation explicit.
Ask:
"Based on everything we've discussed, what is the most sensible next step? What information am I still missing, and what should I do first?"
Perhaps the answer is to contact five former clients and explore whether they know anyone who might benefit from your services. Perhaps it's to test a new positioning message with three potential customers. Or perhaps you need to review your sales conversations to understand why interested prospects aren't moving forward.
Whatever the next step is, make it specific. Decide what you'll do, when you'll do it and what you hope to learn.
If the decision still feels uncertain, identify a small experiment that can provide useful evidence. You don't have to commit to a six-month marketing strategy to discover whether an idea has potential. Sometimes a few conversations provide more useful information than another afternoon of planning.
The important thing is that the conversation leads somewhere. You finish with a clearer understanding of your options and a concrete action that moves your business forward.
AI can help you identify opportunities, clarify your priorities and evaluate different approaches. But you still have to put those decisions into practice.
Think about the client who secured the speaking opportunity. AI helped him recognise a direction that suited his strengths and experience, but he was the one who contacted people in his network, pursued the opportunity, prepared his presentation and stood on stage.
That's where the business result came from.
The same principle applies to your marketing. You can use AI to sharpen your positioning, improve your content strategy or identify promising opportunities. But those insights only become commercially meaningful when you turn them into conversations, communication and consistent action.
Turn clear thinking into clients.
Before your next AI conversation, ask yourself one question:
"What business decision do I need to make before this conversation ends?"
Give AI enough context to understand your situation. Let it ask difficult questions, examine the options and challenge the assumptions behind them. Then decide what deserves your attention and identify the first step you're going to take.
Over time, the value of these conversations becomes easier to recognise. You spend less time circling the same decisions, become more deliberate about where you focus your efforts and make progress on opportunities that fit your business.
Don't just use AI. Think with it.
How are you actually using AI in your business?
Are you mainly collecting ideas, occasionally using AI to think strategically, or regularly turning your conversations into clearer decisions and practical next steps?
I've created a free, two-minute quiz to help you find out.
Answer seven questions about your AI habits and discover which of three profiles best describes your current approach: The Answer Collector, The Occasional Strategist or The Strategic Thinker.
You'll also receive a practical AI prompt tailored to your profile, helping you make your next business conversation more useful.
Take the free quiz: Discover Your AI Thinking Style.
Find out where you stand and how to get more strategic value from AI.
Don't just use AI. Think with it.
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