AI Three Simple Shifts That Turn AI from Frustrating to Game-Changing Mitch Schwartz AI 6 mins read September 8, 2025 Blog AI Three Simple Shifts That Turn AI from Frustrating to Game-Changing Three Simple Shifts That Turn AI from Frustrating to Game-Changing - Table of Contents The Downtown Bench Moment That Changed Everything Shift #1: Stop Looking for Perfect, Start Looking for Draining Shift #2: Forget Perfect Prompts, Start Real Conversations Shift #3: Understand the Risks and Biases, Educate your team. The Real AI Advantage (It's Not What You Think) Hey there! So you’ve heard all the AI buzz, maybe tried a few tools, and now you’re wondering… where do I actually start? I get it. After helping countless businesses figure out how to tech with less headache, I’ve learned it comes down to three mindset shifts that make all the difference. The Downtown Bench Moment That Changed Everything Picture this: I’m 10 minutes early, sitting on a downtown bench outside a networking event. I realize I haven’t looked at the attendee list, and there are 40+ people inside I’m supposed to “strategically connect with.” Instead of my usual wing-it approach, I did something different. I whipped out my phone, threw that attendee list into a Claude project (a pre-trained chat), and had a conversation with it like I would with a really smart colleague. Three minutes later? I had my top prospects ranked, researched, and ready to go. The crazy part? This wasn’t some complex AI setup. Just me having a better conversation with technology. And that’s exactly what we’re missing when AI feels frustrating instead of helpful. Shift #1: Stop Looking for Perfect, Start Looking for Draining Most people ask: “What’s the best AI tool?” or “Should we be using ChatGPT or Claude?” Wrong question. The right question is: “What work drains my team’s energy every single week?” Start there. Not with the shiniest AI tool or the most complex automation. Start with the stuff that makes you go “Ugh, not this again.” Maybe it’s writing follow-up emails after sales calls. Or creating those weekly reports nobody really reads but everyone expects. Or researching prospects before meetings. Here’s the thing – AI isn’t magic. It’s just really good at handling the repetitive, energy-sucking tasks that keep you from doing your best work. But you’ve got to identify those bottlenecks first. I learned this the hard way after watching too many teams jump straight into building complex workflows for problems they hadn’t fully defined. Shift #2: Forget Perfect Prompts, Start Real Conversations Here’s where most people get stuck: They think they need to master “prompt engineering” to use AI effectively. Nope. That’s like thinking you need to learn HTML to send an email. The secret? Talk to AI like you’d talk to a really smart intern on their first day. Give them context, ask questions, refine as you go. Let me show you what I mean with the RICO Framework – it’s basically a conversation starter kit. Here’s a simple version: R – Role: “Hey, act like you’re my marketing strategist…” I – Instructions: “…and I need help writing a follow-up email…” C – Context: “…for prospects who attended our webinar but haven’t booked a call yet…” O – Output: “…keep it casual, under 150 words, with one clear next step.” Better, is to create a project and master prompt ( a text doc) where your personal and/or company context is already summarised. No complex prompting. Just explaining the situation like you would to a human. Compare that to: “Write email.” Wonder why that gets you generic garbage? The game-changer is treating AI like a conversation partner, not a command line. You can literally say things like “Actually, that’s too formal, can you make it more conversational?” or “What do you think would be a better subject line?” One email I was writing kept jumping between too formal and too casual, so I asked: “write it the way someone from Montreal would write it.” Like magic, that nailed my tone. And added “eh?” to the subject line 😅, because chatGPT can bust chops, it turns out. The point is: Converse, give context, get better results. Shift #3: Understand the Risks and Biases, Educate your team. Okay, real talk time. AI has bias. It’s trained on biased data from the internet. AI automations can carry risks, many people respond with dismissal or at the other extreme, by not using AI. But here’s what I’ve learned: The businesses that acknowledge this upfront and build simple guardrails? They end up with better, more inclusive outcomes than they had before AI. When your team understands what’s allowed but also what the boundaries are, they will feel the safety they need so they can explore and create magic. You don’t need a PhD in AI ethics. You just need to think through four basic questions before you start using AI for anything important: Risk Check: Is this AI making decisions that actually affect people’s lives or livelihoods? Bias Check: If I gave this the same task but with different names/backgrounds, would it respond differently? Transparency Check: Do I understand what it’s doing, and is there a human checking the work? Values Check: Does this align with how we want to treat people? Most small business AI use cases are pretty low-stakes. We’re talking about writing better emails, not approving loans. But thinking through these questions upfront helps you catch issues before they become problems. Plus, when someone on your team asks “But what about AI bias?” you’ve already got an answer. Lastly, and maybe obviously, keeping a human approver in the loop is one way to avoid all sorts of trouble. Just make sure both humans and AI have clear parameters for what is in and out of bounds. The Real AI Advantage (It’s Not What You Think) Here’s what I want you to walk away with: AI isn’t about replacing human thinking. It’s about having better conversations that lead to clearer thinking. That networking event story from the beginning? Claude didn’t do the relationship building for me. It just helped me prepare better so I could focus on actually connecting with people instead of scrambling to figure out who I should talk to. That’s the real advantage – AI handles the prep work so you can focus on the human stuff that actually matters. Once you get the hang of these three shifts, you’ll find there’s something deeply satisfying about having a conversation with technology that actually helps you think through problems more clearly. Ready to give it a shot? 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