This post is based on an article that first appeared in the December 2025 Clermont Telegraph

I’ve had the same conversation at least a dozen times in the past few months. Someone mentions AI, and the person next to them grimaces like they’ve just bitten into a lemon. “That’s going to put us all out of work,” they say. Or my personal favourite: “I saw that movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Look, I get it. The hype around AI is exhausting, and half the “experts” explaining it are either trying to sell you something or using jargon that would make a computer science professor wince. However, if you’re keen to learn more in-depth about the state of AI implementation in business, check out this recent study. But, here’s what I’ve learned after spending the past year actually implementing AI tools in our business… you don’t need to understand how an engine works to drive a car, and you don’t need a computer science degree to use AI effectively.

What you do need to understand is that AI isn’t the Terminator. It’s more like the receipt printer.

We’ve been here before

Remember when receipt printers replaced handwritten dockets? Or, when EFTPOS replaced those click-clacky credit card swipers? Or when mobile phones replaced having to be at your desk to take a call?

The pattern is always the same: technology takes over the boring, repetitive stuff so humans can focus on the things we’re actually good at, like thinking, creating, connecting, and solving problems.

The counter staff who stopped handwriting dockets didn’t lose their jobs; they just spent less time with a pen and more time actually serving customers. The office manager who got a mobile phone didn’t work less; they just stopped missing important calls while they were out the back or on site with a client.

Jobs didn’t disappear. They evolved.

So what is AI actually doing?

The thing about AI that (mostly self-appointed) experts don’t explain properly is that AI works in absolutes. It’s all code, all binary; things are either right or wrong, true or false, pattern A or pattern B. There’s no grey area, no “it depends on the context,” no reading between the lines.

That’s why AI is brilliant at specific, rule-based tasks. Need to categorise 10,000 invoices based on keywords? AI can do that in seconds. Want to transcribe an hour-long meeting? Done. Need to identify which of your 500 product photos contain safety equipment? Easy.

But ask it to understand why a long-time customer is suddenly short on the phone, or to craft a message that acknowledges the frustration without directly addressing the elephant in the room, or to know when “soon” means “next week” versus “next quarter” in your particular industry… well, that’s where AI falls apart.

Because that’s not about patterns in data, that’s about understanding humans. And AI, for all its impressive capabilities, doesn’t do nuance. It can’t. It’s not built for it.

The real opportunity for regional businesses

89% of small businesses already leverage AI in some way. Here’s where it gets exciting for us in regional business. Regional businesses tend to be hands-on and pragmatic by necessity. We can’t afford to mess about with solutions that look good on paper but don’t work in practice. That mindset is actually perfect for AI implementation, because the tools that work best are the ones solving real, specific problems rather than chasing trends. And we’ve got practical problems that need practical solutions. Am I right?

Think about the genuinely annoying parts of running your business:

• Answering the same customer questions over and over
• Manually entering data from one system into another
• Scheduling appointments back and forth over email
• Writing the same types of emails or quotes repeatedly
• Sorting through hundreds of photos to find the right one
• Keeping your business data secure or password security
• Transcribing meeting notes or phone calls

Every single one of these things can be automated or assisted by AI right now, using tools that are either free or cost less than the streaming subscriptions you probably forgot you’re paying for.

The mechanic who’s using AI to generate service reminders automatically isn’t replacing his staff; he’s giving them more time to actually fix cars instead of chasing appointment bookings.

The real estate agent using AI to draft property descriptions is not replacing her copywriter; she’s using it as a starting point and then adding the local knowledge and personality that only she has.

The agricultural supplier using AI chatbots to answer basic product questions after hours, they’re not firing their counter staff, they’re capturing sales leads from mine workers who also have crops to sow and are only free to browse at midnight.

The irony of it all

I’ll be the first to admit: I’m the person who’d rather be riding horses, growing veggies or literally anything else outdoors rather than staring at a screen. Give me a quiet, tech-free afternoon in the paddock over a digital conference any day. So trust me when I say the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m writing an article advocating for AI.

But here’s what changed my mind… reality.

Over the past year, Steve and I have scaled Clermont Digital fourfold+ without hiring a single extra person. Not because we didn’t want to, we’ve tried and are still open to it. But finding qualified people in our area of expertise is about as easy as finding a termite that won’t eat wood.

So we had a choice: stay small and turn away work, or figure out how to do more with what we had.

We chose option two, and that meant taming AI tools to handle the parts of our business that were eating up time without adding value. And it worked, not by replacing what we do, but by handling the mundane bits so we could focus on the work that actually requires human expertise, creativity, and local knowledge.

If you’re interested in learning about AI-driven development, system automation, or how we did it, get in touch. If there’s enough interest, we may run some workshops.

The catch is… You still need to know your job

This is crucial, and it’s where a lot of people get AI wrong: you need to understand the nuances of your own work to get good results from AI.

AI is only as good as the person using it. If you don’t know what “good” looks like in your industry, you won’t recognise when AI gives you substandard work. If you don’t understand your customer’s actual needs, you won’t know when AI’s generic response misses the mark.

Think of it this way: if you handed your invoicing to someone who’d never worked in your industry, you’d need to check their work carefully, right? Same with AI. The expertise is still yours. AI just speeds up the grunt work.

That understanding, knowing what “good” looks like, recognising when something’s off, that’s a uniquely human trait. The ability to understand context, to know when the rules need bending, to recognise that this customer needs different handling than that one, even if on paper they look identical.

A copywriter’s confession

As someone with copywriting as one string on my bow, I need to address the elephant in the room: AI-generated content.

You’ve seen it. We all have. That weirdly similar, corporate-speak drivel that’s flooding the internet. The blog posts which sound like they were written by a robot trying very hard to sound human. The social media captions with the same tired patterns, emoji placement and phrases showing up everywhere.

I don’t let AI take over my writing process. Ever.

What I do use it for:

• As an editor – catching typos and tightening sentences I’ve already written
• As an idea generator – “give me 10 angles on this topic” to kickstart my thinking
• As a blank page cure – getting something, anything, on the screen so I’m not staring at a cursor for hours waiting for inspiration

AI helps you just start. And when you start, you’re productive. You’re editing and improving rather than being paralysed by perfection.

But, and this is important, the creativity, the voice, the understanding of context, that’s still me. That’s still human.

Because here’s what AI fundamentally can’t do: be creative in the true sense of the word. It’s trained on digital information that has come before, with millions of examples of what humans have already written, designed, or created. It identifies patterns in that existing work and reproduces similar patterns.

That’s not creativity. That’s sophisticated pattern matching.

Real creativity is connecting ideas that haven’t been connected before. It’s understanding that what worked in one context might work brilliantly in another, completely different situation. It’s breaking the rules in just the right way. It’s knowing when to zig when everyone else is zagging.

AI works in absolutes, right or wrong, pattern A or pattern B. Creativity works in the grey areas, the “what ifs,” the “yes, and…” moments. That’s why every AI-generated piece of content starts feeling samey after a while. It’s all based on what already exists, optimised for what usually works. 

Your creative thinking, whether that’s solving a tricky equipment problem, coming up with a new way to serve customers, or figuring out how to make your business work in a challenging market, that’s all happening in the grey areas where AI simply can’t operate. So, creativity, authenticity and being human is now (always was) your superpower.

AI’s limitations are your opportunity

Here’s what AI can’t do, and probably never will: understand context the way humans do.

AI doesn’t understand the subtle difference between what works in Brisbane and what works in Clermont. It doesn’t know that cash slowly disappearing has become a sore point, or that FIFO workers have different schedules than nine-to-fivers, or that a “quick trip to town” means something very different here than it does in the city. That’s unless you give your AI tools this context to work with; even then, it struggles… but, this is a different conversation around ‘prompt writing’.

AI doesn’t understand our humanness. It can’t feel the frustration of a customer who’s been let down by three previous suppliers. It can’t read the room in a tense meeting. It can’t make someone feel heard and valued when they’re having a rough day.

These uniquely human skills: empathy, context, creativity, connection, these are where your competitive advantage lies. AI doesn’t replace them. It just clears the decks so you have more time and energy to use them. 

At the end of the day, humans understand humans better than AI will ever understand humanness. So don’t lose sight of the human element during this AI revolution. The businesses that win won’t be the ones that replace humans with AI; they’ll be the ones that use AI to free up their humans to do what humans do best… being excellent at taking care of other humans.

Your homework: Five-minute automation challenge

Right. Enough theory. Time for action.

Here’s what I want you to do this week: identify one task that makes you groan when you have to do it. Something repetitive. Something that takes longer than it should. Something that pulls you away from the work you actually want to do.

It might be:

• Responding to the same customer enquiries
• Scheduling meetings
• Creating invoices
• Writing social media captions
• Sorting files
• Data entry
• Anything else that makes you think “surely there’s a better way”

Once you’ve identified it, spend just five minutes researching whether there’s an AI tool or automation that could help. Google “[your annoying task] + automation” and see what comes up. You might be surprised.

Don’t commit to anything. Don’t spend any money. Don’t get overwhelmed by options. Just get curious and explore what’s possible. Then, slowly test one small change at a time… AI implementation is a marathon, not a sprint.

The automated bottom line

AI isn’t here to replace you. It’s here to replace the boring bits so you can focus on being brilliantly, irreplaceably human.

The businesses that thrive won’t be the ones that resist change; they’ll be the ones that use these tools to do what they’re already good at, just more effectively. They’ll be the ones who understand that AI is a tool, not a replacement. AI requires expertise (on your business) to use well. That its limitations are actually opportunities for humans to shine.

We’re not heading towards a sci-fi dystopia (yet, hopefully). We’re heading towards a world where small regional businesses can compete with anyone, anywhere, because we’ve got the tools to punch above our weight and the human skills that no algorithm can replicate.