80% Faster, 90% Cheaper: AI Value Creation from Tahnee Perry & Ed Ortega

🚀AI Accelerator for Agencies: Drive Immediate Growth, Marketing, and Operational Excellence

In mid-July, Just Curious is hosting an exclusive virtual event: AI Accelerator for Agencies, specifically tailored for senior agency leaders ready to implement practical, immediately actionable AI strategies.

You'll join 12–15 agency executives (maximum two per firm) for expert-led sessions from top AI practitioners:

• Justin Massa: Generative AI Agency Operational Strategy

• Kate Cook: Pitch Perfect: How AI Supercharges Agency Business Development

• Tahnee Perry: Build Smarter Campaigns: End-to-End Strategy with AI

• Robert Hatta: Talent Transformation: Building Your Agency’s AI-Ready Team

• Fred Grinstein: AI-Enhanced Storytelling: Accelerate Creative Development in Your Agency

Spots are intentionally limited to ensure personalized attention and tailored insights. Don’t miss your chance to supercharge your agency’s AI expertise.

👉 Reply "Agency Symposium" now to reserve early access!
Official landing page and registration launching next week.

🎙 AI Expert of the Week: Tahnee Perry, Founder @ A25

How AI Enabled One Team to Go 80% Faster and Slash Outsourcing by 90%

Tahnee Perry has spent two decades leading marketing strategy across tech, SaaS, and media. Now, through her consultancy A25, she's dedicated to helping marketing and go-to-market teams overcome AI adoption hurdles, significantly reducing workflow friction, and amplifying productivity.

In our conversation, Tahnee shares actionable insights on overcoming emotional resistance to AI, streamlining workflows, and dramatically accelerating your team's performance through strategic AI integration.

🔥 Why Tahnee’s Perspective Matters

If your team struggles to move from initial excitement about AI to tangible, lasting outcomes, Tahnee’s practical approach is your playbook. Her method turns vague AI curiosity into clear, impactful business results, specifically valuable for:

• Marketing leaders and go-to-market teams aiming to remove friction and boost productivity.

• Executives seeking strategic alignment to measurable outcomes through AI.

• Leaders addressing emotional blockers around AI adoption within their organizations.

Tahnee emphasizes, "When you align AI initiatives clearly to business goals, resistance fades and adoption accelerates."

She underscores that true AI success isn't just about implementing new tools; it's about reshaping your team’s mindset and workflows, fostering genuine collaboration between human creativity and AI efficiency.

📺 Watch & Learn

• Full Interview → Breaking Through AI Resistance: Tahnee Perry’s Proven Approach

• 1-minute Clip → "From 6 Weeks to 7 Days: How AI Revolutionized a Costly Workflow"

🧠 Tahnee's 4-Step Method to Overcome AI Resistance

1. Identify Emotional Blockers:
   Engage directly and transparently with your team about their fears around AI, providing clear support to foster adoption.

2. Rapid Prototyping:
   Immediately prototype solutions using AI tools like custom GPTs to demonstrate quick wins and accelerate adoption.

3. Transform Workflow Expectations:
   Don't just streamline; use AI to eliminate redundant processes altogether, unlocking new business opportunities.

4. Quantify the Impact Clearly:
   Measure and communicate precisely how much time and money is saved (e.g., reducing processes from 6 weeks to 1 week, monthly costs from $20K to $2K).

🎥 From the Vault: Unlocking AI Value & Redefining Leadership

This week, we're spotlighting three practical, high-impact conversations featuring Ed Ortega (Machine + Partners) and Greg Shove (Section), offering clear methods and actionable insights to strategically implement AI and achieve measurable outcomes.

🔑 Ed Ortega’s DEW & VVV Methods: 3 Steps to Choosing High-Value AI Projects

SMB leaders often struggle with where to start AI initiatives. Ed Ortega’s DEW & VVV methods solve precisely that.

Ed introduces two structured frameworks—DEW (Data, Expertise, Workflow) and VVV (Viability, Velocity, Value)—to help you accurately identify and prioritize high-impact AI use cases.

1. DEW—Evaluate Your Foundation:

• Data: Confirm you have robust, relevant data to effectively train your AI.

• Expertise: Leverage internal experts to ensure nuanced, specialized knowledge guides your AI.

• Workflow: Clearly document and analyze workflows to pinpoint precisely where AI delivers maximum impact.

2. VVV—Prioritize AI Projects Strategically:

• Viability: Determine feasibility, considering technical limitations, regulations, or internal barriers.

• Velocity: Focus on projects achievable within three months to maintain agility as AI rapidly evolves.

• Value: Prioritize use cases offering clear, measurable business impacts over those merely interesting or novel.

3. Confirm and Iterate Regularly:
Consistently reassess chosen projects against business metrics to ensure alignment, adjusting as you gather new insights.

👉 Watch the full interview →

🚀 Greg Shove’s 3 Principles for AI-Driven Leadership

Greg Shove’s insights on AI-driven leadership directly address cultural and strategic challenges SMBs face.

Greg reveals how AI is fundamentally reshaping executive decision-making, team dynamics, and overall organizational leadership strategies.

1. Use AI as a Strategic Thought Partner:
Integrate AI into leadership decisions to uncover blind spots, challenge assumptions, and amplify strategic clarity.

2. Establish Adaptive AI Governance:
Implement flexible AI guidelines that encourage iterative improvements and remain closely aligned with evolving business objectives.

3. Prioritize Cultural Alignment:
Proactively manage team anxiety and emotional resistance through transparent communication, clearly articulating your AI vision and its organizational value.

👉 Watch the full interview →

🛠 Ed Ortega on Workflow Transformation: How to Cut a 6-Week Process to 7 Days

Workflow inefficiencies drain resources. Ed Ortega’s AI workflow transformation example offers a clear path to rapid ROI

Ed shares how his team transformed a costly, manual document-processing workflow, dramatically reducing the timeline from six weeks to just seven days and slashing monthly costs from $20K down to around $2K.

1. Ruthlessly Break Down Your Workflow:
Clearly document each step in detail to identify exactly where AI can remove—not just automate—inefficient tasks.

2. Deploy AI Rapidly, Iteratively:
Quickly build and test AI prototypes like custom GPT models to rapidly demonstrate meaningful reductions in time and costs.

3. Maintain Expert Human Oversight:
Include experienced human experts throughout your process to ensure ongoing quality control, accuracy, and trustworthiness of AI outcomes.

👉 Watch the full interview →

🔍 My Favorite Things Last Week

Understanding AI’s evolving landscape helps SMB leaders make smarter decisions. Benedict Evans’ insights provide a clear perspective on where to focus now.

Benedict’s' recent conversation with Matt Turck offers a grounded perspective on AI's current trajectory, cutting through the hype to reveal what's truly happening in the industry.

🔑 Key Lessons and SMB Implications:

1. AI Models Are Becoming Commoditized
AI capabilities from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are increasingly similar. For SMBs, this means lower prices and less worry about choosing a specific model. Instead, prioritize effectively deploying existing models in user-friendly ways that differentiate your products and services.

Actionable Insight: Start immediately with available AI tools—don't overanalyze which model to choose. Focus instead on seamless user experience and meaningful integrations.

2. Error Rates Remain a Significant Challenge
AI accuracy still has room to improve, particularly in critical enterprise scenarios. SMBs should use AI as an assistant or enhancer rather than expecting fully automated precision, ensuring human oversight remains essential.

Actionable Insight: Keep humans deeply involved in quality control. Gradually expand automation as accuracy improves, and use AI primarily for efficiency and productivity gains.

3. AI's Integration into Everyday Tools
AI is becoming increasingly embedded into familiar business applications rather than standalone products. For SMBs, this means faster adoption with minimal disruption, enabling teams to benefit quickly from subtle yet powerful enhancements.

Actionable Insight: Leverage your existing platforms (CRMs, email tools, productivity suites) that offer integrated AI features, facilitating immediate gains without extensive retraining.

4. The Decline of AI Doomerism
Discussions on existential threats have receded in favor of practical, real-world AI challenges. SMB leaders can safely shift their focus toward pragmatic AI deployments, free from speculative anxiety, to solve concrete, everyday business problems.

Actionable Insight: Concentrate your team's efforts on tangible, near-term business opportunities and measurable impacts rather than distant hypothetical risks.

👉 Check it out →