Why Every Service-Based Business Owner Should Be Learning AI

So… should I just make The Salad Project my entire personality?

You know the type.

Laptop open.

£6.80 flat white.

£14 salad.

"Let's circle back."

"Low hanging fruit."

"We need to align stakeholders."

ERP.

CRM.

ABAP.

PBS.

At some point you genuinely wonder if people are communicating or just collecting acronyms.

(Although… guilty. I probably say half of those too. 😂)

The funny thing is…

Monday to Friday, working in technology transformation.

At the weekends, you'll probably find me in a luxury hotel suite somewhere in London or Birmingham creating surprise celebrations through Balloonology.

Two completely different worlds.

Or so I thought.

The longer I spend in both…

The more I realise they're actually asking the same question.

How do we make someone's experience better?

One just calls it "digital transformation."

The other calls it "hospitality."

The consultant in me asks:

How do we remove friction?

The Balloonology founder asks:

How do we create delight?

Turns out…

They're basically the same thing.

One uses spreadsheets.

The other uses satin ribbon.

And that's why I think service businesses are sitting on one of the biggest opportunities we've seen in years.

Not because AI can suddenly do your job.

Because it can finally take away the parts of your job that nobody started their business to do.

The admin.

The endless emails.

The proposals.

The follow-ups.

The scheduling.

The research.

The repetitive stuff.

Imagine you're…

A florist.

A photographer.

A wedding planner.

A decorator.

A beauty therapist.

A hotel concierge.

A private chef.

A cleaner.

A personal trainer.

A dog groomer.

How much of your week is actually spent doing the thing you're brilliant at?

And how much is spent behind a laptop or procrastinating on the admin you need to do / will do later / can't be asked to do 💀

That's the bit I think AI changes.

Not your craft.

Your capacity.

One thing I would say though…

Please don't just ask ChatGPT random questions and decide AI isn't very good.

Spend a weekend understanding how Large Language Models (LLMs like ChatGPT etc.) actually work.

Learn why context matters.

Learn why structure matters.

Learn why giving it better information gives you dramatically better results.

Stop thinking about prompts.

Start thinking about conversations.

That mindset shift has probably saved me hundreds of hours while building Balloonology.

I genuinely think we're entering a world where the most successful service businesses won't necessarily be the biggest.

They'll be the ones who use technology to create more time for people.

Because whether you're implementing SAP for a global organisation…

Or setting up balloons in a hotel room before someone proposes…

The thing people remember isn't the technology.

It's how you made them feel.

And thankfully…

AI still can't do that.