How Business Owners Can Start Using AI Well

How Business Owners Can Start Using AI Well

From The Number by Wendy Brookhouse

June 8, 2026 · 39 min · Season 6

About this episode

The episode discusses how business owners can effectively utilize AI by focusing on AI literacy and treating AI as a delegation tool.

Most business owners have run a few prompts through ChatGPT and assumed that counts as using AI. Susan Diaz, CEO and founder of Northlight AI and author of Swan Dive Backwards , joins Wendy and Kelsey to make the case for going deeper. The conversation covers why AI literacy matters more than access, how to treat AI as delegation instead of magic, and why documenting how your business actually runs is both the starting point for AI and a quiet driver of business value. In This Episode Understand the difference between AI access and AI literacy, and why a license alone doesn't move the needle Reframe AI as delegation, so a weak result points you back to a weak brief rather than a broken tool See why writing down how your business works builds intellectual property and makes the business more valuable and sellable Use the 10/80/10 approach, where you set the thinking, let AI carry the middle, and keep the final polish Pick one tool and get better at it instead of chasing every new headline and feature Ask the harder questions about jobs, security, and adoption that leadership tends to skip Featured Quote "Everything we're doing with AI is a form of delegation. The second you start…

People in this episode

Host: Wendy Brookhouse

Guest: Susan Diaz

Topics covered

  • AI literacy
  • business delegation
  • AI tools
  • business value
  • intellectual property

Keywords

  • AI
  • business owners
  • ChatGPT
  • delegation
  • intellectual property
  • AI tools
  • business value

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Northlight AI

Books & works: Swan Dive Backwards

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