If you look at your Claude spend right now, it ranks somewhere in the bottom of your monthly payroll at most companies.
Think about that for a second.
You'd never hire a full-time person and then just let them answer questions when it came up. You'd give them a job with responsibilities and a number to hit.
I was talking to a roofing contractor in the southeast a this month.
Good company with a 12-person crew and doing about $5M a year. He had ChatGPT, Claude, and two other tools he couldn't name off the top of his head.
I asked him what those tools were doing for his business.
He said, "Honestly? Not much. I use it to write emails sometimes."
He was paying for 4 teammates and giving them one task between them.
Every dollar you spend on AI is a salary. And every tool you're running is an employee.
So what's on their job description?
For a roofing company, the job description should look something like this:
Answer calls and capture messages when the crew is on a roof and can't pick up.
Follow up on the estimates that didn't close in the first week.
Send a message to every customer from the last 3 years before storm season hits.
Keep the Google profile current and ask for reviews after every completed job.
A lot of local businesses are paying AI's salary and getting email drafts in return.
The companies winning with AI in trades and medical have given their tools an actual job to do.
A chiropractor I know started using an AI-assisted follow-up system for no-shows.
Just that one thing took her rebooking rate from 40% to 67% in 90 days. She gave her AI one job.
Treat AI spend like headcount.
If you ran a review with your AI tools the same way you'd run a performance review with an employee, what would you say?
Are they hitting their number? Or are they taking up a seat?
Rooting for you!
~ Nate Kennedy
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How to save $10,000–$80,000 a year, stop leads slipping through the cracks, and give your practice an unfair advantage going forward.
