The Craftsman’s New Tool: Why I Flipped my Script on AI

For twenty-five years, I have lived by a simple truth. The service business is a human endeavor.

At OneAccord, we lead middle-market companies through transition. We do not do this with slogans. We do it by placing seasoned operators directly into leadership roles. These are men and women who have sat in the seat themselves. Because of this human-first heart, I was a skeptic of Artificial Intelligence.

My inbox was a graveyard of broken promises. I received hundreds of pitches from “visionaries” offering bots to automate discovery. I remember one pitch for a voice agent meant to make and receive calls. It was total crap. It was latent and poorly trained. It lacked the nuance and empathy required for high-stakes conversations. To be blunt, the early tools were junk. They wanted a cut of my revenue but provided nothing of substance.

Like many of you, my eyes glazed over. I decided the timing wasn’t right. I stayed focused on our core competency. That means building value through the caliber of our people.

The Catalyst of Clarity

My shift began with Greg Alexander’s book, The Boutique. It challenged my thinking on how a professional services firm scales without losing its soul. I have always believed that leadership is a choice. Alexander’s work made me realize that to remain a firm people choose to follow, we had to evolve.

I joined Collective 54 to surround myself with winners. These are other founders navigating the same growth ceilings. The real “before and after” moment happened when I upgraded to “Era 2.”

In Era 2, the talk shifted from theory to real application. I watched the Collective 54 team take a complex task and finish it in seven minutes. This was a task that usually takes hours of research and drafting. They did not replace the expert. They gave the expert a head start. I saw that AI was a force multiplier. I watched one human produce at the level of three people when they had the right tools.

AI in the Loop

In tech circles, you often hear the phrase “human in the loop.” This suggests the AI is the engine and the human is just there to check the work. I have flipped that script.

At OneAccord, we practice AI in the loop.

We are a professional services firm. Human beings with intuition, character, and experience serve our clients. The AI exists within their loop. It is a tool in the hand of a craftsman. It helps the human perform at a higher level. It is not the other way around.

This is about stewardship. If I can give an operator a tool to handle administrative drudgery, they can spend more time on what matters. They can focus on genuine human connection and principled insight. We are giving our people an exoskeleton so they can carry a heavier load for our clients.

Disciplined Implementation

I am a mix of risk-averse and early adopter. At OneAccord, we are “Built on Values.” This means we are rigorous with our resources. We do not chase the trend of the week. Every tool must earn its place in our long-term plan.

Here is how we are building and the wins we are already seeing:

• Custom Sales Coaching: We built custom agents within Microsoft Copilot. These allow our Principals to tap into twenty-five years of firm wisdom in seconds. In early tests, our sales coach agent provides real-time feedback to our team. It picks up on verbal cues that a human might overlook.

The result is a shift in our culture. I no longer have salespeople telling me they had a “great call” based on a feeling. Instead, we talk about how the client articulated the problem in their own voice. We look for true alignment with our solution. This is reshaping our sales culture.

• Precision Lead Generation: We use tools built specifically for us to refine our sales-led growth. In the past, we were lucky to reach 100 prospects in a year. This year, we will engage with more than 100,000.

We have already generated 50,000 targets that fit our Ideal Customer Profile. We have automated drafts of our outreach while keeping the data clean in our CRM. This ensures our outreach is precise and value-driven. We do not play a high-pressure numbers game. AI is in the loop—not the other way around.

• The “Lab” and Web Intelligence: We are testing tools like Clay in our own “lab” first. We have been able to identify companies visiting our website and run them through our filters. This gives us a targeted list of people who already show interest. We then reach out to them and others like them with direct sales and social media.

We will lead our clients through these same implementations. But first, we master the tools ourselves. This is the difference between a vendor and a partner. We don’t just give advice. We provide the path we have already walked.

A Learning Organization

I am investing in my team to orient our culture toward learning. Following the lead of C54, we have mapped out “AI Lab Days” on the calendar. These are dedicated times for our professionals to experiment and find new ways to solve old problems. We want our veterans to find those lightbulb moments where the tool finally matches the mission.

I am not chasing disruption for its own sake. I am pursuing excellence. We are building a resilient enterprise that can withstand market shifts because our foundation is strong.

The Horizon

Our mission is to help owners create enterprise value that endures. To do that, we must meet clients where they are.

I predict that by 2027, more than half of OneAccord’s revenue will be AI Adjacent. We are not becoming a tech firm. We remain a firm of high-caliber operators. However, our clients will be using these tools. We must be the ones to guide them.

If you feel “allergic to the hype,” I understand. I was there. But do not let the charlatans prevent you from seeing the shift in the bedrock. The era of the AI-enabled professional is here. You must decide if you will lead it or be led by it.