Hi H Client!
Even the Company That Makes Claude Runs on Proven Software
You've probably heard by now that AI can build almost anything in a weekend, including the software that you run your business on, and that before long you won't need to pay for a CRM, a scheduling tool or your reporting at all. It's a fair question whether AI is ready to replace that software, and it's worth knowing what happened when one CEO actually tried it, because his answer matches what we've seen in our own work. AI raises the quality of the work, though it doesn't replace the people, the judgment or the proven systems behind it.
David Friedberg, who runs the plant-breeding company Ohalo Genetics, had said that he saw software as a temporary phase between the start of the internet and the start of AI, so he put his theory to the test and used AI tools to build his own CRM over a weekend. He got it working, though he found out quickly how much more goes into keeping one running, from maintenance and user accounts to security. So, Ohalo moved to Salesforce, and then he also said they weren't going to build their own version of Slack either. Even Anthropic, the company that makes Claude, runs its own sales team on Salesforce and Slack instead of tools built with its own AI. The answer, at least for now, is that a weekend build is only a rough draft, and the systems that a business depends on every day still belong on platforms that are built and maintained to carry that weight.
As a side note, for a business your size, we usually recommend HubSpot over Salesforce, since Salesforce is generally built for large enterprise sales teams with dedicated administrators to run it, and its steeper learning curve makes it harder for a smaller team to actually adopt and use every day. HubSpot is easier for a team like yours to set up and use, and it keeps your marketing and your sales in one place.
AI Gives You the Answer You Want, Not Necessarily the One That's Right
Friedberg's experience lines up with how we think about AI at Halstead. AI is very good at creating a strong first version fast, and it's also built to be agreeable, which means it will often give you the answer that you're hoping for, instead of the one that's right. What separates good work from fast work is judgment, along with knowing your priorities and knowing this industry well enough to catch what the tool got wrong.
The way we see it, AI is a tool for raising the result, and the people and ideas behind your marketing stay at the center of it. It clears away some of the work that doesn't need judgment, so that more time goes into the work that does, like understanding what's happening in your market, deciding where your budget will do the most good, and recognizing when a recommendation doesn't fit the way that you run your business. The thinking behind your marketing comes from our team, from the questions we ask about your goals to the ideas we bring to you before you ask for them, and AI is one of the tools that helps that thinking go further.
You've probably seen this in your own work, when a homeowner shows up with a backyard design that they made with AI in a few minutes. It takes your team's experience to know whether that design will drain properly, sit right on the slope and hold up through the first hard freeze, and the scale is never right!
It's the same reason that we build your growth system on proven platforms and focus our own thinking on how they work together. Growth is a system, not a collection of tools, so every part of it should be working toward the same goals and be measured against them.
Great work still comes from people who know your business!
If you're weighing an AI tool or a custom-built system for your business, bring it to your Project Manager and we'll look at how it fits with the rest of your growth system before you commit.
Until Next time,
Anna Halstead
Co-Owner, Halstead Media Group
