Wedding Business Solutions

Are you using AI as more than just a fancy search engine?

• Alan Berg, CSP, FPSA, Global Speaking Fellow

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 7:40

Are you just searching for answers and accepting quick results, or are you using AI to actually improve your business processes and profits? In this episode, I ask how you can move from using AI as a tool for speed to using it as an engine for real results. Are you among the few who will benefit most, or are you just speeding up the same old routine?

Listen to this new 6-minute episode for insight on how to move past surface-level AI use and start seeing real economic gains in your business.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


Are you going to Wedding MBA? Use the promo code - Alan - to save $20 off your tickets, at www.WeddingMBA.com 

And don't worry, if you can't use your tickets this year, they're transferrable or you can hold them to use next year.

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks. 

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site: 

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com 

Are you using AI just as a fancy search engine? Listen to this episode. See what I'm talking about. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast.

I saw this. I was reading a book on AI agents just to understand the different AI agents more and what kind of agents they are and what people can do with them and things like that. And there were a few interesting quotes in there. One was that 75% of AI's economic gains are going to go to 20% of companies.

Interesting. 75% of the gains, economic gains, are going to go to only 20% of the companies. AI may be giving you speed, but not revenue. Right? And actually, you know what? This wasn't in that book. This was in a LinkedIn article that I was reading. Using AI to do a broken follow-up process. I just talked about on a recent episode about that.

But it also said that 80% are using AI as a fancy search engine. Right. Twenty percent are using it as operating infrastructure. And that was really interesting.

Now I have to admit that I rarely do Google searches anymore. Sometimes I still do, but I tend to use Perplexity actually for most of my searches, especially if I'm looking for something or how to fix something or whatever. Using ChatGPT for other types of searches, like if I'm traveling somewhere, I'm going to use ChatGPT as a search. What is there to do on these days or on this weekend or whatever, stuff like that.

So I am using it as a fancy search engine in many ways. But then there's also the operating things that we're doing with it, using it to help us actually make more money. Now am I using as much as I could? No. But my company is also small. I'm a solopreneur. I do have contractors that are used for many different things. I don't get the volume of leads that most of you are getting. Right?

So I don't need it for automating things like that. I am helping companies that are helping you. Right. So Venue X AI has the AI agent to respond to inquiries for venues and caterers. Probably be expanding to other companies soon. So definitely can use AI in your processes like that.

Although I did speak on another episode that if you don't have a better process, automating it is just going to make it faster. You're going to get faster results of the same kind of results. You want to get better results, you need better processes.

And that's what I'm helping with, with this company, so that the AI agent is actually having a better process. It's not just responding more. It's not just being more conversational. It actually knows how to do it based upon my trainings.

Ask Alan Anything gets constantly updated and trained. And the unexpected thing for me was I use Ask Alan Anything for brainstorming to make new presentations for you, because it remembers more of what I've spoken about and written about and read and presented than I do. Right? Because our brains can only recall so much, but the AI can.

So we literally train it every week. So that's a process that I've done to be able to get my brain out there for you, because I can't be everywhere. And let's face it, not all of you are going to pay $400 an hour for my time, but 20 bucks a month is a pretty good deal compared to that, right?

So if you stop using AI as a hobby and start using it as an operating system, you can start to see economic benefits. And that's where using the tool the right way won't just speed up what you're already doing, but it'll actually give you results you're not getting.

Now, that's the key for the economic benefits: get results you're not getting now, not just get faster results.

Now again, for a lot of us, AI is just a big, fancy vending machine that gives us answers. We put in a question, we get an answer. That's a vending machine. We get that. And sometimes that's all we need. Sometimes, literally, that's all we need.

I needed to get something. I went into, I think, Perplexity. I said, this is what I'm looking for. There you go. I got this thing for our security system, and the keypad didn't come with a wall mount. And I was like, it doesn't even look like it has a place for one.

I went and searched, and it turns out they don't make one for that particular keypad. It's meant to be sitting on a desktop, which is kind of weird for a security system, but hey, I have double-stick tape. We'll get that thing on the wall.

Actually, we have, what is it, Alien Tape. I don't know if you've ever used that. It's like that clear stuff that when you get a new credit card or whatever, it's stuck to it, right? You get that on there, but it's like sheets of that.

And let me tell you something. You put that on the wall, you go take something off, you're taking Sheetrock off with it. It's crazy. It's called Alien Tape. Don't put anything on the wall you don't want to ruin when you take it off, because it's meant to be there forever. I'll tell you that.

So are you using AI as a fancy search engine? Nothing wrong with that for certain things. But is it giving you economic benefit?

Then the question is, what can we do? What can we automate? What can we do better and not just get this vending machine answer, right? I'm searching for something, I get the answer. Nothing wrong with using it for that.

Like I said, I still use Google. Sometimes I'm using ChatGPT. I'm using Perplexity for that. Occasionally I try Gemini. Sometimes I put the same query into three different ones to see the different answers. Put them against one another. Perfectly fine.

But if it's just a fancy search engine, are you getting the economic benefit of it?

And again, 20 bucks a month for most of these, the economic benefit is there in terms of you're getting your money's worth. But are you improving? If 75% of AI's economic gains are going to go to only 20% of companies, are you going to be one of those companies?

And remember, it's not that AI is going to take your job. It's somebody who knows how to use it that might.

So actually, you should come to one of my AI workshops for that. Okay, sorry. Cheap plug for them. There you go. And if you're interested, it's aiworkshoptour.com to find out where the next one is. Hope to see you there.

Have a question about it? Let me know. Alan@weddingbusinesssolutions.com. Thanks for listening.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2026 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


Head Shot

Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

Host