I put the last couple of days into building Ponderosa with AI. We worked through the website, positioning, business model, language, and ideas I’ve carried around for years without ever having much reason to write them down.

We covered an absurd amount of ground. I could start with something half-formed, follow it for a while, find the weak spots, pull in outside research, change my mind, and come back an hour later with something considerably clearer.

Somewhere in that process I wrote:

Most people trying to build something go looking for more tools — like walking into a hardware store hunting for the right hammer. What they actually need is someone who already knows how to swing one.

The client doesn’t need to buy the hammer. They’re hiring the carpenter.

It stuck with me.

I’ve spent most of my career selling emerging technology. Every generation brings better equipment, more information, new ways of working. My instinct toward AI has been the same one I’ve always had: learn the tools, put them to work.

There’s a steel company in Brazil, ArcelorMittal, where salespeople had longstanding customer relationships but spent their days buried in quotes, notes, pricing, inventory, follow-up. They handed some of that off to an AI tool. Customer contacts nearly tripled during the trial.

Those extra conversations lingered.

Anyone who’s sold for a living recognizes that list — the stuff that eats the day around the customer, necessary work repeated thousands of times over a career. Now some of those hours are coming back.

I know where I’d like to spend them.

On the phone. Across the table. Asking another question because something in the first answer didn’t quite add up. Learning how a customer actually makes money. Hearing why a seemingly perfect product still doesn’t fit the way they work.

That’s the part I never got tired of.

After twenty-five years in business development, I’m curious what happens when we arrive at those conversations with better information and more time for them. I have a feeling the human part gets richer.