How to Use AI for Work
March 17, 2026
Most business owners say they want to use AI, but few move beyond the surface-level of using it as a fancy search engine. Here’s how to start using it strategically.
It's your weekly dose of clarity and insight on all things tech & business from Dream in Digital! Each week, I'm here to share my thoughts to help you make the most of today's technology and build a business that genuinely supports the life you want to live.
This Week’s Core Focus:
AI for Work
With AI being all the buzz these days, more and more companies say that they want to start using it for their business. Unless you have a solid implementation plan however, your team will probably default to just using AI as a fancy search engine — and that’s just scratching the surface! Here are some things you can do to go beyond the surface to strategically utilize AI for work:
Treat AI As a Partner, NOT a Replacement: AI works best when it collaborates with you, not when it replaces you. Think of it like a junior team member that can brainstorm ideas, draft content, analyze information, and speed up repetitive tasks, but still needs your direction and judgment. The most effective teams use AI to enhance their thinking, not outsource it. When you guide the process, AI becomes a powerful productivity multiplier.
Pick a Platform: Instead of bouncing between dozens of tools, choose one core AI platform and learn how to use it well. The “Big 3” can mostly do the same things, but each has its strengths:
Open AI’s ChatGPT is excellent for writing and general work tasks
Google’s Gemini shines at research and search-driven insights
Anthropic’s Claude is strong with coding and long documents
Once you pick your primary platform, you may start discovering ways it can support many parts of your workflow. Depth with one tool usually beats shallow use of many.
Give Yourself Time to Experiment: Like any new technology, AI takes time to learn and integrate into your workflow. The most “AI-ready” teams build a culture of curiosity by setting aside time (at least an hour each week) to test prompts, explore new use cases, or attempt to automate one boring, repetitive, task without the pressure of a deadline. Some experiments won’t always work, and that’s part of the process. Over time, those small tests turn into repeatable systems and automations that can save hours of work and move the needle for your business.
Tech Tip of the Week:
Brand vs. Expert Gems/GPTs
The Problem: Gems & Custom GPTs are a great way to work more efficiently with AI tools, but is it best to create a company expert who knows everything about your business/department/client, or should you create a subject matter expert (ex. social media expert, accounting & finance expert, etc.) to build out your own mini team of experts to help you with specific tasks across your company/departments/clients?
The Solution:
A Hybrid Approach.
Trying to make one Gem/GPT do everything leads to "context bloat," where the AI gets confused by too many instructions.
For the highest quality output, keep the "Brain" and the "Soul" separate:
The Brain (The Specialist Gem/GPT): Build your Gem/GPT to be a master of a specific skill (e.g., "The Social Media Strategist"). Load its instructions with technical expertise, platform-specific constraints, hooks, and other expert examples.
The Soul (The Brand Context): Keep your company, department, or client-specific info (brand voice, core tasks, product specs, history, etc.) in a separate "Branding" PDF.
The Winning Workflow: Open your Specialist Gem/GPT, then upload the Branding PDF for the specific client or project you're working on, before typing in your prompt to start your chat thread. This keeps the AI’s "brain" sharp on the craft, while the uploaded file provides the "soul" of the brand. You get a world-class expert, who is perfectly briefed, every time.
How This Helps: By separating the expertise from the brand context, you get higher-quality results, and create a system that allows you to scale easier. Over time, this approach lets you build a small team of AI specialists that can work across departments or clients, while always being able to stay aligned with each brand.