Start With Less, Not More
Picture your office in 1970. A brand-new computer has just arrived—big, expensive, and a little intimidating. Nobody quite knows what to do with it yet. Accounting? Payroll? Word processing?
Within a few years, the answer became obvious. That machine wasn’t there to replace anyone. It was there to eliminate the drudge work: the manual calculations, the endless paperwork, the hours spent chasing down files.
We’re living through the same shift right now with AI. And the businesses that pull ahead won’t be the ones that adopt the most tools. They’ll be the ones that use AI to strip away the tasks slowing them down—so they can focus on what actually moves the needle.
That’s why the first pillar of AI adoption isn’t about adding anything. It’s about subtracting. It’s called Eliminate, and in my experience, it’s the pillar that unlocks everything else.
AI’s First Job Is to Remove Friction
Here’s the mindset shift I want every leader to make: AI isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing less of what doesn’t matter.
Most companies are sitting on a mountain of repetitive, energy-draining work. The reports nobody reads. The emails written from scratch every single time. The approvals that bounce around for days. This work keeps people busy, but it rarely grows revenue.
When you use AI to cut that work out, three things happen:
- Your team becomes measurably more efficient.
- Your best people get freed up for your highest-value work.
- You, as the leader, finally let go of the tasks you don’t enjoy, aren’t good at, or simply shouldn’t be doing.
The secret isn’t adding more capability. It’s being ruthless about what you eliminate first.
What Elimination Looked Like in My Own Business
I learned this firsthand. In my company, we were paying skilled writers $30 to $40 an hour to produce content. It was good work, but it was expensive and slow.
Then I took a hard look at the process and realized something: roughly 80% of our writing workflow could be handled by AI. Not the strategy or the final polish—just the heavy lifting in the middle.
The result? Our cost per blog post dropped from $120 to $30. Quality stayed exactly where it needed to be. And my writers moved from grinding out drafts to doing the high-value editing and creative direction that only they could do.
That’s the power of elimination. It doesn’t lower your standards. It raises your leverage.
The AI Elimination Audit: Three Questions to Ask Now
Before you pick a single tool or watch another tutorial, get radically honest about what you can remove. I use a simple exercise called the AI Elimination Audit. Set aside a few minutes and answer these three questions.
1. What task do you hate most in your business?
Maybe it’s expense reports. Maybe it’s scheduling, chasing approvals, or writing the same email over and over. Whatever makes you sigh—write it down.
2. Where do you spend the most time that doesn’t grow revenue?
Think about the work that keeps you “busy” but doesn’t move the business forward: endless meetings, manual reporting, repetitive admin. List every item you can think of.
3. What could AI eliminate for you this quarter?
Circle one or two items you’d love to never touch again. Then ask: is there an AI tool or automation that could take this off your plate today?
This is the most powerful first step you can take. You’re not just learning about AI. You’re using it to buy back your time and energy, starting now.
“But My Business Is Physical” — A Construction CEO’s Story
I hear this objection constantly: “Sure, that works for tech or service companies. But what about businesses that make real, physical things?”
I recently worked with a CEO who runs a $20 million construction company. He sat across from me and said, “Nicki, I get that we live in an air economy—but I’m dealing in brick-and-mortar buildings. AI feels lightyears away from what I do.”
So we looked together at where the drudgery lived in his business. Not the building itself—the work around the building that slowed everything down.
The answer was billing. His team spent hours every month pulling invoices, sending reminders, and catching errors by hand. Nobody enjoyed it, and it added zero value to the actual construction.
We deployed a single AI billing tool. It pulled invoices automatically, sent reminders, and flagged errors before they hit the books. Within the first month, his team saved more than 20 hours a week—the equivalent of half a full-time employee.
He didn’t overhaul his operation. He eliminated one painful task. And that freed him up to do what a CEO should be doing: visiting sites, building customer relationships, and planning his next phase of growth.
The lesson applies to every industry. AI isn’t about replacing what you do. It’s about eliminating what slows you down, so you can build more, grow faster, and lead at a higher level.
Six Areas Where AI Delivers Results Right Now
You don’t need to transform your entire company to see a win. You just need to pick the one area that will make the biggest difference. AI is already producing measurable results across six key functions:
- Customer Service — Chatbots and automated support that handle routine questions instantly.
- Operations — Automated dashboards and inventory management that remove manual tracking.
- Sales — Lead scoring and personalized recommendations that focus your team on the best opportunities.
- Marketing — Content generation and campaign personalization at scale.
- Finance — Automated expense reports, invoicing, and error detection.
- HR and IT — Streamlined onboarding, threat monitoring, and code generation.
Look at this list and identify one area where eliminating drudgery could free up your team or drive immediate growth. Circle it. That’s your quick win.
Your Next Move
Elimination is the first step to reclaiming your time, your energy, and your leadership capacity. Once you clear away what doesn’t serve you, everything that follows becomes easier.
To help you get started, I’ve put together the AI Elimination Audit Worksheet, along with my list of the top AI tools for cutting busywork. It walks you through the three questions above and helps you spot your fastest wins.
Download the AI Elimination Audit Worksheet here.
Get intentional about doing less of what drains you—so you can do more of what truly matters.
