Fix the Workflow First: AI That Sticks in Small Business

Most companies buy AI backwards — they pick a platform before they have named what they are actually trying to fix. James Ernst of Core Order thinks that single inversion explains most of the disappointment small and mid-sized businesses feel about AI.

James spent eighteen years in marketing and public relations at agencies around the country, took a three-year detour running his own restaurant in Buffalo, and has spent the last two years working in AI full time. Core Order isn't an AI agency — he calls it a growth architecture firm, and the distinction is the whole argument.

• The question that comes before the tool — not which platform to buy, but what you are trying to make structurally better.
• Why tools go unused — departments each buy their own, a few people adopt them, and the company's data ends up scattered exactly where AI can't reach it.
• Homebrew vs. off-the-shelf — pull data from the CRM you already pay for via API or an MCP server, then build the narrow workflow around it.
• Security and hallucination — the only two objections James hears in every room, and how he answers each.
• Financial data specifically — locked-down databases, enterprise accounts where your inputs aren't training the model, and locally hosted open-source models.
• An agent swarm that researches prospects — feed it a domain and a contact name, get back a company profile and recommended services.
• Regulated industries — capturing HIPAA constraints, red lines and approved language in the discovery session instead of after something goes wrong.
• Four hours a week to thirty minutes — the concrete win, and why the reclaimed time goes back to your people rather than into a headcount cut.

• (00:00) Villain origin story — eighteen years in PR, and a restaurant
• (03:09) What a “growth architecture firm” actually does
• (04:39) The subscription graveyard every business has
• (06:25) Homebrew or off-the-shelf?
• (08:09) Making sure AI says the right thing about you
• (10:29) Internal workflows first, AI search later
• (11:28) The two objections: security and hallucination
• (12:41) Where the wins actually show up
• (13:50) Is your financial data safe?
• (15:38) Case study: an agent swarm that researches prospects
• (17:22) Hot take — superpower or distraction
• (18:50) Regulated industries and approved language
• (21:39) Which verticals are primed
• (23:40) The pain point underneath everything is time
• (25:14) On being kind to the robots
• (26:10) Imposter syndrome at the frontier
• (28:45) AI slop and the rising value of human work
• (31:11) Where to find James Ernst

“The first question you should be asking is not which tool should we buy, but what are we trying to make structurally better?” — James Ernst

“AI could either be a superpower or a distraction.” — James Ernst

“I don't leverage AI to write anything for me, because that is such a part of the human process that I want to keep.” — James Ernst

• Core Order — James's growth architecture firm
• The Core Order blog, including Why Enterprise AI Investments Fail and Intelligence Is a Commodity
• James Ernst on LinkedIn — where he's most active, and happy to talk AI with anyone
• Full write-up of this episode
• AI & Small Business hub — what other founders on the show are actually doing with AI
• On keeping the writing human: human-certified, expert-sourced content

Unscripted Small Business is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Full episode archive at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com.