Episode
How to Actually Use AI in Your Business, with an AI Engineer
- Podcast
- Marketing 4 Business
- Published
- Sep 2, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3761
- Processing state
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Summary
Everyone is talking about AI. Almost nobody is telling business owners what to actually do on Monday morning. In this Marketing 4 Business episode , Scott chats with Blake Harkness, the AI engineer behind Harkness AI , about what AI can actually do inside a normal New Zealand business right now. Blake started a mechatronics degree, watched ChatGPT answer his entire coursework, and pivoted. He now works as a fractional AI partner, runs a 300-strong community called Young Kiwis in AI, and recently went to China on a national delegation to see where this is all heading. No hype, just the practical version: Blake explains how AI took his proposal process from 4 hours to 5 minutes, with a human review at the end Why you must pay for your AI tools, and the confidential contract story from the States that shows what happens when you do not Blake's rule for connecting AI to your systems: read-only first, add permissions gradually, never go full ham from the start Scott shares why he scrapped his AI chatbot and AI phone answering project and hired a call centre of real people instead The full breakdown of how a one-man fencing supplier automated Xero invoicing, repeat inquiries and calendar booking using Claude and a set of skills What Blake saw in China: room-service robots riding elevators, AI triage in hospitals, and scan interpretation cut by 80% Why job roles shift rather than disappear, and the two risks Blake sees: using no AI at all, or using AI for everything and learning nothing Blake's 5 steps to get AI ready, including the testing mistake almost everyone makes Scott's take on the AI bubble from an investor's seat, and why retail investors usually wear it The intern who posted 5 Instagram Reels and had a job by day 5 If you are a business owner drowning in admin, uns…