Today’s track: Two Weeks — Grizzly Bear
There’s been a fight brewing in this city about AI.
It started on the Louisville subreddit. Somebody posted about small businesses around town — restaurants, catering companies — leaning on AI, and the thread lit up. It lit up enough that the Courier-Journal picked it up and ran a whole story this week on the “mixed reactions.” The subreddit came first. The newspaper followed it.
I dropped my take in that thread, and I want to lay it out here too — because I think almost everyone is looking at this exactly backwards.
When a small business uses AI, it isn’t cutting corners. It’s getting in front of a bigger audience than it ever could before. It’s connecting with more people, telling them what it makes and what it brings to the table — literally. The food doesn’t get worse. The reach gets bigger. The little guy finally gets to punch at the weight of someone with a whole marketing department.
Think about that for a second. The thing people are mad about is the corner shop getting the same reach as the chain.
We already do this ourselves, every single day. We use a hundred tools that used to be somebody’s whole job. Nobody hires an elevator operator anymore — and nobody’s writing a swan song for them either. No vigil, no think-piece, no candlelight on the subreddit. The job changed, we moved on, and the world kept turning.
And here’s the part everybody skips: the person who used to do that work by hand can pick up the same tools and become more. More skilled. More empowered. Better at the thing they already loved. The expertise doesn’t disappear. It gets a multiplier.
Take design. When I use AI to make something visual, I struggle to articulate what’s in my head — I can see the style, I just can’t name it or point to the right reference. An architect could. Someone trained to see and name design walks right in, says “this, like that, in this direction,” and builds the thing in their head in minutes. The training they already have becomes a superpower instead of a line item. That’s the whole game.
I know it works because of what it’s done for me.
I’ve got a brain full of creative ideas and, thanks to the ADD, weak follow-through. AI fills the gap I can’t. It helps me take the thing I can see and actually make it real.
These past few weeks alone I wrote two 20-page horror stories. I wrote a novella comic called Days of Our Flies. I’m using Claude design to build a dating and third-place app — something I’ve wanted to exist for years and never had the runway to build.
I use Claude AI plus the Merlin app to track every bird that sings in my backyard. I’m up to 39 species, and it tells me what makes each one unique and how it fits into the ecosystem right outside my window. My new smart feeder is up to 13 bird types. It was a gift! I have the best friends and family in the game!
And I lean on it for my health. My personal health profile has all of it — my full chromosome data, my complete genetics report, screenshots off my digital scale that I drop in to track where I’m headed. My AI is incredibly informed. It knows me at a level no doctor’s office ever has, and it helps me show up for myself and feel good about the work I’m putting in.
We are so freaking empowered.
Now here’s where I actually want all this to go.
Automate the internal grind — the scheduling, the invoicing, the back-office stuff that eats a person’s whole day. Then take those people and point them at the community. Put them on street cleanups. Have them hosting pizza parties. Doing real, visible good in the place they live.
Imagine that across Louisville. Every small shop handed back a few hours a week, and spending those hours out on the street instead of buried in a spreadsheet.
The business runs leaner and the workers are happier — and the product ends up wrapped in all the warm fuzzies that come from a team that actually likes showing up. Let the software do the boring part. Let the people go be people.
That’s the version nobody in that thread wanted to talk about. Not “AI replaces the baker.” The baker — plus AI — getting their cookies in front of ten times the people, while the staff that used to be buried in paperwork is out front, in the neighborhood, building something real.
It’s the work I’m doing right now — taking meetings with food delivery companies, insurance folks, mortgage lenders, title companies, real estate and everything around it. Same question every time: how do you use this to get more awareness and more leads, inbound and outbound, to actually work — and how do you free your people up to go do good.
And I don’t want this to only be about business. The same move works in your life. Plant a seed, automate the boring part, free yourself up for the stuff that actually matters.
The folks who are sore about it today are the same ones who’ll be using it next year. That’s usually how it goes.
Warmly,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Schedule a time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind.
The Morning Bergeron daily track playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-morning-bergeron/pl.u-pMyl2GlSW1N3qv
PS: Neat ways you’re implementing AI in your business and life? What are some thoughtful ways you’re actually using it? I want to hear them.