Mark knew he had missed something the moment he hung up an important sales call and realised he could not remember a single word the prospect had said.

It wasn't discipline. It was a system.

After eight years in the Royal Navy as an aircraft engineer, Mark discovered a desire to pivot into business. His military background had shaped him: a life of precision, structure, checklists, and reliability. Determined to break into a new career, he went into remote sales.

"It was quite tough. It took me about 18 months to hit my first 10K month. I hit my goal, but at what cost?" The eleven-hour days began to take a toll on his mental health and relationships. He took stock, realised that sales was just one skill in the broader world of business, and decided to start his own company.

Running a business came with its own weight. Spreadsheets, end-of-day reports, sales notes, follow-up emails. Administrative tasks piled up alongside a high volume of back-to-back calls.

"I was doing everything manually, inputting things into spreadsheets, doing my end-of-day reports. I can get stuck doing the tedious stuff. Even if it's relatively simple, it would be like a big thing looming at the top of my head."

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It was more of a case of, when I didn't use it, how behind I was.

Around 2024, the company he was working with brought AI into the workflow. Tools like Fathom and Fireflies would sit on a call, listen, transcribe, and draft a follow-up email the moment it ended. "I was like, 'Okay, I really need to use this.' I thought, 'Wow. Already I'm ahead of the curve of someone who doesn't use AI.'"

He didn't fully understand how useful it was until the day he forgot to turn it on.

For someone who works in sales, memory is the job. A prospect mentions a problem. They raise an objection. They reveal what they want, what they fear, or why they are not ready to buy. Those details matter because the next email depends on them. But that day he had been taking calls back-to-back, and this time without the tools. He sat there trying to reconstruct the conversation from memory. "It was more of a case of, when I didn't use it, how behind I was."

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I say I have a business partner, but really I have two. Claude being the other one. It just knows everything.

Today, running his growth consulting business looks completely different. AI tools are woven directly into everything he builds. "I say I have a business partner," he smiles, "but really I have two business partners, Claude being the other one. It just knows everything."

The routine kicks off the second a sales call wraps up. Instead of spending hours on messy notes, he now has detailed transcripts that go straight to Claude for analysis and strategy. From there, it helps draft client presentations, researches top-performing social media hooks, and maps out plans. Even video editing, a task that could easily take the entire afternoon, is now handled by tools that automatically strip out dead pauses. "Writing copy still needs a human touch. My business partner used to spend six hours a week writing copy for clients. Now, with proper usage, it takes about 30 minutes."

He realised with time that his strengths lie in vision rather than the administrative grind. "I'm an idea machine. I have loads and loads of ideas, but execution is where I need more work." Mark is already moving past basic chatbots to build autonomous AI agents designed to take an idea the moment it leaves his head and push it into execution while he is already onto the next concept.

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Ask yourself, how can I have a better life? How can I live my life in the way that I want to because of AI?

For Mark, the shift to AI was about taking back control of his life. He does not believe it solves every problem, but it allows him to focus on what he is actually good at. "Ask yourself, how can I have a better life? How can I live my life in the way that I want to because of AI? If you focus on the negative, you'll have a negative life. I can confidently say my life is so much better because of it."

His advice to anyone still on the fence is simple. "Just accept that it's here, and it's gonna get better and more powerful."