By Nazreen Daud, Founder of Roquepress · Published 29 Oct 2026 · Updated 29 Oct 2026 · Originally shared on LinkedIn
The short answer: use AI for business strategy as a helper, not the decision-maker. AI tends to return the most agreed-upon answer, so you and your competitors end up with similar plans. Let it handle the doing, the drafts and the routine work, and keep the big decisions for yourself: who you serve and why they'd pick you.
Two businesses, one question
Picture two coaches in the same city. Similar experience, both running small practices. One evening, both open an AI assistant and type almost the same question: "How do I grow my coaching business?"
They each get a tidy, sensible answer. Niche down. Post regularly on LinkedIn. Offer a free discovery call. Build an email list. Collect testimonials.
None of it is wrong. That's the problem. It's the same list for both of them, and probably for every other coach who asked that week. (This is a made-up example, but try it yourself with your own industry. It's a bit like finding out everyone at the party bought the same shirt.)
Demand Curve's newsletter has a name for something I'd been thinking about: the consensus machine.
What does it mean to call AI a consensus machine?
It means AI tools tend to give the most common, most agreed-upon answer to a question. That makes them reliable for well-understood tasks. It also means two people asking the same strategy question get very similar advice, and similar advice rarely gives anyone an edge.
Demand Curve's newsletter puts it this way: ask AI for your positioning and it hands back the safest, most common claim in your category, so you and your closest competitor can end up saying the same thing. An average plan gives neither of you an edge.
A fair note: Demand Curve sells marketing services, and that newsletter was making the case for them. I'm not recommending their services. I just think the idea stands on its own.
I use AI every day, so this isn't an anti-AI post
I use AI every day, for leverage, and I feel blessed this technology exists. Blessed to be saving loads of time on the work that just needs doing, too.
I also use it as a check on myself. AI helps me cover my blind spots, so the angles I'd miss on my own still get looked at.
So this isn't about using less AI. It's about knowing which jobs to hand over and which ones to keep. If you'd like to see how I think about running AI helpers in a business, I wrote about managing AI agents like a team.
Where is AI brilliant, and where is it average?
AI is brilliant at execution: work with a known "right way" that just needs doing quickly and consistently. It's average at strategy: decisions where the whole point is to be different from everyone else. The skill is knowing which kind of task is in front of you.
Demand Curve explained this with a restaurant in an earlier newsletter (May 2026), and it's the clearest way I've seen it put.
In the kitchen, consensus is exactly what you want. Prep, stock, scheduling: you want the most reliable way to do it, every single time. Nobody wants a creative approach to food safety.
The concept is different. What kind of restaurant is this, and why would anyone choose it over the four others on the same street? Their point, in my words: the most likely concept is the safe, middle-of-the-road place you've eaten at a dozen times and can't quite remember.
Your positioning is the concept. Your day-to-day work is the kitchen.
Here's a simple way to sort the two:
| Kitchen work (AI can help) | Concept work (you decide) |
|---|---|
| First drafts and rewording | Who you serve, and who you don't |
| Summarising long documents | Why a client should pick you over the alternatives |
| Tidying, formatting and checking | What you refuse to take on |
| Brainstorming lots of options | Your pricing and how you package it |
| Routine, repeatable tasks | The one thing you want to be known for |
Why is the average answer a problem for small businesses?
For a small business, being average is expensive. Big companies can win on budget and reach. Small ones usually win by being clearly different: a sharper focus, a more personal service, a point of view. A plan built from the average answer strips out the very thing that makes you worth choosing.
Think about how clients actually choose. They look at three or four options. If all of them say "we deliver quality results with a personal touch", the client picks on price or gut feel. If one of them says something specific and true, that one stands out.
AI can help you write that specific, true thing. It just can't decide what it is. It doesn't know your clients, your history, what you're good at or what you've learned the hard way. It only knows what most people would say.
There's a related trap: doing more because AI makes "more" easy. More posts, more pages, more offers. I wrote about why more is often the problem with business efficiency, and it applies here too.
How should I use AI for business strategy then?
Use AI to widen your options and speed up the work, and keep the final choices for yourself. The order matters: your context goes in first, AI's options come out, your judgement makes the choice, and AI helps you carry it out. You keep the speed and lose the sameness.
- Write your specifics first. Who your best clients are, what they say in their own words, what you've tried and what you won't do. A page is enough.
- Ask for options, not answers. "Give me ten different ways to position this, including unusual ones" works better than "what's my positioning?"
- Ask it to argue against you. "What would a sceptical client say about this?" is a very useful question to ask. This is how I use AI to cover my blind spots.
- Make the decision yourself. Pick one direction based on what you know about your clients that the AI doesn't.
- Hand the doing back to AI. Drafts, outlines and routine tasks. This is where it really saves time.
- Check the result against real conversations. If clients don't react, adjust. A real reply from a real person beats any generated plan. (On reading those replies honestly, I wrote about why a verbal yes without a deposit isn't a yes.)
If you'd like help working out the "why you" for your own business, you can book a call with me.
Speed is cheap now. Judgement isn't.
Everyone now has the same fast, capable tools. That's a good thing. A solo consultant can now get through work that used to need a team. But it also means speed and polish no longer set you apart. Judgement does.
Here's where I land: when everyone has the same information, the edge goes to the person who knows what to do with it.
So let AI run the kitchen. Keep the menu for yourself.
FAQ
Can AI create a business strategy for me?
It can draft one, but it will usually be a common, average plan, because AI tends to return the most agreed-upon answer. Use it to generate options and test ideas, then make the key decisions yourself, especially who you serve and why clients should choose you over the alternatives.
Why does AI give similar business advice to everyone?
AI tools are built to produce likely, widely agreed answers. Similar questions get similar replies, whoever asks them. Demand Curve calls this the consensus machine. Adding your own specifics helps a lot, but the strategic choice at the end still needs your own judgement.
What business tasks is AI best at?
Execution tasks with a known good approach: first drafts, summaries, tidying and formatting, routine repeatable work and brainstorming lots of options quickly. These save real time. Decisions about positioning, pricing and who to serve need your own context and judgement, so keep those for yourself.
How do I get better AI answers for my business?
Give it your specifics before you ask anything: your clients, their words, what you've tried, what failed and your limits. Ask for several options rather than one answer, and ask it to argue against your idea. Then make the final choice yourself, based on what you know.
Should small service businesses avoid using AI for marketing?
No. AI is very useful for drafting and organising marketing work. The risk is letting it decide your message, which leads to copy that sounds like everyone else's. Decide your positioning first, then let AI help you write it, check it and get it out the door.
So, in your own business: where do you let AI decide, only the execution, or the strategy too?
About the author: Nazreen Daud is Founder of Roquepress and a Malay web consultant and marketer in Singapore. He has built websites for businesses since he started freelancing in 2013 and registered Roquepress in 2019. He writes practical, hype-free notes on websites, SEO and AI for service businesses.