Most businesses know they should be doing something with AI. Far fewer know where to actually start.
In this episode of the Sonin //Podcast, Paul is joined by Gerry Lawrence from Freeman Clarke, a firm that provides fractional CTO and CIO expertise to mid-size businesses, to have the conversation that a lot of leaders are quietly having with themselves: is AI really worth it, and if so, where do you begin?
Gerry brings a view across dozens of businesses at different stages of their AI journey, which means he’s seen what works, what doesn’t, and why the gap between the two is almost never about the technology itself.
The conversation cuts through the noise around AI to focus on something more grounded: business value. Where is AI already delivering meaningful results? What separates a successful initiative from an expensive experiment? And why do the businesses that win tend to start with a problem rather than a platform?
They also get into the bits that don’t always make the headlines, how to think about quality and risk differently when AI isn’t deterministic, why keeping humans in the loop is still usually the right call, and what “good data” actually means in practice before you build anything.
The episode closes on pace. Gerry’s view is straightforward: the advantage of moving early compounds every month, and that advantage never goes away.
What this episode covers
- Where AI is already creating measurable value for businesses today
- Why most hesitation comes from the wrong framing, and how to reframe it
- The case for a 10x return before committing to an AI initiative
- How quality assurance works differently when the answer isn’t always the same
- Why human-in-the-loop is still the right default for most use cases
- What foundations you actually need before you build
- Why pace matters more than perfection, and why waiting for the “cheaper” version is usually the wrong bet