I'll be honest with you—I'm more of a high-touch guy. I believe deeply in the relationships, the joy, the tears, the whole human experience that comes out of remodeling. But I'd be doing you a disservice if I let that bias keep me from speaking straight about what's happening with AI right now.

This isn't a wave you can see coming from a distance. An expert I heard recently put it this way: it took about twenty years for the internet to fully integrate into the way we work. AI will do the same thing in two years. It's already here. The tide is rising fast, and a lot of remodelers are either fighting it or looking at it the wrong way. What I want to do is help you find the balance.

Be in the wave, not ahead of it—and not behind it

Years ago, my chief marketing officer Joaquin Razo used a phrase that stuck with me: be in the wave. Not ahead of it, where it crashes you. Not behind it, where you're left watching everyone else move forward. In the wave.

The tricky part right now is that these waves are moving faster than anything we've seen before. So don't go all in financially before you understand what you're buying. Don't ignore it either. If you're thinking, "I'm old-school, this isn't for me," you're going to lose clients. You're going to lose business. And you'll probably lose good team members too.

Spend time thinking about it, talking about it, educating yourself. That's what being in the wave looks like right now.

Don't let high touch become an afterthought

Even as you're leaning into AI, 50-80% of your business is likely still coming from past clients and personal referrals. That's not going away anytime soon. Remodeling is highly human and extremely personal—an advantage you have that a chatbot doesn't.

What does being human and personal mean practically? Stop by and visit a past client instead of just sending a newsletter. Pick up the phone. Train your team to be more personal, more relational. Don't let your clients become strangers. The companies that will win are the ones who figure out how to run great AI systems and show up as real humans in their clients' lives.

Efficient vs. effective: know the difference

Here's a question I want you to bring back to your team: Are we being efficient, or are we being effective? Efficiency is doing things faster. Effectiveness is accomplishing the goal. They're not the same thing, and you need both.

AI is a genuine force multiplier for efficiency. But only you and your team can determine whether you're actually moving toward the right outcomes. Keep asking that question out loud—it'll keep you calibrated.

Treat AI like the utility it is

One of the speakers at a Harvard panel I organized, Alex Newcomb, made a point that reframed things for me. Most people think of AI as a tool. It's not. It's a utility: like electricity, like gas.

You don't decide whether to use electricity. You figure out how to use it well.

That's the mindset shift. So make it a team effort. Pull together a task force with some people who are bullish on AI and some who are skeptical. Start having structured conversations with the group; you don't need to crack the code alone. Get your champions from both ends of the spectrum in the room, because the people furthest along on either the high-touch or high-tech side are often the ones who move the rest of the organization forward.

Position yourself as the client's AI guide

This is the one that keeps me up at night, because I've now heard it from a real company, not as a hypothetical. An owner I was working with in the Southwest started the year with a full pipeline, solid design contracts, everything lined up. Six weeks later, he told me he'd lost about 20% of his business; not to a competitor, but to AI. Tech-savvy clients had taken the designs they were working on together, run them through AI, and come back with better ideas, cheaper material sourcing, tighter specs, and project management approaches they preferred. They liked the design build company; they just didn't see the value anymore.

Do not let that happen to you. The answer isn't to fight AI; it's to become the expert in it. Position yourself as your client's AI tour guide from the very first conversation. You should be the one surfacing what AI can do for their project, not sitting back while they discover it without you.

Step out of your technology comfort zone

We all default to our comfort zones, and that's exactly where growth stops, but the fix is simple: make appointments with yourself. Block a couple of hours a week to explore what AI is doing in your industry and outside of it. Have conversations with other remodelers, with people in completely different fields. Build the habit of thinking about it before you're forced to react.

Challenge your team to squeeze out ten percent

Dean Curtis from Remodelers Advantage shared this at the Harvard event, and it's one of the most actionable things I've heard: Ask every member of your team to find ways to use AI to cut ten percent of their inefficient tasks.

It does two things at once. It makes people examine what they're actually spending time on. And it forces them to get hands-on with AI in a way that's tied to their own work. You'll be surprised what comes out of it.

Map your processes and look for the moments of truth

Think about your process from end to end: the 12 to 14 moments of truth where your client is forming an impression of you and your company. Map them out, and then ask one simple question at each step: How could AI make this better?

You don't need to overhaul everything. Just look for the places where it can sharpen what you're already doing.

Don't panic

I want to close with this, because it's what I'd say to a friend. Don't panic. This is serious, and it's moving fast, but remodeling is not going away. Homeowners will always need help improving where they live. The products and services you provide still matter enormously. What's changing is the paradigm around how you deliver them.

If you can find the right balance between high tech and high touch—if you can use AI to be more efficient while showing up as a genuine human being for your clients—you're not just going to survive this. You're going to lead through it. And your team will follow.