AI That Doesn’t Hit the P&L Isn’t Strategy

The brands pulling ahead are turning AI throughput into revenue, margin, and valuation.

Hey there,

Last week at Vistara, I watched something rare: agency and tech leaders talking about AI without trying to sell it (well, mostly…)

There were no predictions about sentience. No slides about “the future of creativity.”

Just the gritty truth of what’s working (and what’s not) when you actually put AI to work inside a business.

And if there was a single thread running through every session, it was this:

AI isn’t a strategy. It’s a system.

One that compounds only when you stop chasing big reveals and start fixing small, expensive problems.

1. Everyone wants the transformation. Few will survive the translation.

The companies pulling ahead aren’t the ones building custom LLMs (thank the Universe).

They’re the ones building connective tissue, layer by layer.

Prompting → Automations → RAG → Agents.

Each stage replaces another manual step, and together, they change how a business operates. Leaps look impressive on LinkedIn. But ladders win in the boardroom.

2. The workflow is the product.

The most impressive demo wasn’t a model. It was a meeting.

A simple post-call workflow that turned transcripts into action items, approvals, and Jira tickets, all in under five minutes.

No one cared that it used six tools and three automations.

They cared that it saved 1,000 hours this year.

If your AI doesn’t show up in a P&L via time returned or margin gained, it’s still an experiment.

3. The best marketers stopped talking about “AI content.”

They’re using it to publish original data, find the gaps no one else sees, and raise the quality ceiling on everything they ship.

Andy Crestodina said it best:

“AI isn’t for writing faster. It’s for seeing what’s missing.”

The brands breaking through are the ones who use AI to audit, not automate — to clarify, not clutter.

4. Board-level truth:

The companies that win with AI will look less like innovators and more like compounding machines.

They’ll turn context into throughput. Throughput into proof. Proof into scale.

The rest will drown in pilots, decks, and “coming soon” slides.

So before the next leadership meeting, ask two questions:

  • Where is AI already removing 1,000 hours?

  • Where is it helping us win more deals?

If you can’t answer both, you’re not scaling AI…you’re still pitching it.

Only a few companies are building balance-sheet advantage. Let’s make sure you’re in this group.

— Lauryn

P.S. For more on building with AI, check out my presentation from last week here.