“If you or a loved one has suffered unforeseen consequences or organizational health issues due to artificial intelligence, you may be entitled to financial compensation.”
That’s how I opened my talk at the 2025 RIA Convention & Industry Expo. Yes, it got laughs, but like most good jokes, it landed because there’s truth in it.
AI is everywhere…plastered across ads, baked into software updates, and dominating conversations from job sites to boardrooms. But let’s be real: AI without intention can create chaos. I’ve seen it. If you implement AI without a strong foundation, it only magnifies the mess. But with the right structure, AI can multiply the good. And that was my core message to the audience:
AI isn’t the starting point. It’s the reward for doing the foundational work right.
Why We Didn’t Start With AI
At Southeast Restoration, we didn’t launch into AI by asking, “Which tool should we use?”
Instead, we asked, “What kind of company do we want to be when the dust settles?”
We didn’t want more technology just for the sake of it. We wanted clarity, confidence, and margin. So, in 2024, we launched an annual initiative called Embrace the Future, but not as a way to jump into AI headfirst. It was about creating an environment where AI could actually thrive.
To create the right environment, we anchored our efforts in a framework I discovered in Come Up for Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work by Nick Sonnenberg. His CPR model—Communication, Planning, and Resources—felt like it was written for the restoration industry. The core idea is simple but powerful: before layering on complexity like AI, you must solve your foundational inefficiencies first.
- Communication: Like many of you, we were drowning in chaos…emails, texts, sticky notes, Third Party Administrator (TPA) notifications, phone calls, etc. We took a cue from Sonnenberg’s recommendation and chose to centralize everything in one place. Microsoft Teams became our single source of truth. One system. One hub for communication.
- Planning: We slowed down and started reducing expectations to writing. Using Microsoft Planner, we created not just task lists but visibility into who owns what. This built a culture of accountability and extreme ownership, something Nick emphasizes throughout his book.
- Resources: We began intentionally organizing our internal knowledge base so that when we introduced AI tools like Microsoft Copilot, our team wouldn’t be overwhelmed. They’d already have the right information in the right place, ready to be retrieved or enhanced by AI.
Nick Sonnenberg’s CPR framework gave us the clarity and structure to lay the groundwork, so that when we did introduce AI, it wasn’t just a shiny tool… it was a natural next step.
This initial process took a year. And even now, we’re still building on that foundation. But what came out of it was transformative for our business.
When We Did Start With AI
Only after we had laid the CPR foundation did we begin layering in AI, and it’s already making a meaningful impact.
Right now, we’re focused on using AI to support one of our core initiatives, Engineered to Win. We’ve built out AI-powered loss descriptions and adjuster communication templates to reduce the back-and-forth, improve clarity, and ultimately help us sell jobs faster. These are small wins that have created real momentum.
Looking ahead, one of my goals is to overhaul our internal knowledge base, SRG University. It served us well when it launched in 2017, but today, it’s clunky, static, and hard to search. My vision is to migrate that content into Microsoft Copilot, making it interactive, current, and available at the fingertips of our team. Imagine being able to ask a question and instantly get the most up-to-date training, SOP, or company policy in real-time.
Of course, not everyone was on board right away because, let’s be honest, every team has at least one skeptic. For us, the turning point came when one of our most hesitant users realized that AI wasn’t replacing his critical thinking, it was sharpening it. He initially worried it would make people lazy, but after using it, he saw that it didn’t do the work for him; it helped him do his job better and faster. That mindset shift, from “this is a shortcut” to “this is a strategic edge,” was what turned him into a believer.
AI didn’t transform our company overnight. What transformed us was the year of intentional groundwork we put in, so that when AI showed up, it had a foundation to stand on.
Not Where to Start—But How to Start
As we’ve introduced AI into our workflows, the same themes keep surfacing: concerns about where to start, questions about security, and fear that AI might replace people. I’ve heard versions of these questions over and over, and they’re valid. We’ve felt them, too.
We didn’t try to overhaul everything at once. We started with the tasks that bog people down every day—writing consistent job updates, reworking scope clarifications, or manually retyping field notes. We focused on real friction points and used AI to make that work easier, not irrelevant.
And when it comes to writing better prompts or training AI to speak in our company’s voice, one of the most helpful techniques has been assigning it a persona. For example:
- “Act as an Estimator writing a supplemental request to an adjuster who’s pushing back on pricing.”
- “Act as a Project Manager giving a progress update to a customer who’s feeling anxious about delays.”
- “Act as a Trainer building an onboarding checklist for a new team member in Mitigation.”
- “Act as a Customer Experience Rep responding to a frustrated customer review with empathy and professionalism.”
To get even better results, I focus on six prompting elements:
- Define the task – What do I want the AI to actually do?
- Give context – What’s the situation?
- Provide examples – Show what a good response looks like.
- Set a persona – Should it act like a Project Manager? Estimator? Trainer?
- Choose a format – Bullet points? Email? Table?
- Set the tone – Friendly? Professional? Empathetic?
The quality of your prompt directly shapes the quality of your output, simple as that. When you frame prompts with the right context and persona, you get clearer, more tailored results. It makes AI feel less like a robot and more like a teammate.
But here’s the bigger truth: it’s not just about whether your company uses AI. It’s about whether your systems and culture are ready for it to make a meaningful difference. If your processes are already chaotic, AI won’t fix them, it will just amplify the noise. But if you’ve done the foundational work, AI becomes a force multiplier, accelerating what’s already working and helping you reach the next level faster.
So… Is AI a Symptom or a Solution?
Back to that infomercial I joked about, AI can either be a symptom of deeper dysfunction or a solution to something you’ve already diagnosed.
By definition, a symptom is “a sign of the existence of something undesirable.” And I don’t want AI to be undesirable. I want it to be a solution-focused tool that helps us build margin, scale wisely, and communicate better.
If you ignore it and let AI “happen to you,” you risk falling behind while others move forward.
We don’t need AI to replace what makes us great, we need it to amplify what we’re already doing well. And that starts with being honest about where we’re struggling, then building systems that actually support our people.
So, I’ll leave you with this:
AI is not the starting point. It’s the result of good decisions. It’s the reward for reducing friction. And it’s the tool that will help you turn vision into momentum.
The question isn’t if AI is coming, it’s already here.
The real question is: Are you building something it can actually help?
Taylor Carmichael
Taylor Carmichael is the Director of Systems at Southeast Restoration, where she leads the integration of technology and operations across the cleaning and restoration industry. With a Master of Information Systems and over a decade of industry experience, Taylor focuses on streamlining workflows, improving communication, and driving scalable solutions. She’s passionate about making technology practical by bridging innovation with day-to-day execution to help restoration teams work smarter and grow stronger.
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