Episode Overview

Title: How to Build Your AI Team, Task by Task
Host: John Jantsch
Guest: Ava Gutierrez, founder of thinkwithai.com
Air Date: October 16, 2025

This episode dives into practical frameworks for integrating AI into business operations, specifically how to "hire" AI for individual tasks within your organization. Ava Gutierrez, an educator and consultant in AI adoption, shares mindset shifts, actionable strategies, and tools to empower business leaders—from small business owners to marketing teams—on “taskifying” AI and truly collaborating with it for maximum value.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mindset Shift: From Macro Fears to Tangible Actions

• AI in the Workforce: Not All-or-Nothing
  • Early discussion about the sensationalism around AI (“Oh, my God, look at all this incredible stuff it can do in the future. And you know, who's going to lose their job?” - John, 01:26), contrasted with the emerging reality: AI isn't here to replace jobs wholesale overnight, but rather, to augment work task by task.
  • Ava: "AI is going to start taking over some of your work, but it's going to do it task by task and it's your job as the human part of this AI relationship ... to be the one recognizing, okay, this is a task that I should offload to AI." (01:53)

2. AI as a Team Member: A Reframe for Success

• The "Hiring" Analogy

  • Ava recommends imagining AI as an employee:
    • Picture assigning AI a salary and role
    • Provide context and onboarding just as you would with a new hire
  • Quote: "When you go to offload that task to AI, I need you to picture AI as if it was a person and you just hired them ... At the end of the day, it's the amount of context that you're giving that person. Looking at AI the exact same way as you did when you went to hire that VA ..." (04:01)

• Parallels to Virtual Assistants

  • Like hiring a VA without clear instructions, using AI without clear "onboarding" leads to underperformance
  • John: "They actually became a pain because you had to, like, think up stuff for them to do every day ... because you hadn't really planned anything." (05:09)

3. Building the AI Org Chart: The Multi-Agent Organization

• Org Charts are Evolving
  • Traditional roles are augmented with layers of AI "agents" beneath each human.
  • Ava: "What I teach is this idea of you have the org chart ... you up top, you have a bunch of your own AI ... and then your team under each of one of them, they have a bunch of agents that are underneath them." (07:56)
  • AI isn’t just an assistant—can also act as strategist or advisor, depending on the context and how it’s tasked.

4. Role Evolution: From Doers to Managers of AI

• Shifting Team Roles
  • As AI takes on more tasks, humans transition to managing AI outputs, oversight, and strategic direction.
  • John: "You talk about these agents, they're much more of a manager in a lot of ways. Managing the agents or managing the output, directing, overseeing, strategizing." (09:23)
  • Ava notes that predicting future organizational structure is difficult, but the key is adapting and creating new plans as the AI landscape evolves. (10:30)

5. Hybrid Intelligence: Partnership, Not Replacement

• Definition & Importance
  • Ava: "Hybrid intelligence ... means humans will always be central to decision making, with AI in a complementary supporting role." (11:38)
  • Every employee's relationship with AI will be unique and based on their needs and job functions.

6. Learning AI: What to Outsource, What to Own

• AI Skill Set as a Must-Have
  • Ava advises against fully outsourcing AI knowledge, comparing it to early computer literacy in the late 1990s: "The skill set of AI I don't believe is something that is just like something you outsource. It's something to say, I'm going to take some time to learn this ... it is just a skill set." (14:06)
  • Parallels with SEO: John: "You have to actually be smart enough or know enough about SEO in order to buy it. ...Otherwise you're going to get ripped off by people..." (15:18)

7. AI Implementation: Building an Actionable Plan

• Developing a Plan for the Whole Team
  • Leaders should provide guidance, frameworks, and learning opportunities.
  • Ava:
    • "Your team wants you to give them guidance on how to use AI because they don't want to spend their time, their nights and weekends, going through some course that they had to buy themselves ..." (16:22)
    • Leaders must structure AI learning as professional development, not just encourage ad-hoc experimentation.
  • Opportunity Mapping: Ava describes using ChatGPT to audit workflows and propose an “opportunity map” detailing where AI can assist, strategize, or advise on daily tasks. (17:20, 17:50)

8. Taskifying Your AI Onboarding

• Letting AI Help You Integrate AI
  • Ask AI: “Here’s everything I do—where could you help as an assistant, strategist, or advisor?”
  • Ava: “You can go into ChatGPT and say, hey, here's everything that I do every day ... And what it can do is create this opportunity map for you.” (19:05)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Macro Thinking vs. Practicality:
  "All of this like really big macro thinking of AI is just going to take over tomorrow and that's the end. And the reality is that ... is so much more tangible."
  — Ava (01:53)

• On Effective AI Task Delegation:
  "AI should take over your work just task by task. Don't make it any bigger than what it really is."
  — Ava (05:16)

• On Providing Context to AI:
  "How much context would I give this new VA I hired in order to expect them to do this job well? ... Looking at AI the exact same way as you did when you went to hire that VA."
  — Ava (04:01)

• On Hybrid Intelligence:
  "Humans will always be central to decision making, with AI in a complementary supporting role."
  — Ava (11:38)

• On Learning AI as a Core Skill:
  "The skill set of AI I don't believe is something that is just like something you outsource. It's something to say, I'm going to take some time to learn this."
  — Ava (14:06)

• On AI’s Nature:
  "AI is like a golden retriever. It's ready to go whenever you're ready to go ... It's our job to put the constraints on it ... and force it to funnel this intelligence through the specific guardrails that I need for this specific task."
  — Ava (21:02)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:53 | The Mindset Shift: Viewing AI as Task-Based Support
• 04:01 | Treating AI Like a New Hire: Context and Onboarding
• 07:56 | Restructuring the Org Chart for AI Agents
• 09:23 | Human Roles Shift to Managing AI Outputs
• 11:38 | Defining Hybrid Intelligence
• 14:06 | Why AI Should Be a Core Skill, Not Just Outsourced
• 16:22 | The Leader’s Role in AI Adoption & Staff Development
• 17:50 | Creating an “Opportunity Map” for AI Integration
• 19:05 | Using AI to Audit for More AI Opportunities
• 21:02 | The Golden Retriever Analogy: Guardrails and Human Oversight

Final Takeaways

• Start Small: Deploy AI one task at a time. Don’t try to overhaul everything in one go.
• Train and Onboard AI: Give it the same context, process, and clarity you would a new human employee.
• Reframe Tasks: View AI as hierarchical “agents” who can be assistants, strategists, or advisors depending on your needs and the context provided.
• Learn AI Essentials: Leaders and teams must build foundational AI literacy—don’t just outsource and hope.
• Map Opportunities: Use AI itself to help identify where it can provide the most value in your business workflows.
• Support Your Team: Guide staff, foster structured learning, and articulate how/where AI should be implemented.

Connect with the Guest

Ava Gutierrez:
Website: thinkwithai.com
Features: AI First Business System, Notion agents, and more resources

This episode is essential listening for business owners or managers looking to integrate AI practically, while also building their own—and their team’s—AI capabilities for a sustainable future.