It's Time for a Hard Conversation

Salt Lake City · July 20, 2026

Straight Talk on What AI Actually Means for Your Business

I want to start with gratitude, but I have to be honest about something first.

Over the past year I’ve watched company after company slap “Chief AI Officer” on someone’s title overnight. I’ve sat across the table from a lot of them. It reminds me of what happened when Yelp and Google Reviews first showed up and suddenly everyone became a critic. Same thing is happening with AI. Everyone’s suddenly an expert.

Here’s the truth. Even the real AI experts are still learning the long-term implications of this stuff. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.

Early in my career I was handed a book that’s shaped how I think about every business conversation since, Building a StoryBrand, by Donald Miller. The core idea stuck with me. Customers don’t buy the best product. They buy the one they understand fastest, and in every good story, the customer is the hero, not the company. That’s the lens I’ve used on every partnership Black Star Syndicate has considered since 2022 and 2023, when the AI gauntlet really started. Every week brought a new company, a new deck, a new promise of transformation. We took a lot of those meetings. We said no to almost all of them.

That search is over, and I’m proud to share why.

I’ve partnered with GetLatest AI as Chief Strategy Officer. Justin Henriksen has partnered with us at Black Star Syndicate as our Chief AI Advisor, and we’re joined by Matthew Merrill.

When Justin and Matthew first asked me to join, I gave them my honest, kind of abrasive take. I told them the market doesn’t think AI is sexy. People are worried about authenticity, creativity, job security, what’s happening with data centers, and whether any of this is environmentally or economically sustainable long term. AI isn’t sexy. It’s difficult and it’s messy. But it isn’t going anywhere.

They didn’t get defensive. They took that feedback and built something with it. We put together eight specific verticals where AI is actually useful, grounded in the Utah Governor’s economic report done with the University of Utah, plus national research, then narrowed further based on what we were seeing in the field ourselves, construction and real estate, healthcare and life sciences, field service and trades, financial services, travel and hospitality, law firms, professional services, and manufacturing.

Justin brings the kind of background that makes this more than a good idea on paper. Before GetLatest, he directed Microsoft’s U.S. AI and Data partner ecosystem strategy, led U.S. operations at Crayon across a 51 million dollar P&L, and served as CEO of Blue Eye, where he grew recurring revenue 172 percent and turned a 250,000 dollar monthly loss into profitability. He already advises Black Star on AI strategy, so this partnership isn’t new territory for either of us. It’s the next step of something that already existed.

Timing matters here too. Every quarter I sit with real economic data instead of vibes, and the numbers say the same thing plainly. Utah’s growth is moderating, population growth down to 1.3 percent for 2026, real GDP growth forecast at just 1.9 percent nationally, homeownership at its lowest rate in decades. When growth was easy, a business could out-hire its problems. Slower growth doesn’t give you that luxury. Every missed follow-up costs more now, because there’s less new business floating around to cover for it.

The reason I trust them isn’t their resumes. It’s that they’re willing to learn, listen, change direction, and grow. Those are the same qualities that make an AI model actually good in the first place. A model is only as strong as what it’s fed and how well it adapts. Turns out the same is true for the people building the company around it.

If you’re wrestling with what AI actually means for your business, not the sexy version, the real one, I’d like to have that conversation with you. No pitch, just an honest one.

Consider this the latest hard conversation. There will be more. We’d rather have them with you than about you.

Economic data referenced in this piece is drawn from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s “Economic Insights: 2025 Year in Review & 2026 Outlook,” presented at the Utah Economic Outlook and Public Policy Summit, January 16, 2026, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah.