Is AI Coming For Your Customers & Your Business?

The annual Technology in New Zealand report was released last week, and two data points stood out:

• Total revenue from the tech sector increased by 9.9% YoY

• Employment of onshore staff decreased by 12.4% YoY

An astute observation from co-author Rhys is that AI has eaten those jobs, and that the tech sector’s revenue is likely to increase as it becomes more efficient, as jobs are cut.

AI is here; you just need to assess when it will impact you and how.

Here’s how to find out if you’re going to lose your job or customers to AI in 2026:

1. Head to ChatGPT
   

2. Use the following prompt:
   
   “You are a senior futurist, business strategist, and creative-industry economist. Analyse the most probable global and New Zealand–specific trends for 2026 across (insert your customer base e.g technology, AI, marketing, design, creative production, consumer behaviour, live events, and economic factors.
   
   Then apply these trends directly to my business: (insert your website e.g kjgrowth.agency)  — (a brief description of your business - a creative, content, and design studio working across event creative, storytelling, branding, design, visual development, stage concepting, and AI-assisted content production).
   
   Please provide:

   
   Macro Trends for 2026: The strongest 15–20 trends predicted for 2026 in AI, creative industries, marketing, consumer behaviour, live events, and digital storytelling.
   

   Industry-Specific Impacts: How these trends will reshape the work of design studios, creative agencies, and content producers.
   

   AI Threat Map: Identify where AI is most likely to compress my margins, replace services, or reduce the value of traditional offerings.
   

   Opportunity Map: Areas where demand will increase and where a studio like mine should double down (e.g., original concepts, human-led strategy, experiential creative, live-event innovation, brand worldbuilding, hybrid-AI workflows).
   

   Business Model Adjustments: What I should stop doing, start doing, and optimise to stay relevant and profitable in 2026.
   

   Skill & Service Evolution: Which new skills, offerings, and formats my agency should build in 2026 to stay ahead of AI commoditisation.
   
   Customers: We work with companies in a range of sectors can you please look at how AI will remove the need for our business in the following sectors (SaaS, F&B, E-commerce, Construction).
   

   Practical 90-Day Plan: A concrete roadmap with priorities, risks, and actions.
   
   Use real-world examples, tactical detail, and predictions grounded in current 2025 trends. Answer with depth and specificity. Do not speak in generics.”

The reading was relatively sobering for us but also reassuring, as I’ve now got a plan to move at pace.

Easy Business

Are you easy to do business with?

Out of everything I've talked about in this newsletter I think this may be the most overlooked aspect of a good business.

LLM's like Chatgpt or the vibe coding tools like Lovable really get this.

You can use their tools the moment you open their website.

They make it incredibly easy to do business with them.

I assume you're familiar with conversion rates.

The biggest factor in your conversion rates is not what you think.

It's not how much "intent" someone has on any given day to buy from you.

You see marketers talk about this alot "only 3% are ready to buy from you right now".

It's a lie.

Almost everyone who visits your shop, your website, your café is ready to buy from you, right now.

But they don't, because either they can't be bothered figuring out how to do business with you or they don't want to do the work required to do business with you.

In my experience, myself included, businesses get this part wrong because they don't look at this from the customer’s perspective.

They see themselves (their business) as the main character in people's lives and don't understand how minuscule and unimportant they are in most people's day.

They look past all those extra points of friction.

Here's a classic example.

For three weeks I've been trying to complete an accreditation course for social impact reporting.

It's a single-day course delivered online with a course facilitator.

They've rebooked me 4 times in the past 3 weeks.

Every time it's a new story about why I'm getting rebooked. No apologies, no offer to discount or reimburse me.

They haven't even bothered to ask whether the new course date will work for me.

They're making it very hard for me to do business with them.

The easiest way to see where your business may fall short is to ask -

What does someone have to do to get value from me?

Every extra step, minute of time, button click or decision you make that someone else has to endure decreases your chances of getting their business.