AI Forward, Not AI First - with Brian McHale

Plenty of companies have bolted AI onto how they already work and called it transformation. Far fewer have rebuilt the business around it. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle talks with Brian McHale, CEO and owner of Brandience, who bought a struggling traditional ad agency back in 2008 and spent the better part of two decades quietly rebuilding it around AI. His shop now runs eight AI agents for every human employee, cut prospect research from 45 minutes to under 10, and was among the first agencies in the country to earn AI ethics certification. And he did all of it from Cincinnati, not Silicon Valley—which might be exactly why it works. This isn't a story about swapping people for machines. Brian's approach is AI Forward, not AI First: humans stay at the center, and AI makes them better at what they already do. He and Dan get into the unglamorous reality of transformation that actually works—why ambiguity is the biggest source of AI mistakes, how guardrails free people to experiment rather than fence them in, why a leader's job has moved upstream in the content process, and what it means to know when to call a timeout. As Brian puts it, judgment only comes with experience. They also dig into agents and playbooks (and why a playbook is really just a workflow with an agent for each step), the internal bonus program that tied every employee to an AI project and delivered the best ROI Brandience has seen on anything, and the client conversations nobody saw coming—not "please use more AI," but "can I actually own this?" It's a grounded, refreshingly hype-free look at what rebuilding a business around AI looks like from the inside. Listen in and hear about... How "AI Forward, not AI First" keeps humans at the center of the work Why transparency and ethics certification became guardrails, not just signals The shift that moves a leader's role upstream in the content process Building playbooks out of single-step agents—and where to start Why experienced people know when to step in (and when to call a timeout) Notable Quotes from Brian McHale On keeping humans central: "Humans are at the center of everything we're doing still." "The first word that comes to mind for me is just transparency. Because using AI or not using AI either way is just fine." "If you don't know when to say when or when to call a timeout, which frankly really only comes with experience, then you're kind of crossing your fingers and hoping that the tool does what you want it to do." "My goal in life is not to have Brandiance be me sitting there with 50 agents. That sounds terrible." Resources and Links Dan Nestle Lilypath | Website The Trending Communicator | Website Communications Trends from Trending Communicators | Dan Nestle's Substack Dan Nestle | LinkedIn Brian McHale Brandience | Website Go Beyond | Podcast Brian McHale | LinkedIn Timestamps 0:00:00 Host's skepticism on "transformation" and intro to Brian McHale0:06:00 Brandiance's transformation: AI-forward, industry focus, balancing tech and people0:12:00 Navigating regulations, ethics, and AI adoption in healthcare and marketing0:18:00 Ethics in AI: transparency, authenticity, and employee guardrails0:24:00 Leadership responsibility: upstream involvement and AI policy guardrails0:30:00 AI operator training, evolving skills, and workplace adoption challenges0:36:00 Playbooks and agents: Brandiance's approach to AI workflows0:42:00 Agentic tools, Claude Cowork, and collaborative design system workflows0:48:00 Client expectations, ownership, and business implications of AI in agency work0:54:00 Governance challenges, AI engagement incentives, and employee-driven innovation1:00:00 Staffing, layoffs, overreaction to AI, and the value of experience in the AI era1:06:00 Closing remarks, where to find Brian McHale, show wrap-up (Notes co-created by Human Dan, Claude, and Castmagic) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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