AI and the Future of Growth: Trent Gillespie’s Playbook for Business Scale
As businesses race to harness the power of AI and digital transformation in 2025, the challenge of scaling innovation while sustaining growth has never been greater.
Trent Gillespie is a distinguished Growth & Scale speaker, celebrated for his expertise in driving business transformation through technology and leadership. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Stellis AI and a former senior executive at Amazon, he brings unparalleled insight into the dynamics of innovation, growth, and scaling businesses in the digital era.
With a track record that spans from building global teams to accelerating AI-driven solutions, Trent has become a trusted voice for organisations seeking to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving marketplace. His entrepreneurial journey has equipped him with a unique perspective on what it takes to deliver sustainable growth.
In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Europe’s largest keynote speaker bureau, Trent Gillespie shares his insights on driving growth, scaling innovation, and leading businesses through digital transformation.
Q1. As a leader, what are the most important first steps to ensure successful AI adoption in business?
Trent Gillespie: “Well, the first thing is you need to learn it yourself as a leader. I have found that a lot of the leaders in many organisations have deferred it to somebody else to figure out.
“So, when I sit down with a new business that I’m launching AI into, the first task I do is I actually sit down with the whole leadership team, the C-suite, maybe even the board of directors, and I teach them how to use ChatGPT hands-on.
“What I find is that they have never done that in any sort of detail, and so it’s important for them to do it because then they begin to grasp how important that is as an organisation, and then how to even roll it out. They get really excited about it when they see what it can do.
“So, as a leader, it really begins with you. Figure out how to use it, become familiar with the tools and the capabilities, and then you can spread it out throughout your organisation.
“Then, I think the second thing that’s very, very important is to figure out why you want to roll it out and when. You want to not be that company that just says, “Oh AI, we just need to roll it out and just give it off to somebody.” You need to say, “We want to roll out AI because we expect it’s going to give us X amount of benefit in Y amount of time.”
“Maybe it’s productivity improvement, maybe it’s a particular team that needs to be able to automate a task — it could be any number of things. But be really clear about why you are doing it and in what time frame. Then set a goalpost. Say, “We want a plan that’s going to get that thing delivered by that time frame.”
“If you approach it intentionally that way, it’s going to begin the biggest transformation I think your company will ever go through.”
Q2. How can small and mid-sized companies harness AI effectively without the need for large budgets?
Trent Gillespie: “For small businesses, they’ve now got access to these AI technologies that were previously very expensive, and they’re now cheap because of generative AI. So, it’s very easy for organisations to get started — just $30 a month or so for your employees.
“The studies are showing that when you do that, your company can get immediate benefits, about a 43% improvement in productivity gains out the door, just by being able to improve how you do some stuff. What I see working with customers is that their employees who are using it daily get about a 20% improvement in productivity.
“Daily employees, 20% productivity, for $30 a month. I mean, there’s really not an investment with that level of ROI. So that’s how small businesses can do it. Start with just giving the tools, and then start evaluating the light automations.
“What I mean by that is, even within ChatGPT there’s some light abilities to automate things. Maybe it’s how to automate writing a template email that you send every single week, or preparing for a podcast, or whatever it is. Use the tool to accelerate those things.
“After you’ve got that figured out, go and buy some of the AI automation agents — again, $20–$30 a month — and all of a sudden you can automate your tasks with good reliability and scale.
“Pretty soon what you’re going to have is every employee is a manager of AI agents for $20–$30 each, and the power of your company just goes up.”
Q3. Many fear AI will disrupt jobs. How should businesses address this challenge while creating new opportunities?
Trent Gillespie: “Well, it’s a real issue. To be frank, it is happening. People are losing jobs, I want to be really clear about that.
“There was actually a situation that came up recently with me where I had a CEO of a marketing company reach out looking for some advice on AI and if they needed to get started.
“I had to tell her that I thought her business was probably going to be disrupted in the next 12 months if she didn’t take action now. That’s not very far away, and of course this wasn’t what this person expected, and they were pretty caught off guard with it.
“But the thing is, especially in industries like creativity and marketing, there’s a significant amount of change right now and organisations are figuring out how to do things faster and cheaper. So, you’ve got to be able to look at that so you can avoid some of the job loss that might come.
“The way I prefer to look at it, and I really suggest people think about this, is you’re going to be getting rid of some of the stuff that’s not fun — writing the emails from scratch, or writing a big long outline when you can get AI to do it. That can save you a bunch of time.
“But that means you can now invest your time into growth opportunities. What I mean by that is, now you can go out and grow your business, come up with some new products and services that you can create, move into an adjacent market, whatever that is — maybe it’s a new geography or just a different type of product line.
“What you get to be able to do now to prevent the job loss is to create those new things, and with AI it’s never been cheaper to do that. Everything from coming up with the ideas, to aligning your group and stakeholders, to actually building the technology, is cheaper than ever before in human history.
“So, take that work, get rid of the old stuff you don’t like, and start working on amazing growth opportunities.”
Q4. What’s the strongest reason leaders should prioritise AI adoption right now?
Trent Gillespie: “The compelling reason is that your employees are already using it. I find that about 40% of employees in a company today — knowledge worker employees — are already using it to support their work, even if the leaders haven’t told them it’s okay to do it or given them any support.
“That leaves your organisation not only a little bit at risk, because they might not be doing the right stuff with your data, but you’re also missing out on the opportunity of it. Your employees are finding it useful because they’re using it and they see the value it’s giving.
“So ideally, the leaders need to get out of the way. Instead of stopping adoption, empower them and train them and give them the support to use it in a really great way.”
This exclusive interview with Trent Gillespie was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
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