Trent Gillespie sits at the forefront of how businesses are adopting artificial intelligence to drive growth, efficiency, and long-term competitiveness.
With decades of experience leading technology and innovation at scale, including senior leadership roles within global organisations, he is widely recognised for translating complex AI concepts into practical strategies that business leaders can actually implement.
Now working closely with organisations navigating rapid change, Trent’s work focuses on helping leaders understand where AI delivers real value, how it reshapes productivity, and why intentional adoption matters more than speed alone.
As a trusted business speaker, his insights resonate with executives looking to future-proof their organisations without losing sight of people, culture, and commercial realities.
In the exclusive interview with The SpeakOut Speakers Agency, Trent Gillespie shares his perspective on AI adoption, leadership responsibility, and the opportunities emerging for businesses willing to act decisively.
Q1. What are the first steps a business owner should take to ensure they’re on the right path to AI adoption?
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 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. You can spread it out throughout your organisation. And then I think that the second thing that’s very, very important is to figure out why you want to roll it out and when.
“You don’t want to 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.
“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.”
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Q2. How can small and mid-sized businesses leverage AI without massive budgets?
Trent Gillespie: “So 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. 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 43% improvement in productivity gains out of the door, just 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.
“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 are 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 it 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. 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.”
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Q3. How do you address concerns that AI will disrupt the workforce and replace jobs?
Trent Gillespie: “Well, it’s a real issue. To be frank, it is happening. People are losing jobs. I just 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, and 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.
“That’s not very far away. 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. 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, right? 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.
“That means you can now invest your time into growth opportunities. 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. 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.
“Take that work, get rid of the old stuff you don’t like, and start working on amazing growth opportunities.”
This exclusive interview with Trent Gillespie was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
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