Stop Using AI Like Google: What a Chief AI Architect Wants Every Small Business Owner to Know

You've got ChatGPT. Maybe Claude, too. Possibly Gemini sitting open in another tab. And you're still not sure you're getting much out of any of them.

Here's what Conor Grennan — former Chief AI Architect at NYU Stern School of Business and founder of AI Mindset — would say to that: the problem isn't your tools. It's your behaviour.

Grennan was recently a guest on the Silicon Valley Girl podcast (hosted by Marina Mogilko), and the conversation is one of the most practically useful AI discussions I've come across. His core thesis is deceptively simple — and most people completely miss it. Most people aren't behind on AI because of tools; they're behind because of behaviour. They keep using AI like Google. Apple Podcasts

That single reframe changes everything.

The treadmill problem — and why buying a tool doesn't fix anything

Grennan uses a great analogy here. Imagine buying a treadmill — the moment you click purchase, you feel the transformation is guaranteed. But the reason we're not in shape has nothing to do with whether or not we own a treadmill. AI Mindset

Signing up for ChatGPT Plus is the same thing. The subscription doesn't change how you work. Only how you show up to the tool does.

For small business owners, this lands hard. Most of us have grabbed an AI tool during a busy week, typed a quick question, got a mediocre result, and quietly decided "AI isn't really for me." But the tool didn't fail you. You just Google'd it.

The biggest mistake: treating AI like a search engine

With Google, users type in a command and get an aggregation of information from across the internet. Generative AI, in contrast, responds to queries through prompts and conversational language to create a response or summarise information. Newsweek

The distinction sounds small. It's massive in practice.

When you treat AI like a search engine, you ask short, transactional questions and get shallow answers. When you treat it like a thinking partner — someone you can brief, challenge, iterate with, and push back on — you get something genuinely useful.

Using AI tools merely as search engines limits their potential. This approach fails to leverage AI's conversational capabilities and its ability to provide nuanced insights. i4cp

Think about how you'd brief a smart colleague on a task. You'd give them context. You'd explain the goal. You'd tell them what a good result looks like. That's exactly how you should be prompting AI.

The G-CEO framework: a practical starting point

Grennan's course teaches a straightforward prompting framework that's perfect for small business owners who want results without a PhD in AI: Goal, Context, Examples, Outputs — a workhorse framework you can't go wrong with. AI Mindset

Here's what that looks like in practice for a small business:

Goal — What do you actually want the AI to do? Be specific. "Write a social post" is vague. "Write a Facebook post that promotes our end-of-season sale to existing customers who haven't bought in three months" is a goal.

Context — Who are you? Who's your audience? What's the tone? The more you give, the better the output. AI doesn't know your business unless you tell it.

Examples — Share a piece of content you've written before that worked. Show the AI what "good" looks like for you.

Outputs — Tell it exactly what you want back. One post or three options? Short or long? Formal or casual?

Run any prompt through that framework and watch your results improve immediately.

The 'Hi-Thanks-Great' mindset shift

One of Grennan's most-cited ideas is what he calls the Hi-Thanks-Great Framework — a prompt approach focused on getting your brain ready to interact with your large language model as though you're conversing with a human. AI Mindset

This sounds obvious. It isn't. Most of us still type at AI like we're filling in a form. Short. Clipped. No context. No warmth.

When you shift into conversation mode — when you treat the AI like a smart team member you're briefing — the whole interaction changes. You start iterating. You push back on answers that aren't quite right. You say "that's close, but can you make it warmer?" or "actually, let's go a different direction — here's why." That's where the real value lives.

AI isn't a use case. It's a new way of working.

Grennan warns against what he calls the "use case trap" — the tendency to think of AI as something you pull off the shelf for specific tasks ("I'll use it for social posts, but not for much else"). He urges professionals to stop focusing on narrow use cases and instead look for opportunities to integrate AI into all aspects of their work — from writing emails to planning, strategising, and more. OpenAI Forum

For a small business owner, this is a genuine unlock. Once you stop thinking "what can AI do?" and start thinking "how do I work differently with AI alongside me?", the daily wins start stacking up fast.

You can transfer your AI memory across platforms

One practical tip from the Silicon Valley Girl episode: you're not locked into one AI tool, and you don't have to start from scratch every time you switch. Grennan explains how to transfer your AI memory across platforms — from ChatGPT to Claude to Gemini — in minutes. Apple Podcasts

The implication for small business owners is significant. You can build up context, preferences, and working knowledge inside one AI tool, then carry it across to another without losing everything. It's worth experimenting with the best tool for each job — Claude for writing and nuanced thinking, ChatGPT for breadth and speed, Gemini for anything tied to Google Workspace — rather than defaulting to one out of habit.

The bottom line: behaviour beats tools every time

The key insight from Grennan's work is that the barriers to AI adoption are not technological but behavioural. OpenAI Forum, and that's actually good news for small business owners, because behaviour is something you can change starting today — without upgrading your subscription, buying a new app, or doing a course.

Start here:

• Brief your AI like you'd brief a person. Give it context, a goal, and a clear sense of what success looks like.

• Stop asking one-line questions. Use the G-CEO framework (Goal, Context, Examples, Outputs).

• Iterate instead of accepting the first result. Push back. Ask for options. Say "that's not quite right — here's what I mean."

• Use AI daily, not just when you're stuck. The more you engage with it, the more useful it becomes.

The tool is already good enough. The question is whether you're showing up to it with the right mindset.