My first consultation was with BA Start Arcade and Taproom in downtown SLO. The business combines an arcade gaming venue with a full-service bar and kitchen, hosting everything from corporate events to gaming tournaments. The owner, with ties to the tech industry and Silicon Valley, launched this business venture two years ago.
The consultation revealed some important insights about AI adoption in local businesses. Despite the owner's background, AI tools aren't part of his daily operations, citing the inability of AI to conduct tasks at a human level of quality. He believes that AI won't begin replacing jobs for another 20 years - I don't hold him to that ballpark prediction, but this perspective highlights the disconnect between the tech world and main street business.
Through discovery, I learned that a large aspect of the business is social networking. The owner has hired two full-time employees to run their social media pages. He emphasized the importance of creative approaches assisting in the pursuit of building name recognition. I asked Claude to create 6 months worth of weekly events and used examples of events that they've promoted in the past (Jenga night, Smash Bros tourney, Karaoke night, etc.) to assist in this process. Claude was able to come up with new ideas that were relevant to San Luis Obispo e.g, Fraternity vs. Sorority game night. We focused on this example, and in seconds, were able to generate several social media posting ideas and svg flyers. What surprised him was the iterative process of communicating with Claude. After Claude drafted the first flyer, we continued prompting several more versions until he received a result to his liking. We used descriptive language, and provided an example of a flyer that he's created in the past.
This underscores what I think is most important right now in communicating with AI systems - the ability to provide clarity and context. The improvements in performance are most noticeable when LLMs have a clear understanding of what you're looking to accomplish. I suspect this to be an area of focus – helping business owners understand that at their current stage, you should treat these systems as a highly capable assistant with amnesia. Context is key.
Going forward, I plan to develop a system prompt for Claude that will ask business owners quick hitters on their business, goals, and challenges. This way, these sessions will be more interactive. I found that there was some awkward idle time while I was typing a prompt. If I can conduct the discovery process through Claude, then shifting gears to potential use cases will feel more natural – for both the client and Claude.
Claude's computer use demonstration particularly resonated, showing how AI could automate various aspects of the owner's business operations, specifically business communications. This was the real "knock-your-socks-off moment." He showed me long lists of emails, texts, and Slack messages that he responds to. He envisioned a world where an AI system is integrated with his calendar and can act on his behalf, just like a personal assistant. I hope that I can have another visit with him when this is possible! I suspect it will be soon.
One clear challenge the owner faces is creative design - he has hired three artists for their pinball league logo without success. While we explored AI solutions for this, it highlighted current limitations in AI's creative capabilities because it couldn't quite create the logo he was looking for. We also conducted a competitive analysis of other Barcades within a two hour radius using DeepSeek's WebSearch feature. Though he found this interesting, he was able to point out a lot of inaccuracies in the analysis, both about his own value proposition and details about competitors as well.
We wrapped the session by sharing a beer and swapping stories about life beyond business/AI. I am very thankful for the time that he gave me. I'm happy to have my first consultation under my belt. I'm excited to build on this and meet with other clients!
