AI Isn’t Coming for Your Job, It’s Coming for Your Wasted Time There’s an enormous amount of noise surrounding AI right now, and depending on who you listen to, it’s either going to revolutionise our industry, or put half of us out of work. Personally, I think we’re having the wrong conversation. Rather than worrying about what AI might mean for our jobs in five or ten years, I’d much rather focus on the opportunities it presents for print businesses today. I recently delivered a presentation on AI, automation, and the future of print at PRINTING United Expo in Las Vegas, and one of the questions I posed to the audience was how much of their working week they spent doing things they probably shouldn’t still be doing manually. It’s something I regularly challenge the business owners I work with to consider, because the reality is that many of us are spending far too much time working in our businesses rather than working on them. Having spent over 25 years in the print industry and now working with hundreds of print businesses through my coaching and Print Mastermind community, I see the same challenges cropping up time and time again. Business owners are exhausted, their teams are stretched, and everyone seems to be constantly running out of time. Yet when we look at where that time is actually going, so much of it is consumed by repetitive administration, emails, quotations, customer follow-ups, and countless other tasks that add very little value. Now imagine getting just five hours of your working week back. What would you do with them? Would you spend more time developing your team, speaking to customers, finding new business, or perhaps simply enjoying a better work-life balance? For me, that’s where the real opportunity with AI lies. It’s not necessarily about what the technology can do, but what we can achieve with the time it gives us back. Don’t Automate Chaos One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make is investing in technology before they’ve addressed the problems within their existing processes. They introduce another piece of software, subscribe to the latest platform, or implement a new system in the hope that it will somehow transform the way they operate. Unfortunately, if your processes are poor to begin with, all you’re really doing is finding a more efficient way of making the same mistakes. In this edition’s Industry Tips, Colin Sinclair McDermott discusses the smart ways to use AI and how to not overinvest in solutions that may leave you with more tasks and admin than you had before Having been in the print industry since the mid-late 90s, Colin Sinclair McDermott entered the world of self-employment in 2004 and over the years that followed, experienced a number of highs and lows running his own print company, learning what does and doesn’t work. In 2022, he trained with The Business Coaching Academy to become a fully certified corporate coach with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches. Through The Online Print Coach, industry members can access an online training platform, Print Mastermind and private 1-to-1 coaching with Sinclair McDermott. www.theonlineprintcoach.com I recently worked with a client who had decades of experience in the industry, and was exceptionally good at what she did, but much of her business was still operating as though it were 1996. There were manual processes everywhere, systems that didn’t communicate, and far too much knowledge sitting inside people’s heads. Rather than immediately introducing new technology, we started by looking at how the business operated, identifying unnecessary steps, and improving the workflows. Only then did we introduce tools to support those changes. She’s now winning more work, increasing output, and working considerably smarter. It’s an important distinction because automation isn’t a substitute for good business management. Before investing in another system, ask yourself whether the problem you’re trying to solve is genuinely a technology problem or whether it’s actually a process that needs improving. INDUSTRY TIPS | THE ONLINE PRINT COACH 25 www.printmonthly.co.uk Issue 363 - November | December 2026
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