Nikonomics - The Economics of Small Business 285 - Best of 2025! How to Think Like AI with John Long
Mar 10, 2026
John Long, co-founder of think.ai who builds AI agents to automate business calls, texts, and emails. He discusses which models and tools power their agents. Short takes cover agent realism, live demos, use cases beyond sales, onboarding agents like employees, latency tuning, integrations, and why adoption will accelerate.
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AI Should Be A Team Member
- AI acts best as a team member rather than a replacement for humans in business processes.
- Harvard study of 776 Procter & Gamble workers showed individuals using AI matched or outperformed teams without AI and teams with AI greatly outperformed teams alone.
Think.ai Was Built To Solve Their Own Sales Pain
- John Long and his cofounder built their AI agent initially to replace their physical security company's pre-sales motion and qualifying work.
- They stitched together multiple tools and a HighLevel CRM to automate texting, calling, emailing and booking qualified appointments for themselves before launching think.ai.
Who Benefits Most From AI Agents
- Ideal customers have documented processes, staff currently running those processes, and money spent moving leads through them.
- This makes think.ai useful for businesses from home services to HR because agents automate repeatable communication-heavy workflows.