Last month, the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii put on an AI basics workshop for small businesses, which some have called the backbone of the U.S. economy.
Evan Patek, who co-owns leadership development firm Tailored Leadership Solutions, attended the event.
He sat down with HPR’s Kevin Allen to talk about the role of AI for local entrepreneurs, saying that for many of them, it’s a mixed bag of trying to stay human while using the tools available to stay alive.
Interview Highlights
On using AI across industries
EVAN PATEK: It's fun to see how the different problems present for each company, and how they're thinking about, how do you solutionize that using AI? But a lot of people are automating things like billing, or there were talks about marketing campaigns, how do we reach out to these people, but we still want to feel human, we don't want it to be this cold message that goes out. And so there's a lot of just fine tuning, I think, that has to be done.
But it's interesting to watch every industry trying to figure out how do they utilize it. I think the common thing that I got from a lot of the people there was, AI is coming, we want to be cautious, but we also want to use it, so how do we use it, right? And we don't know what we don't know, so what's the best way for people who are running fitness centers and property management and leadership development, who don't have the time and energy to learn, how does AI really work? I think it's a really fun way to see these people trying to figure out where does this fit, and get educated in a way that benefits their business.
On maintaining humanity while using AI
PATEK: I think in the broadest sense, most entrepreneurs, at least here in Hawaiʻi, at least the small businesses, I think they want to do right by the community. And so, a lot of them, I think, recognize that AI is a tool that is there, hopefully, to help them promote and send their message out, whatever that is...
They're not using it to optimize price to the minute. They're using it to really figure out, what are the things that I can do to save me time or money that allow me to do whatever my mission is here, and I think that's a really cool story. And I think as long as the entrepreneurs and the small business owners don't forget what they're trying to do, the tool will help accelerate whatever their mission is, and I think that's great.
On AI as training content for clients
PATEK: We actually want to encourage people to really focus more on the human skills, right? I think if you look back over the last 30, 40 years, as technology has accelerated, our leaders have moved farther and farther away from human skills, and we've moved more into technical skills. How do I write emails and do the technical work?
And so, what we're actually doing is not, it's not in opposition to AI, but it would be disingenuous at this point, I think, for us to say, but also we'll teach AI, right? The idea is we're leaning all the way back the other way. We're trying to pull the pendulum back to how do we teach you to be more empathetic, how do we teach you to create a culture of accountability, or whatever you want to talk about. And I think trying to default to, "Well, how do I use AI to do that more?" is basically counter to that message.
This story aired on The Conversation on Sept. 3, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Annabelle Ink adapted this story for the web.
