The AI Advantage
Workshop seriesOmaha
Omaha · Fall 2026

The AI Advantage

The practical path for implementing AI in your business.

Three modules, eight workshops — from understanding the AI landscape to putting it to work every day. Live demos, vendor-neutral advice, no coding and no jargon. Every session ends with something concrete you can do the next morning.

See the sessionsSee passes

Big companies spent billions on AI. Ninety-five percent of their pilots produced nothing measurable.

Source: MIT Project NANDA, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business, 2025

That isn't because the tools don't work. It's because a company with four thousand employees needs eighteen months and a procurement process to change how one team does one thing. You can decide on Tuesday and have it running Thursday. That's the advantage, and it's the one thing you have that they don't.

Using it takes three things in order: understanding what these tools actually do, then one project small enough to finish, then the habits that keep it going after the novelty wears off. That's the eight sessions, in that order.

Take the full series for $160, or pick the single session that solves the thing costing you the most time.

Passes

Buy by module or grab the full pass.

Module 1 Pass

2 sessions · Cut Through the Noise
$45
Coming soon

Module 2 Pass

3 sessions · Find Your First Win
$60
Coming soon

Module 3 Pass

3 sessions · Work Smarter Daily
$60
Coming soon

Workshop Pass

All 8 sessions · best value
$160
Coming soon

The 8 sessions

Tuesdays, 4:00–5:30 PM
Module 1 · Cut Through the Noise
Get oriented.

AI Literacy — Making Sense of the AI Revolution

Every vendor says their product is powered by AI. Some of them mean it. Understand what's actually underneath so you can tell the difference, read a pricing page honestly, and get more out of the tools you already pay for.

You'll walk away with: enough understanding of how these systems actually work to question a vendor's claims, read a pricing page honestly, and get better results from whatever tool you pick up next.
What we'll cover
  • What a token is, and how token-based pricing turns into a monthly bill
  • What a large language model is actually doing when it answers your question
  • Why AI sometimes states something false with total confidence, and how to catch it before your customer does
  • Where the information you type into these tools goes, and who can see it
  • The questions to ask any AI vendor, and how to judge whether the answers are any good
Tue, Sep 15
4:00–5:30 PM
Registration coming soon

AI Rapid Fire — See What's Possible

No theory, just live demos on the kind of work you actually do — with the prompts, the false starts and the fixes left in. You'll leave with a shortlist of what's worth trying first.

You'll walk away with: a shortlist of uses you watched work in the room, narrowed to the one worth trying in your business first.
What we'll cover
  • Live demonstrations of AI handling real small business tasks, start to finish
  • What the work actually looks like: the prompts, the false starts and the fixes
  • Where these tools perform well, and where they will waste your afternoon
  • Roughly what each of these uses costs to run at small business scale
  • A shortlist of the one or two ideas worth trying in your business first
Tue, Sep 22
4:00–5:30 PM
Registration coming soon
Module 2 · Find Your First Win
Get moving.

AI Forum — What's Working, What's Hard

A conversation, not a lecture. Hear what AI is actually doing in other owners' businesses — what's working, what they've abandoned, and what it cost them to find out.

You'll walk away with: ideas you talked through with other owners rather than read about — what's working, what they've given up on, and where your own sticking point fits. No obligation to present.
What we'll cover
  • What other owners have made work, in businesses about the size of yours
  • What they tried and abandoned, and what it cost them to find out
  • A working answer to something you are currently stuck on, if you want to raise it
  • How other owners handled the objections they got from their own teams
  • Where to go next, based on what is working locally rather than in a vendor deck
Tue, Sep 29
4:00–5:30 PM
Registration coming soon

Find Your First Win — From Idea to Implementation

Three ideas from a conference, none of them scoped, and by Tuesday the list is buried. Find the work AI can genuinely take on and scope your first project on one page before you leave the room.

You'll walk away with: your first AI project scoped on one page — what it is, who owns it, and how you'll know in 30 days whether it worked.
What we'll cover
  • How to spot the work in your business worth handing to AI, and the work that isn't
  • The difference between automating a process and augmenting one, and when to choose which
  • How to size a first project small enough that it actually gets finished
  • How to define success up front, so you know in 30 days whether it worked
  • Time in the room to fill out your own project page, with help from the facilitator and the group
Tue, Oct 6
4:00–5:30 PM
Registration coming soon

Making It Stick — Bringing Your Team Along

Bring your team

When a new tool fails at a small business, the software is rarely the reason. Get a repeatable way to bring your team through a change — including how to handle the person who isn't sold.

You'll walk away with: a repeatable way to bring your team through a change, run live on the project you scoped in session 4 — including how to handle the person who isn't sold.
What we'll cover
  • Why people resist a new tool, and why the stated reason usually isn't the real one
  • How to choose who tries it first, and why that choice matters more than the announcement
  • What to tell your team, when to tell them and what to leave out
  • How to handle the person who won't budge, without turning it into a fight
  • How to tell whether it stuck, and what to do in the first month if it didn't
Tue, Oct 13
4:00–5:30 PM
Registration coming soon
Module 3 · Work Smarter Daily
Make it stick.

Write Faster, Better — AI for Business Writing

Stop starting with a blank page. Build a repeatable method for getting a usable first draft out of AI — proposals, prospecting emails, payment reminders — that sounds like your business wrote it.

You'll walk away with: a method for getting a usable first draft out of AI — proposals, prospecting emails, payment reminders, project updates — including how to have AI build the prompt for you.
What we'll cover
  • A repeatable method for getting a usable first draft, whatever you are writing
  • How to have AI build the prompt for you, instead of hunting for the perfect one
  • How to give it enough about your business that the draft sounds like you wrote it
  • Where AI writing goes wrong, and what to always read before it reaches a customer
  • How to adjust your approach as the tools change, so the method outlasts the model
Tue, Oct 20
4:00–5:30 PM
Registration coming soon

Research Smarter — AI for Competitive Insights

Stop drowning in search results. Build a repeatable AI research routine for sizing up a competitor, a market or a long document — and learn to tell solid analysis from confident-sounding nonsense.

You'll walk away with: a research routine you can run on a competitor, a market, or a sixty-page document — and the checks that keep it honest.
What we'll cover
  • A repeatable routine for researching a competitor, a market or a long document
  • How to direct an AI research tool so you get something specific instead of generic
  • How to verify what comes back, and which claims to never take on faith
  • Turning a long document into something you can act on in ten minutes
  • What these tools cost, and which are worth paying for at small business scale
Tue, Oct 27
4:00–5:30 PM
Registration coming soon

AI Skills & Delegation — Making It Work for Your Team

Bring your team

Most of what runs your business lives in one person's head. Get a process out of yours and into clear instructions your team — or an AI tool — can follow, with simple checks so output gets reviewed before it reaches a client.

You'll walk away with: one everyday process turned into a clear AI instruction your team can run without you.
What we'll cover
  • How to get a process out of your head and into instructions someone else can follow
  • What AI has to be told explicitly that a longtime employee would have simply known
  • How to test an instruction and fix it when it produces the wrong thing
  • Where to keep these so your team actually uses them
  • One of your own processes, written up before you leave
Tue, Nov 3
4:00–5:30 PM
Registration coming soon
Location sponsor

Hosted by Core Bank

Your facilitator
Zach Nelson, Workshop Facilitator

Zach Nelson

Zach Nelson has built organizations from scratch into statewide operations and implemented technology solutions across a wide variety of contexts — from cash-strapped operations to compliance-heavy enterprises. He connects AI investments to revenue and operational outcomes, always mindful that the best tools are the ones your team barely notices. Zach is the founder and principal consultant at Lantern Strategic, and has been a SCORE counselor since 2018.

Why owners take this series →