Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, and the pace of change isn’t slowing down. For business owners in the cleaning and restoration industry, the real question isn’t which AI tool to pick. It’s how to adapt, stay relevant, and keep growing when the rules keep shifting.
Dean Mercado, founder of Online Marketing Muscle, has a clear-eyed take on that challenge—and it starts not with technology, but with people.
“AI amplifies,” Mercado said. “It does not absolve.” That one idea runs through everything he teaches about AI in business. Use it well and it makes you stronger. Lean on it as a crutch and it’ll accelerate your weaknesses.
Mercado has identified three human skills that will separate businesses that thrive in this environment from those that fall behind. None of them are about knowing which platform is best this week.
Skill 1: Precision communication
Mercado calls the first skill prompt engineering, but he’s quick to broaden the frame. This is about how well you communicate—with AI, with your team, and with anyone.
“AI is exposing just how imprecise we’ve become,” he said. “We’ve trained ourselves in slang, shorthand, speed, half sentences, lazy instructions.” When you put vague inputs into AI, you get shallow, generic outputs back. The tool isn’t the problem.
The fix is what Mercado calls precision communication: asking better questions, giving clear context, defining what a good result looks like, and refining from there. It’s a muscle that takes practice, and one that pays off far beyond AI prompts.
“If you know exactly what you want and you ask better questions, you’ll likely have a better shot at getting what it is you want,” Mercado said.
Skill 2: Critical thinking and discernment
AI can sound authoritative. That doesn’t mean it’s right. Mercado is blunt about what he sees as a systemic failure: most people were never taught to think critically, and AI is making that gap more expensive.
“AI is just going to make us lazier,” he said. The antidote is discernment, the developed ability to tell the difference between mediocre output and genuinely good work.
Think about something you know well—coffee, baseball, your trade. You’ve built a standard for what good looks like in that area. Mercado argues you need the same standard for everything AI produces in your business.
“If you’re working with AI and you don’t know the difference between mediocrity and greatness, you’re in trouble,” he said. “AI loves pleasing you. If it can give you exactly what you want, it would love to do that. But if you’re not asking properly, it’ll give you what it thinks.”
That discernment also applies to strategy. Mercado noted that the hardest question he asks clients as a coach is simple: What do you want? Surprisingly few high-revenue business owners can answer it clearly, and the same gap shows up in how they use AI.
Skill 3: Systems orchestration
The third skill is the one Mercado calls AI orchestration, though he prefers a bigger term: systems orchestration. Think of a conductor in front of a symphony. Someone in your business needs to hold that baton.
“It’s not just about the tools,” he said. “Somebody has to be thinking bigger.” Too many business owners get stuck comparing platforms—ChatGPT versus Gemini versus Claude—without realizing that any of those tools can shine or disappoint on any given day. The real skill is knowing when to switch and why.
For cleaning and restoration businesses specifically, Mercado draws a useful distinction. Your office team will likely use AI more than your field technicians. But everyone in the company benefits from sharpening these underlying human skills. The owner, he said, must set the tone.
“You’ve got to set the expectation of what’s acceptable to you and what’s not,” Mercado said. “You need your team growing with their feet moving forward all the time.”
Don’t lose the humanity
Mercado’s broader warning is that businesses are getting “drunk on convenience.” They’re mistaking AI output for actual thinking, and in doing so, they’re hollowing out what makes them distinct.
“Everything is starting to come to mediocrity in the middle,” he said. “Those of you who are outliers, the ones willing to push—you’re going to be the ones who get noticed.”
His advice for those who feel anxious about AI: stop comparing yourself to whoever seems to be doing it all. Lead with your humanity first and then ask whether AI can help you amplify what you’re already doing well. That framing, he said, takes the fear out of it.
“Just because there’s a new fancy tool on the block doesn’t mean you have to change the kind of person you are,” Mercado said. “You always have to have controls in place that make sure you’re keeping the ‘you’ in the business.”
Without that, he said, there’s nothing to separate your restoration company from the next one, and then you’re competing on price alone. That’s a race no one wants to run.
AI amplifies. It does not absolve. That’s Mercado’s reminder, and it’s one worth writing on the wall.
Watch the interview and listen to the podcast:
