3 AI Strategies to Finish the Year Stronger, From Keynote Speaker Susan Frew

AI keynote speaker Susan Frew says the fastest way to finish the year stronger is to make three moves now: automate one process, recalibrate your goals with AI, and invest in your people. Not ten initiatives. Not a company-wide transformation. Three deliberate steps that compound between now and December.

“The businesses winning today aren’t waiting. They’re using AI.”

That’s Susan’s message in this month’s featured video, and she has the receipts to back it up.

Who Is Susan Frew?

Susan Frew is not your typical AI speaker, and she’d be the first to tell you (even though she admits she wears a black turtleneck as often as possible). She’s a former general manager for two countries at a Fortune 20 telecom company who left the corporate world and grew a plumbing and heating business 535%, landing it on the INC 5000 list and collecting 43 industry awards along the way. Yes, plumbing.

Today, she’s a Google AI Certified keynote speaker, a TEDx presenter, and the author of “Compete on Awesome with AI and Recoded: Transform Your Business DNA with AI.” LinkedIn Asia named her an AI Thought Leader after her videos on AI agents passed four million views. Her consulting work has helped clients find real money hiding in their operations: $133,000 saved on overtime billing with an AI-powered scheduling review, and $300,000 in late fees eliminated with a custom GPT that automated payments and alerts.

When she takes the stage, the numbers come with jokes. Susan built her reputation on making AI feel less like a lecture and more like a discovery, and audiences leave with tools they can open on their laptops that afternoon.

Strategy 1: Automate One Process

Susan’s first piece of advice is deliberately small: pick one process and automate it. Not a department. Not a workflow overhaul. One repetitive task that your best person quietly dreads.

The reason is momentum. Most companies stall on AI because they try to boil the ocean, spread the effort across a dozen pilot projects, and end up with nothing shipped. One automated process, on the other hand, produces a visible win. It saves measurable hours. It gives your team a success story to point at, and success stories recruit believers faster than any mandate from leadership.

Good first candidates: meeting scheduling, report generation, invoice follow-up, or first-draft customer replies. Susan’s own $133,000 overtime discovery started as exactly this kind of single, contained project.

Strategy 2: Recalibrate Your Goals with AI

The goals you set in January were built on January’s information. By midsummer, you know more: which customers actually renewed, which product line surprised you, where the pipeline got soft. Susan’s second strategy is to feed AI that reality and let it help you re-plan the back half of the year.

This is where AI earns its keep as a thinking partner rather than a task robot. Leaders can use it to pressure-test forecasts, model what happens if a strong quarter repeats or a weak one continues, and surface the questions the original plan never asked. The companies that finish the year stronger aren’t the ones that set the best January goals. They’re the ones that revised fastest when the goals met reality.

If you’re reading this at the halfway mark of the year, that’s not a coincidence. It’s the single best moment on the calendar to run this exercise.

Strategy 3: Invest in Your People

Susan’s third strategy is the one that separates her from the doom-and-gloom AI headlines: the winners aren’t replacing their teams, they’re upgrading them.

Her Recoded framework maps an organization’s history, habits, tech stack, and people, then asks a pointed question: what could your best employees do if the repetitive work disappeared? She calls the answer the human dividend. Automation without training produces anxious employees and abandoned software. Automation paired with investment in people produces teams that hunt for the next thing to improve on their own.

Practically, that means budgeting for AI training the same way you budget for the tools, and letting the people closest to the work choose what gets automated next. Susan’s Pilot, Measure, Scale approach turns skeptics into champions precisely because the skeptics get to run the pilots.

What Susan Frew Brings to the Stage

Here’s the part event planners love: Susan builds a custom GPT for every conference she keynotes. Your attendees don’t just hear about AI. They talk to an AI trained on your event, live, during the session. It’s the difference between a speech about swimming and getting in the pool.

Her keynotes, including Recoded and Compete on Awesome with AI, fit conferences, leadership summits, sales kickoffs, and association meetings, and she’s a sought-after emcee as well. Audiences consistently describe the same combination: genuinely funny, zero jargon, and strategies specific enough to start Monday morning.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Susan Frew? Susan Frew is an AI keynote speaker, former Fortune 20 telecom general manager, and INC 5000 business owner who grew her company 535%. She is Google AI Certified, a TEDx speaker, and the author of Recoded and Compete on Awesome with AI.

What does Susan Frew speak about? Practical AI strategy for businesses: automating processes, using AI for planning and decision-making, and preparing teams to work alongside AI. Her keynotes are hands-on and audience-interactive, including a custom GPT built for each event.

What are Susan Frew’s three AI strategies for finishing the year stronger? Automate one process to build momentum, recalibrate your annual goals using AI and your mid-year data, and invest in your people so automation upgrades your team instead of unsettling it.

Is Susan Frew a good fit for audiences that aren’t technical? Yes. Her signature skill is translating AI into plain business language with humor. She built her reputation speaking to trades, associations, and small-business audiences, not just tech companies.

How do I book Susan Frew for an event? Contact Eagles Talent Speakers Bureau to check availability. Our team will confirm her availability, fee range, and the best format for your event.

Ready to Bring Susan Frew to Your Stage?

If your organization needs a speaker who makes AI feel possible instead of terrifying, Susan Frew belongs on your shortlist. [Check her availability here → speaker page link] or call Eagles Talent Speakers Bureau at 973-313-9800. Your attendees will leave with strategies they can use before their flights home!