At Swift, we work with hundreds of sports facilities across North America. I’ve probably personally spoken to 1000+ facility owners, and in this process, I’ve seen a pattern emerge from the businesses just getting by versus those that are crushing it.
So.. what makes these businesses and owners different?
It’s not square footage, it’s not location, it’s not footprint. It’s not even their facility management software.
All of those things do matter, but above everything is an owner mindset. They understand the value of their time and are relentless in its use.
This is where AI can amplify that mindset and create new automated workflows to operate your business from a distance.
In this guide, I’ll show you 5 practical ways to use AI in your business. For those looking for a more detailed overview, we originally presented these ideas in our yearly webinar with the ABCA (you only need a free account to watch the recording).
Let’s jump in!
What is AI?
As long as you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the word “AI” in the last 2 years. “ChatGPT”, “Grok”, “Claude”, etc are all becoming popular assistants that people use daily. So much so that it’s become a meme.
Artificial intelligence is the broader term used to refer to the practice of building computers that can think, learn, and reason like humans.
It’s what allows computers to play chess, recognize cats in pictures, generate images, write blog posts, or help you change a tire.
What Isn’t AI?
More importantly, here’s what AI is not. There are a lot of problems with today’s tech, and also just flat-out misconceptions.
Some of the problems are getting ironed out over time, but these assistants are also usually:
- “Hallucinating” - often, you’ll have it trip out over the smallest mistakes
- It’s famously agreeable - it will often just agree with you even if you’re blatantly wrong
- And it’s definitely not magical, sentient, or the Terminator
Why is AI Having a Moment?
You might ask, we’ve had Siri and Google Assistant forever. So why am I hearing about it now, suddenly? Basically, in the last 3 years, thanks to Large Language Models (LLMs), these assistants have gotten way smarter.
Instead of just being able to check the weather or check last night’s scores, they can actually create.
This includes:
- Writing
- Photos
- Graphics
- Music
- Even videos…
Without getting into any of the details, essentially, these models are “trained” on the entire Internet and in that process, learn how to “parrot” or mimic the languages they come across.
All they’re doing is trying to predict the next most likely word, given a previous set of words.
For example:
The sky is ….. Blue
The dog wags its ….. Tail
Just knowing this is enough - it helps you understand how & why the assistant is telling you what it is, and helps you call “BS” if you see something that doesn’t make sense rather than trusting it blindly.
5 Practical Ways to Use AI in Your Business
And with that prior context, let’s get into the actual practical tips for your facility.
With each of these tips, we’ve basically gone ahead and done the diligence on which AI tools to use for which task.
There are a million options, so we’ve just done the grunt work ahead of time + seen what real facility owners are using, so we can give you the final answer.
It’s worth mentioning that all the tools I’ll share are free or have a free-to-use version. I’m not getting paid by any of them to call them out. I’m not going to say “use ChatGPT” for all of them. Although ChatGPT can do a lot, there are specialized tools for each task.
#1 - AI x Marketing (Social Media)
The easiest way to start using AI is in your marketing.
Everyone knows how important social media is in this day & age.
Creating content and posting constantly doesn’t just take time - it takes creativity.
For AI tools, there are lots of options here, Canva, Figma, etc but the best one I’ve found is Adobe Express since it actually creates the elements (instead of just an image) so you can manipulate/change them as you wish.
It gets you from a blank slate to something usable very quickly.
#2 - AI x Marketing (Branding & Website)
Alright, let’s move on to your website. A lot of facility owners resort to hiring a local web developer to build out their website.
If you’re tech savvy, you might do it on your own with Shopify, Squarespace, Framer, or Wix - but again, circle back to the owner’s mindset. Your time is valuable. Ask yourself… “Is my time best spent building a website?”
Today, there are AI website generators that can do 95% of the work for you.
Again, there’s a bunch of options here, and most of them actually aren’t great, or require coding knowledge for the last mile - so based on our research, the winner is Wix Vibe.
This tool actually blew my mind. As long as your initial prompt is detailed, the output is phenomenal. And the best part is, the output is entirely editable via a drag-and-drop builder. Super simple to use.
Check out this live site - it’s insane. And literally only took me 10 minutes, out of which most of the time was spent waiting. Obviously, you may want to tweak it, but the theme here is how to go from blank slate -> something to work with instantly.
#3 - AI x Marketing (Audio & Video)
This is a relatively new space for AI, but things are moving fast, and top facility owners are starting to experiment with this tech.
You can use this to:
- Create branded promo music for your social media content
- Create training footage for your staff, with your voice
- Start a player development podcast
This is a fresh space, but Suno has emerged early as the category leader. And it’s pretty wild what it can do.
As for video, this is probably the least useful AI-generated content for now. That said, the models are rapidly improving, and tools like Veed and Veo3 are creating AI video content that is almost indistinguishable to human created.
It’s also worth calling out that while video and audio AI are really promising, it also has high risks of abuse and copyright infringement. Like Uncle Ben said, “with great power comes great responsibility”.
#4 - AI x Business (Research)
I’ve avoided going to ChatGPT until now, but I’ve finally landed on it - with a twist.
Most people just use ChatGPT in its most basic form. It has modes that can be really handy when doing certain tasks.
For example, use “Deep Research” if you want to:
- Analyze the financials of your business
- Figure out which neighbourhood makes sense to open a new location
- Understand how your competitors in a given area are operating
#5 - AI x Scheduling (Front Desk)
Payroll is the biggest drag on your expenses, and managing staff is a headache regardless. You have online booking, but some people will still call - which means either you need to be on the phone, or you need to hire someone who will.
What if you could use AI to manage those calls for you?
Coming to Swift later this year is an AI Front Desk Agent - automatically fielding calls, answering common questions, and helping clients make bookings or reschedule existing bookings.
We shared a teaser of this feature as a working beta at the ABCA convention in January. Below you can see a live demo from the booth.
We’ll be sharing more updates on this as development progresses! If you’re interested in learning more and helping shape AI features at Swift, please signup for the interest form here.
About the Author
Jeet Mehta is the CEO and co-founder of Swift, the all-in-one sports facility management software. An engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo, with a background in mechatronics and a former Shopify Product Manager, he’s known to send Slack updates at 2 AM after finding the next AI coding solution to superpower our internal process at Swift.
