How AI Agents Saved Steven Bartlett's Company $1.1M and 65284 Hours

Recently, Steven Bartlett made a big splash about how his company saved over one million dollars using AI agents. What's remarkable about what he did is the way he engaged and led his workforce through the change process. This is a standout example of how companies can embrace AI in a smart, sustainable way. And here's is why this works so well:

• Executive leadership is fully engaged and committed

• Clear, concise metrics (goals and results) are communicated

• The company maps processes across the business to identify use cases that reduce routine work

• Employees are fully engaged and empowered to create their own use cases (bonus points for gamifying it into a friendly competition).

• No fear tactics. AI is framed as a tool to enhance, not replace, people in their current roles.

Strong leadership from Steven Bartlett made all the difference.

The body of his message

I gave away $20,000 and it saved our company $1,180,000 and 65,284 hours...

60 days ago I wrote a letter to my team about AI Agents👇🏾

✉️ In that letter I said the following:

Over the last few months, I’ve become convinced that we’re at the beginning of the biggest professional shift of our lives.

AI Agents aren't just a tool - it’s a new co-worker.

A new team member to help you win back time, and do more important work.

A new way of building companies.

So at FLIGHTSTORY, we’re doing something exciting: we’ve redesigning our business and launching a 60-day company-wide AI Agent competition.

✍🏽 The changes:

⟣ Every team is going to be given the support to learn how to integrate AI agents into their workflow (we will help to up-skill and educate you)

⟣ If you want to hire someone into your team at FLIGHTSTORY you have to make the case, in writing, why this role cannot be done by an AI Agent.

⟣ We’re shifting our hiring criteria from hiring technical skill alone to a greater focus on mindset, adaptability, initiative, creativity, and taste - traits that will be most useful in an AI world.

🎁 The competition:

⟣ For the next 60 days, we're going to support and educate you on how to build AI Agents. Matt Toland will be the key point of contact, and he will host town-halls and work directly with every department.

⟣ Every department at FLIGHTSTORY will present to the entire company what they’ve built at the end of the 60 days in a company wide presentation.

⟣ The team with the most impressive implementations of AI - judged by external (Nicole B. Meissner) and internal (Isaac Martin) AI experts - will win a $20k prize!

The results?

✅ 100% participation from all of our offices.

✅ 48 amazing AI tools created by our teams, across every department.

✅ 65,284 hours of productivity unlocked (that's over 7 years saved!)

✅ $1,180,232.83 in efficiency gains

Because they've saved $1.1 million by automating things they typically didn't love doing anyway - we have a bigger budget to invest in other things that are much more exciting; new projects, new hires, global expansion and improving our team benefits.

This wasn’t an AI competition — it was about inspiring a mindset shift. Making change fun, exciting and going on the journey of change together.

Yes we saved money and team time, but the most wonderful thing to see was how excited, fired up, engaged and happy people were to be learning something new that ultimately made their lives easier and made them more capable!

Feel free to copy any part of this for your company - I may publish the whole letter in full in the comments below if you guys want to see it!

Incredibly proud of to be a part of team FLIGHTSTORY ❤️