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What One Thing?
One business. One lesson. Every week.
Real businesses. Real stories. Real-time.
What One Thing? is the straight-talking weekly podcast for growing UK businesses with a team who are on the move — building, scaling, and figuring it out as they go.
Join co-hosts Hayley Baxter (Corbar Accounting) and Phil Davenport (Affirm IT) as they chat with fellow business owners and share their own lessons from the journey — the things they wish they'd known, the wins, the wobbles, and the one thing that made the biggest difference.
Each episode is 15–25 minutes of real-world insight, a few laughs, and practical takeaways to help you grow a better business — without the fluff.
🎙️ Expect:
- Honest interviews with business owners on the grow
- Topic episodes on key business challenges
- Straight answers, no jargon
- One clear lesson, every week
👀 Also on YouTube — because yes, it’s filmed too.
📍 Based in Derbyshire, speaking to businesses across the UK.
New episodes every week — follow to catch the next one.
What One Thing?
15 From AI Hype to Practical Wins: How Ewan Reid Used ChatGPT to Standardise Business Documentation
This week on What One Thing? AI, hosts Phil Davenport and Hayley Baxter sit down with Ewan Reid, Head of Utilis, an Amsterdam-based IT support company with over 21 years of experience helping growing businesses across Europe.
Ewan shares how he tackled one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses today — how to start with AI in a way that actually delivers results. Instead of chasing the hype, he focused on a simple, high-impact problem: improving documentation, SOPs, and internal consistency.
Through practical experimentation, Ewan and his team used ChatGPT Projects to create standardised, branded documentation in minutes — turning a time-consuming chore into a streamlined, collaborative process. The result? More efficient operations, better knowledge sharing, and a stronger foundation for growth.
Phil and Hayley unpack how this approach can be replicated by any SME — even if you’re not technical — and why documentation may be the smartest first AI project you’ll ever run.
💡 In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why “starting small” with AI delivers the biggest impact
- How ChatGPT can automate and format procedures, proposals and SOPs
- Practical steps to protect data security and privacy
- How AI-driven documentation helps you scale faster and reduce key-person risk
- The mindset shift from “AI replacing people” to “AI amplifying teams”
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- ChatGPT Projects (OpenAI)
- Utilis — IT Support for European Businesses
- Traction by Gino Wickman (mentioned in discussion)
👥 About the Guest
Ewan Reid is the Head of Utilis, a managed IT service provider based in Amsterdam. With over two decades in business, Ewan brings a hands-on approach to technology, favouring experimentation, learning-by-doing, and practical AI implementation over theory.
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