Things Rachel Woods Has Said on Podcasts

“But right now, if every new AI idea is coming to your table and your first question is like, what's the ROI on this? You are shutting your team down. You need to instead get them bought in the momentum.” — Rachel Woods, Build a Better Agency Podcast

Woods' advice for an agency owner's first step: get everyone turning a piece of their own work into a process AI can handle. She says that momentum is what later lets you pick the high-ROI projects.

Build a Better Agency Podcast · 2026-10-25 Permalink → Listen →

Build a Better Agency Podcast Around 1:02:05 into the episode

Rachel Woods

Not a lot.

Drew McLellan

Right.

Rachel Woods

But in an agency, I mean, sometimes that can be hard to find, right? Because you have packed calendars. But that's one of our programs is we run a launch program that takes 15 hours for people to get from there to there. But the best next thing you can do is get everybody on your team to be able to take something in their work and structure it as a process that they can hand off to AI where they actually now feel like they're building up kind of the operating rhythm. You need momentum because that momentum, everybody now feeling like, oh, okay, I kind of get this. I get where we're going. I'm bought in. That then helps you now pick the high ROI projects and focus the energy and effort to then work on the harder stuff. But right now, if every new AI idea is coming to your table and your first question is like, what's the ROI on this? You are shutting your team down. You need to instead get them bought in the momentum. Get

Drew McLellan

in the sandbox and play.

Rachel Woods

Yeah.

Drew McLellan

Yeah.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

“You should really, as a business, only need one AI tool. And it doesn't really matter which one. … If you zoom out, you know, three to six months, they all have all of the same features all the time. … My hot take is that you should go choose the tool that is most comfortable and common by the most people inside your company, not the most advanced.” — Rachel Woods, Build a Better Agency Podcast

Asked whether it matters which AI assistant an agency standardizes on, Woods says it doesn't. Her point is that putting the whole team on one tool gives everyone a shared language and stops the time lost to switching.

Build a Better Agency Podcast · 2026-10-25 Permalink → Listen →

Build a Better Agency Podcast Around 34:44 into the episode

Rachel Woods

Yeah.

Drew McLellan

…and rent the tech. Does it matter which of these tools an agency sort of locks into? And typically, when you go in and help an agency, are they mostly in one space, whatever, whichever one it may be, depending on their ecosystem? Or do you have them doing things in all kinds of different tools?

Rachel Woods

…shared language and people can start feeling like this is a team sport instead of like, oh, you're using Grockbot. Should I be switching over and wasting time learning Grockbot? Or maybe I just, they just mentally, you know, thinking about switching over, right? So you're wasting time with being spread out across tools. If you have to pick and you're kind of torn between like which tools to use, my hot take is that you should go choose the tool that is most comfortable and common by the most people inside your company, not the most advanced.

Drew McLellan

Okay.

Rachel Woods

And I know that's going to make you feel like, you know, especially if you're using it. At your point,

Drew McLellan

they're all advancing. Well, first of all, every freaking day they're launching a new version.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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