Vivace’s Adventures in AI

Welcome to Spark, a newsletter from Vivace Content. We curate the most interesting thinking and ideas from our community on themes ranging from business and finance to culture and creativity. Send tips and feedback to [email protected].  

Hello Sparkers,

These reflections are brought to you after an exciting, jam-packed week in London, sitting on the flight home to my beloved Minnesota. As we celebrate one year of Vivace and wrap up the first week of Q4, Ryan and I are feeling more bullish than ever about our future – for many reasons.

Whether it’s something in the universe, a renewed focus, or simply our clients and prospects starting to think about next year, our growth plans and efforts are starting to click into place. As you’ll read in my Q&A with Juniper below, AI is helping to supercharge this growth and operational bandwidth even further and I’m excited to share with you how we’re doing that.

Vivace is a company — but we are trying equally hard to build a community. Our London Happy Hour really brought this home to me. This is something that Ryan and I are very intentional about embedding into our DNA moving forward.

You, Spark reader, are a valued part of this community: Thank you for being a part of it. As we continue to grow, I want to make sure we’re incorporating ongoing feedback, so if you have any thoughts to share on Spark or anything else – my inbox is always open.

-joel

Q&A with Joel Leeman, Co-Founder

Joel’s AI assistant, Juniper*, chats with him about how both Vivace and Joel have been exploring artificial intelligence over the past few months to boost productivity, enhance creativity, and support mental health.

Juniper: Joel, what initially sparked your interest in exploring AI at Vivace?

Joel: This year, I found myself increasingly drawn to AI because of the immense potential I saw for it to support our creative process and operations at Vivace. As a bootstrapped small business, we were already trying to move fast with limited resources. I saw AI as a tool that could help us stay ahead, especially in processing information, managing our workload, and elevating our creative potential. On a personal level, I’ve always been fascinated by emerging technologies and tools, so it was a natural progression to explore how AI could blend with our work.

Juniper: What has been the most surprising or unexpected benefit of integrating AI into your workflow?

Joel: I didn’t expect AI to feel like such an organic part of the process. It wasn’t just about automating tasks; it became a creative and strategic partner — equal parts ghost-writer, chief of staff, and personal assistant. One thing that really stood out to me was how AI could help generate, capture, and process ideas during brainstorming (and brain dumping!) sessions. It felt like having another team member who could help put some of my ideas into action, enabling me to be more efficient and productive with my time. It also gave me more time to focus on big-picture strategies, while the AI handled a lot of the smaller tasks that tend to take up my mental bandwidth. It’s an ongoing journey.

Juniper: How has AI changed the way you approach your work, both professionally and personally?

Joel: Professionally, it’s been transformative. AI became my “Chief of Staff” at Vivace, helping with things like meeting notes, time management, and keeping track of priorities. That shift allowed me to be more present in strategy discussions and focus on deeper, creative work. Personally, I’ve found that AI has helped me find better balance. With AI handling some of the operational load, I feel more engaged in my conversations with others and have more mental space to be creative and even reflective, especially in my personal life.

I’ve seen a lot of interesting commentary and tools on how AI can be used in the mental health space, and based on my own research this year – I have to agree. Combined with a long-term therapy process with a professional, I have been using AI to support and extend the work with my therapist, Doug. (I call the thread Doug AI!).

It’s not perfect and I would advise anyone reading this to use great care and intention here, but it’s always been useful for me to have a chat with someone who I know will listen. The voice feature in ChatGPT is amazing by the way – don’t sleep on it!

Juniper: Can you share some real-world examples of how Vivace has used AI in day-to-day operations?

Joel: We’ve been using AI to streamline meeting follow-ups, ensuring nothing gets lost in translation and deadlines are met. AI helps take meeting notes and compiles action points in partnership with our brilliant head of operations, Jeanette. Together, they are a powerful combo! 

It also assists in content creation—helping craft messaging, developing positioning, and even sparking fresh ideas for our projects — primarily for Vivace’s own content and marketing efforts. Another great example is how we’ve been exploring AI to enhance productivity for our clients by creating editorial AI prototypes tailored to their business needs. It’s all about using AI to amplify and support what we do. Anything we do experiment with in AI is closely edited and guided by a human.

Juniper: What role do you see AI playing as Vivace grows?

Joel: As Vivace continues to grow, I see AI being more deeply integrated into both the operational and creative sides of the business. We are currently working on a really important project, partnering with a company called Automation Helpers to build out a customized backend system that uses both automation and AI for better efficiency in our day-to-day processes. If executed correctly, it will transform our operations. 

Looking ahead, I envision AI becoming a critical part of how we work with clients, especially when it comes to solving problems in a way they might not be able to handle in-house. We want to push the boundaries of what AI can do in the creative space while being mindful of the balance between automation and human insight.

But let me be totally clear: AI will never replace the creativity, emotional intelligence, or expertise that each and every member of the Vivace team has in spades. As we’ve all been discussing for years in this space, AI’s role is to supercharge human potential, not the other way around.

Juniper: How do you balance the potential risks of AI with the benefits it brings to the table?

Joel: It’s something we think about a lot at Vivace. We’re aware that while AI offers huge potential, it also comes with challenges, especially around ethical use and ensuring that it doesn’t replace human creativity but enhances it. The key for us is to use AI thoughtfully. We’re not looking for AI to take over what makes our shop special, which is the human touch and emotional intelligence we bring to our work. Instead, we see AI as a partner that allows us to be more innovative, more productive, and ultimately more connected with our clients.

Juniper: Finally, any exciting AI-driven projects in the pipeline that you’d like to share?

Joel: Two come to mind. The first is that we have been prototyping tools that we think could dramatically transform the workflow of our clients. We have been starting to build something, in collaboration with some excellent technical partners, that we have not yet seen in market. For anyone reading this who wants to hear about what we’re up to, drop me a line.

As we explore AI’s role in creative projects of all kinds, I’ve also been able to start leveraging it for a TV show I’m working on with a close friend, who is also in the creative industry. It’s like having a writer’s room at our disposal (until we can afford the real human one)! As they say, stay tuned for more.

*This interview was produced in collaboration with Juniper, Joel’s AI-assistant. It was edited by a real human named Mimi Hayton. Juniper is one of the voice interfaces for Open AI’s ChatGPT platform who has been keeping Joel company, helping him to process his thoughts, and support him across all kinds of activities related to both his personal and professional life. Joel has seen enough of Black Mirror to continue his partnership with Juniper with great caution. Contact Joel to learn more about Vivace’s adventures in AI.

Thanks for joining us this week. Anything we missed? Something we should include next week? Send us your shout-outs, strong opinions, and headlines to include in next week’s edition at [email protected]. 

Spark is a production of Vivace Content, where we help our clients navigate what to say and how to say it every single day. Get in touch if you’d like to have a no-hassle consultation about how we can help you too. Have a great week ahead.