I started Adia to help ambitious founders and SMEs be heardbe seenbe a success

If AI starts choosing financial products for us, how do you make sure it chooses yours?

I attended the GetFutureReady: The Great Rebundling event in London this week. Our client Philipp Buschmann, co-founder and CEO of AAZZUR, joined Alistair Cotton from Integrated Finance and Maulik Sailor from Innovify to discuss how AI and embedded finance are changing the future of financial services.

One of Philipp’s points particularly caught my attention. As AI agents become more sophisticated, we may increasingly stop searching for, comparing and selecting products ourselves.

Instead, we’ll tell an AI agent what we want to achieve and let it identify the options and potentially make the choice for us.

So what happens to brand?

Philipp’s view was clear: Brand, reputation and trust don’t disappear in an AI-driven world. They remain crucial differentiators.

As someone who spends every day helping businesses build exactly those things, I couldn’t agree more.

Because if AI becomes another intermediary between your business and your customer, being known matters.

Being credible matters.

And having a body of trusted, third-party evidence around your brand matters.

For years, businesses have thought about visibility largely in terms of “Will my customer find me?”

Increasingly, I think there’s another question we need to be asking: “Will AI know enough about me/my business - and trust enough of what it finds - to recommend me/us?”

That's why I believe PR, reputation and third-party authority are going to become even more important as AI changes the way we discover and buy.

The technology may be changing.

The need to be known and trusted isn’t.

Interesting times ahead...

Lovely to catch up with people I don't see often enough and meet new friends too: Martin Damaske, Matt Ball, William Lorenz, Paul Brothers, Isaiah Saibu. Thank you to BDO UK for generously hosting the event.

When was the last time you stopped and took stock of just how much your business has achieved?

As entrepreneurs, we're very good at looking ahead to the next target, the next challenge, the next opportunity.

We're often not nearly as good at looking back and recognising how far we've come.

And that's one of the reasons I think entering the Elite Business Top 100 SMEs (EB100) is so worthwhile.

As an EB100 judge, I'm not looking for the business with the flashiest story or the biggest numbers.

I'm looking for the story behind the numbers.

- What have you achieved? - What decisions did you make to get there? - What challenges did you overcome? - What impact are you creating - for your customers, your team, your industry or your wider community?

Don't assume your achievements speak for themselves. Tell us why they matter.

I spend much of my working life helping entrepreneurs articulate their value and tell their stories, and one thing I see time and again is just how difficult we find it to recognise what is remarkable about our own businesses. We're simply too close to them.

So if you're thinking, "I'm not sure we've achieved enough yet" - I'd encourage you to think again.

And remember, EB100 isn't only about reaching the No.1 spot.

Being named among the UK's Top 100 SMEs gives you independent third-party recognition of what you're building - credibility you can use in your PR, marketing, website, social media, pitches and conversations with customers, partners and investors.

If you're wondering how to make your entry stand out, I recently joined fellow judges Aine Rogers and Arti Halai, alongside Scott English, CFE, for a Virtual Pre-Entry Masterclass where we shared plenty of practical advice from the judging perspective.

And then get that entry started asap! You may be surprised when you sit down and take stock of just how much you've achieved.

🏆 Entries close 30th October:

Good luck!

Elite Business Adia PR Cisco

My husband has a habit of not listening to me sometimes... 😤

Selective hearing, some call it.

His sister can say exactly the same thing and suddenly he takes note. So, occasionally, if I really need him to listen, I tell her instead. 😉

Hopefully most of you have life partners with excellent listening skills, but perhaps you’ve experienced something similar with a boss or a client?

It turns out AI can be a little like my husband.

It pays more attention when other people say things about you (good and bad).

PR has always mattered because third-party endorsement builds credibility and trust with people.

Now, in the age of AI, that same third-party authority can also help influence whether AI knows about you, trusts you - and ultimately recommends you.

So you don’t just need to take my word for it anymore.

Ask ChatGPT, Claude or your AI of choice: “What makes a business more likely to be recommended by AI?” or: “How can PR influence whether an AI recommends a company or personal brand?”

Sometimes it helps when someone else says it. 😉

And if you want the longer explanation, Elite Business have kindly shared the recording of my session from Elite Business Live 2026 below. 👇