Brad Costanzo is the Founder and CEO of Accelerated Intelligence AI, a consultancy that helps businesses integrate artificial intelligence to drive growth, innovation, and efficiency. With a background in investment advisory at Prudential Investments and a Certified Investment Management Analyst designation from The Wharton School, he brings a wealth of experience to his ventures. Brad has a history of successful entrepreneurial endeavors, including strategic exits and the founding of Costanzo Marketing Group and Costanzo Capital. He is also the creator and host of the Bacon Wrapped Business podcast, sharing insights on business growth and innovation.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [3:53] Brad Costanzo shares his early struggles as a financial advisor lacking marketing skills
- [9:25] Brad explains the dual nature of AI
- [11:10] The impact of AI on various industries
- [14:19] Brad shares his methods for staying updated on AI tools
- [17:06] What is the five-bucket framework for categorizing AI tasks?
- [23:18] The importance of identifying bottlenecks and delegating tasks to AI
- [26:44] How did one client save three months of work annually using AI?
- [29:07] Master the MAC Method: Mentor, Assistant, Critic for AI
- [33:08] How Brad uses AI as a thinking partner rather than just a productivity tool
In this episode…
Many entrepreneurs chase growth by stacking more tactics over an already overloaded business model. But what if the real bottleneck isn’t action but thinking? Instead of asking, “What do I do next?” What if the better question is, “What should I be thinking about differently?”
Brad Costanzo, strategic advisor and expert in opportunity engineering, breaks down how shifting your mindset can create outsized results. Brad shares how asking better questions, leveraging AI as a thinking partner, and focusing on frameworks over formulas can simplify growth and amplify influence. He also recounts how one client saved three months of work annually by using AI to analyze data — proving that strategic thinking paired with the right tools can transform a business.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Brad Costanzo, Founder and CEO of Accelerated Intelligence AI, about leveraging AI for business growth. Brad shares insights on influence, advisory thinking, and opportunity mining. They also discuss how entrepreneurs can successfully integrate AI into their operations to not only keep up but thrive in an AI-driven world.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Brad Costanzo: LinkedIn | Website
- Accelerated Intelligence AI
- Bacon Wrapped Business
Special Mention(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “I love looking for leverage points. AI is the ultimate leverage point to do less but achieve more.”
- “AI gives you the ultimate leverage. It’s not about replacing intelligence, but enhancing your thinking and execution.”
- “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I help separate the signal from the noise with AI.”
- “The internet changed things at a snail’s pace compared to AI. This is the shiny object you can’t afford to ignore.”
- “AI democratizes access to opportunity. If you have an idea, you now have the tools to create your own opportunity.”
Action Steps:
- Ask better questions to uncover hidden opportunities: Shifting your focus from answers to powerful questions can open new pathways for innovation and growth. It encourages deeper thinking and reveals insights that surface-level tactics often miss.
- Use AI as a thinking partner, not just a tool: Treating AI as a collaborator can help you brainstorm, analyze, and optimize ideas more efficiently. This expands your cognitive capacity and saves time on decision-making.
- Focus on frameworks instead of formulas: Frameworks provide flexible thinking models that adapt to changing situations, unlike rigid step-by-step tactics. This helps you solve complex problems with clarity and consistency.
- Shift from expert to trusted advisor: Positioning yourself as a strategic advisor builds stronger client relationships and opens doors to higher-value opportunities. It creates long-term trust rather than short-term dependence on your knowledge.
- Engineer opportunities instead of chasing them: Designing your success roadmap gives you control over direction and outcomes. This proactive mindset helps avoid distraction and aligns actions with high-impact goals.
Sponsor: Rise25
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Episode Transcript
Intro: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to leverage AI in your business and how to leverage these creative and productivity tools that come through AI in your business without getting overwhelmed. My guest today is Brad Costanzo. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
John Corcoran: 00:17
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:34
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. As you know, every week I get the privilege of talking to smart founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs from all kinds of companies. If you check out the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, lots of great episodes back there.
And of course, before we get into this episode, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help businesses to give to and connect their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast. We are the easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do three things: strategy, accountability, and full execution.
And I know Brad has been involved in the podcasting world for a lot of years and gets a lot of value out of it. I do as well, and it’s just such a great tool for exactly what we’re doing here today. Having a conversation and sharing some interesting things that someone is working on. And Brad’s going to be telling us all about what he’s been doing in AI for the last couple of years, so I’m really excited about that. But if you want to learn more, you can go to our website, Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
All right. Let me get into our guest here today. His name is Brad Costanzo. He’s the Founder and CEO of Accelerated Intelligence AI and Costanzo Marketing Group. He’s an AI and business innovation consultant who helps organizations with leveraging artificial intelligence to drive specific business growth.
He’s got a varied career, has worked as a financial advisor and done commercial real estate consulting. So that kind of background helps to color the work that he does. And Brad, I’m excited to have you here today coming from beautiful San Diego. And I always love to get to know what people were like when they were younger, when they were a kid. You grew up in the Midwest, and funny story, your dad had grown up mowing lawns, so he’s like, you’re going to mow lawns and make money mowing lawns. And you were allergic to grass. So that doesn’t sound so, like so much fun to me.
Brad Costanzo: 02:26
Yeah, it wasn’t fun. I was like, oh man, can I just go get a job? Like at the movie theater or something like this, like my friends would do? Like that sounds fun. He’s like, no, you’re going to go learn how to work for a living. And I was also allergic to the grass, so I was lazy and it was hot. And, you know.
John Corcoran: 02:39
It’s hot. Yeah. In the summertime.
Brad Costanzo: 02:41
Yeah, yeah. So I had a couple. I had a couple of buddies that I would like. I put ads in the newspaper, somebody’d say, yeah, mow your lawn for 20 bucks, and then I’d call my buddy Nate up. Hey, Nate, you want to make some money?
I’ll pay you $10 to go take your stuff over here and mow this lawn. And then I had another friend, Brandon, do that same thing to him. So early on, I was kind of like delegating and contracting this stuff out. Now, if I was a smart entrepreneur back then and not just kind of a lazy teenager, I would have just scaled up and hired like I created an entire company. I spent most of my time playing Nintendo and staying inside in an air conditioned house drinking lemonade while they did my work.
But it was, you know, that I did this with snow. You know, shoveling snow in the winter, mowing grass in the summer. And I think the only job I had when I was like 16 years old, I got fired from probably being like a bad employee. I’m not really the best employee, and I don’t think most entrepreneurs are or always off doing our own stuff. But yeah, I guess I had kind of the entrepreneurial seed most of my, most of my childhood.
And, you know, then I got you talking about a financial advisory. When I was 25 years old, I became a financial advisor for Prudential Securities. And the thing is, although I was an employee and working in a professional role, those roles 100% commission are very entrepreneurial. So you still had to, you know, you still had to, you know, you eat what you kill.
John Corcoran: 04:11
You kill. Yeah.
Brad Costanzo: 04:12
Bingo. And then I was awful. I was really good at actually advising on finance. It was a passion of mine. And I was really good at working and talking to the people and selling.
I was awful at marketing. I didn’t know how to generate leads outside of just, you know, you know, hopes and prayers. I was bad at that part. And it wasn’t until then I started my first business. It wasn’t, you know, in the digital space.
It was much more in the commercial real estate space. But it was I’m going to start a business going out and creating. I’m just going to go sell it. I’m going to find a service that is really in high demand with commercial real estate owners. It happened to be called cost segregation, for what it’s worth, and it was relatively new back then.
And I just went out and I sold something that I only had, like tip of the iceberg knowledge about. And then I contracted it to the companies who would do it. And then that kind of led out of the financial advisory career into the digital marketing and publishing space.
John Corcoran: 05:03
Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because you are known for marketing now. So did you.
Brad Costanzo: 05:08
I was.
John Corcoran: 05:08
Self-taught eventually. I mean, how did you overcome that hurdle to get better at it?
Brad Costanzo: 05:13
Well, I yeah, I knew I wasn’t good at it and I was doing a bunch of real estate investing as well, and I was just, I just didn’t know anything about lead generation and whatnot. And then read the Four Hour Workweek. He talked about, you know, what Tim talks about in that book. And I was like, oh, I want to do this. So I just cut my teeth.
I said, I’m going to create an info product and just use it as a laboratory to see how to learn how to market. And I just, I used that, built it up and, you know, probably doing about a half $1 million in revenue after a couple of years. It was pretty good. Sold that business and then kind of went on to the next thing. But throughout that I started to learn, you know, marketing and lead generation and kind of the mechanics of building a business.
I was always just good at, kind of like kind of the hustle mentality thrown me in there, let me sell, let me talk to people and schmooze. But I didn’t know about the mechanics of business. Now I know a couple more things about that.
John Corcoran: 06:05
Well, I certainly feel the same way. Like eventually you figure it out after enough go rounds of down markets, which creates some painful experiences. Absolutely. You know, I mean, well, you were in real estate. It looks like you were in real estate in the kind of dot not past.com, but rather.
Brad Costanzo: 06:23
2003 four, five ish, something like that.
John Corcoran: 06:27
Yeah. Because 0708 was kind of a financial meltdown. What were you doing then?
Brad Costanzo: 06:31
Yeah, I had gotten out of it then and I had funny enough, I had almost completely got insulated from that because I actually saw the writing on the wall. I sold all my stocks in 2007. Best, you know, move I’d made to that point. And then I started the digital marketing stuff. So I was out of real estate outside of the house I owned.
But, you know, prior, like 3 or 4 years back in 2000, I lost everything I had in the stock market. I was a financial advisor, and I lost everything because I was like, oh, margin looks fine.
John Corcoran: 07:01
You were. Oh, because you were. No margin investing on margin. Okay.
Brad Costanzo: 07:05
Got leverage, liquidated me. And then I saw a bunch of friends making money with real estate, house flipping and rehabs. I didn’t know anything about it. So I googled a real estate investing course and I found the first thing on Google. It was an ad I bought that I got halfway through . I stumbled across some dude who had three houses for sale. I bought all three and I was like, oh damn, what do I do now? And I called my dad. I was like, I don’t know how to rehab houses, do you? So then we rehab the houses I made, like.
John Corcoran: 07:34
Were they in really bad shape? These three houses.
Brad Costanzo: 07:36
Yeah. They weren’t too bad. They’re bad enough, right? Bad enough. But they weren’t like complete tear downs or anything.
So it was enough that my dad and I, and then a contractor or two would come and do the work. But that’s kind of like being. One of my strengths is I’m very much of a quick start. Like a lot of entrepreneurs are. I jump in and then I’m and then I’ll.
John Corcoran: 07:55
Figure it out as I go down.
Brad Costanzo: 07:57
Yeah, yeah. What do I do now? Yeah. I gotta say, it’s been a superpower. It’s also exhausting because I find myself still doing that, like I’m here. Yeah. Oh, damn. What’s. But there’s nothing like that pressure. It kicks you in the butt like it’s a sink or swim. You’re in. You’re in the game now, figure it out. Right.
John Corcoran: 08:12
So yeah. And that’s certainly the case bringing us to like the present day with AI. Because every day there’s a new tool coming out. There’s new capabilities that AI is possible. You know.
Brad Costanzo: 08:25
Love and hate that piece.
John Corcoran: 08:26
Like, yeah.
Brad Costanzo: 08:27
It’s exciting and overwhelming.
John Corcoran: 08:29
It is because, you know, there’s never been a technology in our lifetimes that’s been like that where it’s been so rapid, you know, like you think you’ve figured something out and then something new comes along, you know? Yeah.
Brad Costanzo: 08:41
We thought the internet changed things quickly. The internet changed things at such a snail’s pace. I mean, it did happen. This was completely revolutionary. And it’s as I said, it’s the part I love and hate.
I, I’m that A.D.D. entrepreneur. I love shiny objects. This is the shiny object you can’t afford to ignore. And so, although it feeds the ad and the novelty pings every single day once more, it’s exhausting. And it’s.
It leads to what I call tool euphoria, where you’re like, oh, look at this new tool. Look what this can do. I can make ten second videos of randomly weird stuff, or I can make this, that, or the other. I can make a poem or a song. I’m like, and then I have to stop and go, no, wait.
John Corcoran: 09:20
Why am I doing this?
Brad Costanzo: 09:21
Don’t make me.
John Corcoran: 09:22
Money.