PLAINS TWP. — As the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce considered topics for its inaugural Empowering Development, Growth and Entrepreneurship Summit, leaders recognized the importance and timeliness of providing small-business owners with a road map for implementing artificial intelligence.
During an event Monday at Mohegan Pennsylvania, industry experts briefed business owners and professionals on AI topics ranging from cyber security to marketing to time-saving tips.
Liam Neville, a managing partner of Neville AI Partners, which helps businesses adopt AI through hands-on implementation and long-term growth strategies, stressed while artificial intelligence continues to become more prevalent in daily operations, proper implementation requires a joint effort.
“It’s something that’s changing businesses everywhere, but AI is only as powerful as your team’s buy-in,” he said.
Neville added that artificial intelligence doesn’t replace the human aspect of business.
“I firmly believe that it is not a threat and that it actually makes our humanity more important than ever,” he said. “AI does not have empathy, it does not have intuition, and it doesn’t have the spark that makes humans special.”
Neville pointed out several positives AI can bring to businesses.
“I like to think of it as quantitative and qualitative benefits of using AI to amplify what we do,” he said. “The quantitative is the efficiency gains, time savings, streamlined processes, and efficiencies across the board. That leads into the qualitative aspect where we have more time to focus on higher-value touchpoints like strategic alignments and vision. If you use AI correctly, there is no doubt you’ll save time — about five to 10 hours back into your week — and increase profits. You’re able to make decisions quicker and quicker, and with better accuracy over a period of time.”
Neville stressed artificial intelligence tools aren’t foolproof.
“They can remember everything way better than any human, but they have a lot of cognitive deficits,” he said. “They make stuff up and don’t have a great internal knowledge of themself; that’s where citing sources and making sure you’re working with data you can trust is important. They can also leak your data. An outside source can come in and trick it easily to feed it information of yours, so it’s important to keep your data secure — ideally on a local, encrypted server.”
Alex Molfetas, co-owner of Center City Print and co-creator and growth lead at ResideSync, provides remarks during the EDGE Summit: AI For Small Business event Monday at Mohegan Pennsylvania in Plains Twp. (ROBERT TOMKAVAGE/STAFF PHOTO)
Kenneth Berry, a software developer with ResideSync, provides remarks during the EDGE Summit: AI For Small Business event Monday at Mohegan Pennsylvania in Plains Twp. (ROBERT TOMKAVAGE/STAFF PHOTO)
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Alex Molfetas, co-owner of Center City Print and co-creator and growth lead at ResideSync, provides remarks during the EDGE Summit: AI For Small Business event Monday at Mohegan Pennsylvania in Plains Twp. (ROBERT TOMKAVAGE/STAFF PHOTO)
Neville compared grasping the intricacies of artificial intelligence to learning a new sport.
“The grip is the prompt craft, and the routine is the discipline of how you’re asking for information,” he said. “And then just keep practicing. Be patient with yourself and slowly work it into your workflow and it will slowly become natural. Don’t wait, start small and start today by summarizing one meeting or generating one marketing idea, and keep what works and ditch what doesn’t.”
Alex Molfetas, co-owner of Center City Print and co-creator of ResideSync — an AI-driven property management platform transforming how landlords, tenants and service providers connect — noted it’s critical to provide artificial intelligence tools with as much information as possible to get the best results.
“AI is like a new employee,” he said. “It knows nothing about you. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. The key is weak versus strong prompts. An example would be for it to act as an experienced customer strategist or an experienced marketer with 30 years of experience — the more data you provide, the better outcome you’ll end up with. The golden rule is to think before acting. Instead of saying to write a fundraising email, tell it to think of three approaches for fundraising emails, show the plan first, wait for approval and then use it. The biggest thing is the time-saving factor. You can have a conversation with it back and forth, or you can give the clear examples upfront.”
Artificial intelligence technology evolves quickly, making it important for business owners to continually look for ways to use it to their advantage, Molfetas said.
“At the time we created this presentation last week, and even from the point I was asked to speak at this conference, AI has changed immensely over that two-month period,” he said. “At Center City Print, we took it upon ourselves to rebuild our CRM (customer relationship management) order management and workflow with AI and we’ve probably eliminated at least 20 minutes’ worth of steps.”
Using AI tools can help business owners — who also have family obligations — save time and develop a better structure for completing repetitive tasks, Molfetas said.
“Every morning I wake up, there is a whole list of things I need to do, both at home and work, so it becomes overwhelming,” he said. “I’ve talked to ChatGPT and laid it out. It’s not that you and I are incapable, but there are always more effective and more efficient ways, and AI kind of unlocks that for you a little bit just by simplifying it.”
Originally Published: October 10, 2025 at 10:43 AM EDT