How to Budget for the Unknown
You don’t need to predict every change in AI to build a useful content budget. Start by identifying the expertise your audience needs to hear, protect the time required to express it, and budget for the work that keeps getting in the way. That gives each person or tool a clear job.
Watch How to Budget for the Unknown on Youtube.
Put your firm’s perspective in the budget first
If your firm sells advice, its content needs to show how your people think. A prospective client wants to understand what you notice, which questions you ask, and how you explain a difficult decision. Producing more material only helps if that perspective survives the process.
Imagine a law firm partner who gives a clear, considered answer when a prospective client asks what happens at the start of a matter. On camera, she falls back on a formal description of the firm’s services. The expertise is there. The production hasn’t helped her express it.
The budget might need interview preparation, an experienced producer, or time to practice. It also needs the partner’s participation. A tool can propose an outline, but someone at the firm must decide whether the answer reflects their actual judgment.
Protect that work before allocating money to volume. Otherwise, you can end up producing more of an answer nobody at the firm would give in person.
Separate the thinking from the work around it
In the video, I describe a process that starts with my own notes and perspective. AI helps gather relevant material and create a starter draft. I revise it until it says what I mean. After recording and editing, tools and people help turn the material into posts, a newsletter, and shorter videos.
The useful distinction is responsibility. The expert owns the point of view and whether the final piece represents it accurately. Support helps with preparation, shaping, production, and distribution.
For an advisory firm, that could mean recording an advisor’s answer to a recurring client question, then using a draft to organize the written version. The advisor still checks the reasoning and the language. A producer or editor checks that a shortened excerpt carries enough context. The firm’s review process still applies.
Choose support around the work you can identify. “Help turn an approved interview into a first written draft” is a clearer assignment than “Use AI to make our content.”
Budget for what your team struggles to do
Start by listing the tasks required to publish. Include finding ideas, preparing the expert, writing, filming, editing, review, formatting, and distribution. Then circle the parts that need the expert directly.
Be specific about the rest. If recording is uncomfortable, consider a producer or performance coach. If filming takes too long because the setup changes every time, production support may be useful. If an approved piece sits unpublished while the marketing lead handles another campaign, the missing resource may be time assigned to distribution.
A tool is one option. An editor, producer, or clearer internal responsibility is another. Compare those choices against the actual difficulty. Buying software for a problem caused by unavailable reviewers won’t give those reviewers more time.
Include internal hours alongside outside costs. Someone needs to brief the work, check drafts, and approve the result. A lower invoice can still leave a partner doing the editing at night. That is part of what the process costs your firm.
Give unfamiliar tools a defined job
When you can’t price a year’s workflow confidently, begin with one task and a limited trial. This is a practical way to apply the video’s advice without committing the full budget to an untested process.
For example, try generating a written starter draft from one approved interview. Record the time spent preparing the input, revising the output, and getting it approved. Compare that with the previous process. Did the draft help? Did the expert recognize their own reasoning? Did it introduce more work than it removed?
Use the answers to decide whether to continue. The next budget allocation can follow something your team has observed.
At a regulated firm, use tools your review or compliance team has cleared for the intended work. Clarify what material can go into them before the trial begins. The trial needs to fit the firm’s working process.
Be deliberate about an AI version of the expert
An avatar introduces another decision: what does your audience believe it is watching, and does that presentation help people assess the person whose advice they may hire?
For a firm trying to make its experts more familiar, replacing their appearance or voice can work against the purpose of the piece. Before allocating money, discuss the audience’s expectations and the firm’s review and disclosure requirements with the appropriate people.
The budget question comes back to what the audience needs to understand about your expert and how the production will help them understand it.
What to do this week
Allow 20 minutes before your next budget discussion.
1. List the work. Map one piece from idea through publication, including review and distribution.
2. Circle the expert’s contribution. Identify where their judgment, voice, and participation are necessary. Give those steps time.
3. Choose one bottleneck to fund. Name the task, the support you want to test, who will check the result, and what would make it worth continuing.
Use Budget for What You’re Bad At Worksheet to track your work: Budget for What You’re Bad At Worksheet
Watch How to Budget for the Unknown on Youtube for the full explanation of how I use AI around my own perspective and where I’d put the money first.
Build the budget around work your firm needs to do. Give the expert room to think, then pay for the help that lets that thinking reach someone.
Think Like a Producer
Get practical advice from Seena Ghaznavi each week on making useful content, putting your expertise on camera, and building trust. One clear idea and something you can put to work at your firm.
