I've had a stack of messages lately. Most of them variations on the same thing: "Ben, this all makes sense... but what do I actually DO?"
Fair question. So here goes.
The Waiting Room Is Full
I was talking to a business owner last week — sharp operator, been around the block. He's watching the AI stuff unfold, reading the articles, having the conversations. He knows something is happening. But he's not moving yet.
"I just want to understand it a bit better before I commit," he said.
I get it. I really do. It feels responsible. It feels like good governance. Wait for the picture to sharpen, then act with confidence.
Here's the problem with that logic. The picture doesn't sharpen until after the window closes.
You've Never Once Decided With Complete Information
Think about every good call you've ever made in business. Every hire that worked out. Every market you moved into. Every pivot that turned out to be the right one.
Were you certain when you made those calls? Really?
I've been doing this since the turn of the century. I can't think of a single great decision I made with complete information. Not one. Every call that mattered was made in the fog. You get a feel for the direction, you gather what intelligence you can, and then you go. Because the alternative — waiting until you're sure — means waiting until someone else has already gone.
The COVID Parallel
The business owners I know who came out of COVID in good shape weren't the ones who waited for the government to tell them what to do. They were the ones who read the early signals, moved before they had to, and treated uncertainty as information rather than a reason to pause.
I remember early March 2020. The virus was still "overseas." Most businesses were in full wait-and-see mode. A handful of people I knew were already working from home, restructuring their teams, and calling their landlords about rent. They looked premature at the time. They looked smart six weeks later.
The AI transition is not COVID. It's slower, more distributed, and the consequences aren't landing on the front page. But the dynamics are the same. The people who look back on this period as an opportunity are the ones who acted before it was obvious.
So What Does "Acting" Actually Look Like?
I'm not suggesting you bet the farm. This isn't about panic-buying a stack of software subscriptions and calling yourself an AI company.
Here's what I mean.
Know what your position is actually built on. Is your competitive position built on genuine relationships, real expertise, and irreplaceable human judgement? Or is it built on friction and familiarity — customers who stay because switching is a hassle? Those are very different things. And one of them is eroding faster than you think.
Ask yourself the uncomfortable question: can your customers replace you with AI? I'm already seeing it happen. Customers who used to pay for a service are having a crack at doing it themselves with AI tools — and some of them are getting close enough that they're not coming back. It's not always better. Often it's not. But it's cheaper, and it's fast, and the gap is closing. If part of your value proposition is "we know how to do this thing," you need to ask how long before your customers figure that out too.
Pick one workflow and actually change it. Not investigate it. Not put it on the agenda for the next leadership meeting. Change it. Use AI to do something you were previously doing manually, and live with the results for a month. You'll learn more in three weeks of doing than in six months of watching. And honestly... you might surprise yourself.
Have the honest conversation about your customers. Who buys from you? What happens to their world if professional incomes compress over the next two years? The second-order effects arrive before the first-order ones are obvious.
Have a view. Not a strategy document. Not a consultant's framework. Just a view. "Here's what I think is going to happen, here's how I think it affects us, and here's the move I'm making because of it." Write it down. Talk to someone who'll push back. Test it. Update it. That's all strategy is, really.
The Misfits Have Always Moved in Fog
Here's what I keep coming back to. The owners in our tribe — the ones who built something from nothing, who never really fit the old corporate model, who made it work without a playbook — we've always operated in conditions of uncertainty. That's not a bug. That's the job.
The person who spent 25 years in a big firm waiting for their boss to give them clarity before they moved... that person is finding this genuinely terrifying right now. And I have real sympathy for them.
But that's not you. You've been making calls in fog your whole career. You're actually quite good at it.
The question isn't whether the picture will get clearer. It will, eventually. The question is whether you'll still be in the race when it does.
Good luck out there. And don't forget to have fun!
