Why most people don't win with AI

Why does AI disappoint so many business owners?

I think many people overestimate the positive impact that AI will have on their business. That is one of the main reasons why people are disappointed with what AI can do.

Usually, when people think about what AI can do in their business, they fall for a certain trap. I would call it the flood raises all boats trap.

Why doesn't AI make a business take off?

If you start improving things with AI, automating things and changing how you work, then of course the quality of your business, your efficiency, your performance and sometimes your communication all improve, given that you do it somewhat right and are not messing up everything.

What many people then expect is that their business suddenly starts to explode, to boom, to really gain traction, and that everything is amazing. That is often not what happens. For your business to outperform the market, what you do has to be better than the market.

What happens when everyone can afford the same AI?

The cheapest cost for AI is something like 20 euros, or dollars, for a Claude subscription. You can go a pretty long way with that, and it's basically nothing for a business to invest that amount. That's why basically everyone is doing it.

If everyone is doing it, the quality of your business is rising, but everyone else's is rising too. That is what many people miss. And if everyone is rising, you're still on the same comparative level, and you don't have a competitive advantage.

What actually creates an advantage with AI?

If you want to gain an advantage by using AI, you need additional things that create the advantage. That can mean you do more with AI, or that you get an expert to do things with AI in a more structured and better way.

Or you make additional investments that go along with what you do with AI, so that AI and these investments strengthen each other. Market research, education, change management and so on. All the things that created a competitive advantage before AI still create one with AI, if the person who has this specific knowledge or skill also has the AI knowledge.

Why look for a consultant who also knows AI?

A few years ago, you would have been looking for a business consultant to optimize your business. Now you're looking for a business consultant to optimize your business who also knows AI. He brings what he knows about business optimization together with what he knows about AI.

Both of them together create an investment that will give you a competitive advantage, one that can outperform the advantages your competitors get from investing 20 bucks in a Claude subscription or OpenAI. So when you use AI, you have to make more investments and make sure you bring in more than your Claude subscription.

If you don't even use the subscription, you're behind in AI investment, and you do nothing to compensate for it with other investments, then you're really starting to struggle and falling behind.

"But I can do this with AI myself." Is that enough?

Sometimes people say, but I can do this with AI. And the answer is, yes, you can. You can do a lot of things yourself with AI, and that is what you need to do just to stay afloat. That is what you need to do just to stay level.

If you want to gain a competitive advantage with AI, you need people who go beyond the pure Claude subscription. People with specialized knowledge, with expertise, who understand your business on a different level and get you beyond that.

How does a new technology change the market?

At the moment, AI is raising all boats. Everyone is gaining additional efficiency and traction, and some are falling behind because they're not investing enough in the AI game. That's not AI specific, it's like that with every technology. If you're not adapting on a standard level, you're falling behind. If you're adopting at a standard rate, you're keeping afloat and staying in the market. If you're adopting beyond that, which usually means investing beyond the market average, you can actually gain an advantage.

That is why every technology shuffles the whole market. Everyone was at some level, then the technology came. Some are rising to the new standards. Some are falling behind. Some are getting ahead. And that's how the whole market shifts.

Where does your business stand?

In this current AI development, you have to ask yourself where you stand. Are you at market average? Are you below market average, or above?

If you are at market average, it's time to think about what's the next move. How can you really upgrade your AI game? Or what other investments outside of AI can you use to strengthen your AI game and really get ahead of the market? From what I've seen, that is what most business owners want in the end.