- The reason AI isn't working for most entrepreneurs comes down to three things: not enough time using it, zero time learning it, and no system for how they create with it.
- Time is the most honest reflection of your AI growth. How much time you spend using AI is no different than asking how many minutes a week you spend in the gym.
- The thing most leaders are missing isn't more tech. It's their thinking.
- Everything you need is already inside of you. Your business, your vision, your offers, your workflows. You just have to learn how to communicate that to AI.
I had a conversation recently with an entrepreneur who runs a fitness platform. Smart guy. Successful business. Uses ChatGPT a decent amount.
He told me straight up: "I think I use AI to a decent amount and have somewhat of a grasp, but I know I'm just touching the surface."
He wanted to know if AI could log into his software dashboard and handle the customization work for him. Just do it. Without him having to learn the whole thing.
I told him yes and no.
Yes, that's possible. It's called agentic AI, and it genuinely became a real thing about six weeks ago. But no, he can't jump straight to that. There are levels to this game, the same way there are levels in fitness. None of them are hard. They just take time and experience.
That conversation is one I have almost every week. Entrepreneurs, leaders, business owners who are smart, motivated, already using AI to some degree, but stuck. Not because AI doesn't work. Because the way they're approaching it doesn't work.
How Much Time Are You Actually Spending With AI?
Time is the most honest reflection of your growth with AI. Full stop. If you're spending a couple hours using it and zero hours learning it, that's the diagnosis for why it isn't working.
Time is the most honest reflection of your growth with AI. Full stop.
I tell every entrepreneur I work with the same thing: How much time are you spending using AI? It's the same question you'd ask someone about the gym. How many minutes a week are you actually in there?
I can directly correlate these two things.
In my days, every single day, I only do three things. I either coach, I create content like a podcast or video, or I'm using Claude. That's it. I am using AI literally every minute possible during my work day.
I don't have a tech background. I don't have a coding background. I'm a sports guy. I ran a sports marketing agency for a decade. But I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm all in.
Here's what that gap looks like in practice.
A woman slid into my DMs recently. Said, "I don't know what I don't know with AI. I just started a new marketing agency and I want to grow it to over $10 million."
I asked her two questions. How much time per week are you using AI? How much time are you spending learning AI every week?
Her answer: two hours a week using ChatGPT. Zero hours a week learning it.
That told me everything I needed to know.
Here's the part that really matters. That same person came to me two and a half years earlier. Exact same conversation. Maybe not the same depth, but the same place. "I'm just not getting it. I'm not seeing it."
Two and a half years later. Same spot.
That's what happens when you use AI without a system for getting better at it. You stay on the training wheels. You never pop the wheelie.
Why Does Everything AI Produces Feel Generic?
The root cause of generic AI output isn't your prompts. It's context poverty. AI doesn't know who you are yet. Pull everything out of your head and organize it in a way AI can use, and the output stops sounding like it came from anyone and starts sounding like it came from you.
The thing most entrepreneurs are missing isn't more tech. It's their thinking. Not in a bad way, but it's just what I've understood after working with hundreds of people on this.
The good news is you already have it all. You just don't see it.
Think about it like this. When you have a big project, you can either just start doing the project, or you can say, what are the 12 steps of this project? You can have AI give you the 12 steps and then do them one at a time.
But most people skip that. They jump into ChatGPT, type a basic prompt, get a generic answer, and think, "Well, AI doesn't really work for my business."
It's not the tool. It's the depth of what you're giving it.
Everything you need is already inside of you. Your business, your vision, your offers, your workflows. The conversation. You have to be able to communicate that to AI to let it do its thing.
When I work with a leader on their AI practice, the first thing we do is pull everything out of their head and organize it in a way AI can actually use. Their brand voice. Their methodology. Their client language. Their offers. Their stories. All of it goes into a context library that travels with them across every AI conversation.
That's the difference between AI writing something that sounds like it could come from anyone and AI writing something that sounds like it came from you.
Are You Using AI or Are You Learning AI?
Most entrepreneurs are using AI. Almost none of them are learning it. Using means you ask a question and move on. Learning means you pay attention to why certain approaches get better results. One week of focused learning feels like a month of improvement.
Most entrepreneurs are using AI. Almost none of them are learning it. There's a massive difference.
Using AI means you open ChatGPT, ask it a question, get an answer, and move on. Learning AI means you're paying attention to why certain approaches get better results, how context changes the output, what happens when you give AI more of your thinking before you ask it to create.
That entrepreneur from the DMs? Two hours using, zero hours learning. That ratio is the diagnosis for 95% of people who say AI isn't working for them.
The ones I coach who are getting extraordinary results? They're treating AI like a practice. The same way a musician practices scales or an athlete practices fundamentals. They show up every day. They try things. They pay attention to what works. Those are the fundamentals that separate high performers from everyone else.
One week of focused AI learning with the right guidance feels like a month of improvement. That's not hype. I see it happen every single week with the people I work with. The technology is changing so fast that when you combine real practice with real learning, the compound effect is massive.
What Happens When You Actually Build a System for AI?
The leaders who get real results from AI have a system. It's called Personalize-Think-Create. Personalize means teaching AI who you are. Think means using it as a thinking partner. Create means building from a foundation of context and strategy. Once you have that system, every project changes.
The leaders and entrepreneurs who get real results from AI have a system for how they use it. That's what separates them from everyone else.
Think about it through the fitness lens again. You can go to the gym by yourself. But when are you going to get the best results? When you have a personal trainer. The accountability. The nuance. The ability to see what you can't see about your own form.
AI works the same way.
The people I work with, we start with a methodology. I reverse-engineered 500 hours of coaching into a process called Personalize-Think-Create. It's the system for how you interact with AI across every single thing you do in your business.
Personalize means you teach AI who you are. Your voice, your values, your business, your way of seeing the world.
Think means you use AI as a thinking partner before you use it as a production tool. You strategize with it. You plan with it. You let it help you see the 12 steps before you take step one.
Create means you build with it. Content, systems, workflows, products. But now you're creating from a foundation of context and strategy, not from a blank prompt.
Once you have that system, every project in your business changes. Whether it's a tool, a vendor, or a project, you start asking the same question: how do I interact with AI with this? Because once you interact with it, you can do something with it.
Can AI Really Replace a $20K Agency Project?
Yes. I built my entire website using Claude Code in three days. The same project would have cost a marketing agency $20K and taken three months. Companies are becoming features overnight, and the leaders who understand AI at a deep level are the ones who see these opportunities first.
Yes. I built my entire website using Claude Code in three days. The same project would have cost a marketing agency $20K and taken three months.
I've been on WordPress for 15 years. Hundreds of blog posts. SEO all over the place. I ported everything over in three days. It could have been done in three hours if I'm being real about where the technology is going.
I don't share that to brag. I share it because I want you to understand the gap between where most people are and what's actually possible. That's the kind of leverage that comes from building real capacity in your business.
An entrepreneur I was talking to recently has a SaaS licensing agreement with a software company for his platform. I told him directly, we could rebuild that entire platform in Claude in less than a week. With zero knowledge of what his current vendor is doing. You just screenshot every page, show AI everything they're doing, and build it.
That's the actual reality of where we are right now.
Companies are becoming features overnight. You think you've built something significant, and then AI can replicate it as one of 30 features inside a larger system.
This isn't a reason to panic. It's a reason to be in the game. The leaders who understand AI at a deep level are going to be the ones who see these opportunities first and move on them.
What Should You Do This Week to Make AI Actually Work?
Start with an honest assessment: how much time per week are you using AI, and how much are you learning it? Then follow the crawl-walk-run path. Crawl: speak to AI like a business partner. Walk: use AI as a thinking partner on one real project. Run: build a context library so every conversation starts from your foundation.
Start with the honest assessment. How much time per week are you actually using AI? How much time are you spending learning it?
If the answer is "a couple hours using, zero hours learning," that's your starting point. You now know why AI hasn't been working.
Here's the crawl, walk, run path.
Crawl: Get on Claude. Start speaking into it the way you'd talk to a business partner. Voice is the future. The coders who built Claude Code didn't write a single line of code. They spoke it all. You can speak three times faster than you can type, and the thing that matters most in AI is context. How much depth do you give it.
Walk: Take one real project from your business this week. Before you start doing it, dump everything about the project into Claude. Ask it to organize it into steps. Ask it to prioritize what's urgent versus what can wait. Use AI as your thinking partner before your doing partner. This is the preparation mindset that changes everything.
Run: Build a context library. Get your brand voice, your methodology, your offers, your client language, and your stories into a document that travels with you across every AI conversation. This is the single biggest thing you can do to make AI output feel like it came from you. I wrote about exactly how to stop starting from scratch every time you sit down with AI.
The bigger your dreams, the deeper the foundation needs to be. The same is true for AI.
You already have everything you need inside of you. Your business, your vision, your workflows. The next step is learning how to communicate all of that to AI in a way that lets it actually help you build something real.
Ready to Make AI Actually Work for Your Business?
If you want a system for how you use AI every day, The Unlimited Method is the roadmap. It takes you from AI dabbling to AI dangerous in four hours, reverse-engineered from 500+ hours of coaching. It gives you the exact framework to personalize AI, build your thinking process, and create with real intention. Learn more about The Unlimited Method →
