That’s what he said. Word for word.
A successful business owner. Built his company from nothing over 22 years. Employs 14 people. Profitable every single year. The kind of person you’d look at and think, “He’s got it figured out.”
And he called me to say he felt lost.
“Everyone’s talking about AI. My competitors are talking about it. My kids are talking about it. I downloaded ChatGPT six months ago, typed something in, got some generic response, and haven’t touched it since. I don’t even know what questions to ask. I don’t know what I don’t know. And honestly? I’m embarrassed to admit that to anyone.”
That phone call changed something for me.
The Dirty Secret Nobody’s Talking About
Here’s what I’ve realized: there are thousands-maybe millions-of incredibly competent business owners who feel exactly like he does.
They’re not stupid. They’re not technophobic. They’re not “behind the times.”
They’ve just been busy doing what they do best: running their businesses, serving their customers, making payroll, solving real problems in the real world.
While they were doing that, the entire AI landscape exploded. And now they’re looking around feeling like everyone else got a memo they missed.
The tech bros are posting about their “AI workflows” and “prompt engineering frameworks.” The LinkedIn influencers are breathlessly announcing that “if you’re not using AI, you’ll be out of business in 18 months.” The news cycles between “AI will take all our jobs” and “AI will save humanity.”
And the actual business owner? The one who built something real? They’re sitting there thinking:
“I just want to know how this thing can help me send better emails.”
Nobody’s talking to them.
The Vulnerability Is Real
When that business owner called me, I heard something in his voice I’ve heard before.
It was the same tone I’ve heard from attorneys who feel overwhelmed by technology. From agency owners who sense the ground shifting. From people who’ve been successful their whole careers suddenly wondering if they’ve missed the boat.
It’s vulnerability. And it takes courage to admit it.
This man runs a company. He makes decisions every day that affect 14 families. He’s weathered recessions, supply chain crises, and a pandemic. He’s not fragile.
But AI made him feel fragile. Because for the first time in a long time, he encountered something where he didn’t even know how to start learning.
That’s what’s different about AI. It’s not like learning new software where you can click around and figure out the menus. It’s not like learning a new industry where you can read books and talk to people.
AI requires a completely different mental model. You’re not operating a tool. You’re having a conversation with something. And if you don’t know how to have that conversation, you get useless results and assume the whole thing is overhyped.
Which is exactly what happens to most people.
Three Hours Changed Everything
I didn’t know what to expect when we started the training.
I walked in thinking I’d cover advanced prompting techniques, workflow automation, competitive analysis frameworks-the stuff I use every day.
Within ten minutes, I realized I needed to throw all of that out.
Because here’s what he actually needed:
He needed to understand what AI actually is. Not technically. Conceptually. What it can do, what it can’t do, and why it responds the way it does. Nobody had ever explained this to him in plain language.
He needed permission to start simple. Every resource he’d found online assumed baseline knowledge he didn’t have. He felt like he was supposed to be building automated systems when he hadn’t even figured out how to get a useful answer to a basic question.
He needed to see it applied to HIS business. Not generic examples. His actual problems. His actual workflows. His actual language. When I asked him what tasks eat up his time, what communication challenges he faces, what decisions he struggles with-that’s when it clicked.
He needed a track to run on. Not “go explore and see what happens.” A specific, repeatable process he could use tomorrow morning. And the next day. And the day after that.
Three hours later, he wasn’t an AI expert. But he wasn’t lost anymore.
He had a foundation. He had confidence. He had specific applications he could implement immediately. And he had a mental model for figuring out new applications on his own.
He sent me a message that night: “I just used it to draft responses to three customer complaints. Took me 15 minutes instead of an hour. Why didn’t anyone show me this six months ago?”
Why This Matters More Than Anyone Realizes
That question haunted me. “Why didn’t anyone show me this six months ago?”
Because nobody’s teaching this. Not really.
The AI education space is split into two extremes:
The surface-level hype. “10 ChatGPT prompts that will blow your mind!” Listicles and TikToks that make it seem like magic tricks. No foundation. No understanding. No ability to apply it to your specific situation.
The deep technical rabbit holes. Prompt engineering courses that assume you already know what you’re doing. Developer-focused content that loses normal business owners in the first paragraph. Frameworks designed for people building AI products, not people trying to run a plumbing company.
What’s missing is the middle. The fundamentals. The “here’s how to actually have a productive conversation with an AI and apply it to your real work” layer.
It’s not sexy. It doesn’t make for viral content. But it’s what actual business owners actually need.
The Basics Nobody Teaches
After that first training, I started mapping out what the real fundamentals look like. The stuff that seems obvious once you know it, but that nobody bothers to explain:
AI is a conversation, not a command line. You’re not entering a search query. You’re talking to something that responds to context, tone, and specificity. The more you give it, the more useful it becomes.
Garbage in, garbage out still applies. Vague questions get vague answers. “Help me with marketing” gets you useless fluff. “Help me write a follow-up email to a customer who complained about late delivery, acknowledging the problem, explaining what we’re doing to fix it, and offering a specific make-good” gets you something you can actually use.
You have to teach it about your business. AI doesn’t know your customers, your voice, your values, your constraints. Every conversation should start with context. Who you are. What you do. Who you’re talking to. What you’re trying to accomplish.
It’s a collaborator, not a replacement. The goal isn’t to have AI do your work. It’s to have AI accelerate your thinking. First drafts. Alternative angles. Questions you hadn’t considered. Synthesis of information. You bring the judgment. AI brings the processing power.
Start with what annoys you. The best entry point isn’t “how do I use AI?” It’s “what tasks do I hate doing?” The email responses. The first drafts of proposals. The meeting summaries. The research you’ve been putting off. Start there.
Iteration is everything. Your first prompt won’t be perfect. Neither will the AI’s first response. The magic happens in the back-and-forth. “That’s close, but make it more direct.” “Add a section about pricing.” “Rewrite this for someone who’s skeptical.” That’s where it becomes powerful.
This isn’t advanced. It’s foundational. But I’ve watched successful business owners transform their relationship with AI once someone actually walked them through it.
You’re Not Behind. You’re Just Starting.
If you’re reading this and feeling like that business owner felt-lost, overwhelmed, embarrassed to admit you don’t get it-I want you to hear something:
You’re not behind. You’re just at the starting line.
The people posting about their elaborate AI workflows? Most of them are exaggerating. Or they’re in tech and this is their job. Or they spent hundreds of hours figuring it out through trial and error.
You don’t need hundreds of hours. You need a few hours of proper foundation, applied to your specific business, with someone who remembers what it was like to not know this stuff.
That’s it.
The window isn’t closing. AI isn’t going to pass you by because you didn’t master it in 2025. This technology is going to keep evolving for decades. The question isn’t whether you’re “too late.” The question is whether you’re willing to start.
What I Learned From Teaching Basics
Here’s what surprised me most about that first training session:
I loved it.
I spend most of my time on advanced AI applications. Building sophisticated systems. Working with clients who already understand the fundamentals. That’s intellectually stimulating work.
But watching someone go from “I have no idea what I’m doing” to “I just saved an hour on something that’s been annoying me for months”?
That’s something different. That’s impact you can see on someone’s face in real time.
And it made me realize how many people are out there feeling like he felt. Successful, competent people. People who’ve built things. People who just need someone to meet them where they are and give them a track to run on.
They’re not looking for hype. They’re not looking to become AI experts. They’re looking for practical application that respects their intelligence while acknowledging their starting point.
That business owner is back to doing what he does best now-running his company, serving his customers, making decisions. He’s just doing it with a new tool in his pocket that he finally understands how to use.
That phone call didn’t just open up a new service offering for me.
It reminded me why this work matters.
