By expanding work capacity, AI tempts business owners into tackling tasks they previously (and correctly) ignored as unimportant. This results in efficiently executing irrelevant work, rather than focusing on high-impact business constraints. The absence of AI can force better prioritization.
The act of making a single, high-quality strategic decision—like eliminating an unimportant project—provides more leverage than using AI to automate that same project. It is more efficient to decide a task is not a priority than to automate a non-priority task.
The focus on AI overlooks that it is just one form of leverage among many. Established, powerful multipliers like capital, media reach, or changing a business model (e.g., from one-on-one to one-to-many) often provide more significant and immediate gains without requiring technical expertise.
Entrepreneurs are chasing AI implementation while ignoring simpler, high-leverage changes. Shifting from a one-on-one to a one-to-many service model, or improving sales processes to reduce team size, can yield 10x leverage with a single decision and no AI.