Hello! A couple of weeks ago, I ran an AI workshop for solopreneurs. The goal was to have them walk away with valuable ways to use AI to scale their own business as they operate on their own.
My challenge was that I had so many avenues to cover and lots of rabbit holes I could have jumped into. The constraint of pulling this into a single workshop actually forced me to throw out quite a lot of my content (e.g. Agents, workflows, LLMs, RAG implementations), and instead focus on the principle that has helped me the most when building with AI myself and helping clients:
10% > 10x. Is it mathematically sound written like that? Nope. Will it make sense if you read on? Hopefully!
Enjoy!
Like many of you, I've been flooded with demos, showcases, and clickbait LinkedIn posts begging me to write "AI" that focus on showing me something that seemingly used to be impossible.
They've designed a solution for something that previously took 3 hours but now takes 12 seconds. And they all wait for some sort of applause, recognition, or AI-generated comments to pump engagement.
But what's actually happening isn't excitement. It's something much heavier.
Not exactly fear. More like... that feeling when you realize you have seventeen browser tabs open about AI and each one we deem important, but looking at all of them makes you want to close your laptop? That weight.
And that weight is crushing us.
The Revolution Trap
We only celebrate revolutions now.
Nobody gets promoted for lots of slight improvements. Nobody raises money for incremental progress. The whole story we tell about technology is about disruption, transformation, and changing everything.
AI made this worse. Way worse.
Because now transformation feels both possible and required. A nightmare for any perfectionist!
Every workflow that hasn't been AI-enhanced feels negligent. Every human process feels outdated. Every small improvement feels like cowardice.
You take your own notes still? SHAME.
But watch any company trying to adopt AI right now. They freeze because they have too many options. Leaders are exhausted by the need to "transform" everything. Teams split between those racing toward an AI future and those trying to preserve something human.
The transformation imperative becomes its own kind of trap. And the only answer seems to be chucking ChatGPT licenses and wishing everyone good luck.
How Change Actually Happens
So what actually happens? Companies announce these massive AI initiatives. Revolutionary customer onboarding. The AI SDR that changes everything. Beautiful architectures with multiple models working together, RAG implemented, fallback options designed.
They plan for months. They strategize. They roadmap.
They never launch.
It's not that it couldn't work. Testing might even show results. But implementation would mean retraining everyone, rebuilding the CRM, rethinking their entire service model. The transformation becomes too big to actually do.
Meanwhile, something else is happening quietly.
Someone in Customer Success starts using ChatGPT to write better follow-up emails. That's it. Nothing fancy. Just better emails. Customers start responding more. Conversations improve. Relationships strengthen.
Nobody calls it a transformation. But their Tuesdays from here on are way more manageable than they were before.
The sales rep who uses AI to research prospects has more time to think. The engineer who automates code reviews has energy left for design. The marketer who generates variations faster can focus on strategy.
They're just getting better at being themselves with the help of AI, without needing to become a full-on AI Operator.
The Compound Effect Nobody Sees
Compound improvement breaks our brains.
We understand linear progress. Ten percent, then another ten, then another. It feels slow. Human-scaled. Normal.
But compound math is weird. For most of the curve, you're actually behind where linear growth would put you. Then suddenly, you're not. You're miles ahead.
Get 1% better every day and the math gets weird fast. You're not 365% better after a year. You're 37 times better. It just happens through accumulation instead of revolution.
We can't see it though. We judge progress by next quarter, not next year. We want the revolution now, not the compound effect later.
So we chase 10x improvements. But most 10x improvements are lies.
Not intentional lies. Just narrow ones:
The AI processes documents 10x faster… but needs 3x more human oversight.
The automation handles 10x more volume but breaks in ways humans never did.
The transformation hits its metrics but destroys what made those metrics matter.
When we chase 10x, we define success so narrowly that we win by changing the game. We can often celebrate the one metric that improved and ignore the three that got worse.
But 10% improvements can't hide. Ten percent better means actually better. Your Tuesday actually improves. You can feel it and measure it.
The Other Kind of Courage
Transformation takes courage. Breaking things takes courage. Betting everything takes courage. We celebrate this courage. We fund it. We write articles about it.
But there's another courage we don't talk about.
The courage to be 10% better when everyone expects revolution. The courage to compound small gains while others chase moonshots. The courage to evolve when you could revolutionize.
This looks like admitting your current process mostly works, building on what exists instead of starting over. Measuring progress in smaller increments. Trusting accumulation over disruption.
It's the courage to be ordinary when everyone's trying to be extraordinary.
Why This Actually Matters Now
Every week, someone tells me they're terrified. AI will replace them. It's too technical. It's overwhelming.
The fear makes sense. The demos are compelling. The capabilities are real.
But watch who's actually thriving. Not the ones trying to become AI operators. The ones who got 10% better at being themselves.
The designer who uses AI for variations but spends the saved time understanding users better. Developers automating the boring stuff to focus on architecture. And that one ops person who finally automated the thing everyone's been complaining about for two years.
They're using AI as leverage to become better at what they already do.
And it compounds. Each improvement makes them more valuable, not less. More human, not less. They're growing with AI instead of putting them in a race against it.
The Radical Thing
Maybe the most radical thing we can do right now is refuse to be radical.
Choose evolution when everyone demands revolution. Pick 10% when 10x is possible. Be ordinary in extraordinary times.
Because real change happens through accumulation instead of through disruption. Because ordinary improvements compound into extraordinary results. Because humans still need to live in whatever future we're building.
The companies I watch succeed are the ones running small experiments every week. Where progress gets measured in increments. Where teams have permission to get just a little better.
Those are the ones actually reaching that greater promise of potential. Even if it is a long game.
Especially because it's a long game.