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The best business advice you ever received will now DESTROY your business. … In case you missed it… I’m writing a series about what happens when the rules of business change faster than businesses can adapt. AI has destabilized the environment and I’m trying to figure out what survives. I’ll drop the previous articles in the comments if you want to catch up. … In my last post, I argued that most of us are still building businesses optimized for stability while AI has pushed us into an increasingly unstable world. Here’s the best business advice any of us ever received, pre-AI: Focus. Niche down. Specialize. Choose “The One Thing”. Ignore distractions. Don’t succumb to “shiny object syndrome”. Go deep. Build the moat. Etc. etc. etc. It’s all the same thesis, just stated differently. And, in a pre-AI world, this was the greatest lesson an entrepreneur could possibly learn. For most of us, it was a lesson we learned the hard way and had to re-learn at regular intervals. The traditional entrepreneurial playbook looks something like this: Pick a market. Find your niche. Develop deep expertise. Build one great company. Hire specialists. Optimize operations. Increase margins. Build defensibility. Scale. Then spend years making that machine increasingly efficient. This is an extraordinarily effective strategy when the environment remains stable long enough for optimization to compound. You spend ten years learning an industry nobody else understands. You develop proprietary processes. You recruit highly specialized talent. You build distribution. You accumulate institutional knowledge. Every year the organism becomes more perfectly adapted to its environment. That sounds wonderful. Until the environment changes. Then something strange happens. The thing that made you great can become the thing that kills you. Your expertise becomes legacy knowledge. Your specialization becomes rigidity. Your optimized processes become expensive baggage.

In my last post, I wrote about the realization that changed how I do business. The closest economic analogy for AI (according to AI) isn’t a technological revolution. It’s a mass extinction. No. AI doesn’t wipe out humanity. But it does wipe out most businesses (like 75%+). And it does so in a very short timeframe. My last post was about the extinction event. (If you missed it you can read the whole thing [HERE]) Today is about the survivors. The 25%. Who are the 25%? The answer changed my outlook on business entirely. There have been five mass extinction events in earth’s history (that we know of). In every instance, the living things that survived all had one thing in common… In ecology, there’s an old framework for how species survive: K-selection vs. R-selection. K-selected species reproduce later, produce much fewer offspring, and invest way more into each one. Examples: elephants, whales, gorillas, bears, you. They tend to be larger, live longer, mature slower, and far more invested in learning, development, and parental care. They evolve primarily in relatively stable environments where resources are limited and competition is fierce. Their advantage isn’t speed. It’s optimization. They make fewer bets and invest more heavily in each one. They develop deeper capabilities. They become extremely good at competing within the environment they inhabit. Think of them as nature’s specialists. They pick a game and get very, very good at playing it. Now, compare them to… R-selected species reproduce earlier, produce way more offspring, and invest way less into each one. Examples: mice, rabbits, flies, mosquitoes, frogs, fish that lay lots of eggs. They tend to mature earlier, reproduce faster, have shorter lifespans, and invest far less in parental care. They evolved primarily in unstable, unpredictable, rapidly changing environments. Their advantage isn’t optimization.

I’m looking forward to learning from everyone and connecting with people who are building businesses around greater freedom, flexibility, and a better lifestyle. What are you currently working toward - more time, more income, more flexibility, or all three?

That’s what I’ve felt. Literally every single day since AI dropped. Or, more appropriately, since I really started to understand the implications of AI on all of our lives. It’s such a strange combination of emotions. Terrified I’m being left behind. Terrified of being irrelevant. Terrified of obsolescence. All mixed up with a level of excitement that makes me feel like I’m going to burst. Excitement for all of the opportunities I can see (and even those I don’t see yet). It’s enough to drive someone crazy. So, I did what all of us do now when we need someone to talk to. I talked to ChatGPT. (Fun Fact: From the very beginning the #1 use of generative AI has been therapy.) The conversation didn’t start with much direction other than I just didn’t want to be so afraid anymore. I’m already a neurotic, armchair “doomsday prepper” so big shifts like this are designed to agitate the part of me that needs to be ready. The problem is, I didn’t know what to get ready for. So I started asking Chat for analogies (which is wildly ironic for reasons you’ll learn if you keep reading the articles I plan on posting). From an economic perspective, what times in human history are analogous to what we’re experiencing today? I was looking for the frameworks, the mental models, the “if this, then that” equations that would help me understand what to do. The problem: There really weren’t any. In fact, I think that’s where the terror and excitement come from. We have nothing to compare this to. So, I went further back. What times in history (removing the “human” qualifier) are analogous to what we’re experiencing today. You’re not going to like the answer. However, please stick with me past the initial shock. I promise, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. You’ve probably already guessed what Chat said (with a little coaxing and then a lot of disclaimers)… Extinction events. Uh oh. There have been five major extinction events in earth’s history (that we know of).