You have more power to change your business right now than you've ever had before. The tools exist. The knowledge is there. All that's left is the decision to stop doing things the hard way.
Let me ask you something. When was the last time you did the same task twice and thought, "There has to be a better way"?
That question is worth a fortune.
"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency." — Bill Gates
The River That Changed Everything
When I was ten years old, my mother moved our family to West Africa. We lived in Niger for two years. And every single morning, driving past the Niamey River, I saw the same thing: villagers on the riverbank, washing clothes by hand. Scrubbing. Wringing. Laying them out on rocks to dry. Every morning. The same process.
Back home in the States, we had a washing machine. Drop your clothes in, press a button, go do something else. The machine does the work.
It stuck with me.
Because years later, I realized I was running my own business by the riverbank. Typing the same email responses manually. Copying data between apps. Doing the same repetitive tasks over and over, when I could have just built the machine.
The Lawsuit That Forced My Hand
Then the crisis hit.
A lawsuit came out of nowhere. We were already operating on thin margins. Some weeks I couldn't pay myself so my team could get paid first. Now legal fees were piling on top of everything else.
Fight, or give up. That was the choice.
I chose to fight. But I had no money to throw at the problem. So I leaned hard into something I'd been putting off: marketing automation. Automated email sequences. Automated social media. Even automated direct mail. All of a sudden, it felt like we had a massive sales force working around the clock.
In reality, we had a skeleton crew.
"We did not just save the business. We doubled it with half the staff." — Ethan King
That's the power of building the machine.
The Gap Most Businesses Are Living In
Here's a stat that stopped me cold. A Goldman Sachs survey found that 76% of small businesses now use AI, and 93% report a positive impact. Sounds great, right?
But only 14% have fully embedded AI into their core operations.
Fourteen percent. That gap tells me everything. Most people are chatting with AI. They're trying it out, asking it questions, getting a few email drafts. But they're still at the riverbank. They haven't built the machine.
The difference between using AI and embedding AI is the difference between washing one shirt and owning a laundromat.
The One Question to Ask Every Single Day
I now ask this question every time I catch myself doing something repetitive:
What is the washing machine for this?
That's it. Simple. Actionable. Write it on a sticky note. Say it out loud. Make it a daily habit. Because once you start asking, you'll see washing machines everywhere. In your client follow-up process. In your social media posting. In the proposals you build from scratch every time. Every repetitive task is a machine waiting to be built.
If there isn't one yet, build one.
Make AI Sound Like You
One of the biggest reasons people stop using AI consistently is that the outputs sound generic. Flat. Like it could have been written by anyone, for anyone.
Here's a three-step process that takes about ten minutes and changes all of that:
Step 1: Open ChatGPT and go to Settings, then Personalization. Fill out every field: your name, your role, your company, your values, your goals, your family details. The more it knows about you, the better it serves you.
Step 2: In a new chat, paste three to five things you've actually written, emails, blog posts, captions, voice memos transcribed. Then type: "Analyze my writing and speaking style. Write 1,500-character custom instructions for ChatGPT to imitate my style."
Step 3: Copy that output into your Custom Instructions under Personalization. Then ask: "Based on my writing style, who are some public figures I remind you of?" If you agree with the names, add one sentence: "Sprinkle in speaking style elements from [Name 1], [Name 2], and [Name 3]." That one sentence injects a massive amount of context because AI already knows everything those people have ever said publicly.
I did this for myself. The content AI writes for me now passes AI detection at zero percent. Not because it's tricking anyone, but because it's trained on how I actually speak. Your authentic voice is the one thing AI can't fake on its own. You have to teach it.
The Wearables I Can't Stop Using
On this week's King Moves (Ep. 124), I talk about how I went from skeptical to fully convinced on the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. I was at a speaking engagement in Monterrey, Mexico, surrounded by sixty people speaking rapid-fire Spanish. I turned on live translate and saw English subtitles right on the display while people talked. I also break down how I pair the glasses with the Plaud Note Pin to build AI-powered study guides after every event. These tools are practical right now, not someday, and they're only going to get better.
Stop playing business on hard mode. Listen to the full episode here and start asking the question that could change everything for your business.
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