Welcome back to the Mid Market Insider!

Today, I’m sharing my thoughts on AI, where it genuinely adds value, and where I think business owners are getting ahead of themselves.

We’ll talk about why understanding your processes matters more than chasing new tools, and how to use AI as leverage without letting it replace judgment.

I’m not anti-AI.

But I’m also nowhere near an AI evangelist.

There’s a difference between skepticism and denial. I don’t think AI is a fad. I do think people are overestimating what it can do for businesses that don’t have their fundamentals in place.

Moving from ledger paper to Excel was transformational. Moving from Excel to a real accounting system was transformational. Those upgrades removed friction and increased clarity.

What I’m seeing with AI feels different.

This reminds me of my lean manufacturing days.

Whenever we’d start a project, someone would inevitably say:

“We just need new equipment.”

That was the default answer.

And almost every time, we pushed back. Not because equipment is bad. But because no one truly understood the process yet.

Once we mapped the workflow, identified bottlenecks, and clarified responsibilities, we could decide if new equipment was needed.

Most of the time, it wasn’t.

The issue wasn’t the machine.

It was the process.

I saw this again during a lean project in a hospital ER.

We had a team member who was exceptional with Excel and Visual Basic. He built an impressive tracking tool. It looked professional. It was dynamic. It was technically impressive.

Do you know what we actually used?

A whiteboard.

It was simple and understood by everyone and it worked.

AI absolutely has the potential to be transformative.

Just like the industrial revolution, the personal computer, and the internet.

But every major technological shift creates new problems alongside new efficiencies.

Here’s where I think some business owners are getting ahead of themselves:

AI isn’t going to decide what to do when three people call in sick.

It isn’t going to determine whether you should hire, fire, or restructure your leadership team.

It isn’t going to craft your company’s strategy.

It can help research pricing.

It can summarize data.

It can accelerate documentation.

It can help draft communications.

Those are useful.

But judgment, context, and trade-offs still matter. A lot.

I recently saw an AI-generated PowerPoint built from a voice memo. It was impressive.

Was it helpful?

Maybe.

But impressive doesn’t always equal valuable.

The real risk isn’t AI replacing jobs overnight.

The real risk is businesses using AI to paper over unclear processes.

If your quoting process is inconsistent, AI won’t fix that.

If your org chart is blurry, AI won’t fix that.

If your strategy is undefined, AI won’t fix that.

It may make the chaos look cleaner.

But it’s still chaos.

The businesses that win won’t be the ones blindly adopting AI everywhere.

They’ll be the ones who:

Technology is a tool.

It’s not a substitute for thinking.

And it’s definitely not a substitute for leadership.

If you’re excited about AI, that’s good.

Just make sure you understand your whiteboard before you build the dashboard.

That’s all for today’s newsletter! Thanks for reading!

In next week’s edition, I’ll tackle a topic that makes a lot of owners uncomfortable: why your business probably isn’t worth what you think it is, and why that’s not an insult.

We’ll break down how buyers really think about valuation, why risk and predictability matter more than effort, and what you can actually do to close the gap between your number and theirs.

Keep building,
Nick