Three, two, sun. EasyJet's big orange sale is now on, with up to £400 off package holidays and up to 20% off flights. Book now at easyjet.com. Get out there. Selected dates and flights sale on 5th of May. Holidays minimum spend and hassle protected. Teas and seas apply. 500 orders a month was manageable. 5,000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfillment with ShipStation. The only platform combined in order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns and analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one. Go to ShipStation.com and use code START to try ShipStation free for 60 days. Most people are having the wrong conversation about AI. They're arguing about whether it's overhyped, whether it's going to take over their job, whether it's a bubble that's about to burst. And while they're debating, the people who understand what's actually happening are quietly pulling ahead. In this episode, I'm not gonna tell you that AI is magic or that it's the end of humanity. I'm gonna tell you what I exactly think is going to happen in the next 12 months and more importantly, what it means for you as a business owner. Because there's a window right now and it's closing. Welcome back to the $100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week and every week. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. Let me be honest with you about where we actually are. 88% of organizations are now using AI at least in one part of their business. That's up from 78% just a year ago. But here's the thing, most of them are using AI to write emails faster or to summarize documents or to generate social media captions. That is not transformation. That is using a Ferrari to go to the grocery store instead of trying to win Le Mans. The businesses that are actually winning? Well, according to research, only about a third of them are scaling AI properly. Only 34% are genuinely reimagining how their business works. That gap between the people using AI as a tool and the people building AI into their operational manual, how their business runs, is where the next wave of winners is gonna be decided. And the next 12 months are when that gap becomes impossible to close. You wanna be on the right side of history when it comes to this transformation in business and AI. Let me start with the biggest shift that's coming in the next 12 months. And it's not smarter chatbots. It's AI agents. Yes, there's a huge difference. A chatbot answers questions. An AI agent completes a task, is like a human, can do the work, get it done. Not one step, multi-step and autonomously. Think about what that means in practice and you probably may be already experienced this. If ever use Claude coworkers, you'll start to see the power of AI in this facility. It autonomously takes care of many things at one time. It literally replaces you in your seat in the computer and completes several tasks at once. If you let it book flights, it'll book hotels, it will create a website for you. And that's just the beginning. To simplify this, an agent doesn't just draft a follow-up email. It reads your CRM system, identifies which leads haven't been contacted in 30 days. It drafts personalized emails for each one, schedules them at the optimal time and updates your pipeline. It does the whole thing without you touching it. An agent doesn't just answer customer support questions. It reads the customer's order history and identifies the issue. It checks your return policy. It starts processing the refund if needed and sends the confirmation to the customer all while you sleep. IBM just called 2026 the year of multi-agent systems and the move from the lab into real business operations. And PWC have found that agents can already handle roughly half the tasks that people currently do in a typical workday. Half, no, are agents perfect? No, they're not. They still make mistakes. And they're not ready to run your entire business unsupervised. But guess what? Humans make mistakes. A ton of them. And really, the question you need to be asking is which half of your tasks could an agent start doing right now and getting done for you without you getting involved? Because the business owners who answer that question today are gonna have serious advantage over who waits until it's really obvious. And listen, the real deciding factor in my opinion is are you going to trust it? Are you going to let go and not micromanage AI? Because most of us were micromanaging AI right now. We're just kind of giving it tasks. We're giving it prompts. We're getting some information. We're gonna use that information for ourselves. And we're not really ready to let go and allow it to just take care of full tasks on its own. This is why I believe in 2026, a lot of companies, big and small, are gonna start using agents for many of the positions in their company. In fact, Big Tech has laid off over 45,000 people in just the first three months of 2026 because of the adoption of agents. Now, for us business owners, here's the most exciting thing that's happening right now that almost nobody's talking about. AI is eliminating the advantage that big companies have and have always had over small ones. Think about what large corporations have had that small corporations have not. Manpower, a marketing department, a legal team, a data analytics team, a customer service operation running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365. A content team producing material every single week. AI is now giving one person access to all of that right now. This is happening now, not in the future. And you can realistically have a team of agents for a few hundred dollars a month. Literally, the solopreneur who learns to leverage AI tools right now can compete directly with teams that are 10 times their size. Now, not all businesses are gonna be able to take full advantage of this. Some businesses are gonna require more human input than just technical input or agent input. But generally, it's going to superpower most small businesses in ways we've never seen before. For example, the small marketing agency that builds AI into their workflow can take on more clients without hiring more people. The freelancer uses AI to offload all their admins so they can just focus on their craft. It's gonna be winning contracts left and right. This is genuinely new. This is a genuine shift in the workforce. And to be honest, many people are just not ready. And those who are gonna adopt this now, not later, are the ones that are gonna win in the long term. We've never seen technology that so directly levels the playing field between big and small. If you're a small business owner and you're not actively building AI into your operation, you are choosing to stay at a disadvantage that no longer needs to exist. You are making it harder on yourself. Three, two, sun. EasyJet's big orange sale is now on with up to 400 pounds of package holidays and up to 20% off flights. Book now at easyjet.com. Get out there. Selected dates and flights sale and fifth of May. Holidays minimum spend and after protected, season C's apply. We're gonna get into productivity and all that jazz, but I know some of you are thinking right now, Walmart, this sounds great, but I don't know much about AI. How do I learn how to use AI? How do I know how to use Claude Cowork for example? Stop it, just stop it right now. Download any of the free apps. You can download chat, GBT, you can download Claude and ask AI how to use AI. Use AI so that you can learn how to use AI. And it's literally if you know how to type and if you know how to write in any language, by the way, or dictate and speak in any language, you can learn anything through these tools. The honest truth is that the only thing that's limiting you is you not thinking big enough and not being creative with how to use this technology. Let me give you a number that should stop you in your tracks. Worker access to AI rose 50% in 2025. 50% in a single year. That's how fast things are moving. And the companies that are actually embedding AI into how their people work are reporting massive productivity gains and twice the transformation and the impact they're making on their clients, twice. What that means in practice is that a person using AI effectively is not just slightly more productive. They're doing the work of multiple people. For example, a developer using AI coding tools is shipping features in hours that used to take days. I know this firsthand. I built a software company myself for 10 years. I did a full episode on this, by the way, recently about can you build a software in seven days using AI? And you should check it out because it's a mind blowing. GitHub, which is a code repository company, tracked 25% year over year increase in code commits in 2025. A billion commits in a single year. A commit is like you shipping out code. A marketer using AI isn't running one email campaign a week. They're running 10. A consultant using AI for research isn't spending three days building a report. They're delivering it the same day, closing the deal. Now imagine your competitor has this person on their team and not you. Or worse, imagine your competitor is that person, running lean, moving fast, and outpricing you on every deal because they have the margins to do so. That's not hypothetical. That is happening right now. The productivity gap between AI native businesses and everyone else is already significant. In 12 months, it's going to be a chasm. If you're finding this episode to be practical and useful and it's getting you to think a little bit bigger, then you wanna make sure to subscribe to the show because we're putting in the final touches on an episode that we've been working on where we sat down with financial expert, Ramit Sethi. And we talk about a lot of things. And most of all, what does it mean to build wealth through a business? What do you need to do? What are some of the traits you need to have and how he did that? How he built his own wealth through building a business. Ramit is an incredible author and speaker and entrepreneur. He's got a Netflix show, if you don't know. He has a New York Times bestselling book, actually two of them. So hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode when it comes out. It's time to address the elephant in the room. And we talked about layoffs and here's the question, is AI going to take jobs? Yes and no. And it's more complicated than either answer. Here's the honest picture. In a McKinsey survey of nearly 2,000 organizations, 32% expect AI to reduce their workforce in the coming year. We've already seen the layoffs happen. 43% expect no change. 13% actually expect to grow their teams. The full picture is more nuance. Listen, AI is not replacing everyone. What's really happening is that tasks are being automated but roles are being redefined. Entirely new roles are emerging right now. This happens every time new technology comes out. For example, this thing I'm doing, podcasting, didn't exist 20 years ago. There's going to be jobs that their entire job is to oversee, direct and improve AI systems. The skills that will matter the most in the next 12 months are not the ones that AI can replace. We're talking about judgment. We're talking about relationships. We're talking about strategic thinking. The ability to direct AI towards the right problems. The people who will struggle are not the ones who are in creative roles. They're the ones that are going to refuse to learn how to work with AI. That's the bottom line. Because their role isn't being eliminated. It's being filled by someone who will use AI. Now I also see another challenge happening in the next 12 months. And that's the death of the generalist. This is a change most people aren't talking about. And it's the one that will hit the hardest. For decades, businesses have relied on a layer of generalists, middle level workers. People who compile reports, people who summarize research, people who manage scheduling and coordination, people who handle tier one customer queries, people who produce first drafts. All of that is going away. That's just how it is. AI does all of that now already. It does it faster, it does it cheaper. It does it without needing to be managed or needing a holiday or a sick day. What this means for businesses like you and I is that the structure is flattening. You don't need a five person layer between the strategy and the execution anymore. You need great thinkers at the top, great operators, at the ground level and AI filling in the middle. The business that used to need 12 people to operate can now run the same output with six, five, maybe even four if they build the proper AI layer that they need. That is a profound structural advantage. And actually a huge advantage when it comes to profit margins. So what should you do about this? Where does this leave you? This is how I think about the next 12 months with my business. Step one, audit your repetitive tasks. Go through your week. Every task you do that follows a pattern, drafting, summarizing, scheduling, responding, reporting, write it down. That list is your automation roadmap. Step two, pick the highest value item, the item that actually makes you money in your business and automate it first. Not everything at once. One thing, get it working, then move on to the next thing. Small wins compound fast. Step three, think about where your human edge lives. What do you do that AI generally just can? That's your most valuable real estate. It could be coming up with topics for your content. It could be creative strategy. It could be client relationships. It could be high six decisions. It could be reading the room in a negotiation. Maybe it's your sales skills. Double down there. Let AI do everything else. Step four, move fast. The window is open right now, but it won't be open forever. The businesses that move and build AI into their operations in the next 12 months are gonna have an crazy unfair advantage. The businesses that wait another year are gonna be playing catch up. People that don't have the 12 months of iteration and learning and compounding that they got from implementing this right now. Speed matters so much in business and it matters a lot more than perfection. Here's what I really think. AI is not gonna replace you and I. Us business owners, creators, people that are producing value in the marketplace, but someone using AI better than you will. That's the real threat, not a robot, a person. Another business owner, a competitor. Someone who woke up early and learned fast and built their AI layer and while you're still debating whether it's worth it, they're eating your lunch. Now, I just wanna take a moment, one moment to push back on myself for a second because I believe in giving you the full picture. Is everything perfect about AI? No, agents still make mistakes. Some tools are overhyped and they under deliver. The AI bubble in the stock market almost certainly has some air in it. It's not exactly what it seems. And there are real ethical questions that businesses are gonna have to answer about how they use this technology responsibly. But here's what's not speculative. The productivity gains are real. The cost reductions are real. The competitive advantage for early movers is real. You don't need to bet on every single trend that comes out. You just need to be the person that doesn't dismiss all of it altogether. Before I go, I wanna leave you with this. The next 12 months are a fork on the road. One path is where you treat AI as a nice to have, as a tool, as maybe something that you use occasionally. The other path is where you treat AI as an operating system for your business, as a partner, as an actual worker. And down that path, 12 months later, you will be leaner, faster, and more profitable as a business, more profitable than your competitors that are scrambling to catch up. Yes, the window is open right now, but it won't be open forever. So I'm encouraging you to move now. If this episode challenged you to think a little bit bigger, a little bit wider, then you should check out a previous episode that we published that I think you're gonna love. It's called The Real Reason CEOs Hate Remote Work and Want Everyone Back in the Office and Why I'm Doing the Same. Yep, we just got the keys to our studio office here in Sydney, Australia, and we're looking forward to building our team here. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify, or ever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode. Three, two, sun. EasyJet's Big Orange sale is now on, with up to 400 pounds of package holidays and up to 20% off flights. Book now at easyjet.com. Get out there. Selected dates and flights sale and 5th of May. Holidays minimum, spend and act all protected. Teas and seas apply.
