AI is creating a weird split in business right now.

Some people see it as “that AI garbage” you can spot from a mile away. Others are quietly using it to write faster, plan smarter, and execute with more consistency—without ever letting AI replace their voice.

The difference isn’t the tool.

It’s how they’re using it.

AI isn’t the final product. It’s scaffolding.

If you use AI to generate the finished thing you post—your newsletter, your caption, your marketing copy—people will often feel it. It can sound generic, overly polished, or disconnected from your real tone.

But that’s not what AI is best at.

AI is best as an internal tool: the scaffolding behind the scenes that helps you build the house faster. You still decide what stays, what goes, and what sounds like you.

The guiding question that changes everything is simple:

How can AI help me do this?

Not “do this for me.”

Help me do this.

That framing turns AI into a thought partner instead of a shortcut.

“AI is scaffolding, not the house.”

The old “AI fear” is just recycled tech panic

A lot of resistance to AI sounds familiar. People used to say:

• “Students will stop learning basic skills.”
• “It’ll become a crutch.”
• “What happens when the batteries run out?”

Those exact arguments were made about calculators.

And before that? People were convinced automobiles were a dangerous fad.

AI is different in one big way: you don’t really get to opt out. It’s being embedded into search, email, phones, software, and workflows. So the real question isn’t whether AI exists.

It’s whether you’ll use it responsibly—before your competitors do it better.

The best business plan fits on one page

Most business plans fail for a simple reason: they’re too big to run.

If it’s 12 pages long, it’s hard to measure. Hard to review. Hard to delegate. Hard to keep visible.

A one-page business plan forces clarity—and clarity drives execution.

One of the cleanest formats is the GPS / 135 plan:

• G = One big Goal
• P = Three Priorities to achieve the goal
• S = Five Strategies under each priority

Example (simplified):

• Goal: $250,000
• Priority 1: 60 appointments
• Strategies: social content, database outreach, geo farming, coffee meetings, referral asks

Then repeat for priorities 2 and 3.

The power move: this becomes a scorecard. Weekly check-ins. Monthly reviews. Minimum quarterly adjustments.

Use AI to build it the right way (one question at a time)

Here’s where most people mess up: they open AI and type, “Make me a business plan.”

That’s how you get vague, vanilla output.

Instead, prompt AI like this:

“I’m a commercial real estate agent and I want to create a GPS (135) one-page business plan. Act as my thought partner. Ask me questions one at a time until you have enough clarity to build the plan.”

That one line fixes three problems:

1. It anchors your identity (what you actually do)
2. It defines the output (GPS/135)
3. It controls the process (one question at a time)

Now AI behaves like a coach, not a vending machine.

Pressure-test your plan with challenger questions

Once you have a draft plan, don’t stop. Invite the challenger.

Ask AI:

• What blind spots have I not considered?
• Are there missing KPIs?
• If you could change one thing, what would it be?
• If capital/time/team got cut by 30%, what must change?
• Simplify this plan by removing low-impact work.

This is where AI becomes genuinely valuable: it can debate with you without ego, without fatigue, and without you worrying you’re “bugging” someone.

Add your personality profile (and stop fighting yourself)

If you’ve ever taken DISC (or similar), you probably got a PDF with your style… and then did nothing with it.

Upload it.

Then tell AI:
“Overlay my personality profile onto this business plan. What doesn’t align with how I naturally operate?”

You’re not giving AI your soul. You’re giving it context so it stops recommending strategies you’ll never stick with.

The plan shouldn’t just be smart.

It should be executable by you.

Find your 20% and time-block it first

The Pareto Principle shows up everywhere: 20% of actions drive 80% of results.

Ask AI:
“Based on this plan and my personality, what’s my highest-impact 20%?”

Then ask:
“Help me time-block these tasks. I work Mon–Fri 9–4, lunch at 12, and I have hard-stop constraints.”

You’ll get a draft schedule in seconds. The key is to revise it with back-and-forth until it matches real life.

Final reminder: verify everything

AI can accelerate your thinking. But it’s still a machine.

Use it to plan faster, write cleaner, and test assumptions—then verify, edit, and own the final output.

Because the goal isn’t to sound like AI.

The goal is to move faster than you could alone.