I Was Wrong: Why My 5-Million-Download Advice Now Kills Businesses

Are you making more money right now because of AI? Because if you're not making more money right now because of AI, then you have to really look in the mirror and wonder, are you using AI correctly? 20 years ago, back in 2006, I had just finished, uh, my coaching program, uh, or my group of people that were in that coaching program. And the people that were in that coaching program are a lot of names that you'd recognize. People like Todd Brown, Ryan Deiss, Russell Brunson, and lots of others. And I had just completed that coaching program and I had my very first big project with this company that I've now worked with for 20 years, uh, Agora Publishing. And that was 3 months later. So I had nothing to do for 3 months and I wasn't gonna be making any money for 3 months. And so I needed something to do. But my coaching program was over a year long and I had only 3 months until I was gonna start working with Agora. So, uh, I decided that I would take the year-long program, compress it down into 11 weeks. And then the next question was, well, how am I gonna get any new coaching clients? And I had this thought that if I took some of my best ideas about why people were struggling online and what they would need to do so that they wouldn't struggle online, And the reason why, and I put that on my blog and gave it away for free, uh, that maybe, just maybe I could get like a dozen people interested enough to be clients of mine for the next 3 months so that then I could start that project with Agora. And so that's what I wrote. I wrote it, I called it the Internet Business Manifesto, and I released it on my blog on June 6th, 2006. And I wasn't prepared for what happened next. Because what happened next is it was widely accepted. It went viral. I didn't get 12 clients. I didn't get 120 clients. I didn't get 1,200 clients. I got several thousands of clients. And so my whole life changed. In fact, if you were to write a biography about my life, there would be the section pre-Manifesto, and then there would be this section post-Manifesto, because as soon as I wrote that, I was immediately the most known person in online marketing. That lasted about a year or two. And what I was really shocked about besides the sales, besides how people took to it, was the impact it had. Now it's 20 years later, it's been downloaded 5 million times plus, right? And it's really set the standard for the way businesses are done today online. Because the people I taught became industry leaders, the people they taught became leading coaches. And so the cycle kind of continued until it kind of was the major operating frame. And that frame was that to the entrepreneur, you can't do everything. And so that in order to scale a business, you have to remove yourself from the business, that you're not only the, you know, the person that started it, but you become the bottleneck. And so the way to scale, rip the personality of the owner out of the business, standardize everything, turn everything into SOPs, and then grow the business scale. And that was the best advice because it was the only way that you could ever scale a business, but it wasn't the ideal solution. It was just the only way. And so life went on and business evolved. But in the last couple years with AI coming on the scene, it's totally changed the game of business. And that, that has totally changed the game of business is something that no one has said. And maybe I feel responsible because the model that most people are following is the model that I laid down 20 years ago. But that model is a model that will lead your business to bankruptcy. As AI becomes more and more pronounced, more and more ubiquitous. And so I don't want anyone following my old advice into this new era, because if you follow my old advice, and that is the advice of Michael Gerber, that's the advice of Dan Sullivan, that's the all business advice up until today. Every business that is online today is following what what is now outdated advice. And so because of that, and it just so happens to coincide with the dates of when I wrote this original document that kind of set the tone, uh, I am going to release a new report, the Updated Manifesto, that really takes aim at nothing other than my old manifesto. And here's where It kind of starts just to kind of give you an idea. Most people who are using AI today are using it wrong. In fact, almost everyone running with AI in their business is running it wrong. And that shouldn't be too surprising. And I'll tell you why it shouldn't be too surprising. Because this same story has repeated itself time and time again with new technology. What do I mean by that? Well, if you look at the way technology has disrupted business over the last 200 years, what you'll notice is, is that the technology develops, it's embraced, but it's embraced incorrectly. And it's only many years later that the actual productivity boom, profit boom kind of evolves and develops. Has seen. So in the late 1800s, the invention of electricity rolled out. So factories now could convert from steam power, which when a factory was powered by steam, there'd be a long shaft down the, you know, the top of the, of the warehouse or the factory. And that would turn and that turning, there would be belts and those belts would control the machines. So the machines had to be laid out in a way that, that could all be powered. But then electricity came on the scene and they made each of those machines powered by electricity, not by this steam shaft running down the central element of the factory. And you would think because of that, that productivity would go up, but it didn't. It didn't go up for 10 years. It didn't go up for 20 years. It didn't go up for 30 years. And then somebody had the smart idea that now that these machines don't need to be laid out in this way, we can create an assembly line. We can set up this factory differently. So 40 years later, productivity rose and it rose dramatically. But that's not the only time that this has happened. This has happened every time. So take the computer revolution. In 1987, Nobel laureate Robert Solow. He said something in 1987 that was pretty profound. You might have even heard him, that statement, and it said, you can see the results of the computer revolution everywhere but in the productivity metrics. And he was right. Society had not yet reaped the rewards of the computer revolution. And it wasn't until about a decade later when companies actually changed their processes to incorporate computerization into their businesses that we went on a, a very steep curve of productivity increases. So here we are with AI. And with AI, 95% of Fortune 500 companies have invested a lot of money and have not seen any productivity increases because there are many success stories already of entrepreneurs redesigning their business, around AI, launching it, individuals, groups of small teams, and creating businesses that are much bigger, much faster, much more profitable than anything that's ever been seen before. So the founder of Base44, using no better tool than you already have access to and can open within 5 minutes from now, he used those tools to create Base44. Within 6 months, he sold that business for $80 million using the same tools that you have access to. And the story doesn't end there because he will end up making about $175 million because the business kept growing after he sold it. Same tools as you. And I could give you story after story after story of other entrepreneurs Just like that. So when you look at what they've gotten from AI and what you've gotten from AI, is it the same? Because what I hear is that very few people are getting that positive result. They just can't get it. They don't know how. So what they have, right, is they have this tool that can produce great output at times., but it has to be babysat. So they have this new job, right? AI can do something for 10 hours, but you gotta sit there and manage it. So where's the freedom? Where's the benefit? There isn't any. So most entrepreneurs right now have a lot more output that requires a lot more of their attention, but is their job getting easier? Is their life getting easier? Is their business getting better? Are they making more money because of it? Odds are they aren't. So in the original manifesto, I broke up the world into opportunity seekers and strategic entrepreneurs. And the reason I did that was that once again, there are these cycles, there are these stories that run over and over again in the world of business. That story, right, is that as any field evolves, It moves from the Wild West days to business days. So the hustlers that were making money get boxed out where the businesses take over. There used to be 100 newspapers just in New York City alone. Now there's 3. There used to be over 3,000 cable companies in the US. Now there's 2. So you'll see this pattern over and over again. So the original advice of the manifesto was Now's the time to make that shift from being a hustler to being a business builder. And lots of people followed that advice. But now with the new manifesto, the way that you build a business is completely different because it's not about being a strategic entrepreneur or an opportunity seeker. It's about being an assembler versus an architect, because the assembler does what every business did in the past when they didn't leverage the disruption in technology and they just suffered because of it. They did exactly what the factory owners did. They switched from electric, you know, from steam, but they received no benefit. Just like an entrepreneur today is shifting from non-using AI to using AI, but no benefit. Why? Because they didn't redesign everything. They didn't Redesign for AI. And when you redesign for AI, you then also realize what else is missing. So what else is missing? You have to read the manifesto to actually find out. What is that one thing that no one is talking about? That is the one thing that is actually going to make all the difference for those companies that do what this one thing is. And I can tell you Very few businesses are doing this thing. Almost no entrepreneurs are. If you're watching the right video, I'll tell you what it is. And what it is, is a different layer in the whole AI architecture that right now no one is focused on. And the reason no one's focused on it is because one, they haven't redesigned their business. And two, they're following old advice. But let me tell you why the change has to happen. A lot of people are making the mistake that when AGI is here, everything will just be the same. And that's true to one, in one, in one way. It's true that everything will be the same because businesses will no longer have an AI advantage. So where will the advantage come from? If everyone's using the same tools and those tools have the same power, where will the advantage come from? The advantage will come from the one thing that you were told to remove from your business that I said 20 years ago and everyone else has repeated for the last 20 years. The worst thing that you can do in a business today is, was the right way to grow your business 20 years ago. Remove the perspective of the founder, remove the judgment of the founder, remove the taste of the founder. But when you remove all of those things in the AI era, what you've done is you removed any point of difference and made sure that your business will be no different than any other business on the planet. So how do you do that? That is the thing that most people don't even, they haven't thought about, so they don't know it. Right? But even if they thought about it, they wouldn't know it because this is an area called tacit knowledge. And tacit knowledge is all the things that make an expert an expert that they can't articulate. They can't explain why should urgency be here and not there for marketing, right? Why should you hire person A versus person B when they appear the same on paper? When you give feedback, what you're really doing is you're expressing your tacit knowledge. So the most valuable thing that you have, your perspective, your judgment, your standards, you speak them into existence every day as you're talking to your AI, as you're talking to team members about what you like, what you don't like, what you would do, what you would never do, the right way to treat a customer, never treat a customer that way. It leaks out of your mouth and disappears the minute it leaks out of your mouth. Never captured, never created as this is the way this person sees the world. You wanna know why you need to babysit AI? You need to babysit AI because it doesn't know that. It doesn't know the one thing that it needs to know for you not to have to sit in that chair and babysit that tool. And no one's focused on it. No one's even thought about it. So this tacit knowledge, right? This perception, this judgment, this perspective, right? It also, you can't buy it. You can't create it in a day. It is knowledge that the only way it is accumulated and grown is compounding. So it's a totally different way. Business is used to scale. Now they will compound. And what will drive that compounding is the perspective, the personality, all those unique attributes of the founder themselves. But right now, no one's talking about that. So no one's even thinking about that, let alone no one's even thinking about this layer and how do you build this layer in AI. So we run a lot of high-ticket programs in AI. And every program that we run as a high-ticket program in AI is by application only. And when prospects fill out those applications for these high-ticket AI training programs, they give their experience, they share where they're at. So I feel based on that, based on the hundreds of applications that I've read, based on the hundreds of entrepreneurs that I've already taught AI, I'm very clear where people are and where they are is they're using AI, they're generating lots of stuff with AI. It requires a lot of time and attention to look at everything that's generated by AI, and they're not making any more money because of AI. Those are the people that join our programs. And what we've been able to do is totally shift that equation. So the manifesto update, the new manifesto that takes aim at the old manifesto, because the old way is the fastest way to get to bankruptcy. In the age of AI, that's why I'm writing a new manifesto. It's been 20 years. I certainly have a lot of other things I could be spending my time on. Everyone is racing towards a cliff because you think the way to grow your business is actually the way to put your business out of business. And so just like I did in the past where I said, hey, market, you're looking at this completely the wrong way. Don't look at it like that. Look at it like that. Well, I'm back 20 years later to tell you the same story, but with a very different ending and very different characters, but ultimately for the same outcome. How do you build a successful business as an entrepreneur? And the way you build a successful business as an entrepreneur in 2026 is the exact opposite of how you built it in 2006.