🌐 Beware: The AI Speed Trap

Everywhere I go lately — masterminds, private strategy sessions, even quick calls with business owners I've known for years — I'm hearing the same thing...

"Andrew, I'm getting so much more done since I started using AI."

And I believe them.

But then I ask the follow-up question. The one that matters.

"What are you getting more done on?"

That's where it gets quiet.

Here's what I'm seeing across the board right now: business owners are using AI to accelerate their execution and calling it a strategy. More content. More proposals. More deliverables. More output across the board. And they feel productive — because they are productive. They're moving faster than they've ever moved before.

But fast in the wrong direction isn't a win. It's just a more efficient mistake.

I've believed in the power of speed my entire career. Speed is king in business. The ability to move faster than your competition — to decide quicker, act cleaner, and capitalize on opportunities before they close — is one of the most powerful advantages any entrepreneur can have. I've watched fast operators consistently outperform smarter, better-funded, more experienced competitors. Every time.

So when AI showed up and handed every business owner access to more speed than they've ever had? My instinct was exactly what yours probably was: use it.

But here's the distinction that I think separates the operators who will dominate the next few years from the ones who will stay busy and wonder why nothing's changing...

Speed is only king when it's deployed in the right direction.

AI gives everyone speed now. That means speed alone is no longer the differentiator. The new edge is invested speed — taking the time AI buys back for you and redirecting it toward the strategic decisions, high-leverage relationships, and course corrections that actually compound.

That's what The Main Event this week is about. I'm calling it The AI Speed Trap and it's catching some of the most driven, talented business owners I know. Not because they're careless. Because they're action-oriented. And action without direction is just activity.

In Your Implementation Blueprint, I walk you through The Speed Redirect — a 15-minute exercise to surface the single highest-leverage decision your business most needs you to make right now, use AI to pressure-test it, and get it on your calendar for resolution this week. Quick, focused, and immediately useful.

As always, The Growth Stack team has curated three Top Reads for you this week. Our Business Growth read from Harvard Business Review digs into what separates companies with sharp strategic foresight from those perpetually reacting to what's already happened. Our Wealth Building read — from this week's sponsor, Fisher Investments — is one every service-based business owner should read: it tackles the concentration risk trap, where most of your net worth is tied up in a single company, and what to do about it. And our Peak Performance read from Entrepreneur makes the case that your best strategic thinking runs on sleep — specifically the REM sleep that drives emotional regulation and clear decision-making.

Speed is still king. It always will be.

The question is whether you're investing it or spending it.

Let's go!

“Beware: The AI Speed Trap”

Every week, we break down the big-picture strategy behind the shifts happening in business—so you can see around corners while others are still catching up.

You're moving faster than ever with AI…

But are you moving in the right direction?

Speed has always been the ultimate business advantage.

Not hustle. Not effort. Not hours logged. Speed.

Speed is king in business, in my view.

The ability to move faster than your competition — to make decisions quicker, execute cleaner, and capitalize on opportunities before they close — has been the defining trait of every dominant business I've ever studied. It's what separates the market leaders from the market followers. It's what separates the seven-figure operators from the people still grinding toward them.

Speed is not a tactic. It's a philosophy.

For the past 17 years, across thousands of conversations with service-based business owners inside private masterminds, high-performance coaching programs, and one-on-one strategy sessions, I've watched the fastest operators consistently outperform the smartest ones.

Fast beats smart.

Fast beats experienced.

Fast beats well-resourced.

Every single time.

So when AI arrived and handed every entrepreneur access to more speed than they've ever had before — I wasn't surprised that everyone rushed to use it. That instinct was right. Speed is king. Investing in speed is what winners do.

Here's the problem…

Most people are spending their AI-generated speed. 

The real winners? 

They're investing it.

The Speed Investment vs. Speed Spending Trap

Think about it the way you would any other resource...

When you have extra capital, you have two options. You can spend it — on things that feel good right now, that temporarily reduce friction, that create a burst of activity. Or you can invest it — in assets that compound, that generate returns, that build something durable.

Most business owners are spending their capital. The wealth-builders are investing it.

The same dynamic is playing out right now with AI-generated speed. AI has given every service-based business owner a new kind of liquidity.

Suddenly you can produce content in minutes instead of hours. Proposals in 20 minutes instead of 2 days. SOPs, emails, scripts, frameworks — tasks that used to require a full afternoon are getting done before lunch. It feels like a breakthrough. It feels like leverage.

But here's what most people miss…

The way you deploy that newly unlocked time is the entire game.

If you take your reclaimed hours and immediately fill them with more execution — more content, more proposals, more deliverables — you haven't created leverage. You've created a faster treadmill. You're moving faster than you were six months ago. But you're not moving toward anything fundamentally different than where you were six months ago.

That's not an investment. That's spending.

The AI Speed Trap is this: using AI to do more of what you were already doing, faster than you were doing it before — and calling it a strategy.

It's not. It's just a better-equipped version of the same mistake.

Why Speed Without Direction Destroys Businesses

Here's a truth most people won't say out loud…

The biggest efficiency gains in the world mean nothing if you're efficiently doing the wrong things.

I've watched smart, motivated business owners use AI to automate their entire content calendar — and produce six months of content that generates zero pipeline. I've watched founders use AI to send five times more proposals than they sent last year — only to discover the problem was never volume, it was positioning. I've watched service businesses use AI to streamline their onboarding process — for clients they should never have taken in the first place.

Fast. Efficient. Going nowhere.

Here's the shift: speed without strategic direction doesn't accelerate your growth. It accelerates your existing trajectory — whatever that trajectory happens to be.

If your business is pointed in the right direction, more speed is the answer. It compounds. Every dollar of AI-generated efficiency you reinvest into the right activities builds an advantage that's almost impossible to close.

But if your business is pointed in the wrong direction — or worse, if you're so busy executing that you've stopped questioning whether the direction is right — more speed just means you get to the wrong destination faster.

That's the trap.

And the entrepreneurs falling into it aren't careless people. They're driven people. The same quality that made them successful — a bias toward action, an intolerance for slow — is now working against them in the AI era.

The Two Types of Speed

This is where I want to introduce a distinction that I think is one of the most important frameworks for the next five years of business…

There are two types of speed available to you right now:

Execution Speed: the ability to produce outputs faster. Emails, proposals, content, systems, frameworks. This is where most people are focused. And it's valuable — genuinely valuable — but it's a commodity. If you have access to Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tool, so does your competitor. Execution speed is table stakes now. It's the baseline, not the differentiator.

Decision Speed: the ability to make better strategic calls, faster. It's not about producing more. It's about thinking more clearly, more often, about the things that actually move the needle. Which client to pursue. Which offer to prioritize. Which market to expand into. Which relationship to invest in. Which direction to commit to.

Decision speed is not a commodity. It's still rare. And it compounds in a way execution speed never will.

The formula for winning in the AI economy is straightforward:

Use AI to maximize execution speed → reinvest the time saved into decision speed → repeat.

Every hour AI buys back for you is an hour available for strategic thinking, relationship building, or course-correcting before a small problem becomes a big one. 

That's the investment. That's where the real return lives.

The businesses that grasp this distinction in the next 18 months will create advantages that will be extraordinarily difficult to close. The businesses that keep chasing more execution speed while neglecting decision speed will find themselves working faster and harder and wondering why the gap between them and the leaders keeps widening.

What Investing In Speed Actually Looks Like

Let me make this concrete…

Investing in speed doesn't mean slowing down. It doesn't mean doing less. It means being ruthlessly intentional about where your speed goes.

A few years ago, the highest-leverage thing most service-based business owners could do was hire the right people, build repeatable systems, and get out of the weeds enough to see the business clearly. 

That was the path from six figures to seven figures. From operator to owner.

AI didn't change that path. It accelerated it.

The question that drives every winner I work with right now is a simple one: If I had 10 extra hours this week — not to do more work, but to think — where would those hours create the most value?

That question is different from "what can I automate?" It's different from "what can AI do for me?" 

It's asking something harder: 

What decisions am I currently under-investing in because I don't have the bandwidth? What strategic conversations am I avoiding because the urgency of execution keeps crowding them out? What opportunities am I missing because I'm too busy executing on the current plan to question whether the current plan is still right?

The answers to those questions are where the real money is.

And right now, AI is the only tool in the history of business that can actually give you the hours to pursue them.

That's not a speed trap. That's a speed investment.

The Bottom Line

Speed has always been king. That hasn't changed.

What's changed is that speed is no longer scarce. AI made it abundant. Which means the entrepreneurs who treat AI as a tool to do more are going to find themselves in a race they can't win — because everyone has access to the same tool.

The entrepreneurs who treat AI as a tool to think better — to reclaim strategic bandwidth, to make faster and sharper decisions, to build the business instead of just run it — are going to create a compounding advantage that execution speed alone can never match.

Everyone's moving faster now.

The real question is: where are you going?

The AI Speed Trap doesn't catch careless people. It catches busy, driven, action-oriented people who never stopped to ask whether faster was the same thing as better.

Invest your AI-generated speed. Don't spend it.

That single discipline, applied consistently, will do more for your business in the next 24 months than any tool, tactic, or trend you'll encounter.

The speed spenders will stay busy.

The speed investors?

They'll be building something that compounds while everyone else catches up.

That's where the future belongs.

In Your Implementation Blueprint below, I'll walk you through The Speed Redirect — a 15-minute exercise to identify the single highest-leverage decision your business most needs you to make right now, use AI to pressure-test it, and get it scheduled for resolution this week.

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Here's where strategy meets action. Each week, we give you the tactical steps to implement what you just learned—so you can capitalize on the insight immediately.

How to Identify Your Highest-Leverage Decision in 15 Minutes…

Most business owners aren't short on speed right now. They're short on direction.

This exercise fixes that. In 15 minutes, you'll identify the single highest-leverage decision your business most needs you to make — the one that's been getting crowded out by execution — and use AI to prepare for it so you can make the call with confidence.

One decision. Fifteen minutes of prep. Potentially months of momentum.

Step 1: Run The Diagnostic (5 minutes)

Open a blank document and answer these three questions. Don't overthink them. Write the first honest answer that comes to mind.

Question 1: What decision have I been putting off for more than 30 days that, if made, would meaningfully change the trajectory of my business?

This could be a pricing change you know you need to make. A service you should cut. A market you've been circling but haven't committed to. A partnership you haven't pulled the trigger on. A hire — or a let-go — you've been avoiding. Whatever surfaces first is almost always the right answer.

Question 2: Why hasn't this decision been made yet?

Be honest here. If the answer is "I don't have enough information," that's solvable. If the answer is "I've been too busy executing to think about it," that's the Speed Trap in real time. If the answer is "I'm not sure it's the right move," that's exactly what Step 2 is for.

Question 3: What would it mean for my business if I made this decision well — and made it this week?

This question matters because it reconnects you to the stakes. High-leverage decisions feel heavy precisely because they carry real consequence. Naming that consequence out loud is what separates the decision from the endless list of things you'll get to eventually.

You now have your target. One decision. Write it at the top of the page in a single, clear sentence.

Step 2: Use AI to Prepare, Not Produce (7 minutes)

This is where most people use AI wrong. They ask it to make the decision for them, or they skip this step entirely and stay stuck.

Neither works.

Instead, use AI as a thinking partner to pressure-test your decision before you make it. Open your AI tool of choice and run this prompt — customized to your specific decision:

"I'm a [your role] who runs a [brief description of your business]. I'm trying to make a decision about [your decision in one sentence]. Here's what I know: [2-3 sentences of context]. I want you to help me think through this — not make the decision for me. Give me the three strongest arguments for moving forward, the three biggest risks I should pressure-test, and one question I might not be asking that I should be."

That's it. Seven minutes of reading and reacting to what comes back.

You're not looking for AI to hand you an answer. You're looking for it to surface the angles you haven't considered and stress-test the ones you have. That's decision speed. That's what AI can do for your strategic thinking that no amount of faster content production ever will.

Step 3: Make The Commitment (3 minutes)

Block 30 minutes on your calendar — within the next 5 business days — specifically to make this decision.

Not to think about it more. Not to gather more information. To decide.

Write down the block. Name it. Treat it like a client call you can't move.

You've done the diagnostic. You've done the prep. The only thing left is the decision itself — and the only thing standing between you and that decision is a calendar commitment.

What Success Looks Like

Fifteen minutes from now, you have one high-leverage decision identified, pressure-tested, and scheduled for resolution. Not someday. This week.

That's not a small thing. Most business owners carry their biggest decisions around for months — turning them over in their heads during workouts, before bed, in the margins of meetings — without ever creating the structured space to actually make them.

This exercise creates that space.

Do it once and you'll see immediately why decision speed compounds in a way execution speed never will. Do it every week and you'll make more high-quality strategic decisions in a quarter than most business owners make in a year.

That's the Speed Redirect. And that's how you stop spending AI's greatest gift and start investing it.

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Every week, we deliver 3 high-leverage insights on Business Growth, Wealth Building, and Peak Performance — with direct links to the smartest ideas, tools, and strategies we’ve uncovered. Backed by what our team is studying, analyzing, and testing behind the scenes — so you don’t have to. These are the 3 core disciplines every modern entrepreneur must master to win. Curated. Actionable. No BS.

🔹 Business Growth: "What Companies That Excel at Strategic Foresight Do Differently" — Harvard Business Review
Based on a survey of 500 organizations, this HBR piece reveals that companies with strong foresight capabilities consistently outperform their peers — not because they predict the future, but because they build ongoing systems to detect signals and make faster, better decisions under uncertainty. A timely reminder that decision speed requires infrastructure, not just intention.
🔗 Read it here »

🔹 Wealth Building: "Wealth Management for Small Business Owners" — Fisher Investments
This week's Wealth Building read comes from our sponsor, Fisher Investments. Their breakdown of the unique wealth challenges service-based business owners face is worth a read — specifically the concentration risk problem: most business owners have the bulk of their net worth tied up in a single company. The same principle from this week's Main Event applies here — investing strategically, not just working harder, is how you build lasting wealth outside the business too.
🔗 Read it here »

🔹 Peak Performance: "6 Sleep Habits You Need to Know to Reach Peak Performance" — Entrepreneur
Your best strategic thinking runs through one system: your brain. And your brain runs on sleep. This piece makes the case that quality sleep — specifically REM sleep — is what enables emotional regulation, creative problem-solving, and the kind of clear-headed decision-making that separates reactive operators from strategic ones. If you're investing your speed in the right places, you need the mental hardware to back it up.
🔗 Read it here »

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