Should I Sell My Business Before AI Disrupts It?

Or should I try to disrupt it myself?

Here are today’s highlights:

• Anthropic is becoming the chatbot of choice for business use.

• Ilana Preuss says states can and should protect small manufacturers from tariffs.

• The pizza metric is flashing a warning signal, but online sales were strong over Thanksgiving.

• Americans are finally losing patience with high car prices.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Alan Pentz thinks you can disrupt your own business before AI does it for you: “I keep having the same conversation. Four owners last month asked me: ‘Should I sell before AI disrupts my business?’ Meanwhile, I invested in a metal-fabrication company. The owner was spending 20 to 30 hours per week processing purchase orders. Not sustainable when you’re trying to grow. We built an AI system in two weeks. PO processing now takes 5 minutes. He got 25 hours of his week back. We’re closing on our second acquisition next month. Same playbook: build the AI capability once, plug each new company into the same operating system. That’s exactly what the PE firms are doing. At scale.”

• “Here’s the data that matters: 95 percent of AI pilots fail. But the 5 percent who break through? Ninety-one percent see a revenue boost. Eighty-six percent improve margins.”

• “This isn’t a technology problem. It’s a commitment problem. Pilots are experiments nobody owns. The winners pick one process, assign ownership, and measure results until it works. Then rinse and repeat.”

• “The gap between ‘wanting to use AI’ and ‘actually transforming your business’ is where most owners get stuck. That’s exactly the gap PE firms are exploiting. I’m not going to pretend I’m not doing the same thing PE firms are. The difference: I’m showing you exactly how it works so you can do it yourself.” READ MORE