The 3 Dimensions of AI (Most Firms Miss These Two)
The firms about to win are doing three things differently.
Chicago. Strategic Coach. I’m in a room with 42 top entrepreneurs, listening to them describe how they’re using AI.
Same story. Again and again.
They ask it questions.
They get answers.
They feel productive.
And that’s where they stop.
I grabbed my notepad and started sketching. Three circles. Because sitting in that room, I realized there’s a word for what most people are doing with AI.
Addition.
AI Addition
Most people add AI to their workflow.
They bolt it on.
Ask a question, get an answer, move faster.
That’s AI Addition.
Linear.
Helpful.
Limited.
When 42 super-successful entrepreneurs are all describing the same one-dimensional use, you start to see how much is being left on the table.
The real results in my business haven’t come from adding AI. They’ve come from multiplying with it.
AI Multiplication: Three Dimensions
There are three dimensions of AI. Each one multiplies the others.
Dimension One: Insight.
Ask AI questions.
Get answers.
Research a topic.
This is where everyone starts and where most stop. It feels productive because it is productive. Just barely.
This is what the entrepreneurs in the room kept describing.
“I asked ChatGPT about X.”
“I used it to research Y.”
Linear value. One dimension.
Dimension Two: IP.
Load your proprietary knowledge into AI.
Your methodology. Your playbooks. Your decisions. Your operational IP, the judgment you’ve built over 10, 15, 20 years in your domain.
This is how you clone expert-level thinking. Junior people start operating like seniors. The firm’s expertise stops living in one or two heads.
IP is the hinge dimension. Without it, you just get faster mediocrity.
Dimension Three: Iteration.
Compress the cycle. Experiment, improve, experiment, improve.
AI lets you take more turns in a day than you used to take in a quarter.
One dimension: you’re smarter.
Two dimensions: your team is smarter.
Three dimensions: you’re running away from the field.
Four Examples
I’ve been running this in my own business. Here’s what all three dimensions look like working together.
LinkedIn Ads. Cost per lead was $846. Now it’s $532. Still dropping.
Dimension One: I had AI research the current best practices for LinkedIn advertisers in 2026, then pull the best performing ads from similar companies in the LinkedIn ad library. It now updates me weekly, automatically, on what competitors are running.
Dimension Two: I’m a trained advertising copywriter with 15 years of running campaigns. That’s operational IP. Our positioning, our past winners, yes. But the deeper layer is the knowledge about what makes advertising work for businesses like ours. All of that, loaded in.
Dimension Three: Testing used to take two to four weeks, mostly because I was the bottleneck. We hired an agency. Fired them because they couldn’t match what we were doing internally.
Now AI pulls data from three different platforms I used to check manually, gives me a report with recommendations, and creates 15 ad angles in five minutes. I pick the ones worth testing. The cycle went from a month to 48 hours.
Do the math. Monthly testing gives you 12 improvement cycles a year. At 48 hours per cycle, you get over 180. Same year. Fifteen times the reps. That’s what compounding looks like when you use all three dimensions.
Project Management Tool. We ran on Airtable. Ten thousand dollars a year. 60% of what we needed.
Dimension One: We used AI as our lead developer. I know the principles of software development from a prior company, but the details have faded. We leaned on AI for that insight.
Dimension Two: We have a unique process with many sub-processes for delivering our clients’ books, written and published in 90 days. We trained the AI on every step so it could build software perfectly tailored to our delivery model.
Dimension Three: Someone on the team sees something that should change. They record a Loom video. We decide if we want the change, then tell the AI to implement it. Feedback to feature used to be one to three weeks with a hired developer. Now it’s 24 hours.
SEO Site. I’ve known how to do good SEO for years. Never had the bandwidth.
Dimension One: AI researched the latest SEO and GEO practices for 2026. GEO is generative engine optimization, how you show up inside AI tools when people search. Full site audit in under 15 minutes. Technical issues, content gaps, a complete punch list.
Dimension Two: I brought my own knowledge of SEO and of our business to judge the AI’s output. It’s not always right. Sometimes you have to redirect it. You have to know the difference between a good answer and a correct one. That’s where your IP earns its keep.
Dimension Three: First version of the rebuilt site in an hour. I gave feedback from my phone between conference breaks. Within 48 hours I had a fully redesigned site, technically optimized for both SEO and GEO, with 25 articles written in my voice using ideas from my book and these newsletters. All done for me. That same AI now analyzes our traffic weekly and proposes updates. We’re already seeing a 20% bump in organic traffic.
This Newsletter. Used to take three to four hours of my week.
The idea for this one came to me in that Strategic Coach room. On a break, I took a photo of my sketch. Walked into the hallway and described what you’re reading now. My AI junior writer runs on all three dimensions.
Dimension One: best practices from the best copywriters.
Dimension Two: my books, my prior newsletters, my voice as IP, and all of these original ideas.
Dimension Three: I iterated this draft in meeting breaks and while walking from security to the gate at O’Hare, dictating changes into my phone.
Total time: 37 minutes.
Every one of these results required all three dimensions working together. Dimension One alone would not have moved any of these numbers.
A year from now, firms still doing AI Addition won’t be slightly behind the multipliers.
They’ll be in a different category.
Everyone uses AI now. That gap is gone.
Stop adding. Start multiplying.
See you next Saturday,
Steve “multiplication, not addition” Gordon
P.S. Last week I wrote that AI amplifies those who can define the what. This is what that amplification looks like. Addition gives you answers. Multiplication gives you an unfair advantage.
P.P.S. When you’re ready, our team is standing by to help you in three ways:
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Watch: What Amazon’s 30,000 Layoffs Reveal About the Future
Where’s Steve:
May 7 - Small Business Expo, New York City (speaking)
May 7-9 - NAPFA Spring Conference, Minneapolis (speaking)
May 27 - Small Business Expo, Boston (speaking)
I’d love to meet you face to face. If you’re at any of these, come find me and say hello.