In January, my wife and I flew to Italy for two weeks.
I’ve shared before how great it was to leave for two weeks, have no contact with the business (I literally took all the business apps off my phone)...
And come back to find we were on track for one of our biggest months.
Everything clicked >> sales, client success, finance.
Leading up to that trip, I worked to pull things off of my plate and empower the team.
It worked.
Almost too well.
When I got back from Italy, I found that I didn’t have that much to do.
There was blank space on my calendar.
That’s what I’d been building for for years. I’d finally made it happen.
And, with every success, a new problem is created...
The universe, seeing that open, unused space, conspired against me to fill it.
Soon, I found myself “tinkering with AI.”
Because, it is the tech of our time, and likely to impact the business (for better or worse) more than anything else.
I quickly justified filling my time building AI systems as a “good use of time as the CEO.”
I should be on the leading edge.
Our clients will be looking for leaders in this time of chaos...
We should be the leader.
And I should dig in and understand it.
All of that is strong logic, and solid reasoning.
And...
NATURE ABHORS A VACUUM.
Soon, I was working MORE building AI systems, experimenting, seeing what worked (and seeing a lot of what didn’t).
At one point, my partner Bill and I texted each other at 10pm on a Tuesday half joking that we were working more now that we had AI than we did before.
Except the joke isn’t funny.
It’s not just true for Bill and I...
I’m hearing that from almost every business owner who’s gone beyond basic ChatGPT queries.
Last Saturday, I was traveling home from an event, and sitting in the Delta lounge staring at the rain in Atlanta, reflecting on this shift from an open schedule to an overloaded schedule in a few months.
Here’s what stood out...
The Delegation Fallacy is still alive
I consider myself a pretty good delegator. We’ve got a great team and they really handle things.
Yet, when I started building AI agents, I held onto them, going back to the flawed logic of “I can do it better/faster with AI”. So I became the orchestrator of some really cool and very effective AI workflows.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I beginning to believe Dan Sullivan’s wisdom when he says he puts a smart person between himself and technology.
Fractured CEO Attention is Financial Liability
The predominant AI workflow since last year for those on the leading edge has been to run multiple Claude Code processes in parallel.
At one point, I was running 4 to 7 major parallel tasks all day long.
My attention was divided across all of those tasks. I’d start an agent on building an ad campaign and let it run while I moved to another agent that was helping me rewrite and strealine our client training.
Start it and jump to the next...
An agent that was recreating our website...
And then to one that was building BookFlow, our internal project app.
And... and... and...
At the end of each day, I was mentally exhausted.
And my ability to solve problems, think strategically, and lead the business was impacted.
In hindsight, fractured attention may have cost us $100k.
Cool ≠ Value
I’m an 8 Quick Start and 2 Implementer on the Kolbe® assessment, which means I never run short of new ideas, and the minute I hold the idea in my mind, it’s as real as if I could touch it.
That combined with AI is a dangerous mix if you’re the leader.
I stopped and did an inventory of the AI systems I’d built since January that were 70% or 80% complete, but needed that last 20%-30% to cash in on the value.
I’m embarrassed to say that the list was long.
Including a number of game-changer ideas...
A complete project management system that consolidates client project status and every client and team communication in one place, and has AI built-in to automate much of the admin work we do back stage.
It was stalled at 70%.
While I was building that, I also built an ad management system that eliminates all the “middle work”--pulling and crunching metrics from 5 sources, writing hooks based on the data, creating images, uploading ads back to the platforms--it saves 4-6 hours a week easily.
And another 5 big AI projects...
And none of them got to 100%, launched and delivering value.
(See fractured attention above...)
This is a trap I’m hearing from too many business owners right now. They’re doing things themselves with AI. It’s all cool and impressive, but it’s not freeing them up or leading to value within the team.
So I started handing off those projects to the team.
Three weeks later, we launched our internal project management app.
It was better than what I planned, and includes a client portal so clients can see from their phone the exact status of their project and what (if anything) we need from them.
Ditto on the other projects.
In the process... I’m clearing up my calendar again.
This time with some earned wisdom.
Every “free” hour will have a plan I call T.I.G.E.R...
Thinking
Insight
Golf
Empower
Relationship
Each of those creates value in the business and must be protected...
Thinking >> that’s my #1 job
Insight >> Reading smart people and processing ideas
Golf >> Because thinking, insight, and creativity rarely happen at a desk
Empower >> Lead and empower the team to own outcomes
Relationship >> the anti-AI moat
The only way to keep out the chaos is to be intentional about filling open calendar slots before the world fills it for you.
Steve “T.I.G.E.R.” Gordon
P.S. When you’re ready, our team is standing by to help you:
Become a Published Author — Million Dollar Author helps you extract your expertise into a book in 90 days. [Learn more →]