Are You Defence Or Offence

Every week I see another coach post some version of ‘ChatGPT can’t write programmes like I can.’

And they’re probably right, it can’t just yet - not with a non-expert running the inputs, anyway. Not with the nuance, the contextual awareness, the client-reading instinct that a good coach brings.

But here’s what bothers me about that content.

It only comes from two places.

Arrogance - Nobody could ever be as good as me.

Ignorance - How AI works today is how it’ll always work

Neither is a very good look, in my opinion.

I was listening to Monday.com’s CEO this week. Bear in mind this is a $3.9 billion public company with $1.3 billion in annual revenue, one of the biggest software platforms on Earth.

He said something that was really interesting. A year ago he admitted that they didn’t get it. They sprinkled some AI dust on top of their products, added a few new AI features, sugar-coated the existing thing without changing much of the value underneath.

Then something shifted. He called it the biggest pivot moment in the history of the company. They are now rebuilding everything: the product, the pricing, the go-to-market, the entire value proposition from the ground up.

His reasoning was really simple. Nobody will want to buy software that’s not doing the majority of the work for them.

His answer when asked whether he was playing defence or offence was, ‘offence, completely’ - because he sees the opportunity, not the threat.

Meanwhile, coaches are posting defensive content about how AI can’t do what they do, which is the professional equivalent of standing in front of a tsunami and asking it to stop.

It’s worth thinking about what your business looks like when AI can do 60% of the work or 70% of the work, and it will likely be sooner than you probably think.

A billion dollar company is rebuilding everything because they understand that they’re not protecting what they’ve built, they are protecting the future of the business by building what comes next.

It annoys me when coaches protect their position instead of capturing the opportunity that is in front of them.

And that’s not to say that you need to suddenly become a software business - but understanding that consumer uptake of AI will rise exponentially to the point where it will probably meet user numbers very similar to the internet.

(You know the internet, the thing where you run your online coaching business that wouldn’t be possible without it.)

So stop thinking, ‘Can AI replace me?’, but;

‘What becomes possible when I integrate AI into what I’m doing?’