Why AI won't make you rich in 2026
AAlex Hormozi
ManagementAdvertising/MarketingSmall Business/StartupsComputing/Software
Transcript
00:00:00In this video, I'm going to make a case against AI and more specifically why more people are not making money despite using AI a lot and token maxing and vibe coding and making all these apps and all that stuff.
00:00:14And so the big misconception, I think, around AI is that AI somehow canceled every other form of leverage.
00:00:20And if you're new to the channel, leverage just means the difference in what you put in and what you get out.
00:00:24If you have a lot of leverage, you put a little bit in, you get a lot out.
00:00:27If you have low leverage, then you put a lot in, you get a little bit out.
00:00:30So AI introduces high leverage, which is great.
00:00:35But the thing is, is that there's a lot of things that create leverage.
00:00:39And so this whole misconception around like, oh, we must only use AI in order to succeed, taken differently.
00:00:47Businesses right now who are using AI and individuals who are using AI and they're seeing their token bills go up are somehow not making more money.
00:00:54And so what I find kind of interesting is a couple of things.
00:00:57So number one, when I look at our business, we are, we now have had another kind of step increase in our revenue.
00:01:05But it's not because of AI.
00:01:07That's the thing.
00:01:08It's not because of AI.
00:01:09If AI didn't exist, we still would have had the increase.
00:01:11And so it's not like a direct line there.
00:01:15The second kind of proof point that I think is more interesting around this, and then I'll give you some tactics, is that I talked to a number of my wealthiest, oldest friends over the last week or two.
00:01:25And I said, listen, I know you need to have public appearances saying, of course, we're, you know, I'm a super AI advocate because you have to do that.
00:01:33But I said, how much are you actually using AI every day?
00:01:37And like, they kind of like look around and they're like, dude, I'm not using AI.
00:01:40And I was like, well, your teams are.
00:01:42And he's like, oh, yeah, of course, you know, of course, you know, they're like, of course our teams are using it.
00:01:45And I'm bringing people in and we're training the team up and all that kind of stuff.
00:01:48And I was like, but you're not using it.
00:01:51And they're like, no, no, I'm not.
00:01:53And I was like, so that's very interesting to me.
00:01:56And so this is the thought that I kind of want to challenge you with and I'll leave some tactics at the end, which is there are a lot of forms of leverage and many forms of leverage are multiplicative.
00:02:10So, for example, capital still has tremendous leverage.
00:02:15AI coming in didn't somehow erase the leverage that capital uses.
00:02:20If you are in media and you make a video like this and thousands of people see it or millions of people see it, that is tremendous leverage, right?
00:02:29AI doesn't erase that.
00:02:32And when you multiply some of these together, let's say you have capital and you have media and maybe you have teams, right?
00:02:36People still create leverage for other people.
00:02:39I do find it ironic that like these, the frontier labs that have all this AI still have thousands of employees.
00:02:44And so it's just like kind of interesting as a counterpoint of like, well, people are still being, you know, needed and useful.
00:02:51But the thought of it is this, is that I'm seeing so many business owners trying to AI max and because their capacity to work has increased using AI, they are now doing things they otherwise would not have done if they didn't have AI.
00:03:07But the thing is, those things that they otherwise wouldn't have done were lower priorities.
00:03:12And so now they're doing things that were less important, faster and automated.
00:03:17Great.
00:03:18Not great.
00:03:19Doesn't matter.
00:03:19That's my point.
00:03:22And so one of the interesting things about not having AI is that it forces you to prioritize better.
00:03:28It forces you to focus on the things that are going to move the needle in the business.
00:03:33So I'm not seeing, with an exclusion of like just a handful of exceptions, most AI use cases that I've seen are not actually making the business a ton more money.
00:03:45I think that having, you know, way more ad creative, I think for sure is helpful from an advertising perspective.
00:03:52We have an AI sales rep, which has been helpful.
00:03:54But the thing is, it's like the AI sales rep is great, but like I also know how to build sales teams.
00:03:59So it's not like this, you know what I'm saying?
00:04:00Like it's like it's more efficient, you know, and it scales, but it's typically not the limiter of the business.
00:04:07And this is my point, is that the constraint of the business, many business constraints, at least at this point, are not still as perfectly solvable with AI.
00:04:15And if they were, then everybody would be making a ton more money.
00:04:18This is kind of like the crux of this, which is, let me give you some other examples of leverage that people are just not employing that you don't need any tech expertise to do.
00:04:25If you have a one-on-one business, you can go to one-on, you know, one-to-many.
00:04:29It's like that would create a lot of leverage, even one-to-small group.
00:04:32It's if you want one-on-one to one-on-ten, you have 10x leverage.
00:04:34Like just like that with that one decision, right?
00:04:37If you go from having scheduled appointments with clients to asynchronous appointments with clients, it's like that gives you a tremendous increase in leverage in terms of how many people you need from a deliverable perspective.
00:04:46If you change your sales motion so that a higher percentage of people buy, and so instead of needing 10 salespeople, you need two, and they close the same amount because you've, you know, basically educated your prospects throughout the sales process more fully.
00:05:00So they need less information to make the decision, which means you have fewer conversations and shorter conversations for your sales reps, and they talk to more qualified customers.
00:05:06Then as a result, you can take what used to take 10 people, and you can funnel it to two.
00:05:09None of that uses AI.
00:05:11This is my point, is that there's so many places in a business where you can increase leverage that there's this fallacy that because I now have this infinite tool, and I'll use infinite with quotes here, I'm just seeing a lot of people using and not making more money.
00:05:26That's kind of my point.
00:05:27And so it's this idea that we can throw away the fundamentals of business, but that's not true.
00:05:31Like, you have to, one, is you want to use every form of leverage that you have at your disposal to solve the constraint of the business.
00:05:41If you don't know what the constraint of the business is, you're just doing more shit, automate it, does not make you more money.
00:05:48And I think this was the conversation that I was having, because I'll tell you the highest leverage thing that you can do, even higher leverage than AI.
00:05:55Ready for it?
00:05:57Making good decisions.
00:05:59Think about it.
00:06:00If I have my whole team, and I say, hey guys, we're actually not going to do this whole bunch of work over here, because I don't think it's important anymore, by doing that, I get so much more out of my team.
00:06:13It is more efficient for me to determine that something is not a priority than for me to automate something that is not a priority.
00:06:27That was good.
00:06:29That was pretty good.
00:06:31That is higher leverage.
00:06:33And so I will get more out of this resource that I have, my team, than if I just try and automate it and then create an output that isn't relevant.
00:06:42And so this is what I'm saying.
00:06:43And so I think quality still matters.
00:06:46AI is not there for a lot of things.
00:06:48There's obviously use cases, and we're, you know, I would say very early and very aggressive adopters of AI across the business.
00:06:53But when I look at the business overall, the things that are growing it are the things that have always grown it, right?
00:06:59We need to generate more demand.
00:07:00We need to convert a higher percentage of that demand.
00:07:02And we need to create, we need to deliver, you know, very high quality stuff.
00:07:07And right now, AI can help.
00:07:10But it's like having, like, access to a lot of, it's actually, you know, it's actually probably a really good analogy.
00:07:14A lot, it's almost like access to a lot of virtual assistants, like third world virtual assistants.
00:07:19That's what, in some ways right now, a lot of the use cases are like that.
00:07:22I'm not saying it's a perfect analogy, but like, there's a lot of through lines there, which is, that's always been there.
00:07:30And to be fair, I think virtual assistants right now sometimes are even cheaper than the AI token usage.
00:07:34But that's always been there.
00:07:36And businesses have still competed that didn't have them or did have them.
00:07:39And it's still the same marketplace.
00:07:40And there's still high quality.
00:07:41And there's still people with good brands.
00:07:42And there's still great offers and bad offers.
00:07:44Like, if you have a terrible offer, then AI on the back end is not going to help you.
00:07:49Now, you can say, well, I'm going to use AI to improve my offer.
00:07:51Maybe.
00:07:52Maybe not.
00:07:52I don't know.
00:07:54And so, anyways, that is my, that is my public service announcement, which is that AI, though it increases leverage, does not cancel other forms of leverage.
00:08:05And for most people, they're using it on things to be more distracted because they have more resources now.
00:08:15They are still making poor decisions about how to allocate those resources.
00:08:20And as a result, thing three, are not making more money just because they have AI.
00:08:25And so, ask yourself this question, which is, has implementing AI in my business made me more money?
00:08:32If it hasn't, then you are likely using it in the wrong place, which means that you need to return to the thing that matters most, which is identifying your true constraint.
00:08:42And then forcing all of, you are very limited, and I say that for myself included, all businesses compared to the resources available in the world.
00:08:50Every one of us has, like, a speck of resources available to us.
00:08:54And so, we have that tiny speck and our ability to focus that tiny speck of resource on the one thing that's going to move the needle.
00:09:02Our skill at being able to do that is the thing that will ultimately make you more money, even more than AI.
00:09:09AI is just a tool.
00:09:11It's not the answer.
00:09:12So, anyways, that is my, that is my two cents for the day.
00:09:14I hope you, uh, feel like my very impromptu style.
00:09:18And if you hate it, you can let me know too.
00:09:20Anyways, lots of love.
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00:09:40And, uh, enjoy.