Everyone’s trying to sell you a prompt library right now. “Master these 50 prompts and transform your business!” And look — prompt literacy matters. But if you’re spending more time with AI than you’re saving, the problem isn’t your prompts.
It’s what’s happening before you type a single word.
Prompting is syntax. It’s the how. But without the underlying skills to drive it, you’re asking a most-likely-word prediction machine to read your mind.
Most people trying to figure out AI are buried in trying tools, watching tutorials and trying to jump on the latest feature. But AI is just the mechanism. The real opportunity here is point it at your business to get more of what you want.
So here are four skills that every solo business owner needs to turn AI into real opportunities. And not one of them requires writing code or being a tech geek.
Skill 1: Laser Focus — Your Personal AI Filter
Having too many choices and not enough time is the biggest AI trap for business owners right now. New tools drop every week, each one promising to change everything. No wonder we’re all exhausted.
But the real problem isn’t the tools. It’s knowing where to point them so you actually get value.
AI right now is an entire laser light show. What you actually need is a single laser pointer aimed at one specific target in your business. So how do you find that target?
Run your situation through what I call a Personal AI Filter. Start with two questions:
Q1: What is keeping you from moving forward right now? Is it decision making? Writing? Graphic design? Following up? Project management? Pick something that bugs you every day. You’re going to be a lot more motivated to figure out a tool when there’s something that genuinely drives you crazy at the end of it.
Q2: Is AI actually the right solution here?
If your problem is that you don’t have product/market fit or that you don’t have enough child care, AI isn’t going to fix that.
Asking these two questions should help you identify at least one big thing that AI can help you with. Tune out the noise and focus on that until you get it fixed.
Skill 2: Design Thinking
Most people sit down with AI and start with a task. “Make me an outline for a presentation on project management.” Then they spend the next hour editing the output into what they actually wanted to say.
Unfortunately, starting with the task skips the most important step: understanding and communicating the underlying problem. Let me explain with a wine opener.
If you ask “what’s the best way to open a bottle of wine?” — the answer is probably “use a corkscrew.” But which corkscrew depends entirely on the circumstances.
- A waiter needs something small, portable, one-handed, and reliable — that’s a waiter’s corkscrew.
- At home, you might want more leverage and less hand strength — that’s a butterfly corkscrew.
- Want high design and low effort with synthetic corks? That’s a Monopole.
- And if you just care about getting to the wine quickly? Pick a bottle with a screw cap.
The variable that matters here isn’t the question, it’s the problem you’re trying to solve.
Your job is to do the thing the AI can’t do. Think about the end game before you ask it to start doign tasks. And this is where having depth of experience gives you a real advantage — because your 20 years of experience are going to give you the vision that AI can’t replicate.
Skill 3: Beginner’s Mind
Remember that grade school science fair project? Someone drops Mentos into a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke and it explodes everywhere. As a kid, that was the best. You got to go outside, make a huge mess, and something genuinely surprising happened.
We need to get back to that place with AI. Where it’s okay to try things just to see what happens.
Here’s what I know: no AI tool saves you time the first time you use it. You have to iterate and optimize. I have a Claude project I use for YouTube scripts, and I update it roughly every two weeks. As I learn more about how AI works, as I get clearer about the output I want, I keep revising.
So if it’s been a while since you tried something new — that’s okay. Start with a tool you’re already comfortable with. Excel person? Try Claude for Excel. Lots of sales calls? Try an AI notetaker. Pair AI with something familiar so the learning curve isn’t “learn AI” plus “learn a whole new workflow” at the same time.
My own example: I recently needed slides for a workshop. Knew the content, short on time, decided to try Gamma. First attempt? Not remotely a home run. But it got me into the app, showed me what it could do, and taught me how to adjust my approach for next time. You’re not looking for perfection on day one. You’re looking for enough traction to keep going.
Skill 4: Identifying Low Hanging Fruit
I have a lime tree in my backyard. If I want to pick limes from the back patio, I need a fruit picker because most of them are out of reach. But if I walk around to the street side, I can pick them just standing there. Low effort, high impact.
But don’t fall into the I’m busy so this is working trap.
If your goal is perfect fish tacos, you need those limes. They’re essential to the end product. But if you’re trying to make spaghetti and you’re spending all your time figuring out how to harvest more limes because they happen to be in your backyard? That’s not helping you.
I see this with clients all the time. Someone comes to me asking how to revise their pitch deck. So I ask, “Is this pitch deck actually getting you clients?” And they say, “Well, I don’t know — I haven’t done very many pitches.” So it’s highly possible the pitch deck isn’t the problem. Revising it is comfortable, but it’s not going to move the needle because what the business actually needs is more opportunities to pitch.
Where to Start This Week
Here’s how to put all four skills to work in the next seven days:
Day 1: Run your Personal AI Filter. List your top three business bottlenecks. Plot each one on the effort-versus-frequency matrix. Pick one that’s high effort and high frequency.
Day 2–3: Apply design thinking. Before you open any AI tool, spend 15 minutes writing down the context around your problem. Who is it for? What are the constraints? What does “good” actually look like? How are you going to use the result?
Day 4: Channel your inner beginner. Pick one tool or feature and try it on a real task. Not a tutorial. Not a hypothetical. Something you need done this week.
Day 5: Set aside a few hours and think about how AI might move your business forward. So not vibe coding because it might be fun to learn (it is!). But if you gave your clients an app that made something easier would it increase retention or improve results?
I think the people who are going to get the most out of AI aren’t the coders. It will be the people who have the vision to see where AI can change the game in their business area and then apply it at specific points to get business results.
