"The gap between knowing and doing is where most businesses thrive or die." –Ethan King
AI isn't just a chatbot anymore.
It builds apps, organizes your files, automates your workflows, and does real work on your behalf. Most people are still treating it like a search engine with personality.
This issue is about making the jump from chatting to doing.
Software stocks just lost $2 trillion in market value.
Salesforce. HubSpot. Atlassian. Adobe. All down 20-35% since October. Not because of a recession. Not because of interest rates. Because AI can now do what those companies charge you $50, $100, $200 a month for.
Wall Street is calling it the SaaSpocalypse.
Anthropic launched new AI tools that showed general-purpose AI could perform tasks previously handled by specialized software, at a fraction of the cost. Investors didn't just get nervous. They started pricing AI as a replacement for entire categories of software, not just a tool to make existing companies more efficient.
Think about your own business for a second. How many software subscriptions are you paying for right now? Project management. CRM. Scheduling. Invoicing. Design tools. Most of us are spending hundreds, sometimes thousands a month on tools we only use 20% of.
Now imagine building your own versions of those tools. Customized to exactly how you work. No monthly fee. No features you'll never touch.
That's not a fantasy. That's what's happening right now.
This week on my podcast, we talked about Matt Schumer's viral article called "Something Big Is Happening." He compares this moment to February 2020. Nobody was panicking yet. Then, bam, world on lockdown. He says we're in the "February 2020 moment" of AI right now.
What does that mean?
AI isn't just chatting anymore. It builds full applications. Without a single line of code from you. For example, a friend sent me a Loom video describing an app he wanted built. I'm not a coder. I told Claude Code to watch his video, and it built the entire application.
That's not the future. That happened weeks ago.
Wall Street already sees it. The question is: do you?
The good news: if you start now, you have a head start. Bad news: Your head start won't last forever.
Here's your next move, based on where you are right now:
Level 1: You're chatting with AI.
Build a Custom GPT or a Claude Project. Give it your business context, your tone of voice, your processes. Turn it from a generic assistant into YOUR assistant. This alone puts you ahead of most people.
Level 2: You're already using Custom GPTs and Projects.
Download an agentic AI application like Claude Cowork or Perplexity Computer. Stop asking AI questions and start giving it tasks. Have it organize your files, build a tool, automate a process. This is the shift from chatting to doing.
Level 3: You're using agentic tools and feeling ambitious.
Set up an OpenClaw so you have a 24/7 AI assistant working for you around the clock. Message it from your phone, give it tasks while you sleep. I'll go deeper on this in future issues.
Pick your level and take action now.
Problem: You keep hearing about things like Vibe Coding, AI Agents, and OpenClaw, but you don't really understand what people mean and have no idea where to start.
Solution: You just have to try it to understand it. Reading about agentic AI is like reading about swimming. You won't get it until you're in the water.
Try this in 10 minutes:
Go to claude.ai/download and install the Claude desktop app on your Mac or PC.
Open the app and click the "Cowork" tab at the top. This is where Claude stops being a chatbot and starts being a doer.
Point it at a messy folder on your computer. If you're like me, your Downloads folder is probably a disaster. Try this prompt: "Look at my Downloads folder. Organize everything into logical subfolders by type and topic. Show me your plan before you start."
Watch it work. It will show you exactly what it plans to do, ask for your approval, then execute. This is what "agentic AI" actually means. It's not theory. It's your files getting organized while you watch.
Ready for more? Think of a piece of software you pay for monthly. A project tracker, a simple CRM, a scheduling tool. Ask Claude Cowork: "Build me a simple version of [tool name] that I can use locally. Include the core features I actually need." Then watch it build it.
Once you've determined a few helpful actions, ask Claude to make each one a scheduled task.
That moment when you see AI doing something on your actual computer, not just answering in a chat window, is the moment it clicks. You'll go from "that's interesting" to "wait, what else can this thing do?"
That's the shift. And once you feel it, there's no going back.
Note: Cowork is available on the Claude Pro plan ($20/month). If you can't figure out how to get a 100x return on $20/month with AI, email me. I'll help.
This week on King Moves (Ep. 123), Justin and I get into why chatting with AI is now the baseline, not the goal.
We break down Matt Schumer's article, talk through the shift from AI-as-assistant to AI-as-builder, and I walk through real examples.
If you tried AI 18 months ago and walked away underwhelmed, you need to hear this. It's not the same tool anymore.
Stop playing life on hard mode. Automate your success.
Until next time,
Ethan King
A.I. Automation for Business Growth
Keynote Speaker | Author | CEO | Strategist
ethan@ethanking.com
P.S. Next week I'm in sunny Key West teaching owners of early childhood education centers practical ways to implement AI, then I'm headed to chilly Canada to conduct a workshop with EO Southwest Ontario. The road doesn't stop, and honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaking of AI doing things for you, I built something at home that I'm pretty excited about. It's an AI assistant named Henley, running 24/7 on a Mac Mini, powered by OpenClaw. I message him through Telegram and he handles my emails, calendar, research, follow-ups, you name it. He helps me keep my life organized and actually get things done off of my never-ending to-do list (because half of them, he actually just does for me).
That's the shift I keep talking about. AI went from something I chat with to something that works for me. I'll share more about how I set this up in a future issue because I think every business owner should have one.
This is Issue #4. Hit reply and tell me: what software subscription would you cancel first if you could build your own version?
P.P.S. My new book (working title: AI Beyond Chat: How to Deploy Digital Employees to Run Your Business) is in the works and it covers exactly what we talked about today. If you want to be on the early access list, reply with "BOOK" and you'll be first to know when it drops.
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