I was a Dewey Decimal kid. Card catalogs, the smell of library glue, the particular satisfaction of finding the right call number on the first try. Then came a typewriter — the kind where a mistake meant starting the page over, not hitting backspace. Then MapQuest, which I printed out, in full, before every road trip, because the idea of a phone telling me which way to turn felt like science fiction.
I got my first computer at 30.
I'm telling you this because I now run an AI school. People meet me, hear that, and assume I was the kid coding in the garage. I wasn't. I was the last one in almost every room to adopt anything new. I am, by training and temperament, a late adopter. And I think that's exactly why I'm good at this.
The gap doesn't close itself
Here's what nobody tells you about being behind: it doesn't fix itself just because the new thing is obviously better. I knew MapQuest printouts were absurd by year two of owning a smartphone. I kept printing them anyway, for a while, because the old way was familiar and the new way required a decision to actually change how I worked. That's not a technology problem. That's a systems problem.
Most of the leaders I work with now are stuck in that exact gap. They know AI matters — nobody needs convincing of that anymore. What they don't have is a system for closing the distance between "I know I should" and "I actually do this differently on Tuesday." That gap is where 400-plus professionals have come through my training, and it's the gap that's widening every month a leader waits.
One of my clients told me that after a workshop, and I think about it often, because it's true for me too — going from card catalogs to AI workflows wasn't one leap. It was a series of smaller catch-ups, each one slightly less terrifying than the last, until one day I was the person other people called when they got stuck.
Fluency beats tools, every time
When I design training, I don't teach which buttons to press. Software changes. The skill that doesn't change is fluency — understanding how to think alongside a system, not just operate one. That's the same skill that got me from a typewriter to a computer to running four ventures with a team of two. Tools come and go. The discipline of figuring out a new one quickly is the actual asset.
I get an unreasonable amount of satisfaction from finishing an entire tube of toothpaste — squeezing out every last bit instead of tossing it for a fresh one. Imagine what I do with your budget, or your team's time, once I've got a system mapped out. That's not a personality quirk I mention for charm. It's the whole philosophy: use what you have, completely, before you reach for something new. Most organizations don't have an AI tools problem. They have an AI systems problem — they bought the tube of toothpaste and never learned to squeeze it.
What this means for you
If you're reading this and you feel behind — genuinely behind, not just behind the hype cycle — I want you to hear this clearly: being behind is not a character flaw, and it is not a permanent condition. I was behind for thirty years before I led anything in AI. What changes the equation isn't talent. It's deciding to build a system instead of waiting to feel ready.
That's the whole plan I give every leader I work with: commit, train on real work instead of practice exercises, build internal capability your team owns, then prove it and win. No theater. No vendor dependence. Just the same stubborn, toothpaste-tube discipline that got a Dewey Decimal kid from a card catalog to running an AI school.