The other night, I offered my 14-year-old daughter a beer.
Not just any beer. A Golden Monkey by Victory Brewing, a delicious, American-made Belgian blonde at a whopping 9.5%. One of my favorites.
I went to the kitchen, poured it into a nice cold glass, and handed it to her.
She took a sip. Then another. Then another.
Before long she was laughing too loud, staggering around, telling me she was totally drunk.
That’s when I let her in on the secret: she hadn’t been drinking Golden Monkey at all. I’d poured her cans from Athletic Brewing; non-alcoholic.
(Muahahahaha!)
She thought she felt it. She didn’t.
And a lot of entrepreneurs are doing the same thing with AI.
They tell their teams, “Use AI daily.”
The team nods and says they are.
Leaders themselves tinker a bit: generate a draft, brainstorm a headline, clean up a few notes.
Then comes the pat on the back: “We’re an AI-powered company now.”
But what they’re feeling is a placebo buzz. They’ve never actually experienced what’s possible when AI use becomes:
Frequent: you’re reaching for it every day, not just here and there.
Natural: it’s the instinctive move, like opening your inbox or checking Slack.
Strategic: each use is purposeful, tied to the highest-value outcomes, not just surface-level productivity hacks.
When you combine these three powerful levers, they become force multipliers.
This takes your ROI far beyond the 2, 3, or 5x improvement people brag about.
You start seeing 10, 50, even 100x results. Better output, clearer insights, and barriers that used to slow you down are disappearing at an accelerating rate.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Teresa Easler, a strategic communication coach, was already using AI regularly. By her own account, she and her team were pretty strategic. But after going through our Sprint, she said she “found a new gear.”
Within 30 days, her team reported a 40–50% increase in productivity and quality. Do the math there – fixed labor costs, 40-50% increase in output! She captured her real voice, shifted how she delegated, and her team started operating on a new level.
That’s the difference between thinking you’ve had a Golden Monkey and actually having couple.
Shape
Disclaimer: No teenagers were harmed—or actually given alcohol—in the making of this story. This is not an endorsement of underage drinking (or overage drinking, for that matter). And if you do try Golden Monkey, pace yourself.
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