The Comfortable Fiction You're Telling Yourself

It's 1999. You run a catalog business. Someone mentions Amazon.

"They sell books," you say. "We sell [furniture/tools/clothing]. Different business. Different customer. They can't touch us."

By 2005, you're out of business wondering what happened.

Right now, you're having the same conversation about AI. "It can only write bad copy." "It hallucinates too much." "My business requires human judgment."

These are comfortable fictions. I know because I've heard them all, and I've also seen what happens when someone refuses to believe them.

Eric Vaughan, CEO of IgniteTech, who was featured in a recent Fortune article, looked at his workforce in early 2023 and saw the same thing: people telling themselves AI wasn't a real threat to how they worked. His response? He replaced 80% of his staff within a year.

Not because he wanted to. Because changing minds was harder than adding skills.

Here's what he did:

He called an all-hands meeting and told everyone: "We're going to give you a gift — time, tools, education, projects — to give you a new skill." Every Monday became "AI Monday." No customer calls. No budgets. Only AI projects. Company-wide. Sales, marketing, finance, engineering — everyone.

Twenty percent of payroll went into this learning initiative.

As he recounts in the Fortune article, “It failed. Mass resistance. Even sabotage.”

The technical staff — the people you'd expect to embrace it — were the most resistant. They focused on what AI couldn't do instead of what it could. Marketing and sales? They got excited. The engineers? They dug in their heels.

So Vaughan did what most owners won't: he let them go. Not a few. Nearly 80% of the company, replaced over twelve months.

"You can't compel people to change, especially if they don't believe," he said. "Changing minds was harder than adding skills."

The result? 75% EBITDA margins. Products built in four days instead of months. A major acquisition completed. And now, in 2026, they're hiring again — but only people who already believe.

Now here's the uncomfortable part.

You're not going to do this.

I don't mean you can't. I mean you won't.

Most businesses get stuck at the point where the owner is no longer willing to demand more from his or her employees. I’ve seen it across scores of businesses and it’s 100% always the reason they don’t grow.

It's easier to accept "good enough." It's easier to believe the comfortable fiction that AI is overhyped, that your industry is different, that your team will come around eventually.

The Fortune article cites stats that one in three employees actively sabotages AI adoption. They're not bad people — they're protecting what they know. Just like you're protecting what's comfortable.

Vaughan invested 20% of payroll in training. He made every Monday an AI-only day. He brought in outside experts. He gave his people every opportunity to change.

Most of them refused.

The catalog owners in 1999 had time. They wasted it telling themselves stories.

You have less time than they did. AI is moving faster than e-commerce ever did. The gap between companies that transform and companies that plateau is widening every quarter.

McKinsey's global managing partner says they'll have as many AI agents as employees by end of 2026. How many do you have?

Zero?

Vaughan doesn't think he's ahead of the curve. He says he's "just not getting run over from behind yet."

So here's what I want you to do, read the article and then ask yourself:

The answers will tell you whether you're building the next version of your business or managing the decline of the current one.

Vaughan didn't want to replace 80% of his staff. It was "extremely difficult." But he did it anyway because the alternative was irrelevance.

What's your alternative?

PS We are kicking off our AI for Business Owners Cohort this week. It’s the perfect way to get moving on AI.