An AI company won’t put you under. But an AI-augmented competitor will.
If you’re a small business owner thinking “AI is for tech companies, not me” — that’s the problem.
Amazon is a dated but useful example. In a June 2025 memo, CEO Andy Jassy wrote that AI would “reduce our total corporate workforce” over the next few years, and that “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.” (Amazon)
When Amazon cut about 14,000 corporate jobs in October 2025, Jassy said on the earnings call that those cuts were mostly about culture, not AI (Fortune). The direction in his memo still stands.
My read: they’re not replacing people with AI. They’re replacing people not using AI with people who are.
Here’s what that looks like in real life:
Speed: Your competitors are quoting proposals in hours, you take days
While you’re manually building quotes, they’re using AI to generate 80% of it instantly. Same quality. Fraction of the time.
Constraints: Your competitors know their bottlenecks, but you’re guessing
They documented their processes, fed them to AI, and got a diagnosis of exactly where things break. You’re still firefighting.
Testing: Your competitors are testing 10 things, you’re perfecting one
They try small AI experiments constantly. Most fail. But the ones that work compound. You’re waiting for the perfect solution.
You don’t need to become an AI company. You need to test AI in the processes you already have.
Start stupidly small:
- Document ONE process this week
- Ask AI where it would break
- Test ONE tiny automation
If your competitors are ahead of you, it’s not because they are as big as Amazon. They’re ahead because they’re testing while others are waiting.
What’s your biggest hesitation about testing AI?