The field of artificial intelligence is so vast that no one, especially me, can see the whole layout. Some people think it will save humanity; others, that it will (has) destroyed us.

Here are just a few threats that have caught my attention in the last couple of weeks:

Threats to person-to-person connections
“Half of C-suite executives said they’d prefer AI managers over humans, even though a third aren’t sure they can tell the difference between AI and a real person.” Carolyn Crist reported in HRDive.

(Whether the CEO’s wanted AI agents to manage themselves, or to report to them, was not specified. Ironically, 38% of their employees would prefer an AI manager. We still have room for improvement in organizational design, it seems.)

How about AI therapists, AI confidantes, AI teachers, AI pets? These “useful” applications have been around for a while now. It’s easy to write an AI love letter. Are AI spouses and children next? And a few unfortunates have followed their AI buddies to their physical deaths.

Threats to learning and creating new knowledge
Back-to-school? Primary/secondary teachers and university faculty alike bemoan the conundrum: teach students how to responsibly use AI to study and learn, but prevent them from using it to answer exam questions or to fully write their term papers, based on what is already sucked up into the LLM databases.

Here is a gift link to Ben Cohen’s Wall Street Journal article on the trend toward bringing back Blue Books for exams. https://lnkd.in/eKfuhGEe

I get how easy it would be to whip up a literature search on a thesis topic. And how helpful.

But to learn to think deeply, and to add to the body of knowledge? That was the stated purpose of the PhD degree when I was at Princeton.

Could you now just conjure up/AI-up a dissertation?

Maybe it’s not just AI cheating we should focus on.  As Arianna Prothero wrote in Education Week, surveys from Stanford University show that for years, 60-70% of students confessed to cheating.  After the release of the generative AI tool ChatGPT in 2023, the amount of cheating held fairly constant.

“We need to reframe the conversation,” said Tara Nattrass, an expert in the field. “We want students to know that activities like using AI to write essays and pass them off as their own are harmful to their learning, while using AI to break down difficult topics to strengthen understanding can help them in their learning.”

Let’s back up here. It’s the idea that cheating itself is harmful to the soul and to our fellows that needs to be taught first. And that is taught through example and consequences by humans we care about.

Threats to life on Earth:
Will our use of AI save or destroy the planet?

David Foster-Wells wrote in his August 25, 2025, NY Times column Who will the future belong to? about two major drivers in the world today. He cites China's lead in the green revolution, and the US’s lead in AI, including the energy suck that AI’s computers require. We don’t see yet how to merge those two.

I am not a Luddite

I used some AI tools to search my emails and to find links to the articles I cited.

And yes, I wrote this myself.  Spell check didn’t even find any typos. But I did edit again for clarity. Myself.

Here's to Humanity

I’d like to end by suggesting that unless we build and preserve our human connections, we cannot work out the other details facing us.  I’m a real person, having real conversations and building real connections among real business owners. I’d love to talk with you. IRL

Lorette Pruden has helped hundreds of small business owners, sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and community leaders grow their businesses and manage that growth since 2000. She specializes in the Formerly Corporate—so many small business owners who’ve worked with her come from a corporate background that she finally wrote the book on it.

Have you ever caught yourself thinking, “If only I could just get through this week, things would finally settle down”? Life has disabused me of the notion that things ever settle down.

 But can you create clarity in the chaos? That’s the mindset of a business owner.

 A business is like a rollercoaster. There are exhilarating ups and demoralizing downs, with a few scary curves and even flips. The business owner has no one else to blame when things go sideways, and no one else to thank when they go well. That’s both the challenge and the gift. But what separates those who simply run a business from those who truly own it? 

It’s the mindset shift—from “doing the work” to “owning the outcome.”

The role of running a business is an operational one. The role of “owning the business” is a visionary one.

Here’s a bit of my take on the Owner’s Mindset:

Key Shifts to an Owner’s Mindset

(adapted from the author’s book, Formerly Corporate)

Embracing ambiguity

Owners know that waiting for perfect means waiting forever. So you make the best call with what you know now, then adjust as you go. Ask what decisions will move your business forward, not what’s next on the task list.

What’s not ambiguous is the need to bring in the money.

Accepting volatility

It’s tempting to spend your energy putting out fires, but owners carve out time to anticipate what’s next—market trends, customer needs, and even their own capacity.

(My capacity is still recovering from a fall I took. Talk about volatility!)

Our times are volatile all right. The larger economy seems indecipherable.

But accepting that must still be the owner’s mindset. Then: What could go wrong?  What could go right? What can I control or influence? What if?

Creating money out of thin air

That’s what a business owner does. Goods and services are offered to a buyer in exchange for money. Where did the goods and services come from? Someone thought them up and did them....Money materializes from the thin air of imagination, is refined through the crucible of hard work, and deposits itself into the owner’s bank account.

My Own Mindset Moment

Formerly Corporate. That’s what I was. Having been successful at executing someone else’s strategy with someone else’s money, I was ignorant of how hard it would be to devise a successful small business strategy and fund it as a start-up.

Banks wouldn’t loan money to a business less than two years old without a P&L statement that showed a P(rofit). Neither would government agencies.

Or I just didn’t know where to look. I didn’t even know to ask the question or who to ask.

The only recourse I saw was my only resource—my buy-out package. That only worked for a while.  I came to learn that the real recourse I had was my own resourcefulness.

I had come from an environment that rewarded individual accomplishment. In academia or corporate R&D, you wanted your name first on the patent or publication,  even though everyone knew it took a team to find a breakthrough.

I couldn’t do this business thing alone either. Once I started learning from more successful small business owners, relying on and delegating to a team of specialists, and planning ahead rather than reacting to outside forces, things began to shift.

By the way, I didn’t have to hire those specialists. Many were like me, small businesses who excelled at business functions that I did not. Like book-keeping, or graphic design, or marketing support.

As I found these other business owners, and we started to work together,  all our businesses improved, as we learned to let go of being do-it-all, know-it-all business runners to being business owners.

I finally got the picture. And I wrote the book on it. Link here. Formerly Corporate: Mindset Shifts for Success in Your Own Business.

How  Can You Start?

 Build on small wins. Look for the pieces that are missing from your business.

• Pick one area to step back and assess: Where are you stuck in the weeds? What’s one decision you could make this week that would create more space for you to lead? Especially if who you are leading is yourself.
• Ask for feedback: Sometimes your team, your customers, or even your accountant can see what you can’t. Don’t be afraid to ask, “What’s one thing you’d change if you were in my shoes?”
• Small mindset shifts add up: Every time you delegate, plan ahead, or choose progress over perfection, take a minute to notice. Small mindset shifts add up, just like the small wins I talked about last month.

Where Are You on the Owner’s Journey?

I’d love to hear what shifts you’re making—or where you feel stuck. Sometimes, just naming the challenge is the first step to moving past it. 

And if you’re looking for support, accountability, or just a fresh perspective, remember that you don’t have to go it alone. I work with small business owners to build not just better businesses, but stronger mindsets. Let’s talk about what’s next for you.

Here's to making the shift—one decision at a time.

Lorette Pruden has helped hundreds of small business owners, sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and community leaders grow their businesses and manage that growth since 2000. She specializes in the Formerly Corporate—so many small business owners who’ve worked with her come from a corporate background that she finally wrote the book on it.

Hire sooner, said most people. But hire for what?

What should you, as the business owner, be doing anyway?

SHOULD NOT Do it all

• It’s impossible.
• You should be doing CEO work—visionary, fund-raising, building a brand.
• If you don’t like doing something that needs to be done, find someone who loves doing it and pay them. They’ll even do it better.

SHOULD 

Mark Cuban, businessman and film producer, offered a different take in a recent INC article: 

• You need to know enough about all the aspects of your business to be able to hire and evaluate other people and opportunities judiciously…
• Plus, at the beginning, you don’t have enough money.
• So do as much as you can at first till you can’t. Then get some help.

Is Cuban’s approach efficient or effective? If you think about that even a little, efficient and effective is the better option. But there's a deeper option.

IT DEPENDS.

I often rely on Peter Drucker when trying to decide:

There is nothing more ineffective than doing something

more efficiently that needn’t be done at all.

Especially for the solo-preneur or small business owner, running a business can be overwhelming. If you delegate too early, you lose knowledge and control of how a process works. If you wait too late, you’ll never grow.

How would you make the choice about what needs to be done at all? Start simply:

Does this need to be done? Does it need to be done now? Does it need to be done by me?

There was a villain…

Several years ago, I worked with a performance artist who was educated in the arts but not in business. He was brilliant in his teaching, and growing his clientele, but new to the US way of doing business. It became obvious to me that there was enough money coming in that he should be able to take a decent salary, but he claimed to be broke.

I asked to review his most recent P&Ls, and now suspicious, referred him to a trusted accountant.

There was a villain. One of his students had volunteered to run his front desk and manage the accounts for him. He was grateful. She recorded the receipts, but not the cash she was taking out of his business.

It had seemed more efficient to turn the bookkeeping over to her, but it was certainly not effective. And he didn’t know enough to catch it.

Another story illustrates the opposite point.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

No one has ever said this better than the POGO cartoon. While it may seem like doing everything yourself is the most efficient option, it isn’t in the long run.

Another client, skilled in bookkeeping and cash flow management, was reluctant to delegate (and pay) anyone else.

Her super-power was in design and project management, but her business was growing so fast that she was doing the books at 3 am. Sleepless nights had an ill effect on her family life and her business. And she didn’t have the time and energy during the day to find someone she trusted to turn her books over to.

Let’s say, we had to pry her hands off that task. Still, she knew how to oversee it and what to look for in someone else’s work.

But another client, raised in a family retail business, never stopped for the day till the money was counted. In his own service business, he used his skills to keep his books up-to-date daily. It was second nature to him, and he wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night if he had not “closed the till”.

Same skill needed—for one person, it was efficient but not effective to do it herself. For the other, it was better to do it himself, and invest in help with something he was not good at.

The entrepreneur’s dilemma.

These examples illustrate the entrepreneur’s dilemma. We all have a limited budget of money, time, and energy. We must prioritize and spend that budget wisely.

If you don’t know enough about the different parts of your business, you run the risk of not making good, effective decisions. But you can’t DO everything yourself forever. That is not efficient in the long run.

A new business owner might feel compelled to handle all functions in their business for several reasons:

Why should a business owner do (or know how to do) all the functions in their business? And why should she not try to do them all herself?

(Disclaimer here: If you’ve read this far, it’s because I know how to write a good newsletter, or you love what I say, or you're my cousin. Or all three. If you read on, I have enlisted a new helper we might call Chatty, to generate succinct lists of pros and cons. So, for your consideration…) 

1. Limited resources: In the early days of starting a business, money can be tight. It's tough to hire experts when funds are low. So, as the owner, you might find yourself wearing many hats to save money and make sure all the important stuff gets done.
2. Hands-on learning: Getting your hands dirty and diving into every part of your business is like getting a crash course in running a company. You learn heaps by doing everything yourself. This firsthand experience helps you make smarter decisions and solve problems like a pro.
3. Control and autonomy: You've got big dreams, and you want to be the boss, right? It's totally understandable. Doing everything yourself means you keep full control over your business. You get to steer the ship and make sure everything aligns with your vision.
4. Flexibility and adaptability: Starting a business is full of surprises and changes. Being hands-on lets you quickly adjust your strategies and tackle challenges head-on without relying on others.
5. Passion and commitment: You're passionate about your business, and you're willing to do whatever it takes to make it succeed. Taking on multiple roles shows your dedication and drive. It's this hands-on approach that sets the stage for long-term growth.
6. Limited expertise: You can't be an expert at everything. Bringing in specialists for tasks like accounting or marketing ensures those areas get the attention they deserve.
7. Time management: Doing everything yourself eats up time. Delegating tasks frees you up to focus on the big picture and grow your business.
8. Avoiding burnout: Taking on too much can lead to burnout. Delegating tasks helps you keep a sustainable pace and maintain your well-being.
9. Quality control: You can't do it all and expect top-notch quality. Delegating to experts ensures every part of your business gets the attention it needs for better outcomes.
10. Innovation and creativity: Being bogged down with tasks stifles creativity. Delegating frees up time for fresh ideas and innovation.
11. Scalability: You can't scale if you're doing everything yourself. Delegating tasks lets you build a team and infrastructure for growth.

While it may be tempting to try to do everything yourself, business owners, recognize your limits.

Learn the essentials of your business. You can grow into finding trusted advisors and colleagues. Then begin to delegate tasks to others who can contribute their expertise and help the business thrive.

Lorette Pruden has helped hundreds of small business owners, sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and community leaders grow their businesses and manage that growth since 2000. She specializes in the Formerly Corporate—so many small business owners who’ve worked with her come from a corporate background that she finally wrote the book on it.