The Rules Changed While Nobody Was Looking

Business has a way of teaching the same lesson over and over again.

Just when you think you’ve figured out how the game works, something changes. The market evolves, customer behaviour shifts, new technology appears, and the strategies that felt reliable a year ago suddenly start producing different results.

The challenge is that those changes rarely announce themselves. The old way often keeps working just long enough to convince you that nothing needs to be different. By the time the results begin to slow, someone else has already recognized what’s happening and adjusted before everyone else.

That’s why I think one of the most valuable skills a founder can develop is the ability to question assumptions before the market forces them to. The businesses that stay ahead aren’t always the biggest or the fastest. They’re the ones paying close enough attention to recognize when the rules have changed.

It’s a shift that’s showing up everywhere once you start paying attention to it, and it’s exactly what I found myself thinking about as I was putting this week’s newsletter together.

AI Is Becoming Your First Impression

Not long ago, if someone wanted to learn about your business, they opened Google. Today, more and more people are opening ChatGPT.

They’re asking for recommendations, comparing companies, and looking for advice before they ever visit a website. That means AI is increasingly shaping first impressions, whether businesses are paying attention to it or not.

The important question isn’t whether AI recommends your business today. It’s whether you’re building a business that AI understands well enough to recommend tomorrow.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve become so interested in structured knowledge. AI doesn’t just read your website. It looks for consistency across your content, your reputation, your expertise, and the way your business shows up online. The clearer that picture becomes, the easier it is for AI to understand what makes you different.

The same thinking influenced how we built SalesFit.AI. The platform is designed around structured data and measurable behaviours instead of assumptions, giving leaders a clearer understanding of what drives hiring, coaching, and sales performance.

The businesses that adapt to this shift early won’t just be easier for AI to understand. They’ll be easier for people to trust.

If you’d like to learn more, you can explore it at salesfit.ai 

The Way People Discover Your Business Is Changing

In the latest episode of The Vault Unlocked , I sat down with Anya Cheng, former executive at Meta, eBay, and Target, and the founder of Taelor, to talk about a shift that’s happening much faster than most businesses realize.

For years, we’ve optimized our websites and content for search engines. Today, more and more people are turning to AI platforms like ChatGPT to ask questions, compare companies, and get recommendations. That changes the way trust is built online.

Anya shared how she generated more than 10 million impressions through ChatGPT without spending a dollar on advertising, and why the businesses that succeed in this new environment won’t necessarily be the ones creating the most content. They’ll be the ones giving AI enough context to understand who they are, what they do, and why they deserve to be recommended.

What I enjoyed most about our conversation is that it isn’t really about AI. It’s about understanding where people’s behaviour is heading and having the discipline to adapt before everyone else catches up.

If you’ve been wondering how AI is changing marketing, visibility, and the way customers discover businesses, I think you’ll get a lot out of this episode.

You can listen to the full episode of The Vault Unlocked on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

If it hits, leave a review. It helps the right people find the conversation.

And if you’re looking to build a business that’s positioned for where the market is going, let’s talk. Book a call. 

Kayvon Kay.