Where are you on the AI ladder?
By Nick Basile
This week I was fortunate enough to give an AI talk at my alma mater, Franklin University Switzerland, and the moment I put a single slide up, the whole room leaned in. The slide was a four-rung ladder of AI adoption, and for the first time every person in the room could see where they were sitting, where everyone else was sitting, and what the next move actually looked like. The fog lifts when you can name the rung you're on.
Here's what I keep seeing out in the wild: most small business owners think they're using AI. They have ChatGPT or Claude open in a browser tab, they type in questions, they get answers, and they call that "using AI." That's a fine place to start. But it's Level 1 of four, and almost all of the real leverage lives above it.
The ladder is short and the rungs are concrete, so let's put you on it.
Level 1 is the thought partner. You open a chat, ask a question, get an answer. It's genuinely useful for brainstorming, for getting a second opinion, for decoding a contract clause you've never seen before. The ceiling hits the moment the task starts to repeat. If every AI session starts from a blank chat, you're at Level 1.
Level 2 is the assistant. You stop retyping the same setup every week. Instead, you write the workflow down once: what the AI should ask for, the steps it should take, how the output comes back. That document is a skill. A markdown file, a Custom GPT, a Claude Project, a saved prompt template; the format is not the point. The point is that the know-how lives in the document instead of in your head, and anyone can run it and get the same quality every time.
Level 3 is the true teammate. Skills start chaining together; they run on schedules and triggers; you show up to review the output, not to start the work. Our content pipeline at Markham Square used to eat 20 hours a week. On Level 3, it takes 1 to 2, and the hours I got back went straight into the work that actually moves the business.
Level 4 is the system. The work runs without you. Stripe has an internal system called Minions that is responsible for more than a thousand pull requests merged each week; humans review before merge, but the agents write the code end to end. That isn't a tool. That's a system. Most small businesses aren't there yet, and that's fine. The ones that are moving fastest this year often are.
Here's the uncomfortable truth that lands in every room I present this in: the vast majority of people are at Level 1. Not most. The vast majority. The good news is that the single biggest unlock on the whole ladder is the move from Level 1 to Level 2. Once one skill is written down and running reliably, the climb takes care of itself.
For now, take a minute and put yourself on the ladder. Don't round up. Then pick the next rung and take one step up. That's the whole game for everyone right now.
Latest from Learn AI with Nick
Tuesday, April 28 · 12 PM CDT · free, remote, 60 minutes. If you've tried ChatGPT and went back to work unchanged, this session shows what AI looks like when it's wired into your business. Live demos, real automations, and a one-page action plan to take home.
Published today. How to turn 150 applications into a ranked shortlist without losing the signal.
The fastest Level 2 win you can install in your inbox this week.
Turn the stuff that only lives in your head into documents your team can actually run. Pairs directly with the Level 2 move above.
Sixty-second short on the fastest way to level up your prompt game.
This week's links
My cheatsheet for a clean context — Ben's Bites
Ben wrote down the rules he uses to keep AI context clean: stay under about 60% of the window, don't trust a 1M-token claim past roughly 150k, use satellite sessions to pre-summarize before the real work. If you're at Level 2 or 3, these rules are the difference between a skill that runs reliably and one that quietly drifts.
That's my designer — Claude — Ben's Bites
Anthropic shipped a Claude Design feature that asks you 5 to 10 questions and then hands back wireframes and a working prototype. If you've ever wanted a landing page but couldn't afford a designer, this is the first version of this idea I've seen that a non-designer can actually use. Limits are tight on the $20 plan, but it's worth a test drive.
ChatGPT's Nano Banana — Ben's Bites
ChatGPT Images 2.0 finally renders legible text in generated images, which is the thing that made every previous version useless for marketing mocks. Paired with Claude or GPT inside a coding tool, you can now go image-to-UI without a designer in the loop for first-pass work. Ship your rough version; polish later.
The CFO Who Killed The Spreadsheet — Open Source CEO
Campfire is an AI-native ERP, and it's displacing NetSuite at mid-sized tech companies at an uncomfortable pace for the incumbents. The founder lived the pain himself during an acquisition, running diligence out of Excel. The lesson for small business operators: the vendors you're locked into today are the ones AI-native competitors are going to unseat first.
Inside a $150K ghostwriting business — Creator Spotlight
Maxie McCoy charges boutique-agency prices as a solo ghostwriter, splits her contracts into a proposal phase and a manuscript phase, and keeps most of her revenue anonymous. A clinic in pricing and packaging for anyone selling expert services alone.
As always, feel free to ask me any questions on LinkedIn. And until next time, happy climbing.