The Death of Average

The Death of Average

Larry Fischer August 22, 2025

Your “good enough” marketing just became worthless overnight. Your adequate customer service is now embarrassingly slow. Your standard business processes look primitive compared to what AI-powered competitors are delivering.

Welcome to the new reality: AI isn’t just changing how we work—it’s destroying the value of everything average.

In the past six months, we’ve watched AI tools produce marketing campaigns that rival agencies, handle customer inquiries better than most support teams, and deliver services faster and cheaper than traditional businesses ever could. The question isn’t whether AI will disrupt your industry—it’s whether your business will survive the disruption.

The Great Value Collapse

Here’s what’s happening right now across every industry: AI is making average performance worthless.

Marketing that used to be “pretty good” is now trash. AI can write compelling copy, design graphics, analyze customer data, and optimize campaigns 24/7. Your monthly newsletter that took 8 hours to create? AI does it in 8 minutes—and often better.

Customer service that was once acceptable is now painful. AI chatbots provide instant, accurate responses while your customers wait 24 hours for email replies or sit on hold for human agents. Your “personal touch” feels slow and outdated.

Standard business processes look like relics. While you’re manually tracking leads, scheduling follow-ups, and creating proposals, AI-powered businesses are automating everything and focusing their human talent on strategy and innovation.

The brutal truth: If your business delivers average results through average methods, you’re about to become irrelevant.

Your Competition Just Got Superhuman

Let me show you what your AI-enhanced competitors are doing while you’re still operating the old way:

Marketing: They’re personalizing content for thousands of customers simultaneously, running A/B tests across dozens of variables, and optimizing campaigns in real-time based on data you couldn’t process in a month.

Sales: They’re qualifying leads instantly, creating customized proposals in minutes, and following up with prospects at the exact right moment based on behavioral triggers.

Customer Service: They’re solving 80% of customer issues immediately through AI, while their human agents focus only on complex problems that require real expertise.

Operations: They’re automating routine tasks, predicting inventory needs, optimizing pricing dynamically, and making data-driven decisions faster than you can schedule a meeting.

The result? They’re delivering better outcomes, faster response times, and lower prices. And they’re doing it while their human teams focus on innovation instead of busy work.

The Average Business Death Spiral

Here’s how average businesses die in an AI-powered world:

Stage 1: Denial “Our customers value the human touch. AI can’t replace what we do.” Meanwhile, your customers are experiencing faster, better service elsewhere and wondering why you’re so slow.

Stage 2: Price Competition You try to compete on price, but AI-powered businesses have lower costs. You’re fighting a losing battle with shrinking margins.

Stage 3: Quality Gap Your “good enough” starts looking obviously inferior. Customers can get better results elsewhere, and they know it.

Stage 4: Irrelevance Your value proposition disappears. Why would anyone choose slower, more expensive, lower-quality service?

Stage 5: Game Over You’re either acquired for pennies or you close. The market has moved beyond what you offer.

The Only Way to Survive: Become Exceptional

Here’s the hard truth: AI has raised the bar so high that average is dead. But there’s good news—if you act now, you can use AI to become exceptional instead of being destroyed by it.

Stop Competing on Average If AI can do something adequately, assume it will do it better than you within months. Don’t try to compete with AI on routine tasks—use AI to handle the routine so you can focus on the exceptional.

Identify Your Uniquely Human Value What can you do that AI genuinely can’t? Complex problem-solving, creative strategy, relationship building, ethical decision-making, industry expertise. Double down on these areas.

Use AI to Amplify Your Strengths Let AI handle data analysis so you can focus on insights. Let AI draft content so you can focus on strategy. Let AI manage routine inquiries so you can focus on complex customer needs.

Become AI-Enhanced, Not AI-Threatened The businesses that survive won’t be those that resist AI—they’ll be those that integrate AI so effectively that they become superhuman versions of themselves.

Your Transformation Starts Now

Week 1: Audit Your Vulnerability List every service you provide. Rate each one: Is this something AI could do adequately? If yes, you’re at risk. Start planning your upgrade or replacement strategy.

Week 2: Pick Your AI Enhancement Choose one area where AI could make you dramatically better, not just more efficient. Customer insights? Content creation? Data analysis? Process optimization?

Week 3: Start Your Experiment Implement one AI tool that enhances your best work. Don’t automate everything—amplify what makes you exceptional.

Week 4: Measure the Difference Track not just efficiency gains, but quality improvements. How much better are your results? How much more can you focus on high-value work?

The New Rules of Business

In an AI-powered world, these are the only businesses that will thrive:

Exceptional businesses that use AI to deliver results that were previously impossible.

Specialized businesses that solve complex problems AI can’t handle alone.

Relationship-driven businesses that combine AI efficiency with genuine human connection.

Innovation-focused businesses that use AI to free up human creativity for breakthrough thinking.

Strategic businesses that use AI insights to make decisions no algorithm could make.

Average businesses? They’re already extinct—they just don’t know it yet.

The Choice Is Yours

You have maybe a year before AI adoption becomes so widespread that customers expect AI-level performance from everyone. After that, being “just human” won’t be enough.

You can either:

  • Use AI to become exceptionally good at what you do

  • Watch AI-enhanced competitors make you irrelevant

  • Close your doors when customers stop accepting average

The brutal reality: Your customers don’t care about your business model. They care about results. If AI-powered businesses deliver better results faster and cheaper, that’s where they’ll go.

Your assignment this week: Stop thinking about whether to adopt AI. Start thinking about how to use AI to become the best version of your business before your competitors do.

The death of average is here. The question is: Will you rise above it or be buried by it?