Sharkproof Living is a movement helping people learn about their environment to make better decisions and control the outcomes. You learn to navigate with sharks as a pilot fish instead of becoming shark food.
This is a guest blog "Why small businesses are paying for AI enthusiasm instead of AI results." In this environment the shark is the peer group. Not a vendor, not a salesperson, but the crowd that signals what the cool kids are doing. Small business owners who normally behave like disciplined pilot fish start drifting toward AI spending because the shark is moving and they feel pressure to move with it. The result is shark food behavior: money spent without a problem statement, without KPIs, and without a stop rule. Pilot fish do not get to make the sharks leave; they just stop being the ones who buy because the school is turning.
Blog author Don Lovett, ProjectBits Consulting (https://projectbits.com, don@projectbits.com)
It first appeared at https://projectbits.com/cool-kids-ai-tax/
Most small businesses don’t have discretionary capital. Every dollar spent on a project is a dollar not available for payroll, an equipment repair, or a customer opportunity. That constraint isn’t a weakness — it’s actually a discipline enforcer. Or it should be.
Something strange is happening right now. The same owner who agonizes over a $3,000 equipment purchase or contracted service is signing up for AI tools and initiatives without a business case, without defined KPIs, and without a kill switch. The justification? “Everyone else is doing it” — and the fear of being left behind does the rest.
The data is not kind to that reasoning.
