In Today’s Accelerated Intelligence Brief
The 4 stages of AI users, and why most people get stuck at stage 2
Prompts, skills, agents, and teams, explained in plain English with one simple kitchen analogy
What a good day with an AI Agent Team looks like, and what it frees you to do
The 3 Ways Agent Teams Break, and the warning signs of each
Second Brains vs. Company Brains, and why most people only have the first one
How to build your Company Brain, starting with 3 files
The 10-80-10 rule, and how it makes you the bookends of your business
How many times has "the next big thing in AI" changed on you in the last three years?
A lot, I know.
First it was prompt engineering. Then custom GPTs. Then personal AI assistants and agents.
And now one personal AI agent isn't enough, noooo…
Now you can have Teams of AI agents running your business (and your life).
So how much of it is hype? And how much can you actually use?
This one actually deserves your excitement…
It also deserves your caution.
Below, I'll show you how to use a team of AI agents like a crew of digital employees.
But first, a quick look at how we got here. If you want to know where this is going, it helps to know where we've been.
The 4 stages of evolution for AI users
Most people move through four stages. Most never reach the last one.
1. DABBLERS:
You test the waters. You try a few prompts to see what AI can do. (this is sadly like 97% of the population right now)
2. REPLACERS:
ou use AI for real time savings, but as a 1:1 swap for tasks you used to do by hand: emails, images, brainstorming, plans.
Need an email? Ask ChatGPT to write it while you wait.
The trap is thinking that speed alone equals transformation.
And most people stop evolving right here.
The serious ones go on to become…
3. AMPLIFIERS:
You use AI to extend your own taste, judgment, and quality beyond what you could produce alone.
AI becomes a thinking partner that knows your context.
4. ORCHESTRATORS:
You direct AI agents that have instructions, skills, guidelines, and processes. One agent does a lot. A team of agents does a lot more. You stop just using tools and start designing an AI-powered operation.
This is where you finally leave the prompt ping pong table.
Your agents work behind the scenes, producing work and taking action to your standards, while you do other work (or no work at all).
This evolution happens fast
If the speed of change doesn't intimidate you a little, you're not paying attention.
Two old sayings about speed are both true:
"Money loves speed."
"Speed kills."
How can they both be true?
For the longest time, ideas have been worth a lot less than execution. And if you want to make money you still need to execute.
But now that AI and automation give a single person the ability to execute and implement at levels 100 times faster than before, execution is no longer the main barrier.
At the same time, jumping into something too fast, too furiously and you start to make a mess, get overwhelmed, make mistakes and end up worse and more overwhelmed than ever before.
And if you’re not careful you end up running enthusiastically in the wrong direction.
The good news is that you can methodically evolve through each stage easily as long as you understand some of the first principles.
First principles: prompts, skills, agents, and teams
Think of it like a restaurant…
What it is | In the restaurant | |
|---|---|---|
Prompt | One instruction you give your AI | Placing an order |
Skill | A reusable process written down for the AI to follow every time | The recipe |
Agent | An AI with instructions that uses skills and tools on your behalf | The chef |
Team | Several agents with clear roles, led by one coordinator | The whole kitchen staff |
Prompts are the first thing everyone learns. You type an instruction and get an answer.
Skills are where quality starts. The best skills carry your judgment, standards, and taste: what to do, and what not to do.
Agents take your order and cook it consistently, using the recipe. They have some autonomy and can connect to outside tools for you. Some wait for instructions. Others act on a schedule or a trigger, like a new email.
Never built an agent? Don't be intimidated. An agent is just a set of instructions in plain English that tells the AI how to behave.
Teams work like a commercial kitchen: a head chef plus line cooks and specialists, each with a role.
I call the head chef my Chief of Staff.
The beauty of a team done right: you don't manage the cooks. You talk to your Chief of Staff, and it coordinates everyone else.
Why (and When) an Agent Team is Worth It
The average person may not need an Agent Team though.
Most will be happy with a brilliant AI personal assistant, a single chef who can just do things for you. There are tools like Muse and ChatGPT’s Dot and Hermes agent and more that have one point of contact.
Your personal assistant agent might be using sub-agents behind the scenes and you may not know or even care.
But business owners, entrepreneurs and creators will want to use a team when they know that quality matters.
It’s when you want to fine tune your specialists to do things your way, the right way, every time and when you want one agent to do quality control on the other agents.
But agent teams are a multiplier (and that’s not always good)
Agent teams multiply whatever you build them on. And they do it fast.
Build a team on scattered facts and no rules, and it goes south like this:
Each agent works from a slightly different version of your business.
One quotes a price you changed months ago.
Another can't find a real testimonial, so it writes a convincing one from a customer who doesn't exist.
A third sends something you never approved.
Every one of them sounds sure of itself.
Nobody notices until a customer does.
The online-hype about agent teams skips these facts.
These teams fail in the same predictable ways. Quietly.
My bet: over the next 12 months, thousands of small businesses will try an agent team, watch it turn into a mess, and switch it off. Most will blame the AI and never fix the shaky foundation that made the mess possible.
But… get the foundation right, and the multiplier works for you: more finished work, fewer corrections, more of your week back. And your agents can help you build it.
The 3 Ways AI Agent Teams Break
Agent teams rarely break because the AI isn't smart enough. They break in 3 predictable places.
1. Missing or ambiguous business rules, policies, and decision criteria
When agents don't have your rules, they fall back on generic "best practice." They don't know:
What needs your OK before it goes out
Your prices, your discount limits, and the things you never say
What "done" and "good" look like for this job
What it looks like: confident decisions that are wrong in ways only your business would notice. A discount you'd never give. A promise you can't keep. You end up babysitting.
2. An incomplete or fragmented AI Company Brain
Each agent works from whatever it was handed, and that's rarely the full, current picture. It's missing:
How you actually do things
Your customer history and past decisions
Which notes are current and which are six months old
What it looks like: two agents give a client two different answers. One quotes last spring's price. Another can't find a real testimonial, so it writes one. Each mistake gets passed down the line and grows on the way.
3. Weak orchestration and handoffs
Even with good rules and good facts, teams fail at the handoffs.
Nobody knows who owns which step
The handoff passes the draft but drops the reasons and limits behind it
No agent stops to check the work, or to ask you
What it looks like: duplicate work, agents that bounce a task back and forth for hours, and output that looks finished but isn't. The team is busy. The work isn't moving.
Look at those three again. Two of them are the same problem: your agents don't have your business written down. The third gets much easier once they do.
That's what a Company Brain fixes. And it's where everything starts.
Success Begins with Your Company Brain
Hang around AI geeks like me long enough and you'll hear two terms used as if they mean the same thing: Second Brain and Company Brain.
They're not the same. The difference matters.
First, let me put you at ease. A "brain" is just a set of folders on your computer (or in the cloud). The folders hold plain-English files that tell your AI what it knows and what to do. They're usually markdown files that end in .md. Humans and machines can both read them, and there's no code in them.
AI Second Brain | AI Company Brain | |
|---|---|---|
What it is | Your external memory and thinking partner | Your company's written knowledge of how it actually works |
What goes in | Notes, ideas, research, meeting takeaways, half-formed thoughts, bookmarks, tasks | SOPs, decision rules, approval limits, brand and voice guides, product knowledge, customer context, metric definitions, current priorities, exceptions, "when X happens, do Y" |
Who relies on it | You | You, your people, and your agents |
If something is wrong | You notice and fix it. The damage stays with you. | It spreads to other people and to every agent, at scale |
The goal | Remember things, connect ideas, move faster on your own work | Let people and agents act the same way, without guessing or reinventing how the company runs |
Most AI users have a second brain but no Company Brain. Then they wonder why they keep hitting limits on speed, productivity, and quality.
How to build a Company Brain that knows your business
My Company Brain serves two purposes: accuracy and productivity.
Accuracy starts with one rule: one fact, one home. Your price lives in one file. Every other document points to it. When a price lives in four places, somebody updates one and forgets the other three. Now the Brain disagrees with itself.
Productivity comes from training. Once you and your agents can find the right files every time, load the Brain with what a new hire would need. You wouldn't hire an employee and expect good work without orientation and training, would you?
Start small: your current business facts, one writing sample, and one recurring process.
Then grow it as the work shows you what's missing:
Company facts: website, values, people, brand guide
Offers and pricing: what you sell now, how to buy, and what's retired
Customers: who you serve, their problems, and their own words from real sales calls
Voice and style: real writing samples, words to avoid, claims you can't make
Procedures: numbered steps for recurring jobs, each ending with a "done" checklist
Decisions and priorities: what changed, when, why, and what's on hold
The folder map: a front door that tells your AI which files to read for which job
That's a sample. Your Brain depends on your type of business, but the principles are the same.
Do this right and you become the bookends of your business
Imagine your business 6 months from now.
It's Monday morning. You open your laptop and type one sentence to your Chief of Staff: "Let's launch the spring offer."
That's it. That's your part.
Your Chief of Staff reads the Brain. It knows the offer, the price, who it's for, and the exact words your best customers used on their last sales calls. Then it hands out the work:
Your research agent pulls what's changed in your market since last quarter.
Your writer drafts the emails and the sales page in your voice, not generic AI voice.
Your design agent makes the images to your brand guide.
Your checker reads everything against your rules before you ever see it, and sends back anything that misses.
By Tuesday, you get a short list: three decisions only you can make. You make them over coffee.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team keeps working. Follow-ups go out to last week's leads. New clients get onboarded the same way every time. Your weekly numbers land on Friday with the one thing worth your attention.
And every week, the Brain gets smarter. Every correction you make once becomes a rule. Every decision gets written down. Your team doesn't forget, doesn't quit, and never needs retraining.
That's what I mean by becoming the bookends of your business.
I call it the 10-80-10 rule:
The first 10% is yours. You decide what the job is and what good looks like.
The middle 80% is your agents'. They do the work.
The last 10% is yours. You review, make the calls only you can make, and put your stamp on it.
You stop playing prompt ping pong. You stop being the bottleneck. You become the person who sets the standard and the direction.
This isn't science fiction. Parts of it already run in my business.
The tools are available to everyone. Most people will plug them into a messy business and get a messy result, faster.
The difference is your Company Brain.
Build it first, and every agent you add makes your business better.
You can ask ChatGPT or Claude for the best practices to build a company brain for you.
And it will give you some great advice and it will build one for you.
But if you want to get both a company brain AND learn how to get a team of AI Agents to run your business, then you might want to join me this Thursday, 10/15/2026 at 9am pacific time for a free workshop I’m cohosting with my colleague Jim about building a team of agents that can run your business.
