“Gee, we should’ve done that years ago”

I've heard business owners say it more times than I can count. I've said it myself. It's the sound of someone realising the wave went past while they were standing on the beach.

I said it about social media. I'm not saying it about AI.

I was wrong about social media

When social media arrived, I didn't like it. My question was simple: how are they ever going to make money from this?

How wrong was I. Social media took over the earth, and today it's my main source of growth.

I watched it happen through my own marketing budgets. Money that once went on brochures and print moved, year by year, online. So when people ask why media companies are hurting while tech companies grow, I don't need a report. I moved a lot of that money myself, because that's where the customers went.

So this time, I took notice

When AI came along, I watched closely. Not the headlines, the problems. I could see it solving jobs I'd been doing manually for years: the reports, the admin, the copy and paste.

I couldn't get it into my business fast enough.

Safety is real. So is fear marketing.

I take safety seriously. AI should be regulated, the same way we regulate cars, knives and guns. Your data, your customers and your reputation all need protecting, and the rules around them matter.

But here's what my years in marketing taught me. When a new technology arrives, the industries that think they might lose out get loud. The message is always the same: this is dangerous, be afraid. Fear goes straight to the safety level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, just one rung above food and water. It's the most basic way there is to market to people, and it works.

So two things can be true at once. AI needs guardrails, and some of the fear you're hearing is somebody's marketing.

"Years ago" used to be easy to catch up

When I was late to social media, it cost me a few years, and I caught up. That's the thing about the old waves: being late was expensive, but it was fixable.

AI is different. When I started rolling out my own tools, I realised something.

I was building in a day what had taken others ten years to develop.

And no developer was involved. I know very basic HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the code web pages are written in), nowhere near enough to build a website like the one you're reading right now. AI did the grunt work. I did the thinking and the checking.

Think about what that means in time and money saved. You either keep going the old way, or you get on the new way.

That's the multiplier. With AI, "years ago" isn't a gap you close later. It's a gap that grows, because the people who start early accelerate so quickly. Wait long enough, and it won't just slow you down. It could put you out of business.

You don't have to bet the business to avoid that. You just have to start: learn it safely, one small problem at a time.

Don't say it about AI

I learned my lesson with social media. I hope you don't have to learn the same one.

If you've ever said "Gee, we should've done that years ago", make sure you never say it about AI.

Brad, CMO (Chief Maverick Officer), Maverick Digital16 October 2026

Every idea here is mine, sorted with Claude's help.