We Grew Up on the Dewey Decimal System - Now We're the AI Power Users Nobody Saw Coming

AI isn’t going to make us obsolete. It’s going to make us unstoppable - if we know how to use it. And guess what? We do.

Back then, if you wanted to find the answer, you had to know how to ask the right question.

Some of you remember walking into a library and heading straight to that wooden drawer of 3x5 index cards—the card catalog. Dewey Decimal System. Author. Subject. Title. Cross-referenced by a dusty Rolodex of logic that didn’t tolerate lazy thinkers.

We were trained from the jump to think critically just to find the information.
You didn’t Google “how do I fix my life.”
You had to reverse-engineer a problem:

What would this be filed under?
What’s the subject?
Who might have written something useful?
How would I ask for this knowledge?

That invisible muscle we built - critical thinking and question-framing -is now the superpower nobody’s talking about in the world of AI.

Because here’s the truth: AI is not magic. It’s mirrors.

AI only reflects back the quality of what you feed it. If you give it garbage, it gives you garbage. If you give it a powerful question, a well-framed prompt, a clear outcome - it opens the damn gates.

People are saying AI is going to ruin our ability to think. I call bullshit.

AI is not making smart people dumber.
AI is making smart people faster, sharper, and more dangerous.
It’s like adding nitrous to a well-built engine.

And we?
We are that well-built engine.
We are Gen X.
We are the cassette-tape-toting, problem-solving, latchkey-raised, critically-thinking crew who learned how to survive analog - and now we’re waking up in the best possible digital playground.

Why this matters for older entrepreneurs (yes, especially you):

We don’t lack value. We’ve got decades of it.
We don’t lack experience. We’re overflowing with it.
What we have lacked - until now - was a simple way to package it, write it, design it, market it, publish it.

That was the blocker.
That’s what stopped so many of us from stepping into digital business.

But now?
AI closes the skill gap. All of it.

Don’t know how to write a sales page? Ask AI.
Don’t know how to structure your workshop? Ask AI.
Don’t know how to name your new program? Ask AI.
You already have the goods. AI helps you deliver them faster.

You are not too late to this game.

In fact, if you're over 40, you’re in the prime seat -the sweet spot between lived experience and modern tools.

AI is not a threat to you. It’s your amplifier.
It takes your smarts and gives them scale.
It takes your ideas and turns them into assets.
It takes your old doubts - I'm not techie enough - and laughs them out of the room.

So if you’ve been waiting? Stop.

You already have everything you need:

• A lifetime of experience

• A brain trained to ask smart questions

• A tool (AI) that rewards precisely that

You were built for this.

You are not starting from scratch.
You are starting from power.

And it's time to use it.

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PS: Interested in learning how to use AI to build a simple digital product business - even if you’ve not used AI yet? Check out my upcoming FREE workshop: Experience for Sale. May 8, 2025. Limited Replay Available.