The other day I met a young lad who just graduated high school. He had just inherited his father’s business because his father passed away. He was asking for advice on what he should do, including if he should go to college. His mom was currently running the business, but the business was going down a bit.

I want to jot down the advice I gave him:

Should he go to college?

College of course, depends on his goals and if he is driven and can build in public and show his value some other way. Maybe college is not necessary, and he can find a job by just showing off his skills. It is easier than ever to learn some subjects. There might be opportunities in the AI era to go to college and get some domain expertise that would help, such as in the fields of biology, etc. When I found out he had the family business to help run, that seemed to be a pretty clear path.

Talk to the customers

He should talk to them to understand their needs and pain points. Set up a coffee with them and don’t try to sell to them; just show you are trying to learn the business and what their business needs are. Be curious about them and ask if they have any memories of his dad to be vulnerable and make a connection.

Finding new Customers vs Current Customers

It’s cheaper to keep and serve current customers than to find new customers, and the type of business does not make it easy to find customers with digital marketing.

Learn the product

He was confused about what he should prioritize, and he thought he needed to learn the ins and outs of the products first. I told him to just learn the basics, take the product catalog, and put it into AI and just tell the AI to give you the basic understanding of each product. Later, he can go in-depth to learn each product but can probably prioritize that after talking to each customer to understand what are the most important products his company sells.

I forgot to say…

What I forgot to say was that in general, growing an existing business is much easier than founding a new business. I also know people that have recently bought businesses and have taken over optimizing operations with them using AI to extremely good effect with tools like Claude Code. There is probably a huge opportunity to use AI for optimizing the business.