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They finally came.
PERSONAL NOTE: What I’m working on
Back in 2019, I launched Spacelet as an apartment rental platform. It blew StreetEasy away. But Zillow still had the moat, and life did what life does. Other businesses of mine needed the money, the people and the hours, and Spacelet went on the shelf.
It's off the shelf now, and it's not the same company or product. It’s much bigger. Because of AI.
No dev team. No investors. Just me.
And it's not just Spacelet. Right now I'm:
Turning SellYourBusiness.com into a national business listing marketplace.
Running ads, support and customer fulfillment for Agent Geek (my SaaS for prospecting that I also use myself)
Prospecting for business for sale leads around the world and giving the leads to my agents so they can fill their own pipeline (while I teach them to do the same for themselves)
Ideas I shelved years ago because I couldn't continue self-funding them or staff them are back on the table. And the ideas can be bigger, because I have the best help I’ve ever had.
Claude Code. OpenAI Codex. Grok Bots. Viktor. What a time to be alive.
Except this newsletter. This is all me. I love writing my thoughts to you every week, and I don’t want AI to ever replace that.
But if you want to talk about deploying AI the right way in your own business, reply to this email. I'm glad to get on a no-obligation call and tell you what I think you should be doing with AI in your biz.
MINDSET: Think bigger because the constraints are gone
For most of business history, the reason a good idea sat on the shelf was simple: no money, or no people. You couldn't afford the developer. You couldn't hire the marketer. You couldn't be in two places at once.
That constraint hasn't disappeared, but it's a lot smaller. A lot of the work that used to need a hire now needs a clear set of instructions.
So the bottleneck moved. It's not capital anymore. It's clarity and attention.
Do you know exactly what you want built?
Can you explain how the job gets done, step by step?
Will you stay with it long enough to finish?
That's good news and bad news. Good, because more of your ideas are possible than ever. Bad, because "I didn't have the budget" stops being a real excuse.
Try this: write down the three ideas you shelved in the last five years. Next to each, write why. If the answer was "money" or "manpower," look again. That reason might have expired.
IN THE NEWS: The NY Fed asked small business owners about AI
On October 8, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published new research from its Small Business Credit Survey, built on answers from more than 5,000 businesses with at least one employee (surveyed in late 2025).
What they found:
46% of these businesses were already using AI tools. Another 15% planned to start within a year.
AI users were more optimistic about hiring, not less. Their net hiring outlook was +33, compared with +15 for non-users.
They were more optimistic about revenue, too: +48 for AI users vs. +21 for non-users.
But the results are early. Only 31% said AI had actually increased their sales, and 77% said it hadn't changed their labor costs.
A separate YouGov survey for Meta (published October 14, nearly 4,000 small business owners in Asia-Pacific) found the same split: 76% said AI made them more productive, but 86% said small businesses need more guidance to get the full benefit.
What it means for you:
AI isn't replacing teams at small businesses. It's backing them up. The owners using it expect to hire more, not fewer.
Most owners are using it, but few are using it well. Using ChatGPT to write a caption is not the same as handing AI a real job in your business.
That gap is your edge. The owners who figure out how to deploy it properly now will be running circles around their competitors in two years.
Survey data reflects what owners expect and report, not proven results. Both sources are linked at the bottom.
STRATEGY: How to deploy AI without breaking your business
AI doesn't fix a broken process. It runs the broken process faster. Here's the order I'd do it in.
1. Start with the list you already made. In Issue #003, I asked you to write down every task you did this week that someone at $25 an hour could have done. That's your AI shortlist. Start there, not with whatever tool is trending.
2. Pick one job, not ten. Choose the task that eats the most time and has the clearest "done." Good first jobs: answering common customer questions, following up on leads, writing first drafts of listings or posts, turning call notes into tasks.
3. Write the playbook before you automate it. If you can't explain the job to a new hire in one page, you can't explain it to AI either. Write the steps, the rules and what "good" looks like. That document is worth having even if you never automate a thing.
4. Keep a human on the hook. At first, AI drafts and a person approves. Once it's been right for a few weeks, let it run on its own and check in weekly. Anything involving money, contracts or an angry customer stays with a human.
5. Measure it like an employee. Hours saved, response time, leads followed up, errors caught. If it's not moving a number after 30 days, change the job or cut it.
6. Then do the next one. One job at a time, brick by brick. That's how one person ends up running four companies.
Before you buy any AI tool, ask:
What exact job is this doing, and who was doing it before?
Where does my customer data go, and who can see it?
What happens when it gets something wrong, and how will I know?
What does it cost per month, and what number will it move?
DEAL TIME
Businesses
Logistics (3PL) Company · Long Island, NY · $12.5M · $6M Gross/$1.8M SDE (Pre-market): One of the leanest logistics I’ve ever listed for sale. No equipment owned. Contracts with billion dollar companies like Canon, Rihanna’s Fenty, and 8 others. Only 3 employees (work is all outsourced to vendors). Clean books, so this is SBA eligible (or the owner will hold a note).
Freight Forwarding Company · NYC · $1.4M · $1.6M · Gross/$600K SDE (On-market): A remote-run company catering to the eastern European market that is ripe for plugging in some domestic trucking routes, customs brokering and other growth opportunities. The owner has already started plugging AI into this one and it’s already resulting in real cash flow improvements.
Produce Distributor · New York, NY · $3M · $5.59 Gross/$1.39M SDE (On-market): Serves 86 restaurant accounts and 20 years of history serving Manhattan only. Prime for a modern operator who can add some new systems and growth engines to it.
Reply to this email with what you want more info on.
STEAL THIS IDEA: The Night Shift Kitchen
The idea: a weekly meal prep business run out of someone else’s empty kitchen after hours, like a bagel shop that closes at 3 p.m., a ghost kitchen, a church or a catering hall. Or even your own kitchen.
How it works: you pay the owner a flat monthly rent for set hours and sell pre-orders only (order by Thursday, cook Sunday, deliver Monday). You can start with an order form and Instagram.
Who it’s for: gyms and trainers, busy families, shift workers and seniors.
The math (example): 100 customers ordering 5 meals a week at about $5 profit per meal is $2,500 a week.
What to watch: health department permits, food handler certification and insurance.
Why it compounds: you build a brand and a subscriber list without signing a lease, and later you can take over a kitchen or buy the restaurant you’ve been renting.
MY WISH FOR YOU
I hope you go back to the shelf. Pull down the idea you gave up on because you couldn't afford it or couldn't staff it, and look at it again with fresh eyes. The tools have changed. Maybe the answer has too.
YOUR TURN
What's the idea you shelved, and what stopped you?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every reply. And if you want to talk through how AI could get it off the shelf, that call offer stands.
LOOKING TO BUY SOMETHING THAT CASH FLOWS?
My team of 30+ agents offers a free buyer concierge service. We'll match you with opportunities from our confidential database of 800+ active and soon-to-launch listings, most of which you won't find online.
Reply and tell me two things:
What you'd be most interested in owning (industry, size, price range)
Where you want to do business
We'll send you opportunities that fit your style. No pressure, no spam.
P.S. Know an owner who's still doing everything by hand? Forward them this email. They can subscribe at brickbybrick.media.
Until next week…
- JM