My 16-Month-Old Grandson Is Better at Using AI Than Most Business Owners. Here Is Why.

Last month, my grandson Logan wanted to get past me on the stairs. He is sixteen months old. Full of opinions. Absolutely certain he can do everything himself.

I was sitting on the second step from the bottom and he wanted up. So he tried going around me. Blocked. He tried squeezing sideways between me and the wall. Blocked. He climbed into my lap and tried to scoot through my arms. Still blocked.

And then he did the thing that made me laugh so hard I had to let him go. He turned around completely, put his little bootie toward me, looked back over his shoulder, and started backing up the stairs like I would not notice because he was not facing me anymore.

He never considered quitting. Never asked for permission to try a different angle. Never felt embarrassed about trying the wrong way. Getting up those stairs was more interesting to him than stopping was, so he just kept finding new ways in.

That is sixteen-month-old curiosity. And somewhere between then and now, most of us learned to stop doing that.

We learned to need to know it would work before we started. To ask permission before we tried something. To feel embarrassed about trying the wrong way in front of other people. To approach new things with 'I probably cannot' instead of 'let me just see what happens.' Now clearly, Logan isn’t using AI on a computer…YET. But his pure curiosity would make him a power player.

This matters enormously when it comes to AI. Because the technical stuff, learning the tools, figuring out the prompts, understanding what each platform is actually good for, you can learn all of that. It is not complicated. It just takes time.

What you cannot shortcut is the willingness to stay curious.

The students in my AI for Small Business Program who get the best results are not the ones who knew the most about technology going in. Tiffany had never once logged into an AI tool before she joined the program. Not ChatGPT, not anything. By the end, she had rebuilt her entire website, developed her brand voice in Claude, and created a complete client guidebook. She told me she was in love with what she was producing.

What she had was not technical knowledge. It was curiosity. The willingness to ask 'what if I tried this' and 'what does this do' and 'can it handle this particular problem I have.'

Then there is Denise. She was already using ChatGPT before the program, but by her own honest assessment, what she was getting back was average. Generic. B-minus work from a tool that is capable of so much more. A few weeks into the program, a young man knocked on her door — he had started a lawn care business and needed help with the business side of things. Denise sat down with him and used AI the way a full marketing team would. Brand identity, client profiles, business plan, social media strategy, business cards. All of it. In his brand voice, tone and personality.

What changed was not the tool. What changed was how she approached it. She stopped asking it for answers and started directing it like a CEO running a team. She got curious about what was possible instead of just transactional about what she needed.

Carol Dweck, Ph.D, spent years researching the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The fixed version says: I do not know how to do this, therefore I cannot. The growth version says: I do not know how to do this yet, so what happens if I try this angle instead?

Logan would have had ChatGPT figured out in twenty minutes.

Here is what I want you to try today. Open whatever AI tool you have and ask it something you have been genuinely curious about in your business. Not a task. Not a deliverable. Just something you have been quietly wondering about. See what comes back. Notice what you feel when it surprises you. That feeling is curiosity waking back up. It is worth paying attention to.

If you want the five prompts that helped me start using AI like a real thought partner instead of a fancy search engine, they are below. No course, no long video. Just five prompts you can use today.