Skip the hype. Ask, then build.
Jon Parker · RizeX Monthly Mastermind · August 2026 · Eastern Idaho
Most business owners are tired of AI hype videos promising a business that runs itself while they golf. At August’s RizeX Mastermind, Jon Parker, a software veteran who did his college senior project on neural networks 26 years ago, took the room back to the ABCs of AI for small business. He left everyone with a 30-day plan simple enough to start that afternoon.
AI changes every week. Jon admitted the talk he planned in February was already outdated by August. For Eastern Idaho business owners, that pace creates a trap: either tune it all out, or jump straight to the flashy stuff and get burned. Jon’s message was that neither works, and that there’s a steady path through the noise.
What Jon covered
The Gartner hype cycle. Jon uses Gartner’s 1995 model to evaluate every new technology. It starts with a technology trigger, climbs to the peak of inflated expectations (“none of you are going to have a job”), and falls into the trough of disillusionment, where leaders who spent millions start to sweat. From there it climbs the slope of enlightenment and reaches the plateau of productivity. The catch is that the plateau is never as high as the peak. “Hoverboards aren’t here yet,” said Jon, who grew up on Back to the Future.
AI isn’t one thing. “We call AI this giant thing, and the reality is it’s a whole bunch of little teeny things.” Each piece sits at a different spot on the curve. In Gartner’s July 2026 update, agentic AI sits right at the peak. Jon has built agents and says they misbehave, hallucinate, and are “a real pain in the butt to troubleshoot.” Gartner puts artificial general intelligence more than 10 years out.
Know your tools. Jon gave a quick field guide to the big four. ChatGPT is “the Kleenex of AI” and the one most of the room uses. Claude focuses on business use. Gemini is likely to win on productivity because it’s built into Gmail and Google Docs. Grok pulls real-time posts from X. He also reminded the room that generative AI is “a really good guesser”: it predicts the next word, it doesn’t think for itself.
The ABCs: Ask, Build, Coordinate. Most owners want to start with coordinate: “My world is chaos, just run it.” Jon’s point was that AI will say yes and try, because it was built to please, even when it can’t do the job. Instead, he expects 85–90% of a typical owner’s AI use right now to be asking good questions. Build comes next, then coordinate, which is really business process management: hooking one process to the next.
Consult, don’t just ask. A bare question is no better than a search engine. Tell the AI what you’re trying to do, then say, “Ask me questions until you understand my problem.” Follow up with “What am I missing?” and “Give me several approaches.” Jon shared an example prompt for niching down a business, which asks for three specific niche audiences based on who you serve and what they need. “Tell me what to do next” doesn’t work, he said, because there’s no context.
Build it twice. Throw one away. Before any AI automation, Jon said, get comfortable throwing things out. Borrowing from Fred Brooks’s The Mythical Man-Month, Jon urged the room to stop hoarding AI output. Start a new project, start a new thread, and don’t let your AI become a junk drawer. Above all: don’t automate your prototype. His favorite meme sums up what happens when you do: “Congratulations, you just broke it faster.”
What the room walked away with
Jon ended with a concrete prescription and promised a marked improvement for anyone who sticks with it for 30 days:
- Homework #1: Ask your favorite AI how to build a skill for your business. A skill is a set of instructions for the AI, saved as a simple markdown file.
- Daily: Ask AI one meaningful business question about a real sales, operations, or finance problem, and have it consult with you.
- Weekly: Build one small thing that removes friction, like drafting email replies or putting together invoices.
- Monthly: Coordinate. Once the pieces work, have AI run them together, for example “run the invoice system.”
He also invited the room to the free Idaho Falls AI meetup, which he helps run alongside James Zolman (June’s RizeX speaker). It meets the first Friday of the month in the Rigby/Rexburg area and the second Friday in Idaho Falls at the Keller Williams building, where Jon leads an advanced session.
A moment that landed
Jon asked AI to pick his walk-up music, and it chose the Top Gun theme. It had read his bio, seen the word “pilot,” and guessed. “Those are not the kind of planes that I fly,” Jon laughed. “I do not have an F-18 sitting in my hangar.” It was a funny opener, and it became the thread of the whole talk: AI is a very good guesser, not a mind reader. The more context you give it, the better its guesses get.
“That’s one thing AI is not very good at, is saying no. It was built to please.” — Jon Parker
“If you jump straight to coordinate, you’re going to end up in the trough of disillusionment really, really fast.” — Jon Parker
About Jon
Jon Parker is co-founder of AreaPro, a real estate market-data platform used by real estate teams across the country. He has more than 20 years in software, including leadership roles at Melaleuca and as CEO of Simplicity Collection Software. He studied computer science at BYU–Idaho, lives in Rigby with his family, and is a certified private pilot, of much smaller planes than an F-18. His AI advice is refreshingly practical, and it comes from a local who has spent his career inside big databases.
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The RizeX Monthly Mastermind meets every month in Eastern Idaho. It’s an intimate gathering of local business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals committed to real growth. Every event features a speaker who’s in the trenches alongside you, plus time for meaningful conversation and connection.