Selling Shovels During the Gold Rush

Seems like every few years, we get told that a big shift is about to change business forever.

Usually, that is mostly hyperbole.

Then every couple of decades, something actually shows up that really does change how people work, build, buy, and live within just a few short years.

AI feels a lot more like that second category.

What has been interesting to watch is not just the shift itself, but the behavior around it.

What people chase first. What gets crowded fast. What quietly becomes more valuable while everyone is looking somewhere else.

That pattern keeps showing up.

I’ve written a fair amount recently about AI itself. How people are using it. Where it actually fits. Where most businesses are still thinking about it too shallowly.

That part is important, and I still think we are early in terms of people using it well. But there is another side of this worth paying attention to.

Every major disruption creates an obvious opportunity first. That is the part everyone sees. The part everyone talks about. The part that gets crowded the fastest.

Then, usually, a second market starts to form around it.

People know the old phrase about selling shovels during the gold rush. It gets repeated a lot because the pattern behind it is real. When everyone rushes toward the visible opportunity, they also create pressure, noise, demand, and problems around that rush. And that is often where another kind of business starts to take shape.

You can find versions of that pattern all over the place throughout history.

Not just in literal gold rushes, but in technology shifts, platform shifts, media shifts, and new waves of business creation.

In every disruption, the first wave usually chases the thing itself.

The second wave notices what the first wave makes necessary.

That feels relevant right now.

Because the AI conversation is still dominated by the obvious layer. More tools. More prompts. More content. More automation. More speed.

And to be clear, that is real. There is value there.

But when everyone starts moving in the same direction, another set of opportunities usually opens up beside it.

That is the part I want to talk about here.

Marisa Murgatroyd is doing a free live workshop this week called The X-Factor Edge: How to Future-Proof Your Income in an AI World. It’s what gave me the idea to write today’s newsletter. What caught my attention is that it is not really another “use AI better” webinar.

It is more about the second-order opportunity AI is creating. What happens when more businesses start using the same tools, producing similar output, and becoming easier to compare?

If that question feels relevant to you, you can save your seat here.

You can see this pattern all over business history.

A big shift happens. Everyone rushes toward the most obvious opportunity first. That is where the attention goes. That is where the noise goes. That is where the crowd forms fastest.

Then something else starts happening right beside it.

A second market begins to form around the first one. Not around the headline itself, but around the behavior, demand, and pressure the headline creates.

And in a lot of cases, that second market ends up becoming its own kind of gold mine.

When people talk about selling shovels during the gold rush, the real point is not the shovel. It is that once thousands of people rush into the same opportunity, they all need other things too.

They need supplies. Transportation. Banking. Places to sleep. Ways to move money. Ways to ship goods.

The people digging for gold were chasing the obvious opportunity. The businesses serving them were building around the environment that rush created.

That second layer became its own economy.

Same idea here.

When the internet started reshaping business, most people were focused on launching internet companies, buying internet stocks, or trying to be early to whatever felt new and exciting.

But a whole second market formed around that rush too.

Infrastructure companies benefited. Hosting. Connectivity. Software. Systems that helped businesses get online, stay online, and scale online. As the internet expanded, the supporting layers around it became valuable in their own right.

The first market was the website.

The second market was everything businesses suddenly needed because websites now mattered.

The same thing happened when cars changed the way people moved. But Henry Ford is not the only one to benefit.

The obvious market was the car itself. But once cars changed travel, a bunch of other businesses grew around the new behavior. Gas stations. Roadside lodging. Repair shops. Restaurants built around highway traffic. Entire categories benefited because the main shift changed how people lived and moved.

The car was the headline.

The businesses built around the car became a second wave of opportunity.

Smartphones followed the same pattern.

At first, the obvious opportunity was building the device, building the app, or being early to mobile.

But then mobile behavior itself created its own economy. Mobile payments. App advertising. Attribution tools. Push notification platforms. Analytics. Entire businesses grew because people were suddenly living inside their phones and companies needed ways to reach, track, monetize, and serve them there.

Again, the first wave chased the platform.

The second wave built around what the platform made necessary.

AI is clearly the obvious first market right now. Tools, prompts, automation, faster content, faster execution.

That is where most of the attention is going.

But if this pattern holds, and I think it does, then that is probably not the only market forming.

It is just the easiest one to see.

Right now, most of the AI conversation is still happening at the surface level.

People are focused on what it helps them make faster, what it helps them automate, and how much easier it has become to produce things that used to take more time or more skill. And that part matters. It is real. A lot of work that used to feel slower, harder, or more specialized is becoming more accessible very quickly.

But that shift has a downstream effect too.

When a lot more people suddenly gain access to the same kind of leverage, the market does not just get faster. It also gets flatter.

• Some businesses can now produce decent content much faster.

• Others can tighten up weak messaging without needing as much outside help.

• It is easier than it used to be to sound informed, even when the underlying thinking is not that deep.

• And at a glance, a lot more companies can present themselves as polished and capable enough to blend together.

That does not mean they are all equally good. It just means the gap gets harder to see.

And once that happens, buyers start looking for different signals. They stop reacting as strongly to the fact that you can produce.

They start paying closer attention to whether you actually think well, whether your perspective feels specific, whether your offer feels shaped by real judgment, and whether there is a reason to trust that working with you will feel different than working with someone else.

That is the part I think a lot of people are going to underestimate.

The first-order opportunity is obvious. Use AI to move faster. Use it to make more. Use it to lower friction inside the business.

But the second-order opportunity is different. It sits in the pressure that creates once more businesses start showing up with the same basic advantages.

That is where questions of trust, positioning, distinctiveness, and real value start to matter more, not less.

A friend of mine, Marisa Murgatroyd, is doing a free live training this week on this exact topic, and it felt worth sharing.

The angle is what caught my attention.

It does not seem like another training about how to use AI tools better. It seems more focused on what happens to the market once everyone starts using them. That is a much more interesting question to me.

I do not know exactly what she is going to lay out yet, because the training has not happened yet. But Marisa is very smart, and she has a long track record of spotting opportunities early and turning them into things that actually work. So when she starts talking about something, I pay attention.

I’m planning to attend myself.

And if this idea has been on your mind too, it is probably worth a look.

Get the Details Here

When something big changes, most people focus on the most obvious question first.

1. How do I use it?

2. How do I benefit from it?

3. How do I get there before everyone else?

Fair enough.

But the more interesting question is usually what that shift changes around itself.

1. What becomes easier.

2. What becomes more common.

3. What starts getting crowded.

4. And what quietly becomes more valuable because of all that.

That is the pattern behind the whole “selling shovels during the gold rush” idea.

Not that the direct opportunity does not matter.

Just that it usually is not the only one.

AI is clearly creating direct opportunities right now. I just do not think that is the only place worth looking.

The second market forming around this shift may end up being just as important as the first.

And for a lot of people, it may be the more practical one too.

That is the part I would be paying attention to. This is a big focus on mine right now, I have plans in motion but not far enough along to share exactly what. :)

Here’s the link again to Marissa’s training if you want to peep game: https://liveyourmessage.com/referral.php?p=rfnl&w=xfactorweb-3-26

Onward,
Ryan

Owner | Poppin Consulting
Marketing Systems Consultant

When you look at AI right now, do you think the bigger opportunity is in using the tools directly or in the second market forming around them?

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