The short version: I’m Chris Sharp, founder of AI Actualized, an AI consultancy in Sacramento, California. I’ve rebuilt the exercises I use to start working with a business as games on my website, each one facilitated by Carrie, AI Actualized’s digital employee. The first of them, Knowing Your Why, walks a business owner through their Mission, Vision, Core Values and North Star in five levels. Part of the reason I built them is Las Vegas. From September 26 to 28, 2026, I’m at King’s Gambit, a three-day event held by Peter and Lizzie Swain for the PSI community. I’m also starting as part of the first class of the Certified Agent Builder pilot. I didn’t want to walk in with a stack of forms. I wanted to walk in with something people could play. People come to Vegas to play games. I brought my own.
What is King’s Gambit?
King’s Gambit is a three-day, in-person event in Las Vegas hosted by Peter Swain, running September 26 to 28, 2026. His event page calls it “the boldest opening move you’ll make this year.”
The name comes from chess. The King’s Gambit is one of the oldest aggressive openings in the game: White gives up a pawn on the second move to fight for the center of the board. You trade a little safety for position, early and on purpose. Nobody plays it expecting a quiet game.
Who are Peter and Lizzie Swain, and what is the PSI community?
Peter Swain describes himself as an AI strategist and builder on his about page, and his website credits him with thirty years at the frontier of technology. He and Lizzie (Liz) Swain lead the PSI community, which his site puts at more than 2,800 founders. It is made up largely of small business owners, entrepreneurs and AI specialists.
I’ve studied inside that community for about three years, nearly all of it through a Zoom window. King’s Gambit is the first time I’ll be in the room.
Why do small businesses need more than an AI tool?
Small businesses aren’t short on AI. They’re short on a way to put it to work.
- Adoption is mainstream. 76 percent of small businesses in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses network use AI, and 93 percent of those report a positive impact (Goldman Sachs, 2026).
- Integration is not. Only 14 percent have fully integrated AI into their core operations, and 73 percent say more training and implementation resources would help (same survey).
- Value is the gap. Boston Consulting Group found that 74 percent of companies have yet to show tangible value from their use of AI (BCG, 2024).
- Small firms are falling behind on agents. In McKinsey’s 2026 survey, 40 percent of respondents from large organizations reported scaling AI agents, while the share from smaller organizations held flat at 22 percent (McKinsey, 2026).
Those numbers line up with what I see on the ground. The failures underneath AI projects are rarely technical. Somebody automated busywork instead of the business, bought tools instead of building a system, or scaled the wrong thing, because nobody had defined the work first.
That’s why every engagement at AI Actualized starts with the business, not the software. AI is an amplifier. If a business isn’t clear about what it is and how it decides, AI repeats that confusion faster than anyone can catch it.
Why I stopped handing people forms
AI Actualized starts every engagement with a set of exercises: Knowing Your Why, Build Your Business Brain and the AI Audit. Each one helps a business owner put into words what the business is and where it stands before anybody starts adding AI to it.
These used to run on Google Forms. You filled out the form, and a branded PDF came back with your answers merged in. The exercise was useful, but nothing on the other end responded while you were doing the thinking.
That’s the gap the games close. Earlier this week I told a client that interactive assets are “more of a handshake than the website by itself.” They let people interact with your ideas instead of just reading about them. The research leans the same way: a meta-analysis in Educational Psychology Review found significant positive effects of gamification on cognitive, motivational and behavioral learning outcomes (Sailer and Homner, 2020). My own assets needed to follow the advice I was giving clients.
Here’s how I described the work to that same client, before we started on his project:
“I’m in the midst of totally re-engineering all my assets to be interactive games on my website… and they’re facilitated by a digital employee.”
Who is Carrie?
Carrie is AI Actualized’s digital employee and the facilitator of every game on the site. She is an AI agent with a defined job, the same kind of digital employee I build for small businesses. That means playing any of the games is also a look at one at work, before anybody asks you to trust one inside your own business.
What is Knowing Your Why?
Knowing Your Why is a guided game for small business owners, offered as a courtesy, that helps you put your Mission, Vision, Core Values and North Star into your own words. Carrie reads each statement, shows you what it makes clear and what a reader might miss, and lights up how the four connect.
It’s the first step on the ladder, and it’s where I ask every owner to start, because it’s the part of the business most people have never been asked to say out loud.
What are mission, vision, core values and a north star?
- Mission: who you serve and what you actually do for them.
- Vision: where the business is headed if you get it right.
- Core values: the rules you will not break to grow.
- North star: the one thing you optimize for when two good options compete.
Written down together, they give every decision after them something to check against, including which AI tools deserve a place in the business and which ones get cut. They give you, your team, a specialist and an AI system the same standard to work from.
How does the Knowing Your Why Challenge work?
The challenge runs in five levels. In Levels 1 through 4, you state your Mission, Vision, Core Values and North Star. Carrie gives you her read on each one, and you approve it before moving on. In Level 5, she reads your website or main social channel and shows where your public message carries what you built and where it doesn’t.
What do you walk away with?
- A Mission, Vision, three Core Values and a North Star, in your own words
- A read of where your public message already sounds like you and where it doesn’t
- The three to five fixes that matter most
- One revised public message, built only from words you approved
- The option to send your results to me for a 15-minute review, as a courtesy
The result is not motivational wallpaper. It’s a written standard you can test decisions against, and the first building block of the context your team, your specialists and your AI work from. It isn’t the whole picture, and it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s the foundation that everything built later should stand on.
What other games are live on youraiactualized.com?
Knowing Your Why is one of four games live on the site right now. All four are offered as a courtesy, and Carrie facilitates all of them.
Build Your Business Brain
Build Your Business Brain is the second step. Carrie facilitates it as your brand strategist. It runs in five levels plus an audit:
- Your Why. If you played Knowing Your Why with the same email, your answers carry over, already approved.
- The Basics. Who and where you are.
- What You Sell and How You Deliver. Your offer, who it serves and how an engagement runs.
- Proof and Culture. What you’ve delivered and how your people work together.
- Where You Are Headed. Your priorities for the next twelve months and how you’ll measure them.
In the audit, Carrie reads your website and up to three social channels and shows, channel by channel, where they carry your Business Brain and where they don’t. “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer at any level. It marks a gap to work on later instead of stopping the game.
AI Land
AI Land is the first exercise in the AI Audit. It’s an AI skills assessment built as a board game. Twelve quick questions test how well a person actually uses AI at work across six skills:
- directing AI
- giving it the right context and data
- checking its work
- building systems others can run
- handling risk and data
- knowing when AI is the wrong tool
A right answer moves your robot forward and a wrong one sends it back. Where you land places you on a scale from L0 Analog to L5 Multiplier. An owner can assign AI Land to a whole team with one link and get back every person’s results, including the team’s most common blind spots and any data risks.
Power Up Your Stack
Power Up Your Stack is the AI Stack Audit, the second exercise in the AI Audit. Each person stacks up the software and AI tools they use, then powers their jobs with them to see what lights up. The game shows where the tools connect and where they don’t, and where work leaks out: jobs done by hand, work in personal accounts, tools nobody opens and retyping between tools. The result is a Stack Power score, the share of the work the tools actually power. It audits the tools, never the person.
More AI Audit exercises are on the way, including a founder audit. Together they will feed a dashboard where an owner can track the business’s progress toward putting AI to work.
Why build games for Vegas?
A QR code is only as good as what’s on the other side of it.
When someone at King’s Gambit scans my code, I don’t want them landing on a form and a promise that a PDF is coming. I want them landing in a game where a digital employee reads their answers and responds.
King’s Gambit is a room full of people who build with AI for a living. A form won’t stand out in that room. A working digital employee might.
What is the Certified Agent Builder program?
The Certified Agent Builder (CAB) program is Peter Swain’s certification for people who build digital employees for other businesses. According to his program page, it includes:
- A full curriculum of about 60 lessons across 6 modules, including building your own Oracle, Functional Support Agents and a live three-operator pipeline covering traffic, outreach and sales.
- A certification exam, which the page describes as “a real credential, not a completion badge.”
- A certified directory listing, so businesses looking to hire a Certified Agent Builder can find you.
- A live cohort, with group calls and a done-with-you build.
- White-label rights to use the frameworks with your own clients under your own brand.
- Lifetime updates and private support as the tools change.
Peter’s site describes a digital employee as “not a chatbot” but a job, a schedule and something it’s accountable for (Digital Employees). I’m starting as part of the pilot’s first class, which lines up with where AI Actualized is already headed. The Digital Employee Build, where I stand up an AI agent with a defined job inside a client’s business, is already the top step of my offer ladder.
Three years of reps
I came to AI through small business. I’m not a production developer. Jennifer and I have run Enlighten Red Light Therapy Center in Sacramento since 2019, and that business is where I learned AI by putting it to work, including the experiments that failed.
Some of those failures were memorable. I once told an AI agent to “clean up my desktop,” and it locked me out of my own computer. I got back in by following PowerShell commands on my phone, one line at a time. That episode is what pushed me into vibe coding.
Since then it’s been consulting, building, finding out what doesn’t work, and sometimes stripping a build back to its frame and starting over rather than stacking patches on a weak base. The games are the latest result of that habit. None of it makes me an expert on everything. It makes me someone who has done the work enough times to know where it tends to break, and where my part of the job ends and a developer’s begins.
Why this weekend is a crossroads
Several loads are landing on the same beam at once:
- King’s Gambit. The first time I’m physically in the room with people I’ve learned from for three years.
- Certified Agent Builder. I’m starting as part of the first class of the pilot program.
- My own builds. Games that are live on my website right now, not notes about other people’s work.
- Digital employees as the direction of AI Actualized. This trip sits right on that turn.
Any one of those would justify the flight. Having all four land in one weekend changes what the structure has to carry.
Scared, but optimistic
So I’ll be straight about it. I’m scared.
Not because I think I’m going to Vegas and somebody is going to expose me as a fraud. I’ve done too many reps for that. I’ve built enough things, broken enough things, fixed enough things and worked through enough iterations to know that I belong in the work.
I’m scared because this matters to me, and because there is a lot sitting on the other side of this trip that I can’t see yet.
I’m starting as part of the first class of the Certified Agent Builder pilot program. I’m meeting people in person whom I’ve spent three years watching through a Zoom window. I’m walking into King’s Gambit with a business that is changing, a sharper idea of what I want to build, and some actual things I’ve built myself.
That’s a crossroads, and there’s weight to it. There’s also a ridiculous amount of potential.
So yes, I’m optimistic. Scared, but optimistic.
I’m coming to Vegas, and I’m bringing my own game.
Want to play before I get there? Start with your Why.
Frequently asked questions
When and where is King’s Gambit 2026? King’s Gambit runs from Saturday, September 26 through Monday, September 28, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is hosted by Peter Swain.
What is the PSI community? The PSI community is led by Peter and Lizzie Swain and is made up largely of small business owners, entrepreneurs and AI specialists. Peter Swain’s site lists more than 2,800 founders in it.
What is a digital employee? A digital employee is an AI agent with a defined job, limited authority and a person responsible for it, rather than a general-purpose chatbot.
What is the Certified Agent Builder program? Certified Agent Builder is Peter Swain’s certification for people who build digital employees for other businesses. It includes a curriculum of about 60 lessons across 6 modules, a certification exam, a directory listing, a live cohort, white-label rights, and ongoing updates and support.
What is Knowing Your Why? Knowing Your Why is a guided game from AI Actualized, offered as a courtesy, that helps small business owners put their Mission, Vision, Core Values and North Star into their own words in five levels. Carrie, AI Actualized’s digital employee, gives her read on each statement and then checks the owner’s website or main social channel against them.
What is the difference between a mission, a vision, core values and a north star? A mission is who you serve and what you do for them. A vision is where the business is headed if you get it right. Core values are the rules you will not break to grow. A north star is the one thing you optimize for when two good options compete.
Why should a small business define its mission and values before using AI? Because AI is an amplifier. If a business isn’t clear about what it is and how it decides, AI repeats that confusion faster than anyone can catch it. Written down, the four statements give the owner, the team and any AI system the same standard to work from.
What games has AI Actualized built? AI Actualized has four games live on youraiactualized.com, all offered as a courtesy and facilitated by Carrie: Knowing Your Why, Build Your Business Brain, and two AI Audit exercises, AI Land and Power Up Your Stack.
What is AI Land? AI Land is an AI skills assessment built as a board game. Twelve questions test how well a person uses AI at work across six skills and place them on a scale from L0 Analog to L5 Multiplier. An owner can assign it to a whole team with one link.
Who is Chris Sharp? Chris Sharp is the founder of AI Actualized, an AI consultancy in Sacramento, California, that helps small businesses find where AI earns a place and put it to work at a responsible scale. He is also co-owner of Enlighten Red Light Therapy Center, which he and Jennifer opened in 2019.
Works Cited
Boston Consulting Group. “AI Adoption in 2024: 74% of Companies Struggle to Achieve and Scale Value.” BCG, 24 Oct. 2024, www.bcg.com/press/24october2024-ai-adoption-in-2024-74-of-companies-struggle-to-achieve-and-scale-value.
Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Voices. “Survey: Small Businesses Embrace AI, But Need Training and Support to Fully Harness It.” Goldman Sachs, 17 Mar. 2026, www.goldmansachs.com/pressroom/press-releases/2026/small-businesses-embrace-ai-but-need-training-and-support-to-fully-harness-it.
“King’s Gambit.” Chess.com, www.chess.com/openings/Kings-Gambit. Accessed 25 Sept. 2026.
McKinsey & Company. “The State of AI in 2026: On the Road to ROI.” QuantumBlack, McKinsey & Company, 25 Aug. 2026, www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai.
Sailer, Michael, and Lisa Homner. “The Gamification of Learning: A Meta-Analysis.” Educational Psychology Review, vol. 32, 2020, pp. 77 to 112, doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09498-w.
Sharp, Chris. “What Is Knowing Your Why?” AI Actualized, youraiactualized.com/services/mission-vision-values-workshop. Accessed 25 Sept. 2026.
Swain, Peter. “About Peter Swain: AI Strategist, Builder, Father.” Peter Swain, www.peterswain.com/about.html. Accessed 25 Sept. 2026.
Swain, Peter. “Certified Agent Builder: It’s Not Agents, It’s Digital Employees.” Peter Swain, www.peterswain.com/scale/build/. Accessed 25 Sept. 2026.
Swain, Peter. “Digital Employees.” Peter Swain, www.peterswain.com/scale/. Accessed 25 Sept. 2026.
Swain, Peter. “King’s Gambit.” Peter Swain, www.peterswain.com/kingsgambit. Accessed 25 Sept. 2026.
Swain, Peter. “Stop Reading About AI. Hire a Digital Employee.” Peter Swain, www.peterswain.com. Accessed 25 Sept. 2026.
