Book Review: The 6 Hour Business by Sean May

The Blueprint for Becoming Truly AI-Native

The majority of business writers don’t write business books as Sean May does. The 6 Hour Business is a harsh wake-up call wrapped in statistics, lived experience, storytelling, and a lot of hard reality rather than a polite invitation to think about AI someday. That’s precisely why it’s worthwhile to read this book.

Throughout its pages and illustrations—beginning with May’s audacious, straightforward foreword, “Everything really did change. On November 30th, 2022, to be exact.”

This is a great opening into how AI has changed the business world, and the rest of the book will help you understand how you can evolve along with it.  

AI is not a tool to be added to an outdated workflow. It’s a brand-new operating system for starting a company. You’re already behind if you don’t use it that way.

Here’s how this book will help you catch up.

What Makes This Book Different

May has lived both extremes:

• Corporate bloat where 50+ people shipped nothing for months
• “Lean” startup culture that still needed 14 days to change three words on a website
• And then—his own transformation, where he built a working, revenue-generating SaaS product in 20 hours using AI, for $180 instead of $700,000+

The book has an advantage because of this contrast. It’s not theory. It’s not futuristic. This handbook was prepared by someone who has established businesses using both the traditional method and the AI-native method, and who has personally observed that the latter strategy consistently succeeds.

I also love that this book is neatly and professionally formatted. It makes it easy to read and to take in the wealth of information inside. Bullet lists, subheadings and text boxes make the information pop out at you, so it’s easy to absorb even if you are not a big reader.

The formatting and the neatly defined chapters also make it easier to come back to a particular section in the future if you want to reference or refresh yourself on the information.

The Big Ideas (And Why They Matter)

1. The 95% Rule

May contends that 95% of your business should now be handled by AI, including creating email sequences, creating complete dashboards, conducting financial analysis, and managing customer service. Your creativity, discernment, and intuition make up the 5% that should stay human.

This is a change in identity rather than a change in mentality. And this is honestly what so many businesses are getting wrong about using AI.

2. Prisoners vs. AI-Natives

One of the strongest chapters draws a sharp line between two types of people:

• Prisoners: drowning in meetings, approvals, processes, and “the way it’s always been done”
• AI-Natives: people who ship before breakfast, eliminate friction instead of managing it, and treat AI like an orchestra they conduct rather than a tool they occasionally ask for help

By comparing their daily timetables, May brutally illustrates this difference, showing that an AI-Native completes more work before noon than a traditional team does in a week.

3. The 6-Layer Extraction Method

This approach teaches you how to condense decades of experience – your own or someone else’s – into hours of useful productivity. This is the kind of power that most individuals are unaware they have, whether they operate a consultancy or a sole proprietorship.

4. Real Proof, Not Hype

One of the book’s best features is May’s use of real projects he created, complete with deadlines, errors, bugs, and the emotional rollercoaster of the “hour 3 breakdown, hour 6 breakthrough” curve, to demonstrate how common people can utilize AI to produce incredibly quickly.

5. The Death List (2030 Edition)

It isn’t a fear strategy. It is a reality spreadsheet.
Math is causing entire job categories, company models, and skill sets to vanish—not out of malice. May has no regrets about it: either adjust or be surpassed.

Who This Book Is For

If you identify with any of the following, this book should be required reading:

• Entrepreneurs who feel stuck behind technical bottlenecks
• Creators who want to build software but aren’t developers
• Founders tired of slow teams, slow approvals, slow everything
• Writers, marketers, and solopreneurs who want to scale without hiring
• Anyone feeling that gnawing sense that “my job might not exist in 5 years”

And especially:
Anyone ready to stop planning and start building.

Why This Book Works

May writes with a straightforward, concise style that reflects the mindset of builders. He makes the following claims using real-life examples from his businesses, striking incidents (such as his cousin’s startled response upon witnessing a whole SaaS application created in under six hours), and lucid logic:

AI isn’t replacing you—
but someone using AI absolutely will.

The book is energetic, readable, and surprisingly motivating. It doesn’t just tell you what’s possible. It shows you, teaching you to do it yourself. It goes more in depth and gives more practical and actionable advice than other books on this subject.

Final Takeaway

The 6 Hour Business is not just another book about “AI trends.” It’s a blueprint for creating a whole business in the time it used to take to schedule a business-building meeting.

One message echoes in your ears as you leave:

You can build faster than you think.
You can learn faster than you think.
The only obstacle left is you.

For founders, creators, and solo operators who want to lead—not follow—this book is a must-read. It’s 5 stars from me.

You can learn more or get your own copy here: 6hourbusiness.com