I was casually chatting with a dentist the other day and when I mentioned that I work in business valuation, he grinned and said, “Well, no one can figure out how to value a dental practice.”
It was a joke. But not really.
Because he’s right: there isn’t a single correct way to value a dental practice. Or most businesses, for that matter.
There are methods and models. Best practices. Industry data. But so much of valuation comes down to context, judgment, and nuance. Are the patients loyal to the dentist or the brand? Will revenue drop if the owner leaves? Does the practice have systems—or just people?
You don’t find those answers in a formula. You find them by asking better questions. And that kind of thinking takes time.
The question that changed how I saw all of this
Later that day, I told my husband about the conversation. He’s the philosophical type, often asking the kinds of questions that stop me in my tracks. And he asked:
“What do we need to think deeply and slowly about and what can be done quickly?”
That single question hit me harder than I expected.
Because we’re in the middle of a moment where everything feels like it’s speeding up. AI is accelerating workflows, rewriting job descriptions, and in some cases, threatening to replace them entirely.
But what if we’re asking the wrong question?
What if the question isn’t “What can AI do?” But rather: What should we be freeing ourselves up to do, now that AI exists?
A pattern as old as progress
History is full of moments where progress meant loss—of knowledge, of memory, of mastery.
When we moved from oral storytelling to written text, we gained permanence. But we lost the memory culture—the mental muscle of remembering entire histories by heart.
When mass production replaced craftsmanship, we gained efficiency. But we lost a certain intimacy with materials and tools.
Now we’re in another moment like that.
We’re building machines to help us process, write, calculate, organize, and correct. And in doing so, we risk forgetting why we learned to do those things ourselves in the first place.
But not all forgetting is bad. Some forgetting is strategic.
What AI is really good at
In the world of business valuation we deal with a lot of details. Numbers, dates, narrative consistency, compliance with professional standards. There are so many things that can be missed, especially by newer analysts still building muscle memory.
That’s exactly where AI shines. It can:
Catch a math error in a complex DCF model.
Flag when a key section is missing from a valuation report.
Check if a supporting paragraph contradicts the stated assumptions.
Surface inconsistencies that would otherwise cost a partner hours.
That’s not deep thinking. That’s mental clutter. It’s necessary—but it’s not where our minds do their best work.
What still belongs to us
What AI can’t do (at least not well) is the slow, careful, pattern-breaking thought. It can’t weigh the cultural context of a founder-owned business. It can’t judge how transferable goodwill really is. It can’t look at three methods and say, “I know the math says this—but I know this industry, and that number’s too high.”
These are the parts we shouldn’t try to automate.
Not because AI is dangerous, but because it’s limited. And because there’s value in remembering how to think.
Progress doesn’t have to mean loss
This is the trap we so often fall into when technology advances: AI versus humans. Speed versus depth. Automation versus creativity.
But what if the real opportunity is collaboration?
What if we used AI not to replace deep thinking, but to make space for it?
Because right now, a lot of our energy goes to checking and rechecking. Fixing things we didn’t mean to get wrong. Making sure a report is formatted correctly instead of asking: Does this story make sense?
Mental clarity may be the most underrated promise of AI.
Not efficiency. Not speed. But the ability to think better because we’re not drowning in minutiae.
My job isn’t to replace human valuators. It’s to help them focus.
That’s what we’re building with Ranger Docs. Not a machine that makes the final call. But tools that catch the noise so the human can hear the signal.
We don’t want to flatten valuation into a checklist. We want to protect the space to ask good questions. To pause. To think deeply, like my husband reminded me.
What’s worth doing quickly and what deserves slowness?
That’s the question I’m carrying forward. Not just in business, or in AI, but in life.
Because I think it's important to get that distinction right and remember: That progress doesn’t mean rushing everything. Sometimes, it means giving ourselves permission to slow down.
Closing thought:
“AI won’t replace deep thinking. But it might just give us the time and clarity to do more of it.”