I've been watching the AI automation space pretty closely over the last year and I've stayed away from it mainly because I feel like I've seen this movie before. After mentoring hundreds of small businesses through SCORE, in my digital marketing agencies and in my corporate digital career, and growing my own audiences and communities, I've started to notice patterns in what makes businesses actually sustainable. Here's the thing about most "AI automation agencies" right now: they're selling boxes connected by arrows. Zapier workflows. n8n nodes. Make scenarios. API wiring. Clients pay because it used to take someone who knew code to do that wiring, and that person was expensive. But here's what's happening. Claude Code and Cursor can now build those exact workflows from a single prompt (I'm actually doing that, not just saying that I'm doing it). Not just the individual nodes. The whole thing. End to end. Error handling. Iterations. The works. So let me ask you something. When the AI can generate the same workflow in minutes that you used to charge a premium for, what exactly are you selling? This is the buzzsaw. The core product of most automation agencies is becoming fast, cheap, and increasingly self-serve. The thin wrapper around the tools is getting thinner every month. Naval Ravikant talks about leverage. Real leverage comes from something that can't be easily replicated. If your only moat is knowing how to connect two tools together, you've got a structural problem. The tools are getting smarter. You're not. If your leverage is the wiring, the tools are just gonna flat out eat your lunch. If your leverage is the model - the way someone thinks, decides, teaches, sells - you can swap tools as they improve and keep your value. The agencies that survive won't be the ones wiring boxes. They'll be the ones teaching clients how to think about their business in a way that the tools can't teach. Everything else is just a commodity waiting to be automated away.

A friend of mine @Tommy Gan recently raised some REALLY important questions about the use of AI. A recent Adobe Creators' Toolkit Survey showed that 86% of global content creators (16K sample size) are using some form of AI in their content creation workflows. It's my personal belief that those other 14% might not be telling the truth about using these tools, but that’s a topic for another conversation 😉 Here’s what he asked: "If I put things in to train the AI to be putting out content that isn't really me, will my audience think this is disingenuous? And if I disclose it, will it put them off?" He went further - he's started unfollowing creators he's followed for years (Anik Singal) because they're openly talking about AI clones. He notices himself skimming past posts that feel AI-written. YouTube shorts and reels that look or feel AI-generated get an instant scroll-past. And he asked the question that actually matters: "Is this really a viable path, and will there be longevity in it?" These are VERY serious questions for content creators because he's not wrong ... about most of it. ----------------------------------------------------- Most AI Content IS Garbage. Tommy's Right. 💯 The reason people scroll past AI content is because most of it deserves to be scrolled past. Same generic phrases. Same safe structures. Same "In today's fast-paced world..." energy. It's AI writing as AI. No wonder people tune out. I tune out too. 👉🙄👈 So when he says "putting out content that isn't really me" - I hear him, loud and clear. That IS what happens with most AI tools. You give GPT a topic, it writes something in GPT's voice, and you slap your name on it. Your audience can smell it. 👃 You can smell it. 😷 Everyone can smell it. 🫢 That's the problem I set out to solve with SelfScale ----------------------------------------------------- The Difference Between a Clone 🤖 and a Mirror🪞 Tommy mentioned unfollowing people who are openly talking about creating AI clones. I get it. A clone replaces the creator. It produces content the creator never actually thought, from perspectives they don't hold, using examples they don't have. That feels disingenuous because it IS disingenuous.