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.

Honest thought after diving deeper into AI + automation: Sometimes we don’t need another hire. We need a better workflow. Before adding payroll, I’m starting to ask: – Is this task repetitive? – Is it rule-based? – Does it follow a predictable pattern? If yes → it might be automation-ready. AI + tools like n8n can handle routing, sorting, follow-ups, reporting — the operational layer that eats hours. Hiring should be for creativity, strategy, and relationship-building. Not copying data from one place to another. Founders — have you ever hired for a problem that could’ve been systemized instead?