Found a client paying $12k/month to an agency for "ongoing maintenance". The workflow hadn't been touched in 11 months. Took over for $600/month. The agency is furious. THE DISCOVERY Networking event last month. Guy mentions he's spending $12k monthly on automation. Me: "What kind of automations?" Him: "Lead generation workflow" Me: "Must be complex for $12k/month" Him: "Agency says it needs constant optimization" Red flag detected. THE INVESTIGATION Him: "Want to take a look?" Me: "Sure" He gave me read-only access. What I found: Single n8n workflow: - LinkedIn scraper - Email finder - CRM push - Email sequence trigger Total nodes: 8 Complexity: Beginner level Last modified: 11 months ago No changes. No updates. Nothing. THE AGENCY'S "MAINTENANCE" Monthly reports they sent: - "System monitoring: 10 hours" - "Performance optimization: 8 hours" - "Security updates: 6 hours" - "Strategic consulting: 4 hours" Total: 28 hours monthly Rate: $428/hour What they actually did: Absolutely nothing. I checked the logs. Workflow ran perfectly. Zero errors. Zero interventions. Zero updates. THE CONFRONTATION Him: "So what do you think?" Me: "You're being robbed" Him: "What?" Me: "This hasn't been touched in 11 months" Him: "But the monthly reports..." Me: "Fiction" Showed him the modification logs. His face went white. Him: "I've paid $132k this year for... nothing?" Me: "Correct" THE BREAKDOWN Agency's monthly "work": - Monitoring = checking if it's running (2 min) - Optimization = nothing - Security = nothing - Consulting = 15-min monthly call Actual monthly effort: 20 minutes tops Monthly charge: $12,000 Effective rate: $36,000/hour They were printing money. THE TAKEOVER Him: "Can you take this over?" Me: "Yes" Him: "What do you charge?" Me: "$600/month" Him: "That's it?" Me: "For actual monitoring and maintenance, yes" Him: "What about optimization?" Me: "I'll rebuild it faster in Skada, throw in custom improvements, and that's included" THE 9-MINUTE REBUILD

It sounds harsh, but it’s true.AI doesn’t take your job — it reveals what was already broken. When a business adopts AI and everything falls apart, the problem isn’t the AI.The problem is that they’ve just placed a magnifying glass over their own operations. - If the process is unclear, AI will amplify that confusion. - If decisions lack data, AI will rationalize mistakes ten times faster. - And if the team doesn’t understand why they do what they do, automation will only accelerate the chaos. The real power of AI isn’t automation.It’s revelation.It reveals how your organization truly works — how people collaborate, where data gets wasted, where alignment breaks. So when someone says: “AI messed up our workflow.”I usually ask:“Or did it just show you what was already broken?” AI doesn’t replace humans.It just forces us to face the flaws we’ve been ignoring. And that’s the part that truly scares people about transformation.