Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Do Good Work is not a label but a way of living.
It is the constant and diligent effort to achieve a new level of excellence in one’s own life.
It is the hidden inner beauty behind the struggle to achieve excellence.
It is not perfect but imperfect.
It is the effort, discipline and focus that often goes unnoticed.
The goal of this podcast is to highlight that drive.
The guests I have on this show emulate this drive in their own special way. You’ll be able to apply new ideas into your own life by learning from them.
We will also have 1on1 episodes with me where we’ll dive into my own experiences with entrepreneurship and leadership.
Every episode is designed to provide you with ideas that you can apply and grow in excellence in all areas of your life, business and career.
Do Good Work,
Raul
All right, let's dive in.
So client services will be replaced by
ai, not just by a human who is using ai.
I think that's a cute aphorism
that a lot of people on LinkedIn
just say, to make you feel a little
bit better for what's coming.
Um, so the reality is a little bit
more simpler than that, and it's,
I think it's a bit more intense.
AI is going to do the work
you currently charge for.
It will do it faster, do it cheaper,
and in many cases it will do it better.
I know this because I'm actually
seeing this happen with some
of the work that I'm doing.
I've built a gentech, uh, workflows and
waterfalls for my own internal processes.
I've built workflows for
my portfolio of clients.
And I've actually built go to market
agents for select clients, including
some publicly traded companies.
And now I'm training my
agents to do strategic work.
Yes, strategic work that used to
take me about three to four weeks
of focused effort to complete
it in just a couple of hours.
And the output, the output is not like
some rough draft or a starting point.
It's actually client presentable.
So in the past, AI would
allow me and enable me to do
more of what I currently did.
So in three to four weeks, in that same
timeframe, it would still take me three
to four weeks to do strategy work, but
it would allow me to do outputs that
would, if I invested 12 weeks or six
weeks into the work and at the same time
invested, but it allowed me to go further.
But now I'm able to capture that
value and days and maybe even.
Hours, and this isn't
cookie cutter strategy.
So I've written books.
I've literally created hundreds of
templates, dozens of frameworks,
and I've honed in my intellectual
property for this strategic work.
And I've trained AI on the
frameworks that produce real
world, real life client results.
Uh, when I sat there and I saw the
output of what's possible, I was excited,
but I was also a little perplexed, uh,
because if ai, it just did in hours,
what it used to take me weeks to do.
Obviously with the right training,
it begs the following questions.
The first question it begs is,
how do I package what I do in
the new era of value creation?
The second question is, is the market
even ready for what's about to hit?
Uh, 'cause I'm seeing this 'cause I tinker
and I build with ai I've spent thousands
of dollars just to build stuff, just
to see what works, what doesn't work.
So it's not like just a $20 subscription.
Um, so I'm tinkering, and when I'm
seeing what's happening, I don't
even know if the market's ready.
And finally, are you ready
for this seismic shift?
And that's the reason why.
I wrote an entire blog post around this,
and I'm recording this podcast for you.
So I believe that client services
is about to get compressed.
AI is deflationary, but with
deflation there's gonna be more usage.
Uh, that's the hope that I have.
And let's dive right into it.
So, if you sell client services of
any kind, whether you run an agency,
a consultancy, a coaching practice,
or a solo operation, uh, you're
sitting on a structure that is gonna
get compressed from the bottom up.
Uh, most people in the industry can
feel it, but they don't really have a
language for what's actually happening.
Um, if you want to see like what
this compression actually looks
like, uh, recently, so I'm recording
this in, in middle of February.
So in late January, uh, Andro released
about 11 plugins for Claude to
automate some workflows across legal,
sales, marketing, and data analysis.
This was late January and the market
response was immediate, about 285 billion.
Hads, a be with a billion in
software stock, uh, disappeared
in a single trading session.
Thomas Rooters, uh, had its biggest
single day drop in company history.
Salesforce fell by 7%.
LegalZoom dropped by 20%.
Uh, and what happened, uh, got its own
name, was labeled as a SaaS apocalypse.
Uh, so what's actually happening,
because there's a lot of hype going
on, the foundation models, uh,
these companies moved up the stack.
So instead of selling you API access
and letting other companies build
on top of it, these companies like
philanthropic are shipping completed
workflows to end users like you and me.
That's very important.
So the middle layer of software that
existed between the AI companies,
the Frontier Labs, and the person
doing the work just got compressed.
Uh, and Satya Naela
himself warned about this.
He said that business applications
will collapse in the agentic
era because they're essentially
databases with business logic.
And the business logic is moving
to agents now apply that same
pattern to client services.
The same compression that just hit
SaaS is coming for every agency
consultancy and client services
that sits between AI capability and
the client that needs the outcome.
Now, I'm not a dor, I'm an optimist,
which is why I'm filming this and
creating this for you so that we can
identify, uh, what to do about it.
So I've been developing a framework
called the services stack because
it matches perfectly how the tech
world thinks about AI infrastructure.
So in tech you have layers.
You, so in different layers to text,
you have the data infrastructure as
the foundation, and then the models
are built on top of that data.
And then you have tooling and applications
that are built on top of those models.
And then you have the user interface
that you and I actually touch and review.
So each layer builds on top of each other.
And the higher you go, the
closer you get to the human and
the harder you are to replace.
So In client services work,
it works the exact same way.
So when you see which layer
you're operating on, you can
see exactly where you're exposed
and exactly what you need to do.
So I'm gonna go layer by layer so that
we can understand specifically, where
you're operating on and some of the
nuances and ideas That I've been having
around this with my discussion with
real founders, with real agency owners,
real consultants, as well as, my overly
consumption of AI and what's happening.
So layer one is execution, and this is
already being replaced, and it's only
a matter of time for the quality of
the execution to exponentially improve.
Uh, so this is the bottom of the stack.
So layer one is execution.
This is like content production,
digital assets, social media management,
email campaigns, web maintenance,
lead generation, fulfillment.
These are deliverables that agencies
have been packaging into monthly
retainers for like 20 years.
So I want you to think in the future
with me, just think in the future, this
layer has already been made obsolete.
The market is just processing
this transition in slow motion.
I'll give you an example.
I consulted one of the top lead
generation agencies in the country,
and they were doing what I call stamps.
It's essentially the same deliverable
with customization per client, repeated
at scale across hundreds of accounts,
and that model works beautifully.
And the only way to produce the
work was to hire more people,
build more systems and automations,
and then continue to scale.
But now, if AI can produce the same or
similar output for a fraction of the
cost, like a legit fraction of the cost.
With better consistency.
The economics break.
Now this doesn't separate 'cause that
client has an IP moat, but I'm just
giving you that example because, because
if you're an agency that charges five
to 15 K per month for email management
campaigns, et cetera, essentially what
Jonathan Stark says, selling hands.
You're not in a declining business,
but you're in a business that's
gonna be undercut by a competitor
that can do that at 10 X scale for a
10th of the price, maybe even less.
And that competition isn't gonna be
another agency, isn't gonna be another
firm that you've been competing.
It could be literally a founder,
an AI workflow in zero employees.
And that's real.
For layer two, we have the template
strategy, and I think that right
now you have about 12 to 18 months.
Uh, as of early 2026 where layer two
template strategy is gonna be, you have
about 12 months to get out of this layer.
Uh, so this is where it can get a
little personal, template strategy means
frameworks that you learn in an online
course, a certification or a book.
And you're applying that to your
customers or your clients with minor.
template.
Strategy simply means that you're taking
a framework that you learn in a course,
in a certification or a book, and you're
applying that framework to all of your
clients with minor customizations.
These are like.
Generic brand audits.
These are cookie cutter
messaging frameworks.
These are marketing plans that
you could have generated with
fill in the blank templates.
And to be completely honest
with you, this layer is in the
same position as execution.
It just hasn't caught up yet.
So the best time for you to
develop your own IP was yesterday.
Now it's even more critical for you
to think about your own thinking and
create your intellectual property
and your own method of execution,
because that is a significant moat.
That is gonna be a really big and we'll
talk about that in the next layer.
Um, but just FYI, having your
own IP isn't gonna save you,
but it's gonna differentiate you
for the next couple of years.
Um, AI does run more competitive, uh,
audits, uh, than most consultants.
It can generate positioning
frameworks and messaging
architectures that are technically
competent and strategically sound.
And if the core of what you sell is a
framework that's applied to someone's
business, AI can do that today.
Uh, the only reason your clients
haven't figured it out yet
is that they haven't tried.
Plus they actually don't care.
Most of them won't care to look under
the hood and see how it's actually made.
So I know this might offend a few people.
I'm not trying to just know that
good strategy will win, but you have
to do more than just good strategy.
And this dives into layer three,
where we dive into judgment
driven strategy, which I think has
like a two to three year window.
Now there's an important distinction
that I need to make about, like,
what we talk about strategy is that
crappy strategy will get commoditized.
It's already commoditized,
but good strategy will get
amplified, at least for now.
there's a massive difference between a
consultant who's memorized the framework
and a consultant who's spent years in
the trenches doing the actual work to
produce a strategy that is repeatable
and that works in the real world.
So when I build my growth plans.
Using ai, I'm not handing the wheels
to the machine and hoping for the best.
I'm driving the entire time.
I make judgment calls on every
turn because I've done this work so
many times with so many companies
and founders to actually know what
needs to move the needle versus
just what looks sexy on a deck.
So that's, that's very
important to distinguish.
Um, like I reject the outputs
that are technically correct,
but practically wrong.
And I add context about team
dynamics, uh, founder psychology,
market timing, competitive threats.
And AI doesn't know a particular
client's real problem.
For example, they might, not know that
the problem isn't their offer stack.
Their problem could be that the founder
is afraid to fire the operations manager
because she's their wife's best friend.
Uh, now that example is too close to
the truth, but you get what I mean.
It doesn't understand those finer
nuances that are interpersonal.
Human relationship conflicts that come up.
Um, so this layer doesn't get
immediately replaced by ai,
it's going to be accelerated.
'cause you can produce, like I'm
seeing, produce this layer much faster.
So instead of taking two weeks to
do something, it take you two hours.
Um, you're gonna be
more valuable for that.
And, and I wanna repeat that
'cause this is very important.
So if you're an experienced operator
and you use AI to do in two hours,
what used to take you two weeks?
You actually become more valuable,
not less because of the net new
value that you identify that
you'll be able to act on that you
couldn't otherwise have done before.
That's really important.
There's net new things that you can't
do right now because you're still doing
things by hand and your margins will go
up obviously because your cost of delivery
goes to nearly zero while judgment
and the actual client that's paying
for it, uh, paying for your judgment.
Improves, improves your judgment
calls, improves your feedback
cycle, and improves the engagement.
Um, so I wanna be honest
about the window here.
I think AI reasoning is gonna
get there on a curve measured
in months, not just years.
Uh, and the gap between template
strategy and judgment driven
strategy is real, but it is closing.
I'll give you an example.
As of January, so 2026 last month,
top engineers at Frontier Labs like
Anthropic and Open AI report that AI
writes a hundred percent of their code.
Their role has shifted from
writing to directing and reviewing.
It's very important.
Therefore, the underlying strategy that
you execute is important, but it isn't
gonna be the major driver to your success,
which means that you need to be building
your position on the layers above this
one while you still have an advantage.
And I estimate that you have about
two to three years of clear runway.
On this layer, and I'm an optimist.
It could be less, but I'm optimistic.
You got about two years, so use them.
So let's dive into layer four.
So we're getting closer
to the top of the stack.
So this is four out of five layers.
The fourth layer is
transformation and accountability.
If you wanna compete, I
suggest you start here.
So let me give you an analogy of how
I'm thinking about this entire problem.
And I've been thinking a lot about this.
So take the fitness industry, uh,
with my FitnessPal YouTube and
Chachi, bt or your choice of ai,
you can make your own workout plan
and meal plan completely free.
I, I've done it.
It's amazing.
you can create a world-class
nutrition and training program for
about net $0 right now, and the
information isn't the barrier anymore.
There is no gap between someone who pays
a trainer and someone who doesn't because
it's the information's not the barrier.
the weird thing, the perplexing thing is
personal training grew premium fitness.
The $500 a month online
coaching tier exploded.
And I'm gonna read the stat here.
Personal training hit 42.5
billion in 2024, and is
projected to hit 60 billion.
That's with a B by 2030.
That's insane.
That's growing pretty hot.
So how does this make sense if the
plan, the nutrition itself is free?
Like you and I can get world-class
training ideas for free.
It's 'cause the constraint
was never the plan.
The constraint is the human being
who needs to follow the plan.
A person who hires a personal trainer
doesn't need to tell 'em, eat more
protein lift four times a week.
The person who hires a personal
trainer needs to become
someone who actually does that.
Consistently over time,
they need an identity level.
Transformation and identity
shifts don't happen from reading
a document or downloading an app.
They happen inside of a relationship
where someone sees you, challenges
you, and won't let you off the hook and
holds you accountable to the version of
yourself that you haven't become yet.
And your clients are the exact same way.
Every client who comes to you, they
already know what they need to do.
Like I just got off a call with
someone like, I need more leads.
They know exactly what to do.
The work that you do for them
confirms and makes it specific
of what they can actually do to
get the outcome that they want.
Because the distance between, I know like
for, this is an example, the distance
between, I know I need to restructure
my offer suite, like my offer stack.
And actually restructuring it and
actually having the hard conversations
with longstanding clients about legacy
pricing or retraining the sales team,
or rebuilding the delivery model
from scratch or the distance between,
uh, where the business stalls out
and never reaches the next level.
That distance, you know, the knowledge
of, hey, I know this is a thing.
AI makes that knowledge part free.
But you charge for the doing
part, not just for the hands,
but you help them transform.
So for example, you're not just
selling a growth plan or strategy
jacks, uh, or brand architectures.
You're selling the closing,
the knowledge, doing gap.
That's very important.
And the doing doesn't
always have to be you.
The doing doesn't always have to be you.
Your orchestrating execution, guiding
clients through the messy middle, where
the plan hits reality, it breaks, adapting
in real time, staying accountable for the
months, not just the weeks to come, and
not just one recommendation in a single
meeting and hoping, hoping it works out.
And if it works, you're there
to build on the momentum.
If it doesn't work, you're
there next month to figure out
why not, and course correct.
And the difference between AI and
you in this scenario is AI can
give advice with zero consequences.
It can make all the promises
in the world feel great.
But when you make a promise to a
client, you're risking your reputation
and your revenue on the line.
And that changes how the client
receives a recommendation entirely.
Which brings us to the top of
the stack, the belief layer.
this is gonna be a little
esoteric, but let's talk about it.
Layer five belief.
So here's something that I learned
from chatting with Tom Ziegler.
he mentioned this and I thought this
was really important, and we're not
really thinking about this as much
in client services as we ought.
And I don't actually hear it in the
marketplace as often as I think we should.
There's a layer above transformation
and accountability, and this is the
most durable layer in the entire stack.
And it's the reason why I think
some agencies and consultancies
won't just survive, but they're
going to actually thrive or come
out stronger on the other side.
And here's the sentence,
and Tom, I owe you this one.
AI cannot believe in you.
The human, it can encourage you.
It can affirm you, to the
point of hallucination.
It can simulate empathy and convincing
you, even fooling you for a little
while, but it can't sit across the
room from you or the table and make
you feel something, or make you feel
like that person across the table has
actually been through this before.
They're putting their
reputation on the line.
They something in me or in my
business that you can't see yourself.
AI can't do that.
That's not a feature
that's gonna get built.
That's just how we're wired
and we have to leverage that.
here's why that wiring matters
more than most of us realize.
So there's a concept in physics
called the observer effect.
At the subatomic level, particles
literally behave differently
when they're being observed.
It's kind of wild.
The act of observation
changes the outcome.
That's crazy.
People work the same way.
We perform differently, commit
differently, transform differently,
actually do different things.
When someone on the other side
cares about the results, not just
monitoring a metric or a dashboard.
They're watching with intent,
with belief, with something on
the line with skin in the game.
And a founder who knows that their advisor
sees them, truly sees what they're trying
to build and what they're capable of,
will take risks that they wouldn't alone.
I see it all the time with my clients.
My clients have so much confidence.
They're conquering, they're taking action.
They're doing things
they wouldn't otherwise.
And they'll push through the
months where nothing seems to be
working, and they'll make the hard
call that you've been avoiding.
And that's not because someone told
them to or, because someone they trusted
and believed that they could do this.
That they're willing to do the
work when things got difficult.
It's not just accountability in the
traditional sense, it's witnessing and the
mechanism makes the transformation stick.
This is kind of similar
to how coaching works.
The relationship in coaching is the
mechanism of change, not the coaching.
That's the crazy part.
The relationship is the mechanism.
Now layer on top of belief.
That layer requires trust.
And having trusts requires the other
party to have something to lose.
When you recommend a strategy and you
stake your reputation on it, when you're
ongoing on that relationship for the
next 12 months or the next quarter, and
the revenue depends on your work and
their revenue, depends on the work, your
clients will receive the recommendation
completely, entirely, because.
Versus just getting something from
a machine with zero output or zero
consequences of things going wrong.
AI has no downside.
They don't lose sleep
when the strategy fails.
They don't care if you lose the client.
I don't even know if they
care in general, really.
Um, and it doesn't have to show up
next month to look the founder in
the eye when the numbers didn't hit.
But you do.
And the fact that you have something at
stake and the machine doesn't is what
makes belief possible in the first place.
'cause you're still gonna be
doing business with other humans.
That's the major premise of this all.
When someone buys from you at the
top of the stack, they're not just
buying your frameworks, they're
not buying your methodology or your
track record, which is important.
All those things are important.
They're buying belief, they're
buying your conviction.
They're buying into the conviction.
That you see a version of their
business and of themselves that
they can't fully envision and
that you've been there before.
And that by walking with you through this
process, you're gonna help them get there.
And that belief is what creates
commitment to do the hard work when
results haven't materialized yet.
It's what keeps.
Clients from bailing out in month
three when the strategy is right,
but the numbers are lagging.
It's the thing that makes transformation
actually stick because someone with
skin in the game witnessed it and
helped bring it into existence.
And your personal brand, how you show
up is the architecture of that belief,
The reputation you build, the outcomes
you've documented, the way you
challenge people in public through
your content, the way you show up,
how thi when things aren't working.
That's a step beyond marketing, that's
constructing a belief system that the
right people will wanna buy into or opt
into when they decide to work with you.
It's human nature one-on-one.
It's all communication.
AI will compete with you on execution.
On strategy, on frameworks, on analysis,
on content, on research, but where it
falls short and where I will believe
it'll continue to fall short is belief.
Because belief requires observations
that change the outcome.
They requires skin in the game to
create trust, and a human who is willing
to show up when things fall apart.
AI has none of those things.
I'm not downplaying it, I'm not
talking it down, but it doesn't
have any of those things and I
don't see a path where reasoning
improvements alone close the gap.
So that's the five layers, but let's talk
about what to do with the five layers.
So the traditional agency model is
pretty much obsolete and template
consulting is running on borrowed time.
So what comes next?
I've been thinking about this deeply and
if you've had private conversations with
me, we've been talking a lot about this.
I think the next model in services
is a craft model, because that's
what's actually happening.
We're returning to something that existed
before the modern agency, industrialized
creative and strategic work.
So before agencies were just
headcounts like factories with
people that sold hours at scale.
There were studios, small groups
of experts, people working directly
with clients, taking pride in
their craft, accountability for the
quality of their craft, their output.
Because their name was on it and
the agency industry commoditized
that into a volume play.
If you know me, like I hate the
traditional agency model, and I think
AI is reversing this process entirely.
So lemme tell you a little bit how I
envision, how I've built teams in the
past and what I see the future look like.
The craft model looks like this.
It's a founder or a principal, Who holds
the client relationship and operates at
the belief and transformation layers.
They operate at the top two
and they're in the room.
They're making the judgment calls.
They're providing accountability, they're
carrying the belief, and that's also
means they're carrying the relationship.
And it's not just a handshake, it's
a real relationship, a real belief.
And around them.
It is a small team of elite practitioners.
Who are T-shaped, meaning that they have
broad fluency at the top, but they have
a deep expertise in one specific craft.
Not junior freelancers, not people
you just found on Upwork, not
generalists, who can do a little bit
of everything at a mediocre level.
Craftspeople who have spent years
mastering their discipline and can
instantly tell you the AI output
if it's good or if it's trash.
Because they know the difference
from actually doing it.
They've actually done that
before and they're training the
AI based on their expertise.
And underneath that human layer is
an augmented workforce of AI agents
handling the execution of production.
And this is completely different from a
firm or an agency that just uses AI tools.
the economics are completely different
from that as well, because in the
traditional agency world, you're scaling
with headcount and you're trying to offset
costs by having your team do more with ai.
but again, your new client requires
more proportional hires and your
margins are compressed as you grow.
You haven't decoupled revenue
or labor costs from revenue.
And AI is offsetting some of those things,
but you're also burning teams out or your
pipeline is drying because you're still
competing on the traditional layers.
In the craft model, AI handles a
production layer, which means that your
capacity extends without proportional
costs, increases operator, with AI and two
to three elite team members can do what
eight to 15 people do because you don't
have team members that are just doing, you
have team members that are orchestrating,
managing, overseeing the doing.
And then helping, bring
that doing into fruition.
this is a pretty sweet business model.
this is from my experience, I'm not
saying this is for everyone, but
it's a pretty sweet business model.
Eight to 12 clients at premium pricing,
every client, getting the principles,
direct judgment, AI's helping execute.
The elite small team handles everything.
And you're doing probably six figures
a month with minimal overhead.
And, uh, obviously like it could
feel like a lifestyle business, but
I think We're returning to the craft,
the human layer and the problems that
you're able to solve because of that.
Because once you get out of the
doing and like, you know, all the
headaches with the agencies, like,
oh, this team didn't do that.
Oh, we failed to do, oh,
we have the deadline.
If you get outta that headache,
what's the new value you can create?
What's the net new?
You haven't explored that
because you haven't built this.
When you focus on that net new,
there's gonna be way more opportunity.
But, um, alas, here we are
and we're still in 2026.
So let's talk about where I actually
think that we're at on the timeline.
Not just where I hope we are, but
where I actually think we're at.
Um, this is me recording this in February.
It's February 12th here in San Diego.
It's a nice sunny day.
Here's where I think we're at.
The execution layer is
already being replaced.
It's already been replaced.
I want you to believe
that it's been replaced.
If you don't believe
it, your time will come.
I don't like saying it that
way, but that's just how it is.
And I hope that you start acting
as if it's already been replaced
so that you're not surprised
for the way that's gonna hit.
If you're still selling hours of
production work, you're competing
with AI today and you're gonna lose
on costs, whether realize it or not.
Uh, template strategy, it's pretty much
done, but the markets take time to adapt.
So I'm gonna give you
about 12 to 18 months.
That's generous.
when, if you're a coach consultant
and you're selling frameworks without
real experience or real judgment
behind them, your clients are gonna
suss out that they can get the same
value from a $20 month subscription.
So the moment your clients realize
that they can get what you've been
charging for, for nearly zero, uh, will
be an expensive moment in your career.
So I recommend you move up
the ladder and create your own
ip, for the judgment strategy.
I think two years, maybe three
years of clear advantage.
this is where you capitalize your ip,
your reputation at the higher levels
and start working on the relationship
or the transformation lever and the
belief layer, document the outcomes,
the transformations, establish yourself
as I work with this person, and this
is the outcome that happens naturally
from working with this person.
It's not a promise, it's a position.
It's very important.
You're not just promising the world,
like entry level agencies or consultants.
Like, Hey, if I don't do this and
you don't get these results, then.
you pay nothing.
Or I guarantee X number of results.
no, those are low level promises.
It's the positioning of when you
work with this person, there's
a belief layer working with this
firm or working with this team.
These things happen because of
the case studies or the outputs
or the belief that you built,
before they actually talk to you.
That's what I'm talking about here.
but AI will close that gap
pretty soon between human
judgment and machine judgment.
I don't have data.
as to what the world looks after
that, I literally can only see right
now about like two to three years.
I don't even know, like
I have it over here.
Maybe minimum of eight, maybe about eight
to 10 hours a week on just ai, like,
what's going on and not just deep dives.
So what's going on?
what's the macroeconomics?
what are we gonna be doing socially?
So there's a lot of things that I can't
see beyond like two to three years.
and I don't think anyone does.
And anyone who's selling you.
That they have a clear picture of
what client services looks like.
Like in 2029 or in 2030, they're making
things up or they're lying to you,
or they're lying to themselves, or
they're gonna sell you something that's,
those are the major three options.
Or they could be hallucinating, who knows?
Um, but I do believe that the belief
layer and the transformation layers are
the last to be disrupted because they're
the most fundamentally human, especially
if humans are still gonna be transacting
and doing business with humans.
There could be a future where it's
agents, doing business with agents.
That's not a, not zero possibility.
So it is a possibility.
I don't know what the percentage
it is, but I just don't see that
happening in two to three years.
So if you're positioned, um, the
lower layers are gonna get compressed
and they are getting compressed,
uh, then I think you're gonna set
yourself up to, to capture the net
new value creation that's gonna
happen in the next two to three years.
And that's what I want you to
do when you listen to this.
I want you to be optimistic
and see what is the net new.
What is the new value that I, that I
can create and that we can capture and
that we can help clients go further?
Um, so in a way, I am asking you to
prepare now so that when your time
comes, you have an advantage, uh, or
at least you have a better, a vantage
point versus just focusing on survival.
'cause if you don't take action now and
you arrive to the future, you're gonna be
focused on survival and that's not ideal.
Um, so what do you do from here?
I wanna share just a few points of
what I'm doing that you can consider.
I do wanna make it super important
that this is what I'm about to share
with you is not business advice.
This is not for you to execute.
This is not in any way
creating a client relationship.
I'm just sharing what I'm personally
doing about it and thinking as
someone who sells client services.
And I work with clients who sell
client services and I help them grow.
And I'm watching this shift
happening from my own practice.
Alright?
Uh, so the first thing is I would suggest,
or here's what I'm doing, collapse
your production costs to near zero.
Uh, I'll give you a real example.
I just got off a call this week with
a strategist at a client organization
who needs an entire, not only just
business plan, but go to market
positioning, subsegment analysis
to present to a public company.
Okay?
a year ago, if you were to talk to me a
year ago, that kind of work usually would
take me about 15 hours or maybe two weeks,
just depending on how long we wanna do.
So, 15, 20, 30 hours up to two weeks.
Now, literally now I can spin up, and this
is light strategy guys, like, it's not
like I'm gonna do the full deck, but this
is just light level, uh, like LITE light.
I can spin up multiple agents.
I can spin up multiple agents with
parallel workflows, not just waterfall
sequences, but true agentic work based
on the training, based on the execution,
based on my frameworks, based on how I
would do it, how I would talk, and how
I would execute with a QA analysis at
the end and present a workable deck.
That I can edit and refine based
on the client's context in hours.
That's amazing.
That to me is amazing.
So the cost of production is approaching
the price of energy and compute.
So it's not literally zero, but come on,
the cost of energy is gonna be quite low.
Um.
It's not zero, but it's close enough that
the old model of building for production
work and hours doesn't make sense anymore.
How do you bill for hours when
you can do this in, in like little
hours or like minutes in some cases?
So my recommendation or my idea is to get
as close as net zero costs as you can, and
only focus on the purely human layer, the
judgment, the relationship, the belief.
The next thing is to audit which
layer you're actually operating on.
This is really important.
It can be pretty humbling and
watch out for legacy thinking.
Um, I wrote this because I've been
thinking a lot about this, and when
you overthink, you can get stalled.
So my hope here is that for you to audit
where you're at, so at least you have.
An idea, and at least you have some ideas
of what you can do about it, uh, because
this might be a little bit uncomfortable
for some of you listening to this,
and if you read the entire substack.
Um, and I'm saying all of this
with respect because I know there's
some peers that I look up to that
will be reading this, who are, you
know, 20 or 30 years in the game.
Um, so legacy thinking debt is
like technical software debt.
You're operating off of assumptions
where AI was, you know, in
2024, but it's no longer true.
For example, oh, AI hallucinates.
That concern was real,
like real two years ago.
Does it still hallucinate today?
Absolutely, but not as much.
And if you have a QA guardrail, like
if you have quality assurance, you can
get to really, really, really precise
good outputs in a very short amount.
You just have to train it.
Um, also if you think that
AI's just a useful tool, like a
docs or like a, a spreadsheet.
Yeah, that makes sense.
When you were just copying and
pasting like GPT outputs, um, but.
You have to think about
it more than just a use.
It is a useful tool.
It's a very, very useful tool.
But now with agents that are producing
client ready deliverables autonomously,
it's, it's a significant tool.
And here's some questions to think
about if you're thinking about AI
in legacy thinking, like, are you
thinking that it's just a tool or are
you using it as a thought partner and
eventually embedding it in how you
do your work and produce your work?
Not just the tool, but it's, it's baked.
It is the process.
That's very important.
Are you genuinely open to the
possibility that your business
model would fundamentally change?
Uh, or are you assuming that people in
the markets are gonna stay the same?
Uh, I, I don't think they are.
Another question for you is, are
you planning to keep the lights
on just how you always have,
or are you actively rebuilding?
Are you r and ding?
Are you tinkering?
And here's a rebuttal that I
know some of you are forming.
It's on the relationship layer.
Like, Hey, Raul, I have deep
relationships with my clients
that protects me from all of this.
Um, I generally agree and I
understand that instinct, but having
a relationship isn't the same thing as
operating on the relationship layer.
Because here, I'll give you
an example, a 20 year client.
That's anchored to execution or
template strategy is still at the
bottom of the stack with a handshake.
So when a new VP arrives at the company
that you're working for, or that is one of
your clients with the same deliverables,
and they find out that they can get the
same outputs from an agent at a fraction
of the cost, the argument of, but we've
worked together for 15 years, isn't
going to survive the budget conversation.
The next thing that I would recommend
is to build your portfolio of outcomes
publicly and do so compliantly, like what
transformations have you facilitated?
What's changed in your client's
businesses when you did work together?
Every case study testimonial, every
piece of content where you can
actually share what happened for
real clients is a brick of proof.
This matters way more
than it has in the past.
Hopefully we can even get to a point
where we can do some sort of like
certification, like, um, like a blog,
like this is a true, uh, certified proof.
That could be a cool way of doing it.
But right now I don't, if you know
about that, email me, I'd love to know.
Uh, but for, for now, just like
post as much as you can and
show real proof, real outcomes.
A lot of people lie, unfortunately.
Just show the real deal to know
that you, when they speak to
you, when they work with you.
It's the real strategy.
It's not just a made up belief thing that
you're just cobbling template strategies.
Um, and doing so, like investing your
ability to diagnose real problems fast.
'cause that skillset
will compound over time.
Uh, not just presenting symptoms that the
client shows up with, but the root cause.
When you do that, you're, you're
sharing that you are the expert
without saying, Hey, I'm the expert.
Uh, so again, say what you
wanna say without saying it.
Um, another key thing that I'm
doing that I would recommend is
to stop competing with a machine.
On the machine's track.
So a ton of you and a ton of things
that I'm seeing online is consultants
who are trying to just learn prompt
engineering or to say they're AI
powered in their services page.
Like I don't, you're competing
in the wrong field entirely.
You gotta go deep in the human
work and the diagnosis and the
belief and the accountability.
And the transformation and the craft.
This is where you can compete.
If you're competing by doing
more just like a machine,
you're gonna be commoditized.
Um, so again, to recap, here's
where I think things are going.
Client services.
The industry itself is going to be going
through the most significant compression
most of us will ever see in our careers.
Um, everything that can be automated
will be automated, and the timeline
is shorter than most anyone in
the industry is willing to admit.
I gave you some of my timelines.
I could be completely wrong,
uh, but that's just where I'm
seeing it from my vantage point.
but the compression doesn't
mean the end of client services.
There's a new era of net new value
creation that we can arrive to if
we focus on everything that I just
discussed, that we focus on where we
reposition at the top small teams, elite
craft AI production underneath, and the
human belief and transformation above.
I think the traditional agency
model has run its course.
I'm happy it did.
And I think the craft model where
the value lies in the human layer
and everything below it, handled
by machines is what replaces it.
And the founders and operators who
build that model, like now within the
next two to three years while the wind
is open, are the ones who look back
at this moment, hopefully in my hope.
as the best thing that ever
happened to their business.
I'm very optimistic about that.
I'm actually bullish on that.
AI is already eating at
your client services.
Whether you notice it or not.
It's gonna come for professional
services and white collar work
faster than you can imagine.
And I think the only thing
left to is whether you want to
restructure around craft judgment.
While have a window to do that, or you
just wanna wait and see what happens
with the market and the market would
ultimately make that decision for you.
if you wanna discuss this more
intimately, one-on-one to see how this
affects your business and how you can
hedge against the change, reach out.
This is a subject that I'm deeply,
deeply, near with and I work on and
think about it almost every single
day with myself and with my clients.
and if you found this useful.
the average person on average impacts
about 10,000 people in their lifetime.
I bet you didn't even know that.
And some of you who are listening to
this right now, I'd love for you to
share this if this is valuable to you.
Share this with someone else
'cause you don't know if you
might be a positive influence.
In their life.
And if you're new, please subscribe.
I am gonna produce more
content around this.
If you have any questions, please
hit me up at podcast@dogoodwork.io.
This is all filmed and created
here in San Diego in my studio.
It's all handcrafted in the same location.
I will have typos, I will have some edits,
I will have some grammatical issues.
That's okay.
And if this is your first time meeting
me, I'm Raul and I help services
founders redesign, how they price.
Sell and operate in the Agentic AI era.
You can visit my website@dogoodwork.io.
That is do good work.
Do IO if you're ready to build
what's next in your form.
I look forward to talking to you.
Until next time, do good work.