A rant-format breakdown of why time and skill stopped being a business moat, and the four pivots (workflows, access, taste, enablement) that replace them.
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2 weeks ago
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Big Idea
The argument in one line.
AI erased the moat that used to protect service and SaaS businesses, the time and skill work required, so survival now hinges on four pivots: sellable AI workflows, infrastructure access instead of features, taste and specialization, and apps that do the work for the customer.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You run an agency, freelance, or consulting business (web design, video editing, ad management, coaching) and bill by hours or expertise.
You operate a SaaS and are watching customers vibe-code their own version of your features.
You want a framework for repricing a service business around outcomes instead of time spent.
SKIP IF…
You're looking for a hands-on AI coding or prompting tutorial; this is a strategy rant, not a how-to.
You don't run a business that sells time, skill, or a piece of software to other people.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
AI erased the two things service and SaaS businesses used to charge for: the time work took and the skill it took to do it. Web design, video editing, coaching, even SaaS features can now be produced by AI in minutes, so billing by hours or claiming special skill no longer protects a business. Four pivots replace that old moat: build AI workflows that deliver fast, custom output per client; sell access to infrastructure and data instead of a product's UI (illustrated with Hyros and iClosed); specialize narrowly enough to know what 'good' actually looks like, since taste is what AI can't fake; and build small apps that do the work for the customer instead of coaching them through it.
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Alex Becker opens with a crude hook, teases the five pivots he's about to share, and states the stakes: even a business that did $130M in revenue got disrupted by AI.
01:22 – 02:39
02 · Work and Skill No Longer Matter
The two things businesses used to bill for and defend, the time work takes and the skill it requires, no longer create a moat because AI can now do both instantly.
02:39 – 05:41
03 · Pivot 1: Build AI Workflows Per Client
Instead of manually delivering services, build a custom AI pipeline per client, raw files in, finished product out, so delivery scales without more personal time.
05:41 – 11:18
04 · Pivot 2: Sell Access to Infrastructure, Not Features
Using Hyros and iClosed as case studies, the argument is that UI features can be cloned by anyone with AI, but the infrastructure, data, and network behind them can't, so that's what should be sold and protected, including through MCP server access.
11:18 – 13:02
05 · Value vs Feature, Value vs Time
Two whiteboard comparisons make the same point from different angles: neither the polish of a feature nor the hours put into a deliverable justify price anymore, only the value the result actually creates does.
13:02 – 14:38
06 · Pivot 3: Get Good and Specialize
With production time collapsed toward zero, the only differentiator left is taste, knowing what a genuinely converting result looks like, and micro-niching into one specific outcome so that judgment compounds.
14:38 – 17:16
07 · Pivot 4: Enable, Build Apps That Do the Work For the Customer
Rather than coaching or servicing customers step by step, build small AI-powered tools that complete the task for them, illustrated with a Chrome extension Hyros built in a weekend to solve installation friction.
17:16 – 21:07
08 · Good, Repeatable, Moat: Locking In Clients
The closing framework: turn a good result into a repeatable, client-specific process, since that repeatability, not the initial quality of the work, is what actually locks a client in and separates surviving businesses from the ones losing ground.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Billing by the hours and skill it takes to deliver work no longer protects a business, because AI can now do the work itself in minutes.
A web design company that takes two to three weeks to deliver a site update is losing clients to AI tools that can redesign a site in one prompt.
The moat isn't a product's features anymore, it's the infrastructure, data, and network behind those features that nobody wants to rebuild.
iClosed succeeded by letting a business run its own custom-built booking forms while iClosed just powers the backend, proving infrastructure, not UI, is what people actually pay for.
A tracking company can stay defensible even after AI lets customers build their own dashboards, as long as the underlying data and attribution system stays irreplaceable.
Opening a product's infrastructure to MCP servers and LLMs so customers can build their own features is now safer than trying to out-build every feature request.
AI removed the time-and-skill barrier that let mediocre web designers, video editors, and consultants survive purely by grinding it out.
What people now pay for is taste, the judgment to know what 'good' looks like and get results, not the hours spent producing something.
Micro-niching into one specific outcome, like improving call bookings on dentist websites, lets a specialist beat AI, because AI can produce the work but can't judge the result in context.
A browser extension that watches a user's screen and installs software for them solved an onboarding problem months of manual support couldn't, and it took a weekend and a half to build.
Businesses that build custom AI workflows for each client create real lock-in, because no client wants to rebuild a workflow tailored specifically to their business elsewhere.
The businesses losing ground right now are mostly the ones still doing client work manually instead of spending the last few months building repeatable AI-powered workflows.
Video editing clients don't actually want edited video, they want more watch time and more sales, so the thing to sell is the result, not the editing labor.
A creator teaching AI video prompting inside a community is already behind, because the winning move is an app that does the prompting for the student instead of copy-paste prompts.
Takeaway
AI killed the old moat, time and skill. Four things replace it.
WHAT TO LEARN
When AI can produce the deliverable in minutes, the business that survives is the one selling workflows, infrastructure access, taste, and tools that do the work for the customer instead of billing for hours.
02Work and Skill No Longer Matter
The time and skill it took to build a website, edit a video, or code a feature used to be the moat, and AI has erased that advantage for good.
Billing by the hour for work AI can now generate in seconds no longer justifies a price, so pricing conversations have to move to outcomes.
03Pivot 1: Build AI Workflows Per Client
Building a client-specific AI workflow, a set pipeline that ingests raw files and outputs a custom result, lets one operator serve dozens of clients without doing manual work each time.
A workflow tailored to one client's exact brand and needs becomes the lock-in, because no client wants to rebuild that customization somewhere else.
Turning a manual service into a self-serve pipeline, drop files in, get the finished product out, is how a service business scales past the limits of personal time.
04Pivot 2: Sell Access to Infrastructure, Not Features
Features and UI can be rebuilt by anyone with AI in an afternoon, but the infrastructure, data, and network behind them usually can't, so that's what should be priced and protected.
Opening a product's data to MCP servers and LLMs lets customers build their own custom features, which removes the pressure to out-build every feature request manually.
A booking company can lose its own UI to a competitor's custom form and still keep the customer, because the backend infrastructure is what's actually being paid for.
05Value vs Feature, Value vs Time
The features people see are worth nothing on their own now; the underlying value they deliver, conversions, results, data, is the only thing still worth charging for.
Time spent on a deliverable is no longer a defensible line item, because AI collapses production time toward zero regardless of the work's complexity.
06Pivot 3: Get Good and Specialize
Once AI can produce a polished result instantly, the only differentiator left is taste: knowing what a genuinely good, converting result looks like in a specific context.
Micro-niching into one narrow outcome, like improving call-booking conversion for dentist websites specifically, lets a specialist beat AI because AI can't judge results in that context on its own.
Most people can now produce a good-looking deliverable with AI, but almost nobody can make it convert, and that gap is where the money is.
07Pivot 4: Enable, Build Apps That Do the Work For the Customer
Building a small tool that watches a user's screen and completes a task for them, installation, setup, onboarding, removes friction that months of manual support couldn't fix.
A tool like this can be built in a weekend using AI, so there's no excuse for an education or coaching business to keep manually walking every customer through the same steps.
Handing customers copy-paste prompts is already an outdated business model when the same effort could build an app that runs the prompting for them.
08Good, Repeatable, Moat: Locking In Clients
Turning a one-off good result into a repeatable process specific to each client is what actually locks that client in, more than the initial quality of the work.
Businesses losing ground right now generally aren't failing because AI replaced them; they're failing because they didn't spend the last several months building the workflows that would have protected them.
The goal is to automate everything that can be automated and spend remaining human time on the one thing AI still can't do: deciding what result is actually good.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
MCP server
A protocol that lets an AI model connect directly to a company's software and data, so customers can query or build on it with an LLM instead of using the company's own interface.
Attribution
Tracking which ad, channel, or touchpoint actually drove a sale, so a business knows where its revenue is really coming from.
Vibe coding
Building software by describing what you want to an AI coding tool in plain language instead of writing the code by hand.
iClosed
A booking and calendar software company, used in the video as an example of a business whose backend infrastructure customers rely on even while ignoring its default forms.
UTM
A short tag added to a URL that tracks which specific link, ad, or campaign sent a visitor to a website.
“Sell the infrastructure behind it. Sell the data behind it. Sell the network behind it.”
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metaphorstory
Have you ever considered pledging yourself with a cucumber covered in sandpaper? No. Because you're probably not a fucking psychopath, but that's exactly what AI did to my business.
And if you don't pay attention to five things I'm gonna share with you in this video about how we survive it and how I'm seeing everybody else survive it and actually make more money than ever. You're next in line for a big old fashioned boofing. I'm talking some real Bonnie Blue level degeneracy.
You put this on the Internet, it's probably gonna land you in jail kind of boofing. Enough sex to win the windows. We need to talk about this because this messed me up, and one of my businesses did over a $130,000,000 past couple of years.
So if if it messed up me, it's it's it's probably gonna mess up you. So you should listen to the five things I'm gonna share with you right now because I don't care what your business model is or if you're new, if you're old in business. This applies to you.
And if you listen to these things, you're gonna make more money than If you do not listen to these things, you are going to die. AI is gonna replace what you're doing for your customers, your clients. If you're a SaaS, it's gonna get replaced.
If you're doing services, these are just gonna get automated. If you're doing coaching or education, it's about to disappear unless you're able to make these pivots right here. And I'm seeing a lot of people I know get rocked, and the ones that aren't doing anything, they're just they're just they're done.
But the ones who have made these pivots right here, they're making more money than ever, and I'm kind of jealous. So I applied these to my business, and it's actually thriving in this era of AI shenanigans instead of sinking like everybody else's business. So let's talk about it.
So what you need to understand first before we get into the five things is the things that don't matter anymore. And the things that don't matter anymore are work and skill.
Let me explain what this means right here. So right now, the amount of time it takes to do things, coding, designing your website, video editing, graphic design, making photos, whatever, writing, That doesn't matter. The time work doesn't matter for anything anymore.
We used to bill a lot for work. Say you're serving clients. Say you're making a website.
You're billing for the time that goes in to make the website, and the real moat to everything is the time that went in to make the website and also your skill. K? But the thing is, if you're making web design, if you're making services for people and I'm just gonna use these as examples over and over again.
It doesn't really matter. This applies to all business models. The skill it took to code, the skill it took to make the website, this is also irrelevant as well.
And these are the things that we use to price basically everything around. If you build a SaaS, what was the moat? It was the skill it took to build and the time it took to build.
Those don't matter anymore. Fable and Cloud Code can do that for you. If you were selling web design, what was the moat?
The time it took to make the website and the skill it took to make the website. I'm sorry. I can go into Fable right now and make a prompt and redesign my entire website, and it will look good, like, really good.
If you're making video ads for clients or graphic design, what was the barrier? Time and skill. Doesn't matter anymore.
What matters right now is what you have access to, your workflows with AI, because this is what takes time.
And I'll get into that more here in a second. And then finally, knowing what is good and specializing in something.
If you do these three things right here and then you AI the rest, you're gonna make a shit ton of money. Let me explain the first example. And this one is workflows.
So this is gonna be great because I'm probably gonna have my video editor watching this, but this is also advice to him too. This is advice to anybody that has any type of business where you do something for other people, which is pretty much all of them. But, look, right now, if I wanted to, I can go throw this raw video into a video editor AI right now, and it will edit it for me, and it will look good.
And if I was editing videos as as my service right now, the thing that really would define me as a video editor will be the time and skill it takes for me to edit videos. But you have to consider right now where will you be as a video editor if the work and the skill don't matter, and you could actually produce very high output video editing with no time whatsoever and with none of your work.
See, the thing that people are actually paying for in the age of AI is not the work and skill and time that goes into something. It's the ability to make something good quickly.
And the ability to make something good quickly in AI comes down to workflows. So for example, let's say you got a single client. Let's imagine this for web web design, video editing, whatever.
That client probably has videos, and they want their videos done a very specific way. They want specific graphics. They want graphics.
For example, like a a video with me already baked into it, like, doing graphs and and on a spaceship flying around. This is already prebuilt in. You can go in and build workflows specific to your clients.
And then what you're able to do is you could produce videos much, much faster for those clients, throw them into your workflow, and it produces something custom to them. So one thing you need to be thinking about with your services is if you're making websites for people, what you can do is you can actually gate off all the things you've given to the AI, all the things that are about their brand that allow you to build the website very quickly.
What you can also do is this allows you to super speed up the delivery of your service via these workflows. So if I create a really good AI editing work flow, I can go and take, let's say, 30 clients, and I can make masterful videos for them.
30 clients, manage all of them very easily. And all they have to do is I could go and create my own vibe coded website where they deposit the videos every single week, the raw files. I dump the raw files in the workflows, and then it just pops them back out of that website.
Do you see those ways you need to be thinking about your biz your business? Instead of just manually manually clients and charging for your time, what you need to do is you can now vibe code your own apps for delivery of your product and services so you don't have to talk to your Your apps can plug into your workflows that customize the specifics for each individual client.
And that right there is your milk because no client's gonna go somewhere else when you have the workflow, the AI workflow, to give them that exact specific thing for their business. And this allows you to operate in completely different way. Imagine if you had 30 clients each paying you a thousand dollars per month for video editing, and then all you had to do is just dump them in the workflows.
Heck, $2,000 a month. That's probably the lower end of it right there. Apply this to web design.
Apply this to ad management. Apply this to graph design. Apply this to any type of consulting.
Just think of odd ways you can actually make custom suit workflows now that your time is out of the picture that are perfect to specific clients or the businesses that you're working with. Okay. So the next one that I wanna get into is going to be access.
This matters a lot when it comes to SaaS right now. So, really, at the beginning of the year, I noticed that, hey.
A lot of the features in Hiros people can vibe code. They can go out there and make their own funnel tracking software. They can go out there.
They can make their own UTM reporting software. What they can't remake at Hyros, my tracking company, is the data management back. Nobody's even gonna attempt that.
It shouldn't it's just no. You're not gonna do it. It's it's too funky.
And what I've also noticed is that people don't want to code up their new their own SaaS. They just don't wanna do it. For example, we use HubSpot, Hiros.
We have no intention of going and coding up another HubSpot. We use iClosed at Hiros. We're a a booking software, but we have no intention of making our own booking software unless they don't improve their MCP servers.
So if we go look at Hiros right here, I'm not here to tell you about how our tracking will just improve your AI targeting on Facebook overnight. You'll make, like, 15% more, and we guarantee it. Definitely not here to pitch my software to you right now.
But what I am going to show you right here is a example of what I mean by access. So the company iClosed, I talked about it. Hiros.
I've custom vibe coded all of our booking forms. I think we have the smoothest booking forms in the space.
And these all plug in iClosed. So what do I mean by access? IClosed manages the entire back end, but I don't use any of their booking forms, and their booking form was literally their main feature.
I don't use any of the forms, and I put everything into it. And I had to jerry rig everything together to make our custom booking forms all work. And so you see what I'm paying for right now is not so much a tool.
I'm paying for access to their infrastructure. Infrastructure is what you need to be selling, whether it's your SaaS, whether it's your service. Sell the infrastructure behind it.
Sell the data behind it. Sell the network behind it. That's what's going to more allow you to survive in AI.
So for example, at Hiros right now, what we did really improved our software and improved the service. And want you to think about this, how you can do this in your business even if it's not a SaaS application. You need to go and open it up to MCP servers.
You need to open it up to LLMs because people aren't gonna work via softwares anymore. They're going to pay for access to infrastructure or access to infrastructure that does certain things or the data that is managed via the infrastructure. If you're really smart, they'll also pay for network.
For example, Facebook ads, that's a massive network of people that gets value just because there's lots of people in that network. If you look at OnlyFans, really good example.
Why is OnlyFans valuable? Why is everybody go and and upload their, uh, their boofing on it?
Same exact thing, the network. But what I noticed at Hiros, it was really going to affect our business in the long run, is people can go and build all the features that we have on the sidebar right here. And the thing was really slowing us down is we can't ever build features fast enough to make people happy.
So what we did is we actually turned over all the infrastructure, and we just allow people to go build their own features. A lot of people are asking me at high risk. I we want a funnel report.
Well, you could just go to Cloud now and actually just ask it to build you a funnel reporting feature, and we'll go do that. And so we have, like, clients building their own funnel reporting that shows all the clicks in their business and then reporting it to their clients and then turning in the reports and then attributing it to all the other places and where they can improve their it it does everything.
So just to make this perfectly clear, the huge thing that's changed in AI is your business still has value. So at Hiros, our real value is our attribution.
At iClose, like I mentioned, the value is the booking infrastructure. No one's gonna rebuild that. No one wants to rebuild that.
No one's gonna do that to save 200 a month. What has absolutely no value right now is the features that allow people to get access to the value.
This used to be the big old thing right here, was the website, not so much the conversions of the website and the impact it had because it took so long to actually make the features. Now the features don't matter. All that matters is the value.
It doesn't matter that you can make websites now. It doesn't matter that you can make good looking websites. It matters that you can make websites that convert or not.
And only a human can do that, and that's what people are paying for. So, again, bring this back to the SaaS perspective. You can lay it out to any business.
The UI and the features have no value. What you wanna focus on is the core value of your business, which again at Hiros is attribution systems. And so what we allowed people to do is say, hey.
Look. Screw our UI. Screw our features.
No. No. No.
No. No. You can go make these in a second, and you already wanna go make them because you prefer something that's custom to you over something that is made for thousands of people just like I showed you with the iClose form.
I prefer a custom form. There's no way they could ever make a form that's just for me. So what you allow people to do is go and access this value through LLMs and then maximize this part of the business, not this part of the business.
For example, at Hiros, if people wanted funnel reports or a specific type of attribution report or whatever the hell they wanna see, we said, okay. Cool. We'll give you access to all the attribution data, and we'll structure in a way that you can just easily go build whatever you want.
This is the huge shift right here. Figure out what the value of your business is and then find ways to make it so people can get access to it however they want and use it however they want. And so we basically turned our business into something where we do have the dashboard.
We do have all the features, but we stopped trying to make features. We just allow our users to make their own features and their own reports and their own tools that they want. Because even if we go and build the best dashboard ever, people don't want that.
They want a unique specific dashboard that's custom to them. Think about that in your business and how you can sell access to infrastructure and not the actual use of the infrastructure and use of the data. Next, you have to get good.
So what people are paying for now is what they've always been paying for, but there used to be that time and skill problem. So for example, a lot of mediocre web designers survived because it still took time and skill and coding knowledge to go and build websites. Now that that's gone, only only really good web designers are going to survive because I can just go to Fable right now and make really good web design.
I can go to Fable right now and make really good animation. And so the thing that people are really paying for right now is goodness. And, again, just to make this part really clear, people now are not paying for time.
Time and skill to actually get something done is irrelevant. It's your ability to actually deliver value with the thing that matters.
So like I just talked about, being able to make really good clean animations doesn't matter. I can do that in Fable in a minute. What I can't do is understand how to make animations that convert leads, that actually impact a business.
What I can't do with with Claude is to design websites and funnels and flows and structures of how my landing pages work that convert customers. What I can do is make the the landing pages look amazing instantly.
So for example, if you look on the screen now, I can make perfectly awesome looking pages for my site instantly. What the thing is missing and what most sites are missing right now is the conversions.
And this applies to everything out there. Sure. You can edit videos and make them look great, but can you make them hold views?
And so all your time right now can go from focusing on time and delivery into the actual value that's being delivered. You don't need to focus on editing videos. You don't need to focus on web design.
You don't need to focus on the actual time and skill to deliver things. All you need to focus on is the result it delivers, and most people cannot deliver results. Most people can deliver a great looking web page now, but they can't make it convert.
This is where you make the shit tons of money. The your power now is not the fact that you can make great looking dentist websites. Anybody can do that.
The power is knowing how to make a dentist website that converts. And if you have that in your head and you can look at a dentist website, their type of customer say, okay. This is the funnel we need to build.
This is the thing we need to do right here. Claude, go do this. This is where you poop money at.
They're paying for taste. They're paying for you to be able to go and do something, and it's not about the time you put into it because you can make an insulin. It's about how well you can tell Claude and how well you know what is good and what is not good.
So the thing you should be selling is specialization because you can't get good at everything. But you can get I'm not gonna special.
I'm not gonna try and spell specialization. Spelling is not where I specialize. What you need to be doing is you need to look at parts of people's businesses and microniche down.
So for example, if you just specialize in improving the conversions of call bookings on dentist websites and you were able to make really good little bots that go and do that and you just did that all day long, yeah, AI can go do that rather quickly, but you're the only one who knows how to do it specifically for your clients and to read what's going on the site and get results like that.
If you were really good at making creative ads specifically for dentists or plumbers or SaaS companies, and sure, you're using AI to make those craves, but you created the workflow for it and you're so specialized into it that you can actually make ads that work, which an AI can't do. It it can't go out there and specialize and know what's good in a specific industry because it takes context and looking at something and actually seeing and thinking what the result is.
The same thing comes with web design. Yeah. Anyone can go make a beautiful website, but can people make a beautiful website in the oil industry that actually converts customers?
No. They can't. What you need to focus more instead of the time and skill and charging for that, you need to focus on finding one thing you can do better than anybody else and you know better than anybody else, and then you can do exceptionally quickly with AI.
That flips your entire service around to your selling results, not your time, not your skill. Finally, last one I'm gonna leave you with is you gotta enable your business with AI. What do I mean by that?
So AI gives you a whole other level of being able to do it for the customer. What do I mean by this? So at Hiros, one of our biggest obstacles was getting people to actually install Hiros because they get confused.
And so what we did is we created a little AI app that sits in the side of people's Chrome, and it just watches what they're doing and then tells them how to install Hiros. It just watches everything they're doing. It will even take control of their screen and install Hiros for them.
Boom. Installation immediately solved with our software. Now how can you do that for your business?
If you have an education business, how could you build an app or a little tool? And by the way, that little software took me a weekend and a half to build.
Okay? So how could you go and build apps in your business that do it for your customer? This is huge because people don't wanna do shit.
And so if you have an education business, how can you build an app that while people are building their site, while they're doing what you're telling them to do, it just tells them what to do next. So if they're having trouble installing their Shopify stores or they're having trouble setting up certain things, why not build an app that just does it for them?
Why not build an app that watches them and does it for them? Why not build an app that coaches them as they do it, as they're making their ads, if they're making their whatever, as they're doing whatever the hell you're telling them to do? Why not make them a little software that helps them with their writing?
Why not make there's a billion different things you can do with this, and I don't see anybody doing this. For example, I saw this person. They're teaching AI video making, AI video creation.
And when I go into their school community, they just have all their prompts and stuff in there, and then they have videos of them of them going and and making the videos. Okay. That's cool.
But you're not gonna last very long here in the age of AI. Why wouldn't you just go and make a little software that helps people with their prompting right away or does it for them or shows them examples? Why are you showing and giving people copy and paste prompts when you could have an app that could teach them all on their own?
You could just link them to an app that teaches them and takes them through all the prompting or does the prompting for them. You have all these little skills and everything that people can put in the cloud and use. Why not have your own little app that already plugs in the cloud for them and then optimizes the prompts for them or helps craft the prompts or helps helps the whole entire funnel and pipeline that's going through?
This is what you need to be thinking about. Why not have an app that goes and reviews their videos and tells them where they probably went wrong in the prompts or reviews their prompts and tells them what's wrong? There's a billion different things you can do with this even when it just comes to plugging in the clot.
For example, like I talked about Hyros, we just made a turbocharged MCP that allows people to access all their data and infrastructure and use it in cloud effortlessly. Think about these ways you can enable your business and creating tools and little gadgets that allow people to do everything that you want them to do and achieve in your business, but does it for them.
With all the stuff that's going on in AI, I don't see a lot of businesses do this. I still see SaaS businesses trying to sell UIs and adding features in their UIs.
Why? I I I I don't understand. At Hiros right here, if a person wants a split testing software instead of Hiros, why would I go and spend six months developing it for them?
Why would I spend two, three months making it for them, and it's still not exactly what they want when I could just give them the tools to go make it themselves in an instant? Why would I go and say, hey. You know, you want this new thing in the report?
Well, let's go and code this up for you and try and get it right, and we'll go back and forth from it. Why don't I just give you the ability to make the report yourself? And then you can just go and add all sorts of Gizmos and put a hippo on top of it.
I see people still in the age of AI trying to sell their services, and they're going and doing the work manually. No. Your your client can go and do the work manually.
And if you're taking a long time to deliver things in your service so for example, I had a web design company, and they're doing all of our website, but it takes two, three weeks for them to go and make changes on our website and make bring back something pretty. I can go into Fable and do that right now. And if I'm doing it myself, why haven't they learned how to do it on their own six months ago?
And why don't they have a custom workflow for my business? See, the reason why these companies are losing business, the reason why businesses are failing is because they didn't take the effort the last six months to go and create workflows. If you have workflows that your clients already need and you can deliver results super fast, they're not going to leave.
But so, again, to make this point super clear and to tie it back to getting good, in Age of AI, you can turn good into a repeatable process that locks your clients in, locks your customers in. So for example, with video editing, and I'm gonna use video editing again as the metaphor because it explains everything much easier.
If I'm going out there and doing video editing for clients, clients no longer want video editing. What they want from video editing is people that watch to the end of videos.
They want watch time increasing. They want your sales videos getting more clicks and more view time. So what you do instead is you say, hell with the video editing.
I'm gonna create a process just for this client that I know is unique to their business, increases their watch time, and gets them results. And then you lock that workflow down. Sure.
The client can go and edit their own videos. They can add graphics and whatever, but do they know how to make the video get watched? Do they know how to increase the watch time?
Do they have all the resources and branding stuff that they can put into the videos to actually make it look good and on brand with what they're doing? No.
They do not have that. That is where your moat is now in all your businesses. It's the good, the thing that gets results, not the time that goes into it.
So specializing in the specific things and knowing how to get the result and then locking down the result into a repeatable process for each client or each customer or whatever the heck you're doing, that's where the money's at. You need to evolve your business. If you have a delivery system, it still requires someone to talk to someone in your business and manually reach out to them and go back and forth.
Instead of just dropping files somewhere and then automatically doing it for them, you why do you deserve to exist? These are the things you need to think about. If you have a coaching business, why are you still telling people what to do instead of just making apps that people do it for them?
You can do that, and it costs, like, a thousand, $2,000 to make the app when you're using AI. There shouldn't be things left up to people figuring out.
There should be things left up to your working time. If you can deliver it, if it's something you can sell, it should be automated, and you should focus on the good part of it, making it an excellent end result, not the actual doing of the result. And you should focus on specializing it so you actually know what is good.
Thinking like this is going to make you shit tons of money in the next few years because most people are not doing this and are not thinking like this. Uh, you would go and sweep up so much business that's being eaten up because a lot of people, yeah, they can go into Claude and they can make their own website, but they don't wanna spend the time going back and forth with Claude.
And they don't wanna create their own workflow, and they're not a master, and they haven't specialized in web design. However, they will do it if you're taking two to three weeks to get designs back. This same concept applies everywhere else.
Find ways to enable your customers and make it fast for them. Find ways to deliver way more, way faster, and better results. So for example, like I said, with, the video editing example, now you can deliver 30 videos a week that are at movie style Hollywood level of quality instead of five videos a week that are at okay quality because you were putting all your time to it.
These are the places where you need to be thinking. This is how you need to be running your business. That's all I got in this video.
I hope it helps.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Alex Becker opens with a deliberately absurd, NSFW hook before pivoting hard: the same AI wave that just gutted one of his businesses, one that had done over $130 million, is coming for anyone selling time, skill, or a SaaS UI, and he lays out the four pivots keeping his own business growing instead of shrinking.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
01:22model
What Used to Matter vs What Matters Now
Work (time spent)
Skill (expertise)
→ replaced by →
Workflows
Access
Good / Specialize
Enable
Work and skill used to be what businesses billed for and what protected them from competition. AI made both irrelevant; what protects a business now is having AI workflows, access to infrastructure, taste and specialization, and tools that do the work for the customer.
Steal forrepricing any service or SaaS offer around outcomes instead of hours
08:50concept
Value vs Feature
Features, the UI, the buttons, the polish, can now be rebuilt by anyone with AI in minutes. The underlying value, the data, the infrastructure, the network, can't be casually rebuilt and is what actually deserves the price tag.
Steal fordeciding what part of a SaaS or service to protect vs open up to customers
11:18concept
Value vs Time
Time spent producing something no longer justifies a price. Only the value the output actually delivers, conversions, watch time, results, does.
Steal forshifting a pricing conversation from hours worked to results delivered
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A garage monologue on why the businesses that break past $10M a year almost never win on funnel, script, or ad skill — they win because they found an offer nobody else was selling.
A shock-humor cold open about masturbation unravels into a fifteen-minute argument that a quiet, undistracted brain — not more hours worked — is the actual lever behind outsized business success.
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