3 years into the AI Agency model. Where it’s all going…

What is up guys? We are here in Cler or something. Uh, beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. Um, and I wanted to do a bit of a reflection on 3 years as an AI automation agency owner, AI entrepreneur. Um, I made one of these videos like I did my one year in AAA uh, two years ago and I was watching that this morning and I was like, man, it would be interesting to do a reflection on where I feel the space is at, what I've learned over the past two years since that video. um pretty the clear paths that are lining up for you to get into AI at this point and why I'm honestly so like much more bullish on this than I've ever been before. The past few days I've literally been sitting here building out an entire end toend automated engineering system that was setting up for my developers at Morningside. We have software eating the world step by step. We have us here as AI automation agency owners ready to capitalize on it. And so on to a bit of a walk and talk here, sharing sort of where I'm at, what I'm thinking about the space, where it's going, and also pointing out a few things that I think you all need to be keeping in mind for 2026 to really be in the category of winners, not just this year, but moving forward over the next 5 to 10 years. Because what I'm realizing more and more at the moment is you got to think bigger. Like, we really do need to be thinking bigger than we were about this opportunity. This is not your typical little online business hop in hop out make a bit of money drop shipping sort of quick money uh deal. This is the biggest play for the next 10 20 years that you could be getting into right now. And you need to stop thinking of this if you are as some sort of like fun play around. I'll dip in see if I can make some quick money and then go to something else or I'll just sort of play around to see what the best opportunity is at a given time. If you seriously commit to this like I am and like the thousands of other people who are right now, this is going to be the biggest upside career you could possibly get into. And in this video, I'm going to break down why I'm so much more bullish on this than I've ever been before and how you can take action in the same way that I am and my team is, my communities, and all the incredible people I met here in South Africa are also doing. So, bit of context here in South Africa, we did uh the Africa AI event. You guys might have seen that floating around on social media. It's basically a group of content creators that I've put together who were running AI agencies a little over two years ago and it has kind of grown and grown from just doing private events with me and the other guys. You you'd know all the people uh who were there. Um and I've been able to grow that into a like a kind of a brotherhood or a community of other AI agency owners and creators who are sort of sharing our knowledge, pulling our influence and really trying to move the space forward in the right direction. And this Africa AI event that we just had this Africa EI hosted here wasn't freaking phenomenal. And what I really noticed there was just how many people were there and showed up. Hey — this is Ka South Africa. Is in Zanzi South Africa. And my dump — your dump. Should everyone come to Cape Town? — Oh we live here. — Oh you live here. Should everyone else come? Yeah, everyone wanted to come. — I agree. Hang on. — Hey, how's it going? — But it was so awesome to see just how many people I met and came through my program community and now 2, three years later are running legit AI businesses across certain areas like voice or that specialize in automation where they've gone down into building custom apps for their clients. It is so amazing to see just our five people come when they stick to this and commit to it because what you need to understand is the compounding potential for those of you who are in the space. There's so much greater than you could have or probably ever thought it was. And I'll explain it like this. I thought AI automation was just this foot in the door to the AI world that's going to allow you to sell AI automations and help businesses to understand this stuff and adopt it. But what I've realized is that is only the tip of the iceberg. Like literally all of the stuff that you've probably heard me talk about and everyone else talk about for the past few years now is just the the cherry on top of what this opportunity really is. This ties back to what Mark Andre

says about software is eating the world. And I can tell you firsthand from what I've doing over the past few days, building out end to-end engineering systems where right now as I'm walking, I have teams of AI agents working on an entire block of features for a custom app I've been building for my team internally. It's sitting there. It's running planning agents, building agents, testing agents, reviewing agents, documentation agents, and then it's shipping it all without me doing anything. I woke up this morning, I had 10 new chunks of work, 10 new GitHub issues that have been fully shipped into production. I hopped on the app and tested it. This is where it's going. We are no longer just these little AI automation guys who add a little AI on top of the business. What this model actually is, I mean, this place is freaking nut. Um, what this actually is we are becoming the AI or we're becoming the technology partner of businesses. And that is so much more profound and so much bigger of an opportunity than we originally thought. Instead of just doing the AI stuff on top, we use AI as the foot in the door. And this is what we're doing at Morningside right now. We're using AI as the foot in the door, the activation energy to get these companies like, "Oh, hey, we better do something about AI. " You go in there, you do an audit, you identify all of these issues from a technology standpoint that they've been missing because tech has just been too expensive. building custom software internally. Too expensive, too much messing around. Now that the cost of software is dropping and I'm sitting here walking as my agents are building and it cost me $5 US per uh GitHub issue or ticket that I'm solving, the cost of engineering has drastically reduced. And you as AI agency owners are actually the wizards who are learning how to use these tools, learning how to bring the cost of software down to identify requirements through your auditing and then to pull that through and say look

we can heavily use AI engineering and engineering methods to be able to create things for you that once would have cost 50 100 grand and taken 6 months. We can build that in three or four days to the point of getting a MVP out, getting feedback on it, and then using these as kind of iteration points to take feedback from the client, plus them into that automated engineering pipeline. And now we're able to capture instead of just the AI spend, we're able to become the technology partner of the business. And that means solving things that don't even necessarily need AI. It is really the cherry on top. When you get in and audit a business, there's tens and hundreds of millions of companies out there who need this. You audit them. You figure out what's broken, what's not working. Is it basic off-the-shelf tools, not even AI related? Is it off-the-shelf tools that are AI? Is it basic automations that are not even AI related? Is it just a custom app or portal for the team to use internally to cut out a dozen spreadsheets and clunky systems and Slack messages and put it all into one dashboard to one tool that they can use? This is where we're seeing a lot of the value being created for our clients at Morningside. So because the cost of software has dropped so much, there is now so much more economically viable software that can be built for our clients. So that's the first point that I want to make here about my kind of threeear reflection on the space is that it is so much bigger than even I think even a year or two from now I'll be saying the same thing that I still didn't fully grasp just how big this thing would be and that what we are becoming is not just these AI automation specialists. We are becoming the wizards who can summon new software and technology using AI engineering practices. It's the mastery of software and building that you're essentially starting the journey on as an AI agency owner becoming and moving from just being an AI partner to being a technology partner where yes building AI software is part of what we offer but at Morningside we're finding that up to 80% of the development work we're doing is just a lot of the full stack development regular without AI features that businesses have been needing for a long time but couldn't afford it would take too long and the only ones you built that platform or that new internal software, can you add the AI as a cherry on top? And so if you're not expanding your agency beyond just selling AI automation and you're leaving all of the normal automation or normal software development untouched and not utilizing our real skill, which is drastically cheaper and faster AI development, well AI assistant development for software, then you're going to miss out on the huge chunk of the pie that we're really getting access to as AI agency owners in 2026. So that's my first point there.

And so the second observation and point I want to make is the important of getting in the right room. And it's so cliche. It's like oh you know your net worth is your net worth. It's true. It's cliche because it's true. And you guys need to be what the way I'm fing people is you need to seek signal in 2026. There's so much noise going on. This podbot stuff exhibit A. so many freaking blabbermouths just talking absolute nonsense about stuff that does not matter to you as an AI business owner or someone who's really trying to build a sustainable business in the space. Hoordebot was such a massive distraction for the vast majority of people. I think those of us who are switched on pretty quickly realized that there was not much value for us as agency owners to be able to sell this yet and moved on. With that amount of noise, it's so much more important to be able to distinguish the signal from the noise. And the best way to find signal and stuff that is really going to sort of move you either from like a mindset or a perspective standpoint or just give you the alpha on what's working and what's not. You need to get into the right room with the right people. Now whether that's communities like my free or paid community, my accelerator, I don't really care where you go, but just make sure you are finding those rooms. I say this because at that Africa Aai event that we had here in Cape Town, the density of knowledge in there, just rubbing shoulders there, the amount of connections that were made, the WhatsApp groups that were set up, the butterfly effect of those connections cannot be underestimated. Even for myself, I'm continually reminded of how important it is to be around people who are actively going out and finding their own information, finding their own source. Example, the other day I was sitting with a friend here, started talking about something that we had in common. before I know it, I was being sent dry folder after drive folder of content. Um, that's the latest strategies that's working for other people and then I can take that information, be able to analyze it against my own operations and then decide if that's something I want to incorporate or not. But those kind of connections where it's like other people that you run into have access to so much information and by not rubbing shoulders with them, you're really just wasting the opportunity to be able to tap into all of the hard work they've done and do a bit of an exchange as well. Give them some source in exchange for something from them. And when those people are the right kinds of people with the right signal versus noise, that is what you need to tune into. Block everything else out. Stop scrolling through your newsletter inbox of the 60 different AI newsletters you're signed up to and start going into communities, hopping on Q& A with other successful AI business owners and hearing what's working for them. That is signal. And the more of that you can focus on, and the more noise you can cut out, the more successful you will be. I promise you, it opens your mind so much when you just hear someone put it so simply and matter of factly. Oh yeah, I've been doing this and we tried this and now with this is working. You need to have as many conversations like that as you can this year because it's more important than ever to be finding signal and blocking out the noise in the space. So we're here at the top. So the last point

I want to make is about just how proven this model is now. Um and I really see similars uh and parallels to the ecom days when it became so formulaic for people to get into ecom uh was the Shopify, AliExpress and Facebook or meta ads stack. That was what that allowed me to get into online business uh 7 years ago. there's just these proven models that appear. And if you watch my original video like this, that was my one year in TripleA. It was saying like I just kind of dove in and had to kind of figure out how to swim or build the plane on the way down. And that was what it was like for me and all the other guys who got in 2 3 years ago. It wasn't clear. There wasn't these established paths to get in. There wasn't validated offers that were proven to be working for tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of businesses already. But if you're getting in at this point, if you decided to wait and sit around to wait for it to be fully proven, this is proven. Now, these two parts that I've been talking about of builder and consultant, the builder being the person who's more curious about the building side, wants to be able to learn the technical skills to go down this AI engineering route that I've been talking about, be the basically the software wizard who can just like conjure up uh AI agents to do building for you and go out and walks like this and come back and it's all done. That's one path that proven to be working. You are that's the most directly tied to the value creation of the space which is the software that ultimately saves time uh and money or generates more sales. Then there is the consulting route and that's for people who maybe don't want to take that engineering route. They are more interested in doing the awareness creation because businesses need to be made aware that there's a problem here. They need to know that AI is this thing that they need to have a solution for. Create awareness. You put them into the first part of the pipeline of an audit or some kind of education. be able to get the wheels moving and there's a lot of value in that so that businesses are educated enough and clear on what opportunities they need to move on and why so that they're actually ready to start spending on engineering and that's when you can pass off to builders or you can progress later on and start to connect those two paths as a builder you can hire a consultant and add consulting to your services stack or if you're a consultant you can add another consultant the consultancy or you can hire a builder you can hire a developer and add that and become a full agency and these are proven pass now. The volume of Linds in my accelerator recently has just gone through the freaking roof starting in January. H even going into the preschool community. If you go in the winds there, people are absolutely crushing it with uh getting their first few clients using the free course that I put in there. This stuff works now. It's not even a question and it makes me so happy to be in a position where I can say that now because for a long time it was unclear. It was like, you know, this is what's worked for us at Morningside. Here's how you can try to replicate it. But we've been able to see time and time again of people like sort of digging into this groove of the consultant and the builder and how they are sort of synergistic and they have things that they can share with each other by stripping away trying to start an entire AI agency up front and being like let's lean it down to something that's based on my strengths more. Am I more on those consulting communication route or do I want to do the building? Because whatever you can find a true burning interest and desire for and passion for if like just over the past two days for example I've basically not wanted to sleep because I've been so excited about these engineering systems that I'm building and how I'm training up my morning side developers to use them. That is like you cannot beat me when I don't want to sleep. I'm so passionate about the stuff that I will make videos just screaming from the rooftops about how awesome the stuff is. You will not beat me when I'm in the room and I'm constantly talking to other people who are running businesses like this. I'm constantly seeking signal, talking to people in my community, hosting events like I did here, talking to more and more people, getting the input so that my brain can just absorb it all and start to identify the directions or lanes I can take my business and my life. So guys, if you couldn't tell, I am more optimistic and excited for this year than I don't think I've been at any other point in my career in AI space so far. when I see the productivity gains that I'm getting from things like claude code and building workspaces to be able to operate all my companies from a central place to be able to pull in data and make decisions and have a true assistant in my business that can help me to make decisions see patterns uh do work I'm going to keep going back to it because you need to understand that the path that you are on right now if you are doing building one of these businesses is the path to mastery of software becoming this like tech wizard who can just build the most insane stuff just with a couple birds just recently the massive leaps in productivity I've been able to get out of setting up claude code workspaces which I've done a whole video on if you guys haven't watched that highly recommend it I'll put that up here but we are at the for we're at the tip of the spear and how the stuff is being used within businesses and also for our own companies as well and there

is going to be this window starting basically now for the next 1 2 3 years that if you cannot make money for this stuff now if you cannot build a business and use what this small fraction of a percent are using for business and productivity horde code Claude bought a window dei gets cut off. These kinds of things should allow you to absolutely print money. You just need to stick with it. All right? So do not get distracted. Do not think there's some grasses green on the other side Business is hard regardless. We are blessed to have AI across the entire business and be able to assist us in different points. If you cannot push through these small bits of hardware you're going to face here. where you have access to infinite intelligence on demand and be able to build systems and automations and apps for yourself, for your clients, then I'm sorry, but like you maybe you weren't power with this stuff after all. like maybe it's a skill issue cuz I wholeheartedly believe that anyone can use this stuff to build the life of their dreams as I have and cuz I've seen it in front of me thousands and thousands of people now at this point who've been able to use it apply themselves and are on the front foot of this now and this just such a sick position career-wise like this is why I'm smiling so much cuz do I look like I'm worried about losing my job or being made like I'm going to be the master of this stuff like I will be the person using a small city's worth of compute to run my business is to build stuff for my clients. And if you can get yourself there, I promise you it is worth every bit of effort. Just to recap there, this opportunity is bigger than I ever thought. And it will probably continue to get bigger and bigger every year. I will say, man, I truly didn't see just how big this thing was going to get. Secondly, you guys need to be seeking signal. There's so important that you get in the right rooms. Cut out the noise. Get in the room with other AI entrepreneurs, other builders, because you need to be learning from them and not from listening to all of this noise and crap from people who are not actually in the arena building businesses. They're just yapping on YouTube. And finally, if you're not already starting an AI business or you're struggling to get to your feet, look into the free course that I've put out. I'll put a link to it up here. Full course breaking down these two paths that are now proven. Thousands of people have gone down them before you. You now just need to do the steps. It's no longer a guessing game. Businesses want consulting and businesses want stuff built. If you follow those, you will be successful. It's not a question anymore. So guys, thank you for all your support of me over the past few years. It has been uh the the most incredible ride for me and I hope you guys following along on this channel have also had leaps and bounds of progress in your career because that's what I've been making these videos for at the end of the day. The fact that I get to create a living for myself and meet incredible people, host incredible trips, um while helping you guys at the same time just makes this uh so much sweeter. I wish you guys all the best for your next 12 months as an Amish agency owner. And yeah, check out the free course up there if you want to get started. I'll see you in the next one.