How do I know if AI is paying for itself?
Put your monthly AI spend next to what it helped you make or save that month. If you cannot name one deal, one delivery or one hour it paid for, it is not paying for itself yet
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Has AI made you any money? If not, look at what you pointed it at
AI companies bill you whether what you built was useful or not. If your AI costs go up every month and your revenue does not, here is what to change
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The three types, the tools for each and a test that sorts your own work
The short answer
Has AI made you any money? If not, look at what you pointed it at
If your AI bill goes up every month and your revenue does not, you are paying for work that does not matter. The AI companies bill you whether what you built was useful or not. Point AI at the work that already makes you money, and stop doing the work that was never worth doing.
Why does more AI often mean less progress?
AI raises how much you can do, so people start doing things they never did before without asking why. That work was skipped for a reason: it did not matter. Now it gets done faster, and it gets called progress
What is the best use of AI in a business?
Deciding what is not worth doing at all, then using AI on what is left. When you cut the work that does not matter, the work that does gets the time and money back
Watch the video
Watch the take
The same idea in a short video. It plays here, and nothing loads until you press play
The bill comes either way
Your plan renews at the same price whether you shipped something useful that month or not. A lot of people are paying for the top plans and building app after app. They launch, they post about their users, and they make close to nothing, because all of their effort went into building and none of it went into distribution, sales and marketing. AI can get your idea built. It cannot sell it for you, at least not yet.
Where does AI pay for us?
We build custom software for clients, and AI is part of how we deliver it. The work is still designed, reviewed and tested by an engineer, but AI makes the build faster, and the build is something a client pays for. That is the test we use for every tool: each dollar of AI spend should map to something a client paid for or an hour we got back.
Why using less AI can get you further
It sounds backwards, coming from people who build with AI every day. When AI comes into a business, capacity goes up, and people start doing things they never did before without stopping to ask why. Those things were skipped for a reason. Now they get done faster and automated, and it looks like progress.
The companies that build these models are still hiring people. They are betting on people too. The highest-leverage move in a business was never automating more. It is deciding which work is not worth doing at all. We made a second video on this.
One question to ask this week
Look at the last thing you automated or bought. Did it move revenue, costs or time in a way you can point to? If you have to think about the answer, it did not, and it is the first thing to cut.
If you are not sure which work in your business is worth giving to AI, the three AI workflow types is the place to start, and where AI actually pays lists the five places it usually earns its keep.
Free, no call
Get the one page version you can print
The three types, the tools for each and a test that sorts your own work
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