{"id":2512,"date":"2026-02-04T16:45:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T17:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/?p=2512"},"modified":"2026-02-11T17:44:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T17:44:30","slug":"ai-is-a-survival-skill-for-consultants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/04\/ai-is-a-survival-skill-for-consultants\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Is a Survival Skill for Consultants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ducttapemarketing.com\/ai-is-a-survival-skill-for-consultants\/\">AI Is a Survival Skill for Consultants<\/a> written by <a href=\"https:\/\/ducttapemarketing.com\/author\/johnjantsch\/\">John Jantsch<\/a> read more at <a href=\"https:\/\/ducttapemarketing.com\">Duct Tape Marketing<\/a><\/p>\n<article style=\", Times, serif\">\n<header>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/ai-is-a-survival-skill-for-consultants\/id78797836?i=1000748198918\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-85085 alignleft lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"\" width=\"374\" height=\"374\" data-src=\"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Steve-Cunningham-1.png\"><br \/>\n<\/a><br \/>\nEpisode Overview<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n<section>John Jantsch welcomes <strong>Steve Cunningham<\/strong>, former agency owner, startup founder, and creator of the book summary platform ReadItForMe. Steve shares how generative AI nearly wiped out his business and forced a complete reinvention of how he approaches consulting and knowledge work. The conversation explores the rise of the <strong>AI-native full-stack consultant<\/strong>, the importance of context engineering, why deliverables must be built for both humans and AI, and how agencies must adopt factory-style workflows to survive. This episode is essential listening for consultants, agencies, and service professionals navigating rapid AI-driven change.<\/section>\n<section>\n<h2>Guest Bio<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Steve Cunningham<\/strong> is a former agency owner, startup founder, and AI-native business strategist. He built the successful book summary platform <em>ReadItForMe<\/em>, backed by a billionaire investor, and read a book a day for nearly ten years. After generative AI disrupted his business model, Steve pivoted to helping consultants, agencies, and service professionals redesign how work gets done with AI. He is the founder of <strong>Simple<\/strong> and the author of <em>The AI-Native Full-Stack Consultant<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<h2>Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>AI replaced entire categories of work:<\/strong> Tasks that once took hours can now be completed in minutes or seconds.<\/li>\n<li><strong>AI-native is not the same as using AI tools:<\/strong> AI-native businesses redesign workflows, systems, and deliverables around AI.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The full-stack consultant is emerging:<\/strong> With AI handling execution, consultants can deliver value across marketing, sales, operations, and strategy.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Context engineering is the real advantage:<\/strong> High-quality, reusable context enables AI to perform at expert levels.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Knowledge work is becoming a factory:<\/strong> Repeatable workflows, quality control, and standardized processes are now essential.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Deliverables must serve humans and AI:<\/strong> HTML and structured formats outperform PowerPoint and Word in an AI-driven world.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The cost of variations is nearly zero:<\/strong> Infinite testing and personalization are now practical and affordable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Catch the full episode<\/h2>\n<p>\n<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<h2>Great Moments from the Episode<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>00:01 \u2013 02:34:<\/strong> How AI nearly destroyed ReadItForMe<\/li>\n<li><strong>03:18 \u2013 05:41:<\/strong> Defining the AI-native full-stack consultant<\/li>\n<li><strong>06:24 \u2013 07:52:<\/strong> Why consultants must go beyond marketing silos<\/li>\n<li><strong>07:52 \u2013 10:05:<\/strong> Context engineering explained<\/li>\n<li><strong>10:57 \u2013 11:16:<\/strong> Hyper-personalization at scale<\/li>\n<li><strong>11:36 \u2013 12:36:<\/strong> Why betting on one AI platform is risky<\/li>\n<li><strong>14:18 \u2013 15:43:<\/strong> The decline of PowerPoint and Word<\/li>\n<li><strong>17:43 \u2013 19:56:<\/strong> Guardrails, QA, and the factory mindset<\/li>\n<li><strong>19:26 \u2013 20:14:<\/strong> The future of agencies and consulting<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<h2>Memorable Quotes<\/h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cAI doesn\u2019t need more prompts \u2014 it needs better context.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIf you don\u2019t turn your marketing agency into a factory by 2026, you\u2019ll be out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWe need to build deliverables for humans and AI, not just humans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<h2>Resources &amp; Links<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Free BlackBelt AI Training (Exclusive for Listeners):<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/roiassociation.ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/roiassociation.ai<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Book:<\/strong> <em>The AI-Native Full-Stack Consultant<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<div id=\"fbxt-wrap\">\n<div id=\"fbxt-wrap--inner\" class=\"fbxt-extra-class\">\n<div class=\"fbxt-header\">\n<div class=\"fbxt-header--logo\">\n<p>\t\t\t\t<span class=\"fbxt-header-text\">Duct Tape Transcript<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<div class=\"fbxt-header--nav\">\n\t\t\t\t<a class=\"fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-email\" href=\"#\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"fbxt-nav-text\">Email<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<a class=\"fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-download\" href=\"#\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"fbxt-nav-text\">Download<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<a class=\"fbxt-header--nav-item fbxt-nav-new_tab\" href=\"#\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"fbxt-nav-text\">New Tab<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"fbxt-content\">\n<div class=\"fbxt-content--inner\">\n<p>John Jantsch (00:01.371)<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. And my guest today is Steve Cunningham. He&#8217;s a former agency owner, startup founder, and now AI native business strategist. He built a successful book summary platform called ReadIt.ForMe, backed by billionaire investor, read a book a day for 10 years. I feel like I do that sometimes. But when AI disrupted his industry, it nearly wiped him out. So now he coaches.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (00:01.71)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m to you to sign up for the presentation. I&#8217;m ask you to for the I&#8217;m going ask to up for I&#8217;m going ask sign up for I&#8217;m you to I&#8217;m to ask you to I&#8217;m going you to sign up presentation. I&#8217;m going to sign the presentation. I&#8217;m going you to going I&#8217;m<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (00:30.425)<\/p>\n<p>solo consultants, agency owners, and service professionals to make more money faster and easier by becoming AI native through his company, Simple and his brand new book, the AI native full stack consultant. So Steve, welcome back to the show. I say welcome back. think this is your first time actually on the show, but, you and I tried to record and I was like in a hurricane and it didn&#8217;t work out. so I&#8217;m glad you were able to come back.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (00:31.822)<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for having me, John.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (00:56.622)<\/p>\n<p>Good to be back for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (00:58.683)<\/p>\n<p>So, I mentioned the AI destroyed your business. You want to talk a little bit about it or tell that story as I&#8217;m sure you have a number of times.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (01:08.75)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. So read it for me was a business that I hoped would last the rest of my life. I loved that business. I like to joke if I could get in the time machine, travel back to 2022 and destroy all the AI, I would do it. That&#8217;s how much I love that business. I got to read books from my favorite business authors like yourself. I live here in San Antonio, Texas by the Riverwalk. I would literally go outside.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (01:24.283)<\/p>\n<p>Ha ha ha.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (01:37.134)<\/p>\n<p>I would take my, I would read on the phone. So I read Kindle on the phone and that was my job. Uh, so I loved it. And so when Chad GPT came out, um, you know, this is a content business, right? So it would take me about eight hours to read a book and summarize it, take notes and do all the, all the stuff from beginning to end. And when I realized that you could get a passable book summary, which is by asking for it and maybe, then with some good prompting.<\/p>\n<p>get a finished product in much less way less time than it would take for me to read and summarize the book. I knew that we were in trouble. so it didn&#8217;t happen overnight. We still have people reaching out wondering, can they bring Rita for me into their business? I, two and a half, three years later, it baffles me that people still have not figured out that they don&#8217;t need us anymore for that. But<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (02:31.579)<\/p>\n<p>you<\/p>\n<p>Steve (02:34.478)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. So the revenue went down, not overnight, slowly but surely. And so we realized that we had to do something about that and saw the writing on the wall transformed our operations with AI. Then lots of folks wanted to know how we were doing it and started showing them. And here we are two and a half years later and we&#8217;re fully AI native and doing lots of fun and exciting things.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (03:01.231)<\/p>\n<p>So I suspect, maybe I&#8217;m wrong, maybe I&#8217;m naive, but that most marketers today are consultants have figured out, know, yeah, I need to use this AI thing. You use the term AI native full stack consultant. How does that differ from someone who say just uses it in their workflows?<\/p>\n<p>Steve (03:18.798)<\/p>\n<p>Well, one of the things that has happened in the last few months is that the easiest way to put it is the AI has gotten really good. So there was this, we were on a short timeline for the podcast. We don&#8217;t have time to dive into it deep, but there were studies done through OpenAI. So take that with a grain of salt, but it&#8217;s called the GDPVAL. And what they did was they took&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>bunch of subject matter experts. got a bucket of tasks across most knowledge work. And they said, give us your best blank. And there would be a task. And so they would do it. And then they would have the AI do the exact same task. And then they would give it to another subject matter expert. And they would say, which one of these is better? And so 2024, wins or ties by the AI was like a 10%. Now it&#8217;s a caveat that the AI has all of the context it needs in order to do<\/p>\n<p>the job. And most people don&#8217;t get anywhere close to giving the AI all the best, all the contacts they need. So 10 % like people would say, yeah, it&#8217;s not a 10%. Well, it&#8217;s probably not a 10 % because you didn&#8217;t give it all the context. anyways, move forward into 2025, middle of 2025, we&#8217;re approaching 50 % wins or ties by the AI. So we&#8217;re getting close. We call that the AI tipping point. As of a couple of months ago, the wins and ties by AI were<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (04:17.56)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, right,<\/p>\n<p>Steve (04:42.414)<\/p>\n<p>70 % and since then you can feel if you&#8217;re using AI, this is getting better and better and better. So what we mean by full stack consultant is if you understand what good looks like across any subject matter expert domain, you can get pretty close to doing an incredible job for your clients in all functional areas of a business. So a marketing agency can do<\/p>\n<p>sales enablement, but they can also do some CFO work. They can do some strategy work. And that is what we mean by the full stack consultant. And the idea is that if you get very good at some new skills, which are not obvious to most people, like how to produce a really good, robust context library for your clients, you and the company can do amazing work. It can be done.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (05:15.385)<\/p>\n<p>Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (05:41.166)<\/p>\n<p>incredibly quickly and we&#8217;re learning more and more every day about what that looks like. So today, this morning, I did about, and this sounds ridiculous when you hear it from the outside and I understand that it sounds ridiculous, but I did about, in about two hours with 30 minutes of my work and an hour and half of just waiting around for the AI to finish its work, about 260 hours of design, interface work, copywriting.<\/p>\n<p>and development. I don&#8217;t do any of those things in the past life. I have no skills in those things, but I know what to ask for. I know what I want and I know what good looks like and now I can get it. So it&#8217;s an amazing time that we live in.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (06:14.232)<\/p>\n<p>Mm-hmm. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (06:24.731)<\/p>\n<p>I want to go back to a point you made there because, I have jokingly, but seriously said, you know, marketing is everything. And what I really meant by that was in a lot of small businesses, I would go into, there were a lot of things I had to fix that weren&#8217;t under the, you know, the heading of marketing a lot of times, because if marketing was going to work or we were going to grow the business, I had to get involved in this area over here. Sales was a typical one. Customer service is another one that, know, that you don&#8217;t always hire a marketing agency for.<\/p>\n<p>But I would get into it out of necessity. And I think what you&#8217;re really pointing to is a great point, this idea of, you go into a business, it&#8217;s not just a matter of offering a suite of like, what do you need? It&#8217;s more like I can be more effective at doing my job that you hired me for if I can actually easily fix an area over here that I may not have true expertise in, or I couldn&#8217;t spend the time because I wasn&#8217;t being paid to fix their P &amp;L, for example.<\/p>\n<p>so I think that&#8217;s a great point. Let me back up again, because I I circled, I wanted the word context. that, let&#8217;s spend a little time talking about that. Cause I think AI has gotten better, but I also think prompters are getting better. and we&#8217;re realizing, you know, we get better output with, context. how do you give a, how, how in your view is probably a really long answer. How in your view, do you give AI the proper context?<\/p>\n<p>Steve (07:52.408)<\/p>\n<p>So when most people talk about context and there&#8217;s a term called context engineering, they&#8217;re mostly talking about it in the terms of like a single task that&#8217;s going on. What we mean by context engineering is how does the AI know everything about your business? that whenever you pull up a task to do that you actually, the AI can, it&#8217;s really hard to explain without getting into the weeds, but here&#8217;s my best shot.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (07:58.512)<\/p>\n<p>Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (08:22.668)<\/p>\n<p>So imagine that you have like the world&#8217;s best employee on every single task that could be done in your business, but they have amnesia. Every single time you give them a new task, they know nothing. So you have to train them. And that sounds like a really painful thing to have to do. But if you build a context library and only has to be done once to start, you can train that, you can give that AI like,<\/p>\n<p>10 years of training in about 10 seconds. So it forgets all the time, but it learns like years in seconds. So all you gotta do, like this is how I boot up my instance of how I&#8217;m AI in my world as the CEO of our company. I onboarded the AI, I go look at the, I literally create an onboarding file. I say, go look at the onboarding file and get yourself onboarded. And 10 seconds later, it knows exactly like,<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (08:54.629)<\/p>\n<p>Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (09:20.418)<\/p>\n<p>from a meta perspective, how we&#8217;re going to do our work today. And I&#8217;ll say, go look at that folder and let&#8217;s do this task, like redesign our interface for this page in our system. And knows exactly how I like to work. It knows exactly how I want design options. And as a marketer, you&#8217;ll appreciate this. you can go in and you&#8217;re doing, let&#8217;s say you&#8217;re doing ad variations. You go and ask for<\/p>\n<p>You don&#8217;t even have to be that specific. If it knows everything about your business, you just say, give me five ad variations on this one topic or this one offer we&#8217;re making. Sends it back. You look at it. You&#8217;re like, like that one the most. And I&#8217;ve had the AI give me like the rationale for like, is scored it and ranked it. Then I could give me five more variations on that one. And then five more on that one. And one of the things that&#8217;s not obvious to people is that the cost of variations is almost zero.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (10:05.177)<\/p>\n<p>Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (10:10.768)<\/p>\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (10:17.58)<\/p>\n<p>So you can ask for an infinite number of variations of.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (10:17.594)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I do that with subject lines for emails. mean, same thing. It&#8217;s like, kind of like the idea of this one. Iterate on that 10 more times. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (10:27.31)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, but you can do it for really big things too. So it&#8217;s not just like a single subject. You can do it for an entire interface, like an entire set of code. so like, because it works so fast and the cost of its work is so low, it transforms the way you approach the work. so customizing campaigns down to the individual level, not a problem anymore.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (10:31.193)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, yeah. Right.<\/p>\n<p>Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (10:57.25)<\/p>\n<p>Like I can find your LinkedIn profile, can scrape it and I can send you like an entire landing page that&#8217;s speaking directly to you. And it cost me a penny to do. And so there are things that we can do that were quite literally impossible before that now makes sense.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (11:16.543)<\/p>\n<p>This might be good time to talk platforms and technologies a little bit. Are you agnostic or have you really gone all in and maybe it&#8217;s so complex that you can&#8217;t really say it in one sentence, but is like, are you a Gemini person? Are you a Chad&#8217;s EBT person or have you really building your own stuff?<\/p>\n<p>Steve (11:36.942)<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re definitely not building our own stuff. We have a very particular point of view, which is we&#8217;re serving companies and companies will eventually choose their LLM of choice. And that&#8217;s what they&#8217;re going to do all of their work on. So we are, we&#8217;re not hitching our wagon to any one LLM. We also have the point of view that for the most part, most AI rappers go away. So an organization is going to build their own software.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (12:01.679)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (12:06.894)<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s our long-term bet. And so we&#8217;re just using whatever one is most productive. I personally have the max subscription on Claude, OpenAI and Gemini. I&#8217;m mostly using Claude right now because Claude Cowork and Claude Code just came out. And so if you listen to this like a month later, maybe I&#8217;m on something else by then, but Claude Cowork has been that tool alone.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (12:28.558)<\/p>\n<p>You<\/p>\n<p>Steve (12:33.548)<\/p>\n<p>has transformed our operations in two weeks. Like we literally operate day to day differently now because of that tool. So, whatever one&#8217;s working the best when the next time we talk is the one we&#8217;ll be on then.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (12:36.346)<\/p>\n<p>Yes.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (12:45.349)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. You know, I contended for a long time that just what you said, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s going to be plumbing. It&#8217;s not going to be, Oh, I use this tool or that too. It&#8217;s going to be, no, this already works with what I use. And I really feel like, doesn&#8217;t that give Microsoft and Google because of their installed user base? mean, you know, I fire up Gmail and all of a sudden it&#8217;s like, Oh, there&#8217;s a new tool. Um, you know, I can opt into, you know, I mean, doesn&#8217;t that give them an advantage? And also I think the other thing, the first version of AI tools.<\/p>\n<p>Is there better kind of use them by themselves? Well, now all of sudden we got collaboration built in, which I think was a big missing part. And so it&#8217;s like working the way people work already.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (13:27.214)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I think the like all other things being equal, Microsoft and Google have the biggest moat around it. However, for the longest time, Chad GPT was the best tool. And now Claude is by far the best tool. so I would have thought that if it was true that Microsoft and Google would be like for sure would win, it would have happened.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (13:34.372)<\/p>\n<p>Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (13:51.525)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (13:52.224)<\/p>\n<p>I know because they had not only they have the user base, they have all the documents and that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s what the AI needs for context. But as it turns out, the AI does not read and work with the file formats that we all produced over the last 20 years, which was PowerPoints and Word documents and all of those kinds of things. So there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s going to be a shift around that as well, which I think will loosen.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (14:08.995)<\/p>\n<p>the<\/p>\n<p>Steve (14:18.382)<\/p>\n<p>the moat that they have because we&#8217;re not going to be stuck on PowerPoint anymore. Like I, the, in the last couple of weeks, I&#8217;ve been on this kick of, and I think this is just true. I will never use keynote or PowerPoint ever again. Um, and I&#8217;m not using like another AI tool. just build HTML documents and it does exactly what I want. And I, that&#8217;s my presentation style. Um, we do SOPs in our business. Everybody in our company builds HTML.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (14:32.155)<\/p>\n<p>Mm.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (14:46.132)<\/p>\n<p>S O P S because you can just speak into a computer. HTML files open everywhere. And it&#8217;s also a good language for the LLMs to understand because it&#8217;s way easier to read than, than a PowerPoint. There&#8217;s others. If you pay attention to how software engineers are using AI, you&#8217;ll have a, you&#8217;ll have a glimpse of the future. They&#8217;re mostly using file formats that they&#8217;re comfortable with and that are, that work well for.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (14:57.147)<\/p>\n<p>yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (15:15.182)<\/p>\n<p>development, like markdown files and things like that. So that&#8217;s what you&#8217;ll see them suggest. Like you have to use markdown files for these things. And, what our point of view around this, and I think this will just prove to be true is that we need to be building like artifacts or deliverables, whatever you want to call it for humans and AI, not just humans. Like humans only is like PowerPoint, like LLMs hate PowerPoint. I hate word document.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (15:17.722)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (15:43.201)<\/p>\n<p>can&#8217;t can&#8217;t can&#8217;t read them at all.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (15:44.878)<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s so much code around it, right? So then you have the like markdown files and things that most humans they look at it. Like I can&#8217;t, I can&#8217;t, a picture is worth a thousand words. It&#8217;s a real thing. Like we need to see visuals and workflows and all those things. And so HTML happens to do both of those incredibly well. So whether or not we&#8217;re right on that, I don&#8217;t know, but for now it&#8217;s like transforming the way that we do work because we can now.<\/p>\n<p>build things that both our humans understand, the LLMs understand, and also there&#8217;s this magical thing that happens when a non-technical person speaks a website into existence, and just presses a button and it&#8217;s live. So it&#8217;s also a really good AI adoption tool, because it&#8217;s cool, right? Like it&#8217;s cool to like, you build something beautiful. So as a marketer, if you have a design system,<\/p>\n<p>Most companies would never spend 30, 40, $50,000 on. You can speak one of those into existence. Like you can do it right now. Then everything that gets designed looks great in your company. And now everybody&#8217;s sharing beautifully designed. SOP documents. Like that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s a weird thing to think about, but it&#8217;s like, I like doing it. It looks nice. it explains what I explains my thoughts and my process. And so, yeah, I think, I think this year is going to be.<\/p>\n<p>transformative in how we all do work and I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s going to look the same by the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (17:17.11)<\/p>\n<p>So, and I know you have an answer for this, but this, I&#8217;m guessing listeners are out there going, okay, if I can just speak this stuff into existence, am I going to just start creating stuff without any kind of guardrails and without any human intervention? where&#8217;s the, you know, the pushback you&#8217;re getting from people that hate AI. So imagine the people that love AI, but don&#8217;t want to be embarrassed.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (17:43.31)<\/p>\n<p>What do you mean by guardrails specifically?<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (17:46.123)<\/p>\n<p>just, just meaning like, if I can design all these things, who&#8217;s going to actually go and make sure that they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re being done right. That they look good, that they say what they&#8217;re supposed to say. Cause you know, some of, particularly some of the image, you know, generates today. I mean, there&#8217;s, it&#8217;s just like appalling. Some of the things that show up in, in some of those.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (18:06.478)<\/p>\n<p>Well, I think there&#8217;s trying to figure out the 32nd way of answering this question. So the way we look at how work is done is by deliverables. you can look at it as a process, you can look at it as tasks, you can look at it as deliverables. But if you look at it as a deliverable, is that that&#8217;s when the thing ends. And that&#8217;s when the human has to look at it. It&#8217;s when the deliverable is done.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (18:18.864)<\/p>\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (18:31.182)<\/p>\n<p>First of all, should have the AI do a QC process on itself. You can do that. And it actually does a really good job of QCing its own work. So that&#8217;s the thing that most people don&#8217;t understand. But then once it comes off the press, whatever metaphor you want to use, and a human looks at it and says, are we sending this out? And if you treat it, and this is a language that most knowledge workers don&#8217;t like, it&#8217;s a factory now. And so you don&#8217;t QC every<\/p>\n<p>energy drink can that comes off the line. But you look at some of them, right? And you know that if this one is this one&#8217;s off, well, we got to look at the ones that just went out the door because maybe they have a defect as well. So it becomes more of a factory mindset, knowing that if you if you have a good manufacturing process and that this again, like marketing agencies will hate this like, but that is that it but<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (19:02.97)<\/p>\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (19:22.297)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. Yeah. Even the word factory there, they&#8217;re going to cringe at. Right.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (19:26.894)<\/p>\n<p>Like if you do not turn your marketing agency into a factory in 2026, you will be out of business. Like let&#8217;s go have a, we&#8217;ll do it next year and we&#8217;ll see whether or not that&#8217;s true. Like you have to, you&#8217;ll have to learn good workflows. You need to learn good work instructions. You need to learn good QC process. And so, and once you do, you can start mass producing things that are top notch and<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (19:37.403)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (19:56.138)<\/p>\n<p>knowledge work will be turned into a factory. And then what gets layered on top of that is a new skill set, which is not 100 % clear what that is yet, but we will invent new things to do that will just add value on top of that.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (20:14.085)<\/p>\n<p>Fascinating, Steve. Appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where do you want to invite people to find out more about, I think it&#8217;s simpleconsultants.ai and obviously about your book?<\/p>\n<p>Steve (20:26.978)<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, well, if you&#8217;re up for it, I would love to give everybody in your audience free access to our BlackBelt training. We&#8217;ll create a page specifically for your network. It&#8217;ll be roiassociation.ai.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (20:47.931)<\/p>\n<p>Awesome. And we&#8217;ll put that in the show notes as well. So that was ROI.association, is that what you said?<\/p>\n<p>Steve (20:54.824)<\/p>\n<p>roiassociation.ai.<\/p>\n<p>John Jantsch (20:56.973)<\/p>\n<p>dot, dot A. Okay. Got it. Awesome. Well, as I said, we&#8217;ll put that in the show notes as well. So Steve, again, appreciate you stopping by. This is awesome. And hopefully we&#8217;ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.<\/p>\n<p>Steve (21:11.662)<\/p>\n<p>Absolutely. Thanks, John.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fbxt-content--footer\">\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"#\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"fbxt-nav-text\">Scroll back to top<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<div class=\"fbxt-modal fbxt-email-signup\">\n<h4>\n\t\t\t\t\tSign up to receive email updates<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<\/h4>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tEnter your name and email address below and I&#8217;ll send you periodic updates about the podcast.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<div class=\"fbxt-email-response-text\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"fbxt-name-fields\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"fbxt-signup-fields\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"fbxt-credits\">\n\t\t<span>powered by<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/fusebox.fm\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AI Is a Survival Skill for Consultants written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Episode Overview John Jantsch welcomes Steve Cunningham, former agency owner, startup founder, and creator of the book summary platform ReadItForMe. Steve shares how generative AI nearly wiped out his business and forced a complete reinvention of how he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2512"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions\/2515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gogetmuscle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}