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I thought AI was about doing the same work faster. Wrong. It's raising the quality bar. Our output is 2x with 2x the quality, and if you're not using AI intelligently, you...
If you think the main advantage of using AI is that it allows you to do the same work more efficiently, you're missing the biggest opportunity right now. And this was actually a mistake I made for the first few years after ChatGPT came out. It was immediately clear to me that we were approaching a world where AI could do the work as well as a human could.
So my initial thought was we could just work way faster and lower our prices and take on more volume. And there are other digital marketing agencies that are doing exactly that right now, and some of them are having success. Pretty soon, I think we're gonna see those agencies get replaced by software, and I think the value of that work is gonna continue to go down.
The thing that a lot of us didn't see coming and is really starting to take shape in 2026 is that AI is actually raising the quality bar. Now, a lot of people are gonna hear that and laugh, and that's a totally fair reaction. AI produces a ton of low-quality slop.
But as we get better at figuring out how to incorporate AI into our processes, or more often now, how to incorporate us into AI's processes, we're finding that with the right structure and context and instruction, there are many things that AI does not just faster, but better than Humans.
The websites we're building are better, the technical audits are higher quality, the strategy is much more comprehensive, and the content quality is miles ahead of where we were with human writers. So instead of doing 10x the output at the same quality, we're doing more like 2x the output at twice the quality. And we aren't the only ones, of course.
I share notes with a lot of agency owners, and those that are implementing similar systems are seeing similar results. And that's what's causing the quality bar to rise. A year from now, people just aren't gonna Wanna pay for what was acceptable two years ago.
Now, of course, that doesn't mean that using AI automatically improves the quality of your work. Most of the work we see done by AI today is still low quality. My point is, knowing that AI was used in the work tells you nothing about the quality.
However, if you're not intelligently using AI in your work, there is no chance you're going to hit the new quality standards and efficiency standards we have in 2027.
AI does not automatically raise quality, but the right structure, context, and instructions can make some work better as well as faster.
Design AI workflows around context, review structure, and clear instructions instead of using AI only to increase output volume.
This source is connected to AI quality / process design.
If you think the main advantage of using AI is that it allows you to do the same work more efficiently, you're missing the biggest opportunity right now. And this was actually a mistake I made for the first few years after ChatGPT came out...