Most people want AI to do all their thinking for them.

I see it everywhere. LinkedIn posts that sound identical. Marketing copy with that telltale AI structure. Content that’s technically correct but completely soulless.

Here’s what they’re missing: AI abundance is creating human scarcity.

When I scroll through social media now, I can instantly spot the difference between someone who used AI to polish their own ideas versus someone who just let ChatGPT spit out generic content. There’s a certain way AI likes to write, and people need to steer away from that.

The real value isn’t in replacing human thought. It’s in extracting what’s already buried in someone’s head that they might not even know is there.

The Handcrafted Business Model

Think about what happened when mass production made everything cheaper.

Suddenly, handcrafted became luxury.

We’re seeing the same thing happen with thinking and strategy right now. Generic AI thinking is becoming mass production. Authentic human insight is becoming the luxury good.

When you have 17+ years of experience like I do, you’ve got insights buried deep that need the right questions to surface them. The AI becomes this interviewer that knows how to dig deeper and pull out your unique perspective.

That’s where the gold is. Not having a machine think for you, but having a machine help you think better.

The Premium of Actually Caring

Here’s something I almost took for granted: I care. I really care.

I spend way too much time on client tasks that other agencies easily overlook. Lower paying clients often get more attention than my margins technically allow. Most agencies don’t operate this way because they’re chasing monthly revenue and new client acquisition.

When everyone else is trying to scale with AI and automation, they lose the human touch that actually drives results.

My clients know that when they have a problem, I’m going to dig into it personally. I’ll spend three hours thinking through a positioning problem because I genuinely want to see them win. You can’t automate that level of investment in their success.

Clients can feel the difference immediately.

The Two-Tier Future

We’re heading toward a split market.

You’ll have the mass market where AI handles everything efficiently and cheaply. Then you’ll have this premium tier where human expertise, genuine care, and personal investment become luxury services.

If someone can get decent marketing advice from ChatGPT for free, why would they pay thousands unless you bring something AI can’t replicate? Seventeen years of making mistakes, learning what actually works, and developing methodology rooted in your specific worldview.

The more AI floods the market with “good enough” solutions, the more people will pay premium for “this is exactly what I needed and nobody else could have given me this perspective.”

Walking in Your Purpose

Here’s the insight that changed everything for me: I don’t actually need a niche.

For years, I tried fitting into marketing boxes. “We serve contractors” or “we’re the coaching agency.” But when I kept getting pushed on why I work with such different types of businesses, it became clear.

If you’re walking in your purpose and not someone else’s, nobody can directly compete with you.

My niche isn’t an industry. It’s working with people who refuse to do surface-level work, who want to build legacy, not just revenue.

When you pick a vertical, you’re competing on tactics and industry knowledge. When you operate from your core purpose, that combination of experience, values, and approach becomes irreplaceable.

The vertical approach makes you a commodity. The purpose approach makes you irreplaceable.

The Discipline Advantage

The question becomes whether business owners have the discipline to stay small and focused when the market tells them to scale and automate.

Most won’t.

Which makes it an even bigger opportunity for those who do.

While other agencies brag about how many clients they can handle with their new AI systems, we brag about how few clients we work with and how much attention each one gets. In a world where everyone’s trying to do more with less, we’re doing less with more.

Clients are willing to pay premium for that level of care because they’ve been burned by the “efficient” agencies that don’t actually care about results.

As AI gets better and more widespread, the gap between automated service and genuine human care is only going to widen. What you can’t commoditize is someone who actually loses sleep over your business success.

That’s only going to become more rare and more valuable.