I would add that the real danger isn’t just overreliance — it’s unexamined reliance. If someone doesn’t pause to question, to test, to layer their own reasoning on top of AI’s outputs, they’re outsourcing not just thinking but identity.
All very factual. But from a more humanitarian standpoint, this kind of technology simply should not be released to the public. Like social media, they are going to destroy themselves due to lack of understanding.
Also, from a broader, less individual perspective, doesn't AI currently consume 17 BILLION galleons of water yearly? We're going to regret that. It seems like an irrelevant solution to a non-existent problem.
We are advancing our sophisticated worldviews and philosophies, increasing 'productivity'. While doing so, the world itself will die.
The truth Dan is that most creators and solopreneurs are not really experienced (and I am talking about over 500 hours or more of experience here) with AI writing, AI as a sparring partner or as a support for their daily Journaling practice.
There is still a huuuge gap of information in the field...
and yet most people are still thinking in polar opposites like:
"AI vs Human Writing? What's better?"
Just be an Ethical Human Being and leverage the tool man! 😂
The key is knowing how neural networks and data structures work. Stay away from beginner AI like ChatGPT. The data structure is a mess.
My favorite is Perplexity. They did a decent job sourcing. It’s possible to get a solid neural network layered approach applied to the right data.
My daughter’s high school won’t let them use AI. That’s smart. Learn to think first. When you get real expertise AI is incredibly helpful and cheap.
The next phase with AI is better data sets. Think of a marketplace where original data not internet scraped becomes the signal without the noise.
I’ll leave out the details. Here’s a small section to show you AI power.
Market Intelligence Overview - Perplexity.
Summary Total Range (Modern Entrepreneur Spend Stack — 2025)
Consider flexible founder modes that not only eliminate this spend but lower not only the cost of sales but operating expenses permanently and avoid employee management. It's been years of experiments with models that work. It's possible today to do the impossible.
Think about the cluster that comes after buying, paying, and finishing. I've not only bought most of these services, but sold them, or often worked for multiple companies that did too.
The entire model is broken. Let's reinvent industry. That changes the economy. We win. The institutional investors heads will spin in circles once corporate bubble head thinking bursts.
Entrepreneur Categories - Not owned by investors
AUDIENCE 1: Growth Founders <$10M
AUDIENCE 2: Business Owners — Service firms, main street, trades <$100M
AUDIENCE 3: Solopreneur Coaches & Consultants
Business Traction
1️⃣ Leadership & Personal Growth
Overview: Annual investments typically range from $5,000 to $100,000+ per founder, depending on provider, delivery mode (1:1, group, forum), and program depth—spanning short intensives to ongoing mastermind or elite coaching containers.
Spending Modes:
1:1 coaching, group cohorts, mastermind forums, and spiritual work intensives
Leadership retreats, team coaching packages, and ongoing founder-development memberships
Digital and blended transformation programs, increasingly measured and tracked with AI
2️⃣ Business & Team Operations
Overview: This category encompasses business systems, operational processes, automation, hiring, team management, financial operations including bookkeeping, legal, insurance, governance, and banking. It is critical for founders and small businesses aiming to scale smoothly without bottlenecks or operational chaos. $10,000 and $150,000 typical.
Spending Modes:
Fractional executive and operational roles billed monthly or project-based
Managed service subscriptions for operational functions (finance, HR, legal)
Automation software and platforms for workflow management, team collaboration, and back-office tasks.
3️⃣ Revenue & Sales Performance
Overview: This category focuses on optimizing sales processes, lead generation, building effective sales teams, accelerating pipelines, and honing closing skills. It's crucial for founders and businesses aiming to scale revenue reliably. $10,000 to $200,000+ typical.
Spending Modes:
Investment in sales enablement technology, including CRMs and AI outreach tools
Lead generation services, both inbound and outbound
Advanced closing skill workshops and virtual sales demo platforms
4️⃣ Brand & Marketing Ecosystem
Overview: This category involves product design, offer creation and pricing strategies, brand positioning, marketing strategy, and go-to-market planning. It is pivotal for entrepreneurs aiming to build distinctive brands and marketing ecosystems that drive sustainable growth. Annual spend ranges widely, typically between $10,000 and $250,000.
Spending Modes:
Product/offer design and pricing strategy workshops
Multi-channel marketing strategy and AI-driven execution
Paid acquisition, content marketing, SEO, and community-building campaign
5️⃣ Content & Authority Growth
Overview: This spend area involves market authority planning, content strategy, thought leadership development, personal brand building, creative asset creation, AI model tuning, and content systematization. It is essential for entrepreneurs seeking to amplify influence, build trust, and scale their voice in crowded markets. Range from $5,000 to $100,000+, depending on brand maturity, content volume, and extent of integration with AI tools.
Spending Modes:
Thought leadership and personal brand coaching sessions and workshops
Content strategy consulting with integrated production schedules and team training
Creative asset development (video, graphics, copywriting) managed or AI augmented
6️⃣ Community, Network & Relationships
Overview: This category encompasses masterminds, peer networks, private forums, retreats, digital communities, and celebrity events. It supports founders in building influential relationships, gaining business insights, and accessing emotional support. Annual spend can range from $3,000 to $50,000+ depending on the exclusivity, and prestige.
Spending Modes:
Membership in mastermind groups and curated peer networks
Access fees for retreats, events, ongoing subscriptions, and exclusive forums
Collaborative projects and celebrity-led events enhancing brand and business leverage
7️⃣ Platform & Channel Building
Overview: This category encompasses building and scaling presence across digital platforms and channels, including YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, newsletters, podcasts, and Substack. It covers social selling, active commenting, organic influence, and paid advertising efforts. Annual ranges from $5,000 to $150,000+
Spending Modes:
Multi-channel content creation and distribution and paid and organic social media
Organic engagement strategies including social selling and community commenting
Newsletter and podcast production and marketing, including Substack subscriptions
8️⃣ Technology and Infrastructure
Overview: This category includes CRM platforms, email systems, websites, AI tools, content and community platforms, point solutions, and backend automation. It also accounts for hard costs, consulting fees, and ongoing management or technical support. Spending varies widely but generally ranges from $20,000 to $250,000 annually depending on infrastructure.
Spending Modes:
SaaS subscriptions for CRM, email, community and content management systems
Procurement of AI and automation tools for workflow and customer engagement
Cloud infrastructure (public, private, or hybrid) expenditure and managed services
The entire ecosystem on social media talks about purpose, meaning, and passion. They write about family, evolution, and spiritual development. The truth. Nobody pays for this. It's marketing to support the sales of Business Traction support that overwhelms owners.
Analyze your own situation in the context of market realities. I shared a quick overview. When you get deeper into the areas of 2025 emerging spend as well as convention it makes more sense. The landscape has saturated. That's why the big marketers are stuck on top.
It's one of those what do I do phases in market dynamics. The experienced owners know the game. They all have a number. "How much did you spend on support that didn't work?" Mine was $150K between 2020 - 2023. I'm not a beginner. That's who funds the social media creator summit.
Am actually in the level 2, I just want to squeeze out a dollar as soon as possible with AI never stopping to think, or question anything. This article really showed me a mirror.
yeah… the whole “high consciousness” vs “low consciousness” thing feels like a shortcut that skips over a lot of context… people have wildly different reasons for using ai, different access, different pressures… labeling them like that kinda assumes you’re sitting in a perfect spot to judge, looking down from above.... a single parent working 2 jobs to make ends meet doesn't have "low consciousness" because they're not on the authors level- they may just not have time to futz about with blogs and ai all day...
the author talks like there are “truth seekers” and then everyone else is just stumbling around in the dark, which… sure, that’s one way to make yourself the hero of the story. but ai’s not some mystical sorting hat. it’s a tool. some people are new, some are figuring it out, some don’t even care — that’s not deep, that’s just a learning curve.
and really… who decided what “smart use” even is? did chatgpt whisper it to the author one night?
it’s fine to share your own approach… but declaring everyone else “wrong” just makes it sound like self-congratulation
This was very fun to read and I enjoyed every part of it.
Amazing Insights 💯
This was such an insightful read!
I would add that the real danger isn’t just overreliance — it’s unexamined reliance. If someone doesn’t pause to question, to test, to layer their own reasoning on top of AI’s outputs, they’re outsourcing not just thinking but identity.
ai doesn’t make you dumb.
it just exposes who was never thinking for themselves in the first place.
— author
All very factual. But from a more humanitarian standpoint, this kind of technology simply should not be released to the public. Like social media, they are going to destroy themselves due to lack of understanding.
Also, from a broader, less individual perspective, doesn't AI currently consume 17 BILLION galleons of water yearly? We're going to regret that. It seems like an irrelevant solution to a non-existent problem.
We are advancing our sophisticated worldviews and philosophies, increasing 'productivity'. While doing so, the world itself will die.
The truth Dan is that most creators and solopreneurs are not really experienced (and I am talking about over 500 hours or more of experience here) with AI writing, AI as a sparring partner or as a support for their daily Journaling practice.
There is still a huuuge gap of information in the field...
and yet most people are still thinking in polar opposites like:
"AI vs Human Writing? What's better?"
Just be an Ethical Human Being and leverage the tool man! 😂
I just did the “master guide” using ChatGpt - it was incredibly insightful.
This is a great read. I use AI basically everyday now. It's a business partner and consultant at times.
There were once people buying horse and carriages because they refused to accept cars were a new thing. It's just the nature of people.
The key is knowing how neural networks and data structures work. Stay away from beginner AI like ChatGPT. The data structure is a mess.
My favorite is Perplexity. They did a decent job sourcing. It’s possible to get a solid neural network layered approach applied to the right data.
My daughter’s high school won’t let them use AI. That’s smart. Learn to think first. When you get real expertise AI is incredibly helpful and cheap.
The next phase with AI is better data sets. Think of a marketplace where original data not internet scraped becomes the signal without the noise.
I’ll leave out the details. Here’s a small section to show you AI power.
Market Intelligence Overview - Perplexity.
Summary Total Range (Modern Entrepreneur Spend Stack — 2025)
Consider flexible founder modes that not only eliminate this spend but lower not only the cost of sales but operating expenses permanently and avoid employee management. It's been years of experiments with models that work. It's possible today to do the impossible.
Think about the cluster that comes after buying, paying, and finishing. I've not only bought most of these services, but sold them, or often worked for multiple companies that did too.
The entire model is broken. Let's reinvent industry. That changes the economy. We win. The institutional investors heads will spin in circles once corporate bubble head thinking bursts.
Entrepreneur Categories - Not owned by investors
AUDIENCE 1: Growth Founders <$10M
AUDIENCE 2: Business Owners — Service firms, main street, trades <$100M
AUDIENCE 3: Solopreneur Coaches & Consultants
Business Traction
1️⃣ Leadership & Personal Growth
Overview: Annual investments typically range from $5,000 to $100,000+ per founder, depending on provider, delivery mode (1:1, group, forum), and program depth—spanning short intensives to ongoing mastermind or elite coaching containers.
Spending Modes:
1:1 coaching, group cohorts, mastermind forums, and spiritual work intensives
Leadership retreats, team coaching packages, and ongoing founder-development memberships
Digital and blended transformation programs, increasingly measured and tracked with AI
2️⃣ Business & Team Operations
Overview: This category encompasses business systems, operational processes, automation, hiring, team management, financial operations including bookkeeping, legal, insurance, governance, and banking. It is critical for founders and small businesses aiming to scale smoothly without bottlenecks or operational chaos. $10,000 and $150,000 typical.
Spending Modes:
Fractional executive and operational roles billed monthly or project-based
Managed service subscriptions for operational functions (finance, HR, legal)
Automation software and platforms for workflow management, team collaboration, and back-office tasks.
3️⃣ Revenue & Sales Performance
Overview: This category focuses on optimizing sales processes, lead generation, building effective sales teams, accelerating pipelines, and honing closing skills. It's crucial for founders and businesses aiming to scale revenue reliably. $10,000 to $200,000+ typical.
Spending Modes:
Investment in sales enablement technology, including CRMs and AI outreach tools
Lead generation services, both inbound and outbound
Advanced closing skill workshops and virtual sales demo platforms
4️⃣ Brand & Marketing Ecosystem
Overview: This category involves product design, offer creation and pricing strategies, brand positioning, marketing strategy, and go-to-market planning. It is pivotal for entrepreneurs aiming to build distinctive brands and marketing ecosystems that drive sustainable growth. Annual spend ranges widely, typically between $10,000 and $250,000.
Spending Modes:
Product/offer design and pricing strategy workshops
Multi-channel marketing strategy and AI-driven execution
Paid acquisition, content marketing, SEO, and community-building campaign
5️⃣ Content & Authority Growth
Overview: This spend area involves market authority planning, content strategy, thought leadership development, personal brand building, creative asset creation, AI model tuning, and content systematization. It is essential for entrepreneurs seeking to amplify influence, build trust, and scale their voice in crowded markets. Range from $5,000 to $100,000+, depending on brand maturity, content volume, and extent of integration with AI tools.
Spending Modes:
Thought leadership and personal brand coaching sessions and workshops
Content strategy consulting with integrated production schedules and team training
Creative asset development (video, graphics, copywriting) managed or AI augmented
6️⃣ Community, Network & Relationships
Overview: This category encompasses masterminds, peer networks, private forums, retreats, digital communities, and celebrity events. It supports founders in building influential relationships, gaining business insights, and accessing emotional support. Annual spend can range from $3,000 to $50,000+ depending on the exclusivity, and prestige.
Spending Modes:
Membership in mastermind groups and curated peer networks
Access fees for retreats, events, ongoing subscriptions, and exclusive forums
Collaborative projects and celebrity-led events enhancing brand and business leverage
7️⃣ Platform & Channel Building
Overview: This category encompasses building and scaling presence across digital platforms and channels, including YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, newsletters, podcasts, and Substack. It covers social selling, active commenting, organic influence, and paid advertising efforts. Annual ranges from $5,000 to $150,000+
Spending Modes:
Multi-channel content creation and distribution and paid and organic social media
Organic engagement strategies including social selling and community commenting
Newsletter and podcast production and marketing, including Substack subscriptions
8️⃣ Technology and Infrastructure
Overview: This category includes CRM platforms, email systems, websites, AI tools, content and community platforms, point solutions, and backend automation. It also accounts for hard costs, consulting fees, and ongoing management or technical support. Spending varies widely but generally ranges from $20,000 to $250,000 annually depending on infrastructure.
Spending Modes:
SaaS subscriptions for CRM, email, community and content management systems
Procurement of AI and automation tools for workflow and customer engagement
Cloud infrastructure (public, private, or hybrid) expenditure and managed services
The entire ecosystem on social media talks about purpose, meaning, and passion. They write about family, evolution, and spiritual development. The truth. Nobody pays for this. It's marketing to support the sales of Business Traction support that overwhelms owners.
Analyze your own situation in the context of market realities. I shared a quick overview. When you get deeper into the areas of 2025 emerging spend as well as convention it makes more sense. The landscape has saturated. That's why the big marketers are stuck on top.
It's one of those what do I do phases in market dynamics. The experienced owners know the game. They all have a number. "How much did you spend on support that didn't work?" Mine was $150K between 2020 - 2023. I'm not a beginner. That's who funds the social media creator summit.
Am actually in the level 2, I just want to squeeze out a dollar as soon as possible with AI never stopping to think, or question anything. This article really showed me a mirror.
yeah… the whole “high consciousness” vs “low consciousness” thing feels like a shortcut that skips over a lot of context… people have wildly different reasons for using ai, different access, different pressures… labeling them like that kinda assumes you’re sitting in a perfect spot to judge, looking down from above.... a single parent working 2 jobs to make ends meet doesn't have "low consciousness" because they're not on the authors level- they may just not have time to futz about with blogs and ai all day...
the author talks like there are “truth seekers” and then everyone else is just stumbling around in the dark, which… sure, that’s one way to make yourself the hero of the story. but ai’s not some mystical sorting hat. it’s a tool. some people are new, some are figuring it out, some don’t even care — that’s not deep, that’s just a learning curve.
and really… who decided what “smart use” even is? did chatgpt whisper it to the author one night?
it’s fine to share your own approach… but declaring everyone else “wrong” just makes it sound like self-congratulation
lol... you're reminding me of Elon Musk saying AI is gonna destroy humans!