What is your take on the timeline of the opportunity for the automation business model? When will it be saturated?
It depends on your definition of saturation. As someone in the automation agency business daily, it's significantly more effective now than when I started a couple years ago. I see it sort of like peak oil. If you plot total volume over time, we're probably past the peak. So you could call it saturation, but at saturation it's actually more effective than now. It's tough to say exactly, maybe sometime in the next three years.
I think sometime over the next 2 to 3 years; I've been saying that for the last 6 months, maybe 2 to 2.5 years. Saturation is a relative term—just because something is called saturated doesn't mean you can't make money in it. Think of saturation like peak oil: the point where the most money is possible using the business model, after which it declines. However, interest in the model and the average impact of systems we build are increasing over time as AI technology improves, so you can still make a lot of money on the way down. If I were you, I'd get up and running with the stuff ASAP, because no market tactic lasts forever, and even if today's tactics stop working, there will be new business models I'll learn about and share with you.
I haven't thought about that in detail, so I don't have a detailed backup plan. I expect the core work of running an automation agency to remain viable for at least three to five years. Over that period the work will evolve—no‑code AI tools like pre‑draft generators will make many tasks more efficient. That doesn't mean you won't be able to run an agency; agents and other services will start to infiltrate the business model soon, but the model itself remains sound because the same shift will happen across the industry.
He says yes, it's smart to start an automation agency now to capture the lag, but you should focus on delivering strategic outcomes and consulting rather than just selling tools. You can still make money with tools, but the real value is in helping clients achieve business results. He also notes that if you're not making $10k/month yet, focus on reaching that income first, and that many traditional businesses (web design, clay pottery) still thrive, so it's not all black‑and‑white.
Keywords like 'AI automation' will eventually die out as the term gets overused, but new labels such as go‑to‑market (GTM) engineering emerge to describe the same core work—building lead lists, automating outreach, and handing off to sales teams. GTM engineering is essentially the same as most AI‑driven growth automation; it just sounds fresher. As people tire of the AI label, everything will have AI baked in, so the term fades while the underlying need for AI‑powered solutions remains. My agency focuses on AI automation services that grow with AI, not on things that disappear with the trend.