#84 · English Anxiety: Do I Need English to Crush AI Automation?

youtube ↗AI & Automation

What advice do you have for getting good grades in high school, are there automation tools for optimized study, and what automations would you add to a marketing agency?

I would never outsource my own competence. A big issue I see is that people from your generation are outsourcing a lot of their thinking to artificial intelligence, which means they may never develop the core problem‑solving abilities that previous generations had to build. So I’m very careful about what I let AI do for me. Things that are okay for AI to handle right now are compiling facts, doing preliminary analysis, and acting as a tutor. When you learn something new, you can ask AI for an explanation, then have AI tell you the answer, and then ask specific follow‑up questions based on what it gave you. Those kinds of uses are fun, but I wouldn’t outsource fundamental judgments—like major life decisions—or try to automate optimized study; I don’t use any automation CDs for studying. As for automations I’d add to a marketing agency, the term ‘marketing agency’ is too broad—it could mean anything from website design to PPC to branding—so you need to get more specific. I work mainly with creative and content agencies, so the automations I talk about are usually for those. For content agencies, useful automations include repurposing long‑form content into short‑form pieces and drafting content from a client brief. Simple daily check‑in automations are also valuable: a form where team members write what they plan to do today, and a retrospective form where they log what they actually did, with the results posted to a public Slack channel. These may sound simple, but they’re really valuable because agencies are all about people—if you can optimize the people, the agency works better.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Niches

I'm an 18‑year‑old full‑stack web developer with API and marketing theory knowledge. I'm unsure whether to start a marketing agency or an AI automation agency, especially since I'm in Saudi Arabia where few talk about this. Should I focus on building my personal brand as an AI expert first, given I have four to five months before university starts? What would you do in my position?

If I were you and thinking long‑term, I’d ask where everything is heading. Everything is moving toward AI and automation over the next five years; what happens after that is uncertain, but my honest advice is to choose the AI automation business model. I’ve found the most success with it and have run it four times. The main reason is leverage: AI and automation offer far more leverage than traditional marketing agencies. Traditional marketing agencies are declining—this model peaked around 2017‑2019 and has been falling since, partly due to market saturation and the rise of SaaS tools that automate tasks like scheduled posting, brand strategy, and marketing strategy. In contrast, the AI automation model is still early; it really took off around 2021‑2022 with ChatGPT, and I predict it will continue growing until about 2027‑2028, when AI agents could double the market and demand. After that, demand may dip slightly as agents become more advanced. If you're in Saudi Arabia, you're essentially seeing a delayed version of this curve, giving you a few extra years to ride the upward trend. So, if I were in your place, I’d go all‑in on AI automation.

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youtube ↗AI & Automation

How does one even start to think like an automation developer? I can never come up with the ideas for automations on the spot.

Never say never. I've been in agencies for about 10 years — I got out of school and started a marketing agency, sent hundreds of proposals, talked to thousands of people, and basically seen the same business model pitched a thousand different ways. When you see something that many times, you start picking up on the trends. My recommendation: don't try to think like an automation developer, think like a business person in general. Every business is basically a pipeline: there's a customer, you pay some money to get that customer, your business adds value to what the customer wants (a project, knowledge, a product, whatever), and at the end you get a higher-quality thing you can charge more for. So there's a multiple on the value of the raw good versus the finished thing. That gives you three or four places to optimize right off the bat: lead gen and sales, fulfillment, and retention. Think of every business through that lens and the automation opportunities become obvious.

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youtube ↗Agency Operations

What tips do you have for a 17‑year‑old high schooler wanting to sell automation services, and should they work as an agent or start an agency?

Avoid reels and short-form content; instead, send personalized Loom DMs to influencers you admire, offering a quick 30-second solution to a problem they may not even know they have. Focus on minimizing friction, not making their life too easy. Check out my main channel and the 'How to start an AI automation agency in 2025' playlist for business fundamentals that help high schoolers launch quickly.

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youtube ↗AI & Automation

Nick, I want to start working in the AI sector and I'm thinking of beginning with AI automation. The problem is that everything changes so fast. New tools keep coming out, so I'm confused about where to start. At first, I planned to learn NA. Then I started seeing agentic workflows everywhere. Now there's AIOS as well. Over the last 3 to 4 months, I watched videos on different topics, but instead of getting clarity, I'm just become more confused. Since you work on advanced AI project yourself, I'd appreciate your guidance to hit $10,000 per month. If you starting from scratch today, what would you learn first? When would you start offering services? And how do you get your first few clients?

First, I’d join a community like Maker School—not just to use my own products but because membership gives you deep discounts (often a 10x return) on AI platform credits and payment‑processing fees. With those savings I’d start by learning a visual drag‑and‑drop automation builder (such as the n platform) for about four to six hours; that teaches you the fundamentals of systems, workflows, JSON, HTTP requests, etc., which accelerates everything else. Next I’d spend another four hours on a Claude‑code course that covers the technical setup, agent communication, model selection, and so on—roughly ten hours total. After that foundation, I’d devote virtually all remaining time to acquiring customers; the first 90 days would be less than 1% spent on learning and the rest on outreach. You need a customer to actually enter the arena, so I’d use Maker School’s day‑by‑day accountability to hit call and outreach targets, then loop back to upsell from any lower tier to higher ones as the relationship grows.

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