Every tool I use for client work just grew an AI layer.
Kit has an MCP now, so you can sit inside Claude or ChatGPT and ask it to build you a whole stack of email automation. RightMessage has one too. HubSpot’s AI makes it easy to move through the data and learn the platform as you go. Most web design tools plug into MCPs now as well. The pattern is the same everywhere: you converse with AI until you get a result.
So a client asked me the other day, genuinely, not as a jab, whether all of that was putting me at risk. Whether they could just do this themselves now.
Fair question. So let me answer it. Does a serious business still need a personalization consultant, or could you just do it yourself?
Maybe. The real question isn’t whether you can. It’s whether you should. And that comes down to who you actually are.
DIY has always been an option. The tools didn’t create the DIYer, they just made DIY faster. AI doesn’t change your decision, it amplifies it. If you’re good at deciding what your business needs, you now have a powerful way to execute it. If you’re stuck on the decision, you now have a powerful way to execute the wrong one. A bad decision delivered faster is still a bad decision. Now it’s just a bigger one.
Can AI replace judgment? Probably not. You can ask it, and it’ll answer with total confidence. But you already know how good that judgment actually is right now. Judgment is a human thing. Being a judge of a decision, a judge of character, discerning whether something should be done at all and not just whether it can be. And then standing behind the outcome.
That’s the part that doesn’t get cheaper.
The labour got cheaper. For you, and for me too. I can put an AI agent, or someone good with AI, on the build while I spend my time on the thinking, the discernment, and the relationships with clients who trust me to own a result. To move their revenue. To lift a conversion rate. To turn more visitors into a donor base that funds the work they care about.
Think about your taxes. I pay an accountant when I could use TurboTax, and it’s worth it every time, because a professional keeps me tax efficient and stops me leaving money on the table. I’m time poor. Even if TurboTax had a brilliant AI tool, I wouldn’t use it. I’d rather a professional with those same tools be even better at their job. I don’t know what to look for, and I don’t care to. And yes, the accountant costs more than the software. But what a good one saves me dwarfs what I pay them. The fee was never the point. The delta was.
So sort yourself honestly. Are you a DIYer who wants to own the doing, and now has a tool that makes that faster? Good. Go build it.
Or do you care more about your business and its growth than about falling back into DIY and getting in your own way? Your decisions might be fast now, and amplified, but they’re still yours to get right or wrong. Or you hand it to someone who owns the judgment calls, and you capture the delta between what you’re making now and what you should be making.
Neither answer is wrong. But they’re two different people. The tool didn’t decide which one you are. You did that a long time ago.