Author: Vlad Bodi
Routine Work vs. Growth Barriers: What’s Actually Worth Automating
You’re probably getting pitched on automating email labeling, social media posting, or report formatting. The vendors will say you’re “spending a few hours here and there on it” and ask “Why wouldn’t you want to automate all these things?” Your instinct to question this is exactly right. Because everyone’s bombarding you with “AI can do…
Why Creative Automation Takes Months, Not Days (Despite What You See on LinkedIn)
Back in 2018, our creative team was drowning. We were producing 100-200 ads per month manually, and every campaign launch meant two days of frantic design work. Fast forward 8 months, and we were generating 30,000+ personalized ads monthly while our design team worked 2-3 hours per week on campaign prep instead of 2 days.…
The Unglamorous Work That Makes AI Agents Actually Function
Everyone’s building AI agents in 5 minutes with n8n these days. At least, that’s what my LinkedIn feed tells me. Meanwhile, I just spent 3 months helping a client structure their data before they could deploy a single agent that actually worked. The problem isn’t the AI technology – it’s that most SMEs have no…
Every Time We Get Busy, Something Breaks
I keep hearing this same frustration from COOs. Different companies, same problem: “Every time we get busy, something breaks. I’m tired of fixing the same problems over and over.” That’s the most expensive way to learn about your systems. This conversation comes up constantly because honestly? Growth is supposed to be good news. But every…
What ‘Qualified’ Actually Means: The Marketing-Sales Disconnect
I’m sitting in on a marketing-sales alignment meeting last week. About 20 minutes in, the CMO drops her frustration in: “You guys rejected about 59% of our qualified leads last month.” The sales director doesn’t even blink. “Because they weren’t actually qualified.” Now, I dealt with marketing a good part of my life. That one…
We Have a 3-Day Approval Process for Something That Should Take 30 Minutes
So this COO tells me about their quarterly efficiency review. He’s going through all their workflows with his team, and they get to this one approval process. He just looks at me and says: “We have a 3-day approval process for something that should take 30 minutes. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t figure…
The AI Governance Reality Check: Everyone’s Using AI, Nobody Asked About the Rules
I was talking to a CEO last week and at some point he just says: “I found out my team is putting client data into ChatGPT. I nearly had a heart attack.” That conversation stuck with me because honestly? This isn’t just happening at his company. Here’s what I’ve learned from talking to dozens of…
The $500 Engineering Hour: When Your Best People Become Expensive Sales Demos
I was talking to a CEO last week and at some point he just says: “My best engineer spent 6 hours yesterday explaining our API to a prospect. That’s $500 of engineering time for a sales meeting.” That made me laugh, but also… ouch. I mean, we’ve all been there. You’re in a sales cycle,…
