The AI Learning Loop Trap: Why You're Sabotaging Your Agency's Success
I'm All In on AI (But There's a Trap)
Let me start by saying this: I am all in on AI. I love AI. I use AI very deeply every day to do work. AI definitely multiplies my output. It's the great force multiplier if you use it correctly.
I'm not here to say any negative words about AI. I'm not an alarmist. I'm not a person who has an axe to grind thinking that it's taking our jobs. I think that AI ultimately is going to be the tool of every successful person, and we will all be getting 10 times more things done with the tool of AI in our hands.
But I do want to talk about something that I call the AI learning loop. And this is a bit of a trap.
The AI Learning Loop: An Endless Chase
AI is obviously evolving very, very fast. It seems like every single day there's five new tools. There's a new AI system. There's a new version of a large language model that's just launched. There's some new groundbreaking development. There's just something that's catching your attention.
And you're stopping and you're reading about it. The temptation is to go down a deep rabbit hole and really learn all about it. You want to test it. You want to spend time learning all about it. You want to tinker with it to see if you can improve your agency.
This can be very, very alluring. The process generally, in my experience, can become an endless loop where you're constantly chasing the latest and the greatest. And if you're not careful, you will get stuck down the AI rabbit hole, spending more time learning about the AI than actually executing with it.
At the end of the day, the point of using AI tools and implementing them in your agency is to get more done, right? If we get stuck in this learning loop, it actually takes us away from the work and actually decreases our output and our efficiency and our impact rather than increasing it.
The Hard Truth About Chasing the Latest
The hard truth about this is that no matter what, you're always going to be late. It moves so fast that you're never really going to catch up. If you're always chasing the latest tool or model, you're never going to stop researching.
You're never going to fully implement what you've learned before something new comes along that you're going to have to research, and you're going to lose focus on your core agency goal, which is delivering results for clients. At least I hope that's your core agency goal.
The big lesson here is that you should focus on building an agency that executes, not an agency that is perpetually learning. Obviously we always want to be learning. That's key, but we don't want the learning to get in the way of executing. Because at the end of the day, ideas and knowledge is useless if it is not applied.
How to Win Without Falling Into the Trap
Here are some ways we can avoid the AI learning loop and still win:
It's Okay to Implement Last Month's AI
One thing that I like to say is it's okay to implement last month's AI. It's still much, much better than what anybody had a year or two ago. Last month's AI is still... I guarantee 99% of the world is still not even thinking about last month's AI, not even last year's AI.
99% of the world is not at this level. So if you implement last month's AI, you can still actually get a lot of results and a lot of traction today. Don't feel pressured to implement what's completely brand new and on the cutting edge. Last month's AI is still going to be far ahead of most agencies.
Also, the benefits to this is if you focus on leveraging older tools (and I'm not saying old, but again, last month's tools), these are tools that are going to be proven and stable. They're going to more easily integrate into your existing systems because people will have built those integrations. And they're directly going to improve efficiency and client outcomes as a result.
Again, the goal here isn't perfection. It's automation and execution. We want to make things efficient and get more done.
Assign AI Exploration to Someone Else
If staying on the cutting edge is really important, delegate this task to somebody else. You as the agency owner shouldn't be spending all of your time tinkering with AI. Some options might be:
Hiring an AI specialist: Somebody whose core role and job is to explore, recommend, and implement tools for you
Partner with an AI consultant
Join an AI-focused community: They can summarize key advancements and make sure that you're getting all of the need-to-know rather than you having to go down these rabbit holes
Focus on AI Integration, Not Exploration
Instead of trying every tool, focus on integrating AI into existing workflows:
Automate your repetitive tasks like reporting, content generation, ideation, and research
Use AI for decision-making support (if this, then that)
Enhance personalization in marketing campaigns using AI insights
We don't need to have these super novel solutions. Integrate them into your existing workflows to save you time.
Build Systems First, AI Second
I find that AI works best when you layer it into a strong, well-documented system that is already working, that already exists. So if you ensure that your processes are well-structured, then you can drop AI into certain steps to automate and optimize those systems more efficiently.
This will actually make your existing systems more efficient, and it's not going to replace the foundational business processes.
Set Clear AI Implementation Goals
Determine what you actually want AI to achieve for your agency:
Are we trying to reduce the manual workload by 30%?
Are we trying to improve ad campaign performance by 20%?
Are we trying to automate 50% of reporting tasks within the next six months?
Let's try to be objective, set goals, and then work towards those goals. Otherwise, we just get stuck tinkering and building and not really actually getting anything done.
The Dopamine Trap of Building
Don't get me wrong. I love tinkering and exploring and experimenting and building AI tools. You know, when you have an input and then it goes through a process and then you have an output, and that dopamine hit that you get when it works and it happened so much faster and so much more simple than if you would have to do it manually... there's kind of nothing like it. It's a bizarre, crazy sensation.
But here's something even more insidious that I've seen: building with a new AI tool, building and spending lots of manpower, hours, lots of resources. You've built something and then when it's finally done, it's not the newest thing anymore and suddenly you hear of something that's maybe a little bit sexier, a little bit more automated, a little bit more whatever.
And the temptation is (and I actually seen people do this), the temptation is to throw away what you just built, what you just spent a ton of time building, and now start building on the new tool, the new platform, the new whatever. You just wasted, I mean, I've seen it, you just wasted potentially a month or more.
And guess what? This is not going to stop. So if you're searching for the best at all times, you are always going to be behind.
The Bottom Line: Stay Focused on Execution
This has just been a short episode to remind you: the bottom line is just stay focused on actually executing and stay profitable. That's the main thing, right? You want AI to make sure that you are having a bigger impact, better outputs, more outputs. You don't want to get stuck in the trap of testing and testing and testing.
Don't fall into the trap. Don't fall into the AI learning loop. Just focus on what is good enough. Last month's AI is much better than you need. I guarantee you're probably still not even leveraging last quarter's, if not last year's AI, in a way that you could.
Focus on that and focus on getting stuff done for your clients and executing and delivering results. That is all you need to do.
Remember: If you're searching for the best all the time, you are always going to be behind. Implement what works. Execute on it. Get results. That's what matters.