Welcome back friend!
The call I didn't want to make
9K people on LinkedIn are going to write "AI is coming for jobs" this week.
None of them are going to be the one making the call. You will.
I just made it. I fired all 3 of my graphic designers.
Not because they were bad. They were good. They'd been with me for years. The math just stopped working.
Like you (probably), I've been messing around with AI image tools. The first batches were kind of there. Then they got closer. And lately, I think they're finally there (Chat GPT 5.5). The same hero image that used to take two weeks and three rounds of email landed in seven minutes. On-brand. No revisions. I'd spent years building the workflow my designers ran. And keeping it running just became kind of silly.
The math is the easy part.
You run the numbers. You see what AI does before lunch that used to take a month. You know what's coming. Then you have to call a human you know, who has bills and a kid, and tell them the thing they've done for you for years isn't a thing anymore.
It's just a shitty feeling. That's what it is.
Every business owner I know is about to do some version of this in the next eighteen months. Copywriters. Designers. Bookkeepers. PPC managers. VAs. Whole layers of the org chart that don't have a reason to exist anymore.
If you're staring at this decision and like your team, here's what I'd do.
- Tell them early. Give your team the most runway you can possibly give.
- Pay severance. You won't regret the money. You will regret being cheap on the way out.
- Write the referral before they ask for it. The thing you're firing them for is the thing they need to sell next.
- Try and find them a new home. See if your communities, masterminds, or friends need them.
- And most importantly, don't refill the seat. The whole point is the layer is gone.
Your role is also on the list. Mine is too.. get ready.
The IVS
Big thanks to Jana Krekic for providing a great tip this week. You may recognize her name from YLT Translations or her new venture, Seller Lingo. Seller Lingo is an AI platform built to understand Amazon compliance for all countries. Thanks, Jana!
I built an AI agent to babysit my website
Last week my website was down for six hours before anyone told me. A customer DM'd. Then a friend. Then my own mother. By the time I checked, Google had already started downranking me. I've used Pingdom, UptimeRobot, all the usual suspects. They ping every few minutes and email you when the page returns a 500. Fine. But they miss slow loads, broken images, expired SSL, half-loaded pages, content that disappeared. They tell you the lights are on (but they aren’t great at telling you the room is on fire 🔥).
So I built an agent instead. Runs every four hours. Opens my homepage like a real user and checks the response time, the CTAs, the console, the headlines, the pricing. Here's the whole setup:
- Pick a tool that runs scheduled agents. Cowork has it built in. n8n with a Claude node works. So does a cron hitting the Anthropic API.
- Write the instructions in plain English. Something like: "Every four hours, visit [URL]. Confirm it loads under 3 seconds and returns a 200. Confirm the headline still says X and pricing still shows Y. Flag broken images, console errors, expired certs, anything off. Tell me what's wrong and what you think caused it."
- Set the cadence to every four hours.
- Test it once with a deliberately broken URL and make sure you get a useful reply.
- Done!
Last Tuesday it caught the next outage. I didn't get an alert that said "down." I got: "Site returned 502 from CloudFront. Origin unreachable. Your host's status page shows an ongoing EU outage. Wait 15 minutes before investigating." That's the line that earned the ten minutes. If your site matters and you're still relying on someone DMing you when it breaks… that is no bueno!
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The Deep Dive (Premium Content)
The Official SFTB Product Launch Checklist
Most Amazon launches don't fail for creative reasons. They fail because of mechanical reasons.
The listing flips live before inventory lands at FBA… The main image isn’t optimized… The PPC starts before the inventory is out of reserved, Brand Registry isn't approved yet, so half the launch surfaces are locked, etc…
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The Mystery Snake
Zoom in….don’t worry it won’t bite.
One thing about living in Costa Rica is the country likes to remind you that nature is very much in charge, and this week’s reminder showed up on the side of our house.
A dead snake. You might need to zoom in on the photo, since I wasn’t going any closer.
Long. Smelly. And close enough that I wanted to know what it was, but not close enough that I was willing to do a full investigation.
No idea what kind it was. No idea what killed it. The funny thing is, after a while, you get used to it.
Not totally used to it. I’m not saying I’m out there confidently identifying snakes like Steve Irwin.
But that’s life here sometimes. Beaches, sunsets, monkeys, tropical fruit… and the occasional dead snake reminding you the jungle was here first.
How to Make Your Brand Tailored Promotions as Efficient As Possible
Here's how to make your Brand Tailored Promotions (BTP’s) as efficient as possible. First things first: If you don’t know what BTP’s are, go here.
The Strategy: Pay MORE to acquire hard customers. LESS to acquire easy ones (seems simple, no?) Here’s the mistake I was making: flat discount across every audience. Oops!
Amazon hands you 13+ pre-built audience segments based on real behavior data you couldn't get any other way. Treat them all the same and you throw away the only edge the tool gives you.
Three tiers:
30% off: new and warm prospects
- High potential new customers
- High intent customers
- Cart abandoners (last 90 days)
- Complementary product remarketing
You're buying the first conversion. Same math as paying a high ACoS to acquire a new customer on Sponsored Products. These people have signaled real interest but haven't pulled the trigger. A deep discount pushes them over the edge!
20% off: returning and at-risk
- Promising customers
- Declining promising customers
- At-risk customers
- Declining top-tier customers
These already know the brand. They've bought before. They just need a little nudge :)
10% off: existing
- Top-tier customers
- High spend customers
- Repeat customers
- Recent customers
- Brand followers
These people are already buying. You don't need to discount them at all, but a small reward keeps them loyal without burning meaningful margin. Anything bigger is paying people to do what they would have done anyway.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT THING: BTPs cap at 90 days. Amazon doesn't email you when one expires, there's no SP-API or Ads API to renew them, so you have to manually recreate each one in Seller Central every quarter. AND they take 3-ish days to go live. So, the play is this: 7 days before expiry, set up a new one (for each audience) to start up the day after the original ones end. This way you’re losing zero days while your new BTP’s are set up.
Forget to give the hotel your loyalty number?
The Nobu Ryokan Malibu in California
Forgot to add your loyalty number at check-in? Most chains let you claim the points and elite-night credit after the stay. The windows vary:
- Hyatt: 12 months from checkout. "Past Stay Credit" form lives in your account.
- Marriott: 12 months from check-in. "Report a Missing Stay" sits at the bottom of your Activity page.
- Hilton: 6 months from the stay date.
- IHG: 6 months from checkout.
Before you submit, have ready: hotel name, dates, confirmation number, and a copy of your receipt.
Don't fire the request off the morning after checkout. Wait 5 to 10 business days. Stays often post on a delay, especially international ones. An early request just gets denied.
One trap... none of this works for third-party bookings. Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com... those rates don't earn points or nights. Doesn't matter how nicely you ask. The hotel never receives the loyalty data. Book direct if you want the credit.
Two habits that pay for themselves... save the receipt at checkout, and check your account a week after every stay!
Above all, keep a close watch on this: you are never so tied to your former acquaintances and friends that you are pulled down to their level. If you do, you'll be ruined. You must choose whether to become a better person at the cost of those friends. If you try to have it both ways, you will neither make progress nor keep what you once had.
Epictetus
BEER! Now that I have your attention… you probably would like the Facebook community.
This week in the Facebook group: WISE adds interest for Canadian account holders
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Rob & Max