A performance-marketing veteran warns against fake AI experts who have no track record building systems or managing budgets. Ask any AI advisor three things: what did you build before 2023, whose P&L were you accountable for, and what would you tell me not to do. Real operators have a long list of don'ts. Grifters have none because everything is an upsell.
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Your AI expert didn't exist before 2023. They're not your expert, they're your fucking audience. I've been in the engine rooms of all the performance marketing for well over 15 years now. I know every platform shift, every algorithm change, 9-figure pipelines. Yes. And this current cast of AI experts that's blowing up all of our news feeds, I have to say, I've never seen them. Not once, not in any room where the real work happens. And here's the grift, and once you see it, my friends, you, you can't unsee it. So here's what I think. I think one guru anoints someone as an AI expert, right? And that person anoints the next one. That one, maybe, I don't know, they anoint 3. Everyone in that circle now cross-promotes, cross-certifies, cross-stage shares, and none of them, not one, have shipped anything at scale. None of them have carried a real weight of a P&L. None have survived a crisis in a real system. It's credibility laundering operation, and the currency being laundered, my friend, is your trust. Then they funnel you into their own AI tools, right? Their wrappers, their proprietary platforms that are usually just a thin coat of paint over someone else's API. They're not teaching you AI. They're using the word of AI to move you into their monetization stacks. And when a 90-day expert is advising on a strategy, a governance, or I don't know, maybe a deployment, that's not just annoying, that's fucking dangerous, you guys. Your data, your customers, your brand, it's all on the line. So before you hire anyone calling them an AI expert, ask them these 3 simple questions. 1, what did you build before 2023? 2, whose P&L have you ever been accountable for? And 3, what would you tell me not to do with AI? Real operators, they have a long list of don'ts. Grifters don't, because everything is an upsell. The loudest voice in the room is almost never the one you want making your call. Follow me for more inside the engine room.
