I've been here a long time and I started my current business in 2020. It's been feeding me since.
I have a deep respect for MJ DeMarco, the moderators, and all of the people over the years who have come through and posted GOLD threads.
I've gone to multiple summits and have made lifelong friends here.
But all of that is going to come to an end, and it's because of AI.
This post is not written or edited by AI. These are my honest thoughts, unfiltered, no AI brainstorm involved, written in the voice I've always written them in.
It's no secret that this place has a churn "problem". I say "problem" because it's not actually a problem, it's what's supposed to happen.
People come here, and one of four things happen.
1) They quit or never really start at all, and never come back (vast majority)
2) They get started, fail, and stay here to get advice, troll, or LARP as a successful business owner
3) They get started, start seeing success, get busy with the work & don't hang out here anymore
4) They get started, see success, and come to hang out & shoot the shit (vast minority)
Group 1, you can't really help.
Group 2 is who this forum is actually for. People who will stick around long enough to take verbal a$$-kickings and finally get their shit together.
Group 3 is the natural end state. There's way more to life than chatting on Internet forums.
Group 4 are the minority of the minority, and frankly, those people are mostly here because of MJ. They're his real life friends, or people who feel some sort of debt of gratitude and a desire to pass on their knowledge.. or monetize the forum. (People who come with the intent to monetize typically don't last more than a few minutes here). Some people came here AFTER seeing success.
My argument is that AI actually reduces the value of places like this for people in all groups.
AI has gotten so good that it's no longer giving generic advice. These days, AI asks YOU questions to get clarifying information to give you a better answer.
It connects to whatever data you can give it & uses it as context. It's trained on audio so it can quite literally hear the urgency and tension in your voice.
Most importantly, it can EXECUTE for you, on a timer, when you need it to. Cloud agents allow you to have an "executor" running 24/7.
So what does this mean for these groups of people?
Group 1 never needs to come here in the first place. They probably still will, but they're annoying with their pronouncements of how rich they're going to be & then they never post again.
Group 2 needs help, but they're able to get the help they need from AI. And if they're here to LARP, nothing will help them.
Group 3 is already using AI & isn't relying on the forum (forum members, maybe, but not the forum itself) to get answers that AI can't give.
Group 4 gives advice, but increasingly Group 4 people have been using AI in their responses to people!
And they're not wrong to do so either. The forum's etiquette, for years, has been "Don't ask a question Google can't answer for you". But now, AI can answer questions that Google couldn't back in those days.
Look at what happened to Stack Overflow. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/438596/stack-overflow-is-becoming-a-ghost-town-now-what
So what questions do you ask on the forum? What content do you post to the forum?
Why engage with the forum at all if it's just going to be either (1) AI answers, or (2) answers that are worse than what AI can provide?
Because of my business, I've worked on a lot of Meta ad accounts over the years, just under 100 of them. Most of the "advice" I give is related to this platform & how to use it to get customers. But most of the "value" I provide to people these days is reassurance when they're losing money. Reassurance that the platform isn't the problem, it's their creative, or their offer, or that they're getting too antsy on too little data. AI wasn't doing that for a long time, but now it is. Best of all, it'll tell you EXACTLY what you can change & how.
One thing about business I've learned is that until you've tried everything, you haven't tried everything. It's a tautology but it means that most people quit before they've actually given all their best ideas a go. AI allows you to try everything, but it won't give you the motivation to try everything.
All in all, it means that the purpose of the forum for many people is now eaten up by AI.
"But you're missing the main value of the forum: the people!"
This is true. The main value of the forum is your ability to interact with people who have "been there and done that". Who have experienced the highs and the lows. Who are walking the path alongside you.
This forum allows us to make connections with people we otherwise would not have met. It allows us to see who is in our area and meet up with them.
This forum is meant to make the journey a lot less lonely. Because guess what: while walking this path, you're going to want to quit. You're going to see a lean business bank account. You're going to see increases in customer churn, problems with your product, taxation problems, and much more. Business is a path of encountering problems and solving them. And nobody in the "outside world" gives a shit because you're doing something that they never really believed in anyway.
But the people will not stick around if there's nothing to engage them. MJ's been complaining that the core group of successful Fastlaners from the early days are mostly active on Facebook now. This has been the case for over a decade.
What happens, though, when the people who frequent this place get bored & find no real reason to interact? No reason to ask a question, no reason to answer a question?
Will they at least share their story? Their progress?
What's the solution?
The real question is: where is the value?
Is it in getting the answers to your questions, when AI can do that just as well? (Aside: One thing I've noticed is that AI, even the best models, generally won't give you ads advice that isn't explicitly given in documentation. My answers to Meta ads questions will sometimes differ from what AI will tell you and I'll have damn good experienced-backed reasons to say it. But the question is whether you'd think to ask forum members in the first place.)
Or is it in the reassurance that you are on the right path and shouldn't quit? The accountability to stay doing what you said you would do? The feeling of not being alone on a lonely path?
Maybe there's value that has yet to be tapped from a community like this?
In my personal view, the ideal Fastlane community is a mastermind: not of subject matter experts, but of people gaining experience together (no matter where they're at now). AI is reducing the need for subject matter experts as bounded advice is often good enough to move forward.
In this mastermind, people share their experiences, their views on things (no matter how controversial). They share their progress and their trials and tribulations. There has always been that side of the forum.
But this will always only appeal to a minority of people, and even fewer will create content for it. They don't want criticism, they'd prefer "gentle push-backs" a la Claude. They are afraid of their "idea being stolen". They don't want people to know how vulnerable (and broke) they really are.
It seems that the people who still get benefit from the forum are mainly using it to fulfill some social need, rather than a business one.
For groups 3 and 4, maybe the real value is access to potential investments before anyone else, but in the entire history of the forum those deals are rare.
Does the forum need a new direction in the AI era? Or do we need to accept that this place just isn't going to be as engaging?
Either way...
I have a deep respect for MJ DeMarco, the moderators, and all of the people over the years who have come through and posted GOLD threads.
I've gone to multiple summits and have made lifelong friends here.
But all of that is going to come to an end, and it's because of AI.
This post is not written or edited by AI. These are my honest thoughts, unfiltered, no AI brainstorm involved, written in the voice I've always written them in.
It's no secret that this place has a churn "problem". I say "problem" because it's not actually a problem, it's what's supposed to happen.
People come here, and one of four things happen.
1) They quit or never really start at all, and never come back (vast majority)
2) They get started, fail, and stay here to get advice, troll, or LARP as a successful business owner
3) They get started, start seeing success, get busy with the work & don't hang out here anymore
4) They get started, see success, and come to hang out & shoot the shit (vast minority)
Group 1, you can't really help.
Group 2 is who this forum is actually for. People who will stick around long enough to take verbal a$$-kickings and finally get their shit together.
Group 3 is the natural end state. There's way more to life than chatting on Internet forums.
Group 4 are the minority of the minority, and frankly, those people are mostly here because of MJ. They're his real life friends, or people who feel some sort of debt of gratitude and a desire to pass on their knowledge.. or monetize the forum. (People who come with the intent to monetize typically don't last more than a few minutes here). Some people came here AFTER seeing success.
My argument is that AI actually reduces the value of places like this for people in all groups.
AI has gotten so good that it's no longer giving generic advice. These days, AI asks YOU questions to get clarifying information to give you a better answer.
It connects to whatever data you can give it & uses it as context. It's trained on audio so it can quite literally hear the urgency and tension in your voice.
Most importantly, it can EXECUTE for you, on a timer, when you need it to. Cloud agents allow you to have an "executor" running 24/7.
So what does this mean for these groups of people?
Group 1 never needs to come here in the first place. They probably still will, but they're annoying with their pronouncements of how rich they're going to be & then they never post again.
Group 2 needs help, but they're able to get the help they need from AI. And if they're here to LARP, nothing will help them.
Group 3 is already using AI & isn't relying on the forum (forum members, maybe, but not the forum itself) to get answers that AI can't give.
Group 4 gives advice, but increasingly Group 4 people have been using AI in their responses to people!
And they're not wrong to do so either. The forum's etiquette, for years, has been "Don't ask a question Google can't answer for you". But now, AI can answer questions that Google couldn't back in those days.
Look at what happened to Stack Overflow. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/438596/stack-overflow-is-becoming-a-ghost-town-now-what
So what questions do you ask on the forum? What content do you post to the forum?
Why engage with the forum at all if it's just going to be either (1) AI answers, or (2) answers that are worse than what AI can provide?
Because of my business, I've worked on a lot of Meta ad accounts over the years, just under 100 of them. Most of the "advice" I give is related to this platform & how to use it to get customers. But most of the "value" I provide to people these days is reassurance when they're losing money. Reassurance that the platform isn't the problem, it's their creative, or their offer, or that they're getting too antsy on too little data. AI wasn't doing that for a long time, but now it is. Best of all, it'll tell you EXACTLY what you can change & how.
One thing about business I've learned is that until you've tried everything, you haven't tried everything. It's a tautology but it means that most people quit before they've actually given all their best ideas a go. AI allows you to try everything, but it won't give you the motivation to try everything.
All in all, it means that the purpose of the forum for many people is now eaten up by AI.
"But you're missing the main value of the forum: the people!"
This is true. The main value of the forum is your ability to interact with people who have "been there and done that". Who have experienced the highs and the lows. Who are walking the path alongside you.
This forum allows us to make connections with people we otherwise would not have met. It allows us to see who is in our area and meet up with them.
This forum is meant to make the journey a lot less lonely. Because guess what: while walking this path, you're going to want to quit. You're going to see a lean business bank account. You're going to see increases in customer churn, problems with your product, taxation problems, and much more. Business is a path of encountering problems and solving them. And nobody in the "outside world" gives a shit because you're doing something that they never really believed in anyway.
But the people will not stick around if there's nothing to engage them. MJ's been complaining that the core group of successful Fastlaners from the early days are mostly active on Facebook now. This has been the case for over a decade.
What happens, though, when the people who frequent this place get bored & find no real reason to interact? No reason to ask a question, no reason to answer a question?
Will they at least share their story? Their progress?
What's the solution?
The real question is: where is the value?
Is it in getting the answers to your questions, when AI can do that just as well? (Aside: One thing I've noticed is that AI, even the best models, generally won't give you ads advice that isn't explicitly given in documentation. My answers to Meta ads questions will sometimes differ from what AI will tell you and I'll have damn good experienced-backed reasons to say it. But the question is whether you'd think to ask forum members in the first place.)
Or is it in the reassurance that you are on the right path and shouldn't quit? The accountability to stay doing what you said you would do? The feeling of not being alone on a lonely path?
Maybe there's value that has yet to be tapped from a community like this?
In my personal view, the ideal Fastlane community is a mastermind: not of subject matter experts, but of people gaining experience together (no matter where they're at now). AI is reducing the need for subject matter experts as bounded advice is often good enough to move forward.
In this mastermind, people share their experiences, their views on things (no matter how controversial). They share their progress and their trials and tribulations. There has always been that side of the forum.
But this will always only appeal to a minority of people, and even fewer will create content for it. They don't want criticism, they'd prefer "gentle push-backs" a la Claude. They are afraid of their "idea being stolen". They don't want people to know how vulnerable (and broke) they really are.
It seems that the people who still get benefit from the forum are mainly using it to fulfill some social need, rather than a business one.
For groups 3 and 4, maybe the real value is access to potential investments before anyone else, but in the entire history of the forum those deals are rare.
Does the forum need a new direction in the AI era? Or do we need to accept that this place just isn't going to be as engaging?
Either way...
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