# Kevin Young, full text Every page of this site as Markdown, concatenated. Index and per-page files: https://kevinyoung.net/llms.txt --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/ \[Image: Kevin Young\] # Hey friends I take complicated systems apart and make them easier to [understand and use](https://kevinyoung.net/about.md). I'm Kevin Young, a web designer, AI trainer, entrepreneur, and writer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I write about what I'm learning, and I'm happy to speak when I can be useful. [Join the newsletter](https://kevinyoung.net/newsletter.md) [Book a talk](https://kevinyoung.net/speaking.md) As featured on [WMBF News](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/when-ai-flags-the-wrong-business.md), NBC Myrtle Beach Pro-How AI Use AI without losing the human side of your work. Pro-How AI, which I founded in 2016 as general technology training, now focuses on AI. It teaches small business owners in Myrtle Beach how to use it. [Check Out Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com) \[Image: A group of small business owners talking together in a bright, brick-walled meeting room\] Find my work at: - [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com) - [RdyToGo](https://rdytogo.com) - [Firebolt](https://fireboltweb.com) - [Meteor Forms](https://meteorforms.com) - [Effypop](https://effypop.com) - [TradeKit](https://tradekit.net) ## How Can I Help You? ### [Use AI in your business](https://pro-how.com) Learn to use AI without losing the human side of your work. Visit Pro-How AI ### [Understand roads and streets](https://commonwaysystem.org) A guide meant to be understandable by everyone, yet still useful for engineers. Explore Commonway System ### [Get a website](https://rdytogo.com) Websites for small business owners who have better things to do than learn HTML. Visit RdyToGo ### [Invite me to speak](https://kevinyoung.net/speaking.md) I'm happy to speak when I can be useful. Book a talk ### ... and more! [Explore all my work](https://kevinyoung.net/work.md) \[Image: Attendees at a Myrtle Beach WordPress Meetup sitting at tables with laptops while a presenter shows a screen at the front of the room\] ## Come to the WordPress Meetup I co-organize the Myrtle Beach WordPress Meetup, where people bring their WordPress questions and leave feeling more confident about managing their own websites. [Learn about the Meetup](https://pro-how.com/myrtle-beach-wordpress-meetup/) ## Hey, I'm Kevin Young I learned most of what I know by being confused first. In ninth grade I traded my free periods to a school IT staffer who agreed to teach me how computers work, and by graduation I had repaired hundreds of the school's machines. Along the way I found my favorite part of the work: watching someone else's confusion turn into clarity. Since then, I've mostly met people where they get stuck, through RdyToGo, Pro-How AI, and the Myrtle Beach WordPress Meetup. I write things down here, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and anyone is welcome to look in. [Read my full story](https://kevinyoung.net/about.md) \[Image: Kevin and Brett Young on the giant screen of the Nasdaq building in Times Square, New York City, while ringing the closing bell\] \[Image: Kevin Young smiling with his arms crossed in front of the RdyToGo logo on an office wall\] \[Image: Kevin Young standing with one foot up on a rock ledge, with blue sky and mountains behind him\] [See My Work](https://kevinyoung.net/work.md) [Read My Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) [Book a Talk](https://kevinyoung.net/speaking.md) ## Read My Latest Writing August 25, 2026 ### [The AI Coworker Trend Grok Bot Started Just Went Free](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ai-coworker-trend-grok-bot-free.md) View August 21, 2026 ### [Your Customers Can Smell AI Content. And Some of Them Are Walking Out.](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ai-slop-backlash-small-business.md) View August 12, 2026 ### [What Is Human-First AI and Why It Matters for Your Business](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/what-is-human-first-ai-and-why-it-matters.md) View June 4, 2026 ### [When AI flags the wrong business: what a local pet store can teach every small business owner](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/when-ai-flags-the-wrong-business.md) View May 4, 2026 ### [Stop Setting Up Zaps. Start Running Agents. The Small Business Automation Guide for 2026](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/stop-setting-up-zaps-start-running-agents.md) View April 13, 2026 ### [The Iceberg Nobody Warned You About](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/the-iceberg-nobody-warned-you-about.md) View April 6, 2026 ### [The Trap That Feels Like a Superpower](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/the-trap-that-feels-like-a-superpower.md) View September 23, 2017 ### [You Are Never Too Old To Learn](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/never-old-learn.md) View ## Explore My Work ### [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com) AI training, strategy, and automation View ### [RdyToGo](https://rdytogo.com) Web design, branding, and marketing View ### [Firebolt](https://fireboltweb.com) Fast, secure static WordPress hosting View ### [Meteor Forms](https://meteorforms.com) Online forms and matching PDFs View ### [Effypop](https://effypop.com) Arts and culture guide View ### [TradeKit](https://tradekit.net) AI-native operating system for small business View ## Join the Newsletter Written in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. I write about what I'm learning. Join and you'll hear when new posts go up. [Join the newsletter](https://kevinyoung.net/newsletter.md) [\[Image: Rosetta Places logo\]](https://rosettaplaces.com) [Rosetta Places](https://rosettaplaces.com) A framework for communities that are walkable, beautiful, ecological, and economically resilient. [\[Image: Commonway System logo\]](https://commonwaysystem.org) [Commonway System](https://commonwaysystem.org) A pattern language for roads and streets, with every claim cited to a source. [\[Image: WordPress Meetup logo\]](https://pro-how.com/myrtle-beach-wordpress-meetup/) [WordPress Meetup](https://pro-how.com/myrtle-beach-wordpress-meetup/) Where people bring their WordPress questions and leave feeling more confident. [\[Image: Better The World logo\]](https://better-the-world.net) [Better The World](https://better-the-world.net) The Myrtle Beach company behind six service brands, formed in 2025. --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/about/ # I learned most of what I know by being confused first. \[Image: Kevin Young\] ## Quick facts - Based in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina - Today, Better The World, LLC (owner, 2025) [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com), founder (2016); [RdyToGo](https://rdytogo.com), co-founder (2010); more brands on the [Work page](https://kevinyoung.net/work.md) - Today, independent projects (not part of Better The World) [Rosetta Places](https://rosettaplaces.com), founder (2026); [Commonway System](https://commonwaysystem.org), founder (2026) - Today, community [Myrtle Beach WordPress Meetup](https://pro-how.com/myrtle-beach-wordpress-meetup/), co-organizer - Earlier Hempfield Area School District, Assistant Educational Technologist (1998 to 2008); Hempfield Township Parks and Recreation, computer class instructor (1999 to 2000) - Education A.S., Computer Science (Computer Networking), Westmoreland County Community College (1998 to 2000); Computer and Information Science, Central Westmoreland Career and Technology Center (1998) - Credentials - NOCTI computer technology competency certificate (1998) - Pennsylvania Skills Certificates in Computer Programming and Computer Technology (1998) - Creating Aesthetic Cities, The Aesthetic City Academy (2026) **Training and courses** - Three AI courses from Anthropic - Career Essentials in Generative AI (Microsoft and LinkedIn) [Show more (22 on LinkedIn)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/youngkev/details/certifications/) - Awards Grand Prize, 2013 Foursquare Global Hackathon, with the RewardBoard app (teammates Joe Clarke and Mikkel Green); invited to ring the NASDAQ closing bell in Times Square - Languages English; learning Spanish and Portuguese - Press Interviewed as an AI expert source by [WMBF News](https://www.wmbfnews.com/2026/06/04/myrtle-beach-pet-store-fights-restore-facebook-page-after-ai-flagging/) (NBC Myrtle Beach), June 4, 2026 - Elsewhere [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/youngkev/), [GitHub](https://github.com/rdytogokev) ## My journey from questions to clarity ### Ninth grade Computers were the first thing I wanted to understand. I liked machines I could watch work, but electronics happen inside a box, and nobody could explain how. That drove me to figure it out. Thankfully, an opportunity presented itself in ninth grade. I traded my free periods, lunches, and homeroom to a school IT staffer who agreed to teach me in return. The principal okayed it as long as my grades held up. Fixing computers is mostly a long stretch of not knowing the solution, followed by a rewarding aha moment. By the time I graduated, I had repaired hundreds of the school's machines, and that's where I got hooked on that moment of clarity. ### Tech school Another moment of clarity came in high school. A classmate and I taught ourselves HTML (new and exciting at the time). Web pages had seemed like magic until we saw the code behind them. But our computer teacher saw our enthusiasm and turned our new hobby into a senior-year project. As a result, the whole class built the school's first website. ### After graduation Not long after I graduated high school, the school district hired me part-time. During this time, I started teaching computer classes for the local township's Parks and Recreation Department. One class had 24 adults, ages 32 to 82. The oldest was a woman who baked cakes for a living and had never touched a computer. On our first day of class, she struggled with clicking the mouse. She was holding it up in the air in front of the computer monitor. Not long after, she became my star student and eventually ran her whole business from a computer. Months later, she sent me a letter that ended: "It's not your age that prevents you from learning; it is your attitude." She was right, and I've never forgotten it. That's when I saw the other side of the moment I'd been chasing: watching someone else's confusion turn into clarity. It's still my favorite part of the work. ### 2000 and since I went full-time with the school district in 2000, after earning my associate's degree in computer science. Since then, I've mostly met people where they get stuck. RdyToGo, which my brother Brett and I started in 2010, builds websites for small business owners who have better things to do than learn HTML. Pro-How AI, which I founded in 2016 as general technology training and which now focuses on AI, teaches business owners to use it without losing the human side of their work. I also co-organize the Myrtle Beach WordPress Meetup, where people bring their questions and leave feeling more confident about managing their own websites. ### Passion projects Some of my passion projects grew out of confusion in everyday life. For instance, roads and streets shape everyone's day, yet few of us understand why they're built the way they are, or how that could be better. So, as an enthusiast, I am developing the Commonway System, a guide meant to be understandable by everyone, yet still useful for engineers. The guide is built on published evidence and professional standards, with sources cited. English spelling is another example, and it's harder than it needs to be. Since I was about twelve, I've been tinkering with a clearer alphabet, now a hobby project I call the Living English Alphabet. ### Why I write I don't always have the answer. Life still challenges me and my assumptions, which is why I write things down. This site is where I do that, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and anyone is welcome to look in as I muse, rant, and imagine what could be. ## Find my work at ### [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com) AI training, strategy, and automation pro-how.com ### [RdyToGo](https://rdytogo.com) Web design, branding, and marketing rdytogo.com ### [Commonway System](https://commonwaysystem.org) A pattern language for roads and streets commonwaysystem.org [Explore all my work](https://kevinyoung.net/work.md) I take complicated systems apart and make them easier to understand and use. [Join the newsletter](https://kevinyoung.net/newsletter.md) [Book a talk](https://kevinyoung.net/speaking.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/accessibility/ # Accessibility How kevinyoung.net works for people with different abilities, what has been tested, and what has not. This site is meant to be easy to read and use for everyone. The goal is to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA. That is a goal, not a certification, and this page says plainly what has and has not been checked. _Last updated: September 26, 2026._ ## What is built in - **Skip link.** The first Tab stop on every page jumps straight to the main content. - **Visible keyboard focus.** A two-ring outline shows where you are on any background, in both themes. - **Light and dark themes.** Use the sun and moon button. The site starts in light mode and remembers your choice. - **Display settings.** The "Aa" button opens a panel with text size (up to 150%), three reading fonts (Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible Next and OpenDyslexic), high contrast, a simplified view (one column, no decoration or animation), a reading ruler, a thicker focus outline, a large pointer and a pointer highlight. Your choices are saved on your device only. - **Text-only version of every page.** Find the link in the Display settings panel and in the footer. There is also a Markdown copy of every page, mainly for software. - **Search.** Press Ctrl+K (or Cmd+K), or use the magnifier button. It works from the keyboard, and results are announced. - **Text alternatives.** Meaningful images have alternative text. Purely decorative images are hidden from screen readers. - **Reduced motion.** Card hover movement stops when your device asks for reduced motion, and the simplified view removes animation and transitions altogether. - **Three languages.** The site is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese, with a language switcher in the menu and the footer. ## How it was checked On September 26, 2026, every page was scanned with the axe-core automated checker against the WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 A and AA rules and its best-practice rules, in light and dark themes, at desktop width and at a 375 pixel phone width. Problems it found were fixed, and the final scans came back clean. On a sample of pages, text at 150% was also checked at a 320 pixel width, and nothing scrolled sideways. Automated tools find only part of the possible problems, so this is a starting point and not proof of full conformance. ## What has not been tested - Navigating the whole site with a keyboard alone, by a person - Screen readers such as NVDA, JAWS and VoiceOver - Forced-colors (Windows high contrast) mode - Browser zoom at 200% and 400% - Real touch devices ## Known limitations - The Spanish and Portuguese text was drafted with the help of machine translation and is waiting for review by native speakers, so some wording may be awkward. - The reading ruler does nothing in forced-colors mode, by design, because it would hide the page. - A full review of the image descriptions in every post has not been done yet. ## Tell me about a problem If something on this site is hard to use, please let me know through the [Contact](https://kevinyoung.net/contact.md) page. Say which page it was, what you were trying to do and what got in the way. If you use assistive technology, mention which one. I will do my best to fix it, and I can send the content in another format if that helps. The [text-only version](https://kevinyoung.net/text/all-pages/) of any page is a good fallback in the meantime. --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/ai-policy/ # AI policy How AI was and was not used to make kevinyoung.net, and how to tell what is what. I use AI tools, and I would rather tell you how than leave you guessing. This page says where AI helped make this site, where it did not, and who is responsible for what is published. _Last updated: September 26, 2026._ ## The short version - This site was built with help from [Claude](https://www.anthropic.com/claude), an AI assistant made by Anthropic. Claude helped write the code and wrote first drafts of some text. - I review and approve what is published, and I am responsible for it. - The stories about my life are my own. AI did not invent them. - No AI system talks to you on this site, and nothing you do here is sent to an AI tool. ## How the site was built The design, code and features of this site were built in conversation with Claude, including Claude Code, Anthropic's coding assistant. That covers the layout, the light and dark themes, the Display settings, search, the text-only pages, the accessibility checks and much of the behind-the-scenes work. I decided what to build, looked at the results and asked for changes until they were right. ## The words on the site - The About page, my short bios and the descriptions of my work were drafted with Claude's help from facts and stories I supplied. I edited and approved them, and I asked for changes until they sounded like me and were accurate. - My posts are my own writing. I sometimes ask AI to check grammar and punctuation, and I decide which suggestions to accept. - Posts from my other businesses' newsletters are also mine, and are marked with where they first appeared. ## Translations The Spanish and Portuguese text was drafted with machine translation from the English. Friends who speak those languages natively are reviewing it, so until they finish it may contain awkward or wrong wording. The English version is the one to trust if they differ. ## Images The portrait on the home and About pages was generated with AI from a real photo of me. It keeps my likeness and changes the clothing and background. The other photos of me and my work are real photographs. Credits for photos from other people are shown next to them. ## What AI does not do here - There is no chatbot or AI assistant for visitors. - Nothing you type, search or click is given to an AI tool. Search runs in your browser, and the [Privacy policy](https://kevinyoung.net/privacy.md) explains the little that is collected. - AI is not used to make up quotes, reviews, credentials, sources or experiences. ## AI tools reading this site The site offers Markdown copies of its pages, `llms.txt` and `llms-full.txt` so AI tools can read it accurately. The [Terms and conditions](https://kevinyoung.net/terms.md) ask for a reasonable request rate and a credit to the source. ## If something is wrong AI can make mistakes, and so can I. If you spot an error, an odd translation or something that reads like it was written by a machine and should not have been, please tell me through the [Contact](https://kevinyoung.net/contact.md) page. I am responsible for fixing it. --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/contact/ # Contact Get in touch with Kevin Young. Contact details and a form are coming soon. Until then, you can find me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/youngkev/) or [GitHub](https://github.com/rdytogokev). --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/newsletter/ # Newsletter Join Kevin Young's newsletter. The signup form is coming soon, once the newsletter platform is set up. --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/privacy/ # Privacy policy What kevinyoung.net collects, what it does not, and the choices you have. This is a personal website run by Kevin Young in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It collects very little about you. This page explains what, and what you can do about it. _Last updated: September 26, 2026._ ## The short version - There are no accounts, no ads and no sale of personal information. - The site uses Google Analytics to count visits. That is the one tool that collects data about visitors. - Your theme, Display settings and searches stay on your device. - Forms for the newsletter and for contact are not live yet. Before they are, this page will be updated to say what they collect. ## What is collected when you visit **Google Analytics.** The site uses Google Analytics 4 to see which pages are read, roughly where visitors come from, and what kind of device and browser they use. It sets cookies to tell one visit from another. Google receives your IP address as part of the request, and Google says Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses. The data is not linked to your name, and I do not combine it with anything else. To opt out, use a browser or extension that blocks trackers, or install [Google's opt-out add-on](https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout). There is no cookie banner yet, so if you would rather not be counted, please use one of those options. **Hosting.** The site is hosted on Netlify. Like most hosts, Netlify keeps server logs that include your IP address, the time and the page requested, for security and operations. ## What stays on your device The theme you choose and your Display settings are saved in your browser's local storage under the names `ky-theme` and `ky-display-settings`. They are never sent anywhere and are not cookies. Search runs entirely in your browser, so what you type is not sent to me or to anyone else. You can clear these at any time by resetting the Display settings or clearing this site's data in your browser. ## Fonts and other sites The fonts are served from this site, not from a font service. The site has no embedded videos or social media widgets. The share buttons on posts are plain links that only contact LinkedIn, X or Facebook if you click them, and their own privacy policies then apply. The same goes for any link to another website. ## Newsletter and contact The newsletter signup and contact form are not live. When they are, they will collect what you type into them, such as your name and email address, and this policy will be updated before launch to say how it is used, who handles it and how to unsubscribe. ## Children This site is not directed at children under 13, and I do not knowingly collect information from them. ## Your choices Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask what data is held about you, or to have it deleted. Because visits are counted without your name, there is usually nothing I can tie to you, but you are welcome to ask through the [Contact](https://kevinyoung.net/contact.md) page. ## Changes If this policy changes, the date at the top will change with it. Changes that matter, such as a new form, will be described here before they take effect. --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/site-map/ # Site map Every page and post on this site in one list. ## Pages - [Home](https://kevinyoung.net/index.md) - [About](https://kevinyoung.net/about.md) - [Work](https://kevinyoung.net/work.md) - [Speaking](https://kevinyoung.net/speaking.md) - [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) - [Contact](https://kevinyoung.net/contact.md) - [Newsletter](https://kevinyoung.net/newsletter.md) - [Search this site](https://kevinyoung.net/search/) ## Policies - [Accessibility](https://kevinyoung.net/accessibility.md) - [Terms and conditions](https://kevinyoung.net/terms.md) - [Privacy policy](https://kevinyoung.net/privacy.md) - [AI policy](https://kevinyoung.net/ai-policy.md) ## Writing - [The AI Coworker Trend Grok Bot Started Just Went Free](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ai-coworker-trend-grok-bot-free.md) - [Your Customers Can Smell AI Content. And Some of Them Are Walking Out.](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ai-slop-backlash-small-business.md) - [What Is Human-First AI and Why It Matters for Your Business](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/what-is-human-first-ai-and-why-it-matters.md) - [When AI flags the wrong business: what a local pet store can teach every small business owner](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/when-ai-flags-the-wrong-business.md) - [Stop Setting Up Zaps. Start Running Agents. The Small Business Automation Guide for 2026](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/stop-setting-up-zaps-start-running-agents.md) - [The Iceberg Nobody Warned You About](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/the-iceberg-nobody-warned-you-about.md) - [The Trap That Feels Like a Superpower](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/the-trap-that-feels-like-a-superpower.md) - [You Are Never Too Old To Learn](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/never-old-learn.md) - [Taking Flight for the First Time](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/taking-flight-for-the-first-time.md) - [Use this game changer to scale your small business or startup](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/use-game-changer-scale-small-business-startup.md) ## Tools and files - [Text-only version of every page](https://kevinyoung.net/text/all-pages/) - [sitemap.xml (for search engines)](https://kevinyoung.net/sitemap.xml) - [RSS feed of new posts](https://kevinyoung.net/rss.xml) - [llms.txt (a guide for AI tools)](https://kevinyoung.net/llms.txt) - [llms-full.txt (every page as Markdown in one file)](https://kevinyoung.net/llms-full.txt) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/speaking/ # Speaking Talk topics and past events. Talk topics, past events, and a booking form are coming soon. --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/terms/ # Terms and conditions The terms for using kevinyoung.net. These terms cover your use of kevinyoung.net, a personal website run by Kevin Young. By using the site, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use it. _Last updated: September 26, 2026._ ## What this site is The site shares writing, information about my work and projects, and ways to reach me. It is provided for general information only. ## Not professional advice What I write about AI, business, websites, technology and other topics is general information and personal opinion. It is not legal, financial, tax, security or other professional advice, and it may not fit your situation. Results vary. Please check things that matter with a qualified professional. ## Content and copyright Unless a page says otherwise, the words, design and code on this site are mine, copyright Kevin Young, all rights reserved. You may quote short excerpts with a clear credit and a link back to the page. Please ask before republishing a whole post or page. Photos and illustrations credited to other people belong to them and are used under their own terms. Business names and logos mentioned on the site belong to their owners. ## Reading by software The Markdown copies of each page, `llms.txt` and `llms-full.txt` are there so people and AI tools can read the site respectfully. Please keep your request rate reasonable, do not overload the site, and credit the source when you use what you find. ## Links to other sites The site links to other websites and services, including my other businesses and projects. I do not control them and am not responsible for their content or practices. Their own terms and privacy policies apply. ## No warranty I try to keep the site accurate and working, but it is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind. Information may be out of date, and pages may change or disappear without notice. ## Limit of liability To the fullest extent the law allows, I am not liable for any loss or damage that comes from using the site or relying on what is on it. ## Acceptable use Please do not use the site to break the law, to attack or overload it, to try to get into parts you are not meant to reach, or to copy it wholesale. ## Governing law These terms are governed by the laws of the State of South Carolina, United States, without regard to conflict of law rules. ## Changes I may update these terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed, and continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the new terms. ## Contact Questions about these terms can be sent through the [Contact](https://kevinyoung.net/contact.md) page. Privacy is covered separately in the [Privacy policy](https://kevinyoung.net/privacy.md). --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/work/ # What I work on Most of my work lives in a handful of small brands, each built around one thing I got curious about. A few projects sit outside the company because they belong to me, not to a business. ## Better The World, LLC I own Better The World, a Myrtle Beach company behind six service brands. I formed it in 2025 to bring the brands I have built since 2010 under one roof. Its mission is to help entrepreneurs #BetterTheWorld. [Company site →](https://better-the-world.net) ### [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com) AI training, strategy, and automation Kevin Young is the founder of Pro-How AI, an AI training, strategy, and automation company for small business owners in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He has spent more than 25 years in technology and teaching, including a decade in school district technology and teaching computer classes to adults. He co-organizes the Myrtle Beach WordPress Meetup. His approach: understand the system deeply, then explain it so clearly that anyone can act on it. pro-how.com ### [RdyToGo](https://rdytogo.com) Web design, branding, and marketing Kevin Young is the owner of RdyToGo, the Myrtle Beach web design, branding, and marketing agency he co-founded with his brother Brett in 2010. Kevin works directly with clients, so the person who plans your project is the person who builds it. He has been building websites since the late 1990s. rdytogo.com ### [Firebolt](https://fireboltweb.com) Fast, secure static WordPress hosting Kevin Young started Firebolt in 2016 as a WordPress maintenance service. After years of cleaning up hacked sites and broken plugin updates, he switched to a simpler idea: turn a WordPress site into a fast, secure, pre-built copy, and manage everything for the client. Kevin runs every Firebolt account himself. fireboltweb.com ### [Meteor Forms](https://meteorforms.com) Online forms and matching PDFs Kevin Young started Meteor Forms in 2016 to save business owners the work of building their own online forms. Send in a paper form, and Meteor Forms builds the online version and a PDF export that matches your original layout. meteorforms.com ### [Effypop](https://effypop.com) In development Arts and culture guide Kevin Young founded Effypop in 2013 and named it for his two cats, Ephany and Poppy. It's a guide to the arts, culture, and creative people of the Grand Strand, from someone who has lived in Myrtle Beach since 2008. Effypop is still in development, with a Myrtle Beach pilot live today. effypop.com ### [TradeKit](https://tradekit.net) In development AI-native operating system for small business Kevin Young started TradeKit in 2018 after getting tired of stitching five tools together to run one company. It is a local-first, AI-native operating system for small business, still in development, with a CRM, invoicing, time tracking, and automations planned. tradekit.net ## Independent Projects These two are separate from Better The World. They are my own long-running curiosities about how places work. ### [Rosetta Places](https://rosettaplaces.com) Working draft Planning and advocacy for walkable, beautiful places Kevin Young is the founder of Rosetta Places, an independent planning and advocacy practice that defines and helps build communities that meet a higher standard for walkability, beauty, ecology, and economic resilience, for new construction and existing places alike. He has been drawing maps and redesigning streets since childhood, and he is building the framework in the open, one pillar at a time. rosettaplaces.com ### [Commonway System](https://commonwaysystem.org) A pattern language for roads and streets Kevin Young writes and maintains the Commonway System, a pattern language for roads and streets. He is an enthusiast and compiler, not a transportation professional, so the work rests on its citations. Each claim is cited to a source, and any claim not yet sourced is flagged. Plain language comes first, with technical detail beneath. commonwaysystem.org --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ # Writing I write things down to work out what I think. Some posts are only here, and some are reposts from the other places I write. ## Recent Posts August 25, 2026 ### [The AI Coworker Trend Grok Bot Started Just Went Free](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ai-coworker-trend-grok-bot-free.md) Grok Bot started the AI coworker trend, and two free alternatives followed fast. Here's what small business owners need to know before choosing one. Read More August 21, 2026 ### [Your Customers Can Smell AI Content. And Some of Them Are Walking Out.](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ai-slop-backlash-small-business.md) Small business customers are pushing back on obvious AI content. Here's what the backlash looks like and how to use AI without losing trust. Read More August 12, 2026 ### [What Is Human-First AI and Why It Matters for Your Business](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/what-is-human-first-ai-and-why-it-matters.md) Human-first AI uses AI to make your team more capable, not replace it. See what it means, why it matters, and how to start implementing it. Read More June 4, 2026 ### [When AI flags the wrong business: what a local pet store can teach every small business owner](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/when-ai-flags-the-wrong-business.md) A Myrtle Beach pet store lost 30% of its revenue after Meta's AI wrongly removed its Facebook page. Here is what happened, why it matters, and what you can do about it. Read More May 4, 2026 ### [Stop Setting Up Zaps. Start Running Agents. The Small Business Automation Guide for 2026](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/stop-setting-up-zaps-start-running-agents.md) Compare Zapier, Make.com, N8N, and the new wave of AI agents. An honest breakdown of every small business automation tool that matters in 2026, with clear guidance on which one to use. Read More April 13, 2026 ### [The Iceberg Nobody Warned You About](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/the-iceberg-nobody-warned-you-about.md) MIT just mapped where AI capabilities and human work actually overlap, and the results should change how every small business owner thinks about their next move. Read More April 6, 2026 ### [The Trap That Feels Like a Superpower](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/the-trap-that-feels-like-a-superpower.md) AI promised to save us time. So why does everyone feel busier than ever? The same trap that stole your evenings after the smartphone is quietly setting up again, and this time, you can see it coming. Read More September 23, 2017 ### [You Are Never Too Old To Learn](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/never-old-learn.md) A short story about the first computer class I ever taught, in 1999, and the lesson my oldest student taught me. Read More September 18, 2017 ### [Taking Flight for the First Time](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/taking-flight-for-the-first-time.md) A Discovery Flight, a secret gift from my brother, and the first time I took the controls of a Cessna over Murrells Inlet. Read More August 11, 2017 ### [Use this game changer to scale your small business or startup](https://kevinyoung.net/writing/use-game-changer-scale-small-business-startup.md) Why every small business or startup needs documented, trained, and monitored processes, told through the story of a sandwich kiosk. Read More --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ai-coworker-trend-grok-bot-free/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) Pro-How AI # The AI Coworker Trend Grok Bot Started Just Went Free Kevin Young August 25, 2026 \[Image: Three friendly cartoon AI characters, two with green checkmarks, standing side by side\] Originally published on Pro-How AI. [Read the original](https://pro-how.com/ai-coworker-trend-grok-bot-free/) In August 2026, three companies released a new kind of AI tool within days of each other, and all three are built around the same idea. Instead of one chatbot you have to keep re-explaining things to, you get a small team of AI “employees,” each one handling a different job, working even after you’ve closed your laptop for the night. Grok Bot started it, and it costs real money, somewhere between $60 and $300 a month. Two free alternatives followed almost immediately. For a small business owner, the question isn’t which one is fanciest. It’s whether any of them are ready to actually hand work to, and which one fits your budget and comfort level. _If you’re just getting familiar with [SpaceXAI’s Grok Bot](https://pro-how.com/grok-bot-for-small-business-what-it-can-and-cant-do/) itself, we’ve covered what it can and can’t do for your business in more depth. This piece picks up from there and looks at what showed up right behind it._ ## What is an "AI agent roster," and why did three of them launch in one week? Think of it like the difference between one overworked assistant trying to juggle everything, and a small team where each person owns one job. That’s what these tools do with AI. Instead of one chatbot you re-explain things to every time, you get a few AI "employees," each one remembers its own job, keeps working on it even after you’ve logged off, and reports back when it’s done. Picture it like this. One agent’s whole job is watching your inbox and flagging anything urgent. Another one’s job is pulling together a summary of what happened while you were closed. A third one’s job is drafting the social media post you keep meaning to write. You’re not managing one assistant with a growing to-do list. You’re managing a small, specialized team, except none of them need a paycheck, a desk, or a lunch break. Here’s what that actually looked like in practice. In one of the [first real examples to surface after Grok Bot’s launch](https://www.explainx.ai/blog/grok-bot-real-world-use-cases-august-2026), a small plumbing company had its office admin, the daily grind of paperwork and follow-ups that eats an owner’s morning, handed off to one of these AI agents and running inside a single day. That’s the actual shift worth paying attention to. Not the technology itself, but what a business owner gets their time back for. Three different companies built a version of this within a week of each other. [xAI’s Grok Bot launched on August 11](https://www.unite.ai/xai-launches-grok-bot-always-on-ai-teammates-with-their-own-cloud-computers/). A free alternative called [OpenMausBot](https://github.com/milind-soni/OpenMausBot) followed within days. Nous Research shipped its own free version, called [Bot Mode](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/bot-mode), inside an existing tool called Hermes Agent, on August 16 and 17. One costs money, two are free. What differs isn’t really what they do. It’s how much you pay, how much control you keep, and how proven each one is. That’s what the rest of this article walks through. ## How much does Grok Bot actually cost? Right now, the cheapest way in runs about $60 a month, and the most expensive option runs $300 a month. xAI has [changed the pricing twice in the two weeks since launch](https://cellcog.ai/blog/grok-bot-pricing/), so treat this range as a snapshot rather than a fixed number, and check the current price before you commit. Here’s why the range is so wide. Grok Bot isn’t sold on its own. You get access to it by subscribing to certain plans from two different companies, xAI and a coding tool called Cursor, which [recently merged with xAI’s parent company](https://netalith.com/blogs/ai-tools/what-is-grok-bot). That’s part of why the pricing is confusing even for people who follow this closely. The cheapest entry point, Cursor’s Pro+ plan, only opened up in the last few days, and it wasn’t available at launch. For a business owner, the practical move is to budget for this like a real monthly expense, not a one-time purchase. And because the pricing has already shifted twice in two weeks, don’t assume the number you read today will still be accurate in a month. ## Is OpenMausBot stable enough to actually use? It’s real, and it works, but it’s genuinely early. [OpenMausBot](https://github.com/milind-soni/OpenMausBot) is a free program built by an independent developer that does basically the same job as Grok Bot, except it runs on your own computer instead of in the cloud. Free means no monthly fee for the tool itself. You’ll still need an AI subscription you may already have, like Claude or ChatGPT’s coding tools, for it to actually run on. Think of OpenMausBot as the app that organizes and directs the work, not the AI brain doing the work itself. The person who built it describes its current state himself this way. > Early but real. > Milind Soni, OpenMausBot creator He means the core idea works end to end, but some conveniences aren’t fully built yet. As of this writing, scheduling it to run tasks automatically on its own is still a placeholder feature rather than something fully working. It’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux computers. This is a good fit for a business owner who likes trying new things early and doesn’t mind some rough edges while they get ironed out. It’s not yet the right pick for someone who wants to install something once and never think about it again. ## What makes Hermes Bot Mode different from the other two? This one has the safest reputation of the three, because it’s not a brand-new experiment. It’s a new feature added onto a tool called [Hermes Agent](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent), which has been around for a while and is already widely used, with hundreds of thousands of people using the underlying project. [Bot Mode](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/bot-mode) is built so that it never actually owns anything of yours. Every AI agent you create through it is really just a saved configuration underneath, the same kind Hermes Agent has always used. If you turn Bot Mode off, nothing you built with it disappears. It’s more like rearranging furniture in a room you already own than rebuilding the house from scratch. That’s the kind of detail that matters more to a business owner than any technical spec. Whatever you build here isn’t locked in, and there’s very little to lose by trying it. ## What can a small business actually do with one of these tools? The specific use falls into a handful of repeatable categories, and mostly, it doesn’t matter which of the three tools you use to do it. All three can be pointed at the same kind of job. If this kind of hands-off automation is new territory for you, [our roundup of free AI tools](https://pro-how.com/the-best-free-ai-tools-for-small-businesses-in-2026/) and [our guide to running AI agents instead of basic Zaps](https://pro-how.com/stop-setting-up-zaps-start-running-agents-the-small-business-automation-guide-for-2026/) are good starting points before you pick a specific tool. Picture the plumbing company again, mentioned earlier in this article. The daily grind of paperwork and follow-ups, the stuff that eats an owner’s morning before the actual plumbing work even starts, got handed to an AI agent and running inside a single day. Or picture a small print shop with dozens of jobs in progress at once. It’s easy to lose track of what’s where when everything lives in your head or a messy spreadsheet. [One shop owner](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-stories) set up an AI agent to keep a running, organized list of every job’s status, so nothing falls through the cracks during a busy week. Or picture a business owner who knows they should be reaching out to potential customers but never has the uninterrupted time to research them first. An AI agent can do that homework overnight, pulling together a short, ready-to-use list by the time you sit down with your coffee in the morning. None of this requires picking the single "best" tool first. It requires picking the one repetitive task that eats the most of your time, and then picking whichever of the three tools fits your budget and your comfort level with new software. ## Which one should a small business owner actually try first? If you want the safest way to test the idea without spending anything, start with Hermes Bot Mode. It’s built on something already proven, and there’s very little risk in trying it. If you’d rather pay for a version that’s fully managed for you and skip any setup, Grok Bot is the more polished, done-for-you option, as long as the $60 to $300 monthly cost fits your budget. If you enjoy trying new things early and don’t mind some rough edges while a young project catches up to its own ambitions, OpenMausBot is worth a look, especially since it’s free and now available on Mac, Windows, and Linux. None of these choices is permanent. The fastest way to figure out which one actually fits your business is to pick the one task eating the most of your time and try handing it off. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is an "AI coworker"? **It’s a named AI agent that handles one specific job on its own, like watching an inbox or researching leads, and keeps working on it even after you’ve stopped actively using it.** Instead of one assistant juggling everything, you get a small team where each member owns a task. ### How much does Grok Bot cost? **As of this writing, plans start around $60 a month and go up to $300 a month, depending on which subscription tier you choose.** Pricing has changed twice since its August 2026 launch, so check current pricing before committing. ### Is OpenMausBot really free? **The software itself is free with no subscription fee.** You do need an existing AI subscription, such as Claude or ChatGPT’s coding tools, for it to actually run on. ### What is Hermes Bot Mode? **It’s a free feature built into Hermes Agent, an established open-source AI tool, that lets you create a roster of specialized AI agents instead of one general assistant.** ### Do I need to know how to code to use any of these? **No.** All three are designed to be used through chat, the same way you’d message a person. Some initial setup is more technical than others, which is one of the differences worth weighing before you choose. ### Is my business information safe with a brand-new AI tool like this? **All three are early-stage products, and it’s worth treating them the way you’d treat any new vendor.** Start with lower-stakes tasks, review what the AI produces before it goes anywhere public or customer-facing, and give it more responsibility only once you trust how it performs. Want help putting this into practice? Learn more at [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com/). [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/ai-slop-backlash-small-business/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) Pro-How AI # Your Customers Can Smell AI Content. And Some of Them Are Walking Out. Kevin Young August 21, 2026 \[Image: Hands cooking a meal in a wok on a home kitchen stove\] Originally published on Pro-How AI. [Read the original](https://pro-how.com/ai-slop-backlash-small-business/) A restaurant in Galveston apologized for posting AI-generated photos of its dishes, and a viral comment explained why it mattered: some customers now choose the business that keeps it human. Here’s where the line sits between helpful AI and AI slop, and how to stay on the right side of it. ## What does "AI slop" actually mean for a small business? AI slop is content produced with no human judgment in the loop: generated images standing in for real products, generic articles with no lived experience behind them, stock-style posts that could belong to any business in any town. Customers are developing an eye for it, and the reaction isn’t neutral. In the Galveston case, the apology worked because the real photos were better than the fake ones. The food looked specific. It looked like that kitchen, that day, that owner’s hands. The lesson isn’t “never use AI.” It’s that customers forgive AI in your operations far more readily than AI in your identity. Nobody in those threads cared if the restaurant used software to schedule shifts or answer the phone. They cared about being shown a fake plate of food and asked to want it. ## Where does the line sit between helpful AI and AI slop? A working line: AI can draft, sort, schedule, summarize, and answer. AI should not pretend. **Fine:** AI drafts your newsletter, you rewrite it with one real story from your week. AI answers the phone at 9pm and books the appointment. AI summarizes your reviews so you can spot patterns. **Not fine:** AI-generated photos of dishes you serve, products you stock, or rooms you rent. AI testimonials. AI-written “about us” copy describing a founder story no human wrote. The distinction tracks something customers already believe: using a tool is honest, impersonating your own business is not. ## Why is this backlash happening now? Two reasons, visible in the same month’s data. First, volume. As more businesses generate content, the average quality of AI marketing drops, and customers calibrate to the average. Second, a counter-signal is forming. A widely shared Reddit thread where a designer’s father replaced her work with AI output drew over a thousand comments, most siding with the human work. On Hacker News, an ECB blog post predicting an AI market correction made the rounds. The mood is shifting from “AI is impressive” to “prove you’re still a real business.” That shift is an opening. If some of your competitors are filling their feeds with generated content, the business that shows real photos, real names, and real specifics becomes more distinctive, not less. ## How do you use AI without becoming the slop example? Three habits that hold up: **Use AI where the customer never sees the seam.** Phone answering, appointment booking, lead follow-up, inbox triage. These save real hours and customers experience them as responsiveness, not fakery. **Keep one human fingerprint in everything public.** One specific detail per post: the street you’re on, the customer you helped Tuesday, the actual dish. Specific nouns are also what search engines and AI assistants look for when they recommend businesses, so honesty and visibility point the same direction. **If you must use AI imagery, label it or skip it.** The Galveston apology worked because it was honest. The original post didn’t, because it wasn’t. ## What this looks like done right The strongest version of Human-First AI is a business where the customer can’t find the AI and wouldn’t mind if they could. The phone gets answered at midnight by an agent that books the job. The follow-up email arrives in two minutes. The photos, the voice, and the story are unmistakably one human’s. That combination is becoming rare enough to be a competitive advantage. ### Is using AI for marketing content wrong? No. The problem is AI content that misrepresents your business: fake product photos, invented testimonials, generic posts with nothing real in them. AI drafting that you edit and ground in real details is fine and increasingly normal. ### Will customers actually notice AI-generated images? Often, yes, and the ones who notice talk. The Galveston restaurant case drew enough attention that the owners issued a public apology within days. ### What's the safest way for a small business to use AI? Behind the scenes: answering calls, booking appointments, following up on leads, organizing your inbox. Customers experience this as better service, not less authenticity. ### Does human-made content perform better than AI content? The evidence is directional, not settled. What’s clear is that obviously artificial content now carries reputational risk, and specific, real content earns engagement and trust that generic content doesn’t. ### How do I start using AI the right way? Pick one back-office task that eats your week, automate it properly, and keep your public-facing content human. If you want help deciding where to start, that’s exactly what we do. Want help putting this into practice? Learn more at [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com/). [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/never-old-learn/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) kevinyoung.net # You Are Never Too Old To Learn Kevin Young September 23, 2017 \[Image: Never Stop Learning\] [Free-Photos](https://pixabay.com/users/Free-Photos/) / Pixabay This short story describes a character-building moment that defines my personality to this day. I have intentionally left out names. The year was 1999, late September, and everyone was settling into the routine of the new school year. The weather was starting to cool down, and evenings were coming earlier each day. After school, you could hear the rumblings of the football team practicing outside and the consistent interval of the marching band drumming along as they circled the building during their drills. The school district had one high school, three middle schools, and six elementary schools. In addition to the schools, we had various administration and support staff buildings, including a warehouse, bus garage, and an old house where the food service department was headquartered with some of the most delightful older ladies you could ever meet. These buildings were spread across several towns and a sprawling township in suburban Pittsburgh. To sum it up, we had an extensive school district. Now that the initial bustle of the new school year was out of the way, the people of southwestern Pennsylvania do what they do best. They find activities to keep them busy during the long slumber of winter that will soon overtake the region. Football parties (where you could eat the same five things each week and still experience a unique well-prepared culinary interpretation every time) are and have always been a mainstay of Steeler Country. However, many of the residents in the area participate in other activities. Continuing education and indoor activities were a hit because they involved becoming engrossed in some hobby or interest that helps keep the mind off the depressing weather that the region features. ## Keeping busy So, every year the local recreation department and the school district work together to schedule fun courses and activities for those who are so inclined. Often, the school district provides the space for such events to take place once the school day is complete. The recreation department would then round up instructors and organize everything. Now at the time, I was a young professional starting out on my career in technology. Each morning I would soldier through my many college classes while pursuing my degree in Computer Science with a specialization in Networking. Then I changed gears at midday and worked part-time at the school district as an assistant to the district’s ONLY technologist. Just think about the challenging and absorbing task the two of us faced. We supported the entire IT infrastructure of the school district: 15 buildings, computers in every classroom, seven labs in the high school, two in each middle school, and a lab in each elementary school. We served 800 staff members, thousands of students, and the administration. With multiple computer networks, Internet connectivity, and a website to maintain, I often wonder how we pulled it off. My boss was impressive, especially considering that five years earlier, he was a middle school librarian. The district recognized his aptitude for technology and made him into the whole I.T. department rolled into one man. You can see why I hold tremendous respect for him. He did not have formal training to support this system, yet he kept things running smoothly. He was a machine. Looking at my daily routine back then makes me feel old now. I worked around the clock and never seemed to run out of energy and stamina. ## A new direction One afternoon while working in the dungeon, as we called our office, the boss man answered the phone. After a few uh-huhs, he says, “I’ll ask him and let you know.” So it turns out that the recreation department wanted to offer computer classes to senior citizens and adults. It seems that they could not find anyone brave enough to do it. \[Image: The dungeon, our office.\] The dungeon \[Image: A workstation area in the dungeon.\] A work area in the back room \[Image: Hallway in the high school.\] Hallway at the high school You have to remember that the year was 1999. Older, that is, more experienced people did not seem to like computers. I remember hearing my dad’s generation saying things like “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks,” and “You kids need to study math and skills that matter, and not rely on a computer to do everything for you.” While I can’t argue that core skills are essential, these people were just making excuses because they did not want to learn computers. And these were the people they wanted me, a 19-year-old, to teach. Well, I needed the money and liked the idea of teaching. I figured I taught people all day long anyway. Many computer problems come from a lack of understanding of tech. So teaching people was part of how I solved computer problems. Since this was my first time teaching a class, I wanted to prepare well. I worked up a course syllabus, study guides, and other support material. I created a quiz and designed a certificate of completion. I wanted my students to walk away from this course with a new skill and be proud of it. So, I decided to teach it workshop style and commended everyone for what they had learned. The course included up to six two-and-a-half-hour classes set a week apart. They started at 6:30 PM (right after my regular workday ended). I would not get home until 9 or 10 back then, but I loved every minute. ## The first class I remember the very first class vividly. I am at the front of a high school classroom, with the previous teacher’s notes still scribbled on the whiteboard behind me. As I looked out at the group that I would soon come to call friends, I felt the pressure mounting. The room had about 24 adults ranging from 32 to 82 years old. There was a single parent whose kids were in a different activity down the hall. She just got off work and barely made it to class on time. Next, a 60-something couple: the husband was there because his wife wanted to try something new. He was entirely uninterested, with his nose buried in a magazine most of the time; she was upset that he wasn’t cooperating. Especially pressuring was the retired elementary school teacher who surely was wondering why I was allowed to teach this class. The student who stood out the most, however, was the most senior member of our group. She was an 82-year-old cake maker. An entrepreneur and craftswoman who was as sweet as her product. She entered the classroom with absolutely no knowledge of computers. She did not know how to turn one on. She had a pink pen with a homemade, artsy-crafty heart attached to the eraser. Her notepad was filled with details just minutes into the first lesson. Now, my plan for the first lesson focused on the basics. How to properly turn a computer on and off, use a mouse, and learn the names of the main components of a computer system, such as the tower, screen, keyboard, and printer. After we got through the basic terminology, it was time to put everything into practice. The whole group turned on the computers, waited for them to boot up, and reached the login screen. This might seem trivial to you, but this was as compelling to them as driving a car for the first time. You wouldn’t believe how helpful it was to have a login screen. It prevented the students from clicking the wrong things. So nothing crazy happened, and I didn’t have to run around and undo mistakes. The next big challenge for everyone was learning the mouse. Now, I instructed everybody to place their hands on the computer mouse and get a sense of how it makes the pointer glide around the screen. The room got quiet as everyone experienced the sensation of a computer reacting to their movement. I instructed them to click the ‘login’ button saying, “Now, go ahead and put the mouse over the ‘login’ button and give it a click.” After a moment, I asked, “How is it going? Did everyone log in successfully?” After about a minute, one hand raised up from the center of the room. “Mr. Young,” my oldest student quietly squeaked, “it’s not working for me. Can you help me?” It was a strange feeling being called “Mister Young.” I walked over and asked her to repeat what she was doing. Reassuringly, I said, “Maybe I will be able to see what went wrong.” To my surprise, she picked up the mouse off the desk and lifted it into the air! She held it in front of her computer screen. Then, with her other hand, she pressed the mouse button. While trying to turn my head aside, I noticed the lady across from her had a silly grin and big eyes. I, too, had to bite my tongue for just a second. It was hard to keep my composure, but I did not want to make her feel bad. I said, “You know, I think I might know why it didn’t work.” Imagine explaining why the mouse must stay on the desk to operate it, but I did. After some practice, she became so excited as it worked for the first time that everyone was moved to clap and cheer her on. I had to help other students overcome similar struggles with clicking too. They would position the mouse in the correct spot. But then lift their entire hand off the mouse before clicking the button. Moving like this made the mouse slide away and messed up what they were doing. This story seems implausible today with iPhones and almost everyone using technology, but it happened. Later during that first class, she told me that she wanted to learn computers to help her track her business finances. I remember thinking her goal was a tall order for someone who had just learned the mouse, followed by group applause. What do you say to that? ## The defining moment As the weeks progressed, however, she bought a computer and made incredible progress. She especially enjoyed Microsoft Excel. It was a perfect solution for her financial tracking needs. She became my best student. Before long, it was our last class together. I remember having an extended Q-and-A session. It felt like there was no end to the questions my students had. As I wrapped up my closing remarks and congratulated everyone on the progress they made, I gave special commendation to my star pupil. Despite the frigid conditions that late October had in store outside, it was a warm occasion. Everyone was sad that the class was over and eager to know when the next one was scheduled. It was bittersweet saying goodbye. I did enjoy all the chocolates and gifts, though. Now, months later, I was halfway through my next group’s set of lessons. Things were going well, but this new class did not have the interest level that the first had. I was considering whether there was some truth to the “old dogs… new tricks” philosophy. But then, I received a letter from the recreation office. It was my star student. In her touching note, she shared her excitement over her new computer skills and told me that her whole business operates from a computer now. She thanked me sincerely and encouraged me to keep teaching. I was seriously moved. > It’s not your age that prevents you from learning; it is your attitude! That day, I realized that I was the student after all. She was my instructor, not by word but by example. She taught me that it’s not your age that prevents you from learning. It is your attitude! I hope that many years from now, after many football seasons have passed when I am 82 years old, I will still be eagerly learning new things and never let anything hold me back. Maybe then, some wide-eyed go-getting 19-year-old will learn from my example and keep the buck moving forward. I hope the same for you. [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/stop-setting-up-zaps-start-running-agents/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) Pro-How AI # Stop Setting Up Zaps. Start Running Agents. The Small Business Automation Guide for 2026 Kevin Young May 4, 2026 \[Image: A small business owner working on a laptop at a desk in a bright office\] Originally published on Pro-How AI. [Read the original](https://pro-how.com/stop-setting-up-zaps-start-running-agents-the-small-business-automation-guide-for-2026/) You set up a few Zaps. Maybe a Make.com scenario or two. New contact hits your form, goes into your CRM, and sends a welcome email. Clean. Automatic. Done. That was the game in 2022. In 2026, it’s the floor, not the ceiling. A **new category of tools** has arrived that doesn’t just move data between apps. It reasons. It makes decisions. It wakes up at 3 am, checks your inbox, drafts responses, files things, and flags what actually needs your attention. These aren’t automation workflows. They’re agents. And they change what’s possible for a solo operator or small team in ways that Zapier simply wasn’t built for. **This guide covers the full landscape**: the three workflow automation platforms most small businesses are already choosing between, and the two emerging agent categories that are starting to make those platforms look limited. We’ll also be honest about who each one is actually for, because the most powerful tool is useless if you can’t run it. ## The Workflow Automation Platforms: Make.com, Zapier, and N8N These three tools share the same core idea: connect your apps, define a trigger, define an action, and automate the handoff. They differ significantly in how deep you can go, how much they cost, and how much technical comfort they provide. ### What Is Zapier? Zapier is the most widely adopted no-code automation platform, and for good reason. Its library of 7,000+ app integrations is the largest in this category, its interface is the most beginner-friendly of the three, and you can have a working automation (called a “Zap”) running in minutes without touching a single line of code. It handles multi-step Zaps, filters, delays, and conditional logic well enough for most small business needs. If you want to automatically send new customer details from your online store into your CRM so your team can follow up immediately, Zapier does that cleanly and reliably. Where Zapier starts to strain is cost and complexity. Its task-based pricing adds up faster than most small business owners expect once you move beyond simple two-step automations. And when you need workflows that branch, loop, or adapt based on what they find, you’re pushing against what it was designed for. **Zapier is the right fit if** you need quick setup, the broadest possible app coverage, and relatively linear workflows. ### What Is Make.com? Make.com (formerly Integromat) takes a more visual, canvas-based approach. You build “scenarios” by connecting modules on a drag-and-drop board, which makes complex, branching workflows easier to see and manage than Zapier’s linear structure. Its 1,400+ app integrations cover most common business tools, and it goes deeper on workflow logic: conditional branching, error handling, parallel processing, and data transformation. For a business running automations that need to respond differently depending on what they find. Different paths for different customer segments, for example. Make.com’s architecture handles that more naturally. Pricing is operations-based rather than task-based. In practical terms, this often makes Make significantly more economical than Zapier at the same workflow volume, and the gap grows as your automations get more complex. **Make.com is the right fit if:** You need more visual control over complex, multi-branch workflows and want better pricing at scale. ### What Is N8N? N8N is the open-source option. You can self-host it for free with the Community Edition, which includes 400+ core integrations, unlimited workflows, and unlimited executions, with no license fees. That makes it the most cost-effective of the three for businesses willing to manage their own infrastructure. Its technical ceiling is the highest of the three. N8N supports JavaScript and Python inline, direct database connections, and is the most capable of the three platforms for building workflows that start to behave agentically, meaning they can adapt and make decisions dynamically rather than just following fixed rules. The tradeoff is setup friction. N8N rewards technical users and punishes those who aren’t comfortable with Docker or server administration. The paid cloud option reduces that friction but narrows the cost advantage. Worth noting: n8n’s own documentation recommends self-hosting only for users experienced at managing servers. **N8N is the right fit if:** You’re technically comfortable, want maximum flexibility, or need to self-host for cost or compliance reasons. ### A Note on Pabbly Connect Worth mentioning for the sake of completeness: **Pabbly Connect** (pabbly.com/connect) is a Zapier alternative that often gets overlooked. It connects 2,000+ apps, offers a visual workflow builder, and is trusted by 14,000+ businesses. Its standout feature is a lifetime-deal pricing model that makes it particularly attractive to budget-conscious small businesses that find Zapier’s recurring, task-based costs unsustainable. If you’re evaluating options and cost predictability matters, it’s worth a look before committing to any of the three above. ### A note on where we come in At Pro-How AI, we help small business owners figure out which of these platforms fits their actual situation, and then set it up so it runs without them having to babysit it. That includes CRM automation, lead routing, follow-up sequences, and done-for-you workflow builds across Make.com, Zapier, and N8N. If you’re not sure where to start, [an AI strategy session](https://pro-how.com/contact) is a good first move. ## Comparing the Three: Side by Side | Feature | Make.com | Zapier | N8N | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Integrations | 1,400+ apps | 7,000+ apps | 400+ core nodes + unlimited custom | | Workflow complexity | Advanced: conditional logic, parallel processing | Moderate: multi-step, filters, delays | Most advanced: code-level control, agentic workflows | | Ease of use | Visual, moderate learning curve | Easiest, most beginner-friendly | Steeper, best for technical users | | Pricing model | Operations-based, scales better at volume | Task-based, adds up quickly at scale | Free self-hosted; cloud from €24/month | | Self-hosting | No | No | Yes, full control | | Agentic capability | Limited | Limited | Strong native support | | Best for | Mid-size teams needing visual power | Small businesses, quick setup | Technical users, maximum flexibility | * * * ## The Next Level: AI Agents Here’s where the conversation shifts. Everything above is reactive. You build a workflow, it fires when a trigger happens, it follows the path you defined. Change the inputs and you need to change the workflow. AI agents work differently. You give them a goal, access to tools, and context. They figure out the steps. They handle exceptions. They remember what they’ve learned. They can run while you sleep and surface only what actually needs a human decision. This is not a theoretical distinction. It’s a practical one that’s showing up in how small businesses operate right now. There are two meaningful sub-categories here, aimed at genuinely different users. ### Developer-Grade Agents: Claude Code and OpenAI Codex Claude Code (from Anthropic) and Codex (from OpenAI) are powerful agentic tools built primarily for developers and technically oriented operators. They live in your terminal or IDE, read your actual codebase, write and execute code, run tests, manage files, and submit changes, all autonomously. For a small business owner who is also their own developer, or who has one on staff, these tools are transformative. Claude Code can audit your site overnight, identify issues, and open pull requests with fixes before you’ve had your morning coffee. Codex can run multiple parallel workstreams simultaneously, making it well-suited for teams managing several projects at once. The honest caveat: these tools assume significant technical comfort. If you’re not living in a terminal, they’re not designed for you. They’re also primarily coding and development tools, powerful for building and maintaining technical systems, but not a general-purpose business automation layer. **Who they’re for:** Developers, technical founders, and businesses where the operator is comfortable with command-line workflows and wants AI working directly inside their codebase. ### Personal Agents: OpenClaw and Hermes Agent OpenClaw and Hermes Agent represent a different vision: a personal AI agent that lives on your own server, connects to your messaging apps, and handles tasks across your digital life, not just your codebase. **OpenClaw** (open-source, MIT licensed) acts as a local gateway between an AI model of your choosing and every tool you already use. It connects to WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, iMessage, email, your file system, your browser, and more. You message it like you’d message a person. It executes. Users are running it to clear inboxes, manage calendars, automate research, and coordinate multi-step tasks, all from a text message sent while they’re away from their desk. Setup requires technical confidence, and both tools are best run on a dedicated home server or equivalent local infrastructure rather than a VPS, which introduces security exposure that undercuts the whole point of running your own agent. **Hermes Agent** (also open-source, from Nous Research) takes a different architectural approach centered on a learning loop. Most agents start fresh every session. Hermes builds persistent memory, creates reusable “skills” from tasks it completes, and gets measurably more capable the longer it runs. For repetitive, structured workflows (a daily briefing, a recurring research task, a weekly report), Hermes compounds in value over time in a way that stateless tools simply don’t. ### Managing multiple agents: Paperclip If you find yourself running more than one agent, or want to think about your AI setup the way you’d think about a team, **Paperclip** (paperclip.ing) is worth knowing about. It’s an open-source, self-hosted control plane for AI agents that gives you an org chart, goals, tasks, budgets, and agent templates in one place. One community member put it well: “OpenClaw is an employee. Paperclip is the company.” It’s early-stage but genuinely interesting for anyone building a multi-agent setup. **Who these tools are for:** Technical users and solo operators who want a truly autonomous personal agent across all their tools, and who are prepared to configure and maintain it themselves. ## Comparing the Agent Category | Feature | Claude Code / Codex | OpenClaw / Hermes Agent | | --- | --- | --- | | Primary use | Code, development, technical workflows | General-purpose personal agent across all tools | | Interface | Terminal / IDE | Messaging apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, etc.) | | Setup difficulty | High, developer-focused | High, self-hosted, technical configuration required | | Best for | Developers and technical operators | Solo operators who want an always-on personal agent | | Self-hosting | Partial (Claude Code is local; Codex is cloud-based) | Yes, runs on your own server or local infrastructure | | Cost | Subscription + API usage | Free (open-source) + API/model costs | | Learning over time | Limited session memory | Hermes has persistent memory and self-improving skills | | Security considerations | Moderate, scoped to codebase and dev tools | High: broad system and account access requires careful setup and local hosting | | Small business readiness | Ready for technical founders | Early adopter territory, powerful but not plug-and-play | * * * ## So Which One Should You Actually Use? The honest answer depends on two things: **what you’re trying to automate**, and **how much technical friction** you’re willing to absorb. **Start with Zapier** if you’re new to automation and want something running this week without a learning curve. Connect your lead form to your CRM. Automate your follow-up emails. Get the basics working. It’s the fastest path from zero to functional. **Move to Make.com** when your workflows outgrow Zapier’s linear structure or its pricing stops making sense. Make handles complexity better and costs less at volume. **Look at Pabbly Connect** if recurring subscription costs are a concern. The lifetime pricing model is genuinely different from anything Zapier or Make offers, and the integration coverage is solid. **Consider N8N** if you’re technically comfortable and want maximum control, especially if self-hosting matters for cost or data reasons, or if you need custom integrations that the other platforms don’t support. **Add Claude Code or Codex** if you’re a developer or technical operator who wants AI working directly inside your systems. These tools don’t replace your workflow automation layer. They add an intelligent execution layer on top of it. **Watch OpenClaw and Hermes Agent** if you’re drawn to the idea of a personal agent that handles tasks across your entire digital environment. Run them on dedicated local infrastructure rather than a VPS if you go that route. Both are worth understanding now, even if you’re not ready to run them today. ## The Bigger Picture The tools in this guide aren’t competing with each other as a comparison article usually implies. Most serious operators end up running more than one. A Zapier or Make.com layer handles the routine app-to-app handoffs. N8N handles the more complex, custom logic. An agent layer handles the things that require judgment. That’s a more sophisticated stack than most small businesses have today. But the gap between businesses that are building it and those that aren’t is widening in 2026 in ways that will be hard to close later. If you’re not sure where you sit on that spectrum, that’s exactly what an AI strategy session is for. We work with small business owners to map their current workflows, identify the highest-value automation opportunities, and build a practical roadmap, whether that means setting up your first Zap or standing up a full automation and agent stack. [Start the conversation here.](https://pro-how.com/contact) The tools exist. The question is whether you’re using them. ## Sources and Fact-Check Notes All statistics and product claims in this article were verified against primary sources and recent third-party reviews as of May 2026. **Zapier** - Integration count (7,000+): Verified via Zapier’s [pricing page](https://zapier.com/pricing) and [app directory](https://zapier.com/apps). Note: Some sources cite 6,000–9,000, depending on how premium apps are counted. The figure 7,000+ reflects the most consistently cited current number. - Task-based pricing: Confirmed via [zapier.com/pricing](https://zapier.com/pricing). Free tier: 100 tasks/month. Professional: from $19.99/month for 750 tasks. - Pricing restructured in 2025: Confirmed. Filter, Formatter, and Paths steps no longer count toward task limits. **Make.com** - Integration count (1,400+): Verified via [Make’s integrations page](https://www.make.com/en/integrations) and independent 2026 reviews. Some third-party sources cite up to 3,000 when including community-contributed integrations; the 1,400+ figure reflects officially supported native integrations. - Operations-based pricing: Confirmed via [Make’s pricing page](https://www.make.com/en/pricing). Core plan at approximately $10.59/month for 10,000 operations. Make shifted to a credit-based model effective August 2025; for non-AI workflows, 1 operation = 1 credit. - Free plan: 1,000 operations/month, 2 active scenarios, 15-minute minimum intervals. **N8N** - Integration count (400+): Confirmed via the [n8n GitHub repository](https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n) and [official documentation](https://docs.n8n.io). The platform additionally offers 600+ community nodes and unlimited custom integrations via HTTP nodes. - Self-hosting: Confirmed as free under the Community Edition (fair-code licensed). Cloud Starter begins at €24/month for 2,500 executions. See [n8n pricing](https://n8n.io/pricing/). - Per-execution pricing model: Confirmed. One workflow run = one execution, regardless of step count, a meaningful cost advantage over Zapier’s per-task model for complex workflows. - N8N’s own recommendation: [n8n’s hosting documentation](https://docs.n8n.io/hosting/) states self-hosting is recommended for expert users only; others are directed to n8n Cloud. **Pabbly Connect** - Integration count (2,000+): Confirmed via [pabbly.com/connect](https://www.pabbly.com/connect/). Trusted by 14,000+ businesses per their website as of May 2026. - Lifetime deal pricing: Confirmed as a current offering at [pabbly.com/connect](https://www.pabbly.com/connect/). **Claude Code** - Agentic capabilities: Confirmed via [Anthropic’s Claude Code documentation](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview). Claude Code supports multi-agent orchestration, parallel subagents, MCP server integration, and computer use for browser-based tasks. **OpenAI Codex** - Current model: GPT-5.3-Codex launched February 5, 2026. GPT-5.5 is now recommended as the default per OpenAI documentation. - Cloud-sandboxed architecture: Confirmed. Codex runs in an isolated cloud environment with parallel task execution. **OpenClaw** - Open-source (MIT licensed): Confirmed. - Broad tool connectivity (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, email, file system, browser): Confirmed via project documentation and community reporting as of 2026. - Security recommendation (local hosting over VPS): This reflects Pro-How AI’s editorial position based on security best practices. Running an agent with broad system access on a third-party VPS exposes API credentials, message content, and system access to the risks of shared infrastructure. Local hosting or a dedicated private server is the recommended approach. **Hermes Agent** - Nous Research: Confirmed as the originating organization. See [Nous Research](https://nousresearch.com). - Persistent memory and skill-building architecture: Confirmed via project documentation. **Paperclip** - Open-source, self-hosted: Confirmed via [paperclip.ing](https://paperclip.ing) and the [Paperclip GitHub repository](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip) (60,000+ stars as of May 2026). - Agent management/control plane positioning: Confirmed via product description and community quotes. Want help putting this into practice? Learn more at [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com/). [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/taking-flight-for-the-first-time/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) kevinyoung.net # Taking Flight for the First Time Kevin Young September 18, 2017 \[Image: Kevin Young standing next to the Cessna on the tarmac at Myrtle Beach International Airport, giving a thumbs up\] So I finally tried something new. My brother, Brett Young, bought me a secret gift. Here is a short story of my first time tasting the thrill of flight. It's around 3:00 PM this afternoon (September 18, 2017) and Brett says "Ok, we need to wrap up early today. We are heading down to the Market Common." Now, the Market Common is a retail center that ascribes to the New Urban Design esthetic. The streets have wide sidewalks lined with trees and shrubs. Busy shoppers are shuffling from store to store staring into heavily designed window displays. The bottom floor of the buildings, with traditionally styled exteriors, feature retail shops with posh name brands and expensive restaurants. The upper floors are apartments where hipster types water topiaries on their balconies overlooking the bustling streets below. This community is a new and strange development for the Myrtle Beach area which usually builds standard suburban communities that sprawl. The area visually invites you to start walking around and exploring. If I weren't lazy, I could see myself jogging the track around the pond. Looking back, this was my first real brush with New Urbanism, the same walkable, human-scaled design thinking behind the Commonway System and Rosetta Places today. I love heading down to the Market Common and slipping in-between the shelves of Barnes and Nobles with the fresh scent of new books wafting around. I'll grab a chai tea latte and pick the latest illustrated Star Trek-themed book, find a chair, and drift into a future universe. So when Brett says that we are heading down to the Market Common, I am all in. What I didn't know was that he had a secret plan. You see, the Market Common was built in place of a retired air force base and abuts the back side of the Myrtle Beach International Airport. If you plan to fly your Cessna or private jet, you must drive through the Market Common to get to the General Aviation terminal. While Brett was honest, the secret detail he left out was that I was going to the Myrtle Beach Academy of Aviation located at the airport. ## You missed your turn As we are driving around presumably looking for a parking space, Brett turns the car down a somewhat industrial looking street. "I am not sure this is where you want to park," I quipped. Brett pulls into a parking lot at the end of the street. There are two sizeable grey airport hangars filled with various workers repairing small aircraft. I am thinking that Brett is just using the parking lot as a place to get the car turned back around. But, instead, he parks the car. Something must be up. As we walk into the lobby, replete with chairs and a coffee table, a friendly receptionist peeks out of the customer service window and asks if I am Kevin. I was about to answer when Brett stepped in and said "Yes, he is Kevin and I'm his brother. We spoke on the phone earlier. I am dropping him off and will be back to pick him up. About how long will this take?" I knew what gift precisely Brett had in store for me. The Academy of Aviation has a package called a Discovery Flight that I've been salivating over for some time. The Discovery Flight serves as an introduction to flying. It is half educational and half fun. Now some people aren't interested in learning to fly, but I have always wanted to try it, and Brett knew that I would love this opportunity. I could feel the excitement pulse up my back as my heart started to speed up. I tried to keep my composure and even bit my lip. I kept thinking, "Ok, Kevin let's keep this under control." ## Meeting Rusty Meanwhile, the bubbly receptionist said, "I'll call Rusty, your instructor, and let him know that you are here. Go ahead and take a seat." While waiting to meet with Rusty, I was contemplating the reality that was soon about to unfold. I remember reading the web page for the Discovery Flight package. It says, "you'll get approximately 30 minutes of ground school with your instructor and learn what to expect once you're airborne. You'll also get an amazing 40 minutes to spend soaring through the skies and experience the thrills of flight!" That, however, is not exactly how things went down! Rusty, a retired Ohio police officer and seasoned flight instructor, was laid back wearing jeans and a button-down shirt. He sat me down in a tight conference room with a dominating table. Showing a confidence that eases the nerves, Rusty assures me that my experience will be safe and fun. I could tell that he is knowledgeable and experienced. The instructor job fits him well. You can tell that he loves teaching people as much as he loves flying. While holding earmuffed headphones in his right hand, he looked me in the eyes and asked, "How are you when it comes to bumpy flights? Do you get a little queasy or nervous?" Wow, what a way to start! We spent a couple of minutes talking about expectations, and concepts that are all new to me. Like, taxiing the plane and rotating the yoke. I remember asking a few questions for clarification as I had no idea of the terminology Rusty was using. Another employee of the school popped into the room and apologized to me for interrupting our lesson. They spent about ten minutes talking about an incident that occurred a few days prior. The kind of thing where typical government bureaucracy at the airport fell apart and Rusty pulled no punches while rectifying the situation. His colleague was a bit chatty and impressed with the way Rusty handled the matter. Hoping that we didn't lose flying time, I didn't resist when we got up and started walking out to the plane after only receiving about 10 minutes of my ground lesson. Once we got out to the Cessna, the bubbly receptionist met with us and had me pose in front of the plane for a photo. ## Please fasten your seat belts Not long after, Rusty and I are sitting in the Cessna's cabin going over the preflight checklist. I am reading step-by-step instructions from a card, while Rusty is flipping switches and checking status indicators on the massive instrument panel before us. He waits as I spurt out the next instruction before he performs it. After getting strapped in and testing our headphones, he tells me that he will handle all the communication with the control tower. He mentioned that the chatter may get overwhelming but that I should not get anxious about it. Up until this point, I was under the incorrect assumption that we would be flying out of some learning runway separated from the main airport. I was wrong. The pressure I was feeling was starting to rise, but I trusted Rusty and felt safe under his tutelage. Rusty said, "We are now going to taxi the plane over to the runway. Do you remember what I told you about the foot pedals? We are going to use them to direct the plane where we want it to go." So while a plane is on the ground, you must taxi (or drive) it around using foot pedals, there is no steering wheel. Taxiing usually takes first-timers like me a little while to learn. The goal is to align the nose of the airplane to follow a bright yellow stripe painted on the tarmac. It sounds simple until you realize that the pedals work under different principles than their automotive counterparts. They are connected to each other. When you push one pedal in, the other pops out in an equal and opposite reaction. They are used to steer the plane left or right. To complicate matters more, the pedals also act as brakes to stop or slow the aircraft. Each pedal can be swiveled upwards to activate the brake. You can see how a person who has only driven a car could be a little overwhelmed by these pedals. Now everyone who knows me well knows that I am a bit of a talker. There are only a few times that I shut up; eating, sleeping, watching Star Trek re-runs, and becoming absorbed in something tech related usually does the trick. So saying that Rusty saw me in rare form is an understatement. I was so engrossed in learning everything that I hardly spoke a word. When Rusty asked me questions, I kind of grunted one-word answers. He had no idea that I could form whole sentences. I was just taking everything in, and it was overwhelming and compelling. I wanted more but I was also feeling a healthy fear. I didn't want to forget some vital instruction, mess up and cause our deaths. We are about to fly a plane after all. The strange jargon didn't help me either. Pilots have some private lingo that replaces regular English. For example, it's not a steering wheel; it's a yoke. Another example includes what I wanted to call a dashboard, but is appropriately referred to as an instrument panel. Even maps have a particular name; they are called sectional charts. After a little bit of practice with the steering pedals, I was starting to understand how to taxi the plane. Rusty would let me know when I was doing good and conversely when I was straying from the all-important yellow stripe on the ground. I couldn't believe it. I was essentially driving a plane. I even heard Rusty say, "Good, you're getting the hang of it!" I think he was more relieved than I was. We were nearing the runway as Rusty informed me to stop the plane. He was calling to the tower in another foreign language in which every letter must be spoken like a word. He would say "Zulu" for the letter "Z" and "Niner" for the number "9." We've all heard this in movies, but I heard it real-time. Between the bits of radio chatter, you could hear the sound of the propeller whipping through the wind. The plane slightly vibrated to the dull roar of the engine. I couldn't help but wonder how this little airplane was held together. Just then, Rusty pointed directly ahead out the front window. Across from us was a commercial passenger jet getting ready to take off! "It's not every day that you see a jet head on," he said with a little chuckle. Moments later the Allegiant Airline jet, which probably was carrying some 200 people, started taxiing down the runway. Suddenly I realized, this is legit. This is going to happen. Holy Crap. ## Return your tray table to its full upright position Surely, Rusty is going to handle the takeoff. That is what the website said was going to happen, right? I'm sure it said something about, "once you're airborne...you'll...experience the thrills of flight!" Wrong again. The control tower gave the signal for us to take off. I remember looking down the runway and still seeing the Allegiant jet on the ground or at least a couple of the wheels were. So how could it be our turn, they are still here? Rusty reassuringly says, "You have nothing to worry about. This runway is two miles long. We only need a few feet to take flight. We could take off and land several times before the end of the runway." I almost grumbled under my breath, "that is a distinct possibility." So Rusty had me start taxiing the plane onto the runway while he reached down and pulled on a cylinder-shaped rod. This appeared to increase the speed of the propeller. I think it was called a throttle or pitch control, but I am not entirely sure. Once aligned straight down the runway he said, "I will take over the foot pedals and keep us going straight. Now, remember, when I say 'Rotate,' you will pull that yoke toward yourself as we talked about." Only seconds pass and we are moving pretty fast. Rusty yells out, "Rotate. It's time to rotate." Now, this is another terminology thing that can be confusing. Usually, when you hear the word "rotate," you think to turn a wheel clockwise or counter-clockwise. That is not the case with the yoke of a plane. Instead, you must pull the entire yoke toward your body. When you do this, the nose of the airplane raises and points upward. Contrastingly, when you push the yoke away from you, the nose lowers and the plane descends. So as commanded, I rotate. The nose of the plane lifts upward as planned. My goal is to have the nose lined up with the horizon. Very quickly it was lined up and Rusty then said, "Ok, that's good there." I was just about to ask how long it will be until we take off, only to realize that we were already off the ground. My inner monologue was celebrating, "That's it. Woo Hoo. I just took off. I'm flying a plane." Rusty was observing me and told me, "Now we need to keep ascending until we reach 2000 feet." I asked, "How do you know how high you are?" Rusty points to the plane's altimeter and says, "You see the little white triangle? That is 2000 feet. You're almost there." The control tower chimes in and we are now supposed to make a left turn. Apparently, all airports use a leftward circling traffic pattern on entrance and exit of the airspace. Turning a plane may sound like no big deal and you are correct, it isn't. Except that, unlike making a turn in a car or truck, the whole airplane banks at an angle for the turn. Banking the aircraft summons one of those sour feelings in your stomach just before you find yourself spewing your lunch all over the place. Thankfully, I did not hurl. Rusty now explains that pilots usually bank at a 30-degree angle because anything more would make their passengers uncomfortable. That's a helpful tip. Now we straighten out as we head southward. Rusty lets me know that [Murrells Inlet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murrells_Inlet,_South_Carolina) is dead ahead. I loved this new perspective of the world. Here we are, mid-flight, the sun piercing through the countless clouds floating like icebergs above us and the Atlantic Ocean with its blue-green hue sparkling off to the left. Looking out towards the horizon, this beautiful tan strip goes on and on separating the water from the lush green forest on our right. You can understand why locals call this area the Grand Strand. The wonderment took over. I felt like a little child running around outside on a beautiful day. Lost in an imaginary playland, never wanting reality to take me back. What a beautiful planet we get to call home! What a great gift this flight is and a great gift our earth is. Let me not forget that. \[Image: Kevin Young wearing a headset and holding the yoke of the Cessna, with Murrells Inlet visible out the window.\] At the yoke, with Murrells Inlet out the window ## Eyes back on the road, er sky Rusty now taps his finger on the altimeter to remind me that we are starting to descend. "You need to keep us at 2000 feet," he cautions. Remembering that "rotating" the yoke sends us upward, I gave it a pull. "Whoa, whoa," Rusty says, "pull it gently. We do everything gentle." The airplane is racing upward. We finally level out. He can see that I am holding the yoke tightly. "Kevin, why don't you let go of the yoke for a moment. See. Nothing is happening; the plane will continue along just like that. You don't need to hold on so tightly. Just hold it with your fingers and keep us level." ## Coming in for a landing We flew around for some time, Rusty had me perform other turns and he taught me how to make a controlled descent and had me bring the plane back up. But all good things... I was hoping that Rusty would perform the landing, but that is something I will be learning too. As we approached the airport, he pointed to a black strip on the ground that marked the beginning of the runway. It was still a bit off in the distance. We began a controlled descent toward that landing strip. It was rewarding to know that I remembered how to perform one. As we neared the landing strip, we made our required left turn. Everything was surreal. Now Rusty wanted me to slow down the propeller a little more and rotate the yoke. Rotating the yoke seems counter-intuitive because the nose of the plane lifts upward instead of down. On the inside, I am very nervous. I look calm like a duck on the water, but underneath, I am paddling like the dickens. Anticipating at least a bump, I was about to ask when the touchdown would happen. Rusty then says, "You can let go of the yoke, we are on the ground. We need to taxi now, so follow the yellow stripe off to your left." Apparently, I wasn't quite getting it, so Rusty says, "You don't need your hands on the yoke anymore. Remember, you use the foot pedals for taxiing." "Oh yeah," I mumble back. I have to say that while I loved every minute of the flight, I was delighted to be back on land. It wasn't long before we were shutting things down and walking back to the hangar that housed the school's offices. This guy really was a great teacher. Not everyone could get me to operate something so complex and potentially dangerous without coercing me first. He had a way about him that made you feel safe and put you at ease. I hope he never decides to sell timeshare. I made a point to thank him, not just for teaching me but for putting up with me. [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/the-iceberg-nobody-warned-you-about/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) Pro-How AI # The Iceberg Nobody Warned You About Kevin Young April 13, 2026 \[Image: An iceberg floating in dark water in front of snowy mountains under a cloudy sky\] Originally published on Pro-How AI. [Read the original](https://pro-how.com/the-iceberg-nobody-warned-you-about/) You’ve probably heard the headlines. Programmers were laid off. Junior developers can’t find work. Tech companies are freezing hiring because one AI tool can now do the work of a dozen entry-level engineers. The conversation is loud, anxious, and, according to a new study from MIT, almost entirely focused on the wrong thing. I recently watched a video by [Economics Explained](https://www.youtube.com/@EconomicsExplained) that clearly broke down this research, and it reframed how I think about AI’s real effect on the economy. Most of the discourse treats AI as something that **replaces jobs**. But that’s not really how it works. More often, AI replaces the _tasks inside them_. A lawyer doesn’t disappear overnight, but the hours spent reviewing routine contracts quietly shrink. A journalist keeps writing, but research time starts to compress. Sounds like a softer version of the same story? It definitely isn’t. > Our entire economic system was built to count jobs and people, not to look inside a job and ask which parts of it AI can already technically perform. That’s the core problem MIT set out to solve. They didn’t build another prediction of which jobs will disappear. They built something more useful: an actual map of where AI capabilities and human skills currently overlap, weighted by the economic value of that work. They called it the **Iceberg Index**. ## The Tip of the Iceberg, and What's Underwater The visible part of the AI-disruption story, the one getting all the headlines, is tech. In 2025 alone, more than 100,000 job losses were linked to AI restructuring. When you measure the wage value of tech work that AI can technically perform, it comes to about 2.2% of the total US labor market, roughly $211 billion. \[Image: Iceberg infographic showing 2.2% visible AI workforce exposure in tech versus 11.7% hidden exposure across the broader economy, based on the MIT Iceberg Index\] The same capabilities that make a coding assistant useful to a software engineer, document processing, routine analysis, and data handling, don’t belong just to tech. They show up across hundreds of occupations that would never appear in an AI-layoffs headline. Financial analysts. HR coordinators. Insurance claims processors. Legal secretaries. When you apply the methodology to the _whole economy_, the number jumps from 2.2% to **11.7%**, roughly $1.2 trillion in wage value. Five times larger. - **$1.2T**: total wage value at technical AI exposure - **11.7%**: share of the entire US labor market - **5x**: bigger than the tech sector exposure alone The anxiety about AI that has dominated headlines for two years has focused on roughly one-fifth of the actual problem. The other four-fifths have been sitting on a fault line that no government, no company, and no individual worker has been actively preparing for. ## Who Is Actually Most Exposed? Here’s where it gets strange. If you had to guess which states are sitting on the biggest fault lines, you’d probably say California, Washington, New York. You’d be wrong. According to the Iceberg Index, **South Dakota, North Carolina, and Utah** show higher exposure values than California or Virginia. Their economies are heavily concentrated in administrative and financial work, exactly the skills sitting in the gap between what AI can technically do and what it’s currently doing in practice. > **The Tennessee Example** > > Tennessee’s tech sector exposure is 1.3%, nothing that would trigger alarm bells in any standard workforce planning model. But its Iceberg Index is 11.6%. The white-collar workforce keeping Tennessee’s factories running is 10 times more exposed than the tech sector everyone has been watching. And it’s not just geography that surprises. A separate [Anthropic study on labor market impacts](https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts) found that workers in the most exposed occupations tend to be more educated, higher-paid, and more likely to be female than those in the least exposed occupations. As Economics Explained put it in his breakdown of this research, the people most exposed aren’t the ones who fell behind. They’re the ones who did everything society told them to do. > The people most exposed to AI displacement are the ones who did everything society told them to do, and did it well. ## The Gap Between "Can" and "Is" Before this gets too dark, there’s an important distinction the MIT study makes: it measures **technical capability**, not outcomes. The Iceberg Index is an earthquake risk map, not a weather forecast. It tells you which buildings are sitting on a fault line, not if or when the tremor will hit. The gap between capability and actual use is significant. [Anthropic’s labor market research](https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts) found that for computer and math workers, AI is theoretically capable of handling around 94% of their tasks, but in observed professional use, it’s currently covering about 33%. That gap exists because of regulation, integration challenges, and the simple fact that most organizations still require a human to check AI’s work. - **94%** technical capability: what AI can theoretically do in computer and math occupations - **33%** actual deployment: what AI is actually doing today in those same roles These are friction points that may resolve themselves as technology matures. And the leading edge is already visible: the MIT paper notes a 13% relative decline in early-career employment (ages 22-25) in AI-exposed occupations. Entry-level job postings have also shifted noticeably since 2023, with demand concentrating on experienced roles. Job postings fall before employment does. ## A Warning for Workers AI Can't Touch Here’s a wrinkle Economics Explained raises in his video that I think deserves its own moment. What about the roughly 30% of workers with essentially zero AI exposure? Cooks, plumbers, nurses, childcare workers, bartenders. People doing physical, hands-on, relational work that no language model can replicate. Surely they’re fine? Not exactly. There’s a well-documented economic pattern called [Baumol’s Cost Disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect), first described by economists William Baumol and William Bowen in the 1960s. The core idea: when productivity surges in one part of the economy, wages rise across the whole economy, including in sectors where productivity hasn’t moved at all. A nurse still needs the same amount of time per patient. A plumber still has to be there in person. Their output doesn’t scale, but they still need to be paid competitively with everyone else. The result is that the relative cost of hands-on, human-intensive work keeps rising, pulled upward by productivity gains happening around it. Healthcare, education, childcare, skilled trades. These are services people can’t simply stop using when prices climb. And most of them are funded or subsidized by governments already stretched thin. > **The Uncomfortable Conclusion** > > Workers safe from AI displacement may find themselves in industries governments will increasingly struggle to fund, as the Baumol effect accelerates alongside AI-driven productivity gains everywhere else. This is Economics Explained’s extrapolation from the research, not a finding of the MIT paper itself, but it’s grounded in solid economic theory and worth taking seriously. ## What This Means If You're Running a Small Business Here’s where I want to get practical, because this study has a very direct message for small business owners, even if it never says it out loud. The Iceberg Index reveals that AI’s most powerful effects are happening in **exactly the kind of work small businesses do every day**: document processing, data analysis, client communication drafts, financial summaries, research, and coordination. The work that fills your administrative hours. The work you either do yourself or pay someone to do. > **The Small Business Translation** > > - The financial analyst compressing a day's work into an hour? That's you, reviewing invoices and cash flow reports. > - The HR coordinator whose document processing is exposed? That's you, onboarding contractors and writing job descriptions. > - The legal secretary processing routine documents? That's you, drafting client contracts and proposals. The people waiting to see how this plays out are the ones who will feel the gap most. The people already using AI to do administrative work faster, writing, summarizing, researching, processing, are quietly compressing their overhead while their competitors aren’t. That’s not a technology advantage. That’s a **time advantage**, and time is the one resource you can’t buy more of. The MIT researchers built the Iceberg Index because the old tools couldn’t see the actual shape of the problem. Most people are navigating with a 30-year-old map. The question for you isn’t whether AI will change your industry. It already is. The question is whether you’ll be the one doing the compressing or the one being compressed. > You don't need a graduate degree in AI to benefit. You need to start. The tools are already here. The window to get ahead is still open, but it's not staying open forever. ## A Quick Note on What the Study Doesn't Claim The Iceberg Index is honest about its limits, and I want to be too. It measures where skill overlap _exists right now_, not what firms will do about it, how fast governments will respond, or which workers will successfully adapt. Transitions like this have historically created as many new roles as they disrupted. The transitions that went best were the ones where people could see what was coming clearly enough to prepare. That’s all this post is trying to do. Give you a clearer map. The rest is yours to decide. **Sources & credit:** This post was inspired by the [Economics Explained video on the MIT Iceberg Index](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zlD0K09IKE). Baumol’s Cost Disease commentary and the two-speed economy framing are his analysis, not the findings of the MIT paper. Primary research sources: the [Project Iceberg paper (MIT / Oak Ridge National Laboratory)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09901); Anthropic’s [Labor Market Impacts of AI research](https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts); and the [Baumol effect (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect) for background on cost disease. Want help putting this into practice? Learn more at [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com/). [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/the-trap-that-feels-like-a-superpower/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) Pro-How AI # The Trap That Feels Like a Superpower Kevin Young April 6, 2026 \[Image: A stressed professional at a desk holding her head while colleagues point at papers and screens around her\] Originally published on Pro-How AI. [Read the original](https://pro-how.com/the-trap-that-feels-like-a-superpower/) There is a pattern that keeps repeating itself in history, one that I have been thinking about a lot lately. A new technology arrives. It feels like a superpower at first. And then, quietly, it becomes a new obligation. What started as freedom slowly becomes a chain. I think we are standing at the beginning of that cycle again, and this time, the technology is AI. ## Remember What the Smartphone Did to Your Evenings? Cast your mind back to before the smartphone era. If someone sent you an email, it sat in your inbox until you got to your desk. No one expected an immediate reply. That was simply the nature of the medium. Email was faster than a letter, but it was still tethered to a desktop computer and office hours. Then Apple introduced the first iPhone. Suddenly, you could receive and reply to emails from anywhere, at any time, with unprecedented ease. In those early days, it genuinely felt like a superpower. Very few people had smartphones, so when you fired off a reply in minutes, people were amazed. You stood out. You seemed incredibly on top of things. But the world slowly adopted the technology. And as it did, something shifted. That extraordinary responsiveness, which once made you exceptional, became the new baseline. People stopped being impressed and started being impatient. What originally felt special now felt like a trap. Your free time, your evenings, your moments to breathe and mentally reset, all of it became subject to the expectation that you were reachable and responsive. Always. Because everyone knew you could be. > What originally felt like a superpower slowly became a trap. And now, with AI, that same cycle looks ready to repeat. This is not just my observation. Economist and author Tim Harford recently wrote about [this exact dynamic](https://timharford.com/2026/04/what-if-ai-just-makes-us-work-harder/) in a piece that stopped me in my tracks. He describes research from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where academics studied how technology workers are actually experiencing generative AI on the job. The findings are striking, and more than a little unsettling. **Recommended reading:** [**“What if AI just makes us work harder?”**](https://timharford.com/2026/04/what-if-ai-just-makes-us-work-harder/) by Tim Harford, originally published in the Financial Times, March 2026. Harford is an economist and author known for making complex ideas accessible. This piece is well worth your time. ## The Busy Paradox: AI Makes the Minutes Great, and the Hours Terrible According to Harford’s piece, the UC Berkeley researchers found something almost paradoxical. In the moment, workers using AI felt a genuine sense of momentum and expanded capability. Prompting, experimenting, and iterating felt energizing and almost exhilarating. But when those same workers stepped back and looked at their broader work experience, a different picture emerged. They felt busier, more stretched, and less able to fully disconnect. AI had made them more productive in the moment, but it had not given them more rest or margin in their lives. The result was more work. Harford points to a historical pattern that makes this feel sadly familiar. He notes that email was vastly quicker and cheaper than a letter, but that only meant a flood of lower-quality messages bleeding into evenings and weekends. PowerPoint made creating visual aids faster, but it just meant highly paid professionals started making their own slides, badly, and more often. The library photocopier let students copy academic articles at speeds their parents couldn’t have imagined, but it didn’t make reading or thinking any faster. In each case, a narrow measure of productivity increased dramatically. But the overall effect was often more distraction, more busywork, and a longer list of things people felt guilty about not finishing. > **The Pattern** > > A new technology removes friction from one part of your work. So you naturally do more of it. New expectations form around that increased capacity. Your workload expands to fill the new space, and then some. Suddenly, the technology that was supposed to give you time has stolen it instead. ## This Is an Uncomfortable Feeling, And It Is Okay to Name It I want to say something directly: if you are feeling anxious about AI right now, that is a completely understandable response. The pace of change is genuinely staggering. New tools are emerging weekly. Everyone seems to be talking about AI in breathless, urgent tones. There is a pressure in the air, an unspoken message that if you are not already using AI to do everything faster, you are falling behind. That pressure is real. And it will likely intensify. As AI becomes more widespread, those who use it effectively will have a significant advantage. And as that advantage becomes more visible, expectations will shift, just as they did with smartphones. What is impressive today will become assumed tomorrow. So yes, there is reason to take this seriously. But here is what I want you to also hear: this cycle does not have to own you. ## The Difference This Time: You Can Get Ahead of It With the smartphone, most of us were caught off guard. The technology crept into our lives before we understood its implications. By the time we recognized that our evenings were gone, the expectation of constant availability was already baked in. We had no framework, no strategy, and no community helping us think it through. This time, we can see what is coming. And that changes everything. Harford himself points toward the same conclusion. He highlights one consultant’s practice of keeping a running list of prompts and ideas for AI tools, working through them intentionally in dedicated blocks of time rather than turning to AI reactively at every moment. The point is simple but profound: **just because you can use AI at any moment doesn’t mean you should**. Intentional use is the difference between AI amplifying your life and AI consuming it. > **The Human-First Principle** > > At Pro-How AI, we call this the Human-First approach. AI is a tool, an extraordinarily powerful one. But it should serve you, not the other way around. The goal is not to do more work faster. The goal is to do the right work with greater clarity and to protect the parts of your life that make you human. ## What Practical, Human-First AI Literacy Actually Looks Like Learning to use AI well is not about memorizing a list of prompts or chasing every new tool that launches. It is about building a mental model, a way of thinking about where AI genuinely helps, where it creates clutter, and how to stay in charge of your own time and attention. It means asking questions such as: Which tasks in my business are truly repetitive and rule-based? Where am I spending time that AI could handle without sacrificing quality? And just as importantly, where do I _not_ want AI involved, because that work requires my human judgment, creativity, or relationships? It means building habits. Not just using AI when you think of it, but having intentional systems so that AI works in the background for you, rather than becoming another notification demanding your attention. And it means staying in community with other people who are working through the same questions. Because this is new territory for everyone. The people figuring it out together are going to navigate it better than those trying to figure it out alone. The smartphone trap caught most of us off guard. We don’t have to let the AI era do the same. You can choose to learn how this technology actually works, build real skills that serve your goals, and draw intentional boundaries that protect your time and your sanity, before the world sets those expectations for you. That is what we are here to help you do. Want help putting this into practice? Learn more at [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com/). [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/use-game-changer-scale-small-business-startup/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) kevinyoung.net # Use this game changer to scale your small business or startup Kevin Young August 11, 2017 \[Image: Small Business\] [StockSnap](https://pixabay.com/users/StockSnap/) / Pixabay As a small business owner, I want to know all the secrets of how to make my business stronger, faster, and, **importantly**, more **successful**. When I learn something new, I absorb that knowledge and apply it to my business as soon as possible. Does this sound like you? Great, because this article is all about one of those secrets that every small business or startup needs to know and that every successful large business uses all the time. ## The missing ingredient So what is it? Let’s illustrate with a story. Imagine this scenario: Everyone keeps telling Sue that she makes the best sandwiches. Her attention to detail, excellent flavor combinations, and high-quality ingredients make the difference. People keep saying, “You should open a business selling your sandwiches. Everyone would buy them!” So, Sue finally did it. She created a sandwich kiosk; people love her food and buy sandwiches in droves. Sue got so busy during the daily lunch rush hour that she realized she needed to hire staff to keep up with the demand. This is where Sue’s story deviates. For some reason, Sue’s initial success seems to have slowed, and she doesn’t know why. Also, when Sue works her shift at the kiosk, all the customers ask that only Sue make their sandwiches. People don’t want Sue’s staff to make their lunches. This situation is a lousy place for Sue. She will burn out if she doesn’t figure out how to scale up by increasing her staff. She’ll never have time to leave the kiosk. She will spend her energy making sandwiches instead of developing new products, managing, and all the other tasks involved in running and growing the business. In short, Sue’s company can’t scale up, and it will lock her into a trap that kills many small businesses. What is the solution? The solution is processes. ## Don’t click the back button The sound of the word “processes” feels overly technical and boring. You say, “Meh, I’ll save this article for when I have absolutely nothing to do.” Let me try to change your mind about processes. Soon you will see why they are the game changers you wish you had always known and appreciated. Many successful business people reading this will surely agree that using processes was how they got their business to the next level. They will urge you to embrace the power that well-documented, entrenched, and monitored processes will bring. ## See how Sue saved the day What exactly is a “process?” The best way of explaining processes is to show them in action. Now armed with the knowledge of processes, Sue realized the problem with her business. She could see the inconsistencies in her product. Each of her staff did things differently, and her customers knew it. They knew that if they wanted perfect sandwiches, they were only going to get them from Sue. Sue now set out to correct things. She documented how to do everything correctly and created procedures that were easy to understand and learn. Sue made checklists that everyone could find and follow, then trained all of her staff rigorously to make sure that they followed the procedures and met all the criteria in the checklist every time they made a sandwich. She monitored things by training team leaders to regularly evaluate the work and food. Finally, Sue is back on track. Her customers are happy with the food made by her staff because they know they can get a consistently good sandwich every time. Profits are up, and Sue’s time is freed to expand and improve the business. Kiosk number two is in the works, and Sue is grateful because she now has the leverage she needs to grow. So what are “processes?” They are your businesses’ documented, trained, and monitored steps and procedures. By having well-known established processes that ensure quality and consistency in your products and services, you will be empowered to grow and make more profit. ## Don’t tell yourself this destructive lie \[Image: Computer screen with code\] [fancycrave1](https://pixabay.com/users/fancycrave1/) / Pixabay “Well, that is great and all for Sue. But, my business, product, or service is too custom to make processes for it.” If you believe your business is the sole exception to needing processes, you might as well quit now. You will save yourself a bunch of headaches. The truth is, that if you have more than one person in your business, you need processes. As a website design firm, I can say that the work my company [RdyToGo](https://rdytogo.com/) does is very custom. No two websites we make look anything alike, and no two clients interact with us the same way. In the early years, when my business partner, Brett, and I did everything, we had no processes. When we hired our first web designer to ease the workload, we were surprised by the inconsistency of our company’s web designs. What I thought was common sense seemed lost on our designer. We kept thinking, “How could he possibly think this design was remotely acceptable for our client?” And, “Why in the world would you design something like that?” Immediately, we realized that we needed a checklist to make sure that we always addressed critical details. That checklist grew over time and then split into separate lists that we use at various stages in our projects. We created processes. The thing is, no product or service is too unique not to need processes. ## Reward those that get it It’s time-consuming and tedious to document a new process, train staff, and establish a system to verify that everyone follows your procedures. Once I finally embraced processes and set out to implement them in our business, I realized that I should have done this from the start. I would squeeze hours out of my busy workday to write and establish processes we should have already created and been regularly using. I wondered, “What if I was not the only team member creating processes?” So, one day, I was explaining the importance of processes to one of my employees, a rising star in the company. I shared a similar story to that of Sue mentioned above. He seemed to get it. To my surprise, I found him creating processes the next day and training his teammates not long afterward. I can’t describe the glee from the payoff of using processes and now seeing my staff embrace them. There is a valuable lesson here, establishing processes must be part of your company’s culture, and people who get it must be empowered to create processes too. Think about that for a second. We should make processes. But making new processes should be part of your operations. How much time will you save if you can build this kind of system into the core of your business? ## Putting it into action Why not start today? When you make the effort to improve your business or startup with processes, you will realize additional rewards. As you analyze how you do things and prepare to describe them, you may find better and more efficient ways of doing them. You may realize that you can cut out some steps that were a waste of time. If your business already has several people, you may discover that work and information don’t flow through the organization how you thought it did. Before long, you will see huge savings or detect a significant problem you never knew you had. Now, that is a reward worth the effort. How far you take this new-found appreciation for processes is up to you. Large organizations have set up computerized systems that track and monitor their processes as they happen, and they constantly react to their performance metrics. That may be overkill for your small business or startup now, but someday as your business keeps growing, you too may need to do this. Until then, keep in mind that Business Process Management (BPM) software exists and learn about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and how they are used to track the performance of your processes. [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/what-is-human-first-ai-and-why-it-matters/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) Pro-How AI # What Is Human-First AI and Why It Matters for Your Business Kevin Young August 12, 2026 \[Image: A small business owner working on a laptop at a desk in a bright office\] Originally published on Pro-How AI. [Read the original](https://pro-how.com/what-is-human-first-ai-and-why-it-matters/) Human-first AI is the practice of using artificial intelligence to make your team more capable, not to replace them. Instead of chasing full automation, you use AI to hand off the repetitive parts of a job so your people spend more time on the parts that actually need a person: judgment calls, relationships, and problem-solving. For a small business owner, that distinction decides whether an AI tool ends up trusted by your team or ignored by it. Pro-How AI℠ builds every client project around making people more capable at their jobs, not just getting more done. ## What Does Human-First AI Actually Mean? Most AI marketing leads with what the technology can do. Human-first AI starts from a different question: what does your team need less of on their plate, and what do they need more time for? In practice, that means the AI handles the predictable, high-volume stuff: answering the same three questions a hundred times a day, logging a call into your CRM, drafting a first version of an email. Your team keeps the parts that actually require a person: reading a frustrated customer correctly, making a judgment call on a tricky case, building the relationship that turns a one-time buyer into a repeat one. Human-first AI takes more setup than the “just plug in a chatbot” approach. You have to actually map out where your team’s time goes before you can decide what to hand off. It’s slower to start. It also tends to be the version that survives contact with a real team instead of getting quietly abandoned after month two. > **Worth Knowing** > > Pro-How AI’s own training is built on Anthropic’s AI Fluency Framework, the same curriculum used to teach people to work directly with an AI model instead of just prompting around it. Working with the tool instead of working around it is most of what separates human-first AI from the automate-everything version. ## Why Does This Matter for Your Business Right Now? Three things tend to change once AI is set up around your people instead of around a spreadsheet of tasks to cut. **Your team stops treating AI as a threat.** When people are asked for input before a tool rolls out, rather than told what changed after the fact, adoption looks completely different. A front-desk employee who helped decide which calls the AI should handle is a lot more likely to actually use it than one who found out about it in a company memo. **Customers notice the difference between “automated” and “actually helpful.”** A tax relief specialist had already built a solid AI lead-nurture system, but leads kept vanishing at the last step: the bot would hand a warm, engaged lead a web form to fill out, and the momentum died right there. The fix wasn’t more automation, it was less friction: letting the lead book the appointment inside the same text conversation instead of redirecting them somewhere colder. Conversion improved dramatically once the “automated” hand-off stopped feeling like one. [Read the full case study](https://pro-how.com/case-study/plugging-a-leaky-sales-funnel-how-one-simple-fix-dramatically-improved-conversion/). There’s also a real point of difference in it, at least for now. Most AI rollouts we run into happen without much thought for how they land on the people using them. Getting that right, and being able to explain why, tends to show up first in the reviews customers leave and the people who apply for a job. ## How Do You Actually Start Implementing This? **Start with where your team’s time actually goes, not with a tool.** Sit down with the people doing the work (not just the manager overseeing it) and find the specific tasks eating hours without needing a human’s judgment. [Missed after-hours calls](https://pro-how.com/your-phone-is-ringing-right-now-nobody-is-answering-it/) and manual CRM data entry are two of the most common ones we run into. **Bring your team into the decision, not just the announcement.** Ask what they’d want off their plate and what concerns they have. A concern raised early is a lot cheaper to address than a tool nobody trusts six months in. The tools worth picking are the ones built to hand off to a human, not just replace one: a CRM integration that surfaces what a person needs to know, or a phone agent that knows when to route a call to a real employee. [A Myrtle Beach wedding design studio](https://pro-how.com/case-study/from-ai-is-useless-for-us-to-their-most-valuable-business-tool/) came to us convinced AI had nothing to offer a creative, visual business like theirs. After a 5-day course, AI became their first step in every project, not a replacement for the designer’s eye, but a faster way to get to more concepts before a client meeting. > AI is the best thing we have ever used for our business. > > Casey Martin, Creative Wedding Designer This is close to what we walk clients through directly: the [AI Hero Mini Challenge](https://pro-how.com/ai-hero-mini-challenge/) is a beginner-friendly starting point if you want hands-on training before deciding anything, the [AI Phone and Booking Agent](https://pro-how.com/ai-phone-and-booking-agent/) is the most common first fix for missed after-hours calls, and [CRM Setup and AI Integration](https://pro-how.com/crm-setup-and-ai-integration/) is usually where the manual data-entry problem gets solved. If your team is already using AI tools day to day and nothing governs how, the [Business AI Policy Builder](https://pro-how.com/business-ai-policy-builder/) closes that gap. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Is human-first AI slower to set up than a standard chatbot? **Usually, yes, at least at the start.** You’re mapping actual workflows before choosing tools instead of installing something generic on day one. That upfront time is usually what determines whether the tool gets used six months later or quietly abandoned. ### Does human-first AI cost more than fully automated tools? **Not necessarily.** The cost difference is mostly where the time goes: more upfront planning, often less rework and fewer abandoned tools later. A fully automated tool that customers avoid isn’t actually cheaper once you count the business it costs you. ### Can a very small business (2 to 5 people) actually use this approach? **Yes.** If anything, it matters more at that size, since one employee’s buy-in can be the difference between a tool working and it sitting unused. Start with the single task eating the most time, not a company-wide rollout. ### What's the first task most businesses should hand off to AI? **For service businesses, it’s usually after-hours call handling or CRM data entry.** Both are high-volume, repetitive, and don’t require the judgment calls that make a customer feel heard. ### How is human-first AI different from what Pro-How AI does for other companies? **Some vendors position AI as a cost-cutting, headcount-reducing tool first.** Pro-How AI℠ builds training, automation, and governance around keeping your team central to the work, which is the actual difference between AI a team adopts and AI a team routes around. ### Does adopting AI mean fewer employees? **Not under a human-first approach.** The goal is freeing existing people from repetitive work, not eliminating roles. Businesses that cut headcount alongside an AI rollout usually did so as a separate decision, not because the AI required it. ## Where Should You Start? You don’t need to overhaul your whole operation to try this. Pick the one task costing your team the most time right now, and start there. If you’re not sure where to begin at all, [our guide to starting with AI with no tech experience](https://pro-how.com/how-small-business-owners-can-start-using-ai-today-without-any-tech-experience/) is a good next stop. Want help putting this into practice? Learn more at [Pro-How AI](https://pro-how.com/). [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) --- Source: https://kevinyoung.net/writing/when-ai-flags-the-wrong-business/ [Writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md) Pro-How AI # When AI flags the wrong business: what a local pet store can teach every small business owner Kevin Young June 4, 2026 \[Image: Kevin Young being interviewed by WMBF News about AI content moderation\] Video still courtesy of [WMBF News](https://www.wmbfnews.com/2026/06/04/myrtle-beach-pet-store-fights-restore-facebook-page-after-ai-flagging/) Originally published on Pro-How AI. [Read the original](https://pro-how.com/when-ai-flags-the-wrong-business-what-a-local-pet-store-can-teach-every-small-business-owner/) ## A 20-year business. 8,000 followers. Gone in an instant. The Spoiled Pet has been serving Myrtle Beach families for two decades. Ferrets, hermit crabs, bunnies, and other animals have found homes through this local store. Their Facebook page, built over 20 years with more than 8,000 followers, was their primary way of reaching customers. Then one day, without a warning or a clear explanation, Meta's AI flagged the page and took it down. Owner Robert Mills told [WMBF News](https://www.wmbfnews.com/2026/06/04/myrtle-beach-pet-store-fights-restore-facebook-page-after-ai-flagging/) the business had lost approximately 30% of its revenue since the page was removed. The family had reached out to Facebook around 15 times over four weeks and received no meaningful response. This is not a one-off story. It is happening to small businesses everywhere, and it will become more common as platforms continue to shift from human moderation to automated AI systems. ## Why did this happen? Here is what the AI was doing. Facebook's Commerce Policy prohibits most animal sales on the platform. However, licensed brick-and-mortar pet stores are explicitly permitted to promote their businesses and in-store inventory under that same policy. The Spoiled Pet never posted prices for animals and had never received a sales-related warning before the takedown. WMBF News asked me to explain the mechanics on camera. Here is what I said: > "They had to give it examples, thousands and thousands of examples of policy violations, whether that's spam, violent imagery, whatever it might be. They fed their system that. It doesn't have to be a perfect match to what it's been fed, but it's similar to what it's been fed. And then when it sees that, the AI will flag it." Kevin Young, Founder of Pro-How AI. Interviewed by Katherine Schreiner, WMBF News (NBC Myrtle Beach), June 4, 2026. In plain terms: the AI was trained to recognize content that looks like prohibited animal sales. Photos of animals alongside descriptions of breeds and availability visually resemble that pattern. The system does not understand context. It does not know the store is a licensed business. It sees a pattern, matches it to a violation category, and acts. No human reviewed it. No warning was issued. ## What industries are most at risk? If your business touches any of these categories, your content faces a higher chance of triggering an automated flag, even when everything you post is completely within the rules. - **Pet stores and animal-related businesses:** photos of animals with descriptions can match prohibited sale patterns - **Health and wellness products:** supplement, weight loss, and medical claims are closely monitored - **Financial services:** loan, credit, and investment content triggers elevated scrutiny - **Real estate:** housing ads face Fair Housing Act compliance monitoring - **Firearms and outdoor equipment:** any firearms-adjacent content is highly sensitive - **Alcohol and supplements:** regulated product categories with strict ad and post guidelines - **Political and advocacy content:** flagged for coordinated behavior patterns even when organic You do not have to be doing anything wrong. You just have to look like something the AI has been trained to catch. ## Three things you can do right now **Diversify your online presence.** If Facebook is your only channel, you are one AI decision away from losing your primary customer connection. An email list, a maintained Google Business Profile, and a website you actually own are assets no platform can take away. The Spoiled Pet's situation is a clear reminder: rent where you must, but own what you can. **Know the appeals process before you need it.** Meta Verified (the paid account verification service) flags appeals as high priority in the review queue. If you are in a higher-risk category, the cost may be worth it for the faster access to real support alone. Knowing this option exists before a crisis hits gives you a faster path to resolution when speed matters most. **Understand what the AI is trained to catch.** Meta's Community Standards and Commerce Policies are publicly available. Knowing which content patterns trigger the AI gives you the ability to frame your posts in ways that reduce false-positive risk. This is not about gaming the system. It is about understanding the rules of the platform you are building your business on. ## The gap between what business owners expect and what AI actually does The Spoiled Pet's situation is not a technology failure in the traditional sense. The AI did what it was trained to do. The failure is a literacy gap: a small business operating on a platform without a clear understanding of how that platform's automated systems work, what triggers them, and what recourse exists when they get it wrong. That gap is what Pro-How AI exists to close. I work with small business owners in Myrtle Beach and across the country who are navigating AI tools they did not ask for and were not trained on. AI is already making decisions that affect your visibility, your reach, and your revenue. Understanding how it works is not optional anymore. It is a basic business skill. You do not need to become a technologist. You need to understand enough to protect your business and make smarter decisions about how you show up online. ## What small business owners are asking about AI and social media **Why did Facebook remove my business page?** Facebook uses AI to automatically detect and remove content that appears to violate its policies. The AI is trained on millions of examples of violations and flags content that matches those patterns, even when your business is operating within the rules. A wrongful removal often happens when your content visually resembles a violation category without actually being one. The system does not understand context the way a human reviewer would. **How does Meta AI content moderation actually work?** Meta's AI moderation systems are trained on billions of examples of content that violates its policies. The AI learns the patterns behind those violations and scans new posts for similar patterns. It does not need a perfect match to flag content. Because AI operates at scale without full contextual understanding, it sometimes removes content from legitimate businesses that happens to resemble prohibited content. **What can I do if Facebook wrongly removes my business page?** Submit an appeal through the Meta Business Help Center immediately. Purchasing Meta Verified gives your appeal higher priority in the review queue. Keep records of all your posts and communications. If the issue persists beyond several weeks without resolution, contacting local media has proven effective in prompting faster responses from Meta, as the Spoiled Pet's situation demonstrates. **Can I opt out of Meta AI content moderation?** No. Meta's automated moderation applies to all content on the platform with no opt-out option. The best protection is understanding which content patterns trigger the AI and structuring your posts to reduce false-positive risk. Businesses in regulated categories such as animal sales, health products, and financial services face higher risk of accidental flags and should be especially thoughtful about how they frame their content. **How can Pro-How AI help my business navigate this?** Pro-How AI offers training and strategy sessions designed specifically for small business owners who want to understand how AI affects their online presence. We cover how platform moderation systems work, how to reduce your risk of being wrongly flagged, how to protect your digital presence across channels you own, and how to use AI tools to grow your business with confidence. You can learn more at [pro-how.com](https://pro-how.com/). [← All writing](https://kevinyoung.net/writing.md)