A live room, almost seven thousand little squares, and a chat running so fast that every message is gone before you finish reading it. Somewhere in that river, someone types a real question about her own business. A few seconds later, it has scrolled away. I was in that room a few days ago, and that moment has stayed with me ever since. So I sat down with my microphone and recorded this episode of Being Is the New Doing, The Show. Furthermore, this bootcamp is the perfect example of why I wrote several weeks ago that the business model you liked might have reached its end. Drowned in the room I didn’t go to learn how to build an AI employee. I have been building my own team since April, and I have been automating my business since the days my blog sent its newsletter out by RSS (yes, that long ago). Today I have 8 autonomous AI employees and 20 AI employees trained on my business. I went to listen. I wanted to hear, from the inside, what entrepreneurs are living with AI right now, at the end of a long day, in their bodies. And to be fair, the demos were brilliant. The person leading that bootcamp is very good at what she does. On day one, though, it felt like drinking from a fire hose. One participant put it beautifully: she loved the fire hose, and then she had to regulate the flow herself to make any of it useful. By the second evening, the same sentences kept coming back in the community, in a hundred different words: * My brain is full. * don’t know where to start. * Which tool first, which employee first, in what order? * I have watched everyone else build amazing things, and I still don’t know what to build for me. And underneath, much quieter, a sentence that nobody typed: Nobody sees me here. You can sit in the biggest room you have ever been in and never feel so alone with your question. So we do what feels natural. We buy the next thing: the upgrade, the next program, the next bootcamp, hoping this one will finally save us. That reflex carries precious information, my dear. It tells you that what you are missing is a direction and someone who sees you, far more than one more tool. The end of the crowd What struck me most in that community was the scepticism. People wondering out loud whether a session was really a training or a sales pitch, whether the enthusiastic comments came from affiliates, what the real cost would be once everything was added up. And honestly? I understand them (check my post on AI real costs). When AI makes content infinite, attention becomes the rarest thing we have, and being seen becomes the most valuable one. People want to be recognised. They want someone to know their name and their business. I don’t see how you can sell your work to someone you have never seen. I believe we are living the end of many models at once: the funnel that runs without you, the launch with the doors that slam, the room of ten thousand. My new business model A fire hose is built to put a fire out. I chose a campfire. A small circle, real warmth, and everyone at the right distance. I know this choice from the inside. In 2017, my blog was one of the first B2B blogs in French-speaking Switzerland, with around thirty thousand visitors a month, and I let it go. I chose the quality of my relationships over the size of my audience. Back then it looked like a strange choice. Today it looks like the future. And for you, sitting with your next purchase in your basket, here is the good news: the answer you are trying to buy is very often already in you. Look inward first, and the right next step becomes much easier to see. What your business needs first Let me tell you about Annick. When she came to me, she was holding all the AI tools in her hands: the subscriptions, the courses, the templates, and a plan for an automation so complex it would have needed a team just to maintain it. Things she had been told she should build. She was submerged, with no idea which end to start from. So we put almost everything aside, and I asked her one question: What does your business need first? Her answer came slowly, and it was beautifully simple. Clients. Time to serve them well. Work she is proud to deliver. The big automation can wait, and it will be much easier to build later, because by then she will know what it is for. When I called Valérie for help, I was completely disillusioned. Like many people, I had imagined that AI would be some kind of magic wand. I was going to download THE right prompt, the one they sell us on social media as THE solution for running your business, and boom, my whole admin system would set itself up almost on its own. Well. Spoiler alert: not at all. Admin is really not my thing. I tried anyway. I moved forward with Claude, I created things, tested, tweaked… except the further I went, the more I felt it was sending me in completely opposite directions. That’s when I called Valérie. What I needed, in the end, was not one more prompt. I needed a foundation. A solid structure I could build on, something that truly fits my business and the way I work. And that is exactly what she gave me. Before that, it felt a bit like being dropped in the middle of Everest with a single instruction: “Here’s your gear, now climb.” Except I didn’t know how to use the ice axe or the harness, let alone which route to take. So I started, step by step. I got to know AI. I learned how it works. I sometimes even used one AI to explain how to use another, which is rather comical when you think about it. It was real work. Long at times, tedious often, with an enormous number of questions. Because to build a system that holds up, you need to understand where you want to go and see the whole picture. Luckily, I’m good at anticipating. But even so, there comes a moment when, on your own, you hit your limits. That’s where Valérie’s support was precious. She kept me from throwing it all out the window, helped me regain confidence and, above all, find a direction again. She gave me a base and a plan. Then it was up to me to build. Today, when I look at the path I’ve travelled, the results are there. Managing my emails, my client files, my follow-ups, creating and tracking my projects, even creating invoices: all of it already works. I still have a lot left to set up. But there’s a fundamental difference from the beginning: now I know how to do it, and I’ve understood something essential: There is no magic prompt! There is no miracle! AI can become an incredibly powerful tool for your business, but behind it, you have to build, think, test, correct and learn. It takes a lot of time. It takes work, but when the foundations are right (thank you, Valérie), you move forward. This isn’t the first time I’ve called on Valérie, and it certainly won’t be the last. In my view, Valérie has something extra: she’s always ahead of her time. It’s quite amazing how she sees changes coming, understands them quickly and, above all, knows how to turn them into something concrete and useful. I will keep calling on her, without hesitation, to go even further in my expertise. And of course, I recommend her with my eyes closed! Thank you so much, Valérie, for being in my world 😍 Annick Think of it like hiring. You would never hire twelve employees on the first day of your company, before you even have a client to serve. With AI employees, we do exactly that, all the time. AI amplifies what is already there. When you know what your business needs, it amplifies your clarity. When you don’t, it amplifies the noise, very fast and very well. And finding clients can start much simpler than the market makes you believe. [ton exemple très simple pour commencer, le même que dans le script] If you are wondering what an AI team really costs once it runs, I opened my whole ledger, numbers included, in What My AI Team Really Costs Me. Questions to sit with Before your next purchase, take ten quiet minutes with these. Write the answers by hand, or say them out loud on a walk. * What does my business need first, this month? * Which tool, course or program did I buy hoping it would save me, and what was I really looking for? * Where do I feel seen in my work, and where am I one more square in a crowd? * Which of the things I am trying to build were my own idea, and which ones was I told to build? * What would I start with tomorrow if I trusted what I already know? You may be surprised by how much is already there. Listen and go deeper If you want to explore why being comes before doing, especially now, my book Being Is the New Doing is on Amazon. And if you would rather sit by the fire with me, one to one, my Power Week is exactly that. Five sessions in one week, one person per week, three weeks this quarter: starting October 19, November 2 and December 7. We point it where you need it most, toward your 2027 strategy or your first AI employees, and you leave knowing what your business needs first, built from your own centre. The week is USD 3,500, and the Monday Guarantee refunds you in full if our first session doesn’t feel right (once the pre-work is done). If this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who is still drowning in their tabs. It might be the first time someone really sees them this week. Take care of your good vibes, Valérie 💚 Get full access to The Awakened Entrepreneur at demontvalerie.substack.com/subscribe
