110: The AI Rebound Effect

AI is supposed to make everything easier—but in many service businesses it’s doing the opposite: pushing people back toward humans they can trust. In this episode, I unpack why. First, audiences are shifting from links to answers—organic search and email engagement are down as more people ask LLMs directly. Second, trust is fracturing. A whole generation raised on edited, vetted nightly news now treats the open internet as suspect; when the stakes are high (money, health, legal, travel), they want eye contact, not a chatbot. Third, overload is real: infinite choices don’t mean better decisions; they mean decision fatigue. That’s why travel agents, financial advisors, and boutique service pros are seeing a quiet resurgence.

But this isn’t anti-AI—it’s pro-human with AI at your back. I share a playbook for blending high-touch delivery with backstage automation: AI for intake, prep, drafting, scheduling, and QA; humans for discovery, judgment, and relationship. You’ll hear 10 examples of service roles that can lean into person-to-person delivery while using AI to scale the unscalable. The takeaway: trust is the new moat. Pair it with smart automation and you don’t just survive the AI wave—you surf it.

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