Last week, a client told me someone else using AI could do the same work for half the price. My heart sank.
When AI Makes Production Cheap, What Gets Expensive?
I also got stuck here. Last year, I spent two months on an industry report; now AI spits out a first draft in ten minutes. Where's my value then? I finally figured it out: AI makes "production" cheap, but three things get expensive—judgment (knowing what to do), distribution (having people listen to you), and trust (people believing your choices).
My friend Lin Xiaoman, an independent consultant in Hangzhou, told me over coffee by West Lake this March: "Clients don't pay me to be fast; they pay me to stop them from making stupid decisions." She stopped competing on delivery speed and started competing on judgment—and her rates actually went up.
You Can Replicate This Today
Money: $0. Time: 30 minutes. Technical barrier: Just knowing how to type. First step: Open a blank document.
Write down one thing: Among the decisions you helped clients make over the past three months, which ones were valuable because of "judgment" rather than "output"? I wrote down five, and realized three were all about "me understanding their users better than they do." I later shifted my positioning in that direction.
Advice by Stage
Just starting out: If you're still looking for your first client, I'd suggest making people remember you for "seeing things clearly." One good judgment call is more memorable than ten deliverables.
Have 1-2 clients: If you already have steady deliverables, I'd suggest adding a line at the end of each delivery: "Here's how you can judge whether to do this next time." Make the client feel you're not just an executor.
Scaling up: If you're leading a small team, I'd suggest writing your "judgment criteria" into an internal doc, so every piece of output has your taste behind it.
This method isn't for everyone, and it's fine if you don't try it now. But when you find clients comparing prices instead of value, you can come back to this idea.