There's a certain kind of message I've been getting a lot more often lately. It goes something like: "I've made a start on this. Can you just tidy it up and get it built?"

Attached is a sales page, or a slide deck, or a graphic, made in whichever AI tool the sender has been playing with. And I completely understand how it happens. You had an idea, you wanted to see it straight away, and twenty minutes later there it was. Or at least a very convincing picture of it.

You have a good idea on a Tuesday.

Maybe it's a little promotion for an existing offer, or an upsell, or a change to your membership that would make things better for the people already in there. Nothing dramatic.

Within about thirty seconds you've mentally walked through the waitlist, the sales page, the emails and the 37 apps that all need to talk to each other for a customer to get from one end to the other. If we change this, then that needs updating. If the checkout works differently here, we'll have to change that thing over there. And while we're touching the sales page, the branding for that product has been a bit off for months...

...Aaaaaaand never mind.

You hired someone to make the graphics, build the sales page, design the PDF or update the website. They did the work… but somehow, 20 minutes later you’re back in there changing things yourself.

Maybe you only meant to swap out one photo or tweak a colour, but changing that colour means something else doesn’t work anymore. And while you’re in there, you notice the spacing on another section, and actually… that paragraph could probably use a rewrite too. What felt like a five-minute change has somehow taken most of the afternoon.

And then it happens again tomorrow…

For several years, I wasn’t really sure what my job was anymore.

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know that I started my business as a graphic designer and brand strategist. Graphics, websites, branding—all the design stuff. That was me. That was what I did.

And if you’re new here, you’re now caught up. That is the very, very shortest version of my first decade in business.

But somewhere along the way, “graphic designer” stopped describing a lot of what I actually did…