A Conversation That’s Already Happening
Somewhere right now, a business owner is looking at a line item on their budget and asking a question that should make every IT professional uncomfortable: “Why are we paying this much for something that basically runs itself?”
Or the version that cuts deeper: “IT doesn’t generate revenue. Why is this number so big?”
This isn’t hypothetical. It’s not a thought exercise for a LinkedIn post. It’s happening in boardrooms, in quarterly reviews, in conversations between CFOs and CEOs who are looking at every line item with fresh scrutiny. And if you work in IT, whether internal or as an MSP, you need to have an answer ready. Because “that’s just what IT costs” isn’t going to cut it anymore.
The Printing Shop That Didn’t Make It
I want to tell you about a printing shop I knew. Traditional paper printing, the kind that sustained businesses for decades. When digital started eating into their margins, they did what smart business owners do: they pivoted. Vinyl printing. Screen printing. They found the adjacent value, the thing that still required expertise and equipment that most people didn’t have access to.
It worked. For a while.
Then Cricut happened. If you’re not familiar, Cricut makes consumer-grade cutting machines that let anyone with $300 and a YouTube tutorial produce small-run vinyl projects at home. The thing that required a shop, specialized equipment, and years of experience suddenly became something a hobbyist could do in their garage.
The owners had gotten comfortable in the vinyl change. It felt like the answer, not a temporary reprieve. When Cricut hit, they didn’t know where to go next. They hadn’t been looking for the next pivot because they thought they’d already made it.
They didn’t survive.
The pivot had an expiration date. And by the time they realized it, the clock had already run out.
The Brutal Irony
Here’s what keeps me up at night sometimes: IT departments implemented the tools that made IT look unnecessary.
Think about it. Self-service portals so users don’t have to call the help desk. Automated provisioning so new employees get set up without human intervention. AI-assisted troubleshooting that walks users through fixes. Self-healing endpoints that resolve issues before anyone notices them.
Every single one of those was a win. Every single one made things better. And every single one was also an argument against your budget at the next review.
We optimized ourselves toward invisibility. We built the tools that are now being used to question whether we’re needed at all. I am very guilty of this because I, too, am building and using those tools. I am a work-smarter-not-harder kind of gal.
The Old Answers Are Dying
For years, IT professionals had a set of reliable responses when someone questioned their value:
“You need us because you don’t know how.” But now AI can walk someone through almost any technical task with step-by-step instructions tailored to their specific situation.
“You need us because you don’t have time.” But the automation we implemented means there’s genuinely less to do. That was the point.
“You need us because it’s complicated.” But abstraction layers keep hiding the complexity. Cloud platforms, managed services, and software-as-a-service solutions have made “complicated” someone else’s problem.
“You need us because you need someone on call.” But Copilot never sleeps. Neither do the AI assistants that are getting embedded into every platform.
These were our vinyl. They worked for a while. They’re not enough anymore.
The Help Desk Is Just the Start
If you’re reading this and thinking, “Well, this is really about tier 1 support,” I need you to look further up the chain.
Yes, tier 1 is already being absorbed by chatbots. That’s obvious to anyone paying attention. But this isn’t a tier 1 problem. It’s a pattern that keeps repeating at higher and higher levels.
Cloud architecture that once required specialists is now a template you deploy from a marketplace. Security monitoring that previously required a dedicated team now uses AI-based detection with human oversight. Network design that took years of experience to get right is increasingly handled by software-defined systems that optimize themselves.
The “complicated” keeps moving upward. And the floor keeps rising with it. The things that made you valuable five years ago are becoming commodity skills. The things that make you valuable today will follow the same path.
The Spin Cycle Trap
Here’s where people get stuck. They anticipate this and think, “I need to learn AI to stay relevant.”
So they take a course. Learn the tools. Get a certification. Feel safe again.
But remember “prompt engineering”? That was a hot skill for maybe 18 months before the models got good enough that elaborate prompting barely mattered anymore. The courses people paid good money for in 2023 are already artifacts.
This is the spin cycle: learn something, feel secure, watch it get disrupted, repeat. And the cycle is compressing. The gap between “this is a valuable skill” and “everyone can do this” keeps shrinking.
I’m not saying don’t learn. I’m saying don’t mistake learning for safety.
How Long Does the Boom Last?
Let’s be realistic about timelines. The “I know AI tools better than my competitors” advantage? Maybe three to five years before it’s just baseline literacy.
Think about Excel. There was a time when knowing Excel well was a genuine competitive advantage. Now it’s just assumed. You don’t get hired because you know Excel. You don’t get hired if you don’t.
The same thing happened with email, with basic cloud tools, with video conferencing. Skills that felt cutting-edge became table stakes.
The boom doesn’t end. It moves. The scarcity shifts to wherever humans still matter. The question is whether you’re chasing the boom or positioning yourself where it’s going.
What’s Left When the Basics Disappear?
So what’s actually valuable when everyone has access to the same AI tools, automation platforms, and self-service capabilities?
It’s not a skill. It’s not a tool. It’s not a certification you can hang on your wall.
It’s the ability to see the next wave before it hits. Not perfectly, but well enough to start moving.
It’s knowing what NOT to do. The judgment that comes from watching projects fail, from seeing what happens when someone deploys a solution that technically works but practically destroys productivity. Experience isn’t about knowing the right answers. It’s about recognizing the wrong ones faster.
It’s a translation. The ability to sit between what technology can do and what the business actually needs, and bridge that gap in a way that creates real value. Not just implementing solutions, but identifying which problems are actually worth solving.
It’s relationships built on trust, not on “I can do this thing you can’t.” Because when everyone can do the thing, the relationship is all that’s left. The client who trusts your judgment, who calls you before they make a decision, who values your perspective even when they could technically figure it out themselves.
It’s being the guide when everyone has the tools but nobody knows which ones matter. The paradox of abundant capability is that choosing becomes harder, not easier. Someone who can cut through the noise and say “this is what you actually need” becomes more valuable, not less.
The Question to Sit With
I want to leave you with some questions that I’ve been sitting with myself:
What’s your vinyl? The thing that feels safe right now, that pays the bills, that you’ve built your value around, but that has an expiration date you might not want to look at too closely?
What’s your Cricut? What’s going to make your current value accessible to everyone? It might already exist. It might be coming next year. But it’s coming.
Are you learning to run the vinyl printer better, or are you building something that matters when everyone has one in their garage?
The client is going to ask why they need you. Probably sooner than you think. What’s your answer?
The Ones Who Won’t Press the Button
Now, someone reading this might think: “There are still plenty of people who can’t even turn a machine on. They’re not going away.”
That’s true. There’s a whole market segment of business owners and decision-makers who don’t want to learn new tools, don’t want to change their mindset, and will happily pay someone else to handle anything technical. They exist, and they’ll keep existing for a while.
But building your future on that crowd isn’t a strategy. It’s a countdown.
Every year, there are fewer of them. Business owners who won’t adopt technology are aging out. The ones replacing them grew up with smartphones. The floor keeps rising, and the pool of people who need help with the basics keeps shrinking.
You can serve that market. You can make money doing it. But if that’s your whole plan, you’re the printing shop owners getting comfortable with vinyl, not realizing the Cricut is already on its way.
What the Printing Shop Teaches Us
The owners who didn’t make it weren’t stupid. They weren’t lazy. They made a smart pivot at the right time. But they made one critical mistake: they thought the pivot was the destination.
They got comfortable. They stopped scanning the horizon. When the next wave came, they were caught flat-footed with no idea where to go.
That’s the real lesson here. Not that you need to predict the future perfectly. Nobody does. But you need to understand that every safe harbor is temporary. Every skill that feels essential today is on a clock. Every value proposition has an expiration date, even if you can’t see it yet.
The work isn’t finding the one thing that will keep you valuable forever. That thing doesn’t exist. The work is building the habit of looking ahead while you still have the luxury of time.
The client will ask why they need you. Probably sooner than you think.
Make sure you’re not still talking about vinyl when they do.