I paid a $500/hour strategist to alphabetize my filing cabinet. For weeks I did
By John Aspinall ✱ · June 9, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
I paid a $500/hour strategist to alphabetize my filing cabinet.
For weeks I did it without thinking.
That's what running every AI task on the biggest, smartest model actually is.
Summarize a support email? Max brain.
Sort inbound leads? Max brain.
It worked.
⤷ It also cost a fortune & crawled.
Here's the fix, and it took me way too long to see it:
You don't have one AI assistant.
You have three.
→ A junior VA → fast, cheap, tireless. Give it the boring high-volume stuff. Tag the reviews. Triage the inbox. Classify the tickets.
→ A senior operator → your everyday workhorse. Writes the copy, drafts the SOPs, builds the reports. 80-90% of your work lives here.
→ A fractional strategist → expensive, and worth it. You only call them in when six figures are on the line. The Q4 plan. The pricing model. The funnel rebuild.
The whole game is matching the hire to the job.
Simple rule:
Repetitive and high-volume? → the junior.
Day-to-day work? → the senior (your default).
Complex or high-stakes? → the strategist.
Most operators burn money defaulting everything to the strategist.
The pros route the task to the cheapest hire who can do it well → and save the big brain for the calls that actually move the number.
Stop reaching for the max brain on autopilot.
What are you running everything on right now?