I'm excited to share that I've created my first agent using n8n and thanks to a few YouTube videos. 🙃 For those who have been doing this a while, you may be lol'ing about my excitement. That's ok. I am too! Before I started this mission, a couple hours ago, I had no idea how to use APIs or any of the n8n building blocks but I'm following advice I found in yesterday's video about "How I'd make money in 2026..." by the one and only Nate Herk. I'm going to continue following his recipe and see how far I can get with the power of AI! UPDATE: 2nd image is what I was able to add with Outlook. Interesting how 2FA and API Keys, etc. can all work seamlessly together to provide an outcome. Turns out, Google only refreshes an 'Other' calendar type, whenever it wants so it can take hours (8-24 hours) before a calendar updated on a shared Apple calendar appears on the Google calendar for consideration of availability or not. My work here is complete for the day. Total time is around 5.5 hours including two 10-minute breaks from never having built a functional Agent, to having one that has some robustness measures baked into the logic. I'm pretty happy with a single session's progress.

Just saw this roundup of the top voices in AI and Automation and our guy Nate Herkelman is RIGHT THERE with the heavy hitters. If you're not following these people yet, you're missing out on some seriously good content. These are the builders and creators actually pushing automation forward right now. Here's the lineup: n8n – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gMjJC8zT Nate Herkelman – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g8JdHnEi 👑 congrats @Nate Herk you are killing it! Jack Roberts – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g3qHT7GP Aemal Sayer – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gsdmKW8S Alexandra Spalato – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gEtgiBex Prakarsh Gupta (Small AI) – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gXa4EHhk Yashica Jain – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g8m6WJfK Nadia Privalikhina – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g2VgtpFY Manthan Patel – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gfwmJc-Z Oskar Kramarz – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gcb2tVjz The AI Automators – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gnjej6_S Devin Kearns – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gHfUu2uE Cole Medin – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gxxBCrUx Milan Tahliani – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gMnV7DA6 Oumnya Benhassou – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gJAwNNGu Robin van Veen – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gwipk25i Simon Coton (Simon Scrapes) – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gD6dN4pm Ryan Doser – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gBhUjYFQ Solomon Christ AI – YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gVyfsf_7 Who are you already following? Anyone we should add to this list?

It really opened my mind to how AI can streamline tasks and spark new ideas. #AISChallenge

But it also has an expiration date. Right now, sticking "AI" in front of "consultant" is a real edge. The search demand is there. The budgets are there. Companies are actively hunting for someone who can walk in, look at their operations, and tell them what to actually do with this stuff. So if you're trying to position yourself, take the label. It works. But the label is the temporary part and we've seen this cycle before. → When Excel showed up, people might've called themselves "Excel accountants." But how ridiculous would it be if someone introduced themselves like that today? → When the internet showed up, people spun up "internet marketing" agencies. Now that's just marketing. AI is doing the same thing to consulting because AI is going to seep into everything. In a few years, the qualifier drops. The consultants who aren't AI native won't be winning business. They'll just be bad consultants. The job under the hood doesn't change. A consultant walks into a business, finds the actual constraint, and prescribes a solution. The newest tech is the toolbox, not the job description. But people take the "AI consultant" title and assume the answer always has to be AI. Sometimes the right call is a database restructure. Sometimes it's a better SaaS tool. Sometimes it's a deterministic workflow with zero AI in it. I'm not saying AI is never the answer. It's the highest-impact tool we've had in a long time. But forcing it where it doesn't belong is how clients lose trust fast. I think about it as a pyramid. → Bottom: deterministic workflows. No AI. Cheap, fast, reliable. → Middle: AI workflows. More power, more cost, more failure modes. → Top: AI agents. Maximum capability, maximum risk, longest time to ship. The higher you climb, the more it costs, the longer it takes, and the more ways it breaks. More risk. Start at the bottom. Only move up when the problem actually demands it. The label "AI consultant" gets you in the door right now. The discipline of solving the real problem with the simplest possible solution is what keeps you there once everyone else catches up.

I’ve got a DGX Spark GB10 for AI projects: research experiments, training language models, and running inference services. I’d love to swap setup tips, performance notes, and favorite tools. What are you running?