Celebrating One Year in AIS+: A Thank You to Nate Herk 🙌

Jul 21 (edited) • Wins 🌟

A question from a member caused me to pause and reflect as I close in on celebrating one year in AIS+.

After I posted about closing a $33,500 AI Enablement project for inventory forecasting, he asked:

“Did you already have case studies about this type of automation? Or did the client choose you based on trust alone? I’m interested in how you positioned your offer.”

It was a great question.

And the honest answer is: it was trust, but not trust alone.

It was trust that had been rebuilt, repositioned, and reinforced over the past year.

Almost one year to the day, I joined AIS+ with

@Nate Herk

and

@Yash Chauhan

to begin my AI journey in real terms.

At the time, I was not starting from zero professionally. I had decades of experience in operations, turnaround work, business process improvement, post-acquisition synergy, low-code/no-code systems, workflow design, and executive-level problem solving.

But I was starting from the beginning in terms of being seen as an AI professional.

And that is a very different challenge.

Here is the question I asked myself:

Is it harder to convince someone you are an AI expert if they have never met you and are introduced to you as an AI professional?

Is it harder if they have known you for thirty years, already have a fixed picture of who you are, and now you have to convince them that you have transformed into someone who can help lead AI change?

My story is the second one.

The people who knew me best already trusted me. But they trusted me for what I had been.

Operations.

Turnarounds.

Process improvement.

Business strategy.

Execution.

They did not automatically see me as someone who could help transform a company with AI.

That credibility had to be earned.

This is where AIS+ became a major part of my professional transformation.

Over the past year, I have used this community in three very specific ways.

First, I consumed the lessons, videos, frameworks, and examples from Nate and other leaderboard members.

I did not just watch the content. I studied it, applied it, tested it, and translated it into business use cases I could explain to executives and operators.

Second, I put myself into the community fully.

I became the number one ranked member on the AIS+ all-time leaderboard, and use it in my marketing. That achievement was never about points for me. It was about reps.

Every comment, post, question, and discussion forced me to get sharper.

Third, Nate hired me to be the Community Manager for his high-ticket AI Incubator course last year. That gave me another level of exposure to serious builders, serious questions, and serious AI implementation conversations.

That mattered. Because AI credibility does not come from saying, “I know AI.” It comes from being able to explain it clearly, apply it practically, and stay calm when business leaders ask hard questions.

Over the past year, I have published more than 300 posts and articles about AI across AIS+, AI Bits & Pieces, and LinkedIn.

I have written about AI adoption, AI literacy, prompt engineering, citizen development, workflow automation, RAG, enterprise AI strategy, AI tools, AEO, GEO, client use cases, second-brain systems, and the practical reality of bringing AI into business environments.

That writing has become part of my proof. Not because every post is perfect. But because the body of work shows the journey.

It shows the thinking.

It shows the reps.

It shows that I am not casually interested in AI.

I am actively living inside the shift.

And that is one of the biggest lessons I have learned from AIS+. The community became a form of live peer review.

There are brilliant AI professionals, technical builders, operators, consultants, and business owners inside AIS+.

When you share your thinking in a room like that,

You sharpen it.

You get challenged.

You get corrected.

You get encouraged.

You see what others are building.

You learn what is real and what is hype.

You also learn how to explain AI in a way that business people can actually understand.

That has been one of the biggest gifts.

Today, I can walk into a room with executives, operators, owners, or technical teams and talk about AI with confidence.

Not because I know everything.

I do not.

But because I have spent the past year building the skill, the language, the judgment, and the practical pattern recognition needed to help companies move forward.

So, to answer the question more directly:

The client did not choose me because I had a perfect case study for this exact inventory forecasting automation.

They chose me because there was already deep trust.

But that trust had to be extended into a new category. And AIS+ helped me make that leap.

It helped me reposition from someone known for operations and business transformation to someone trusted to lead AI-enabled operational transformation.

That is a very different thing.

In the past year, I have gone from AI beginner to AI practitioner, strategist, educator, community leader, content creator, and now someone being trusted with meaningful AI enablement projects.

At age 60, just to raise the difficulty level. That part matters to me too, because reinvention is easy to talk about and hard to do.

It requires humility.

It requires reps.

It requires being willing to look like a beginner again.

It requires asking questions in public.

It requires writing before you feel ready.

It requires building before you feel fully qualified.

It requires surrounding yourself with people who are ahead of you, beside you, and coming up behind you.

AIS+ has been that place for me.

So, thank you to @Nate Herk , @Yash Chauhan , and one of my first mentors @Usman Mohammed along with the entire AIS+ community.

You have played a major role in helping me transform my professional identity over the past year.

From operations and turnaround guy… To AI strategy, enablement, and business transformation practitioner.

And honestly, I am just getting started.

++++++

Join AIS+ by using this link:

Start Your AIS+ Journey Today!

You may or may not know that I am the number-one-ranked member of AIS+, and have successfully sold over $200,000 in AI services over the past year. While this success was due in large part to hard work and dedication, the AI knowledge I gained at AIS+ was a key factor in my success.

If you use my link above to join, I will give you a personal tour of AIS+ when you arrive to make sure you get off to a great start. I will also introduce you to some key people who can help make your AIS+ journey successful.

Respectfully,

@Michael Wacht

Click my name to follow me on Skool.

Follow me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwacht

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Celebrating One Year in AIS+: A Thank You to Nate Herk 🙌