I am all in · AI Automation Agency Hub

I am all in

👋 Hey everyone, Duy here. Originally from Brussels, currently based in Cambridge, UK.

A bit about me. I'm an engineer by training, and I've spent the last 11+ years at a global engineering software company, though not in one role. I started in technical support, then did about six years as a technical trainer, flying all over Europe and the Americas teaching engineers embedded systems and technical software. A lot of engineering, maths and science, basically.

After that I moved into authoring self-paced online courses for our clients. So I've been around "automation" for a long time, just the engineering kind, not the n8n/Claude kind. And watching what people have built with the AI tools of the last two years honestly floored me.

Here's how I got here. Last year I attended a Shadow Operator workshop with Iman Gadzhi, then joined his VIP community. The idea was that you could use AI to help smaller creators monetise the audience they already have. So I started CreatorsForge (https://creatorsforge.co/) off the back of it, and that became my first real taste of AI automation. I built a system that scrapes Instagram to find creators, runs them through n8n to analyse their niche and how they could make money from it, then drafts a huge batch of outreach emails to get them on a call. The same system also pulls together the Gamma slides, writes the HeyGen voiceover scripts, and preps the questions for the qualification call. Doing all of that is where it really clicked for me.

Then I found Nate Herk's content on AI automation, fell down the whole AI agency rabbit hole, joined his AIS+ community, and went even deeper on the tools. I've built a lot with Claude Code since, I'm already working with a few small clients, and I started my own agency, Sharpr Automations (https://sharpr.cloud/). It's built on an idea I borrowed from genetic algorithms: every project sharpens the internal system we build on, so each iteration comes out a little sharper than the last. That's the whole motto really.

I've also got a sports nutrition community called The Fuel Lab (https://fuellab.sharpr.cloud/). I'm a HYROX athlete and a qualified nutrition coach, so that one is close to my heart, but the part that fits this community is how it runs. I built a content engine with Claude that generates almost everything for me. It picks a topic, writes it up in my voice, fact-checks every claim against the actual science with proper citations before anything goes out, makes the images, renders the videos with AI voiceovers, builds the PDF guides, then publishes it all and sends the email out on a schedule. It's chained together with n8n, Claude, ElevenLabs for the voices and Remotion/Hyperframes for the videos. I barely touch it week to week and it costs me pennies per issue. Honestly it's taught me more about wiring AI tools together than anything else I've built.

Now the honest part, and the reason Liam's intro video hit me so hard.

I've always known the weakest part of my business is me. I've got no real background in sales or marketing, and getting on calls with clients used to terrify me. In my company, that's why we have a Sales department, and I've always been in the Services department. Both are customer-facing, but I handle the technical side of it.

My instinct was to be the one man band who does everything himself. The two path split, Consultant or Builder, gave me permission to stop fighting that. I'm a Builder. Behind the scenes systems are where I'm strong. So the plan is to lean into that, and partner with someone on the consulting side until I've built up the confidence to grow into it myself.

If I'm really honest, I've been sitting in the starting blocks for too long. Getting ready. Learning every skill. Building thing after thing, trying to make it all perfect so that when I finally jump, I don't carry the imposter syndrome with me. I'm flooded every day with more Youtube videos to watch, more courses to finish. Recently, I also got interested in image and video generation with Higgsfield, and it opened another rabbit hole.

For a while now I've been quietly quitting. Not slacking, just feeling my identity drift away from "engineer." And there's a phrase that stuck with me for the other side of all this, "job hugging." Holding onto a job out of fear rather than love for it, gripping the safe thing tighter than ever because the economy feels shaky and AI is moving so fast. I get both pulls completely. A stable salary feels more valuable than it's ever been, and walking away is scary when you're not sure you could land another job, because that one might get automated too. But the more I sit with that fear, the more it turns into the reason to build something that's mine.

My "why" really comes down to the three freedoms. Time, money, and place. I don't want a company deciding how much my year is worth, or where I'm allowed to live. This is me choosing to take my life back into my own hands.

Goal for this community: land my first proper paying client as the Builder. And to connect with a few of you on the Consultant side who are great with people but would rather hand the building over to someone who lives in the systems.

That synergy Liam talks about? That's exactly what I'm here for.

If that's you, come say hi 🙌

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I am all in