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"We don't rise to the level of our tools, we fall to the level of our metrics."
A solopreneur with an impressive digital stack: ChatGPT subscription, specialized AI for sales copy, tools for video scripts, social media posts, and brainstorming.
He spent weekends mastering these tools, tweaking settings, admiring their capabilities.
But his business was going nowhere.
No launched products. Zero revenue.
He'd fallen for the great lie of the AI era: that owning the tool equals making progress.
Sound familiar? Ciaran Doyle nails this pattern in a recent article.
It's not about having the perfect AI setup.
It's about measuring what those tools actually DO for your business.
Result? When you track the right metrics, you can:
See which AI tools actually earn their keep
Stop the endless tinkering that produces nothing
Move from "almost ready" to "shipped and earning"
How he breaks it down
Ciaran recommends 5 key metrics to track weekly:
1️⃣ Output Shipped
Count ONLY finished, published assets
Emails sent, blog posts live, videos uploaded
Not drafts, not ideas — things in the market
2️⃣ Time Saved
Calculate your "leverage score" - an estimate of how much time you saved with AI vs doing it manually
Track hours saved vs. manual work
If you're spending 3 hours to save 1, that's not leverage
3️⃣ Conversion from AI Outputs
Real, countable results (clicks, opt-ins, sales)
Connect AI work to actual revenue
4️⃣ Iteration Speed
Time from idea to published asset
Should get faster as your systems improve
Faster shipping = faster market feedback
5️⃣ Tool ROI
Is each tool making/saving more than it costs?
Ruthlessly cancel negative ROI tools
Combat "subscription bloat" that drains profits
My take
This hit home hard.
I've absolutely been the person with a folder of AI-generated drafts that never see the light of day.
(Case in point: I spent an hour earlier this week collecting a bunch of half built ideas into one place so I can finally make a decision and ship one.)
I've wasted hours wrestling with prompts to get something that would've taken 30 minutes to write myself.
I've kept paying for tools I barely use because "I might need them someday."
The learning curve with AI is real. Sometimes you do need to invest hours upfront to save days later.
But without these metrics, it's easy to fool yourself.
You think you're being productive because you're "working with AI".
But are you actually shipping more? Making more money? Saving meaningful time?
Start with just one metric if this feels overwhelming.
A good place to start: track your "Output Shipped" for two weeks.
The number doesn't lie.
And it might be the wake-up call you need to stop collecting AI tools and start using them to actually build your business.
Dig deeper
Want to audit your AI tool stack? Reply to this email and let me know which tools you're currently using (and what your goal is!) and I'll share thoughts on optimizing your setup
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