What is the difference between analog, digital and agentic work?

Analog means people hold the knowledge, digital means software holds it, agentic means AI holds it and finishes the work. Here is what that looks like.

It comes down to who holds the knowledge and who moves the work. In analog work, people hold the knowledge and do the work. In digital work, software holds the information but people still move the work from place to place. In agentic work, AI holds the knowledge, coordinates the process and completes the work, and it only interrupts you when something is broken.

Gus Waite and I used this frame all through the second episode of Season 2, because the word agentic means nothing to most owners until they see it applied to something they already do. We ran it through two things every business has: the agreements people make with each other, and the money.

What does each stage look like side by side?

• Analog: people hold the knowledge and perform the work. Your bookkeeper, your CPA and your banker know the numbers, and they do the work.
• Digital: software holds the information, and people move the work around. QuickBooks can give you a P&L, as long as everyone put the right information in and someone goes in to pull it.
• Agentic: AI holds the knowledge, coordinates the process and completes the work. It tells you when something breaks, and otherwise it runs.

Owners are control freaks. I include myself. Agentic AI is the first support system I've found that gives a control freak more control, because the answers come when you ask for them instead of weeks later.

How does it change the way a team keeps its agreements?

This one goes back to how I coached owners for years. I found that every upset or inefficiency in a business came from one of two places: a missing agreement or a broken agreement. An agreement has three parts: who is going to do it, what they're going to do, and by when. Trust between two people gets built when one of them hands something off with those three parts clear and it comes back done. When a whole company runs on agreements, all boats rise.

The analog version was a paper form. Every manager kept a who, what and by when sheet, and before long they had stacks of them and couldn't keep track of their own agreements. The digital version was email, which helped, as long as someone remembered to write it.

Here's the agentic version, from Gus. Every call he has is transcribed in Zoom. Right after the call, the transcript goes into his co-CEO, an AI project built on his Source Code. It pulls out who is going to do what by when, sends each person an email with their agreement and his, and puts his side into his task list so he can see whether he's keeping his word.

I saw the same thing from a young developer on our tech team. We'd just left a meeting and I told him I was a little concerned he wasn't writing down everything we'd agreed to. He told me the notetaker was capturing it, his agent would email me what he'd agreed to do, and it would go on his calendar. I'd forgotten we'd set that up.

Gus described the old way from his own days. Nine meetings back to back. No lunch, no water, no calls from family. By the end of the day he'd made agreements he couldn't remember, and he was frustrated and trying to reconstruct who he'd told what. And seven of those nine people were never going to do business with him. He'd only booked them out of fear that not enough people were coming in. Now he has three people on the calendar who actually want to work with him, and he told us the day before the recording he went swimming.

How does it change the way an owner sees the money?

For a lot of owners, money is where the shame lives. Gus talked about how many of them stay vague on purpose. They don't want to look at the numbers. They don't know if it was a good month. They mistake cash flow for profit: fifty grand came in this month, but they spent fifty-five, and they'll put the difference on a card because it'll all work out.

My analog version was a spreadsheet. I'd look at my credit card statements, work out an average, type it in, and check each month whether I was up or down. Digital was a bookkeeper reconciling everything in QuickBooks. It was better, but it was history. My P&L arrived on the 15th of the next month, and by the time I read it I was already into the next cycle and couldn't apply anything to the month I'd lost. Ask a CPA for a P&L during tax season and you might hear back months later.

The agentic version is the co-CFO Gus built. He described a program that downloads every transaction and sorts it into personal and business. Each morning he can go to one place and ask what he's spending personally, what his personal burn rate is, what his business cash flow is, how much is coming in and going out, and which subscriptions he pays for and actually uses. Then he can act on it the same day. If he needs three deals this month to hit his number, he goes to his marketing and sales agents and adjusts.

Why only five numbers?

Because the old model buries you. Gus's picture of it: QuickBooks adds new features every year, you tried once, you failed, and you never figured out the one thing you wanted from it. The new model starts from the inside. What are the five pieces of information that matter to you, available any hour of the day? You don't need the rest.

Gus also tied the numbers to a definition of success. When success means more, there's never enough. When you know your number, what it takes to live the way you want, including how often you eat out and the flowers you buy your mother, success becomes having the time, money and presence to be available to what's in front of you, instead of wondering whether the Amex bill got paid.

When we define success is more, there's never enough.

Gus Waite

Does agentic mean no employees?

Not for anyone we work with. The $5 million company at 70% EBITDA with no employees is a challenge I set for my own AI native business, one I'm building from scratch. We're on our way and we aren't there. When we walk into an existing company going AI forward, the agreement with the owner is that nobody gets replaced. People get nervous when AI shows up, and creating safety is part of the job.

Gus gave the example of how he works with his own VA now. The old model was hiring a VA from the Philippines to do tasks for ten dollars an hour and not thinking much about her. The new model is a Claude subscription and a shared project. She records every task she does for him as an SOP in Loom, and each month she puts those SOPs into Claude and asks which agents could handle those workflows. In his view, owners who love their people owe them this, because in two or three years the first question at a job interview will be whether you're AI literate.

The work AI should take is the work that eats people's days: copying information, chasing updates, building the same reports again, answering questions the company has already answered, searching for documents. What stays with people is judgment, creativity, relationships and leadership. Your team will know you've changed when they see you on a Zoom call without ten other things going on, present and not rushing.

To try the frame on your own business, pick one process, like agreements after a meeting or your monthly numbers. Write down who holds the knowledge today and who moves the work. If the answer is a person and a person, you're analog. If it's software and a person, you're digital. The next step is deciding which of those tasks an agent could finish and report back on, and where you want a person to check it.

Cut from $5M With No Employees: The Belief That Has To Move First.