They Said I Was Too Old To Start Using AI To Earn An Extra Income Online...
“I Never Read a Book in My Life, But This Opened My Eyes”
You don’t realise how much you’re relying on it until it stops.
That quiet phone.
That job that doesn’t come through.
That neighbour who said they’d “pass your name along” and never did.
Word-of-mouth used to be gold.
The pipeline kept food on the table and the boiler running, literally.
People trusted it because it came from honest conversations.
“You need a guy? I know a guy.”
And boom, you’re in business.
But what nobody told us is this:
Word-of-mouth has a shelf life.
It works when you’re visible.
It works when you’re still out there, still active, still showing up.
But the minute you slow down or retire?
The calls get fewer.
The referrals dry up.
And suddenly, all that work, all those years, and busted knuckles… feels like it’s fading into silence.
It hits hard.
Because it’s not just about the money (though let’s be honest, the pension doesn’t stretch like they said it would).
It’s about the identity.
The purpose.
That feeling of still being needed.
What I didn’t see at the time was that relying only on word-of-mouth made me invisible the second I stopped pushing.
I had no system.
No machine.
No way to scale that trust I’d built over decades.
And that’s when I started to ask the fundamental question:
“What if there’s a better way to be seen?”
Not by begging for attention.
Not by chasing people down.
But by putting something out there that works while I sleep, sits online, and introduces people to who I am without me lifting a finger.
The problem was, I didn’t know where to start.
I’m not a tech wizard.
I don’t “do” social media.
I don’t read marketing books.
And most of what’s out there feels built for someone else, not a retired tradesman with a mind wired for the physical, not the digital.
But here’s the truth I found out the hard way:
If you want to be seen again…
If you want to feel useful again…
If you want to still have an impact in this world…
You can’t sit and wait for someone to remember your name.
You’ve got to give them a reason to look you up.
And what’s wild? That’s now easier than ever. (But we’ll get to that soon.)
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