Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

Embarrassed to share this but if it helps one person, then I’m ok.

13 years:

2010: Had a rough breakup.

→ Boozing increased (early 20s are a blur).
→ Fired from well-paying after punching someone for racist comment at X-mas company party (Intoxicated, 100% my fault)

2011 - 2012: More partying and drinking

2013: Stopped partying. Enrolled in CS for college.

2014: Still miserable working dead-end job

→ Found @PatFlynn SPI Podcast.
→ Mindblown from all the possibilities
→ Thought I was Zuck
→ Launched an iOS app
→ Failed (bye $7K)
→ Skills I learned? Priceless

2015: Dropped out of CS to focus on biz building.

→ Started 3 businesses, all failed but with new skills.

2016: Back to 9-5 job, sales job, paid decent.

→ Started Amazon FBA biz
→ Biz hit $20k/month.
→ Discovered automation but saw it as an expense.

2017: Won sales person of the year award ($2 mil sales)

→ Burned out from working 90+ hours, FBA biz failed.
→ Quit drinking and cigarettes
→ Quit 9-5.

2018: Tried FB Ads biz, failed

→ Pivoted back to focus on marketing automation
→ Almost burned out
→ Documented and systematized
→ Hit 10K profit (clients generated via networking events 😣)
→ Delegated more
→ Built team (VAs, contractors).

2020: Biz doing well, working ~20 to -25 hours a week, but unfulfilled.

Pre-pandemic: Sold my agency, pandemic ate up exit $ big time, but had enough to sustain my creative pursuits.

2020 - 2021: Thought I wanted to build a SaaS, applied to SaaS roles to build network, (I really wanted to create content but too scared).

→ Rejected 200+ times
→ But still built network and mentors.

Summer 2021: Discovered build in public community.

→ Slowly began creating content (about everything) struggled to figure out what my “niche” was (didn’t think anyone cared about automation content).

December 2021: Built an automated Airtable database for a newsletter biz I was volunteering for, someone else wanted the same for their biz.

→ Sold it for 7K
→ “Aha” moment and demand was validated (automation content)

January 2022: Went all in on talking about automation

→ Twitter and LinkedIn growth spiked
→ Inbound requests for automation consulting
→ Hit almost 200K in revenue in 2022

May 2023: Decided to leave consulting to focus on the newsletter biz.

August 2023: Released two digital products, collaborating with a major brand and found my dev to help me create software products.

September 2023: Feeling grateful.

You are not your past.

I wish someone shook me to wake the fu** up but I still wouldn’t trade those lessons for anything.

H/T @thepatwalls for the inspo post

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@daniel_nguyenx https://t.co/0z0NkDpycT 🫰

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@iamjasonlevin

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@johnrush if your margins are healthy then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the spend’s just fuel

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@miguelreng True

That’s been the case before AI exploded (not that you’re wrong)

But the gurus are over here over-promising, scamming - making the industry synonymous with drop shipping 😢

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

Anyone claiming they fired their VA and replaced them with a $40K automation or agent needs to share:

→ The termination letter you sent
→ Your automation activity logs showing:

• Every trigger and action
• All endpoints and dependencies
• Success rates vs error rates
• Time saved
• Error logs
• Evals

→ Video proof of the actual output and results

No documentation = You’re either lying, incompetent, or both.

The “automation replaced my team” fantasy has gone too far.

Show the receipts or stop the cap.

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@KevinEspiritu @MatznerJon I love this so much

[Kevin → Plant Daddy @KevinEspiritu]

THE COURSEBOI MANIFESTO (How to Not Get Scammed)

First off, not all courses are scams, many teach real skills...

But COURSEBOIS are an entirely different beast. They spawn from the black, soulless Nether of Low Ethics™️ when one (or both) of these scenarios happens:

1. A new media format / business model emerges, or
2. Barriers to entry for a business model lower

Here's how to spot them:

Coursebois tend to flex outcomes vs. education.

The quintessential courseboi for my era of the Internet was Tai Lopez's "Here in my garage" ad. Selling a lifestyle and promising if you follow "67 Steps" it'll be yours too.

Showing out comes CAN serve as proof, but you'd need to show outcomes of STUDENTS, not yourself...

The ethical ones focus on frameworks and systems, not Lambos, mansions, girls, etc.

Example: One of @ramit's early courses was called Earn1k. It was literally a course about making your first $1,000 on the side, complete with concrete examples of students who went through the course and achieved the outcome promised.

I took that course 15 years ago and made $5k in a summer designing websites. I bought it, did the work, and got the outcome. Success.

Coursebois love top-of-funnel metrics.

"My apps do $3.6mm a month" or "We do a billion views a month" are common phrases for coursebois.

OK cool, but $3.6mm - COGS of running app - app store fee - taxes - cofounder split - living expenses of an ostentatious lifestyle = ???

No mention of profitability, margin profile, conversion rate on the views. Dollars and views are agnostic metrics unless contextualized against a business reality.

They’ll never talk about course-completion rates.

Tai Lopez's “67 Steps” program reportely had <0.5% of buyers finishing the 67th step. If they hide dropoff or completion rates, they're more likely to be selling hopium than solid value.

To be clear: low completion rate doesn't immediately = scam, it just means you made a course that people who paid $ for don't give a fuck about, which isn't great proof of value.

They promise outcomes that are objectively low-probability, even if course material is followed.

"Quit your job in 30 days" "Build viral apps" "$10k/mo in 90 days" any of these phrases is an immediate red flag.

There's a power law to almost all outcomes on this beautiful Earth, so using the outlier example as your flagship marketing tagline is low ethic and a bad signal for course quality.

When barriers to entry fall, the Coursebois arrive.

I'm old enough now to realize there is Nothing New Under The Sun...it's all a transmutation of what's come before. If you think any of the hype marketing you're seeing lately on here is revolutionary, here's a basic timeline of this industry:

Direct Mail (1950s–80s): Mail list rentals + cheap postage lowered the cost of reaching strangers → copywriting gurus and “mail order riches” promises. Gary Halbert's era.

Infomercials (1980s–90s): Late-night TV airtime got cheap → anyone could run 30-minute sermons → classified ad gurus, get-rich-quick tapes, Tony Robbins infomercials.

Early Internet (1999–2006): Email service providers + ClickBank made digital delivery cheap → launch formula gurus and “$1M in 24 hours” hype. Frank Kern, "Mass Control", etc.

Blogging / SEO & Web 2.0 (2007–2012): WordPress + cheap hosting made publishing trivial → “passive income” gurus teaching how to monetize blogs and YouTube channels.

Shopify & Amazon FBA (2013–2017): Drag-and-drop e-comm + Amazon logistics lowered the bar for retail → dropship gurus, FBA private-label courses.

Cheap Facebook/IG Ads (2013–2018):
Self-serve ad platforms removed the need for agencies → SMMA (social media marketing agency) gurus promising $10k/month retainers.

Creator Economy Platforms (2018–2021): Patreon, Gumroad, Substack, OnlyFans made monetization plug-and-play → “quit your job, get paid for your content” courses.

TikTok Virality (2020–2022): Insane algo pull + lower friction to create videos → hustle-tok bros teaching reselling, “UGC side hustle” courses.

AI Tools (2023–Now): ChatGPT, MidJourney, no-code APIs made software creation accessible → “prompt = $10k/month” gurus and AI agency courses.

Every time the edge starts to erode, coursebois spawn from their Hellhole and start cashing in on shovel-selling because it's dramatically higher margin and easier than running the actual business they're teaching about.

Coursebois will always be with us. They're the Sisyphus of capitalism, forever pushing the boulder of low-ethic dream-selling uphill, only for it to roll back down on us all when the next bizopp or media format arrives.

We can't stop them, but we can mock them and stop falling for them.

P.S. Things I've done that I've never sold a course on:

- Sold 100k copies of my books
- Built audience of >14mm
- Gotten billions of views
- 8 fig of revenue/yr
- The list goes on

BECAUSE IT'S LAME

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@ayushtweetshere Lovable/Bolt + Cursor/Claude go brrr

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@ayushtweetshere 👏🏼 lfggg

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@itsolelehmann @grok 😜

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@itsolelehmann @grok what is ole saying?

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@dagorenouf Stripe screenshots and Bali trips look good online, but don’t give peace.

Purpose and being useful do.

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@alexstyl Feel better Alex 🙏

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@randfish @rezzz Rand,

Sorry you’re dealing with RSI, sucks.

I’ve dealt with it for almost 9 years.

Hope it gets better soon 🙏

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@sebo_gm 🤣

Pod groups

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

Can one of y'all hook it up with a webhook? @WisprFlow @superwhisper

Or, @make_hq @zapier integration?

Thanks

🙏

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

Can one of y'all hook it up with a webhook? @WisprFlow @superwhisper

Or, @make_hq @zapier integration?

Thanks

🙏

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@levelsio Amen

[@levelsio @levelsio]

If I hear people talk about "AI agents" these days it's generally a red flag and I know they're non-technical ppl reading AI news but not actually shipping anything

Not cause I don't believe in AI agents but it's such a marketing term with no real meaning at this point

[Mike Cardona | Automation Alchemist 🧪🔧 @CSMikeCardona]

@JeremyNguyenPhD Automate it or build it yourself.

File converter apps are pretty straightforward to build. Highly recommend.