the case for AI Native Services and why it's the best time in 50 years to own one, a Waze for airport security lines, an upper-body strength block, and the tweet of the week.

We guarantee we can find hidden profit in your business with this 3-minute test: https://exit-audit.breakwaterma.com/

There's a popular narrative right now that AI is about to gut the service economy. Lawyers, accountants, brokers, consultants — all quietly replaced by chatbots while the displaced workforce wonders what hit them.

It makes for a great headline, but I disagree.

I know, I know, as a M&A advisor, I’m part of the said service economy. So you might think this opinion is self-serving, when it’s the opposite. What I sohoudl be really doing is keeping my mouth shut about the $10 trillion opportunity in the service ecnonomy.

As the kids these days say: so here’s the sauce.

I started Breakwater with the intention of building an AI-Native Services (AINS) business — service firms built from the ground up with AI as a core team member, not a side experiment bolted on after the fact.

The unlock is simple: AI doesn't replace your best people. It removes the ceiling on how many clients those people can serve.

Every M&A / investment bank in history has been bottlenecked by the same thing: time. The senior partner can only sit on so many calls, run so many engagements, and review so many documents before quality breaks. That's why every services firm looks like a pyramid (not like Michael Scott’s business pyramid) — one rainmaker on top, an army of juniors and middle-managers below, all scrambling to replicate the partner's brain.

AINS flattens that hierarchy.

A traditional M&A broker in our space runs 6-8 mandates at a time before things start to break. With our internal platform Alfred, our deal partners are already running 20+ mandates simultaneously without dropping the ball. Alfred reviews hundreds of NDAs in minutes, is able to conduct buyer outreach around the clock, and sifts through hundreds of data room docs in seconds.

Even better, by integrating with our meeting notes and emails, Alfred is able to take proactive action. Drafting emails and offers for our Deal Partners before their last call is even finished. This keeps deal momentum high, which is the most critical factor in a high closing rate (in my opinion).

Our target is a 5-10x increase in the number of clients we can help a year.

Which is exactly the part the AI doomers miss. We're not firing humans, instead we're serving 5-10x more business owners through the most important transaction of their lives. The work that's left for the human is the work that always mattered most: the relationship, the judgment, the trust built across a kitchen table when a founder is selling the thing they spent 30 years building. AI can't do that, and it never will.

Zoom out and look at the broader wealth and advisory ecosystem. The vast majority of business-owner referrals coming out of large advisory networks sit below the transaction size minimum of traditional investment banks. That's hundreds of business owners a year who simply can't get served under the old economics. AINS rewrites that math overnight. The same dollar of advisory work, delivered with public-company-grade rigour, to a client who would have been turned away two years ago.

Which brings me to the punchline for anyone reading this who owns, operates, or is thinking about acquiring a service business:

This is the best window in 50 years to either start or buy one.

Here's why. The price you pay for one of these businesses today is anchored to the old math: one senior employee, an army of juniors, a hard cap of how many clients you can service each year. Implementing AI into one of these service businesses changes the margin profile to resemble that more of a software company. Ironically, the type of business venture capitalists despised for the past decade are the most sought after businesses right now.

We see this being a massive opportunity in M&A where thousands of boomer-owned service businesses across Canada are about to trade hands over the next 5 years.

The 'AI replaces workers' crowd is missing the real story. It's not fewer jobs. It's far more clients finally getting the white-glove service that used to be reserved for the top 1% of accounts.

Service businesses haven't been this exciting in a generation.

🚨 No, it's not the publicly traded tech giant you might expect… Meet $MODE, the disruptor turning phones into income generators.

📲 Mode’s 32,481% revenue growth ranked them #1 on Deloitte’s list of fastest-growing companies in software. They aim to pioneer "Privatized Universal Basic Income" powered by technology, not government, and their EarnPhone has already helped consumers earn & save $1B+.

Invest today and earn up to 20% bonus shares.

^{Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A+ Offering.}

^{Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.}

^{The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.}

Credit: ideabrowser.com

4 rounds for time:

Rest 60 seconds between rounds. Score = total time.

Upper body strength + power day. 4 sets of:

Tips:

love this framing

every second counts