I keep seeing the same question in here: "How do I actually get up to speed on AI and automation?" I've answered it a few times in the comments, so I figured I'd just write the whole thing up. Quick context on where I'm coming from: I'm a searcher, but I also run growth/revenue ops, and I went from "I use Claude/ChatGPT daily" to building real, enterprise-grade automations on top of my own systems. The honest version of that story is that the first three months were mostly wasted. Here's what the wasted version looked like: watching YouTube, reading threads like this one, and poking at tools on my own. I'd get something half-working, lose the thread, and start over. Everyone kept saying "just get Claude Cowork" or "just learn n8n" — which isn't wrong, but it's like handing someone a table saw and saying "just build furniture." The tool isn't the hard part. Knowing what to build, and how to make it reliable, is. What actually moved me forward: I joined a hands-on class/community (Agent J+ on Skool) where people build live, on camera, and you copy the process instead of reinventing it. What took me three months of bumbling, I re-learned properly in about a day. Since then I've built things I'd have told you were out of reach — automations that draft, research, and run parts of my week that I used to do by hand. For searchers specifically, a few things AI is genuinely good at right now (not hype): Sourcing: pulling and enriching target lists, dedup'ing, scoring fit against your thesis instead of eyeballing a spreadsheet, auto sending outreach to sellers. Diligence: chewing through a CIM, data room docs, or a pile of financials and flagging the things that don't add up — customer concentration, working-capital surprises, adjusted-EBITDA gymnastics. The un-sexy stuff: turning meeting recordings into notes and next steps, drafting your seller/broker/lender follow-ups, keeping your pipeline honest. Post-close: the same skills compound. The automations you build searching become the ones you run inside the business. The thing I'd tell my three-months-ago self: don't try to learn this alone off YouTube. Get in a room (virtual is fine) with people building the same things and shortcut the whole curve. Here's the community I used — it's hands-on, not just videos, and it's where the "learned it in a day" thing happened for me: redacted Full disclosure: that's my referral link, so I get credit if you join. I'd recommend it either way — happy to answer questions in the comments about what I've actually built with it, referral or not.