45

Today I turn 45.

I’ve never been particularly interested in birthday posts, mostly because they often end up sounding either celebratory or nostalgic, and I don’t really feel either of those things right now. What I feel instead is that strange sensation of standing at an important junction, where continuing in the same direction starts to feel riskier than making a deliberate turn.

Dante famously wrote that he found himself “in the middle of the journey of our life” at 35. At the time, that probably sounded dramatic. At 45, it sounds surprisingly accurate. The years move quicker. You become more aware that what you choose to ignore today may define your future tomorrow.

And that’s exactly why this birthday matters to me. It feels like the right moment to stop pretending that the world around me isn’t changing—and that my business isn’t changing with it.

AI Is Real, But Not in the Way People Think

There’s no doubt that AI is already reshaping the way people work. The hype is impossible to avoid, but beneath the noise there are also genuinely useful applications that are improving businesses in meaningful ways. From what I’ve seen so far, the biggest wins are happening internally: automation, operational efficiency, admin systems, support workflows, and process optimization. Companies that understand this early are already saving time and reducing repetitive work.

What I find interesting, though, is that the public conversation often skips over the human side of the equation. AI can absolutely speed up development, generate more code, and produce more content, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for judgment. If anything, it increases it. More generated code means more pull requests to review. More generated articles mean more generic noise online. More automation means a greater need for someone to decide what actually matters.

That’s why I still believe we are early. AI is becoming a powerful layer on top of human work, but not a replacement for clarity, taste, experience, or responsibility. And perhaps that’s also why this moment feels personally significant to me, because I can see the exact same pattern happening in my own business.

The Freelance Model That Worked for Me Is Fading

For the past decade, I built a business around a very specific idea: small, focused WooCommerce work done quickly and efficiently. That approach gave me freedom in a way that traditional agency life never could. I never wanted to run large teams, manage endless timelines, or spend months inside enterprise projects. I liked solving contained problems and moving on.

That’s how the “WooCommerce mechanic” identity was born.

A store owner had an issue, needed a customization, or wanted something fixed quickly, and I could wrap the work in a few focused hours instead of turning it into a multi-month engagement. That model allowed me to build a lifestyle I genuinely enjoyed. I travelled South America for six months while still working with clients in the mornings from hostels and Airbnbs. I prioritized sport, travel, family, and flexibility over scale at all costs.

But over the last two years, the trend has become impossible to ignore. Small freelance work is shrinking rapidly, and the businesses surviving most comfortably are agencies operating with larger retainers, long-term contracts, and ongoing projects. The market is consolidating around scale and continuity, while short-term technical tasks are becoming increasingly commoditized.

The problem is not only economic. It’s also personal. I know myself well enough to understand that long projects drain me creatively. The challenge now is figuring out what replaces the old model without building a business that no longer fits the kind of life I actually want.

Content Has Changed Forever

Content is going through a similar transformation.

For years, quick tutorials, affiliate articles, and SEO-driven educational content were enough to build traffic and sustain online businesses. I benefited enormously from that ecosystem. A significant part of my business grew through writing helpful WooCommerce content consistently over time, and I’ll always be grateful for that era because it created opportunities that completely changed my life.

At one point, affiliate revenue alone helped me purchase a third of my house. That still sounds surreal when I think about it.

But the reality today is different. AI can already generate endless tutorial-style content in seconds, and the internet is quickly becoming saturated with material that is technically correct but emotionally empty. As a result, generic information is losing value. What stands out now is perspective, personality, experience, originality. Real-world case studies and opinions that can’t simply be generated from scraped data.

Oddly enough, I think this shift is healthy.

It forces creators to become more human rather than less. The content that survives will likely be content grounded in actual experience and personal conviction instead of content designed purely to rank. That realization changes the way I think about writing entirely, because it means that the safest strategy is no longer imitation—it’s uniqueness.

Learning Online Is Also Being Rewritten

The third pillar of my business was online education, and that landscape is changing just as quickly.

Traditional online courses still have value, but the way people consume knowledge is clearly evolving. Users increasingly expect fast answers, conversational learning, immediate examples, and adaptive explanations instead of committing to long lesson structures. I’ve already heard of people learning languages directly through AI conversations because they feel more dynamic and useful than traditional platforms.

The same thing is happening in technical education.

When someone can ask a question and instantly receive explanations, examples, follow-ups, and clarification, the appeal of sitting through forty structured lessons naturally decreases. People want outcomes faster. They want information condensed. They want interaction more than passive consumption.

That doesn’t mean teaching disappears, but it does mean that the format needs to evolve. And that realization forces me to rethink not only how I create educational material, but also why someone would choose to learn from me specifically in a world where information itself becomes abundant and nearly free.

Designing the Next Fifteen Years

So this is where I find myself at 45: grateful for what WooCommerce allowed me to build, but aware that the business model that carried me since 2014 cannot continue untouched forever.

And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Every meaningful chapter in my life started with some degree of uncertainty. Moving countries, travelling for months while working remotely, building an independent business, relocating to Sicily, becoming a father—none of those decisions came from certainty. They came from intuition mixed with the willingness to adapt.

This moment feels similar.

I know I need to go all-in on a new direction, even if I don’t yet have every piece fully mapped out. I need to spend less energy protecting what used to work and more energy building around what still feels meaningful and sustainable. That includes business goals, but also life goals, because for me the two have always been inseparable. There is no business worth building if it destroys the lifestyle it was originally meant to support.

So today’s birthday wish is actually very simple.

I hope I can enjoy the next fifteen years as much as I enjoyed the last fifteen. Not necessarily by repeating the same formula, but by staying adaptable enough to keep building a life that still feels aligned with who I am.

The rest, as always, is up to me.