AI Is Expanding the Agency of One. My Own Experience Affirms Its Advantage

When I started PLR Group Inc. as a solopreneur, the path forward wasn’t necessarily clear.

I spent 20+ years in marketing, media and innovation, working with/for brands and agencies but the context of the work was always within a team even when I was a single contributor within an organization.

As a team of one, I needed to now be responsible for elements end-to-end and AI was an inevitable part of that journey for me. I was particularly wary of using AI in ways that could flatten the very things clients hire an experienced marketer for: judgment, cultural context, relationships, instinct and a point of view.

The American Marketing Association’s new State of Marketing Careers Report 2026 gives a name to something I have experienced firsthand: the rise of the “agency of one.” The AMA describes it as a skilled operator directing AI across “research, strategy, writing, and distribution simultaneously.”

That does not mean AI replaces (my) expertise. My experience suggests almost the opposite.

These findings stood out:

The “agency of one” is becoming real. 

The report describes a skilled operator using AI across “research, strategy, writing, and distribution simultaneously,” allowing work that once required several people to be handled by one person with the right systems and judgment. For my consultancy, that has meant using AI to accelerate research, synthesize information, pressure-test ideas, and move from strategy to execution faster while keeping client objectives at the center.

Execution is becoming less valuable than orchestration. 

The report puts it plainly: “Companies are not hiring less judgment. They are hiring less execution” (p. 25). As AI handles more repeatable work, the marketer’s advantage shifts toward setting direction, interpreting context, evaluating quality, and knowing what not to automate.

This is where the report became especially personal.

PLR Group was built deliberately without the layers of a traditional agency. In my first year, I remained directly involved in research, positioning, messaging, business development, partnerships, content and execution. That founder-level involvement helped the consultancy grow revenue from 2025 to 2026 year to date across clients and projects like The People’s Theatre. AI has become part of the operating system that makes that model possible.

The real competitive advantage may become more human, not less.

The AMA warns marketers against confusing AI fluency with marketing expertise. On its skills map, ethical decision-making, leadership, creativity, curiosity and critical thinking sit at the most human end of the spectrum. It argues that these skills “will command premium value as automation takes over execution-based tasks.”

That may be the most important takeaway of all.

The report also contains a warning I share. AI-generated productivity can become an end in itself. More output is not automatically better marketing. The AMA cautions against blindly trusting polished outputs, outsourcing original thinking, and confusing “speed or quantity with quality.” Its recommendation is to employ AI as “a thinking partner, not a thinking replacement.”

So, what should marketers do next?

1. Leverage AI around your strategy, not your strategy around AI. Use AI for understanding large amounts of information e.g. data, drafts, analysis and repetitive efficiency, but keep ownership over strategy, ethics, recommendations and final decisions.

2.  Protect your point of view. The report advises marketers to use AI as “a thinking partner, not a thinking replacement.” Start with your own hypothesis, experience and perspective, then use AI to challenge or strengthen it.

3.  Build proof. AI skills will increasingly be table stakes. What differentiates marketers will be documented outcomes, original thinking and the ability to show where AI improved the work without becoming the work.

One year in and I have projects and clients to point to in order to substantiate this claim and it’s paramount to the future of my own sense of what’s possible. For solopreneurs, that is the opportunity: greater capacity without surrendering the expertise clients are paying for.