In this monologue, George Kao reflects on how AI has upended his own course-selling business, forcing him back into one‑on‑one coaching, and uses his experience to outline concrete career pathways for people with office‑manager or virtual‑assistant skills who are learning AI. He argues that while AI makes it technically possible for a single person to run a multi‑million‑dollar operation, very few actually do, creating a niche for early adopters. Kao recommends a baseline spend of $100‑$300 per month on AI services (Claude, ChatGPT) to enable agentic workflows, and emphasizes that only a tiny fraction of the internet‑connected public pays at that level, meaning competition is limited. He advises AI‑savvy professionals to approach businesses—especially in low‑tech sectors like construction—by quantifying cost‑savings (e.g., $10k/month) and offering pilot projects for a modest fee. The overall message is that AI can automate tedious admin work, freeing professionals to focus on higher‑value, creative, or client‑facing tasks, making work more enjoyable and opening new revenue streams.
Chapters
Okay, so I'm talking with a former office manager or somebody who has those kinds of skills, and like, you know, she's retraining to this new world of AI, et cetera. And thankfully, she's really interested in it and has learned a lot of the skills, et cetera. So the question is, any sort of advice on where she could take her career, business, et cetera? And I would say this, yes. Everybody, obviously AI is everywhere in the news, and everyone knows that, oh my gosh, it's probably very capable now of doing lots of things, including people are scared of it killing all of us, right? But I don't think that's gonna happen. But I wrote a whole thing about AI doomers, and you can read my blog post about that if you want to. But so here's the thing, and it's so funny. I was talking with my mother, who is just about 80 years old. And she watches the news all the time. And I said, you know, Mom, I'm having to dramatically transition my business because my business has been eaten up completely by AI. Because what was my business all along? Giving information. Well, some of you might say that's not really true. It's more of your presence and it's more of the, you know, the how you help your clients, you know, regulate. while also delivering some holistic business advice. Okay, fine. But a lot of my business was selling courses and I have seen my course business drop precipitously after ChatGPT came out. Like every single year it just kept going. And this year, as of this recording, it's, you know, it's in hospice, my course business. I'm pretty much, you know, retired now. Pretty much I could say that I barely make a single sale per course a month. Whereas I used to make thousands of dollars a month, no problem, evergreen courses, right? So, and then as, and the other side of my business is coaching. Some people say consulting and basically people hire me and I have been, I have stopped taking one-on-one clients for years because my course business was doing so well and membership business, everything was doing so well. So I, but now I'm taking one-on-one clients again because I have no business otherwise. Like there's nobody wants to buy courses, nobody wants to buy memberships. It's like, what do you mean? I just chat with my AI. What are you talking about, right? And so I'm taking clients again. And even that's hard because my role of, oh, business consultant. Well, ChatGPT, yeah, the best business consultant, most patient business coach and always available. When do I need to book you? Oh, you're not available till next week? Well, I can talk to ChatGPT right now. Why would I wait for you, right? So I told my mom, you know, I think I'm grateful. I've done well enough for myself where I could just retire and not make any more money. But But I would like to, and I'm not rich by any means, but I could. I live in Mexico. The reason why I moved to Mexico, I can live modestly and be okay. But I told my mom, hey, so maybe I'll start making software, you know, because AI makes software making easy. I'll just make software to make things easy for my audience. My mom is like, she's like, anyone can make software now. I'm like impressed that my 80-year-old mom said that anyone can make software now. I said, Mom, that's true, but very few people do. And that's— I, that I think is the key insight for where you should take your AI skills going forward. Do not have the illusion that just because AI makes everything— like, AI makes it possible for one person with a laptop to build a billion-dollar company on their own now. One-person billion-dollar company with 10,000 agents running customer service, technical troubleshooting, marketing, branding, ads, advertising, you know, vendor relations, everything can all then be done with a person who is savvy enough to use AI agents to, to do all that. Now, whatever, billion-dollar, million-dollar, $10,000 company, whatever. you can now do it just— but who— but think about this. Who is doing it? Do you look— talk to the people around you? Are any of them building a company using AI? Almost nobody is, right? So it's like, if you think about it, yes, 100% of the people with a laptop and internet connection and enough money to pay for, you know, I would say if you're serious about AI and using it to build a business, You need to be at least on the $100 a month plan because a $20 a month plan will run out very quickly if you're trying to actually have it do agent, agentic AI stuff. So $100 a month is like a minimum. I'm, I'm on $200 a month for Claude and $100 a month on ChatGPT. I have both of these because Claude uses— I do, I direct Claude most all, all day long to do various things. And then sometimes certain things Claude can't do, like images. ChatGPT does it really well. So I have Claude drive ChatGPT. My ChatGPT subscription is driven through Claude. I pay both anyway. So just giving you an idea, right? So $100 to $300 a month, it's like having an entire company working for you. Okay? So first of all, just me saying that, how many people— you can research this yourself— how much of the public is paying even $20 a month for AI? It's tiny amount, right? It's— I, I, I think it's in— it's under 10% of the, of the public, internet-connected public, are paying even $20 a month. I— please research. I'm sure it's going up over time. But let's just be dramatic and say a third of the internet-connected public is paying $20 a month for some AI. Okay, fine. I don't think so. But how many are paying $100 a month? Probably less than 5%, I'm guessing. Okay, fine. 10% are paying $100 a month. So you think about, okay, now I'm competing with 10% of the public, not 100% of the public. Do you see where I'm going? And then of those who are paying $100 a month, how many are really using it? How many are actually using it like every day to learn how to automate this, automate that, and to make your own work easier, to stop doing boring work, stop doing technical work and just be more training your judgment on, I like this, you know, dear AI, you know, AI gives you an output and you go, okay, I like this for that reason. I don't like this for that reason. And you're always training your AI on your judgment and on your discernment and your taste. That's what humans are. That's what's valuable for humans to do now anyway. So down, down, down, down, down to maybe you're competing with like 1%. It's, that's probably true. You're probably competing with 1% of the world. who actually use this stuff, like seriously use it. And so, and this is true for every field, for every field. So as an office manager, for example, how many office managers are AI savvy? Honestly, I think a lot of people are stuck in their old ways and they're still barely using AI, you know? And so if you are an AI savvy, fill in the blank, office manager, Life coach, spiritual mentor, energy healer, whatever you wanna fill in the blank, you are going to be much more effective and efficient in this coming— well, now already, because you have AI do all your admin work so you can free up your time and energy for more creative, spiritually aligned, intuitive, whatever you wanna call it, type of work, being with your clients, etc. So So, so back to the person who is an AI savvy, you know, virtual assistant, assistant, office manager, et cetera. Go to any business. You probably— your own network already has lots of business owners. Everybody knows business owners. No, really. Look at your network or people. Everybody knows people who know business owners or people who are decision makers in, in some capacity in a large or small company. All of us know people, okay? Or know people who know people. Go to them and say, I bet you're not anywhere implementing AI to remove a lot of the costs in your business and the, and the, and the tedious work in your business. Let me come in. Let me do that. And then negotiate a rate with them. They'll be happy. And you need to do some research, due diligence. Obviously, I know you will, to do due diligence. I'm gonna tackle this industry right now. You know, the person who said, okay, I have experience in the construction field. My goodness. Construction people, my guess is it's a kind of an old stodgy field. Construction's been with us ever since humans have been around, right? And probably a lot of them don't— are anxious. So here's the other thing. Everybody is anxious now about AI. Like, everybody is anxious and feeling behind. Like, they feel like they should get on the bandwagon, but they're too busy or too distracted or whatever. And if you're willing to learn the skills and prove it for your own self, right? And then go to the construction, you know, the person who asked, go to the— go to your construction buddies and say, hey, Let me come in and make your company finally AI savvy or your processes much more streamlined. And I, if I were this person, I would research costs to say, okay, and I would work with my AI to say, I'm gonna go into pitch some construction companies, help me come up with the best pitch possible. What are the costs they would be saving monthly? Give, give us actual credible numbers and good numbers that they, they'll be like, yeah, that, that's, that's probably, that's probably true. And so if I could show them, hey, listen, I could save you $10,000 a month. Okay? And you only have to pay me $2,000 a month. And listen, why don't I do a pilot project where it's just pay me $1,000. I'm gonna do a pilot project and then you could see for yourself and then we can go on from there. And they're gonna need you ongoingly for quite a while to like troubleshoot and like build new things and like anyway, so I just think it's really exciting. Like, everybody who's willing and interested to be AI savvy or have fun doing it particularly has so much career opportunity now. Like, like, if I weren't, you know, already this, you know, tired, retired, tired and retired guy, I would be like gung-ho right now going to everybody I know and go, let me just come in and streamline, cut costs, help you do more creative work. And it's so much more fun. Now, work can be a lot more fun now because the boring stuff can no longer, you know, no longer has to be done. So I hope this is helpful and looking forward to your comments below.
