"How are you going to have time for both?"
That was what my wife asked me when I told her about wanting to start AIIMN. WindRider was already a full business, and she was wondering how I would fit AIIMN in too.
The answer was the reason I was so excited about AIIMN.
A lot of WindRider's work no longer runs through my hands. We have built a team of AI agents that handle a lot of the work autonomously. We have an orchestrator, which is an AI agent whose job is to hand work to specialist agents. One of those specialists is our Google Analyst agent, which reads our website data and tells us what it sees. That report gets handed to our marketing manager agent who refines our plans from the data. Another is our Facebook team, which researches, designs and builds ads for us. Work that used to wait for a person now gets assigned, done, and brought back.
So when my wife asked about time, the honest answer was that the time already existed. The agents had created it. I hadn't been looking at it as a place to put a second business. I had been looking at it as the reason WindRider ran more smoothly.
Once I realized that, I saw AI differently. The usual AI pitch to business is cost. Smaller teams, less software, etc. That is a real benefit, but just not the biggest one. The reason I am so bullish on AI for small business is because it expands capacity.
Most small businesses I know have more ideas than resources to execute on. The product you would add, the channel you would test, the second company you would start all sit on a list because nobody has room to start them. When agents carry the repeatable work, the list starts moving. You aren't doing the same amount with fewer people. You are doing more with the same people.
If you run a small business, ask what you would start if you had more time and more expertise. That is what adding AI can give you.
It is the reason AIIMN exists. I would not have been able to start a second business if the first one still needed me at every step.
My wife's question was a fair one. The work is getting done, and the time is there for AIIMN.
-Robert