It’s 9:47 PM. You’re still at your desk.
Your family is asleep, but you’ve got three proposals to review, client emails piling up, and that financial report you’ve been putting off all week. Another late night in a string of many.
Sound familiar?
As entrepreneurs and small business owners, time is our most precious and limited resource. We’re constantly making tough choices between growing our businesses and having a life outside of them. Between focusing on sales and doing the operational work that keeps everything running. Between the strategic thinking that moves us forward and the day-to-day tasks that keep us treading water.
Meanwhile, the conversation around AI has become increasingly polarized.
On one side, there’s fear: “AI is coming for our jobs.” People hunker down, resistant to change, worried about being replaced.
On the other side, there’s blind enthusiasm: people jumping in with both feet but often using AI as merely a faster calculator or fancy search engine – barely scratching the surface of what’s possible.
But what if we’re all missing the point?
AI isn’t trying to take your job. It’s submitting its resume, asking to join your team.
As a strategic business consultant working with entrepreneurs climbing toward six figures and beyond, I’ve seen firsthand how AI can transform not just efficiency, but the entire structure of a small business. It can help you compete and grow in ways that might have taken years to accomplish before – now possible in months or even weeks.
But only if you approach it strategically.
AI isn’t here to replace you. It’s here to liberate you.
Most of us are trapped doing tasks that aren’t aligned with our core strengths – important work that nonetheless steals time from our zone of genius. We’re stuck working in our business rather than on it. And no amount of productivity hacks or time management techniques can solve this fundamental problem.
What we need is a team. But traditional hiring comes with its own challenges – overhead costs, management headaches, and the struggle to find reliable help within budget constraints.
After a recent podcast conversation with AI expert Rich Staats, I was inspired to create a framework that would help entrepreneurs take action with clarity and purpose. Based on the insights from our discussion, I developed the RAISE™ framework – a systematic approach to transform AI from a mere tool into a talented team that works for you around the clock.
This isn’t just theoretical – it’s a practical roadmap with key elements to implement, along with the why and when for each step. Let me show you how to go from overwhelmed solopreneur to the CEO of your own AI-powered organization—one task at a time.
The RAISE™ Framework: Turn Tools Into Talent, and Talent Into a Team
R – Recognize
Identify the tasks or roles that are stealing your time or bottlenecking your progress.
The journey begins with honest assessment. What tasks are you doing that don’t leverage your unique expertise? What important work has been relegated to the back burner because it’s either tedious, time-consuming, or outside your core strengths?
For many entrepreneurs, these tasks might include:
- Administrative work like scheduling and email management
- Financial tasks like bookkeeping and invoicing
- Technical work requiring specialized knowledge you haven’t had time to develop
- Content creation and distribution that’s essential but time-intensive
- Research and data analysis needed for informed decisions
- Customer service inquiries that require attention but pull you from strategic work
A perfect example from my own experience: I was spending hours each week repurposing my podcast content into blog articles, social media posts, and email newsletters. This was valuable work that needed to be done, but it was preventing me from focusing on client strategy and business development where my true expertise lies.
There is truth to the saying “If you’re not selling, customers aren’t buying.” Regardless of whether or not you consider yourself a salesperson. The funnel needs prospects for a business to have stability. Especially when you take businesses with a longer sales process in mind. Think of high-ticket items from auto sales to other luxury items. People are rarely buying something the first time they hear about it or see it. If it takes 11 touchpoints to win a customer. Where should you, as a business owner, be devoting your time? On the sales and playing to your strengths or the tasks that you struggle with and put off as long as you can until you’re forced to make a half hearted attempt at addressing it check a box?
Action step: Make a list of all the tasks in your business that consistently get postponed or that pull you away from your expertise. These are your potential AI delegation candidates.
A – Assign
Hire your first AI agent. Give it a clear job to do—just like bringing on a new team member.
Once you’ve identified tasks for delegation, it’s time to “hire” your first AI agent. Think of this as creating a role with specific responsibilities, not just using AI as a general tool.
For example, instead of thinking “I’ll use ChatGPT for stuff,” create specific roles like:
- AI Contract Reviewer
- AI Financial Analyst
- AI Content Editor
- AI Research Assistant
- AI Customer Support Agent
Each agent should have a clearly defined role with specific tasks and outcomes. This specificity helps you get better results and build systems around each function.
During my conversation with Rich, he shared a perfect example: “I don’t want AI to paint my pictures, I want AI to do my accounting so I can paint more pictures.” This highlights the ideal approach – leverage AI not to replace your expertise but to handle the essential tasks you either haven’t mastered or that don’t represent the highest use of your time.
In my business, I was working longer hours and losing productivity because I was taking on more tasks, not for gains, but to maintain. As budgets tighten and people evaluate where money is being spent. My focus switched from networking calls and sales calls to support and retention.
Combing through assessment form responses is a necessity for not just my services but making sure my messaging aligns with the experiences and expectations of my audience. I could either continue working to 3 AM or I could create a job description and hire an AI agent to review the intake forms and organize them in a way that allows me to focus on the follow-up with the client and sharing a snapshot of what their responses were telling me about where they are vs. where they thought they were and help them map out how to get where they want to be.
Action step: Choose ONE task from your delegation list and create a specific “job title” for an AI agent who will handle it.
I – Inform
Onboard your agent with prompts, examples, and expectations. Train it like you would a real employee.
No employee performs well without proper training, and AI is no different. Your AI agents need clear direction, examples of good work, and a thorough understanding of your preferences.
When onboarding your AI agent:
- Provide context – Let AI know what expertise it needs to bring to this role
- Set expectations – Be specific about deliverables and quality standards
- Share examples – Provide samples of good outputs if you have them
- Create boundaries – Clarify what the agent should and shouldn’t do
For my content repurposing work, I created detailed instructions that specified my brand voice, content formats, and audience information. I trained the employee on what insights to look for and would be relevant to my audience. Which streamlined my content creation process. Taking me from starting from scratch, combing through transcripts and notes to reviewing show notes and key takeaways that now serve as the starting point.
A well-trained AI agent becomes more valuable over time as you refine your prompts and instructions based on the outputs you receive.
Action step: Write a “job description” prompt for your AI agent that includes context, expectations, examples, and boundaries.
S – Simplify
Create repeatable templates, workflows, or automations to ensure quality and consistency.
After you’ve successfully delegated one task to AI, it’s time to systematize it. This means creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) that ensure consistent, high-quality results with minimal oversight.
For example, I transformed my own content repurposing process into a simple template with standardized inputs and outputs:
INPUT: [Podcast Episode Topic]
INPUT: [Key Points from Episode]
OUTPUT: [LinkedIn Post Focused on Main Takeaway]
OUTPUT: [Community Content Highlighting Key Insights]
OUTPUT: [Newsletter Summary with Action Steps]
The template approach meant I could consistently transform my content with less hands-on effort. By training it on what I wanted to review and needed to take action. It helped me simplify the process and focus more on adding value for the audience and to the content that I’m creating.
During my conversation with Rich, he shared how he created a financial reporting system that transformed what was once a 6-hour monthly process into a 5-minute task. By developing a simple two-step process with “clean data” and “build report” functions, he was able to transform raw financial information into actionable insights without spending hours in spreadsheets.
Action step: Create a simple template or checklist for your delegated task that standardizes the process and makes it repeatable.
E – Expand
Grow your AI team. Hire more agents for other roles and establish a management structure.
Once you’ve successfully delegated one task, it’s time to expand your AI workforce. This means:
- Delegating more tasks to specialized agents
- Creating systems for these agents to work together
- Establishing a management structure for your AI team
A full AI team might include:
- Front-line workers – Agents that handle specific tasks like writing, research, or data analysis
- Mid-level managers – Agents that coordinate related tasks and ensure quality
- Executive assistants – Agents that help you manage your time, priorities, and decision-making
The power of this approach is that it creates a scalable system. Each agent has a specific role, but together they form an organization that can handle complex workflows and projects.
This approach has been particularly valuable for my own business, where I’ve built out specialized AI assistants to help me with:
- Research assistance for client industries and markets
- Content adaptation across different platforms
- Proposal development with customized sections
- Feedback analysis from client sessions
Each specialized assistant strengthens my ability to deliver high-quality work without requiring me to spend countless hours on supporting tasks. I’m still providing the strategy, expertise, and human touch that clients hire me for, but I’m able to do so more efficiently and at a higher level.
What’s especially powerful about this approach is how it enables skill development. Rather than replacing expertise, these AI assistants can guide you through learning new skills that can be monetized. For instance, I’ve used AI to help me learn data visualization techniques that I now incorporate into client deliverables – adding a new revenue stream to my business.
Action step: Map out your ideal “AI org chart” with at least 3-5 specialized roles that would make the biggest impact on your business.
From Solopreneur to CEO: The Transformation
The RAISE™ framework isn’t just about productivity—it’s about transformation. When implemented successfully, it changes your role in your business:
- You spend more time in your zone of genius
- You focus on strategy rather than execution
- You scale your impact without scaling your workload
- You build a business that isn’t dependent on your time
This transformation allows you to serve more clients, create more impact, and enjoy more freedom—all without sacrificing quality or working longer hours.
Getting Started Today
The journey from solopreneur to CEO of your AI-powered business starts with a single step. Here’s how to begin today:
- Start small – Choose one recurring task that takes significant time but doesn’t require your unique expertise
- Experiment – Try different prompts and approaches to get the results you want
- Document – Keep track of what works so you can systematize and repeat it
- Iterate – Refine your processes based on results
- Expand – Add new AI team members as you get comfortable with the process
Remember, AI isn’t magic—it’s a workforce multiplier. The quality of your results depends on how well you communicate, systematize, and manage your AI team.
Are you ready to RAISE™ your business with AI? The future belongs to entrepreneurs who can effectively delegate not just to humans, but to AI agents as well. It’s time to build a business that works for you, not the other way around.
Want more guidance on building your AI team? Download my free AI Hiring Playbook for templates, prompts, and step-by-step instructions to implement the RAISE framework in your business.
