Listen to the episode with Onikepo Omotade
The short version
- Nobody knows how much time is left in their time bank, which is why trading it for money is the worst deal available
- Start with pen and paper, write down every task you do, then hand the list to AI once a week and ask what it can take off your plate
- I built an AI agent, Luna, to do podcast outreach after my wife hated doing it manually. This week I am booked on four podcasts
- Employees who say AI could never replace them have maybe twelve to twenty four months. The ones who become productivity maxers get raises
- Corporate salary is leverage for an SBA loan. Buying an existing business beats starting from zero because it already has a track record
- AI is a line item on your budget, not a twenty dollar a month magic trick
- I show up as a giraffe because my divorce attorney once told me my company had zero enterprise value since it all revolved around me
Nobody knows how much is left in the time bank
Time is interesting. You, me, anyone reading this, none of us has a clue how much is left in our time bank. We do not know if today is our last day on earth or if we have thirty more years. God willing it is thirty or forty or fifty depending on how old you are, but we have no clue. That is why I think time is our most valuable asset, and when we trade it for money we end up in the hamster wheel. Mortgage to pay, kids to raise, expenses, saving for retirement so we can get out of the job one day.
Kepo opened the conversation with the thing she hears constantly from her audience. I am busy. I do not have time. Maybe when I quit my job I will start something. So we spent the hour on what actually breaks that loop, and almost none of it required quitting anything first.
Here is an example I gave her. Someone I worked with in the past loved to meal prep because they were busy and driven. Instead of going into the business side of shipping food, they made a one page meal plan and sold it for ten dollars a person. Ten dollars is what people spend at Starbucks. You got a PDF every week, you shopped the outer ring of the grocery store, you saved money cooking at home. That turned into a million dollar business. No food shipping. Just a PDF, every single week.
People pay for organization and they pay for convenience. Look at what you already do in your life and ask whether you could help other people accomplish the same thing. Back then you had to format that PDF yourself. Now you type your recipes into AI and it makes it all nice for you.
I think time is our most valuable asset and when we're trading it for money, we get in this hamster wheel of like I can't stop, I've got a mortgage to pay, I've got kids to raise, I've got expenses to pay
The pen and paper audit
Everything I do starts with a notebook. I keep one handy all the time and it is full of notes. I write down all the tasks I actually do as I do them. Check my emails. Respond to text messages. Monitor Slack. Meal prep. Schedule a date night. Whatever they are, they go on the list.
Then maybe once a week I take that list into Claude or ChatGPT and I ask it four things:
- Here are all the tasks I did this week, are there any you can help me do better
- Are there any you can take off my plate entirely
- Are there any you can help me streamline
- And when it suggests something, what does that actually look like
It comes back and says things like, Gary, I can help you manage your emails better, we could connect your Gmail. Or, I see you are spending a lot of time on support tickets, what if we built an agent to handle those. I ask what that looks like and before I know it, it has written a full plan. What I get back is the time that is uniquely me. My thoughts, my impact, conversations, being present. Last night I went to PopStroke with my wife and my son and I was not on my phone checking on my business. As busy professionals we are often not present with our family even when the device is put away, because something else is occupying our mind.
Luna, and why Kepo thought I might be a giraffe
Years ago my wife did my podcast outreach and she hated it. Tedious. Send fifty emails, follow up, keep a spreadsheet, track who responded, then when you book a new show go back and tell the other shows to check Gary out. It took too much of her time and she was always in a bad mood about it. So I avoided the whole thing for years, because I did not have the time either.
Then I made a list of what I would do if I had infinite team members to delegate to. Podcast outreach was at the top. So I built an agent for it. Luna writes personalized emails, monitors the replies, flags what I need to follow up on, does all the research. I do not lift a finger. This week I am booked on four podcasts.
Kepo's honest reaction was that she got an email from Luna, checked my page, could not find my face anywhere and wondered if I was a real person at all. She half expected a giraffe to join the call. I will get to the giraffe.
Luna does the other half too. The morning of our recording I had two podcasts on the calendar and one email waiting. It listed both shows, did all the research, read Kepo's transcripts and gave me the questions she was likely to ask. I still went and listened, because I wanted to hear her voice and how she engages with guests, but the email told me exactly which episodes and which few minutes to grab. Every podcast I go on, Luna goes back and finds it when it publishes, does marketing around it, and reads it so we refine the pitch based on what actually got said.
What corporate people should be handing to AI right now
Kepo came from strategy consulting, so she asked what someone in that world would use this for. Meeting prep. I am walking into a meeting, prep me. Location prep, we want to open a branch in a new country, what do I need to know. Law prep, what is different or unique about that jurisdiction that I am not familiar with. Proposals. Emails.
I use it on my own communication constantly. I am blunt and direct, and that does not always land well. So I run an email through AI and say, this is what I need to say, can you make it sound nicer. It has saved me an enormous amount.
The one more people should be doing is the job hunt. Take your resume and the tasks you actually do, load it into Claude, have it rewrite the resume against real job descriptions and submit for you. In corporate you do not get ahead by staying in the same seat for twenty years, you get ahead by learning and moving to the job that values your skills more. Applying is hard and slow, which is why people stay stuck. I have seen a lot of people get a twenty to thirty percent pay boost by using AI to personalize the resume and the cover letter, without lifting a finger.
I think every employee working for a company should have multiple AI assistants working for them.
I think that every employee working for a company should have multiple AI assistants working for them.
Productivity maxers get raises. Everyone else has twelve to twenty four months
Kepo asked the layoffs question directly. Should people be scared. For me it is a yes and. Yes, you should be worried, because AI is getting smart. Think about what a human hire costs a company. You invest in teaching and training them, then they leave, then you train the next one. Turnover is one of the highest expenses in the corporate world. When you train an agent to do a role, that agent never quits, works twenty four seven, no lunch break, no maternity leave, no sick day.
So the employees saying my job is safe, no AI could ever replace me, I think they are cooked. Maybe twelve to twenty four months. The ones who say I get it, my Tesla drives itself, I believe AI will get there, so let me become the person who empowers AI to do the tasks, those are the productivity maxers. They are safe for the next several years. They are the ones whose reply to the boss is instant instead of two hours later, because an agent handled it.
It is easy to start. Say one word to AI and the word is goal. My goal is to be the best employee at this company. My goal is to eliminate my mundane routine office work. My goal is to be a better communicator. The people who embrace that get raises, stay safe for years, and end up with a skill set that makes them powerful enough to start their own thing or consult for other businesses. There is a whole world of corporate employees training other corporate employees to use AI inside their jobs, and it is not really getting monetized yet.
So I think the people, the employees that say, my job's safe. No AI could ever replace me. I think they're cooked. I think they're done. They've got maybe twelve to twenty four months left.
Buy the boring business, use the salary as leverage
Buying a business is one of the best things someone in corporate America can do, and the salary is the reason why. It is easy to get approved for an SBA loan when you have a great salary. It is hard when you are self employed. Two hundred thousand in your own business does not get you the same financial qualifications as two hundred thousand from a corporate job. That is just how the banks work.
Codie Sanchez talks about buying boring businesses and she is right about it. Maybe you know nothing about HVAC or electricians or moving companies or landscaping. Ask AI, find a couple of niches, go through SBA, buy the business, then bring in what you already have. Management, leadership, marketing, consulting. Run it differently.
When you start from scratch you have no idea whether you will be wildly successful or crash and burn. When you buy an existing business you have a track record. You know what it does and you can see how to grow it. You do not have to know how to do nails to buy a nail salon that is doing great. And the moment it cash flows is the moment you can go buy the second one.
AI does not replace the professionals in this. I can get myself eighty percent of the way there and clear up issues that would have cost hundreds or thousands in professional fees, then go to my accounting or legal team with a thesis instead of a cold stack of documents. On a deal I would load the due diligence documentation into AI and do the work myself, then hand my thesis to a due diligence person and ask them to find my blind spots. Cheaper, faster, easier. Same thing happened when I wanted a Tesla charger. I took a picture of my electrical panel, asked AI, and got told it could not hold it and I needed an upgrade. Several thousand dollars, so I passed for now. Normally that is a service fee, a wait, and time out of my day to hear the same answer I got in two seconds.
When we buy an existing business, we have a track record. We know exactly what it does and we know how we can help that business grow.
What AI cannot do, and the giraffe
AI is very biased to agree with you. Every idea you have is a great idea and the next million dollar business and you should go raise funding for it right now. At least that is what my AI tells me. So the question becomes what is unique to us. Our perspective, our insights. Those are the things no one replaces. We used to wash dishes by hand, wash clothes on washboards, ride a horse, go home to use the phone. My high school teachers told me I would not have a calculator in my pocket all the time. I have the best calculator in the world in my pocket right now.
For a business owner, the part that stays human is the marketing. Most entrepreneurs get busy replying to emails and then do not market enough and then do not make enough money. Landscaping company, laundromat, does not matter. AI can handle the tactical side, make sure you have enough wash powder, check the water bill, even pay the bills. It cannot go build a relationship with the business down the street that sends you a client.
It is also not free. People think AI is supposed to be twenty dollars a month for a huge engine. I was talking about this with Michael Hyatt a week or two ago. AI needs to be a line item on your budget and treated like a team member. I have a budget in credits and tokens for podcast outreach and I look at expense against return exactly like I would with an employee. It is a fraction of the cost, but it is still an expense.
Now the giraffe. Eleven years ago I went through a divorce and my attorney told me my company had no enterprise value because it all revolved around me. I had a marketing agency, I was the face of it, we did about two and a half million in billings. Great revenue, zero value. So when I rebuilt, I built around a character. Find me on Instagram or X or Facebook or LinkedIn and you will see a giraffe wearing a hat that says Gary. It is still me. But I will age, I will go on vacation, I will live my life, and none of that makes my ideas or my intellectual property less valuable. Every call I do is recorded, transcribed, and training a model behind the giraffe. If you get used to learning from the giraffe, then when I step back the giraffe becomes the thought leader. There are about seven thousand of us now. Tony Robbins chief marketing officer is a giraffe. The chief information security officer of the NFL is a giraffe. Landscapers in Australia, mechanics, car dealership owners in the Netherlands.
I am building it so I can own it. I do not have to hire someone else or depend on their human capital. I have two children and I do not have to pass the business on to them, but I can pass on the income, because I own the asset that replaces me. And none of this conversation with Kepo happens without Luna in the middle. So do not look at AI as bad. Look at how it could empower you to help more people and make a bigger impact, and use it for good.
I'm building it so I can own it. I don't have to hire someone else. I don't have to depend on their human capital.
The moments worth clipping
Short cuts from this episode, if you want the highlights before the full thing.
Questions people ask about this
How do I figure out which of my tasks AI should take over?
Pen and paper. Keep a notebook and write down every task as you do it. Check emails, respond to texts, monitor Slack, meal prep, schedule a date night. Once a week, take the list into Claude or ChatGPT and ask which ones it can do better, which it can take off your plate entirely, and which it can streamline. When it suggests something, ask what that actually looks like and it will write you a full plan.
What is Luna?
Luna is the AI agent I built to do podcast outreach after my wife found doing it manually too tedious. She writes personalized emails, monitors replies, flags what needs follow up, and does the research. She also preps me before recordings by reading a host's transcripts and giving me the likely questions, and she goes back after episodes publish to market them and learn from them. This week I am booked on four podcasts.
Is AI going to take my corporate job?
It is a yes and. Employee turnover is one of the highest expenses in corporate, and a trained agent never quits, works twenty four seven, takes no lunch, no sick day, no maternity leave. The employees insisting nothing could ever replace them have maybe twelve to twenty four months. The employees who become productivity maxers, who empower agents to handle their routine work, are the ones I think get raises and stay safe for years.
Why is a corporate salary an advantage for buying a business?
Because of how banks work. It is easy to get approved for an SBA loan on a great salary and hard when you are self employed. Two hundred thousand from your own business does not qualify you the same way two hundred thousand from a corporate job does. That is the leverage, and it is why buying a boring business while still employed is one of the biggest sleepers out there.
Do I still need accountants, lawyers and other professionals if I am using AI?
Yes. I keep an accounting team and a legal team. AI gets me about eighty percent of the way there and clears up issues I would otherwise pay hundreds or thousands to sort out, but then I go to the professionals with a thesis rather than a cold stack of documents and ask them to find my blind spots. Cheaper, faster, easier, and still reviewed by a human.
Why do you appear as a giraffe?
About eleven years ago my divorce attorney told me my marketing agency had no enterprise value because it all revolved around me. We were doing about two and a half million in billings with zero value. So I rebuilt around a character. Every call I do is recorded, transcribed and training a model behind the giraffe, so that when I step back the giraffe becomes the thought leader and I own the asset that replaces me.
Watch or listen to the whole conversation
The full episode is on Grow With Kepo, hosted by Onikepo Omotade.
Written by
Gary Henderson
Founder of Gary Club
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