Automate Your Agency

What If An AI-powered One Person Business Actually Sucks?

• Alane Boyd & Micah Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 86

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 16:05

Send us Fan Mail

Is the “one-person business” really the dream or just burnout disguised as freedom?

In this episode, the conversation takes a hard look at the rise of solo-operator culture, AI agents, and automation hype. While headlines promise total freedom through one-person businesses powered by AI, the reality is far more complex and often lonelier.

This discussion breaks down why running everything yourself isn’t scalable, sustainable, or fulfilling, even with AI and automation. You’ll hear why AI agents are only as effective as the human expertise behind them, and why generic automation can’t replace strategy, judgment, or nuanced decision-making.

Key topics covered in this episode:

  • Why the one-person business model is often misunderstood
  • The hidden cost of being the expert in marketing, sales, ops, and tech
  • How AI and automation actually fit into real businesses today
  • Why AI agents still require human expertise, oversight, and instruction
  • The difference between eliminating busy work vs. eliminating people
  • How small, focused teams outperform solo operators long-term
  • Using AI to support experts, not replace them

Instead of chasing the idea of doing everything alone, this episode makes the case for building tight, trusted teams supported by AI, where automation removes tedious work and humans focus on strategy, creativity, and growth.

If you’re exploring AI agents, workflow automation, or questioning whether “doing it all yourself” is really the goal, this episode will help reset expectations and give you a more realistic path forward.

Learn More about our AI Leadership Workshop

Winning businesses aren’t just working harder, they understand how to use AI strategically. Sign up for the AI Leadership Workshop, a 3-hour expert-led mastermind designed to give leadership teams clarity, alignment, and a practical path to stay competitive.

Book a call to customize your workshop today!

Disclosure: Some links are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the podcast!

For more information, visit our website at biggestgoal.ai.

Upcoming Cohorts & Workshops:

Enjoy our Free Tools:

Connect with Us:

Alane Boyd (00:02)
Do you really want a one person business? Because what you're really saying is, I want to be the only person who solves every problem twenty four seven.

Micah Johnson (00:11)
Alane, I don't want to be a one-person business.

Alane Boyd (00:14)
mean, my favorite thing is to delegate. No, it's so hard.

Micah Johnson (00:17)
You definitely don't want to be a one person business. Hell no.

It like, I hear all these people talking about it and it makes great headlines. It makes great click bait and people talk about it. Like it's this way to get business freedom, but I don't know. Hot take, I freaking disagree with this 100%. I've been there and it's lonely.

Alane Boyd (00:44)
so unbelievably lonely, you have no one to brainstorm with, and you're only as good as your next best idea. That means you were the expert at everything. And I used to think I knew everything, and I was just really immature.

Micah Johnson (00:59)
I mean, it sounds good. Like when you have those bad days, you're managing a team, even if it's a small team and you're like.

just imagine if this was just me, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this stuff. But then it's like you get into this whole concept of, well, I'm going to become the marketing expert. I've got to be an expert on marketing. I got to be the sales person. I got to figure out sales. I got to be the ops person. I've got to figure out the ops. And yes, it's presented as like, well, AI can handle all that for you. Automation can handle all that for you.

Alane Boyd (01:19)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (01:33)
Who the hell is inventing all of these processes and all these workflows to get to that point? It's you. Generic AI is not going to say, here's your perfect marketing plan for your nuanced business, and this is exactly how to do it, and I'm going to build everything for you. No, we're not there yet. Somebody has to be the expert. Somebody has to be building the workflows, and it's all got to work together, and it's all got to fit.

Alane Boyd (01:41)
Yes.

Micah Johnson (02:02)
Man, I don't know, I'm getting agitated just thinking about it. But yeah, call the doctor.

Alane Boyd (02:05)
Your blood pressure's rising, Micah, I can see it.

Yeah, lot of times what we say and what we believe even with the 27 agents that work for us is that it gets us 80 to 90 % of the way there. to 20 % is still a human. And that adds up. That can't be Alane does all 10 to 20%. I mean, there's days that I can't get to 10 % of anything.

So we still need humans handling that and there's things that I'm really, really good at, but there are a lot of things that I'm not good at that I want a different team member to handle.

Micah Johnson (02:45)
Yeah. And I mean, the reality is AI and automation as much as I love systems and processes and love the concept of it, taking away all the busy work. That's exactly what it's for. It takes away the busy work to help me draft my emails, help me schedule a post, help me answer support tickets, but help me and really help my team members, help my employees, help my, you know, contractors help not do because.

Alane Boyd (03:14)
.

Micah Johnson (03:15)
It's just it just can't do it all.

Alane Boyd (03:19)
Yeah, and like the other side of it is like, payments don't go through or a client needs help on something that didn't work. And it wasn't even necessarily that the technology broke. It's just that that's a part of running business we're humans working with humans. And without a team member, you're handling 100 % of that even if its agent is assisting you.

Micah Johnson (03:42)
I think about that all the time when I see these headlines and see these videos yeah, all right. A one person business, and maybe we eat our words in this episode next year or a couple of years down the road. But right now, I mean, like you said, if a payment fails, you're telling me that you're going to grow a business and you're going to be out golfing. You're going to be hanging with your family. You're going to be on vacation. You're going to be sleeping.

Alane Boyd (04:10)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (04:10)
Stuff breaks, your entire business is now broken. You're the only one that can fix it. Sure, hire contractors, do all these things. Yeah.

Alane Boyd (04:20)
Then you're not a one person business

If you're saying, I'll a contractor for that, then you're not a one person business. You have somebody working for you to handle things.

Micah Johnson (04:30)
Yes. And if you are the only person, no contractors, again, you're learning marketing, you're learning sales, you're learning ops, you're learning tech, you're learning APIs, you're learning agents, you're learning N8N. And these days you should learn a lot of that. You should have the basis and all of that. But at some point you're going to want to have family dinners. You're going to want to go golfing. You're going to want to sleep and not be interrupted. I think back on our previous business, Alane, and

Alane Boyd (04:45)
Yes.

Micah Johnson (04:59)
We had servers and software and we had a whole team with all of this. But at the time I was playing the COO CTO role and it was traumatizing because it was 4 a.m., server went down. Guess where the ball drops. I have to get up and I have to help my team fix this. And it was so

Alane Boyd (05:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (05:27)
stressful. And what a one person business is saying is, I don't want to hire a CTO to help me delegate this burden. I want to be that person for that, but also for every other department as well. And the trade off is I don't have to manage people.

Alane Boyd (05:41)
Right.

So this is the key thing that I think of and the more that I talk about agents and see us building them, this has become so clear and concrete. Your agent, and this sounds stupid when I say it out loud, Micah. Your agent is only good as the instructions that you give it. It isn't an expert. You are the expert telling it very explicitly what you want it to do.

What its job is. So as a one person business, you're saying that you are the expert in every single thing, like you're saying, Micah, but I'm just saying it in a different way. Because that agent has to be told, this is the trigger, these are the instructions, this is the output. And you can hire contractors, but then again, it's not a one person show anymore.

Micah Johnson (06:37)
Well, and let's say you hire contractors to help you build these systems and you coach them on your idea. Great. And it's running for a month. Awesome. There's the dream. But you're not interacting. Sure, go play golf. Go interact with people socially. Meanwhile, and you and I have lived this as well, Alane, when you are in communities where it's not people that are ambitious. It's not people that are building businesses.

they're on different levels like you feel unfulfilled in life because your brain's wanting to solve problems and do these things and if you take that away You're just kind of like What the hell am I doing?

Alane Boyd (07:06)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It gets real lonely. You don't have anybody to bounce ideas off of, talk through things. I mean, that really is the more fun part of business is, hey, let's get some smart people together and work through an idea and see how we can make it better.

Micah Johnson (07:37)
Yeah. I mean, I think the way that I think about it is essentially maybe the goal isn't just being a one person show, but maybe it's not being a hundred person company either. Maybe it's can I build a, just a tight team of people I love working with that I can rely on, they can rely on me and we have purpose and we are building this thing together.

Alane Boyd (07:52)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (08:05)
And

honestly, that's how we operate. That's what we're trying to build right now. It's not what's our head count, how many people can we get for our egos? And it's not let's fire everybody and just run at me or just run at you or just run at the two of us. It is let's build a team of people that we like and people have strengths and they have weaknesses. But that's also

Alane Boyd (08:23)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (08:31)
part of business and also part of the fun of putting this together is, building that team, finding those ways that somebody's weakness might be covered by somebody else's strengths and engaging and interacting. And man, even going through the frustrating parts, from my experience, I'd take that over.

Alane Boyd (08:33)
Yeah, we will.

Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (08:53)
doing it by myself in a room, sitting in front of a computer, trying to make shit work by myself. Like that was so lonely that I opted to say, I'm done with this. I need a team. I want to scale up some people.

Alane Boyd (08:59)
Mm-hmm.

Thank

Yeah. And, you know, I love when we think about these agents as digital workers and we have them as part of our org chart. Cause then you really can have managers and directors with a team of agents where they're an expert at marketing or content marketing. And then they have this team of agents because so much of our day is tedious bullshit. Moving information from one system to another system, going and finding the data, go.

Micah Johnson (09:30)
Yes.

Alane Boyd (09:37)
all of those tedious things that like take away from the work that we're doing, that is where we need the agents sitting and to make those creative, the strategic people on our teams have superpowers in their day because they're not having to do that other monotony.

Micah Johnson (09:53)
Well, and this is really interesting on this side of it, because you think about cognitive effort and how much brain power you have to use for stuff. As a highly skilled person, the more work, and this is like getting into personality traits and stuff, but the more work you do of that busy work, of that copying and pasting stuff, you're still using brain power, but you're exhausting.

your brain power on that instead of like, Hmm, strategically, how could we do this or how could we solve this problem? And you could spend half the day on busy work, go to lunch, get sleepy, and then be like, well, I guess I'll just have to do this tomorrow. And it slows everything down. But yes, this is where agents can like I said earlier, I gave the example of like drafting emails and scheduling posts, like

Alane Boyd (10:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (10:46)
Let automation, let AI do that so that you can have that starting point to say, ⁓ all right, this is a good idea. But because I'm a subject matter expert in this, I can take my experience, my knowledge, my nuanced information that I have about the business, about our customers, about our niche, about all the things that make this a real business, and apply that to the drafts instead of go, well,

Alane Boyd (11:12)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (11:13)
AI did it good enough. I'll just put this out and guaranteed the people reading the email are going to look at it and go, Micah just used AI for this.

Alane Boyd (11:22)
Yeah, I think I really like your example. And I was thinking through even a recent change for us. We have AI that helps us put together our weekly email newsletter that I've been leading. So we have the agent and then I'll go in and change it up, change the wording and stuff. Well, we have a new person on our team who is now taking that over. And we saw that even the open rates and everything increased, people reading and clicking has increased.

And that's because they are better at doing that than me. We have the same agent, the same content coming to us, but the way that it gets executed is different because they're a better expert at marketing than I am.

Micah Johnson (12:05)
Yes.

And I think that's the power is like, while AI can feel smarter because it has all this training data and all this knowledge and it can do stuff so fast, is it really better for the final result? advocates of AI for sure, as a tool, as part of automation, as part of all of that. But you mentioned the big marketing.

Alane Boyd (12:24)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (12:31)
thing that I put together. It's like eight or nine agents powering this automated system, but it is not fully automated. In fact, I built it the opposite. I built it completely modular because a human runs the system. The AI powers the busy work, but the system itself is run by a human and every single module in it starts with a human triggering it and ends with a human reviewing it.

Alane Boyd (12:45)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (12:58)
before it's going to the next module. 100 % I could have said, here's a topic and then do all of these things, create all the posts, schedule all this out, do all this, write all this. And that would have been just AI stuff. But we don't do it that way because it's nice to have that human element. It's nice to have that human review. And it's necessary to have those.

Alane Boyd (13:13)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (13:24)
points where a subject matter expert, like you're saying Alane with the email newsletter, I want to keep hiring people that are better than me at doing, you know, everything. That's the whole point.

Alane Boyd (13:29)
Mm-hmm.

Everything.

Yeah. So, and I think this is a good way to summarize the episode too is, you know, instead of thinking about, you know, how can I just eliminate team members? How can I just have a bunch of agents working for me? And I'm the master behind everything is thinking through what are the tedious parts that anybody on your team has to do, whether it's one or 10 people.

and start looking at it like that and where would you want an expert to make something better? know, where your weakness is or where you don't want to put time into and be thinking about your structure that way that you have these experts on your team that have the support of agents so that they can do the best that they can do with their tools.

Micah Johnson (14:19)
Yeah. And I would say with that, because I think that's such a valiant point, is start small. Don't solve the whole thing. Help your experts. Yeah. Help your experts do this one tiny little thing better. And that's where you start.

Alane Boyd (14:28)
Yeah, you can't. You are only one person.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Head Shot

Alane Boyd

Co-host
Head Shot

Micah Johnson

Co-host