Today we’re speaking with Ling-yi Tsai, an HRTech expert with decades of experience helping organizations navigate change through technology. While she has worked with large corporations, her true passion lies in empowering entrepreneurs and consultants to harness the power of AI, not as a replacement for human ingenuity, but as a powerful partner. She’s here to discuss a revolutionary ideinstead of hiring to scale, entrepreneurs can use AI to reclaim their time and multiply their impact. We’ll explore the journey from identifying hidden time-wasters to building automated systems, all while preserving the unique voice that sets a business apart, and ultimately, reinvesting that recovered time into strategic growth.
Many entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed but don’t know where their time goes. What is a brutally honest way to track activities for one week, and what shocking patterns of “fake work” or context switching do people typically uncover? Please share a specific anecdote.
The most effective way is also the most uncomfortable: you have to track every single minute for seven straight days. No fudging the numbers. This isn’t about judgment; it’s about data. I worked with a consultant who was convinced his days were consumed by client calls and deep work. After a week of honest tracking, he was floored to discover he was losing nearly three hours a day to context switching—jumping from email to Slack to a document and back again, never fully settling into one task. He saw that what he called “research” was often just sophisticated procrastination. The data doesn’t lie, and it often reveals that most of our effort, sometimes as much as 80%, is spent on tasks that only generate 20% of our actual value.
Once someone identifies a repetitive, time-wasting task, what are the first few steps to build an AI system to handle it? Could you walk us through creating a clear process document for a task like drafting social media posts, including quality criteria and example outputs?
You must start with the task that makes you want to scream—the one you do every day that requires consistency but zero genius. That’s your first win. To build an AI system for it, you need to create a crystal-clear process document. For social media posts, this means outlining the exact steps: ‘Step 1: Analyze this source article for key takeaways. Step 2: Draft three distinct hooks based on the target audience’s pain points. Step 3: Write a 150-word post for LinkedIn incorporating a key statistic.’ Your quality criteria must be specific: ‘The tone should be authoritative but approachable. Each post must end with an open-ended question to encourage engagement.’ Finally, provide concrete examples of inputs and outputs. Give it a blog post you wrote and the exact social media copy you derived from it. The goal is to make the instructions so clear that the AI can replicate your process flawlessly, freeing you from that repetitive grind.
Professionals often worry AI will strip their unique voice from their work. How can they use AI for the heavy lifting of initial research and drafting, while ensuring the final 20% reflects their personal brand and expertise? What does that human “magic” look like in practice?
That fear is completely valid, which is why the 80/20 approach is so critical. You should never let AI have the final word on anything that represents your brand. Think of it as an incredibly efficient research assistant and first-drafter. Let it do the heavy lifting: gathering data, structuring an argument, or outlining a report. That’s the 80%. The final 20% is you, and that’s where the magic happens. It’s the moment you read the draft and insert a personal story that perfectly illustrates a point. It’s when you rephrase a sentence to reflect your unique wit or a contrarian viewpoint that challenges the reader. This human layer of insight, vulnerability, and specific expertise is what builds trust and authority, and it’s something AI can’t replicate.
Energy-draining admin work, like chasing invoices or managing a calendar, can kill creative momentum. What specific AI workflows can an entrepreneur set up once to run automatically? Please provide a concrete, step-by-step example for managing and prioritizing an overflowing email inbox.
Administrative tasks are the silent killers of productivity and creative energy. For an overflowing inbox, you can set up a powerful, one-time workflow. First, you instruct an AI tool to sort incoming emails into predefined categories: ‘Urgent Client Matter,’ ‘Invoice/Payment,’ ‘Newsletter,’ and ‘Low Priority.’ Then, you create a rule for the AI to automatically draft replies for common inquiries, like requests for a meeting, which it holds for your one-click approval. Finally, you can have it create a daily summary of the ‘Urgent’ folder with recommended actions, so you start your day with a clear, prioritized list instead of a wall of noise. You set this up once, and it runs forever, giving you back the mental space you need to focus on growth.
Reclaiming time is one thing, but using it wisely is another. What system can someone use to track hours saved by AI and ensure they are reinvested into high-impact activities like strategic planning, rather than just filling the space with more busywork?
This is the most crucial step, because time saved means nothing if you just fill it with more low-value tasks. You have to treat those recovered hours like gold. I advise my clients to create an ‘AI Time Dividend’ tracker—a simple spreadsheet where they log every hour saved by their automated systems. At the start of each week, they look at the total hours saved from the previous week, let’s say it’s 15 hours, and they must consciously allocate that time into high-impact buckets: five hours for strategic planning, five for building key client relationships, three for creative product development, and two for personal rest and development. By making the allocation tangible and intentional, you create an accountability system that ensures the time you reclaim is actually used to scale your business and well-being, not just your to-do list.
What is your forecast for how AI will continue to change the landscape for solo entrepreneurs and small businesses over the next five years?
Over the next five years, I believe AI will fundamentally break the traditional “hire to scale” model for entrepreneurs. The idea that you need to take on the overhead, complexity, and management stress of a team to grow will become outdated. We’re moving into an era where a single individual, armed with the right AI systems, can have the operational leverage of a ten-person company. This will empower a new wave of highly efficient, profitable, and lean businesses that can compete on a global scale without the traditional burdens of expansion. The most successful entrepreneurs will not be the best managers of people, but the best architects of AI-driven systems.