Solopreneurs explain what AI is and isn't good for when you're running a business

• From travel advising to accessory design, these solopreneurs are upfront about how they use AI.
• Outsourcing administrative tasks to AI frees time to communicate more directly with their customers.
• This article is part of "The AI-Powered Solopreneur," a series exploring how solo business owners use AI to drive growth.

Over eight years of writing for travel publications, Kim Magaraci developed a passion for domestic travel. She learned that travel tips online couldn't compete with those destinations you could only discover by word-of-mouth.

So, when she founded her travel business, KGM Travel Design, in 2024, she hoped to emphasize personal relationships with vendors and customers and avoid using AI, despite her experience with it.

"I don't think you can get good advice asking ChatGPT for an itinerary," she says. "It's antithetical to everything I stand for."

And yet, Magaraci realized that using AI for administrative tasks like analytics, compiling reports, and generating condensed client briefs allowed her to spend more time on the personalized relationships that set her business apart.

She's one of many solopreneurs who told Business Insider that outsourcing administrative tasks to AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Nano Banana — Gemini's photo-editing AI — has allowed them to scale their business by spending more time on strategic and creative work, including growth decisions and building personal connections with customers.

"It's getting harder and harder to deny the time-saving aspects," Magaraci says, adding that she has embraced AI "in order to run a successful business and grow this business into what I want it to be."

AI supports growth by creating more free time, solopreneurs say

Seneca Connor, founder of The Bag Icon, an accessories brand, uses Nano Bana and other AI products to edit photos and videos. That not only saves her money — up to $2,000 per monthly photo shoot, she says — but also time.

With the hours saved, Connor has been able to design more original bags and launch a greater number of bags curated from other designers, all while reducing her marketing costs.

As a result, The Bag Icon saw more than a 20% year-over-year increase in profits last year, despite the impact of tariffs.

Accountant and solopreneur Gloria Hebert uses ChatGPT for her business, Aybear Services, to instantly create educational client worksheets that previously took an hour or two to set up.

This frees up time that she then uses to prioritize analyzing financial data from her bookkeeping clients — data she doesn't feed into AI because of privacy concerns. Managing finances is the core of her business, so having more time to spend on that has allowed her to streamline her workdays.

The time saved also allows her to organize networking events and community education classes for local business owners, which has led to an uptick in business. "Several of those entrepreneurs hired me to do their books," Hebert says.

AI allows more time for personalized communications, which build brand following

Lisa York is the owner of Sell More Stuff, an email marketing business. Although she has a small audience, she saw a 33% conversion rate for sales last year, she says. She credits that growth to her personalized, voicey emails, which always open with a personal anecdote and are never written with AI.

"I use a lot of story-led emails," York says. "People enjoy them, and they open the email because they can see my name."

That's something AI just can't replicate, she says. But York is able to spend time drafting engaging copy because she outsources other tasks — including tech support for her website, research, and brainstorming marketing strategy — to ChatGPT.

Like York, Connor uses the time that AI saves to build robust communication and rapport with her customers, which she says builds loyalty to her business. Less time spent on photos and video gives her more time to respond to emails and direct messages from clients seeking advice about their purchases.

"It's building community that's missing in the big brands," Connor says.

AI frees up time so solopreneurs can focus on their business's core

While AI has allowed these solopreneurs to grow their businesses without hiring a team, the technology shouldn't take over the core aspects of a business, Hebert says. Rather, it can be a tool that allows owners to focus on those critical areas.

"Use it as a resource," she says.

York — whose target clientele are other solopreneurs — says she's seeing more people recognize that. "People aren't scared of it anymore," she says.

Connor plans to expand her use of AI this year. She's experimenting with a digital clone — a video avatar that can deliver a script explaining new products. That approach will save her time on filming videos, but she says she'll always be the one dishing out the original advice that her clients have come to trust.

Even if a video is created using AI, Connor says, "all thoughts, ideas, and suggestions — those are my own."