Ashley Gross is no stranger to AI education. Her own fascination with AI tools led her to owning AI upskilling for 100 people in her previous organization. She saw the need for a community where AI enthusiasts from different backgrounds and perspectives could learn together. So she launched AI Workforce Alliance, focused on helping enthusiasts launch their own AI-first businesses.

She’s created an online space to network and shares tutorials, tool trials, and a podcast – and she’s doing it all herself with AI. Here’s how she built and manages an online community with one person and $400 a month.

Why businesses fail (and how to avoid it)

There are a million ways AI can help you build a business, so what’s most important? Ashley Googled the top 3 reasons businesses fail and started there.

1. Poor product-market fit

"People don't do surveys or A/B testing before they create the product or service model and then they have to backpedal and iterate on a business that’s already failing," Ashley says.

To validate product market fit, Ashley leaned on AI. She used AI to run product market research and a product market fit assessment before she created the community, during the creation process, and after launch, to identify friction points, user experience issues, or errors in her hypothesis that she needed to iterate on quickly before they became a problem.

The tools she uses:

• Crimson Hexagon (now BrandWatch). Ashley likened this tool to a Survey Monkey that’s enabled by market research and competitive intelligence with a social media-like dashboard. She uses this tool to run surveys and easily parse the key trends she should be aware of.

2. Lack of know-how

"Many business owners lack the skills and knowledge necessary to effectively run their business," Ashley explains.

Ashley isn’t lacking in AI education experience. But considering the pace of change in AI, she needed to safeguard against this anyway.

To keep herself competitive, she regularly uses AI tools to help sharpen and upskill her own knowledge of AI.

The tools she uses:

• Butterfly.ai. Ashley shares her title, company, the skills she benchmarks herself against and her goals for herself. Then Butterfly creates five-minute video games to help her build new skills everyday.

3. A bad business plan

This was what Ashley was most worried about, and where AI truly augmented rather than supplemented her.

She focuses specifically on tools that can automate budgeting and financial projections so she always has a clear picture of how the business is doing.

The tools she uses:

• Wave. Every time she gets invoiced, signs a financial document, or receives a contract, it all goes through Wave which handles all the bookkeeping.
  
  
• Expensify. She takes a picture of every business-related receipt or has the tools in her tech stack forward invoices to a forwarding email that sends them to Expensify.

How she runs her community for $400 – and how you can too

Supplementing her strengths and augmenting her weaker spots is not the only benefit Ashley gets from running an AI-enabled business.

“To run my whole entire business – the courses, all of the content on all of the channels, the community, the podcast – it's $400 a month,” Ashley said.On the flip side, to hire a developer, a content manager, someone in PR, and a video and podcast editor, it would cost her $13,000 a month to run her business.

Here’s how you can copy her model:

1. Benchmark your skills

Take stock of your experience or skill gaps by doing some research into common pitfalls of small businesses. Then find AI tools that will solve those problems for you because you won’t have the time to upskill yourself on them while you’re trying to get a business off the ground.

2. Lean into automation

As a solopreneur, you’ll have to be everywhere all at once, and automation makes that possible. Ashley uses Make.com to send an automated welcome message to every new person that joins her community.

“I think that people tend to forget that you have to nurture leads before you get them and after you get them because that's what prevents churn,” Ashley said. “And that's where automations are a game changer.”

3. Use your free time to network

Ashley is a big proponent of prioritizing time fiercely as a solopreneur. If AI can step in for you on all these automatable tasks, spend your time doing what only you can do: Connecting with people.

Ashley set up 15 minute coffee chats with people she wanted to make connections with, took notes on upcoming milestones for each of them, and then used Folk AI to send automated follow ups congratulating them or sending well wishes.

Parting wisdom

Ashley’s approach to running her business with AI is: AI everywhere. Not only is AI helping her ensure the core business functions are solid, it’s helping her provide as much value as possible to her members.

So if you’re looking to grow an online community like Ashley’s, start by seeing where AI can automate the really important stuff you don’t have time to learn. And then go one step further to see where AI can nurture your customers or add delightful experiences you might not have otherwise been able to do.