u/wasayybuildz

I’ve been thinking about the AI coaching conversation, and I think a lot of the fear around it makes sense.

If someone is selling AI as a replacement for the actual coaching relationship, I get why people push back. The human part is the product. The presence. The space. The accountability. The way a coach notices what is happening in the moment. The way the client feels seen by another person.

That is not the part AI should be trying to replace. Where AI actually makes sense, at least to me, is around the coaching relationship. A coach should not have to spend hours cleaning up notes, organizing client thoughts, writing follow-ups, remembering every small admin task, chasing scheduling, drafting homework, or trying to manually keep track of patterns across months of sessions. That is the kind of work AI is good for. It can help prepare before a session. It can summarize messy notes after a session. It can draft follow-ups that the coach edits in their own voice. It can help spot patterns across client history. It can keep admin and repetitive work from taking over the business. That does not make the coach less human.

If anything, it gives the coach more room to actually be human with the client. I think the mistake is treating AI as the coach. AI is not the product. A better coaching experience is the product. A smoother coaching business is the product. More time for the actual client relationship is the product.

I think most businesses are buying AI for the wrong reason. They hear “AI” and think the value is in the tool. Chatbots. Automations. Agents. Whatever new thing is trending this week.

But from what I’ve seen, the real value is much more boring. But from what I’ve seen, the real value is much simpler. Companies want the outcome without adding another full-time salary. They want something that can handle repetitive work every day, after hours, on weekends, and during busy periods. They want the cost to make sense. They want work to keep moving even when the team is offline, busy, or overloaded. That is where AI becomes interesting. Not because it is “smarter” than people. Because for the right tasks, it can do the work at almost half the cost, run 24/7, and give the business the outcome they were already trying to hire for. They do not care if the workflow uses Zapier, Make, n8n, GPT, Claude, or something custom. They care that the system works when their team is not.

I’ve been spending more time thinking about AI like operations infrastructure instead of “cool tech.” The best setup is usually invisible. It sits behind the business and quietly makes the boring work happen on time. That is also where I think a lot of opportunity is right now. Not in selling people “AI tools.” In finding the messy, repetitive parts of a business and making them run smoother.