“So many things that are just annoying. I’d rather just do the sales or the presentation and not do all of the behind the scenes.”

Hey there,
Before Deb joined The AI Executive System, this was her day.

Run a consultancy outside Philadelphia with a team of two, herself and one virtual assistant.
Lose the afternoon to invoicing, paperwork, and an inbox she could never get to zero.
Look up at 6 p.m. and try to work out what the family was going to eat for dinner.

Six months later she has 28 AI agents running her business and her household, she’s delivering 30 days of client work in 4 days, and she’s finally launched the nonprofit she’d been putting off for years.
You can hear it from Deb herself. Her full interview is on the program page:

[▶ Watch: Deb’s six months in The AI Executive System]
…or read on for the director’s cut, including parts that didn’t make the video: what she said back in March before she’d built any of it, the one thing she’d do differently, and what she’s done with the time since.
Where she started
Deb sat down for a video interview a few weeks into The AI Executive System. She had a problem I suspect you’ll recognize.
The work she loved was the sales and the presentations. The work devouring her days was everything else.
“So many things that are just annoying. I’d rather just do the sales or the presentation and not do all of the behind the scenes.”
And then there was home:

“My family life, I struggle with housekeeping, dinner — there’s always a question, what are we going to eat for dinner. Laundry, pet care. Just trying to figure it all out and run a business is difficult. And I love my family so much, and I don’t want to be in front of a computer all the time.”

That’s the heart of it.
Not “I want an army of agents.” Not “I want to outsource myself.” No YouTube influencer jargon. Instead, AIEX students say:
I know what matters. My loved ones, my health, my community.
Yes, I work hard to build my career. But also, life is short.
And I don’t want to waste it sitting in front of a computer.
She almost didn’t join
If you read Tuesday’s email, you’ve already heard about Deb’s hesitation:
“What if the technology moves faster than the training?”
It held her up at first. Then she did the math that settled it:
“If I were to figure it out on my own it would probably take a year. And this program was promising six months.”
She joined. And then, on camera, she said this:
“At the end of the program I want to be able to say that I built 20 AI agents to run my business and my personal life. I built a CEO, automated CEO, and a chief of staff for my home.”
That was 6 months ago. Nothing built yet. Just stating out loud what she intended to do.
She also said this:
“I’m 56 years old. I’m not supposed to know how to use a computer, let alone build AI agents and a chief of staff. That’s not supposed to be the title for me. But here I am doing this.”
And she didn’t just do it. She far exceeded her own goals and expectations.
The thing she’d have done differently
Deb wanted to go faster than we recommended.
AIEX is deliberately a months-long program, not a weekend bootcamp. It takes time to learn the patterns that let you build dozens of solid AI agents.
“I’m always asking at the end of a live session, what’s coming next? What’s next? What’s next? How fast can we do it? I wanna build it like in a week.”
When we asked her for feedback 6 weeks in, that was her only note: give me a “high speed” route.
And once, she took one.
“Only one time I didn’t listen to one instruction, and then it caused me to be in a frustrated state. But then I went back and I’m like, okay — she said not to do that, to do this.”
I’m including this because impatience is one of the most common ways people get stuck. You’re already a top performer at work, so naturally you want to move fast.
The program is self-paced, and you can go through it as quickly as you like. But learning to build AI agents takes time. My own team includes professional software developers, and even we had to feel our way through the pitfalls I wrote about yesterday.
So we built the early part of the curriculum to move you quickly through the fundamentals. Fast, but not so fast that you skip the parts everything later depends on.
Deb quickly talked herself out of it:
“Even though I wanna rush it, I respect that… You can’t rush it. You have to go through the steps and learn it.”
The 6-month progress report
We interviewed her again at six months, and asked her how many agents she’d built.
She had to stop and count.
“I built a total of 28 agents. I had to think about it for a second, because I continue to build.”
Twenty-eight. I went back and rewatched the first video afterward, the one where she said 20.
She was 40% ahead of her goal and was nowhere close to finished yet. Now that she’s on a roll, she says:
“My goal is to ultimately have 50 to 100 agents running several businesses that I run — mostly the consulting business and the nonprofit business.”
Once she started closely following the curriculum, things fell into place.
The Phase 1 assistants aren’t always “flashy,” but they address the work that prevents you from doing deep work. You don’t start with a council of advisors. Or a fully autonomous anything. Instead, you target the biggest daily time-sucks: email, calendar, news, lead prospecting, a house agent, a health agent. Deb’s inbox: “my email was so messy I couldn’t get a handle on it.” Her calendar: “I was missing a lot of meetings before.”
Then, a 4-week process was condensed into minutes. Her old process for finding and pitching new business: one to two weeks hunting prospects, several more days working out each one’s problem, then more days writing the pitch. She used to do it manually. Now, the agent does almost everything.
“So that’s four weeks of my time, in a few minutes, done.”
And that breakthrough was bigger than just saving time. She was about to escape this vicious cycle:
“When you spend so much time prospecting for new business, like let’s say a whole month just to get some new business in the door, then you’re not focusing on client service, then that falls apart. Then the next month you’re like, okay, I gotta catch up on client service… but then you’re not prospecting for new business.”
Feast. Famine. Repeat. Her revenue used to swing hard in both directions: some very good months, and some where she was refunding clients or letting them go.
The agents didn’t just save hours. They stabilized the business and ended Deb’s burnout.
Her clients can feel it. She typically promises 30-day delivery. Now she’s delivering in 4 days and client complaints are down to zero.
And then there’s the ecosystem of agents: 28 agents, everything reporting up through a Chief of Staff and a House Manager to a CEO agent watching the whole umbrella.
Total time back: 72 to 100 hours a month.
The result of patience, hard work, and finding the right coaching and community.
So she started a nonprofit
Deb has wanted to do serious nonprofit work for a long time.
She’d just never had the space in her schedule (or her brain). When you’re spending two weeks a month prospecting and the other two delivering, there is no version of your calendar where a passion project fits.
She has the space now.
That charity has since earned a $12,000 grant sponsorship.
And she’s now been invited to apply for another one worth $85,000.
“Now I’m getting invited to apply, which is way, way different from going out there looking for grants.”
Her agents not only helped her make the space for the nonprofit work. They also helped her accomplish it faster. And if you think back to Jimmy’s story from earlier this week, here we see the same pattern again:
Not just “getting more done.” Increasing your capacity while simultaneously doing better work faster.
And she reclaimed her family time
She used to do her learning in the middle of the night, because the entire day went to keeping the business upright. Now she learns during the day: cybersecurity, AI ethics, a new language.
She built her family a health agent, because that was the priority that mattered most to her:
“My health is the most important one… we’re so focused on living a long life and a healthy life — not only just making a lot of money, which would be great, but to be able to enjoy that money and travel.”
She plans the family’s travel through an AIEX agent. She’s helping relatives set up their own systems and start their own businesses.
And this:
“I’m so patient, calm, and present, whereas before it was putting out every fire. You wake up in the morning, you walk around in circles. You don’t know, by 6, 7 o’clock — what did I get done for the day?”
She adds:
“And yes, the fires still come. The business problems still come… But the calmness is here, because the agent showed me the patterns that I need to focus on and what I don’t need to focus on.”
The so-called fires of office work didn’t completely stop. She just doesn’t have to put them out alone anymore.
How you can model this
Deb’s story is both unique to her and part of a pattern we’ve now seen across 100+ students. Your outcomes will look different. But the steps that got her here transfer to anyone:
Build for the busywork first. Not necessarily the flashiest agent. The one that fixes the tasks that fill up your brain until it’s 6 p.m. and you can’t remember what you did today. Deb’s favorites are still email, calendar, and health.
Connect them, don’t collect them. Ten agents that can’t talk to each other is just 10 more things on your to-do list. Ten agents reporting to a Chief of Staff is a powerful team.
Remember, we’re here for values, not just “optimization.” Work has a tendency to fill the time you set aside for it, no matter how fast you get. That means you’ll need to consciously decide to focus on the more important things: family, relationships, health, a bucket-list experience, whatever that is for you. So when you find yourself with 10 extra hours a week, you know the highest-value way to use it.
Back to our core question
On Monday I asked you this:
What if the energy and brainpower we save through AI augmentation gets redeployed in high-value ways that help ourselves and others?
Deb found her answer.
Six months ago she was drowning in invoicing, stressing out about what was for dinner. Today she has a 28-agent operation running her business and her household, she’s delivering in four days what used to take 30. And she’s put the reclaimed time into a funded nonprofit and into being present for the people who count on her.
“It’s life-changing — not only for myself, but for my household, for my extended family, and for my community. I feel like I’m making an impact.”
That’s not a productivity story. That’s a person who got her life back and immediately spent it helping other people.
Enrollment for The AI Executive System is open now, and closes this Friday at 11:59pm Pacific.
Everything’s laid out on the program page: the three phases, the assistants you’ll build, the tech tracks, and the coaching options including the new Executive Concierge tier.
Take a look and pick the AIEX level that fits you →
To your success,

- Rob Howard
Founder, Innovating with AI

P.S. If you’d like to watch Deb’s full video interview, we’ve got that on the program page for you too.
(Enrollment closes Friday at 11:59pm Pacific Time.)