People always ask how I run two businesses by myself. The real answer is I don't. AI runs about 40% of it.
I have an e-commerce brand selling curated home office accessories and a freelance social media management business with 6 clients. Both operate from my apartment in Austin. No employees. No investors. Just me, my laptop, and a very specific set of tools.
Here's my exact setup. No fluff, no affiliate links, just what I actually use every single day.
The non-negotiables (I'd keep these if I could only afford 3 tools)
1. ChatGPT Plus - $20/month This is my co-worker. I use it for: writing product descriptions, drafting client social media captions, brainstorming content ideas, rewriting customer service emails, summarizing competitor research, and generating weekly content calendars for my clients.
Real talk: I spend about 2 hours a day talking to ChatGPT. It's not perfect - I rewrite about 30% of what it gives me. But it gets me from blank page to rough draft in minutes instead of hours.
2. Canva Pro - $13/month The AI features in Canva are genuinely good now. Background removal, Magic Resize for different platforms, text-to-image for quick social graphics. I create all my client content and my own product photos here.
Before Canva AI, I was spending $200-400/month on a freelance designer. Now I handle 90% of design myself and only hire out for complex stuff.
3. Notion AI - $10/month My entire business lives in Notion. Client dashboards, content calendars, invoices, product inventory, meeting notes. The AI feature helps me summarize long client briefs, draft project proposals, and organize my chaos.
The "really helpful but I could survive without" tier
4. Tidio - $29/month AI chatbot on my e-commerce site. Handles about 70% of customer questions automatically (shipping times, return policy, product questions). Before this, I was answering the same 10 questions 20 times a day.
5. Zapier - $20/month Connects everything together. When someone buys a product, Zapier automatically adds them to my email list, updates my inventory spreadsheet, and sends me a Slack notification. When a client approves social content in Notion, it queues in my scheduling tool.
6. Copy.ai - $36/month I use this specifically for email marketing and ad copy. It's better than ChatGPT for short, punchy sales copy. I write my weekly newsletter drafts here.
Total monthly cost: $128
That's less than what one part-time assistant would cost for a single day.
What I tried and dropped
- Jasper ($49/month) - good but redundant with ChatGPT Plus. Couldn't justify both.
- Descript ($24/month) - video editing AI. Cool but I don't do enough video to justify it.
- Grammarly Premium ($12/month) - ChatGPT catches most of what Grammarly would.
- Three different scheduling tools - settled on just using Notion + Zapier instead.
The honest truth
I make about $14K/month between both businesses. Without AI tools, I'd either need to hire someone ($2,000-3,000/month minimum) or drop half my clients. The math is simple.
But AI doesn't do the hard parts. It doesn't build client relationships. It doesn't know my brand voice until I teach it. It doesn't make creative decisions. I do all of that.
AI handles the stuff that used to eat my evenings - the repetitive writing, the formatting, the basic customer service, the data entry. It gave me my nights back. That's worth $128/month.
If you're just starting out, get these two things:
- ChatGPT Plus ($20/month)
- Canva Pro ($13/month)
That's $33/month and it covers 80% of what most solo businesses need. Add more tools only when you hit a specific bottleneck, not because some influencer told you to.