A note from Jennie
I use AI throughout my own business, and I've learned that a tool doesn't make an unclear process clear just because it can run faster. You still have to decide what needs doing, what good work looks like, and what decisions belong to you.
That's why I wanted to share this article from Hazel June of The Pink Project. Rather than treating AI as a magic button, Hazel approaches it like delegation. You give it the right job, teach it your process, and review what comes back. Her five-layer framework offers a practical way to decide where AI can actually help instead of adding another impressive-looking system you now have to manage.
I know there's a ton of hype around AI automation. It's cool, and it's useful, but I think of automation as something you do last. Once you’ve proven the system or process works.
That said, I treat leveraging AI like delegating to a team member. I stay the CEO and AI runs the task (and in some cases, whole departments).
I've been building AI tools and systems for clients and for myself since 2023, and the result is what I call the AI Delegation System.
Delegating to AI = Delegating to a Human
When you hand a task to a real person, you don't just toss it over and disappear, right? You give them context. You show them how you do it. You hand over the SOP so they know what to do, how, and when. Then you check their work until you trust it, and then you check less.
AI works the same way. It's a hire you're training, which means the feedback loop matters. Most people miss this part. They think using AI means replacing themselves 100% with a machine. But it's really like hiring a team member, minus the payroll, the scheduling conflicts, the performance reviews, and the drama. You still train them, set the standard, and give feedback.
What We're Actually Solving For: Operational Leverage
Operational leverage is producing more output without proportionally more input.
For a solo expert, that means more clients, more content, and more programs, without needing more of your time, energy, or presence. It's not productivity tips either. It's building infrastructure so you don't have a structural dependency that caps what a solo business can produce and earn.
The 5 Layers
Before we go through them, these are not five steps to complete in order. They're five lenses for looking at where AI creates leverage in your business. The best use case is stacking them.
1. Consistency: The Intern
AI delivers the same quality at 3:00 AM that it does at 9:00 AM. It replaces your bad days. Without consistency as the foundation, every other layer turns into a mess, because the output has to hold up across the board.
Example: I have an AI Brief skill, a Claude skill that researches, filters, and formats a weekly AI update for one of my clients' communities. It goes out every week no matter what kind of week I'm having.
2. Time: The Assistant
This layer replaces your hours. It turns a four-hour task into a 20-minute one. Time leverage doesn't pull you out of the business, though. It pulls you out of the tasks that never needed you in the first place.
Example: I build online courses for clients, and assets like PDF guides, worksheets, infographics, and slide decks usually take me hours, if not days. With AI, I created 17 assets in two hours. Which is insane.
3. Capacity: The Department
This layer replaces the team you don't want to manage. AI can handle the volume that would otherwise take five more hires.
Example: I have a full AI content system with different AI team members. It handles my end-to-end content workflow, from ideation to publishing, which used to take several humans. I just show up to review, approve, deny, or give feedback. I'm the editor-in-chief of the whole department.
4. Insights: The Advisor
Honestly, this is my favorite layer. It helps you see your blind spots. When you run a business solo, you work in silos with no outside perspective. You get so deep in a project or deliverable that you can't see the gaps.
Example: I have an AI advisory board, more than seven advisors now, each trained on a distinct worldview: how the mentors I wish I had actually think, based on their frameworks and methodologies. I also have an AI coach that calls me out when a behavioral pattern shows up, i.e. when I start avoiding work or drifting.
5. Expertise: The Specialist
This one replaces you, and I don't mean that in a bad way. What I meant is that your IP, your frameworks, and your voice can run without you in the room.
Example: I have a knowledge base of my frameworks, methodologies, thinking processes, and decision-making logic. When my AI team members create a course, a tool, a PDF guide, or a lead magnet, they reference those source files. AI builds assets from my expertise without me being there.
Stack Them
Here's the cool part: one system can hit multiple layers at once.
- The AI Brief skill covers consistency, time, and insights.
- The content system covers capacity, consistency, and expertise.
- The knowledge base covers expertise primarily, plus capacity and consistency.
That's the compounding benefit of the AI Delegation System.
If you run an expert-based business, your expertise is the asset.
AI can help you build the infrastructure of systems, processes, and AI employees so you get the freedom you built this business for in the first place.
Hazel June
Hazel June is the founder of The Pink Project. She helps established online experts and operators use AI to take the boring but critical work off their plate, so they can get their time back, focus on the work they actually enjoy, and grow without building a team they don’t want to manage. Before this, she spent a decade as a corporate trainer, then built a freelance business from the ground up, working with brands like Danielle Leslie and Impact Theory University. She's coached hundreds of business owners and trained thousands of people on leveraging AI.
If you want to identify which layer in the AI Delegation System you’re underutilizing, I highly recommend you take this quiz. It’ll tell you exactly how to better leverage AI using the 5 layers.
Take Hazel's AI Delegation QuizLearn more about Hazel at The Pink Project.
One thing I'd add
Before you delegate a task to AI, make sure it's a task your business actually needs done and that you can explain the process clearly. Automating the wrong strategy won't fix it, and handing AI a vague assignment usually means you'll spend your saved time correcting the results. But when the work makes sense and the process fits how you operate, delegation can make consistent follow-through a whole lot easier. That's a practical fix, not a mindset problem.