I spent $289 to let AI run my entire business for a week

Last month, I had what might be the dumbest or most brilliant idea of my entrepreneurial career: What if I let AI completely run my business for a week?

Not just help with emails or generate some copy. I'm talking full control. Product development, marketing campaigns, customer service, content creation – the whole shebang. All I'd do is provide the budget ($289 to be exact) and watch what happened.

Spoiler alert: It was way weirder than I expected.

Why I decided to become a human ATM for robots

Look, I've been running businesses for years, and I'm tired. Tired of making every single decision, tired of being the bottleneck, tired of waking up at 3 AM wondering if I remembered to update that landing page.

The promise of AI automation has been dangling in front of entrepreneurs like a carrot for months now. "Let AI scale your business!" "Automate everything!" "Work four hours a week!"

But most people are using AI like a fancy calculator – asking it to write an email here, create a logo there. I wanted to see what would happen if I actually treated it like a business partner with a company credit card.

Setting up my AI CEO (and praying I wouldn't go bankrupt)

The ground rules were simple:

I'd give AI access to $289 across various platforms
It would have 7 days to build and run a complete business
I could provide initial direction but couldn't micromanage
Everything had to be measurable

I chose to focus on digital products because, let's be honest, I wasn't about to let AI order 1000 units of mystery inventory from Alibaba.

The tech stack I settled on was actually pretty straightforward:

GPT-4 for strategy and content
Midjourney for visuals
Zapier for connecting everything
Bubble for quick web development
Facebook Ads for marketing
Stripe for payments

Day 1: AI's first business decision made me question everything

The first thing AI decided? We were going into the "productivity planner for remote workers" space.

I'll be honest – I was expecting something sexier. Maybe crypto arbitrage bots or an app that matches people with AI-generated poems about their pets. But no, AI went full corporate consultant on me.

Its reasoning was actually solid though. It analyzed market demand data, looked at keyword search volumes, and identified a gap in the market for planners specifically designed around remote work rhythms rather than traditional 9-to-5 schedules.

Within six hours, it had:

Created a 47-page digital planner PDF
Designed a landing page that honestly looked better than most human-made ones
Written sales copy that didn't sound like it was written by a robot having an existential crisis
Set up automated email sequences

The speed was insane. What would normally take me weeks happened before lunch.

The marketing campaign that taught me I don't understand my own audience

Day 2 was when things got interesting. AI launched our Facebook ad campaign, and I immediately wanted to intervene.

The target audience it chose seemed way too broad. The ad creative was more subtle than I would've gone. The copy felt almost... boring?

But here's where it gets weird – the ads started performing. Really well.

CTR was sitting at 3.2%, which is solid. Cost per click was reasonable. But more importantly, the people clicking were actually converting on the landing page.

Turns out, AI had identified something I completely missed. Instead of targeting "entrepreneurs" and "productivity enthusiasts" like I would have, it focused on "remote employees at companies with 50-200 people who showed interest in time management content in the past 30 days."

Way more specific. Way more expensive per impression. But the quality of traffic was incredible.

When AI customer service got philosophical

By day 3, we had our first customer complaints rolling in. Nothing major – a few people couldn't download their planner files, someone wanted a refund, typical stuff.

But watching AI handle customer service was like observing an alien try to understand human emotions.

One customer wrote: "This planner doesn't work with my chaotic lifestyle."

A human would probably respond with something like "Sorry to hear that! Here are some tips..."

AI wrote back: "I understand that structure can feel constraining when your natural rhythm is more fluid. The planner is designed to be adaptive – you might find success using only the sections that resonate with your workflow rather than following it linearly."

It was... actually better than most human customer service I've seen? More thoughtful, less scripted. Though it did occasionally get a bit too philosophical for someone who just wanted to know where their download link was.

The pivot that saved everything

Day 4 brought our first real crisis. Sales had plateaued, and our Facebook ad costs were climbing. In human terms, we were about to blow through our remaining budget with nothing to show for it.

This is where most people (myself included) would panic and start throwing money at different ad sets, hoping something would stick.

AI took a completely different approach. It analyzed our customer data and realized that our highest-value customers were all buying during specific hours and had similar browsing patterns. Instead of expanding the campaign, it doubled down on this segment and completely paused everything else.

Then it did something I never would have thought of – it created a "premium version" of the planner with additional templates, priced it at 3x the original, and only showed it to people who had spent more than 5 minutes on our original sales page.

Revenue jumped 40% overnight.

The creative content that made me jealous of a robot

By day 5, AI was creating social media content that was getting more engagement than my personal posts. And that stung a little.

It had figured out that our audience responded best to "productivity tips disguised as coffee break content." So instead of posting typical business advice, it was sharing things like "Why your 2 PM energy crash might actually be your most creative hour" with visually stunning graphics.

The content felt human in a way that surprised me. It wasn't trying to sound like a motivational poster or a productivity guru. It felt like advice from a friend who happened to be really good at optimizing their day.

Though I did have to intervene when it tried to post a 47-slide carousel about "The metaphysical implications of time blocking." Sometimes AI gets a little too excited about philosophy.

The numbers don't lie (but they do surprise)

After 7 days, here's what our AI-run business accomplished:

Total revenue: $1,247
Total ad spend: $289
Net profit: $958
Customer acquisition cost: $12.50
Lifetime value (projected): $47
Customer satisfaction: 4.6/5 stars

But the numbers only tell part of the story. What really struck me was how different AI's approach was from mine.

Where I would have focused on growth and scale, AI optimized for profit margins. Where I would have tried to appeal to everyone, AI found a very specific niche and dominated it. Where I would have panicked at the first sign of trouble, AI calmly analyzed data and made strategic pivots.

What I learned about letting go of control

The hardest part of this experiment wasn't the technology – it was resisting the urge to jump in and "fix" things that didn't need fixing.

AI made decisions I disagreed with that turned out to be brilliant. It ignored "best practices" I swore by and found better approaches. It showed me that my instincts, while valuable, aren't always optimal.

But there were definitely limitations. AI struggled with anything requiring genuine creativity or emotional intelligence. It couldn't read between the lines of customer feedback or pick up on cultural nuances that might affect our messaging.

And let's be real – it can't replace the vision and passion that drives most successful businesses. It can execute incredibly well, but it needs a human to point it in the right direction.

The future of AI-powered businesses

This experiment convinced me that we're on the verge of something big. Not the "AI will replace all entrepreneurs" kind of big, but the "AI will make it possible for one person to run a business that previously required a team" kind of big.

The tools exist right now. The integrations are getting smoother. The AI is getting smarter about business strategy, not just task completion.

But the real opportunity isn't in replacing human judgment – it's in augmenting it. AI can handle the execution, optimization, and analysis while you focus on vision, relationships, and creative problem-solving.

I'm not about to hand over my entire company to robots anytime soon. But I am definitely going to start treating AI less like a tool and more like a really efficient business partner who never needs coffee breaks.

And who knows? Maybe next month I'll give it a bigger budget and see what happens. Though I'm definitely keeping the philosophy posts on a tight leash.