Instead of hiring employees, pay AI instead: I listened to Yu Wei talk about the next step for one-person companies

Six years ago, we each wrote a preface to the same book.

In 2020, Yuanliu published the traditional Chinese version of “One-Man Company: Starting Thoughts and Challenges” (opens in a new tab), with two prefaces at the front of the book. One article is “Being the General Manager of Your Own Life” written by Yu Weichang, and the other article is “The Thoughts of “One-Man Company"" written by me.

At that time, when we were talking about a one-man company, the focus was on “less”. Less overhead, less staff, less meetings, less things that make you less like yourself. It’s a defensive assertion: You don’t have to grow up to live well.

Six years later, I sat in front of the screen and watched Raymond connecting from Taiwan to Canada and chatting with Yu Wei near Toronto about the next step of the one-man company. This conversation lasted for an hour and a half, and I listened to it from beginning to end. After listening to it, I realized that the line was no longer just “less”.

Because Brother Chang said something in the middle, I immediately wrote it down.

That sentence is almost what I have been writing this year.

Raymond asked him: In the past ten years as a one-person company, has there ever been a moment when you wanted to find employees?

He said not at all. Then he added:

I will never hire another employee in my life, believe me. I will pay a lot of AI models, but I will never hire another employee in my life.

The core coordinates of the new book “The Unmanned Company” that I just wrote (expected to be published in December or January of the following year) are actually these three grids: traditional companies rely on hiring people to expand, one-person companies rely on minimalism to survive, and now there is a third type. There is no one else in the company, only yourself plus an AI army, but the output is like an entire team.

Brother Chang’s words are like moving the third frame from my manuscript to the scene, and adding his own sense of touch: AI is obedient and capable, does things quickly and cheaply, and can understand what he says. He paused and added the most crucial part: no need to take care of his emotions.

Raymond took it very well. He said that those who can really take this matter to a high level are mature entrepreneurs. Because that group of people have accumulated real expertise in the workplace, they were tied by golden handcuffs in the past and dared not leave. Now, public relations, design, engineering and other things that used to have to be done by setting up departments can be done by one person with AI.

When I heard this, I felt a little mixed. This is exactly what I have been doing in the past two years, and it is also what I plan to explain in the book. But I know very well that the most vulnerable aspect of this matter is never technology, but labor ethics: in an era of labor shortage, you actually teach people not to hire others.

Brother Chang did not avoid this question. The answer he gave was very practical: entrepreneurs should be more cold-blooded.

His cold-bloodedness has its origins

If you only listen to the second half, it’s easy to think of Brother Chang’s one-man company as a lifestyle choice. But the most valuable part of this conversation was that he fully explained the pain of the first half.

Before he left his job, he was the general manager of a foreign company in Taiwan. He had more money, less work and was close to home. He was respected by the industry and loved by his boss. The idea of ​​starting a business has been in my mind for three years, but I haven’t done anything yet. What really pushed him out was when his daughter was still crawling on the floor, holding his legs and saying: Dad doesn’t want to go to work. He described it as the last drop of water that penetrates the stone.

And he deliberately left before the end of the year because of the reverse operation: the higher the cost of giving up, the stronger the determination to never look back.

After resigning, he did not take the first step. He moved to Taichung to start a business, but his idea failed, so he took on consulting projects to make a living. From 2015 to 2016, he worked as a blogger brokerage company. The largest shopping website in Taiwan sent a case to him, and he acted as an intermediary and took a cut. His performance was very good in those two years.

The problem was structural: more than 95 percent of his company’s revenue came from that one client.

2017 was the first year of YouTube live streaming. The shopping website shifted its budget from bloggers to live broadcasters and YouTubers, and its performance plummeted. At that time, he still held on to the expectation that the customer would come back. Later, the company ran out of money, and he paid his salary out of his own pocket.

When he talked about this passage, he used one word: women’s kindness. He said that entrepreneurs cannot always think that their employees need me. Once the market trend is gone, there will be no turning back. If you want to make a break, you must do it as quickly as possible.

After laying off the team and moving because his daughter transferred to another school, he officially became a one-person company. His comment on that moment was: I regretted not becoming a one-person company earlier.

I think this must be listened to continuously. Without the crash in 2017, “not hiring employees” was just a cool saying; with that crash, it could stand because it was an operational judgment forced by reality.

AI makes products cheaper, but makes trust more expensive

There was a turning point in the middle of this conversation, which I think was the most weighty judgment in the room.

Raymond mentioned that recently Lean, a member of the well-known YouTube channel “One Plus One”, developed a subtitle tool called What’Sub, which suddenly became popular. He asked Brother Chang what he thought of this matter.

Brother Chang’s answer is straightforward: this is fan monetization. There must be someone on the market who has made a better product than it, but no one knows about it and no one uses it. Their products may not be the best, but enough people know about them, and they just meet a painful enough need. As for the engineers who jumped out and said there were security issues and loopholes, Brother Chang said that was the voice of an angel. Once the product is repaired, the product will be better and fans will trust you more.

Following this judgment, the conclusion emerges: AI has lowered the execution threshold of making products very low, so the difficult part has been changed. The difficulty is no longer making something, but having a group of people who are willing to pay and believe in you.

What’s more troubling is that AI also makes it harder to accumulate trust.

Brother Chang told an example that I am still thinking about. He had seen an author stamp a fingerprint watermark next to an article he wrote, and write a slogan next to it: This article was written word by word by me.

His comment was: Even if I saw the fingerprint, I don’t think it was really carved word for word. It’s just a symbol, an impression that I want to give everyone.

As I read this, I felt my heart beat faster! Because what the author did was essentially self-evidence for something that did not need to be proven. In the future, each of our creators may have to work hard to provide this kind of proof.

There is no shortcut to the solution given by Brother Chang, it is show up everyday. Appear in front of your audience every day and make people believe that you will not disappear suddenly or run away after cheating.

He also gave a simple way to identify others: existence is truth. If a person stays in the same field for a long time and is still there, he will probably be able to withstand the test of time, because the person with the problem has long since run away or been exposed. On the other hand, if you keep changing fields or even changing names, you should be very careful.

Raymond added a warning here that struck me deeply. He said that the methods that Brother Chang talked about to enhance trust, such as physical interaction, being a host, publishing books, winning awards, and appearing on programs, are really effective and are even used by fraud groups. Therefore, the order cannot be reversed: you must first have real accumulation and works in this field, and then publish books, teach classes, and give programs, rather than the other way around, first publish a fishing book, and then claim to be a fishing expert.

People’s experience and “safe answers” given by AI

The two people’s judgments on the future of knowledge payment are almost identical: technical and tool-based content will become less and less valuable, because AI teaches more patiently and customized than most lecturers.

There are only two categories left that are valuable. One type is a personal and unique experience, the pitfalls you have stepped on, your opinions, and your philosophy; the other type is an experience that requires physical participation, such as yoga, fitness, piano, cooking, and carpentry.

Brother Chang is very precise about the positioning of AI. He said that AI is not an expert, but more like prediction: after integrating most of the information on the Internet, it finds an average value. That’s the safe answer, but it may not be the answer you need most.

This sentence means more to me than I imagined.

I usually have an AI army in operation, including the secretary team, development team, and content production line. What they took care of for me happened to be those tasks that had standard answers. And what I left for myself was exactly what Brother Chang said: there is no average value to refer to, and you can only rely on yourself to make a judgment after going through it once.

From this perspective, AI is not replacing me, it is completing all the “safe answers” for me first, so that I can concentrate on dealing with the unsafe parts.

There is a place where he and I take different paths.

There is one place where my approach is different from Brother Chang’s, and I think the difference itself is worth writing down.

Brother Chang said that he has never placed any advertising, neither physical classes nor subscriptions. His analogy is very visual: it is like playing a game map, slowly walking out from the core point, and the places you pass will light up; advertising is like using a portal to jump directly into a black area, which is full of people who have never heard of your name. You will be deducted points from the beginning, and you have to go back to correct that impression.

I have never touched advertising before, but recently I started to study Meta advertising delivery and material pipeline. I agree that the risks he said are real. After seeing the same advertisement too many times, some people will accumulate trust, while others will accumulate disgust. But I also think that the “black area” does not necessarily have to be entered through a portal. It can first illuminate a small area with content, and then use advertisements to amplify the already lit area.

Raymond’s approach may be more suitable: don’t invest at all in the first three years of starting a business, and wait until you are sure that this product is the best in its category before starting to let advertising amplify it.

Brother Chang himself also added: E-commerce is the most suitable for advertising, because the response rate can be calculated; mid-priced products, about two to three thousand to three or four thousand yuan, may be more effective than high-priced products; high-priced products may not be cost-effective to target the public, and low-priced products may not be cost-effective at all.

The details of downgrading the subscription plan

There was an interview where Brother Chang was making fun of himself, but I was shocked when I heard it.

He said that he originally booked a $200 plan, but later found out that the limit could not be used up. He felt guilty and even didn’t want to sleep. He felt that he should use it up after paying the money. He later dropped the plan to $100, and life became a little easier.

I just did the exact same thing last month, downgrading the highest-level subscription I’ve had for a long time. My reason at the time was the cost, but after listening to what he said, I admitted that the real reason was the same as his: the quota will in turn manage you. It will make you start a few more tasks just to be able to afford the money. In the end, the time will be filled not with needs but with guilt.

Brother Chang classified this matter into the category of inner demons. He used the metaphor of the Lord of the Rings, saying that you can’t help but be greedy and want to do more and bigger, and to suppress this inner demon, you just need to determine what you want to do, and then take care of the group of people who believe in you.

Three things I took away from this hour and a half

First, the next stage of a one-person company has begun, and the way it is started is different from six years ago. Six years ago, the idea was to shrink the company to the smallest size in order to survive; now, the idea is to enlarge a person to resemble a company. The same road, but in the opposite direction. Brother Chang’s sentence “No more employees, but we will pay for many AI models” is the shortest version I have ever heard.

Second, the threshold has moved. The execution threshold for making products has almost reached zero, but the cumulative cost of trust is rising. Those who put all their efforts into products will be disappointed; those who have appeared stably in the same field for a long time will receive greater rewards than before.

Third, personalize first, then systematize. This is the order given by Brother Chang when he was asked about student cases. I think its scope of application is far wider than entrepreneurship. You can’t win by copying other people’s models, because that’s their life experience; you have to grow your own version first, and then systematize that version.

Finally, add a digression. Raymond asked a Tim Ferriss-style question: Which of the expenses under $5,000 in the past year had the greatest impact on you? Brother Chang thought about it for a long time and said that the best thing was traveling. He took his wife and daughter back to the place where he lived from 13 to 18 years old. He visited old classmates and also went to his cousin’s house on the Atlantic coast. The neighbors there were a group of deer who would jump in front of the glass and knock on the window with their mouths.

He said that traveling is the best input in life, surpassing all reading and taking classes. Moreover, tourism is divided into stages: novices visit scenic spots and check in, and there is no problem at all. After accumulating enough experience, they will naturally upgrade to staying for four days, only going to one spot a day, and sitting in a daze for the rest of the time.

I left this paragraph at the end because it is actually the same thing as all the previous discussions about AI, trust, and business models. When all the jobs with standard answers are handed over, what is left to be filled in by yourself is the experience that has no average to refer to.

That is the asset that truly belongs to you in the end.

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*This article is compiled from an online conversation on August 27, 2026. The speaker was personal brand career coach Yu Weichang, and the moderator was Raymond. The quotes in this article are all based on what I heard on the spot. If there is any discrepancy with the original meaning, I am responsible. *