Last October, I got on a call with Daniela Woerner. She runs a 35,000-person email list in the spa industry and has been building AI programs for aestheticians and salon owners across the country.
We were exploring a potential partnership. She wanted to bring AI tools to her audience. I wanted to understand who her people actually were before I started pitching anything.
She described them in a way I keep thinking about:
“They are all extremely not tech-savvy. They would want someone to build it. They would hire it out. They are very good at revenue. Very good at sales. Very good at serving their clients. But they are like pen and paper. Some of them don't even know how to add a Google Calendar.”
I've heard versions of this from a lot of people I've talked to over the past year. And I think it reveals something important about where the real AI opportunity is right now.
The Myth of the “AI-Ready” Client
When most people talk about selling AI services, they picture someone like themselves. Someone who's already tinkering with ChatGPT, reads the newsletters, and watches the demos. Someone who just needs help going deeper.
But that's a pretty small market.
The much larger market is people running real businesses who have zero interest in learning a new skill set. They're already stretched. They're good at what they do. A salon owner with three locations isn't lying awake at night thinking about agents and context windows. She's thinking about her stylists, her retention numbers, and whether the new Aveda line is worth the shelf space.
That's not ignorance. That's good prioritization.
And here's the thing: those clients often get better results from AI than the tinkerers do. Not because they're smarter, but because they're more focused. They hire someone to solve a specific problem, that problem gets solved, and then they go back to what they're actually good at.
The Education Phase Nobody Skips
Daniela had been working with her audience for three to four months before she even started talking about selling AI services. She called it “seeding.”
Just teaching people what the language means. What does “agent” mean? What does “automation” actually look like? What can it do?
This sounds slow. But it's the right order.
When I teach AI workshops, I see a version of this every single time. People come in skeptical. They've heard the hype. They don't know what applies to them. The first hour isn't really about AI at all… it's about recalibrating expectations.
The moment it clicks is usually during a live demo. I'll pull up a real workflow and show someone their exact problem being solved in real time. Email drafted in 12 seconds. Meeting prep done automatically. Research that would take an afternoon done in minutes.
The room changes. I watched someone in one of my February workshops go from folded arms to rapidly taking notes in about 90 seconds. That's not a product decision. That's a “don't know what you don't know” moment resolving in real time.
But that moment only works if someone's been warmed up to the possibility first. You can't skip to the demo without the foundation.
Two Markets, Two Very Different Services
There's a real split in who buys AI services right now.
One group wants to learn. They want to understand how it works. They'll watch your course, attend your workshop, try things themselves. They're excited by the process. This is the DIY market.
The other group wants it done. They don't want to learn prompting. They don't want to think about which tool is best for which task. They want someone to build the thing, train them on the one button they need to push, and then be available when something breaks. This is the done-for-you market.
Neither is wrong. But they're different businesses.
The DIY market is where workshops, courses, and content marketing work well. You educate, demonstrate, and let people self-select into your programs.
The done-for-you market is won with trust. Specifically, with trust built over time before you ever ask for money. Daniela's three-month seeding window wasn't a marketing delay… it was the marketing.
What High-Touch Actually Means
One thing I do with every client: I give them my personal cell.
When I told Daniela this, she paused. “I don't know if you should do that with our people.”
I understand the concern. But this is actually a feature, not a risk.
When you're selling AI services to non-technical clients, the biggest fear isn't the price. It's the feeling of being stranded. What if it breaks and I can't fix it? What if I don't understand it six months from now?
Having direct access to the person who built it removes that fear. And in my experience, people almost never abuse it. They text occasionally with a quick question, feel reassured, and keep using the system. That access is part of what they're paying for.
This also creates referrals. Non-technical clients talk to other non-technical clients. Word spreads that you're actually available. That's a stronger acquisition channel than any ad campaign.
The Right Framework for This Work
I use what I call the AI Fluency Levels to think about where any client is starting from. Level 1 is AI-Assisted: using AI tools directly, like ChatGPT for writing or Perplexity for research. Level 2 is AI Workflows: stringing tools together to automate repeating tasks. Level 3 is Building Agents: creating autonomous systems that run without you.
Most non-technical clients don't need to reach Level 3 themselves. They need someone who's already there to build Level 3 for them. And they need enough Level 1 understanding to feel confident using what gets built.
The education gap Daniela described is real. But closing it doesn't require turning a salon owner into an AI builder. It just requires showing her enough to trust the outcome.
That's a very different job. And honestly… a more interesting one.
Thanh Pham runs AI workshops for business owners and consults on AI implementation. If you want to explore what's possible for your business, learn about his workshops here.
