Can of AI Spinach — One Guy Can Take on the World and Win

I grew up watching Popeye. He was an ordinary sailor—until trouble arrived, he cracked open a can of spinach, and suddenly he could do things nobody thought possible.

I think I’ve found my spinach.

It comes in a slightly less appetizing container: artificial intelligence.

And I’m only just opening the can.

I’m not standing on a mountaintop telling everyone how I conquered the world. I’m still climbing. In fact, I feel like I’m just starting to rip open my shirt, gobble down the spinach, and notice the muscles popping. The exciting part isn’t what I’ve already accomplished. It’s what I’m beginning to realize is possible.

For a person running a small business, AI changes the size of the game.

The smallest company with the biggest ambitions

For most of my career, business growth has come with a familiar assumption: to do more, you need more people.

More customers mean more phone calls. More phone calls mean a receptionist. More jobs mean scheduling help, more paperwork, bookkeeping, marketing, customer follow-up, and someone to keep all the pieces moving.

Before long, the skilled person who started the business is managing an organization instead of doing the work they love.

Now imagine a different possibility.

Imagine an excellent electrician who wants to run a first-class electrical company. He’s brilliant at the trade. He knows how to diagnose problems, do safe work, and make customers happy. But he doesn’t want to spend his evenings returning missed calls, writing estimates, chasing invoices, and figuring out why his website isn’t producing leads.

What if he could build the capabilities of a much larger company without immediately building the payroll of one?

An AI receptionist could answer routine calls and capture details. A scheduling system could offer appointment windows. An assistant could prepare draft estimates from his notes, organize job information, remind customers about appointments, and follow up after the work is complete. Other tools could help prepare invoices, sort receipts for his bookkeeper, and maintain a consistent marketing presence.

None of this makes him a better electrician by magic. He still needs to inspect the job, make the technical judgments, meet his obligations, and check what the systems produce. Automation requires design, supervision, and the occasional rescue mission.

But look at what just happened: he didn’t necessarily hire ten employees. He gained access to functions that once might have required a team.

It’s a change in what one person can realistically organize.

Call him the Popeye electrician. Or, if you prefer capes, the Superman electrician.

Stop thinking like a small business

Here’s where I think many business owners are aiming too low.

They ask, “How can AI write a social media post for me?” Or, “Can it improve my Google Ads?” Those are perfectly reasonable questions. I work in marketing, after all. But they barely scratch the surface.

What if the better question is: If I were designing my company from scratch today, what would every department look like?

A large enterprise has recognizable functions: sales, marketing, customer service, operations, finance, administration, human resources, and management. Even a one-person company has to perform many of those functions, whether or not anyone has given them formal names.

So draw the organizational chart.

Then, instead of automatically filling each box with a new hire, ask which activities could be handled or supported by software and AI. Which ones need a human decision? Which ones can run on a trigger? Which ones should escalate to the owner? Where are the safeguards?

This isn’t about sprinkling a chatbot on top of yesterday’s processes. It’s about redesigning the enterprise.

Your website might be one piece of the operation. Being on page one of Google might be another. Neither is the finish line. A lead has to be answered. A prospect has to be qualified. A quote has to go out. The job has to be delivered. The customer has to be looked after. The business has to know whether it made any money.

An impressive front door is no substitute for a working house.

We’ve seen a version of this movie before

Think about the rise of online creators.

People like PewDiePie, Casey Neistat, and MrBeast demonstrated that an individual with an idea and access to a distribution platform could build an audience on a scale once reserved for major media companies. Those became real companies, of course, with real teams.

But the historical shift is worth noticing: the internet gave individuals distribution power they had never possessed.

AI may be opening a different door. It can give individuals access to capabilities that used to be locked inside organizations.

The first wave made it possible for one person to reach millions.

This wave may make it possible for one person to operate with the support of an entire digital team.

Not every solopreneur will build an empire. There will be failures, bad tools, expensive mistakes, and plenty of exaggerated promises. But the starting conditions have changed. You no longer have to accept every old constraint as permanent.

I want my clients to feel this, too

I’ve been in business long enough to remember when every new capability came with another subscription, another specialist, another employee, or another vendor to coordinate.

My own work has increasingly become orchestration: understanding what a business needs, connecting the right systems, and making the whole thing work together.

Now AI is giving me a glimpse of what happens when that orchestration becomes faster, more conversational, and more accessible.

I can talk through a problem while driving, think through a strategy on a walk, sketch out a workflow in conversation, and then have software help turn the thinking into action. I still need to review the results. But I’m no longer chained to a desk to make progress.

And I don’t want that advantage to stop with me.

I want the plumber, electrician, lawyer, contractor, and small-business owner I work with to see themselves differently. Not as little companies hoping to survive against the big guys, but as capable entrepreneurs who can borrow some of the machinery of a big enterprise.

I want them to ask bigger questions.

Not simply, “How do I get more clicks?”

But, “What could my business become if I redesigned it around what’s possible now?”

The cape is optional

There’s something wonderfully ridiculous about a grown man imagining himself turning into Superman. But it’s also a useful metaphor.

Clark Kent doesn’t become Superman because somebody hands him a better filing system. His entire relationship with what is possible changes.

That’s the transformation I’m interested in.

I’m not saying AI gives us literal superpowers. It doesn’t remove the need for skill, judgment, accountability, or hard work. It certainly doesn’t guarantee success. But it can change the amount of work one determined person can coordinate, the range of problems they can tackle, and the scale of the ambition they can reasonably entertain.

That is a pretty extraordinary can of spinach.

And the best part? It isn’t reserved for a handful of people with enormous budgets. More and more of these tools are available to ordinary business owners willing to learn, experiment, and rethink how they operate.

Which brings me to the question that has been nagging at me.

What happens when everybody gets the spinach?

What happens when every electrician can be the Superman electrician? When every consultant, designer, contractor, and entrepreneur has access to remarkable tools? When the advantage of having an AI assistant is no longer unusual because everyone has one?

At that point, perhaps we’re back on a level playing field—only the field itself has been lifted to an astonishing new height.

If everybody is Superman, the interesting question is no longer who has superpowers.

It’s what we choose to do with them.