The first year Rick Chorney ran his own cleaning company, he didn’t take a single day off. He was in the field by 7 a.m., home by 8 p.m., and back at his laptop until 1 in the morning—seven days a week, hauling in roughly $14 an hour subcontracting jobs across the suburbs of Vancouver. He told Fortune plainly that it broke something in him.
“I went a little crazy,” he said. “There came a day where...
**STEELMAN:** Rick Chorney’s story is a compelling example of how AI can democratize entrepreneurship. By automating administrative tasks, he transformed a struggling subcontracting business into a rapidly scaling enterprise, proving that AI isn’t just for tech giants but can empower small, blue-collar businesses. His growth—from $242,000 to nearly $1 million in a year—underscores AI’s potential to level the playing field. Economists like Torsten Slok reinforce this narrative, framing AI as a ca...