Last week I had a call with a woman named Daniela who runs one of the biggest training programs in the spa industry. Her email list has 35,000 people. Her membership program has over 200 active members. She paused a program that was doing well into six figures a month… specifically to rebuild it around AI.
She told me something I keep thinking about: “In the spa world, everybody is essentially stuck in the nineties.”
Spa software hasn’t changed in decades. Most spa owners don’t know how to add a Google Calendar event. And Daniela, who’s been studying AI for two years and is considered the AI-forward voice in her space, says she’s still a beginner compared to what people in tech circles are doing.
That gap right there? That’s the opportunity.
The Industries Furthest Behind Are the Most Interesting
When people ask me about AI adoption, they usually assume the interesting things are happening in tech companies, startups, and Silicon Valley offices.
But I’ve been teaching AI workshops to salon owners, spa owners, real estate agents, and contractors. And every single time I walk into one of those rooms, I see the same thing.
Not resistance. Not skepticism. Just… they had no idea this was possible.
At a salon conference a while back, all three of my sessions were standing room only. These were business owners who didn’t know AI could respond to their text messages. Didn’t know it could handle phone calls. Didn’t know a 30-minute intake conversation could generate 30 days of social content automatically.
The moment they see it, they want it immediately.
This is what I mean by the first-mover advantage in non-tech industries. In these spaces, nobody’s doing this yet. The person who shows up first with real, working AI solutions becomes the go-to expert almost overnight.
What Being Behind on AI Actually Means
Here’s a useful reframe. When I say these industries are behind, I’m not talking about people who are lazy or resistant to change.
Spa owners are incredible at their craft. They’re excellent at revenue and sales and serving clients. They just happen to run businesses where the technology layer has been mostly ignored for twenty years.
The same is true for contractors, lawyers, physical therapists, and most of healthcare. These are people who went deep on their actual profession. The technology side just never demanded their attention until now.
And because of that, almost nobody in their industry is ahead of them on AI. The playing field is flat.
The approach I call “one tweak a week” applies perfectly here. You don’t need to leap from zero to full automation overnight. You pick one thing AI can help with this week, implement it, see the result. Then you add the next tweak next week. Let curiosity compound.
Where to Start: Revenue First
Here’s the thing I keep telling business owners in these industries. Start closest to revenue.
If you can show a spa owner that AI will generate more five-star reviews, she’ll be interested. If you can show her that AI will help her post on social media every day without hiring someone, she’ll be very interested.
But if you lead with “AI can optimize your scheduling” or “AI can cut your operational overhead”… you’ve lost her.
I’ve seen this pattern with multiple clients. The ones who start with revenue-generating applications get hooked immediately. And then, once they’ve seen it working, they come back asking about everything else. The operations, the payroll, the scheduling. But you have to earn that trust first with something that visibly moves the needle.
This is why I built a content strategy agent for a jewelry business recently. Here’s how it works:
- A 30-minute intake call where we capture the brand voice and content strategy
- The agent ingests all of that and generates a 30-day content calendar in Airtable
- Every day, it posts automatically. The owner reviews and approves once a month to make sure everything still looks on brand
Total cost: about $6,000 to build. Then $50-100 a month to keep running.
For context, a social media manager typically costs $3,000-5,000 per month. You can do the math.
The Part AI Cannot Replace
One salon owner I worked with wanted more five-star reviews. Makes sense, they’re critical for local businesses.
We built an automated follow-up system. But something interesting happened when we dug into it. The biggest driver of reviews wasn’t the follow-up emails. It was the hairstylist’s relationship with the client during the appointment.
AI could automate the ask. But it couldn’t automate the connection. And that’s actually a good thing.
What the automation did was take all the admin friction away from the stylist. They didn’t have to remember to ask. They didn’t have to send the text themselves. The system handled that. And because the friction was gone, the conversion rate went up.
AI doesn’t replace the human. It removes the friction around the human. The stylist’s talent is still what drives the review. AI just makes sure the ask happens every single time.
The Education Gap Is Real
Daniela told me she’d been spending three to four months just seeding her audience on what AI agents even are. What the vocabulary means. How to think about automation.
That felt slow to me at first. But she was right.
In non-tech industries, you can’t skip the education phase. People need time to understand the language before they can say yes to the solution.
This is also why workshops work so well for this market. You’re not selling software. You’re giving people a live experience of what’s possible. Once someone sees an AI agent do something in real time that they thought was impossible… they’re sold.
What to Do If You Are in One of These Industries
You have more time than the tech crowd, but not unlimited time. The window where you can be the first person in your specific niche doing this is probably 6-18 months wide, depending on your industry.
Start with whatever is closest to revenue for your specific business. If reviews drive clients, start there. If social media drives your pipeline, start there. If proposals are eating your time, start there.
And find someone who can show you what’s already working in other industries, then adapt it to yours. You don’t need to figure this out from scratch. The playbooks already exist.
The spa industry is behind. Construction is behind. Most of healthcare is behind. But the people in those industries who get moving now won’t be behind for long.
Interested in AI automation for your business? Thanh runs hands-on AI workshops in Austin and works directly with business owners on implementation. Learn more here.
