While juggling the stream of commitments at work, home, school and beyond, you’ve probably thought: I wish I could clone myself. It may sound like something straight out of a science fiction novel, but it’s easy to daydream about all the ways a second “you” would help free up some of your precious time.
Entrepreneur Kareen Walsh has found a way to make this fantasy a reality—with help from artificial intelligence. In fall 2024, Walsh released Hey Kareen®, an AI-powered mobile app that allows her business coaching clients to tap into her expertise anytime, anywhere, even when she’s busy.
“Creating an AI clone of my business coaching methods and content has been so freeing,” she says. “I have made it possible for my community to have me in their pocket, providing on-demand guidance anytime they need it.”
Coaching others to success
After rising through the ranks at financial services technology firms in her 20s, Walsh decided to strike out on her own and launch a consultancy. “I worked for different companies helping them deliver complex tech platforms and bringing agile practices,” she says.
Over the last decade, she’s grown her company, Revampologist, to become a seven-figure business with a team of consultants. During that time, she also discovered her true passion: coaching and guiding others. “I feel like it’s my calling,” she says. “I feel like I was meant to be a conduit to help other people achieve what they want out of life and business.”
More specifically, she’s focused most of her coaching work on entrepreneurs—people who’ve willingly chosen to take risks, follow their passions and build something new. Walsh can help founders crystallize their visions, serve as a sounding board, offer support during crisis moments and more. “When I get those aha moments while working with my clients and helping them discover why they’ve been blocked or why something’s not working or even how to move forward to the next thing, it is just life-giving—I could do that all day,” Walsh says.
Scaling the business with AI
Walsh gets to know most of her clients through initial two-day immersive sessions. From there, she offers ongoing coaching and support via phone, email or video chats. When Walsh started thinking about how best to scale her coaching practice, she realized her time was the biggest factor limiting her business’s growth. She knew she didn’t want to work more hours or extend her capacity. And while she briefly considered hiring other coaches, she ultimately decided that clients wanted to work with her—not someone she’d trained to be like her.
Faced with this conundrum, she relied on her deep background in technology to provide an answer. Working with a team of experts, she bootstrapped a project that leveraged two existing software-as-a-service platforms, along with her own “intellectual property,” to create an AI clone of herself.
Roughly six months later, Hey Kareen® was available for download from the Apple Store and Google Play. The app includes daily journal prompts for entrepreneurs, workbooks, podcast episodes, resources, articles and videos. Premium subscribers can also submit questions and get real-time answers from Walsh’s AI clone.
The app’s answers are surprisingly accurate. “I’ve had friends test it for me,” she says. “They’d ask me the questions directly, and I’d answer them in a text message. Then, they would go into the app and ask my AI the questions. They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, it sounds just like you; she said almost the exact same words you said.’”
Accessibility and building a legacy
The first time Walsh tested the app herself, happy tears filled her eyes—for two reasons. First, her clients can now access her acumen and knowledge whenever they need it. Second, she realized the app is her legacy. “[The AI clone] can go on and keep doing this way past the time I’m even interested in doing it anymore,” she says. “I’m not the one fully responsible anymore, feeling like I’m leaving anything on the table. It’s all right there, forever.”
More broadly, she believes the app is an example of what happens when business leaders and entrepreneurs embrace technology, rather than fear it. “It’s really important to understand how to leverage the different platforms coming up and also take advantage of the efficiencies they can create for you,” she says. “Efficiency with our time is so critical. It’s what’s required so you can spend the time on the things that light you up—that’s the freedom that AI has given me.”
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Photo by Kaitlyn Casso