In this episode of the Modern Direct Seller Podcast, we chat with business coach Amber McCue, author of the brand new book How to Clone Yourself. Amber has spent over 15 years building multiple businesses, often alongside a corporate career, and she’s learned to do it without living at her desk. She shares the thinking that helped her stop doing everything herself, plus how she’s putting AI to work in her own business. If you’ve ever wished there were two of you, this conversation might get you closer than you think.

You can find Amber on Instagram and pick up How to Clone Yourself on the book’s official site. That’s also where you can meet the AI Clone Team she created for her business.

And if you’re ready to build your online presence somewhere you control, you can claim a free capture and convert homepage from Oh My Hi.

Time based notes:

How to Clone Yourself with Amber McCue

If your to-do list feels longer every time you look at it, you’re in good company. Plenty of business owners have wished for a clone at some point, someone who could take a few things off their plate so they can focus on what matters most. Business coach Amber McCue has spent over 15 years figuring out how to make that happen, and she’s finally put it all into her new book, How to Clone Yourself.

Every Business Starts With a Chief Everything Officer

Amber grew her first company from nothing while she was still working in corporate, eventually expanding it into more than two dozen cities across the US with a team of 60 and millions in revenue. Early on, though, most business owners handle everything themselves, and Amber has been there, too.

She saw it firsthand while building a photography company with her business partner, Joanna. The two of them were doing it all, until one day, Amber was standing in a photo shoot and realized that being in the room was no longer the best use of her time. The process was streamlined enough to train other people to run it, which freed her up for the work that would serve the company better.

That kind of shift doesn’t happen overnight. Amber explains that it starts with noticing the tasks you might not need to be doing, and then deciding over time whether to hand them off or drop them completely. Even a weekly task that takes an hour can often shrink to 15 or 30 minutes once there’s a system behind it.

Go for the Big Bills

One of Amber’s favorite ways to sort priorities is what she calls the $100 bill test. Picture money suddenly blowing all around the room for 30 seconds. Most of us would scramble and grab whatever’s closest, ending up with a fistful of ones and fives. With a plan, you’d skip the small stuff and go straight for the biggest bill you can find.

Our businesses work the same way. When Amber looks at everything on her plate, she asks whether each task is a big bill or a small one. The small ones are worth questioning, because some of them don’t need to be done by you or anyone else. She also puts life first, deciding what she wants her life to look like and building the business around it.

Why a Shorter Work Week Can Get More Done

Amber runs her companies in about 24 focused hours a week. She first noticed the pattern while living in Côte d’Ivoire, where she worked from noon to 6 p.m. four days a week. Looking back, she realized she’d worked that way for most of her career, since building businesses alongside a corporate job never left room for a 40-hour week.

That’s where Parkinson’s law comes in. Work expands to fill whatever time you give it, so a tighter container pushes you to get clear on what really matters. Amber sits down, locks in, and then steps away, knowing she’ll keep thinking things through on a walk or in the shower anyway.

We’ve all seen this play out the day before a vacation. Somehow, the whole to-do list gets done in a couple of hours, when the same list would’ve stretched across two weeks if we’d given it that long.

Help Is Within Reach for Solo Sellers

A lot of direct sellers run their businesses on their own, without a team or a budget to hire one. Amber believes there’s never been a better time to be in that spot, with solo business owners now building companies worth millions.

Her advice starts with a plan, because knowing your priorities up front keeps the work from expanding and helps you move faster. From there, look for tasks you rephoeat and turn them into systems, which Amber sums up as the who, what, where, when, and why of how something gets done. Once those are in place, AI employees can take on a lot of the work. Amber points out that you don’t need to be technical to set them up, since most of it comes down to talking it through.

An AI Chief of Staff Takes On a Book Launch

Amber put this into practice with her own book launch. She set up an AI chief of staff to help manage the project, defining the role in ChatGPT and then building it in Claude after ChatGPT recommended it. Once it was running, it reviewed the team’s Slack messages and documents and put together a draft launch plan.

From there, it checked in with the team in a Slack channel, reminding everyone what was due and following up on deadlines. By the final stretch, it was sending so many messages that the team had to ask it to calm down and send a summary instead. Amber went in a little skeptical, but she came out impressed and with ideas for making it even better next time.

Start by Noticing Where Your Time Goes

Cloning yourself starts with paying attention to how you spend your days and asking whether each task really needs you. From there, simple systems and a little AI support can give you back hours for the work you love most. If you’re ready to dig deeper, you can pick up How to Clone Yourself on the book’s official site and start building your own clone team.