Small businesses run on thin margins and thinner teams. You need someone to manage your inbox, research vendors, update spreadsheets, schedule meetings, and keep tabs on competitors -- but hiring a part-time employee costs $1,500-2,500/month. An AI employee handles all of that for $9/week. Cheaper than a lunch meeting. For small business owners drowning in busywork, this is not theoretical. It is the difference between staying buried and actually growing.
What Small Business Owners Delegate First
- ● Inbox management -- "Go through my last 50 emails, flag the urgent ones, and draft replies to anyone asking for a meeting." Your AI employee triages so you start the day focused.
- ● Research -- "Find 10 commercial cleaning services in the area, compare pricing, and list which ones have 4+ star reviews." RIRD opens a real browser, checks each one, and returns a clean comparison.
- ● Competitor monitoring -- "Check these 5 competitor websites every Monday and flag any pricing or service changes." Runs automatically without you remembering.
- ● Data cleanup and follow-ups -- "Go through this CSV of 500 contacts. Flag duplicates, verify emails, and draft a follow-up for each valid one." Bulk work done in minutes, not days.
The Real Cost Comparison
A part-time admin in the US: $18-25/hour, 20 hours/week = $1,440-2,000/month before taxes and management time. An overseas VA: $500-1,200/month plus onboarding, quality checks, and timezone headaches. The full hiring comparison breaks down every line item.
RIRD: $9/week. Works 24/7, handles multiple tasks in parallel, zero management. No PTO, no ramp period, no performance reviews. Message it a task, it executes, it reports back.
Why Not Just Use Zapier + ChatGPT
You could cobble together Zapier, a scraper, a spreadsheet plugin, and ChatGPT. Many try. The problem: each tool does one thing, none talk to each other well, and maintaining the stack becomes a part-time job. When a scraper breaks because a website changed its layout, you are debugging instead of running your business.
RIRD is one employee with 23 tools, powered by OpenClaw. Describe what you need in plain language. It figures out which tools to use. When a website changes, RIRD adapts because it uses a real browser that reads the page like a human.
Start in Five Minutes
No setup wizard, no API keys, no technical knowledge. Create an account at rird.ai/pricing, connect your WhatsApp, Telegram, or Slack, and send your first task. The setup guide walks through everything.
At $9/week, the risk is zero. If your AI employee saves you two hours of manual work in the first week, it has paid for itself several times over. Not features, not benchmarks -- just hours reclaimed and dollars saved.