Morning, CEO!
Imagine staring at an extinction-level event.
That was Fedor Pak in late 2022. He took over a chatbot company right before ChatGPT dropped. His product became obsolete overnight.
Most people would curl into a ball and weep. Fedor? He pivoted.
By December 2025, his new venture, Chatfuel Clinic Suite, hit $1M ARR.
He didn’t just survive the AI meteor; he built a bunker, filled it with gold, and sold tickets.
Here’s the playbook we’re stealing today.
1. Your “Product-Market Fit” Has an Expiration Date (And It Smells Like Old Milk)
I’m 41. I know a thing or two about things that used to work suddenly not working anymore (my knees, my tolerance for loud bars, my ability to stay awake past 10 PM).
Fedor learned this the hard way.
Chatfuel was the king of “if-this-then-that” chatbots. They had 1.5 billion conversations in the bank. They were the cool kids.
Then Generative AI arrived. Suddenly, “rules-based bots” looked like a horse and buggy on a Formula 1 track.
Fedor realized that resting on your laurels is a great way to get crushed.
He didn’t try to fight the wave. He went back to square one.
He literally walked into a small, three-room dermatology clinic. He watched the owner drowning in WhatsApp messages.
The owner wasn’t treating skin. He was playing schedule Tetris.
The Steal for You:
Your current job description? It’s probably perishable.
The skills your boss hired you for three years ago might be the equivalent of that rules-based chatbot.
Don’t wait for the meteor.
Audit your services today. Are you offering 2022 value in a 2025 market? If so, find your version of the “dermatology clinic.” Find the new pain point. Pivot before you’re pushed.
2. Nobody Wants to Buy a Drill (They Just Want the Hole in the Wall)
I have a toxic trait.
When I build something cool with AI, I want to explain the architecture. I want to tell you about the vector database, the RAG pipeline, and the context window.
I want you to be impressed by the how.
Fedor made this mistake too.
Early on, he tried to sell “AI capabilities” to doctors. He talked tech.
The doctors looked at him like he was speaking Klingon.
Nothing landed.
So, he stopped talking about the drill (AI). He started talking about the hole (Revenue).
He changed his pitch to: “I will stop you from losing 35% of your revenue to no-shows.”
Suddenly, wallets opened.
He realized the market rewards clarity, not complexity. He stopped selling “Automation” and started selling “Peace of Mind.”
The Steal for You:
Stop telling your boss/client how you used AI to finish that report.
They don’t care about your prompt engineering. They don’t care that you used Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5.2.
They care that the report is done 3 days early. They care that you found a $10k cost saving.
Market the outcome, not the tool. Be the person who solves the headache, not the person who explains the chemistry of Aspirin.
3. The “Centaur” Strategy (Or: How to Not Hate Your Job)
I am an introvert. If the doorbell rings unexpectedly, I don't answer it; I drop to the floor and army-crawl to the kitchen.
So, the idea of AI handling communication sounds like heaven.
But Fedor’s approach wasn’t about replacing humans because humans are annoying. It was about replacing humans because humans are expensive and distracted.
He built a system where AI handles the low-leverage junk:
Scheduling? AI.
Reminders? AI.
“Where are you located?” questions? AI.
This wasn’t to fire the doctors. It was so the doctors could actually doctor.
The AI handles the admin layer so the human can handle the empathy layer.
Fedor calls it the “Business Autopilot.”
The Steal for You:
Look at your workday.
How much of it is “Admin Drudgery”? Scheduling meetings, summarizing emails, formatting data?
That is low-leverage work. It keeps your “Me Inc.” running, but it doesn’t grow the business.
Your goal is to build your own “Autopilot.”
Use AI to strip away the 30% of your job that makes you want to scream.
Reinvest that time into the stuff that actually gets you promoted (or keeps you sane enough to binge British detective shows, which is my personal KPI).
To Recap:
Pivot Fast: Your skills expire. Refresh them before they stink.
Sell Outcomes: Don’t explain the tech. Explain the win.
Automate Drudgery: Let AI be your secretary so you can be the CEO.
Fedor turned a crisis into $1M.
You can at least turn it into a Friday afternoon off.
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fedor-pak-chatfuel
https://chatfuel.com
https://www.aitoolssme.com/interviews/fedor-pak
https://medium.com/authority-magazine/fedor-pak-of-chatfuel-5-ways-to-use-marketing-automation-to-improve-team-efficiencies-ba7ff34d6ab9
https://www.starterstory.com/stories/chatfuel
