How do I Land my first AI Automation client? Korea vs US/UK — where should I focus?

Korea’s business ecosystem is completely different from what most automation courses teach:

Businesses don’t use tools like n8n, Gmail, LinkedIn, Google, VAPI, Bland, etc.
Everything revolves around KakaoTalk (messenger app), Naver Search, Naver Blogs, and Naver Reviews
Many businesses already use semi or highly-automated chatbot systems inside KakaoTalk

This makes even something simple — like building a RAG-based chatbot or workflow system — feel hard to apply.

This is the hardest part: Even choosing a niche feels confusing.

Let’s say I choose a beauty salon as my first niche.

When I try to think of what to automate for them, I always get stuck because I don’t even know:

Their exact internal operations
Their exact manual for bookings, reminders, follow-ups, reviews, or retention
What tools they even use (Google Sheets? Airtable? Excel?)
How they manage leads, cancellations, packages, or repeat customers. I don’t have real datasets to test or prototype with.

So how do I build something without knowing exactly what I should build? How can I identify pain points I don’t even have visibility into?

My questions: