The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - He Built a $10K/Month AI Business With Zero Tech Skills - Ep. #304

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Check out my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠��https://TKOPOD.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join my community at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOwners.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━I sat down with Phil and we talked about how he started an AI automation agency with no coding background and landed a $50,000 consulting contract by simply starting with people he already knew. He shares how he first built voice agents in GoHighLevel, then used Claude to help create proposals, pricing, contracts, and client solutions. We also talked about his work with a chiropractor, where he built automations and content systems for a new laser treatment offer, plus a grant writing tool for a nonprofit. The big takeaway from this one is that you do not need to know everything before you start. You just need to talk to business owners, listen for pain points, and use AI to help solve real problems.Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tkopod.co/p-yt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ask me a question on or off the show here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-ask⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more about me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-cjk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn about my company: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-cof⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow me on Twitter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-x⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Free weekly business ideas newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-nl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Share this podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-all⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Scrape small business data: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-os⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---

The contract that he gave me for the first six months was for $50,000. Holy cow. Once I got all that set up, we're probably talking about it taking me an hour and a half every month for this. I didn't know anything about coding. I'm still learning all of the ends and outs of clog. I just started talking to Claude, okay? Yeah. A $3,500 for setup and then $1,500 a month for six months.

How many hours would you say you spent up front building the $3,500? I don't mind. Building things in there that I've never built before, I would say maybe 12 hours. Wow. This is by far the best time in human history to be alive and start a business. Five, ten years ago, small business owners would have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered, and if you'd have told them what was coming, they would have told you it was fiction that it was not possible. Well, guess what? We are seeing now a day and time to where we can have a dream about what we want to build, and though we've never built it before, AI can help us build it. What the heck,

does it get any better than this? What you once thought was impossible. It's so possible now, and we have never had more tools at our disposal than we have right now. Well, Phil, why don't you just start from Ground Zero? I basically retired from my other work in June of 2025. Just been doing all sorts of things. Through listening to your podcast, decided to go the AI agency route. And I'll say this. By far, this is the best business decision that ever made. Okay. So what was the first thing that you did? Okay. So the first thing I did was started building voice agents just because it was super easy to build and I'm not that technical. I didn't have any history in computer programming, anything like that. Pitch the agents to some friends and they liked it.

pitched it to some roofing companies. They'd like it. Through a pitch that I made to an investment firm buddy of mine, it opened the door for me to have a conversation with him about AI in his business. The guy's brilliant when it comes to finances and they manage like $1.4 billion in the Nashville area, nine offices. But in terms of him being able to trust AI to help him with something, he just didn't know what it was. And so anyway, came to an agreement with him the first part of March for initially for a six six month term consulting, part time consulting for him. We built a, I say we like it's, there's more than me in the company, but there's not, okay, but ended up building a content creation thing for him.

That was the start of it and we're trying to be able to automate things for him now. But that said, I mean, the contract that he gave me for the first six months will renew after six months was for $50,000. Holy cow. I want to get back to him, but you start by saying voice agents. What were you using to build these voice agents? Okay. I was using Go High Level. Okay. So you start learning voice agents in Go High Level for your friend. And he's just like, ah, this is cool. It's kind of long wind.

Not really my use case, but it gets your foot in the door with him. It earns you some trust with him. He sees, you kind of know what you're talking about, at least more than he does, which is the important part, which leads you to more conversations over the course of months, and then you just, in March, you signed a $50,000 contract with them, right? To do all things of AI. Correct. Just doing random automations for him to help him with his social media. And when I say helping with social media and marketing, this is me trying to help them automate things.

Okay. I don't have any background in social media or marketing or something, but I know enough to know that if you ask the right questions of AI, it can end up. guiding you through the process. And he has people in his firm who have kind of done that before. So I came into it knowing how they functioned, how all of it worked. And that would Okay. So did you talk to any other friends or family between October and March or was it just this investment? Yeah. No, no. Here's the thing. I had talked to, I had talked to, I had talked to, I had cold called a lot of briefing companies. But then what the trigger was for me is Brandon

had a presentation one time on getting new clients. And one of the things he said was to start with those you know. And so I basically went through all of the contacts on my phone. I've got more than a thousand contacts. And I just started making a list and just started sending text. Hey, I've started this AI automation business. You know, I'd love to be able to sit down with you. And so had probably seven to 10 sit downs with business owners. My first encounters with them looking back involve me talking too much, sharing all the things that AI would do, rather than letting them share the challenges that they're having, share the pain, pain points. And so some of those first clients, probably the majority of those first clients, I didn't get in. It wasn't because

of AI. It's because I was just too chatty. Yeah, yeah. You were trying to sell. And like the best sales is to listen. It's counterintuitive, right? Correct. When you had these sit downs, did you ever have the problem of, you know, you asked the age old question, like, what, what are you struggling with in your business? What problems are you facing in their life? I don't know. Like, they don't, they just don't give you much. Did you ever experience that? No, they were good at giving me a lot. They were, they were good at giving me a lot. But basically, what I've encountered with most business owners is they, they know they need to utilize AI. Yeah. But they don't know practically what they need to start with. And the third thing is they certainly don't know how, okay? And now I'm obviously,

significantly better at it to just sit down with them and let them talk. But no, my goal mainly, normally I don't even go with a list of questions. If it's a business that I don't know a lot about, I'll have AI help me, Claude helped me come up with some starter questions, but my only goal is to get them talking. Did you record these conversations at all? All of them, all of them. With this little thing I got from, I heard from this guy by the name of Chris Corner. I got one right here, but I put it through the watch. And it's been defunct ever since. And I'll say this, it is the best in my assessment.

It's one of the best tools for an AI agency owner. One is it captures the entire conversation you have with the client. Okay. So you can focus on what they're saying while they're saying it without thinking I need to write down something. Secondly, once you have that, for me, I plug it into Claude because Claude knows that the majority of my bills are through go high level or either Claude Code. and then it helps me come up with some solutions for them. Okay. Now, if people don't have that, I'm putting in the chat what it is, Limitless pendant.

There's the P-L-A-U-D. That's like their main competitor. Limitless got bought out by Meta. I think they're shutting that down and meta is absorbing it or something. So that pendant, support for that pendant is probably going away. I've never used Plod. I was like a religious adherent to this thing until it went through the wash after they announced the merger.

And so I haven't been able to buy another one. And I just haven't used anything since. And I'm not joking you. I leave the house and I touch my chest. Yeah. Because I'm like, do I have it? And it's been like four months. So I should get the other one, but I have it.

Anyway, my point is we all have smartphones. We can just hit our voice notes app. Yes. Record it that way and then upload the transcription to Claude or whatever. So has that been helpful to like generate questions after the fact that you weren't able to think of or solutions after the fact that you were able to think of on this? Oh, well, I'll say this. It has been priceless.

Because once I put that into clause, Claude and I can talk back and back and forth about it and, you know, can say, okay, and Claude will give me some solutions and then we'll work on pricing. I mean, literally work on pricing in Claude for me. Claude helps me draft the contracts for the client, helps me be able to be ready for potential questions that they would have in regards to the bill. Yeah. Okay.

So do you have any success stories from those other meetings you had with other friends? Absolutely. The other success story is that I have a good friend that owns a non-profit. And through his non-profit, I built this app and Claude called Grantcraft and built that for him for free. And basically what it does, it finds grants that fits his ministry. And it finds them. It drafts them. It goes and it does studies of the grants to find out what you have to fill out to apply for that grant. It, it. drafts it based on the content that we bet it about this ministry. Then you have a human go in and read it before it is sent in and basically set it up for him for free, wanted to have proof of concept. And what I, what I told him was, I said, okay, this is, this is basically how we'll price this. I said, I'll charge you $1,500 per grant that I fill out $2,000 a month for the retainer for the service. However, I will not bill you anything until you have a grant come through and my billing for you will not exceed 8% of the grant. Okay. And so and so what that lets me do with him is one is it's a commission-based

thing I get paid for for him. But two is I can I can fill out a lot more grants and he's going to get. It allows me to have a tax write off to his to his business. And when I first set this up through clawed code, I was able to have my open claw agent go in there and literally go through the process of filling out all the grants for me and sending that to me and letting us look through those should before we actually sent them sent them in. Okay. And so, so started out with that. But so through that project that I started with him, he is a chiro chiro cracker. And so about two and a half weeks ago, maybe, well, I take it back. It could have been like a month ago.

He had this new laser. It is a body toning laser approved by the FDA. I basically created a deal, a deal for him to help him launch it and manage it. That was the second project I got. I charged him $3,500 for setup. And then $1,500 a month for six months. after six months, we'll be able to, we'll be able to re-evaluate. Then anything more than 10 clients, he gets monthly through this service, I get $75 per client in

addition to the $1,500. And then in addition to that, he pays for all of his CRM costs through go high, go high level. He also gives $500 month towards marketing for ads and stuff to push new client. into this service that he's got. So what did you build exactly for him? So basically what I built for him. One is I built him a content creation app that is built on the Zerona Z8 laser. Helps create content for him that can be put out there.

Two is set up a automated box for him on a go high level that we sent out to all of his existing clients. He had like 7,500 existing clients to be able to answer any questions that they had in regards to the bot. Then I created a sign up form for them to sign up for the services and then to sign up for a launch. And then I'm basically just handling all of the monthly, monthly management. Management of his social media for this. Honestly, once I got all that set, we're probably talking about it taking me an hour and a half every, every, every month for this. And you're charging $1,500 a month? Yes.

$1,500 a month for the first, for the first six months. And we would evaluate. We'd evaluate after that. But then that has led to some other things with him because he's wanting me to help him promote some other laser services he has in his practice. And then here's a laser, because he's literally got these laser treatment things. But the other thing that he has never had a functioning CRM, and he wants me to work on something to help him reactivate some of his clients.

He's probably the majority of small businesses are in the same boat. Correct. How many hours would you say you spent up front building the $3,500? I'll say this. With me setting up things in their CRM and in a go high level, building things in there that I've never built before, I would say maybe 12 hours. Wow.

12 hours for the 12 hours for the 3,500. This tool, it's like a vibe coded wrapper. Right. It's like, it was. Absolutely. Okay. It is. Because I know, I'll say this, I don't know, I didn't know anything about coding.

I didn't know, I didn't know anything about coding. Still don't. In fact, I'm still learning all of the ends and outs of Claude. Just, I mean, I didn't know anything until the last month about an MV file when you're building in Claude. I just started talking to Claude, okay? Yeah. So, and now that I've built through these a couple of times, then I've got a little more knowledge about it now.

And it's kind of funny that people keep coming back to content creation. You don't have a background there, do you? No, but here's the thing that, I mean, I do not have a background in it. But I know that for the average business owner who doesn't, who does not have consistent content creation. And when it's possible to easily build a knowledge base from what we know about that business and what it does, it is not that hard to create some kind of content creation, okay, that is consistent with the boys for the, I'd say what, for the investment firm that I did, it has like, this guy's been doing investment talk radio longer than Dave Ramsey's than doing his. And we have 22,000

chunks of data in this knowledge base that creates content for him. We've got 570 something commercials. So it is super easy to create a quality content in the, the voice of the business owner when you've got so much content. Yeah. And I ended up telling him when we first created, I said, look, Paul, you don't like it. It is all you, my friend. It's all you because I mean, that's it. If you don't like it, you don't like yourself because I built this on you.

I'm trying to give it an analogy because on one hand, it's like content creation is important for businesses for any business. On the other hand, it's like so hard to go viral and stand out. But the analogy I would think of is imagine, imagine like a town that had 10,000 residents. and only five retail stores, okay? Five, that you grocery store, restaurant, whatever, like way more demand for retail stores than supply. There's only five. So then these five stores didn't he have signs up. Everyone just knew the red brick building is the grocery store. The white brick building

is the restaurant, yada, yada. Until suddenly, like, there's 10. There's 10 retail stores, more competition. And so now they're like, man, you should probably get a sign, right? Like, we don't necessarily need like a sign spinner, like a human out front to like be savvy and bring people in. We should actually, we should probably just have a sign. Like, we need a presence. People need to know that like, we are the grocery store. We're grocery store number one now and the one that just opened is number two. To me, that's what content creation looks like in 2026 and over the next five years. Like, you're not promising people that they're going to go viral or like transform their business with content. And they're not even thinking that. But like at this point,

they just need something. You got to hit publish on something or you, you're just not relevant anymore. You need a sign. You just at least like bare minimum put up a sign, right? It doesn't need to be good or flashy or nice font or lit up at night. You just need a sign. To me, that's what content creation for local slash small businesses are today. Yeah. Any thoughts on that?

No, totally. Totally. Because, you know, all this stuff that we're creating is just to help them have a presence. It's not that I'm, we're trying to help anybody go viral with this. But, but yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So this doctor physician, that was a personal friend of yours as well.

Yes, personal friend of mine. And I'll end up saying this. Every bit of the business that I have had to this point has been from people, from either direct contacts, direct friends, or friends of friends. We consistently underestimate this in the business culture sometimes, that people are more important than money. And to have meaningful relationships with people, where you do everything within your power to try to add value,

to them and for them and to help them and to serve them and to do anything you can to help them other than building them something for free. You understand what I'm saying. And there's just such an opportunity that we all have in all the circles where we've operated. We've done business before, people that we come in contact with and businesses. You know, there's just such a huge opportunity for us to find their points of pain by opening up conversations with them and that creates an inroad for us to pitch them some sort of a what I would call an early level solution that can end up leading to other things. You know, it's interesting because there's like there's something anyone can learn from anyone, any other business or whatever.

Like we could learn some good business principles from bad business people or from bad businesses like drug dealers, right? I think of one industry that's very shady. I think most people would agree. And that's MLMs, multi-level marketing, network marketing. But what they are is very effective at selling. And they're also very effective at having high margin products because there's so many layers in that pyramid scheme. Everyone's got to get paid. But one thing they do really well is when you sit down, like probably many of us have sat down with like a cousin or a brother-in-law that was trying to sell us to Hesiannone juice or rubber made or something. But when you sit down on one of these seminars, it's always like, write down a list of everyone you know. And then it's all that.

Yes. It's like, geez, I'm going to burn all these relationships. And if you sell on the crap bill of goods, you will. You will burn. I know people that have done that. But if you're serving them and genuinely solving problems and using AI to help them make or save more money in their businesses, then you're helping them. Then you're being a good friend. So if we take that principle and like put an ethical twist on it, there's something we can learn there. Like end of story, you're more likely to close someone that you know. Even if you went to high school with them 20 years ago and you haven't spoken with them since, you still know them. Like you're still warm, warmer than a cult call, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So you said two things. I'm going to add one to it. You said,

your customers have all come from friends and friends of friends. I would think that the third thing would be what I call like the floodgate principle. And that's when you find a friend that you can serve, you solve a problem with AI and they see what you're capable of. And then they come back to you and they're like, what about this? I have this other business. I have this rental home. I have and then now like you're the guy. And like I have people in my life that are good at programming or Facebook ads. They're good at things I'm not good at. And every time I have a problem in that space, I go to Justin. I go to that guy, Kevin. It's like you're my guy. And that's like the floodgate. So it's like there's like the third tier of people is actually the same as the first. It's just more

jobs from the same person that you already gained trust from that maybe you went to high school with. Maybe you go to church with. Any thoughts on that? Tell me. Totally. Totally. And it's just, let me tell you something, when you develop the reputation of being the type of person that just wants to help someone out, okay, that you help out someone, even if they don't buy your product or service, you give them some tips. I'll say this. When I first sat down with the chiropractor and started talking about AI, neither he or his wife, they didn't even have any kind of AI accounts. They didn't have Chad GPT. They didn't have Claude. And when I'd walked in through the process of just signed. signing up and had them do some basic things. They're like, you're just kidding me. And I was like, no, it'll end up doing it. And so anyway, yeah, anything, anything we can do to add value. Anything is just super help.

What kind of qualifying questions do you ask to know if they're even capable of being able to afford 1,500 a month, 3,000 up front, et cetera? Well, part of the thing is in the investment guy when I ended up signing him, well, first off, we talked numerous times. we'd talk like seven to 10 hours or more. And I didn't even know necessarily what he was on. He didn't know what he was on. And then he just said, he just said, well, hey, if I, if I hired you on some kind of

kind of a retainer for the next six months, what would you, what would you charge? And I said, well, first off, you need to tell me how many hours you'd want me working for you a week. And so, and I said, well, we're talking about 20, talking about 20 to 25 hours a week, maybe helping you do some things, building automation. I'm charging him nothing for the automations. because of the amount that he's paying me. And he said, well, he said, what if we, what if we did 50, 50,000?

And I was like, okay, you know, started out with that. And then the other one, then the other one with the chiropractor with this laser, what I knew was he was super pumped up about it. He's got an established practice. It's a proven product. And for him, being a business owner, to have me take over the entire product launch was a huge value for him. One is he didn't know, know how to do it. Could he have learned? Well, sure, he could have learned, but there was a huge learning circuit. And so they were just pumped up with it ready to go.

And when I just went over what was possible with a proposal that Claude helped me create, okay, when I went over what was possible, I just started, you know, I already had the $1,500 a month set in there and the $3,500 for sign. And it was not a hard sale at all. I just said, well, hey, Chris, we would do this, this and this. We'd go through. and do all. He said, you mean you would do all that for $3,500? I was like, yeah. Anyway, for the investment advisor guy, is that $50,000 over six months? What is the time for month? Six months. And so it started the first month of the first part of March. I've gotten two checks from him. I basically get a total of six checks and then we will reevaluate after that. But it was like, you know,

83, 33, 33 per month. Okay. What do you have in the pipeline right now and what do you think is next? How can you scale growing a business on friends and family? Well, first off, I'm going to say this. At some point in time, I don't believe you can only scale with friends and family. You've got to be able to branch out. And so I'll say this. One of my flaws that I know is I have not settled in on a niche. Okay.

And when I say settle in on a niche, I don't mean like one necessarily one type of customer, but one initial product or service that I've offered. And I don't know if I listened to the video the guy did on business assessments with AI. And I thought about doing something like that, maybe have a tier that's free, one that's $250, one that's $1,000. And that provides a foot in the door to be able to offer free products to them that they could sign up for, but then to do different level bills. Yeah, that's something that I have not yet settled in.

But I absolutely love problem solving and being able to build personalized apps for a business that meets the specific needs that they have. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think it's a problem that you don't have a niche yet. Like you have revenue, right? And that's more valuable than a niche. What I really want to know, and I think this is what most humans struggle with is it sounds like it was a period of months before. or you started learning these skills and you got your first revenue. How does one stay motivated?

How do you stay grinding when you've had, you sat down at Starbucks with who knows how many people and you have nothing in the bank account to show for it yet? Chris, one of the things that we all know that we so don't sometimes tell ourselves is that the greatest battle we all have in starting a business, running the business, learning, growing is the person we look at in the mirror data. You know, are we going to do the, difficult thing. One of the things that I love that Staben says, he says, you know, am I disciplined to the thing that I know I need to do and not do the thing that I know I shouldn't do?

So am I disciplined enough to know that being busy does not mean you're making progress in your business? What it may mean is you're being busy doing the wrong things because you're too scared to do the things you know you need to do. And Brian, Brian Tracy wrote this book. years ago that says it's called eat the frog first. In other words, do the thing that you dread the most. And I'll say this, just in terms of how you have taught with your teaching on your podcast, you try to teach people. Look, learn by action. Learn by action. Get in there and do it. No, you don't know how to do it. Start doing it. And when it comes to the AI agency, we have told ourselves, I mean, all of us at some point, well, I don't know this and I don't know all this about

I don't know this. There's so many things that we don't know. Look how quick AI run. Well, that's true. We don't know. But guess what? 99% of the business owners that we sit in front of, we know significantly more than they do.

And we know enough that it's possible that we know where to get the answers that we need to help them do the thing they want to do even if we've never done it before. And I'll say this. One of the things I have to continually tell myself, because I can be the worst critic of me, is that I have to tell myself, Philip, talk to yourself like you would talk to your kids going through a chat. I would never shame my children. I'm not going to speak down to them if they try something and it fails and they get discouraged. I'm going to talk to them in such a way that it spurs on their growth to see failure as a particular event in their life and not as not for them as a person.

So anyway, I'm sorry, I kind of feel like I'm preaching right now. No, this is amazing. This is like my favorite part. No. And it's just, I'll say this. This is something that makes me about just jump up and down inside. I'm amazed that this is in my assessment and a lot of others says, by far, the best time in human history to be alive and start a business. There's never, there's never, Henry Ford never imagined the opportunity.

Solomon in all of his glory and splendor and biblical days. never imagined the access to things that we have. Five, ten years ago, all business owners would have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered. And if you would have told them what was coming, they would have told you it was fiction that it was not possible. Well, guess what? We are seeing now a day and time to where we can have a dream about what we want to build that came from a client that has presented something to us. And though we've never built it before, AI can have.

help us build that. What the heck? Does it get any better than this? Does it get any better? And I come back to the same thing with me. Philip, your greatest limit is you, my friend. Are you willing to see that what you once thought was impossible? It's so possible now. And it isn't, it isn't just for you. It's for others. And I'll say this. It does something deep inside of all of us that we know is true and right and just or something other to be able to help and assist someone else. And we have never had more tools at our disposal than we have right now. Okay. Oh my gosh, Phil, I'm like, obviously, most of you guys are familiar with the podcast.

I don't get into like the motivational stuff, high level stuff, raw, raw stuff. We get tactical, we get granular. But there is a place for this. I don't get into it because I don't think I'm very good at it. You're clearly good at it. So you open the door. Like, I just got off the phone with two 18 year olds that sell VCRs. They're making like seven grand a month selling.

yes, VCRs. They buy them on Facebook Marketplace for $10, and they go for $100 on eBay, 100 because no one makes them anymore. So there's no, there's still demand. There's no supply, right? Plenials want to watch movies with their kids. Like, there's an opportunity.

We pulled up Facebook Marketplace, and there were hundreds of VCRs for sale within an hour of me, for like 10 to 30 bucks. And then, I mean, if you guys are on Twitter, I went on DoorDash last week. I don't even order DoorDash, and I just thought, I wonder how much money I can make on DoorDash. So I downloaded the DoorDash for Drive.

app. I was approved within 10 minutes. I'm making 30 bucks an hour. Listen in to podcast. 30 bucks an hour with no experience, no reviews, nothing. And it's like, I could do this on a moped, a $500 moped. I could make the same amount of money on a moped, you know? And so it's like, and then you're talking about this, like there's so much opportunity. And I still want to be sensitive to people hearing this because there's people that hear that all the time. There's so much opportunity. It's never been. It's like, where's my revenue? Okay. I'm trying. I'm out there. I'm grinding. It's not here yet. Like, where's my revenue? That sounds really great, Chris. That's a great sound bite. But like, I'm out there meeting at Starbucks with my friends and family. I don't have

revenue. And to what you said near the end, like not talking down on yourself, you open the door for a Nick Saban quote. So I'll continue it. I'll double or nothing you hear. He has a story. It's a true story. He was out fishing on the lake. And this guy next to him is catching all these croppy. And he's throwing back every other one. And he's like, why are you throwing back the big ones? Why aren't you keeping the big ones? Those are delicious. And he thought maybe, you know, bigger catfish don't taste very good. Maybe he thought, this guy probably doesn't know that the big ones are actually delicious. He's like, well, my frying pan is only this big. So I don't keep the bigger ones because I can't cook them. And he's like, dude, you need a bigger frying pan. Like get a bigger frying pan. Right. And so it's like dream bigger. You know, like if if you're talking to a guy and you might have a bigger fish on the line than you think you're, you're capable of handling like close the deal and then buy a bigger frying pan. Like figure it out. And yes, like don't give voice to your negative thoughts. because we all have them. But the moment we vocalize them is when they become more real and they become more hardened

in us. And like the negative thoughts compound even faster than the positive words, right? Like I just try to suffocate all the negative thoughts as best as I can and verbalize the positive ones because compounding works in both directions. Like you pick, go that way or that way, you want to go better or worse, it's your choice. So to me what it sounds like is like you cannot be prideful. You cannot be unwilling to meet with friends and family. If you are, it still works.

Like, I'm the guy that's prideful. I'm the guy that, like, I was never posting on social media. I just started business number 13. I just started business number 19. I just, because I know what people think. This guy can't, how was this guy feeding this family? He's all over the place. You got, I was never advertising what I was doing because I was ashamed and embarrassed.

So I was never selling to my friends and family. So I created this artificial barrier. I made it unnecessarily hard for me. Right. So I'm telling you guys, don't do what I did. Like, be willing to sit down with people from the mindset of like, I'm going to help you make more money. I'm not trying to sell you a false bill of goods or the next diet pill or whatever. I want to help you make or save more money in your business. So I feel good about texting you and offering to meet you at Starbucks or whatever because this is going to be a win-win for us. And then ask them questions. Do more talking or do more listening than talking. Well, and I'll tell you, let me tell you a quick story. The first vibe-coded thing I ever built. was in Replit, it was for my brother-in-law to manage his cows and sheep out on his farm. That it was, that it's possible that, you know, you can take a picture of the cow to know what Bessie looks like or whatever he calls his cow. And then, you know, you know, when they blasted

their vaccines, you know, which, which ones they've given birth to and who's connected to who. And told him, I said, my brother-in-law is Greg, I said, man, if you wanted to put GPS trackers on him, we could put it on, we could put it on Google Earth and find out where the cows were. But, but anyway. So, yeah. I mean, I think a lot of these. solutions that we're building for people are going to become products of their own. Right. Like I think a lot of people in this group, they're going to go solve the most random problem from those random business owner.

And then another business owner in the same industry is like, can you do that for me? Sure. Copy paste. Can you do that for me? Sure. And it's like, I'm just going to start. I'm not doing an agency anymore. Like that got me from point A to point B, but I want to go to point F.

And that's through this. I'm just going to sell access to the software to every single dairy farmer in Northwest Wisconsin or whatever it is. What have we missed, Phil? This is the thing I would challenge you to, okay? Sit down with your mobile device, wherever it is you store your contacts and just start writing down names of people. And the goal is not to sell them something. The goal is to open up the door to have a conversation with them.

Because really, even if you knew their business in and out, you still don't know what the pain points are. And I'll say this, just in saying this, I haven't thought about this. I have not asked any friends that I've built stuff for to recommend me to someone else. Is there somebody else that you know of? Something like this would be helpful too. I just thought of that. I haven't done that. But anyway, just sit down, have conversations with people, listen to them, find out the pain points,

find out the things going on in their business and offer them things that will help. It's funny you said that you hadn't done that because that was the one thing I was going to add to that is always ask for referrals. Yeah. Because like if there's like good, better best, good is like cold calling. Better is like a friend of a friend. Best is a friend. Right? But like a friend of a friend is light year is better than a cold call.

So do it. This is amazing, Phil. I'm inspired. I'm ready to run through a wall. Okay. Well, Phil, appreciate you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge and motivation with us. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, sir. You're glad to be here. Glad to be here. Guys, I want to tell you about something. I've been building behind the scenes. You've been watching my videos about AI tools and asking the same question. Okay, cool. How do I turn this into a business?

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