The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - He Started a $15K/Month AI Side Hustle for $20 - Ep. #325

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Check out my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOPOD.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join my community at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOwners.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━I sat down with Ryan Schuetter and we broke down how he went from a $52K/year job to making $15K/month helping small businesses implement AI. Ryan shares how he started the business for just $20, landed his first clients by having 100+ conversations with people in his network, and built offers ranging from AI cohort groups to $5K-$10K/month consulting. We also break down his DASA framework, why in-person networking is such an advantage, and how even a shy introvert with no sales or coding experience can get started.You can find Ryan here:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RyanSchuetterInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan.schuetter/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanschuetterFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryan.schuetter.9/Newsletter: https://ryanschuetter.com/contactEnjoy!---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---

How much did it cost you to start an AI implementation business in total? $20. So you're 26 years old. What will you make this month from implementing AI into small businesses? $15,000 this month. Profit? Profit. Amazing.

And you're telling me that a shy introvert can make six figures a year implementing AI in a small business. Yes. You could make more for sure. Everyone is saying that AI will kill small businesses. You say the opposite. Why? This is the best time you can compete with the enterprise. because you have access to the technology that allows you to do so.

You have the same access that they've always had now. Yeah. And theoretically, you have even better tools than them because they're limited to what they could use based on policies and governance that they have in those organizations. You move much faster them. What on average do you charge for an implementation built? It could be anywhere between $1,000 or $20,000. It just depends on the project.

No sales experience? Sierra. Never gone door to door, never been in a boiler room doing $1,000. The most terrifying stuff I've ever done. That's encouraging. Is there any hope for shy introverts like me that don't want to talk to people? Yes. In fact, there's a guy in Ryan, Cincinnati, 24 years old, very shy introvert.

You're about to meet him. Who makes $15,000 a month, solving problems using simple tools that he taught himself on. He doesn't know how to code. He's never learned how to sell. And he was working a dead end job making $52,000 a year a year and a half ago. Today, he's making $15,000 a month working for himself. So I had to ask him today, Ryan, who are you? How do you do what you do? How do you sell? How do you price this? And what is the DASA framework, which he claims is the key to his success? Let's meet Ryan. So if you were to explain to a five-year-old how you make money, what would you say? I made a lot of friends. Made a lot of friends in the space and helped them solve their biggest problems.

Yes. Okay. So you make money solving problems for business owners using technology. Yep. Accurate? That's pretty accurate. What does an average customer look like? What type of person? What type of business owner? What are you charging them for what? Yeah. The clients that work with right now are all over the place, but it's currently founders that are very much in the business and understand the power of AI, yet their teams are not

really implementing it the way they could be. So that's my ideal avatar that I typically go after. A startup founder? A startup founder. Younger wish? Could be young. I've worked with every age group, especially in Cincinnati. that's not the most tech forward place in the world.

There's a lot of people that are kind of getting, you know, dabbling in AI. There's a lot of people that absolutely don't understand it. Okay. So I think my reach is quite large. What is the average revenue of one of your customers? Yeah, it could be anywhere between pre-revenue all the way up to $20 million is probably the range I've worked with so far. But it's usually sub-10 million for how I've been getting started so far.

So you're 24 going on 25. AI happens. You start playing around with it. You like nerding out over software and technology. You feel like that's a skill of yours and something that you enjoy. And so for whatever reason, you say, I'm going to make a list of 100 people that I know. And most 24-year-olds don't know a ton of people, right? Which it bodes well for anyone watching this if they're young or don't have a big network. We're talking about friends and family at church, neighborhood, teachers, people you went to school with. Is that what we're saying? Previous coworkers? All the above, yeah. Certainly. a lot through just the contacts list on my phone. I was literally going through and seeing, who might find interest in getting help with AI? I was hitting up, you know, friends, like friends' parents of mine all over the place. And a lot of the start I have is also through some business mastermind groups that I joined along the way. Cade groups that I entered because online groups?

Yeah, online groups and person groups. There's local AI groups I'm a part of and business groups here in Cincinnati, But also there's some business mastermind groups that I'm a part of that I met people like myself, other founders in different spaces. And a lot of people have opposite skill sets as myself. Yeah. So naturally, I try to help them in any way I can. Okay. So would you consider yourself an introvert or an expert?

Very introverted. Okay. So is calling 100 people, meeting with 100 people? Is that intimidating to you? Yeah. But it's way easier if you're not trying to sell. I was just trying to get on the phone and provide value in any way. I'm not trying to pitch anything.

I wasn't even going after a paid offer. I told myself I would have 100 free calls with people and then look into charging for some of my services. But up until then, it was very low pressure on me because if, you know, people don't want to jump on the phone for me, it's totally fine. I'm just trying to provide value. Because they say that happiness equals expectations minus reality. Yeah. So if you go in there with like, all right, I'm going to 100 conversations, close 30% of them. My monthly recurring revenue will be $1,000 per $30,000 per month.

By month three, you're like, I'm literally not trying to sell. That's not like a wink, wink, wink. I have nothing to sell you. We wink, right? I literally want to learn and ask how I can add value to your life and or your business. And hopefully, maybe no pressure. I don't even have a sales pitch for it. I don't even have anything to sell yet if I wanted to.

But maybe hopefully you'll find something about me intelligent or smart or helpful. And you'll say, hey, I like that idea. I don't want to do it. Can you do it? Yeah. For a fee. How much? Is that kind of what you're thinking?

Yeah, and I think the first 10 people or so that helped on the phone with me probably could tell I really did not know what I was doing. But I think they would get little pieces of value along the way. And from the pieces I really felt like I was contributing to people as well as from their feedback, I was starting to able to get traction with what can I actually charge for or what sort of education I could kind of provide people. Okay. So of these 100 people, give me a rough breakdown. What percentage? church. What percentage? Extended Family? What percentage? Friends? What percentage?

Give me just a rough breakdown. I would say 60% from the business groups I'm loosely associated with. Maybe we've split that half and half with local versus online groups that I met along the way. How many groups are we talking? I'm very involved with two local groups here.

There's a business group I'm a part of, AI group I'm a part of. And then there's two online masterminds that I'm also pretty happily engaged with. And I was engaged with them for about a year leading up to this point, because like I said, I had other entrepreneurial ventures leading up to this, which eventually led me down its path. How many people were in each of those four groups, give or take? The local ones are probably about 100 or so people each, and then the online ones are much

larger, probably about 500 people each at the time. Less engaged, because there's more people. Less engaged. Like per person, it's less engagement. Online, there's less engagement, but there's more people. What about the local ones? Are you? Yeah. Yeah, there's a local group called SinciI that I love attending. Is it like a meet up group? Or how do you find it? Yeah, they meet monthly. And I forget how I met Kendra and Helen, who are the ones running it. But now I'm friends with them from attending their meetups and just trying to talk to them and provide any sort of a value I could along the way to them, which included, you know, hopping on the phone with them. They're talking about launching an online version of their group, things like that. Just trying to. provide my insights and being engaged with their communities is very important because they could see that and they can understand that I really enjoyed being a part of it. And is the SINCAI one, was that literally a meetup group? Like you found them on meetup.com or where does it find them? I was on email list. Do you know how you found them? No. I think I was just doing Google

searches to see how I could get involved locally. Okay. I think it served what I needed at that time and that getting started with my entrepreneurial journey. Okay. Really getting connected with people doing the same thing and getting around peers that uplifted me. I think I get the same amount of value from the local AI groups. What about paying customers? Which groups did you get the most amount of paying customers? The local groups or the online groups? Where do I, the online groups?

Because since I've had those relationships for such a long period of time, they finally, you know, snowballed effect into me working with them in a paid capacity. So 100 people, 60% loosely came from these four groups and the other 40%. Came from contacts list on my phone. Came from LinkedIn. Who am I to see if? Who am I? Came from.

Yeah. And just trying to, if I could have a meeting with someone and retindle that relationship, I also found that to be a privilege as well. Okay. Were you trying to make sure these 100 people were all business owners or no? I tried to stick to business owners whenever I could. But there's a lot of people also operating small and medium-sized businesses that I also targeted or managers or just the leaders in organizations.

If I could talk to a sales leader about helping them use AI within their department, that was something I also went after. Okay. How many of these 100 conversations did you actually end up having? All, well, of the ones that I got booked, because I booked way more than 100, and I ended up having the 100 conversations. Okay. So how many did you try to book? Because you knew there would be a funnel, right? Not everyone will say yes to a call. Some people say yes and they won't show up. I wasn't tracking it. And I was going through. And if people weren't replying to me, I might, you know, next month go back around and try to get them again. But by the end of three months, I was able to hit 100. I probably kept going past 100. I probably got to 150 or so when I, I lost count after 100 because I stopped being meticulous about tracking these specific free calls. Yeah. But, you know, I probably hit up three to four times more than people that are stopped on the call.

So the goal was not 100 reachouts, but 100 real conversations, which takes hundreds of reach out. Yeah. And all, let's say it was 300. All of them were people in your sphere in some way. Nothing cold. Yeah. Okay.

People underestimate how many people actually have in their sphere. If you open up your contacts on your phone, you have a really long list of people on there, even from high school, from wherever they might have came from. And then I went out of my way to join these groups, which is not easy for me being introverted, and not naturally kind of doing these things by force myself, because I understand that's what will get me started. But the desire for wealth has to be greater than the pain of being an introvert. As an introvert, I feel that pain. Yeah.

Okay. So of these 100 conversations, how many were in person? how many were virtual? All were virtual. Really? Yeah. 100% of them. Wow, that's surprising. Of the virtual ones, how many were phone versus Zoom? I did everything on Google Meet. Okay. Did a hundred calls each an hour long on Google Meet. Wow. Okay. The first call was an hour? First call was an hour. Last call was an hour. Okay. Do you have any gauge of, from those hundred conversations or 150, whatever it was, how many turned into a second conversation? A lot did, but not necessarily to, continue people down the sales funnel, more so just to keep the relationship going.

A lot of these turned into third, fourth, fifth, sixth conversations, which eventually had people working with me. But then after this first call, I would give people some takeaways, like here's my recommendations for you to go implement today. And hopefully you get traction with this this week. And then, you know, maybe a month or two would go by and they say, hey, Ryan, thanks for the advice. This has been working out really well for me. Do you have any ideas about this? And then maybe we'll hop on a quick call or maybe we have a quick meeting to get people rolling with that. And then I never really have a sell for them until I see, or until I started to see a very specific avenue that I could provide value with, which turned out of

those authors I have today. Okay. So let me back up. When you did the reachouts to the 100 people, did your pitch change over time? What did it start with? What did it end with? Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people in the AI space, they talk about doing a AI audit for your business. And that's the freebie to get people on the call where then they'll start to build maybe like a vibe coded product or a SaaS product or something that could take over a software platform for that company. And that's how I started too. I was like, I'm going to do an AI audit with all these people. And then I will try to replace a product for them and try to tie that ROI back to the maybe the time savings or the software savings that we were having. But it was hard for it's hard for me to explain. But I try to

I keep using the word value and I do that intentionally because that is what I'm trying to provide. Every person that interacts with me. That's the experience I'm trying to provide is Ryan provided a ton of value to us. And the people I was providing the most value to were the people that I was leading through educating them. And the reason that is is because let's pretend I teach you how to do everything that I do in my implementation work. You could take that back to your company and you won't need to rely on me anymore theoretically. You don't need to rely on anyone else to manage these platforms for you. You could just naturally grow them on your home. You could implement different products because you understand how these fundamentals work.

So what that turned into present day is doing a lot of education offers where I teach you directly, and we work together directly, to build these sort of platforms or these sort of tools for your team, to eventually be able to do other projects on your own. Okay. So zooming out, you go into this. saying, like literally, what was your first text or DM to them? Hey, so-and-so, have spoken in a few years. Can I do an AI audit for your business?

Or if not, what was it? I never let off with like just copy and paste texts like that. I've much, I started with reaching out saying just trying to rekindle in general, just saying, hey, Chris, hope all is well with you. I want to hear about what is going on in your life or if I know what's going on your life, how is this new role going or how is this project going for you? You're doing a little research going to their Facebook, their LinkedIn, and referring to specific things. For sure.

Okay. Because I've gotten these texts before and it's usually someone that joined a pyramid scheme and MLM and they want to sell me Tahitian Noni juice or something. And it's like, oh, geez, hey, I started a new business. I'd love to talk about how we can accomplish our goals together. Yeah. I read that and I roll my eyes. Right. I would too.

So how do you, so give me an example of what you would say. It has to be, it has to be so genuine. It has to be, I am here just to hear about. about what's going on your life. This is what I'm doing right now, and I'm helping people with AI. If you ever want help with that, let me know. Or if you want to schedule a call with me,

here's my booking link. And then I also maybe get some specific examples. What I love doing is pitching with demos, having YouTube links ready to go that you could send to people to prove, hey, I've been doing this. I don't, I know what I'm buying. Yeah, my YouTube links. It doesn't matter if the video has 30 views or 30,000.

Most have 30. Yeah. Good to know. Good to know. Tell me if this is wrong. But it's like, hey, Uncle John. How's it going? How's life?

Good. Just moved to Indianapolis. Awesome. I saw on LinkedIn that you just got promoted. Yeah, yeah. It's just casual like that. Yeah. And so there might be a half dozen text exchange before you ever mentioned what you're doing, right?

Right. Okay. Yeah. So oftentimes I would send, you know, a batch of a hundred texts in the morning or emails or or, you know, LinkedIn DMs, wherever. And then I would start working for the day. And I'd get back to. my phone and have like 50 replies back and I have to, you know, frantically reply out to all of them,

but making sure that I'm keeping the conversation genuine and not trying to, again, be salesy because that's just not the personality. Are you tracking these in CRM in a Google sheet? How are you keeping track? Back then I didn't. I was just trying to put as much time into just focusing on sending these as possible. But now that I got rolling and I have a little more traction and I'm not sending the hundred messages a day, I do have a, you know, a CRM I use. Well, some people get so hung up, especially when it comes to intimidating stuff, they get so hung up on how do I track this? How should I tag them?

Should they use pipe drive? Oh my gosh. They really just don't want to reach out to people. These are advanced forms of procrastination that make them feel good that they're making progress, but they're not making progress. I've went through this myself. And I still do to this day.

That's probably my biggest issue, especially being the tech nerd that's like, all right, maybe if I have to optimize, I have to optimize, optimize, optimize, optimize, before I press go on these messages. There's no reason to it because you're going to learn along the way and learn more from doing Yeah, yeah.

I'm just trying to do things on. So when you tell me like, oh, I was, I'm, I'm reading that as like, all right, you're a winner, right? Like, you shouldn't worry about that stuff. Just send some freaking. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So if you have no money like you're making yet, there's no reason to be tracking like crazy. Yeah. There's a time and place for it. And obviously I do a lot of that work, but you don't have to worry about it when I'm getting started. Okay. So 100, 150 conversations. Do they all go an hour?

Do they go 15 minutes, some, an hour and a half? Yeah. On average, they went probably an hour. Some went up to like, there was ones that we decided to keep going for a while up to like, I think the longest one probably went three hours or so because we were really getting into a platform they were using. We were talking about how you can automate within this platform. That was much more of an automation sort of talk instead of AI. But again, you know, when I was getting started, I was just trying to get rolling on these calls. Other ones went, you know, five minutes just to talk about, oh, you should do this on chat, GPT or whatever. Yeah. Or, you know what, you know what, let's let's, you know, do this another time or maybe, you know what, Ryan, I just wanted like say hi. I'm just talking about this right now. They went all over the place. And, you know, it does get to you after like, oh, I know, these calls today. I have three calls.

They all didn't really go the way that I intended. But then it was like, you know, I have some really good calls along the way where I got some real aha moments out of people. And I was like, how can I mimic that again? Let's try to, you know, tailor the calls in that direction versus the ones that are family. Okay. So 150 people.

How many were a second conversation? Probably a third or a fourth of that. Well, no, it was probably more like a fourth or a fifth of them. know I'm thinking about it, but again, the second conversation could come anywhere between that point to now. And I always am re-engaging people. I'm not just like, let's finish this call and we ever speak again. I'm usually reaching out and saying, hey, how is this specific thing going? Is there anything you want to talk about more? I'm happy to hop on a call in five minutes with you. Or whatever you're available, let me know, because at the time, I'm flexible. I, you know,

recently left the job I was working. And for the past year or so now, I was just trying to do these calls for the three months I was getting started. Speaking of a job, were you working a full-time job at this point? I was working a full-time job up until July of last year. So while you're doing all this reach-out, you were? Yeah. The reset reach-out started when I knew I was about to leave the job probably in May and continued until July or August. Okay. And what was your job and what were you making there? Yeah, I was working in clinical research as a project manager at a local hospital, and I was making about $52,000 a year. Okay. All right. So let's say be conservative. We'll say a fifth turned into a second conversation. Now, 30 people max. Yeah, on 150. How do those conversations go in general? Yeah, it's again, very similar.

We have a very specific sort of avenue we're trying to go down. But this time I kind of understand what they're dealing with. I understand much more about their company. So I do a little more research and maybe I even build something for them prior to the call. These calls go so much better. You have a backstory. You know how they are. You know what they're started doing.

You know their business. Yeah. So I'm going to try to see the future and know that your third call was much more than a fifth. Right. But we'll get there in a minute. All right. So you're doing research. you're prepping more than you could before.

Yep. Hey, look what I built for you. Hey, show me what you ended up doing based on my suggestions. Yeah. Okay. How do those calls go? I mean, if I'm truly providing value to them, usually a lot of them ended with like, hey, how can we find a way to work together? We don't really know what exactly that looks like, especially I was getting started.

I didn't really have an offer ready to go. Like, oh, this is what it looks like. It'll be this amount of month or we'll build this. I didn't have any of that. But what we did have following a lot of these second or third conversations was let's find a way to work together because we obviously mesh well. There's a reason you came back and talked to me. There's obviously value I could provide,

which is tied to some sort of tangible ROI. So why not try to make this work? Did you close anyone from the first call? I don't think I closed a single, well, I didn't try to close people on the first call. Right. But no one was like, dude, I know.

You're not anything. But like, can I just pay you to do this? That didn't happen in the first. I don't think so. That's encouraging to me because you could have been bummed out and just stop. Right? But I'm like, no, we're going to play the long game. Long game, long game, one game, right? All right. So 30 conversations. How many turn into a third

conversations? I would say probably about half or more of those, again, over whatever time period like. Yeah, months are lapsing. Yeah. Months, it takes time. Yeah. And a lot of these people, you know, I'm coming back a year later and people are starting to forget that first conversation. I try to bring it back up. The moment they start to forget about me, I try to say, hey, here's another little tidbit of value or sometimes I'm not even trying to just get on these calls with people. Sometimes I'm made a YouTube video specifically addressing this audience or maybe this sort of real estate niche and I send them the YouTube video saying, hey, made this thought of you when I made this, let me know if this resonates. You know, I hate to draw comparisons to multi-level marketing

because this is absolutely not that. The reason I draw a comparison to it is because if you were to go to a multi-level marketing seminar, they would say, make a list of a thousand, people that you know. That's what they do because it works, right? They know what they're doing. Call every single one of them say, how has life been since high school? I've spoken in 20 years. And the reason, so I have a lot of friends that have done MLMs schemes, right? And some of them burned, burned their relationships. And some of them, but they made a lot of money. Some of them burned their relationships and didn't make a lot of money. Total waste. Some of them made a lot of money and did not burn their relationships.

Right. They're doing great. And the difference between those two parties is if they burn their relationships, it's because the price of what they sold did not match their value of what they were selling. Right. It's like they, if you, if I sold my grandma a lemon car, she's not going to like me anymore. Yeah. If I sell my grandma a corolla at fair market value and it works and it serves her life better,

she still loves me. Okay. So over here, whatever MLM they were selling, if it matched, the value that they were expecting, then they did a service to their friend. Yes, they sold to them, but they needed that thing in their life, or at least they think they did, which is what's important. So you could have burned your audience. You could have burned your relationships if your service sucked and it wasn't worth the price. I'm guessing it wasn't. We haven't gotten there yet. Yeah. But, okay, 30 conversations, 30 second conversations, and then give or take 15 third conversation. Did you

close any on the second conversation? Yeah, I probably did close one or two on some. very low-end projects just to get the ball rolling. I was charging probably between $500 and $1,000 for those sort of projects, but I was just trying to get foot in the door, one-time sort of thing. And with the vision of having something to follow after with that, but correct, it was just to get in the door. So let's say, give or take, 150 conversations, 150 hours on average, not including all the time texting. Let's say 300 hours at work. Yeah, okay, for all the reach out.

Then you get, you add, you know, you got to do some follow-ups a few hours, 30. Did the, did the second conversations last about an hour as well? Yeah. Okay. So we're like 350 hours. We're being conservative. Probably wasn't that much because it doesn't take that much. Like, you could text 20 people in 15 minutes.

Yeah. I got pretty fast to text. I'm sure. We're being really conservative. 350 hours to get your first call it 1,500 in revving. Let's say two people at 750 each. Accurate. Yeah.

Okay. So your hourly rate is terrible at this point. You're looking at two bucks an hour. For sure. Okay. But you're building something for yourself. Yeah. And that's the whole point.

And you're willing to play the longer. Yep. Okay. So 15. So of the 30 conversations, you close two people. Then you have 15 more conversations on round three. How do those go? I probably closed the majority of them.

Really? This time. And not on the phone call. Again, at this point, I'm like scared to close on the phone. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to like give you a price right here. And now that's terrifying. But we did come up with some sort of arrangement where we would move forward or work together. in an educational sense or build a certain project together. A lot of those third conversations ended up being

successful for me. Are you still doing 100% of these on Google Meet? Yeah. Okay. And see, that's, I'm assuming that a lot of these you could have done in person, right? You've got, you're in the SINCAI group. Some of these people are within an hour, right? And I did, I did have some like coffee chats with people along the way, but I would say, you know, above 90% of my are just Google Meets. Is that a personal preference. I love just being able to share my screen. You know, and you share your screen. I'm going to do the laser pointer on your screen about what we should do. And we could, you know, share tabs and do a lot of that. I think it was just the fact that I was, hey, probably nervous to get in person, to be completely frank. Yeah. And I was used to working in this online environment. Sure.

So these days, there are way more in-person interactions, especially over this last couple of months or so. Yeah. But when I was getting started, I think it was just, let's just do what's working for me right now. much just allow on these people meets. Now, I know that probably most of these people were not within an hour of you. But in a perfect world, if all 150 were in person and you had a 20% follow-up rate or whatever, I bet you anything, it's closer to a 40% follow-up rate if they're in person. Yeah. Just because the data on this is very clear. And you know that and I know that, but you're like me. And I want, I don't want to go anywhere, A, B, I don't like meeting people in person. So I would have done what you did. But just for those watching and listening, if you're willing to do in person,

your closure rate will absolutely be higher. Yeah. Like maybe twice at high. And I was going to say, this is probably my largest piece of advice for anyone getting started is go all out on in person with the fan because, like you said, it makes a whole lot of difference about how, A, you connect with people, but B, if people will work with you in the future, you've got that in-person relationship finally. And it just makes it a much more friendly, much more engaging conversation whenever you have

them. So as the value of AI continues to do this, which will, this will happen for a while, the value of in-person continues to do this. Yes. And the value of a Google meet continues. Yeah. Okay. So 30.

Sorry. We were 30 conversations. 15. Third conversations. You close literally all of them, almost all of them. A good amount of all. I would say maybe 10. 10.

And you'd already close two from the second conversation. Yeah. So you've got 12 paying customers. Some recurring. We haven't gotten there yet. Some one time. From 150 reachouts. So 8, 9%

close rate. Yeah. Which, if you did a cold email campaign to 150 people, you're going to have probably a 0% close rate legitimately because the numbers aren't big enough. You might need to email 1 to 5,000 people to get one close, right? And so people watch those are like 8% of close rate. From all those out percent is amazing. And let me guess, no sales experience.

Zero. You didn't serve a mission for your church like I did for two years, never gone door to door, never, like, been in a boiler room doing thousands of dollars. This was the most terrifying stuff I've ever done. That's encouraging. Yeah. Introvert, no sales experience, no formal tech experience other than playing around with tools and stuff. You're not a software engineer? I'm an ops guy at the end of the day. I'm not a, I did not come from my engineering background. Okay. 12 closes. Tell me, or you said 10 out of the 15 you closed, right? And plus the other two. Yeah. Give or tape. What did you charge those 10? Like,

what did the pricing structures look like? give or take. Yeah. So eventually this is what my offer turned into, starting at the top of funnel. Obviously, we have everywhere that I'm potentially meeting people along the way. We have business masterminds. You're looking at this here? I'm looking at that.

Okay. We have business masterminds, local meetups, social media, and previous relationships. That's literally everyone that I reached out to. Again, I did attempt to do the, you know, mask email outreach. Nothing happened with it. Zero. That's the introvert's dream if that works. Yeah.

Yeah. And again, all that sounds like that. talk to people that make a lot of money from their network. And they're a pastor, they're an extrovert, they're a super connector. You're none of those things. You're 24 at the time. Yeah. Okay.

That eventually moves to being in the middle of the sales funnel here with free work, resources and guides, long from content, workshops, and essentially all of these being lead magnets. And by lead magnet, it means what is a, you know, freebie that does provide value that gets people in the door to want to work with me in a longer extent? It's almost like a teaser. Yeah. What a full offer.

And it's a trust builder and an expertise showwork. And tell me how many YouTube subscribers you have today. Not many. I probably have 100 or so on YouTube. I think I have a hundred, not 100,000, right? 1001,000. Okay. Yeah.

And how many did you have when you first started? Maybe zero, right? Zero. Yeah. I started this channel probably a year ago. And the intent of this content is to show your expertise. You're not trying to go viral, but you want people to see. I publish stuff on the.

internet. Yeah. Period. Because like, it's immediate credibility. Well, you're making content for these people anyway. Right. Why not upload it? Yeah. What's the downside? If I have to do a demo twice, I just record it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Free resource is long form content, workshops, lead magnet. And I'm guessing your content is not highly edited. It's screen recording. It's you talk. One go. I don't try to put in, you know, too high level editing into it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, a lot of these resources and guides, for instance, are like prompt frameworks, they're CEO guides, they're how to use clot code. It's a lot of the things people are typically asking of me and I want to have them ready to go for whatever it comes up in conversation.

So hopefully from a call that I were to have with you, for instance, I wouldn't just be giving, you know, some advice or feedback on the call. I'll be giving you lead magnet number one, maybe two and three depending on what you're looking for. Gotcha. Eventually, after it's not as much of a funnel as much as much as a Luke because I, I'm consistently building relationships and I'm also consistently providing education to people. People kind of stay in that top and middle funnel over and over again until at some point I'm getting on a call and we have some sort of mutual agreement to move forward. And often I eventually found what that looks like for me at the bottom here.

We could talk about that more. Okay. Okay. So what we just described is kind of this. We kind of skipped over the middle part. In between steps one, two, and three, you're sending them stuff. Yeah. Right, based on what you learned about them on the call. Correct.

Okay, so tell me about your offers and how did you land on those? Yeah, this came from what I learned on the free calls with people. So I figured out that what I'm really good at doing on these calls, I'm good at building tools. I'm good at helping with business operations and systems. But a lot of people found a lot of value in what I was teaching them and sort of having that framework mindset, saying this is how I would go about it in your shoes, which eventually led me to realize why don't I just try to turn these into some sort of educational based offer. So on the far left, you'll see the private coaching offer. And then I have cohort groups.

Those are the two main offers. But obviously, I also do implementation builds or just, you know, AI builds, website builds, things like that as time goes on. But I try to keep people start, gets people started by doing the private coaching and the cohort groups. Okay. What the private coaching looks like. Usually it's a free month sort of deep dive into your business. I work directly with the founders of a leadership team to be able to implement AI and tech and tools long term, really focusing on employee engagement with those tools, really focusing on adoption. Yeah, adoption is the best word to describe it. But obviously not everyone could afford that. That's my high ticket offer, the one that I am most ingrained into your business. I am essentially

becoming a thought leader in your business. You know, people say, keep AI officer. Fractional C, AIO or right. Whatever terminology you want to use for. Yeah. So that's, you know, the high ticket one. But obviously, most people, especially in my immediate network, they don't. What does this cost, give or take? Yeah.

Give or take, it's, you know, like five to ten grand a month. Yeah. Okay. And that's like your ideal. That's like I am not, you know, most people, I'm not even trying to pitch. Sure. That is here. You know they can't afford it.

Yeah. And also, you know, I can't afford to take on infinite clients of that. I want to take on one or two of those people, max. Yeah. How many hours per week does this take, give or take? Yeah, right now, I am per client. I have one client doing that with me in the current, you know, three months sprint. Probably takes 10 hours or so a week for me to focus on that.

Okay. Okay. All right. And then cohort groups. Yeah. And this is what I really love to do. The cohort groups are essentially month-long sprints with me where I get groups of the one I'm doing right now, 10 people, to build alongside each other a common goal.

So for the one I'm doing right now, we're all building websites using clod that optimizes SEO and their deep file. Okay. And we're all working on it together. People are coming from different backgrounds. One person, you know, comes from an account background,

real estate background. So you're not matching together blue-collar business owners and white color. You're just like, whoever I got for this 10 weeks, if they qualify. If they need it. Or four weeks.

If they need it, if they can pay, you're in this call. September. And I have done focus related ones as well. Like I've done real estate specific ones in the past. I did one for acquiring businesses to make essentially acquisitions agents to help with writing letters of intent, working with brokers, underwriting deals. We had, you know, AI specific boot camps or cohorts for that. And now I'm doing this one. That's much more general. But this has been the largest one. Yeah, I've been doing this month. Okay. What do you charge for this? This is just $1,000. That's awesome. So 10. grand for one month's worth of work. And it's how much, I mean, it might even be less work than the private coaching, right? Yeah. How many hours per week? It's a lot of hours. So the way they work is every week, Monday leads off with like a lesson plan. The end of week we have a call.

The big, because of both of these are with the whole group. Monday, full group lesson plan. Thursday or Friday, full group kind of breakdown, talk about how things are going for people, discuss what problems they came up, they came through. Obviously, most people are probably reaching the same sort of questions and problems by the end of the week. So it's a great time to interact and get those out of the way. And in the middle of week, I'm having 30-minute one-on-on-ones with people. So with the 10 people I have going right now, you know, it certainly adds up. But not everyone books a one-on-one every week. Correct. How many hours per week would you say it shakes out of? Yeah. So let's say two hours on Monday, two hours on Thursday, and then five hours in between.

Called another 10. About 10. Okay. So 250 bucks an hour. Really? Yeah. Call it 40 hours for a month, $10,000. And how big could this be? How big are you comfortable letting it get? Probably double that size. 20 people?

Yeah. Yeah. I think the first one I did was literally just me working with a friend. I called it a cohort group because I tried people to join. I have one person joining. Great. Let's work together as much more one-on-one. That was to get the trial period out of it.

And you're making content out of bed. Correct. Yeah, I'm repurposing a lot of this. The second one I did, three people. now, you know. Still $3,000 a month. Yeah. Like, it's great.

It was awesome. It felt really good to have people, you know, people that weren't previously buying into working with me. Yeah. Being able to afford something and also me provide something that will theoretically last them for the rest of their business days. Yeah. All right. Implementation builds. Yeah.

This is something. You could be getting this from these guys too, right? Correct. Doesn't have to be one or the other. I've had multiple people that go through the cohorts work with me to build something. Okay. Post cohort. And all of that is one off.

things, and I usually calculate that based on using an hourly rate I came up with for myself and also understanding how much time I think it will take because I've worked a lot of these projects over the year. What hourly rate? It's $200. And what is your, I know these are all over the amount. Yeah. What on average do you charge for an implementation belt?

It could be anywhere between $1,000 and I can imagine charging like $15,000 to $20,000. It just depends on the project. Yeah. What are some examples of charges that you give? been out for this. Yeah. So a lot of, I don't know how obsessed I am with the AI agent terminology, but building AI tools that are scheduled and fit directly into your business, I do a lot of that. That's kind of the theme, including like, you know, marketing specific tools. For instance, the most recent one I did was working with the realtor to regroup this content and just produce

a lot large amounts of content for them. You know, sales builds to help with the outreach funnels and then newsletters and the things like that, they're all over the place. They widely vary. Okay. Just say 2,000 average? Yeah. Okay. So of the 12, now I know you've gotten customers since then, but if these first 12 people,

how much revenue have you generated lifetime from that? Yeah. Oh, geez. That's a good question. Probably, I would say the average person joins a cohort group of mine and then probably works on a project with me. So about $2,000, maybe, on average. Okay.

So $25,000? Wow. From the first 12, yeah. Yeah. So let's just say that's almost for your first like batch of customers for all the time spent, I guess it doesn't include some of the implementation time. You probably made 50 to 100 bucks an hour. Yeah. Yeah. To start a business. Yeah. You got paid $50 to $100 an hour to start in a business.

Correct. Right. To generate content, to generate testimonials to get a like a foundation of customers that could start referring people to you. Because that doesn't include all the. referrals, right? What about customers that you've acquired since those first? Majority has come actually late this summer and then I have the best month of my life, which is about to be making about 15 grand for this night projected. Amazing. You know, if you would have asked me a couple months ago, there was months I was like,

I don't know if I'm going to make any money. Right. It was very up and down, especially with I have a lot of travelers over the summer. I try to finish up a lot of projects going into that. And then the introvert in me stopped my sales funnel. I don't know. It spirals really fast, but I got to the point that this is. going to be by this month. Yeah, with the 15-K. So in a year and a half, you went

making $4,000 a month at your 9 to 5. And then you had a bunch of conversations. Didn't really spend any money other than a little, you know, tech tool, software tool. 20 bucks a month when I was getting started. Yeah. Yeah. So $4,000 a month working for the man pre-tax to, you know, $10 to $15,000 a month working for yourself. That's right. And you're not professionally trained. You don't own sales abilities. You just like tinkering with software tools and AI tools. and you provide value to people and then they ask how they can pay you for.

Yeah. And I think the proof behind it is I put in the time, they see the content going out. They see the demos and they see everything that I've made for others because I've been recording it along the way. So I don't need a degree to prove that I could do these things. I have all the proof in the world that I can provide people. What percentage of your revenue today is coming from those first 12 versus people after that?

Yeah, the month I'm having right now, I probably about have 50% of the revenue. of the people being first engagement clients and then the other half being clients that I've been working with. Wow. I mean, so you were able to more than replace your income solely from your personal network. Yes. Right. And then everything above that is coming from either referrals from that personal network or people that you found sense then. And really the people you found since then are still kind of in your personal network. You're just expanding your network by joining these networking groups and actually reaching out. What tools do you use to do all these? Like, what are

your favorite tools? Yeah, I, A, make it whatever tools the businesses are currently using. So I make it my business to understand. Yeah. But if, you know, you're not using any AI tools or any platforms right now, as of August of 2026, I would just say, jump into Claude. You can learn everything you can about Claude. Don't get distracted by all the other shiny objects out there. Based on what we know right now and what's working with people, I would just do blog. Okay. What, like, non-AI tools or other AI tools, like CRM. Yeah. Mike,

I've done a lot within Go High Level. They have a lot of, that's the CRM platforms. I use a lot. I've done, you know, a lot of like naturally.

Salesforce and HubSpot and all these other large CRM systems. And then from the automation side, it was a lot of NAM, which is just strictly automation bills for people. If this step happens in a business workflow,

then these steps of actions happen. Yeah. Obviously. Okay. And how are you finding new customers today? Yeah. When you take the time to do so. I reach out to 10 people every day doing the same thing I've been doing for the past year.

I go into my contacts and I see who do I, you know, what sort of value can I provide? Maybe I think I want to run a education group based around this information or this deliverable. Who can I potentially provide that to in my network? I go in, you know, text 10 people or I call 10 people who I consider my friends now. I've been doing this for a year now. Hey, you know, I'm going to be building this alongside other business owners. are you interested in joining us? So much easier so.

Yeah. And, you know, I don't feel any guilt at all in doing that because I feel like I'm giving them so much value in these offers that it outweighs any sort of like, you know, salesy feeling that I've had. So if you generate 25,000 from the first 150 customers, and that 25,000 is growing, right? Just imagine if you had those same 150 conversations today. And instead of your positioning as, I think these are tools are cool, I just want to know how I can help you. Instead of that, it's, yeah, I make $15,000 a month solving problems with AI for business

owners. That's right. And I can do that for you. Yeah. Like your close rate will be orders of magnitude higher. Yeah, especially if you understand the problems they have and that's just through genuine conversation. Yeah. How important are networking groups in person stuff especially? It's everything. It's everything. It's, I would not be where I am without it. Because I mean, let's be honest, there's a lot of AI dudes out there, right? The guys with that. where drop shipping dudes became crypto dudes became, you know, and I've been that guy. I'm not really guilty too. Dude, I'm not.

I love those guys. Yeah. I'd rather have that guy in my corner than the guy who's been an account executive for 14 years. Yeah. Right? Because they're out there. They're trying stuff. So I'm not dogging on those guys.

But there's a lot of those guys. I was flipping real estate two years ago. Yeah. Amazing. Oh, yeah. Real. I forgot that. I've done that too.

But like, when you're in person, then you're in the 1% because the other guy. are in the 90%? They won't do it. They don't want to. They could, but they don't want to. I mean, Cincinnati is not a huge area. What other tips or tricks do you have for people to be successful at this? Yeah, I think trying to establish mentorship wherever you can, get in the rooms with the people that are the step ahead of you or even three steps ahead of you by understanding how they got there. And a lot of it is through this genuine relationship building. You'll quickly find out. And obviously, there's just been strategies that are doing so. The two strategies that I kind of split equally is seek to serve and pay to play.

Seek to serve, meaning I am going to try to provide value to this mentor in any way I can, hopefully to receive guidance in return. Pay to play being, I am going to pay to be in these rooms with these people or pay for these coaches. These consultants tell me out along the way. Yeah. Now, what about the theory that, geez, I don't want to show this guy how to vibe good because then he's going to make his own website?

Has your thinking on that evolved over time, or is that a genuine concern? certain that people should have. Because some people say, give away the secrets, sell the implementation. Do you agree with that or not? I give every old thing away. I just, I will give away. If I, you know, I give all my trade secrets away. I follow the exact format I use to teach the cohort groups. I will tell you exactly what I do. But I think people still are looking for the partners like me who have this sort of build their mindset, have sort of operational brain to work alongside you and to be a thought leader and to be on top of the AI spin and everything that's happening these days with AI, they want to have these jangling connections with me moving forward.

In these cohort groups, I tell people exactly what I'm doing to build and I don't leave any secrets. So theoretically, you could go off and do all these things on your own. You'll never need me again. But I find over and over again that by providing all this value, people would rather continue to work with you know, because they said, wow, look what Ryan did with 1,000 of my, you know. thousand dollars that I made and look what he created for yeah so let's continue this relationship well it's like I don't want to show this guy how to fish because I'm catching all this fish I show him out a fish he doesn't need to buy for me anymore but what happens when you show him how to fish is that

then he learns how to fish then he comes to you like hey how do I catch bass oh well that's a whole other thing how do I catch trout well that's cold water that's right well can you show I want to catch bass I'm sick of eating catfish all day it's like it just gives them more and more opportunities to pay you money for sure so instead of selling fish you're selling coaching, you're selling consulting, you're selling a subscription service of lures. You know what I'm saying? You just got to have faith that it will work out better if you believe in the law of abundance as woo-woo's sounds and just give it all the way. Absolutely. You know, come back tenfold. We don't bury our talents. Right. Now, tell me about the DASA framework.

Yeah, this is, I use a bunch of frameworks in my work. I like to follow the Alex Formosies in the world who use frameworks and subscribe any sort of business solutions they have. But this is the framework that I use to lead up to any AI project. So whether it's in sales, marketing, this is the path I follow. And it starts with the D, which is diagnose, which essentially means finding the problem

that they're looking to solve. A lot of people are trying to solve non-existent problems using AI. And that's the waste of time. You want to actually be getting some sort of outcome from what we're trying to build. So that's the D. A stands for articulates,

saying what the dream solution would look like for your business. If we built something like this, for instance, my team wouldn't have to work, you know, the full 40 hours a week on this because a lot of this is taken off their plates. It could be more time saved or more money made, whatever, you know, whatever sort of spin you want to put on it. The S stands for systemize, which means try to bring all of the ideas together from your team, try to bring in SOPs or, you know, standard operating procedures about what is currently working. Who are people in the space that are doing this properly?

Let's study them. system that would work that we could plug AI into because if you have a working system already with a lot of manpower and a lot of manual work then AI will make that so much easier for you. So I think like the slogan I love to use is if you're automating chaos, you're scaling chaos. That's what I'm trying to prevent with using this sort of framework with everything I build. So then finally, AI can be implemented into a project. If you're automating chaos, you're scaling chaos. It's kind of like a business.

Do you watch the office? in the episode where he starts Michael Scott paper company and his accountant's like you're out of business. The more paper you sell, the more money you lose because you're selling paper out of loss and he's like crunching numbers again. He's like crunch. Did anything change? No. It's like that's what happens when you sell something in a loss.

You don't want to sell more of it. Right. If you automate chaos, you're scaling chaos. Yeah. And then it puts a bad flavor in your mouth about all the tech that we're implementing. Chat Chabit doesn't work or these automations don't work. You just had a really bad system to start with. AI is using the. data that you feed it, give it the, you know, proper information all work with.

Yeah. I like to call it A of the DASO framework articulate. That's like the aha moment. You articulate the problem to them that they're experiencing, but they don't have a structure around. Right. You're like, oh, so you're telling me that, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, yes. Right. But get it. And then it's like buy in. Some of this is happening on the calls that I'm doing with people. Yeah. Yeah. We're always, well, A, you know, the hard part is trying to get the problem out of their mouth. But then what, you know, I could give them that our aha moment on the call. And then once we start to work together in a paid fashion, we could take over with the systemize and AI implementation steps together.

Now, if you, it sounds like you're taking three calls for you to close your average deal, right? Where would you place call number one, two, and three along this framework? One is, you know, the D and the A step. Both of them? Yeah. Because a lot of people kind of know the problems they're currently having in their business. Yeah. Sometimes you have to get it out of them, right?

Sometimes we're like, well, how is your, you know, this revenue track and how is this different? different offering going. It does sometimes, you know, first call oftentimes could be just the diagnosed step. But I try to get through the first two steps on the first call. And then the articulates stuff kind of snowballs into the second and third call of people typically. Okay. And then the rest of it is post close. Correct. How do you, I've talked to a lot of people that do AI implementation. Some of them struggle to ask a question good enough to elicit a good enough answer about what they're struggling with in their business. Because if you're a business owner, and I'm trying to solve problems with AI for you.

And if I ask you something generic, like, what problems are you struggling with in your business right now? Yeah. They have all kinds, but they don't know how to match their actual problems with the answer to that question. So are there any, like, creative workarounds to bubbling that out of them?

It's still one of the most challenging things I face. But I love asking, like, what is keeping you up at night? Like, what is the thing that is haunting you because you're going to have to go deal with it the next day? Yeah. There's oftentimes, I have a lot of solutions. I could fix the problems that are really, like, haunting people.

Like, you know, I'm not making enough money to pay my staff. Like, well, let's dive into that more. Or, you know, this one project is going wrong in all these different ways. Let's dive deep into these. This is like, you know, I want to help you solve these problems with my specific expertise. Yeah. You've heard the phrase with regards to, like, prompting AI. Garbage in, garbage out.

Garbage out. Yeah. The quality of your question equals the quality of your answers. For sure. So generically, if you go to church or hang out. out of people. How you doing? Good. How you doing? Good. Stupid question, stupid answer. Yeah. I was on a podcast once where the first question was, what was the last thing you cried about? Yeah. I'm like, I just said. So I'm like, first of all, I'm a little embarrassed to admit.

Second of all, I need like three minutes to think about that. Yeah. You know, like it's a great question and it almost always gets a great answer. So that question in this business and this industry is so critically important because if you cannot diagnose the D of the DOS. framework, aka show them that there is a disease that needs curing, then there's no disease that needs curing. But we all have problems. Even a perfectly ran business has problems that could be better optimized, right? Yeah. Any other creative ways of getting that answer other than what keeps you up tonight, which is a great one? Anything else that comes in mind? I like what your friend said on the podcast you jumped on. Like trying to get the elicit some sort of response that they

weren't expecting from you. I'm trying to think what else. That's my sort of main go-to. But I love asking like why questions when people are talking about their business. They might act like all of this is going fine. Like I don't want to, hey, I don't want to be vulnerable with this guy that I haven't talked to in years. I'm just going to talk about, you know, yeah, the marketing portion of our business is going fine. Operations are going okay. And I, you know, trying to pinpoint maybe very specific things about them. Well, what about this particular offering? Have you been able to get that off the ground? Yeah. A lot of these, you know, the questions I ask go into the studying leading up to these calls. Okay. So you're 26 years old.

What will you make this month from implementing AI into small businesses? $15,000 this month. Profit? Profit. Amazing. Everyone is saying that AI will kill small businesses. You say the opposite. Why?

This is the best time you can compete with the enterprises because you have access to the technology that allows you to do so. You have the same access that they've always had now. Yeah. And theoretically, you have even better tools than them because they're limited to what they could use based on policies and governance that they have in those organizations. you move much faster. Well, do you know how many organizations can't implement chat GPT because they don't think it's secure enough or it's not secure enough? Yeah. The hospital system I was looking at, they, you know, they're trying to move forward with their AI implementation, but it's hard, you know, it's hard to get it going for them.

Yeah. What is the most a small business has ever paid you to help them with AI? Yeah. I've been working with the same business for the past year or so now. So I've made about 15 grand working directly with them. And what have you done for them? It's been the advising. It's been business advisory, how we're implementing AI and the software tools into their company, making sure that they're on track to reaching their goals. What industry and what size of a business is this? It's a small startup. It's a tech startup. Are they funded? No. Wow. Pre-funding. And that's a friend of mine.

How much did it cost you to start an AI implementation business in total? $20. Cloud Pro? I think at the time it was Chad GPT. But yes. Back when Chad GPT was cool. Back when, yeah, that was the crazy. Yeah. What is an AI tool that everyone is hyped about that you find to be useless for business? I'm not a fan of OpenClaw, to be completely honest. Where did it go? Yeah, there's been a lot going on in the background with them working with Chad.

I can put Google Trends right now, and it's going to look like this. I don't even get to. I think it's perfectly fine for AI users like myself who understand how to use the tools to be using OpenClaw. But I don't like the fact that people are. trying to implement them into their business as fast as possible because of the access you're giving it. People just don't understand how big of a risk it is. Yeah. Why are you doing AI implementation for small businesses here in Cincinnati? We want to move to Austin, New York, San Francisco. Yeah. I mean, this is where I was born and raised and people really need it here. I love serving the

people that, you know, I grew up around, the people that, you know, have, I don't know, have served me to this point. A lot of people in, you know, the Austin, Texas is of the world or the San Francisco's, They have in-house people doing this. Or their neighbors are AI experts or AI influencers already. There's much less of us in the Midwest and particularly in Ohio. So I love being the person that people could rely on locally. And you're telling me that a shy introvert can make six figures a year implementing AI in a small business. Yeah, you could make more for sure.

Have you ever automated someone's job away? Nope. Because, I mean, we're growing up high here at the end of the day. Yeah. No jobs have been automated away. I've just tried to make them more efficient. I think I'm all about efficiency and how you could spend the majority of your time doing what actually matters versus taking, you know, the email management stuff out of my hands, things like that. Okay.

Let's say that you get a call tomorrow from a plumber with five crews. What is the first thing that you automate for him? There's a lot of logistics that go into the home service space in general. A lot of people really struggle with how can we optimize? routes. I've been working on solutions related to that recently with home service businesses. Likewise, a lot of people in the space aren't usually the most tech savvy individuals. So potentially they need tools that fit their lifestyle. And by that, I mean, let's try to find the right tooling or CRM system that their teams will actually use understanding why they might not use certain tools out there,

what confuses them about it and trying to get to the root cause of those problems. So they could grow and scale to the point they want because of the tools that they brought into their business. If a 20-year-old wants to do exactly what you do, what should they do? They should do the exact same thing I've been doing, which is trying to get in person. Don't make the mistake I bet I made a year ago and just trying to go all out online, but meet as many people as they can in person, try to find mentors and build solutions that they see problems for in their own world. You know, for instance, if you're currently in university, how can you make solutions for people in your classes or your professors?

Try to take the problems that you see around you and find solutions for it. And likewise, if you've never used AI before, I love starting by making a video game because it takes all the pressure off of you. And it puts your effort into something that's a lot of fun and engaging for you. And that's how I actually, that was my first project ever did as I made a video. What video game? It's called Liftline. It's a ski resort trivia game because I'm a big.

big into skiing and snowboarding. So I took something I love and I kind of made a wordle style game around it. That's cool. Yeah. See, I'm a small business owner and I get 20 emails a day from 26 year old AI bros. Yeah. Why should I or other small business owners hire you? Because I'm a true gogiver. If you haven't read Bob Berg's The Gogiver, I highly recommend you doing so. I try to just provide as much value as I possibly can with no real expectation and return constantly. If you need some sort of solution, I got you. I will try to make it as affordable for you as possible. And through doing so, I think people just naturally gravitate towards me. If people want to get a hold of you or hire you or learn more, how can we find you?

Yeah. I am constantly posting on social media under my name, Ryan Shooter. That's spelled S-C-H-U-E-T-E-R. We'll link to that. I'm always on YouTube. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn. That's where you'll find me most often. But I'm also starting a newsletter on Substack called the freedom-based founder. Okay. Right. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Chris.