# 181 Best AI startup idea of 2026 (I'm making $1,000/hour with it)

I currently have five clients paying me anywhere between $1,200 and $2,000 a month for 90 minutes of my time each, which works out to be over $1,000 an hour, and the service that I'm offering is dead simple. But what's interesting is the whole thing starts with a $999 AI tools assessment. So in this episode, I'm walking through the full masterclass, the four phases of the assessment, the expansion menu of upsells that you can sell after the assessment, seven ways to find clients that require zero money or zero audience, and the AI concierge offer that's currently generating the highest dollar per hour of anything I've ever done. This is the full playbook by the end of this episode, you'll be able to implement this entire business model for yourself. So let's dive in. All right, this is the full AI assessment masterclass. We're going to be going through the four phases of the assessment, the expansion menu, seven ways to sell it, and then the my favorite upsell of them all, the AI concierge upsells. So first and foremost, let's start with the AI tools assessment. So what is it first and foremost? So the AI tools assessment is where we sit down with the business owner for 45 minutes. We interview them on a Zoom call to pull out their pain points, and then we take that transcript of that call. We feed it to Claude. Claude analyzes their pain points and then finds anywhere from three to seven off the shelf AI tools that the business owner can implement immediately to reclaim five to 10 hours per week or more. And then we deliver that all in a report and then we can upsell the business owner on additional services after that. We charge $999 for the AI tools assessment. So that is the business model in a nutshell, right? Now, let's talk about each phase in detail. So let's talk about phase one, the discovery call. What do we say on this discovery call? How does it work? So it's a 45 minute call. You can do it on Zoom or on Google Meet. You've got to make sure you have an AI note taker present in the call. I like to use Fathom. I think it's Fathom.video. It's completely free. Now the purpose of this call is to pull out problems. All we're doing on this call is we are asking questions. We are not pitching. We are not prescribing. We are simply uncovering pain. So the key questions to ask on this call are things like walk me through yesterday. What do you do yesterday in your job? What tasks do you dread? Where does work tend to pile up? What if you tried to automate in the past and then failed? All right, so that is all we're doing on the discovery call. We are pulling out those questions, all those pain points, and letting the AI note taker transcribe the whole thing so that we have that transcript. Now phase two, the AI analysis. So during phase two, this is where, and we've actually built a skill that in-clod, right, we can take the transcript, paste it into cloud, run the skill, and cloud does the full phase to for us in like five minutes, completely autonomously. Now we actually give that skill to our AI operator academy community members. If you're interested in joining the community, the link's going to be in the description or in the show notes. But you could just prompt cloud yourself to do this for you, right? It's going to take a little more time and you're going to have to be a little more precise with your prompt. So you could create a prompt, turn it into a skill. But at the end of the day, all we're doing is we're having cloud go out there and find, like I said, three to seven tools that fix the pain points that we identified from the discovery call. So during this analysis step, cloud is going to pull out the actual pain points from the transcript, then go find the tools that fix those pain points, right? Cloud is going to be able to catch patterns that you might have missed during the actual call itself. So it's going to pull out those tools, it's going to go and find those tools. And for the tools that it finds, sometimes you might find that it's not perfect, right? It might prescribe a tool that you don't agree with or you don't feel as a good fit. So anytime that's the case, I like to go to a website called futurepedia.io or there's an AI for that.com. These are both big AI tools directories that have thousands of AI tools and their group by industry. So you can go and search for any tools that you might need to kind of fill in the gaps or anything that cloud couldn't find you. So those are two really important websites for filling in the gaps of phase two. So bottom line by the end of phase two, you're going to have three to seven tools that fix the pain points that you uncovered from phase one. All right. Now phase three is the actual report. So this is the deliverable that we show clients that includes all of our prescriptions, all of the tools that we found in phase two. And I'm going to show you guys in a second what the design template actually looks like. But at the end of the day, it just includes a few simple sections. We've got an executive summary, an effort versus impact matrix, the exact tool recommendations that we found in step two, a four day quick win start plan and the financial impact to their business. So I'll show you guys exactly what that template looks like here in a second. All right. So here's the actual report template that we fill in and give to clients. So and you guys actually you can download this template completely free at audit template.ai. It's also going to be in the description in the in the show notes. I've open sourced this template so you guys can go and plug and play and use it for your clients. But at the end of the day, it's pretty simple, right? It's just nine slides. We've got a title slide, executive summary where we quantify the pain, the outcome, the primary focus and the hours they can reclaim each week. Then this is the effort versus impact matrix that we talked about. These are the quick wins where we just kind of very quickly summarize the quick wins. Recommended solution. So this is where we lay out all the tools that we're prescribing, four day quick wins plan, the what comes after quick wins, which is where we kind of tee up any upsell opportunities for the client. And then the financial impact slide monthly net ROI weekly time returned total monthly tool costs and the next steps, which is where we have a call to action button for them to schedule their review call, which is actually part four of the entire playbook. So again, that's a report pretty simple and on phase four, that is where we schedule the review call where we walked through the report with them in like a screen share format. So we get on another call with the client and we're screen sharing the report, right? We're walking through it and saying, Hey, you had this pain point. Well, this tool can solve it and this is how much it costs and this is how you set it up. We walk through each recommendation one by one. And then we ask some very important closing questions, things like, well, which of these is the most urgent for you to implement right now? Do you want to do it yourself or do you want help? And then what is your timeline for implementation? There's 50 to 60% of the time they are going to want your help in implementing what you would prescribe to them, right? They're going to say, this is great. But hey, I'm a business owner. I'm busy. I'm working 50, 60 hours a week. I actually don't have time to implement this. Can I just pay you to help me do it? And that is where we go next, right? So that leads us in to the next part of the playbook, which is the expansion menu, right? That's where we say like $999 for the report. That's just the front door where we really make our money is in the expansion menu and an AI concierge, which we will talk about towards the end of the episode. So what's on the expansion menu? What can we sell them after we've sold in the assessment? So from one, we can do a process redesign, right? This is where we look at a current process in their business and then we map it to what the ideal future state looks like. So this is a real service. We've sold this anywhere from $3,300. For example, we had a client who was an e-commerce seller who had an advertising workflow that took them about 10 hours per week. And we charged them $3,500 to look at the process as it is today and literally just optimize the process. Say, hey, right now the process is 18 steps. Here's what it would look like in a perfect world and it would be nine steps. So we charged, like I said, $3,500 for that and we didn't even automate anything. We didn't even implement AI. We just fixed the broken process first and then to automate that is a separate project, right? So you can charge a lot of money to just simply fix people's broken processes. So that's a great upsell that comes from the assessment. Next, we can sell just a simple automation build, something like a Zapier automation or a make.com workflow. This is usually best for just like a simple process that a business owner has that it's very clear, you know, there's a simple input, there's a simple output, they're doing it manually and they need to automate it. So those are, you can charge, you know, one to three K sometimes five, six, seven K depending on the complexity, but a lot of times these are just a simple Zapier or make.com workflow automation build. Next, you've got things like knowledge systems. So these are some of my favorite things to sell. This could be something like a second brain for a client. This could be something like a custom GPT. A great example of this is we've got a client who's a business broker and every time he lists a business for sale, he gets like 400 emails from people who are interested in buying that business. And he was like, man, I wish I had like AI that they could just talk to to get answers to their questions because every time it's the same five questions that he's getting asked. So what we did is we built him a custom GPT trained on the marketing package for that listing. And so instead of giving out his email to interested buyers, he gave them a link to the custom GPT and they loved it, right? Both the seller of the business. business and the potential buyers both gave him feedback that it was the best experience they've had with the broker because now they don't have to wait on a response from him. They can get their response immediately from the custom GPT. So that's a really good example of a knowledge system and we charged three grand for that. Next is a custom workflow. So this is where you could kind of mix and match things from the rest of the menu. So this could be like a prompt pack, a skill pack, templates, a Zapier build, all in one. These are custom workflows. Usually it's going to be like a set of Claude skills that you build for the business owner. And depending on how much time it saves them, you can charge at least three to five K sometimes more. Lastly would be a full implementation. So that is where you're combining, you know, most of if not all of the previous pieces of the expansion menu into more of a full implementation that you can charge anywhere from five to 10 K or more for. And you might be building them a custom AI agent, like a Hermes agent, or you might be automating an entire customer onboarding workflow for an agency, for example, you can easily charge five to 10 K or more for that full automation. All right. Now let's talk about how to sell it because that's everybody's biggest bottleneck. It's like, okay, I know I know how to build. I know what to say, but I don't know how to sell it. So there's seven ways that we can sell these automations of these builds or whatever you want to call them that don't require any money. They don't require you having an audience. They just require a little bit of hustle and grit. So first and foremost is hosting an AI meetup, right? This is something I'm doing every month in Q3 here locally in Charlotte. And so where you go to a local co-working space, you partner with them or you pay them a little bit of money to be able to rent their space, and you host a local AI for business meetup. And at this meetup, you simply spend 20 minutes teaching about one specific topic. Usually it's just how do I use cloud? How do I use cloud co-work, right? And then you get people's contact information at the door and you follow up with them within 24 hours and offer a free mini AI assessment and then upsell them on the full assessment from there. So this is a method that takes a little bit of time to compound. Really in month one, are you going to get your client? Maybe, maybe not. But by month three, five, six, etc. You will have established a really good local network. It will get a lot of leads from this and you will be the go to person that people think of when they think of AI because you're the host of the meetup. Next is to door knock local businesses. I had a guide DM me on Instagram recently talking about how he went up inside to 30 different local businesses in his town and did exactly what I said earlier. He pitched them on a free mini AI assessment and of those 30 he set up five meetings and of those five meetings, two of those people became clients. So this is like old school, nobody wants to do it. Most people are too afraid to do it. But if you need a client today or this week, this is the way to do it. Go knock on the door by going into a local business, asking to talk to the owner, ask to talk to the manager and offer them a free 15 minute AI assessment and then upsell them into the full one. Third LinkedIn DMs, right? Another one that's pretty simple than anyone can do, you're just going to target CEOs or entrepreneurs who have anywhere from 10 to 50 employees. You're going to look for people in your local area on LinkedIn and you're going to simply ask about their pain points and ask about how they're using AI. We're not going to pitch in the first message. We're just probing to get a feel for how are they using AI today. If we send 20 DMs a day for 30 days, we are 100% going to schedule meetings that is a guarantee. And again, the key is asking about pain. We're not pitching. And again, we can offer the free mini assessment as a lead magnet to get them on the hook and get them on a call to then upsell them the full assessment. Next is free audits, right? Free assessments. Exactly what I was saying for all the other methods. Actually this is the method you should start with because we're reaching out to our existing network. So this is where we are sending text messages to 10, 15, 20 people that we already know, that already know us, that we know our business owners either from church or from the gym or from the kids school or wherever. We're sending them text messages saying, hey, I'm offering free AI assessments. It's a 15 minute assessment where we uncover one bottleneck in your business. If it works, if you like it, I'd love to get a testimony on. I'd love to talk to you about the full paid assessment. Are you interested? That's all we're doing here. Super simple. You're going to get a couple of deals from that. Five is agency partners. So going out there and finding the coaches, the agencies, the accountants, the CPAs, the attorneys, the people out there who already have clients that are your ideal client and offering to be a AI referral for them. So think about your CPA, right? Like chances are your CPA has 50 or 100 clients. All of those clients want to know more about AI. And they're, you bet they're asking your CPA about AI and he doesn't know how to answer. So if you go to him and say, hey, whenever your clients have questions about AI, send them to me. I'm happy to help. You can become the AI guy for your other professionals in your life. And then you can create a really good, mutually beneficial referral relationship there. If you end up doing business with any of their clients, you kick them back 10%. It's that simple. Next is office hours. So this is where you approach a local co-working space and you offer to host a free weekly AI office hours at the co-working space. Now this is hugely beneficial to both you and the co-working space because the co-working space gets a free AI workshop for their tenants. So it's a huge value ad for people that are already there and people that are considering paying to be a part of that co-working space. And it's a huge benefit to you because you get a captive audience of people who are interested in AI who are already business owners in person that trust you because they're in person with you and you can turn those people into paying clients. In fact, we had a guy, we have a guy in our AI operator academy community named Dennis who did his very first free AI office hours at a co-working space this week. He posted a picture in the community he had about nine people show up and two of those people turned into warm leads that he has follow up calls with and he very likely will turn them into paying clients. All because he contacted a co-working space, pitched them on doing a free AI office hours, him and his brother showed up and educated the room for an hour and he got two really qualified leads out of it and they're going to turn into deals. Now the last one is post your wins, right? This is one that a lot of people are afraid to post their wins. They think they're bragging or they think that nobody cares or they think that it's arrogant, but it's really not. If you get a win for a client or even if you just answer somebody's question about AI, like it could be that simple screenshot the text message with permission of course, post it on LinkedIn and say, "Hey, my friend Dave had this question about how to use cloud co-work. This is the answer that I gave him. I'm sure a lot of other people have that same question. Hope this helps." It can be that simple, right? Simply documenting your results, posting your wins as much as you can. I understand if you're early on three to five times a week might be a stretch because you don't have that many wins. The bottom line is whenever you get a win, post about it and do that for 90 days and you're going to be top of mind in the minds of your ideal prospect and when it's time for them to hire somebody for AI or it's time for them to want to learn about AI, you're going to be the first person that comes to mind. All right. All of that is great, but what I think is the very, very best part of this entire video and of this entire process is the AI concierge offer. This is my very favorite thing to upsell after a paid assessment, even more so than everything on the expansion menu. What is AI concierge? This is a done with you consulting offer. This is a monthly retainer. This is monthly recurring revenue where we sit down with a business owner for two 45-minute calls per month and they share their screen and we are literally helping them implement AI build clawed skills to automate some of the tasks that are in their business. And again, this is done with you. We're not having to build some fancy automation. We're not having to go off and spend six hours on a weekend building like a Zapier flow. We're doing two 45-minute calls a month. That's it. That's a whole deliverable. In between calls, we are giving them unlimited access to us via Voxer, which is a walkie-talkie app. And what you'll find is that nobody even hits you up on Voxer. It is a high perceived value. The client sees unlimited access and they're like, oh, this is great. I can call Corey whenever I need to help me with any AI problems realistically, nobody ever calls. I've been doing this for three months. I have five AI concierge clients. I have gotten a grand total of four Voxer messages and only from two clients. Three of the clients have literally never even hit me up on Voxer. So it's a very high perceived value, but nobody ever really uses it even though they can and they should. We promise a 12 business hour response time. It's like, hey, if you hit me up on Voxer, I will respond in 12 business hours or less. Now when you're charging $1,200 a month for $2,45 minute calls, really your hourly rate is about $750 per hour. When you're charging $1,500 a month, you're going to be able to get a $1,500. charging $1,500 a month, your hourly rate is $1,000 an hour, and when you're charging $2,000 a month, your hourly rate is about $1,250 an hour. Now, I have five clients on this offer right now, 1 at 1,200 a month, 2 at 1,500 a month, 1 at 1,800 a month, and 1 at 2,000 a month. So all in all, my blended hourly rate is like $1,11,000 or $1,200 an hour, something like that. So this is a really high dollar per hour service that is 99.9% net margin. Alright, so that is the offer. What do we cover in the actual sessions? Right? What do we actually do with the client? So on the very first call, what we do is we set them up with Claude Coer. We onboard them to Claude Coer. We do things like set up their context files, set up their global instructions, connect their tools, all the things that we need to do inside Claude Coer to make the rest of our engagement together, 10 times more successful. We do all of that on call one, and we actually built a Claude plugin that we give to our AI operator Academy community members, that they can literally download, give to their clients, and it's a guided onboarding that they can walk through with their clients. So the client runs this plugin, and it literally walks them through, okay, here's how we build your context files. Here's how we generate your global instructions. Here's how we connect your tools. And then we are just on the call to babysit the client through that. So our community members, we give that plugin to them. And that's what I do for my clients. I literally email them the plugin and walk through it with them on the first call. Now for every call after that, we are literally just building skills for their existing workflows. So we are running what we call AOA audit optimize automate on all of their workflows, one at a time. So we are auditing the workflow by saying, okay, show me how you're doing this task today. Walk me through it. They walk me through it on screen. And then we, oh, we optimize, right, we cut out the fat. Usually it's a 15 step process. It only needs to be eight. So we fix the process first and then we a automate, which means we just turn that into a cloud skill. So I'm sitting there with them. They're sharing their screen inside their cloud. And I'm telling them, you know, type this prompt this connect this tool, make this fix, right. We're literally just coaching them on how to use cloud co work. That is the entire model that's all we do on every call. Right. And then lastly, what makes it feel premium are all the bells and whistles that we include with the offer itself. So before we start the, the, the first call, we send them an onboarding form, right. This onboarding form gives us a big inventory of everything that we're going to cover during the engagement. So it says things like, you know, what is your biggest, what would be your biggest win over 90 days for this engagement. And they might say something like, oh, well, if we automated XYZ task, that would be the 90 day win. And they just kind of give us all their goals for this engagement, which literally turns into the roadmap of everything that we complete over the course of 90 days. So that's a questionnaire that we send them before call one. It takes them maybe 10 minutes to complete, but we can jump right into call one and hit the ground running instead of having to figure out where to start on the call. So it just makes the engagement feel a lot more professional. Next, we give them actually a one-pager in notion that is kind of their client hub, right. So this is where all of their client information lives. This is where their call recordings live. This is where we list out the top three takeaways from each call. This is where we list out the action items from each call. And most importantly, where we list out an inventory of everything that we built on the call. So inside that notion hub, we say things like, okay, today we built these three context files and we built these two skills and we generated these global instructions. So they can look at that notion and be like, oh, wow, this is everything we built together. We're really moving the needle. This is a lot of deliverables. I'm going to keep renewing every month. Right. So it's these little bells and whistles that we include with the engagement that make it feel premium, that make it feel worth them paying anywhere from $1200 to $2,000 a month. So that is the full AI concierge and AI assessment modules and a nutshell. Again, this is in my opinion, AI assessments best startup idea of 2026. Anybody can sell them. You don't need experience. All you're doing is asking questions and prescribing tools. It's so simple. AI concierge is a bit more advanced. But if you have that, you know, that consulting mindset and you have the ability to know cloud co work and teach it at a high level, you can easily make $1,000 per hour being an AI concierge. Again, if you guys want the report template for the assessment, that's in the description in the show notes. If you guys want this full diagram here, also going to be in the description in the show notes completely free for you guys. If you want to learn how to do this at an even deeper level and have my support and accountability and answering all your questions and facilitating this for you, then I encourage you to join our AI operator academy community. Again, link in the description and in the show notes. Thank you so much for watching slash listening and I will be back soon.