This podcast episode features Greg and guest Billy Howell, who demonstrate how to build and run a business using Grokbot, an AI agent team tool. Billy shares his experience running a local newsletter called The Arlington Bagel, which he now operates entirely with Grokbot after his intern left. The key insight is that Grokbot is most effective when used with constraints—limiting the number of agents to avoid token waste and context bloat. Billy recommends starting with a chief of staff agent that audits your existing business, sets a revenue-focused mission, and suggests creating only essential agents like research, sales, or platform-specific experts. He emphasizes a three-phase approach: build the team in week one, execute without tinkering in week two, and expand or automate in week three. Automation through routines and skills is crucial for scaling, but Billy warns against over-engineering, advising users to let agents work on their own cloud computers and only interface through the chief of staff. Beyond newsletters, he explores other business ideas like Shopify stores for product sourcing and SEO directories using a simple tech stack. The episode stresses starting small, focusing on one project, and iterating—Grokbot can generate revenue through sponsorships, ad sales, or product sales, making it a cost-effective tool for non-technical entrepreneurs. Billy concludes by encouraging listeners to commit to a single project for a month and see tangible progress.
Grokbot is here and there's a reason why it's going viral.
I mean, anyone who's non-technical could spin up these agent teams
and actually run a business end-to-end.
Today's episode is for anyone who's interested in starting a business,
running a business that is completely run by AI agents.
And we show you not just big ideas that you can run,
small ideas that you can run using Grokbot agent teams
that do $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, $25,000 a month.
I had my friend on Billy Howell come on the podcast
and show you exactly how he runs his local newsletter business
using Grokbot agent.
So this episode is for anyone who's interested in starting a business
that actually has agents running the entire thing.
We're going to show you how to use Grokbot.
We're going to show you how to spin up these agents.
We're going to show you the best practices.
We're going to show you the business ideas that work here.
Enjoy the episode.
I'll see you at the end.
And I can't wait to see what you build.
Thank God Billy Howell is here.
And Billy, by the end of this episode, what are people going to learn?
You're going to get an inside look at a business that I built and run with Grokbot.
And you're going to come away with how you can set up your own business using Grokbot.
Okay.
And a little birdie told me that you think Grokbot is like the best place.
That anyone could run agent teams, right?
So you're going to go through the best practices of Grokbot, how you're using it.
You're a guy who literally tests every single tool.
You test hundreds of tools to millions of people with the rundown.
You're going to show us how Grokbot works.
You're going to give us the best practices.
You're going to tell us how we can use Grokbot to build businesses and run agent teams.
And by the end of the episode, can you commit that the person that is going to give their time to this episode,
will have a better understanding than anyone on the internet to run a business with Grokbot?
Yeah, 100%.
Because most of the content I see around Grokbot is wrong.
They totally don't understand why this tool is powerful.
And I'm going to just transmute all that information to people's brains
because I'm so excited about this and it's all I think about.
All right, let's do it.
Okay.
So Grokbot is this new agent team tool.
And if you haven't seen it,
it looks like this, Greg.
Now, what we're looking at here is the team that runs my newsletter.
My newsletter is called the Arlington Bagel.
You can see it here on the hat.
Pretty sweet.
And it goes out to 6,000 Arlingtonians every Thursday.
And I used to have an intern, my cousin Marshall, run this newsletter.
He would research it.
He would put it together.
He would edit it.
He would man the email desk.
But cousin Marshall, he would edit it.
Cousin Marshall, I had to let him go because Grokbot is just so much better.
Sorry, cousin Marshall.
What actually happened is he went to work at a summer camp where they don't have internet.
So Grokbot kind of saved me.
And Greg, have you used Grokbot yet?
I have.
Okay, cool.
How many agents do you have over here?
I have one, two, three, four, five, six.
Six.
Okay.
Okay.
So the best thing I think about Grokbot is that you have a limited amount of agents.
I did the math on this, and I think it's about 76 or 88 possible unique agents.
Because when you set them up, you've only got this many shape and color combinations.
And you can upload a custom avatar.
But the point is, it's all built around constraints.
And that's why it's so useful for me.
Because if you're like me, you probably use lots of agents.
You probably have agent tools.
You probably have lots of business ideas.
And what that turns into is an agent for every single task you think of.
A chat GPT thread, you'll never come back to.
A clogged co-work project folder that sits there until you remember about it two weeks later.
But what I like about Grokbot is you are forced to be mission-oriented.
Because it's one thread.
One bot.
It's DMs.
It's like talking to a teammate.
And I actually think that design thing is one of its best selling points.
Color and shape is all the human brain needs to differentiate something.
So you can easily recognize all your different little teammates here.
Versus like a gray thread in chat GPT or cloud.
I find this tool saves you so much on switching costs and organization.
So right off the bat, we're saving time using this.
Am I sounding crazy here?
Talking about the design of the agents in Grokbot?
Well, you're not.
I think like, you know, a few weeks ago, the buzz was all around Jack Dorsey's buzz product.
Which I think was such an interesting product.
But I think what, you know, I posted a video about it.
And a lot of people were just like, I don't know how to get this started.
You know, it was a lot of the technical people liked it.
But what it feels like is Grokbot is almost like a non-technical version of some of the features of Buzz.
So if you're non-technical and you want an agent team and you want this almost like Slack-like experience,
Grokbot is a good place to start.
Now, I think the big question that a lot of people have is,
and this is what I want to get to by the end of this episode is,
you know, it's not cheap.
It's, you know, $200, $300 a month.
You know, if, yeah, how can we, yeah, how can we, you have it right there.
How can we make Grokbot pay for itself?
5x, 10x, 20x, 50x.
Where do we go?
Okay, Greg, you're not going to like this.
But you're going to have to pick one project to work on with Grokbot.
Okay.
So the problem that I've found as someone who uses lots of AI tools and builds lots,
lots of business ideas is you can't, you can't,
you don't have enough tokens to build four businesses as one at once.
You're going to go into debt paying for tokens.
And even worse than that,
you're going to have context bleed that's going to make all of your agents less effective.
So how Grokbot works is these guys actually run on the cloud,
which is different than a lot of agents kind of team products that you use.
I don't know.
Well, they spin up a computer.
That's the difference here, right?
Is they spin up virtual machines for your agents?
Virtual machine.
They all live on one computer in the cloud.
I like pretty sure on that.
I actually hadn't thought.
But why that's important is if I do my newsletter in here and then I also do like managing my Twitter
and then also I'm sorting receipts in my Gmail.
That's just going to add context bloat.
That's going to add files.
To trip them up.
It's going to slow you down and it's going to ultimately burn tokens that go towards your limit.
I've noticed that the Grokbot usage plan is pretty generous.
I think in the first week I used it pretty heavily,
but was able to get through week one with like 10% of my usage left.
And that's me running one newsletter.
So Greg,
like imagine someone starting two new,
two businesses and managing their email.
You're going to hit that limit and you're going to be like,
well,
I just set $200 on fire and you're going to be frustrated.
So I think you need to pick.
So can you walk us through like,
okay,
your cousin quits.
You need to,
you need to create an agent team,
like walk us through some of your agents,
how people could think about best practices,
setting them up and,
and,
and just give us the sauce.
Yeah,
man.
So when you start,
they give you,
they give you a bunch of preloaded agents that I can't recreate here,
but I let,
I picked chief of staff from the list.
And then because I already had an existing business.
So if you have an existing business,
I'll give it access to your existing business docs and have it do day one,
just like an audit research kind of plan.
So I had it look at my notion,
my slack,
my Gmail.
And I said,
Hey,
take stock of this business.
And then I need you to tell me the,
the top three agents that you suggest we create first for this team to drive
revenue,
right?
Our mission is to drive revenue.
So what do we need?
And so my chief of staff went,
if we scroll back far enough,
I can probably find it.
But that's probably not worth doing.
It kind of took it.
So it took a deep look at everything and it said,
okay,
we're going to need a research agent that researches the newsletter items.
So it's a local newsletter and we,
we give you three things to do every weekend and restaurant,
new restaurant news,
right?
So it was like,
we need a research agent.
We,
and then chief of staff was like,
I'm going to edit it.
The first issue,
we're not going to do an editorial bot yet.
So we just started with research sales.
And then the newsletter goes through beehive.
So it suggested we have a beehive expert agent that just,
anytime we have a question about,
can we do this in beehive?
have, like, how does this look in VF stuff like that, it goes
to that. So if your business is really dependent on a platform, say you want to set up a Shopify
store, which is something we'll talk about. Definitely having a Shopify dedicated agent
is a good idea just so your chief of staff doesn't have to be an expert in everything.
So is what I'm hearing the first step is to set up a chief of staff?
Set up a chief of staff. You need to figure out how to get your team mission aligned. And so
the mission of your business should be to make money. And that's where you need to start.
Have it set up three teammates to start. One of the pitfalls I see people make is
having their agents make too many decisions for them. So for example, I've been struggling with
where does our content live when we're writing the newsletter? Does it live in a Notion database?
Does it live in local files? Do we have it in Google Sheets? Agent hasn't been able to make
a choice for three weeks. So finally, I was just like, we're doing Notion, no more tinkering.
Okay. So for some reason, I think that's just a rabbit hole people get stuck in with AI is
shopping around for the perfect solution. So at some point, you're the person that has to make
the decision, not the agent. And so then I suggest once you build the team, just run the damn ball.
Run with that team for a week and see what you can get done. So
you're starting fresh. Use that team to buy a domain, set up your website, help you set up a
new Gmail, help you make your first sales list. So think about your chief of staff as the CEO of
the business. CEO is not going to be able to run the business if it doesn't know how it works. So
I'll give you an example. Say you want to set up an outbound sales agent for your newsletter and
sell ad space. Have your chief of staff do that exact task once. And then once it does it and you've
reviewed it and it worked, be like, okay, now create an outbound bot that does that thing that
you just did. Yeah, it makes sense. Basically, you have someone, you know, you call it chief of staff.
I think of it more as like a COO type person, like someone running operations. And you're basically
saying like, before you go ahead and go crazy, creating a bunch of new agents for every single job to be done
that you can think of, the move is basically to perfect it with the chief of staff or the
COO. Get it to a point where it works. You're happy with the output. Once the output is
pretty good, then you're like, okay, I've earned the right to create another agent that just focuses
on that. And then you give, you know, I would imagine it's important to give that particular
agent a goal as well. So with the outbound agent, maybe it's like,
you need to send X amount of emails or, you know, we want Y amount of, you know, visits and stuff
like that. And then, you know, we haven't talked about it, but, you know, within GrokBot, there is
the concept of essentially a cron job or a weekly, you know, something that you can have it do on a
daily, a routine, I think it's called a routine on GrokBot, where you can have it automated, right?
Yeah, that's exactly.
Exactly. That's where I was going to next. So you don't have to do it exactly like this,
but this is how I did it. I built the team. We kind of learned how to fly the plane.
No tinkering was the week two of running it with Grok, with GrokBot. I didn't allow myself to
create any new agents, not mess around with skills. I mean, maybe add some connections,
but it was really about execution. And then week three is when we expanded the team.
So we found those gaps. So, okay, we need someone manning the Gmail inbox because chief of staff
can't be doing that every day. We need someone manning the Shopify merch shop. And then comes
automation. I mean, you can do automation at the top two after you build the original team,
if you have a good idea of how your business should work. But basically what I did was I said
to my chief of staff, bot in here, I was like, hey, based on how we ran this this week and our
team, we need someone who can set up to make progress while I am not working on this. So
I want you guys to move the ball forward while I'm sleeping automatically. And you need routines
for that. So it put together a plan. Most of these agents have, depending on their role,
a daily or weekly or biweekly end of day brief. So that's a really powerful tool with AI agents.
I pull one up. So it's got this instruction here and it's routine. This is the social one. He runs
my, he creates my graphics for Instagram and runs the content calendar. And so the instruction is
to look at your current to-dos, what's new, like basically what did you create today? What blockers
do you have? And then write a quick five-line report and send it to the chief of staff.
I think that you just five lines is all you need. More than that is you're just going to be burning
tokens and context. And then my chief of staff, bot will, it'll be, it'll pull up what's shipped,
what's stuck and what needs you. And so I told it this too. So what's been done, what's blocked and
what do I need to do to unblock? That's awesome. And the reason why it makes sense to have
agents and not just giving the chief of staff to do some of these tasks is because you don't
want to burn tokens and you don't want to cloud up the context. Is that right?
Yeah. Well, I mean, you need, you need to think about this like it's a real business and like
it's a real team. You wouldn't have the CEO or COO, let's say Greg, of a company going in and
making Instagram social posts every day. And like a real person, it takes up mental bandwidth for
that agent.
Yeah. And that's the idea. And you can click in here and see it messaging other bots and like
asking it for updates, which is pretty cool.
That is cool. I mean, that's like a, that's what's so cool about all of this. That's like a glimpse
into like the future of work where you have all these agents kind of like messaging each other,
getting work done, coordinating work together. And then you're just sitting there like kind of
and the goals and the context.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so mostly I interface through this chief of staff bot, but if I need
to go deeper on something, I cut out the middleman like you would at a real company. I would go right
to the social person and be like, Hey, uh, we need these graphics. Like I would give it feedback and
be like, can you change the subtitles? Can you change the background? Just little edits like
that. Uh, and then you can tell it like, Hey, when you're done, uh,
update chief of staff when we're done here. Uh, and it'll go report back.
So the chief of staff kind of routes tasks around.
And theoretically, you know, you could in the future create a, so, you know, bagel social
strategist that's trained on how like Akra Geisenberg does his Instagram posts and says that
like, pretend you're, you know, Akra Geisenberg, here's some contacts. Imagine he was reviewing
these posts. What would he say? And then feed that context back to social bagel social. Is that
how you do it? Yeah. Uh, I've been lately having, having it do QA loops. Um, not so I haven't done
it in rock bot yet, but in like codex, this is a general agent pattern. So what Greg's talking about
is how do I automate feedback for work product that agents create? And there's this hack basically
where you say, okay, once you do this, you're going to be able to do this. And then you're
once you've done this once, uh, create a panel of sub agents for grock bot. It could be, you know,
the chief of staff or just other agents on the team and have them do an adversarial review of
your work. Do that in three rounds. And that has got, that has made me so much progress on
stuff that normally I would have to come back and painstakingly review and critique.
I get a much more policy. It goes from like a 50% done output to, you know,
to like 90% done. Yeah. I mean, it also allows the human to be less involved, which is helpful.
Yeah. So to be less involved, but you, you really have to run, you have to be in the weeds with the
team for a couple of days, a couple of weeks before you can run it autonomously. And you do
that with the routines, like we said, uh, and you do it with having agents review work that you,
you teach them how to review.
Like you. So a useful thing could be, so say Greg, like I gave all this feedback on these posts that
it did. I could say, okay, take what we did in this thread and turn it into a skill that another
agent can use when it's reviewing. So it reviews exactly like Billy, right? And that's exactly what
you would do. And so if you want to see, do you want to see how the newsletter actually works?
Do you want to talk about like the business case? Yeah, I think, yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I do,
I think that there's thousands of
potential newsletter businesses that could be built and run with GrokBot?
Yeah, thousands for sure. So this is a local newsletter, but I've run newsletters in tech
and sports for different clients. And basically all you need to get started is a niche and where
to get the best information to put in the newsletter. So if you're really into, I don't
know, board games and you know all the best board game subreddits and the best board game review
sites and message boards, then you can make a newsletter where you aggregate and editorialize
about new board games every week, right? And so what you would do is you would get a
Beehive.
I have a Beehive account. Mine runs all through Beehive. I like to use Notion for laying out my
newsletter and you can connect GrokBot to it. It's really easy. By the way, GrokBot does connections
way better than any other agents. I think it's called plugins, right? On GrokBot?
It is called plugins. That's true. Okay. So this is a look at my newsletter in Notion.
And so in GrokBot, so sometimes this is a pro tip. If you don't see a plugin that you want to use,
or if, for example, you want to do Shopify,
Shopify can, it can like the built-in GrokBot integration or plugin just is skills for using
Shopify. I can't actually do anything in your store. So you'd have to install the Shopify
CLI. And so to do that, I would just say, Hey, set up this command line tool. And it can use that
on its own computer here that you can view at any time.
And that's because Shopify has a CLI, right?
Yes. Yeah. But it's pretty intelligent. If you want to connect something,
it'll just create like a card in the chat and be like, okay, here's where you put your API key or
click this to go sign in with OAuth. It's, it's like really easy to use.
Low friction. Okay. So basically what you would do for creating a newsletter with GrokBot is you
would make a list of your sources. It can be a Google sheet. It can be a Notion. And then you
have your research bot go out and look. So I do mine twice a week. We send once a week on Thursdays
and I tell it to go look. And then it fills in these cards in Notion with, okay, this,
this is a new restaurant story. Here's when we should publish,
here's a short summary. And then if it's an event, here's when they're showing Shrek,
it'll look like this and I have it set up. So then when I move it to process,
there's a make.com automation that writes like the actual blurb for my newsletter, how I want it,
which is a little advanced, but you can have GrokBot write the actual like news item for you,
in the page in Notion. Yeah. Like why,
I even have a make.com automation. Uh, so this is like a big agent thing in general is
once you've got a workflow that's working for you, you want to get rid of all the ambiguity.
So I could have GrokBot write the blurbs every week and it does a really good job.
But if the model changes or I don't know, just depending on how the bot's feeling,
it might write them differently because that's just how it is. They're a black box. And so if
you're running something,
business critical, you want to automate it as much as you can. And that also frees up tokens
for you to do more building with GrokBot, right? So you want to, you want to build,
you want to execute and then, and then automate. Um, so when, but you can have GrokBot automate
stuff. So I can, and then Greg, you're right. I can do a good job having it make an SOP
and I can say, okay, every time you write an article, a news story,
run this script that formats it exactly how I want. And GrokBot can run a script
on its computer every time. Uh, so you could do it that way. And it's just, I don't know,
you can do more volume on make.com with like an open AI key for little widget tasks like that.
So it's a cost thing.
It is. Yeah. So like with the scale of a newsletter, I could, I could waste GrokBot
tokens, uh, writing news stories on say like 200 potential news stories. Uh, or I could have
filter out and just keep the best ones and then have my make.com chat, TPT automation,
write the little two sentence blurb. I don't want to waste. It's like a real employee. If you have
a high performing employee, I don't want to waste it writing little two sentence summaries, uh, over
like every week for, for a hundred items that I may or may not use. But again, I got here
because I stood up the process and did it manually with GrokBot first. I had it writing those
blurbs every week. And I can give you an example. I keep saying blurbs, but this is what these events
that it finds basically turn into. Uh, and they're formatted the same every week. There's
like emoji, uh, event title, the time, and then a summary. That's the part that I use
open AI for, but GrokBot can do it. Um, okay. And then sales. So GrokBot actually
found me a sponsor this week. Uh, and it's because I connected it to my Gmail and had it
just monitor for inbound. And there's something I missed like last week with a local actually
bagel shop owner reached out and he actually invited me and my wife and we went over there
this morning and he gave us free bagels and we're talking about him sponsoring. And that's
because GrokBot found it and was like, Hey, you should follow up and you should pitch him on this
exact ad slot. And that's because I set up this outbound or, uh, this inbox monitor and this, uh,
sales agent and the sales agent, what you have to do when you're setting up the business is okay.
I need you to set up and price everything that we sell. Uh, and so in this case, it looked at
what ad slots we had and how they were priced. And then it updated them based on the market and
the growth of the newsletter. Uh, and it made a sales sheet that we could show this local business.
That's awesome. That seems like a no-brainer.
So, um, I'm just thinking about myself. It's like, I should have, like, let's say I have any
media, you know, any media property should have like an email, I guess. Right. And we should have
first for sponsorships opportunities, reach out to sponsorships at whatever.
And then basically what you're saying is you have GrokBot monitoring that inbox,
pricing things out, sending messages. Um, and then does that go to your chief of staff eventually
that reviews?
Reviews it or it just goes like, how does the flow work?
Yeah, it goes through the chief of staff. The sales bot will say, Hey, chief of staff,
we, we're looking at, uh, this potential sponsor. Does this email outbound message make sense?
And right now the chief of staff runs all of those by me. And so I'm kind of being like,
okay, put this in Gmail and I'll edit it and send it. Uh, and then the idea is it'll just
improve over time as I give feedback. I, for something like this, I'm going to have to
I believe with cold email, it's quality over quantity for especially a local newsletter.
So that's the thing that's worth your time to make little tweaks to. And
the beauty of GrokBot is it kills that writer's block for starting that outbound message.
And so here's the trick. If you're new to doing this kind of outbound outreach for your business,
even with AI, you don't want to boil the ocean.
You don't want to make a sales bot and say, you know, get me every car dealership in the state
of New York and write a message to every sales agent there and set up three subdomains so that
my email stays not in spam, right? What you should do is set up an automation that goes on Monday
that goes, okay, your job is to add five prospects to our list. And then on Monday, okay, pick the top
three prospects and create a subdomain. And then on Monday, you're going to create a subdomain.
Create an ad package custom to them and draft an outbound email and then send it to chief of
staff. And you'll make more progress doing that, I promise you, than doing 200 outbound emails at
a time. What about ideas for the agents? So one of my, one of my GrokBot agents is just an idea
agent. And his, his role is to come up with ideas for my other agents, like,
creative ideas. Because I don't want to be this, the person always prompting my agents to come up
with ideas. Like, how do you think about that? For, for business ideas or?
Like, I, specific ideas for agents. So for example, like, yeah, like for the social,
for example, Bagel Social, it's like, you know, you, I think what makes humans amazing,
is like, we're, at least creative humans are going to be like, coming up with new ideas, always trying
to push it forward.
where culture changes, therefore you move social content
based on where culture is going.
And I find that agents, one of the reasons why AI slop is a thing
is if it's under the same loop, it just kind of follows the same loop
and you end up getting that creative and you get product
that kind of looks the same.
So my question for you is, do you have any ideas
around using Grokbot to come up with creative ideas?
My example is I actually went and asked it to create an idea generator
and it works with my other agents.
Yeah, so how do we keep the Grokbot agents out of the loop of not improving?
Right?
How do I introduce new ideas?
I don't, Greg, really.
Why I like Grokbot and how I use it is I only add an agent
if we really need it.
I'm so anti-idea creation.
I'm anti-agent creep and agent creep because that's how you burn tokens.
That's how you spin your wheels.
That's how you don't make progress.
You can do what I did at the beginning, that chief of staff audit.
You can run it regularly and say, hey, look at how we worked this week.
What agents can we add?
What can we remove?
What should we turn into a routine or a skill?
You can do that kind of automated improvement.
But no, I don't have a good solution for that.
Well, you're basically saying, like, let the agents cook
and basically don't.
It sounds like what you're saying is, and you've been consistent
in the sense, like, don't create a lot of agents.
Create a small amount of agents that focus on high quality,
high value work.
Make sure that it meets your bar.
Have a chief of staff manage these agents.
But only create an agent if it is,
mission critical.
Correct.
Yeah.
And that's exactly how you should talk to your chief of staff
who manages your team.
What else haven't we covered around Grokbot that people need to know about?
Well, we talked about the computer a little bit,
but it can access files on your computer.
So I'm not sure how you, I think,
I think it asked permission like one time and then it's allowed to.
You can get it on your phone and then it can run either on this computer
or if the app is open and your laptop's on,
it can do stuff on your computer.
I would say my main takeaway from that is, like,
don't go against the grain.
So Grokbot works well on its computer and it can read stuff on yours,
but I find myself falling into this trap of,
okay, you know, generate a report and then
put it on my desktop and then put it in Notion.
And I don't know if other people are like this,
but you end up just working on the system more than the actual output.
So I'm kind of like, I tell my agents, like, okay, work,
create stuff on your computer.
And then when it's done, send it to me in chat and put it in Notion.
Not like when it's done, like after I've reviewed it.
That way you don't have to be like, hey, that thing we were working on yesterday,
like, where is it?
Is it?
Is it on your computer?
Is it on my computer?
Is it in the cloud?
Right?
You're just creating problems for yourself.
So I think a lot of people are going to watch, listen to this.
And really, like the whole agent team idea is going to click in their heads.
Yes.
I think that there's tons of different business ideas that you can build on top of this.
You know, one of them is local newsletters.
What else could people be building?
Any type of newsletter doesn't need to be local.
Probably would be easier not to get the ball rolling on one that's not local.
That's a whole different can of worms.
Shopify.
I'm I've got a different separate Grock bot account that I pay the $200 for because I'm
so crazy about keeping the context separate and it's just Shopify.
And so I'm training it to be to use the Shopify developer tools and to source products.
I have a sourcing.
Agent a developer agent and it's like an email agent right now and I'm still setting those
up but Grock bot does an outstanding job of researching products sourcing products.
And so I'll just I what I would do is say I have an idea for this product.
I have I really like this company and its product.
I want to do something that's in the same category similar price point.
And it knew to go look at import Yeti which like can just look at people Shopify's and
tell you like exactly what they're sourcing and like what their margins are.
It did that on its own.
I was kind of blown away and it made these reports on each product idea and was like
here's my recommendation.
Always ask for recommendations by the way here like my bulletproof system for testing
business ideas with Grock bot is I want to do this.
This or this so I've got three ideas.
Maybe they're similar.
Maybe they're different go research each of them figure out how I can price it what the
cost is going to be and then give me your top three recommendations on how to do the
damn thing and it just works you it your task should not be open-ended when you're doing
research or you're just going to end up doing research for two weeks.
That's fair.
Okay, so you think I mean you think Shopify that there's still opportunities.
And and finding products finding audiences for those products and then having agent teams manage that whole process.
That's you know, that's interesting because like a lot, you know, on this podcast.
We talk a lot about like digital products SAS vertical AI not so much on the Shopify side.
So it isn't it's just interesting.
Yeah, I I'm not like an e-comm expert.
This is an experiment.
I'm working on but I think it's nice to work on something physical because the cost of creating digital things is going to zero.
There's no friction there actually making something physical a brand that you can just like build over time.
I think that I think that's a smart thing to do and over here.
I see you have site builder stack.
What do you mean by that?
Yeah, so I I just have an agent on my other account that has this simple stack of cloud.
Flare the CLI tools pork bun is where I buy domains so it can log into that on its computer and buy a domain and then I use this thing called Astro for for it's a framework for creating static sites and it's connected to my GitHub and so basically like I needed I needed a link for people to book meetings with me and I didn't want to pay for Calendly.
So I said I got it set up on this stack and I said go.
Embed my three different Google calendars on this and I was literally sitting on the phone on the beach and it would send me okay, here's a mock-up of this and I would tell it okay make another branch and do a mock-up in this style and it will come back and through cloud flare.
It would have separate developer links that I could review the different styles in and then when I said, okay, I like that one.
It connected it to the domain that I owned and it went live all from the beach.
And I set that up in two or three hours that but that stack and I'll probably use it for a long time just for simple.
I need something to exist on the internet.
It doesn't need to be perfect or pretty.
So is you know, is that just like internal tools building internal tools or is there an opportunity to build some of these tools and sell it to other businesses?
Yeah, so what I would use this for is landing pages.
So yeah.
It's kind of an internal tool.
If I want to sell say a local business on being a sponsor, I could just say, hey, you know, make a landing page that speaks directly to this customer or directories.
So Astro specifically is really good at directories.
So if you if you're interested in the SEO game, just drew through that.
This is the stack for testing and iterating.
And I would just have a research agent that adds to the directory.
So if you want to make a directory.
Directory of pickleball equipment, I would set up a coding agent that uses this stack and a research agent and every day the research agent investigates a new brand and writes a great page on that brand as markdown and then it hands it to the engineer who posts it.
Then you would, you know, set up an agent that collects referral links and does outbound to get to get deals once you have the traffic and you could rent and repeat.
So that's kind of like that if you're interested in doing kind of the SEO directory game.
Yeah, so I've done a few episodes on directories in the past.
I'll include the latest one with my friend Frey, who does a good job of kind of explaining why directories matter, how it's a good like 10K, 25K, 100K a month business.
You know, what is a directory?
It's basically just curated data on a website.
So it's you're picking a topic and you're like.
Here's the best XYZ in this topic.
and in an AI world
we actually need directories more than ever
because there's just too much information
so when it's curated
it's helpful
also the whole SEO game is changing right now
people are going to chat GPT
and they're going to Google AI overviews
to actually consume content
and platforms like that need directories
so I think using Grokbot
as the basis for your directory
is absolutely brilliant
and the beautiful thing about a directory
is once you build a strong directory
it's a foundation
and you're getting thousands of visits a month
and then you can say
I want to build a Shopify store
I want to build a newsletter
I want to build a SaaS
I want to build a mobile app
so it's actually a really good place for people
to start
and the cool thing about a directory
is it ties in with this
not a local newsletter
but niche newsletters
so say we're doing that board game idea
you could have it build out
board games that are good for parties
could be your niche directory
and you could have a newsletter that talks about that too
you could have this on a subdomain
or a different domain than your newsletter
and they tie into each other
so you can monetize
by linking people to the directory
and have a referral link there
you could do those warm leads
from those referral links
could become sponsors
in your actual newsletter
I think the lowest barrier to entry
with CrockBot to start a business
is probably newsletter
and then directory
I think that stack goes together really nice
beautiful
all right
I think we covered what we wanted to cover
is there anything else you want to leave people with?
yeah
I would do this
try this for a month
set up CrockBot for one project
and run it like a real team
like we went over
and
let us
like let me know
like tweet at me
like did you make progress doing this?
I'd like this is your sign to pick something
that you've been thinking about
and pursue it aggressively
versus trying a new tool
and researching ideas for four weeks
so I think that's it
so do this
build a Spotify or newsletter
or a directory
with CrockBot
and I think you'll see what I mean
this I haven't been excited about a tool like this
maybe like all year
maybe this is my favorite this year
yeah so
tweet at me
what's so interesting about this tool is
we've seen glimpse of this and other tools
but nothing has been as simple
and has just like worked
as well as it has been
as well as CrockBot
so it's really fun
also like the value
that you can actually create
is massive
and I'm glad that during this episode
we covered
it wasn't just about the big ideas
these are like little ideas
that you can start today
that anyone can do
and who knows where that goes
maybe that turns into a big idea
I'm sure when Rowan was starting the rundown
he didn't think it was going to get to millions
of subscribers
on his newsletter
worth millions of dollars
so you know you start small
you automate what you can
you keep a few agents
I love your framework
build team week one
execute no tinkering week two
week three hire fire
week four automate
and do it with one business
and just keep iterating
and creating value for customers
I love it
Billy thank you for coming on
I'll include links for where to follow Billy
in the show notes
in the description
and I want to hear
and Billy wants to hear
what you know
what you think of Grokbot
so in the comment section
please let us know
I read every single comment
and I reply to most
so would love to see you there
and thanks again Billy
you're a legend
thanks Greg
it's been a blast
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Grokbot is an AI agent team tool that allows non-technical users to run businesses end-to-end using a chat-based, Slack-like interface.
The tool is best used with constraints
Start with a chief of staff agent to audit your business, set mission goals (e.g., revenue), and create only mission-critical agents.
Best practices include
Business ideas include local or niche newsletters (e.g., The Arlington Bagel), Shopify stores with product sourcing, and SEO directories using a simple tech stack (e.g., Astro, Cloudflare).
Grokbot runs agents on cloud virtual machines, integrates with tools like Notion, Gmail, and Beehive, and can handle tasks like research, sales outreach, and website building.
The framework
Grokbot costs $200-$300/month, but can pay for itself 5x-50x through revenue-generating businesses like sponsorships, ad sales, or product sales.
Summary:
This podcast episode features Greg and guest Billy Howell, who demonstrate how to build and run a business using Grokbot, an AI agent team tool. Billy shares his experience running a local newsletter called The Arlington Bagel, which he now operates entirely with Grokbot after his intern left. The key insight is that Grokbot is most effective when used with constraints—limiting the number of agents to avoid token waste and context bloat.
Billy recommends starting with a chief of staff agent that audits your existing business, sets a revenue-focused mission, and suggests creating only essential agents like research, sales, or platform-specific experts. He emphasizes a three-phase approach: build the team in week one, execute without tinkering in week two, and expand or automate in week three. Automation through routines and skills is crucial for scaling, but Billy warns against over-engineering, advising users to let agents work on their own cloud computers and only interface through the chief of staff.
Beyond newsletters, he explores other business ideas like Shopify stores for product sourcing and SEO directories using a simple tech stack. The episode stresses starting small, focusing on one project, and iterating—Grokbot can generate revenue through sponsorships, ad sales, or product sales, making it a cost-effective tool for non-technical entrepreneurs. Billy concludes by encouraging listeners to commit to a single project for a month and see tangible progress.
FAQs
Grokbot is an AI agent team tool that allows non-technical users to create and manage virtual agent teams to run businesses or specific projects, like a newsletter, by automating tasks and workflows.
Grokbot costs around $200 to $300 per month, but with effective use, it can pay for itself many times over by automating business processes and generating revenue.
Start by setting up a chief of staff agent to audit your existing business or project, then create a small team of 3-4 mission-critical agents focused on driving revenue, and run with that team for a week before expanding.
Avoid creating too many agents and keep tasks focused. Use routines and automation for repetitive work, and have agents review each other's work to improve quality without excessive token use.
Yes, Grokbot can monitor your Gmail, find potential sponsors or customers, price products or ad slots, and draft outbound emails, which then go through your chief of staff for review before sending.
You can start local or niche newsletters, directories, or Shopify stores. These are low-barrier entry points where Grokbot can handle research, content creation, and sales automation.
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