He Built a $10K/Month AI Business With Zero Tech Skills - Ep. #304
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The speaker shares his journey of building an AI agency from scratch after retiring, despite having no prior coding or marketing experience. He started by creating voice agents in GoHighLevel for friends, which led to a conversation with an investment firm buddy managing $1.4 billion. This resulted in a $50,000 six-month contract for automating social media and content creation. He also built a grant-finding app called Grant Craft for a nonprofit friend, then charged a chiropractor friend $3,500 setup and $1,500/month for a laser service launch, including a content creation app, automated bot, and CRM management. The work takes about 1.5 hours monthly. The speaker learned to listen to clients rather than talk too much, recording conversations with a pendant (or smartphone) to upload to Claude for analysis and solution generation. He emphasizes that all his clients came from personal contacts, urging a focus on serving and adding value to relationships. He believes this is the best time to start a business because AI enables anyone to build solutions without technical expertise, turning what seemed impossible into achievable projects.
Speaker 1
The contract that he gave me for the first six months was for $50,000.
Speaker 2
Holy cow.
Speaker 1
Once I got all that said I would probably talking about it taking me an hour and a half every month for this.
Didn't know anything about coding.
Still don't.
I'm still learning all of the insurance and outs of Claude.
I just started talking to Claude.
OK.
A $3500 for setup and then $1500 a month for six months.
Speaker 2
How many hours would you say you spent upfront building the $3500 I?
Speaker 1
Don't know building things in there that I've never built before.
I would say maybe 12 hours.
Wow.
This is by far the best time in human history to be alive and start a business 510 years ago.
Small business owners would have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered, and if you'd have told them what was coming, they would have told you it was fiction, that it was not possible.
Well, guess what we are seeing now?
A day and time to where we can have a dream about what we want to build.
And though we've never built it before, AI can help us build it.
What the heck?
Does it get any better than this?
What you once thought was impossible, It's so possible now, and we have never had more tools at our disposal than we have, right?
Speaker 2
Well, Phil, why don't you just start from Ground Zero?
Speaker 1
I basically retired from my other work in June of 2025.
Just been doing all sorts of things through listening to your podcast.
Decided to go the AI agency route.
And I'll say this, by far, this is this is the best business decision that I ever made.
Speaker 2
OK.
So what was the first thing that you did?
OK.
Speaker 1
So the first thing I did was started building voice agents, just because it was super easy to build and I'm not that technical.
I didn't have any history in computer programming, anything like that.
Hitch the agents to some friends and they liked it.
Pitched it to some roofing companies.
They like it through a pitch that I made to an investment firm buddy of mine.
It opened the door for me to have a conversation with him about AI in his business.
The guys brilliant when it comes to finances and they managed like $1.4 billion, you know, in the Nashville area 9 offices.
But in terms of him being able to trust AI to help him with something, he just didn't know what it was.
And so anyway came to an agreement with him the first part of March for initially for a six, six month term consulting, part time consulting for him.
We, we built AI say we like it's, there's more than me in the company, but there's not OK, but ended up building a content creation thing for him.
That was the start of it.
And we're trying to be able to automate things for him now.
But that said, I mean the contract that he gave me for the first six months will renew after six months.
Months was for $50,000.
Speaker 2
Holy cow, I want to get back to him.
But you start by saying voice agents.
What were you using to to build these voice agents?
OK.
Speaker 1
I was using go high level OK.
Speaker 2
So you Start learning voice agents and go high level for your friend and he's just like, this is cool.
It's kind of long winded, not really my use case, but it gets your foot in the door with him.
It earns you some trust with him.
He sees what you kind of know what you're talking about, at least more than he does, which is the important part, which leads you to more conversations over the course of months.
And then you just in March, you signed a $50,000 contract with them, right?
To do all things correct.
Speaker 1
Just doing random automations for him to help him with his social media.
And when I say helping with social media and marketing, this is me trying to help them automate things.
OK, I don't have any background in social, social media or marketing or something, but I know enough to know that if you were asked the right questions of AI, it can end up guiding you through the process.
And he has people in his firm who have kind of done that before.
So I came into it knowing how they functioned, how all of it worked, and.
Speaker 2
OK.
So did you talk to any other friends or family between October and March or was it just this investment?
Yeah.
Speaker 1
No, no, here's the thing I had, I had talked to, I had talked to multiple other people I had talked to.
I had cold called a lot of roofing companies.
But then what the trigger was for me is Brandon had a presentation one time on getting new clients.
And one of the things he said was to start with those, you know, And so I basically went through all of the contacts on my phone.
I've got more than 1000 contacts and I just started making a list and just started sending texts.
I have started this AI automation business.
You know, I'd love to be able to sit down with you.
And so had probably 7 to 10 sit downs with business owners.
My, my first encounters with them looking back involve me talking too much, sharing all the things that AI would do rather than letting them share the challenges that they're having, share the pain, pain points.
And so some of those first clients, probably the majority of those first clients I didn't get, and it wasn't because of AI, it's because I was just too chatty.
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah.
You were trying to sell and like the best absolutely to listen.
Counterintuitive, right?
Speaker 1
Correct.
Speaker 2
When you have these sit downs, did you ever have the problem of, you know, you asked the the age-old question, like what, what are you struggling with in your business?
What problems are you facing?
And they're like, I don't know, like they don't, they just don't give you much.
Did you ever experience that?
Speaker 1
No, they were good at giving me a lot.
They were.
They were good at giving me a lot.
But basically what I've encountered with most business owners is they they know they need to utilize AI, yeah, but they don't know practically what they need to start with.
And the third thing is they certainly don't know how OK.
And now I'm obviously significantly better at it to just sit down with them and let them talk.
But no, you my goal mainly.
And normally I don't, I don't even go with a with a list of questions.
If it's a business that I don't know a lot about, I'll have AI help me, Claude help me come up with some starter questions, but but my only goal is to get them talking.
Speaker 2
Did you record these conversations at all?
Speaker 1
All of them.
All of them with this little thing I got from I heard from this guy.
Oh yeah, by the name of Chris Corner I got.
Speaker 2
One right here, but I I put it through the wash and it's been defunct.
Speaker 1
Ever since, and I'll say this, it is the best in my assessment.
It's one of the best tools for an AI agency owner.
One is it captures the entire conversation you have with the client.
OK, so you can focus on what they're saying while they're saying it without thinking I need to write down something.
Secondly, once you have that for me, I plug it into Claude because Claude knows that the majority of my bills are through GoHighLevel or either Claude code and then it helps me come up with some solutions for them.
Speaker 2
OK, now if people don't have that, I'm putting in the chat what it is.
Limitless pendant.
There's the plod PLAUD that's like their main competitor, Limitless got bought out by Meta.
I think they're shutting that down and Meta is absorbing it or something.
So that pendant support for that pendant is probably going away.
I've never used plod.
It was, I was like a religious adherent to this thing until it went through the wash after they announced the merger.
And so I haven't been able to buy another one and I just haven't used anything since.
And I'm not joking you I, I leave the house and I touch my chest.
Yeah, because I'm like, do I have it?
And it's been like four months, So I should get the the other one, but I have it.
Anyway, my point is, we all have smartphones.
We can just hit our voice notes app, just record it that way and then upload the transcription to Claude or whatever.
So has that been helpful to like generate questions after the fact that you weren't able to think of or solutions after the fact that you weren't able to think of on this?
Speaker 1
Oh, well, I'll say this, it has been priceless prices because once I put that into Claude, Claude and I can talk back and back and forth about it and you know can say OK, and Claude will will give me some solutions and then we'll work on pricing.
I mean literally work on pricing in Claude for me.
Claude helps me draft the contracts for the client, helps me be able to be ready for potential questions that they would have in regards to the build.
But yeah, OK.
Speaker 2
So do you have any success stories from those other meetings you had with other friends?
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
The the other success story is is that I have a good friend that owns a nonprofit and through his non nonprofit I built this app in Claude called Grant Craft and built that for him for free.
And basically what it does, it finds grants that fits his fits his ministry and it finds them, it drafts them.
It goes in, it does studies of the grants to find out what you have to fill out to apply for that grant.
It drafts it based on the content that we bet it about this ministry.
Then you have a human go in and read it before it is sent in and basically set it up for him for free.
Wanted to have proof of concept.
And what I, what I told him was I said, OK, this is, this is basically I will process said I'll charge you $1500 per grant that I fill out $2000 a month for the retainer for the service.
However, I will not bill you anything till you until you have a grant come through and my billing for you will not exceed 8% of the grant.
OK.
And so and So what that lets me do with him is funny is it's a Commission based thing.
I get paid for for him.
But 2 is I can, I can fill out a lot more grants and he's going to get it allows me to have a tax write off to his to his business.
And when I first set this up through Claude code, I was able to have my open claw agent go in there and literally go through the process of filling out all the grants for me and spending that to me and letting us look through those should be before we actually sent them, sent them in OK.
And so, so started out with that, but so through that project that I started with him, he is a chiro chiropractor.
And so about 2 1/2 weeks ago maybe, well, I'll take it back.
It's could have, could have been like a month ago.
He had this new laser.
It is a body toning laser approved by the FDA.
They basically created a deal, a deal for him to help him launch it and manage it.
And that was the second project I got.
I charged him a $3500 or set up and then $1500 a month for six months.
After six months we'll be able to we'll be able to re re evaluate then anything more than then 10 clients he gets monthly through this service.
I get $75 per client and in addition to the 1500 and then in addition to that he pays for all of his CRM costs through go high, go high level.
He also gives $500 month towards the marketing for ads and stuff to push into clients into this service that he's got.
Speaker 2
So what did you build exactly for him?
Speaker 1
Basically what I did what I built for him One is I built him a content creation app that is built on the Zorona Z8 laser helps create content for him that he that can be put out there. 2 is set up a automated bot for him on go high level that we sent out to all of his existing clients.
He had like 7500 existing clients to be able to answer any questions that they had in regards to the bot.
Then I created a a sign up form for to for them to sign up for the services and then to sign up for a launch.
And then I'm basically just handling all of the monthly, monthly management management of his social, social media for this honest Actually, once I got all that said, I we're probably talking about it taking me an hour and a half every every every month for this.
Speaker 2
And you're charging the 1500 a month?
Yes, 15.
Speaker 1
100 bucks an hour yeah, 1500 a month for the first, for the first six months and we would evaluate, we'd evaluate after that.
But then that has led to some other things with him because he's wanting me to help him promote some other laser services he has in his practice.
And then here's yeah, laser because he's literally got these laser treatment things.
But the other thing that he did, he has never had a functioning CRM and he wants me to work on something to help him reactivate some of his clients.
He's.
Speaker 2
Probably the majority of small businesses are in the same boat, correct?
How many hours would you say you spent up front building the $3500 I?
Speaker 1
Don't know.
I'll say this with me setting up things in their CRM and and and in a go high level building things in there that I've never built before.
I would say maybe 12 hours.
Wow, 12 hours for the 12 hours for the 3500.
Speaker 2
This tool, it's a, it's a like a vibe coded wrapper, right?
It's like it is.
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
OK.
It is because I know, I'll say this.
I don't know.
I didn't know anything about coding.
I didn't know.
I didn't, I didn't know anything about coding.
Still don't.
In fact, I'm still learning all of the ends and outs of Claude.
Just I mean, I didn't know anything till the last month about an MV file when you're building in Claude.
I just started talking to Claude.
OK, Yeah.
So and now that I've that I had built through these a couple times, then I've got a little more knowledge about it now.
Speaker 2
And it's kind of funny that you people keep coming back to content creation, you know, have a background there do.
Speaker 1
You no, but, but here's the thing that I mean I do not have a background in it, but I know that for the average business owner who doesn't, who does not have consistent content creation and when it's possible to easily build a knowledge base from what we know about that business and what it does, it is not that hard to create some kind of content creation.
OK, that is consistent with the boys for the.
I'll tell you what, for the investment firm that I that I did, it has like this guy's been doing investment talk radio longer than Dave Ramsey's been doing his.
And we have 22,000 chunks of data in this knowledge base that creates content for him.
We've got 570 something commercials.
So it is super easy to create a quality content in the voice of the business owner or when you've got so much content.
Yeah.
And I ended up telling him when we first created, I said, look, Paul, you don't like it.
It is all you, my friend.
It is all you.
Because, I mean, that's it.
Speaker 2
If you don't like it, you don't like yourself because I felt this on you.
I'm trying to give it an analogy because on one hand, it's like content creation is important for businesses, for any business.
On the other hand, it's like so hard to go viral and stand out.
But the analogy I would think of is imagine, imagine like a town that had 10,000 residents and only 5 retail stores.
OK, five that you grocery store, restaurant, whatever.
Like way more demand for retail stores than supply.
There's only 5.
So then these five stores didn't have signs up.
Everyone just knew the red brick building is the grocery store, the white brick building is the restaurant, yadda yadda.
Until suddenly like there's 10, there's 10 retail stores, more competition.
And so now they're like, man, we should probably get a sign, right?
Like we don't necessarily need like a sign spinner, like a human outs front to like be savvy and bring people in.
We should actually, we should probably just have a sign like we need a presence.
People need to know that like we are the grocery store.
We're grocery store number 1 now.
And the one that was open is number 2.
To me, that's what content creation looks like in 2026.
And over the next five years, like you're not promising people that they're going to go viral or like transform their business with content.
And they're not even thinking that.
But like, at this point, they just need something.
You got to hit publish on something or you're just not relevant anymore.
You need a sign.
You just at least, like, bare minimum put up a sign, right?
It doesn't need to be good or flashy or nice font or lit up at night.
You just need a sign.
To me, that's what content creation for local slash small businesses are today.
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Any thoughts on that?
No, totally, totally.
Because, you know, all the stuff that we're creating is just to help them have a presence.
It's not that I'm we're trying to help anybody go viral with this, but but yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2
OK, so this doctor physician that was a personal friend of yours as.
Speaker 1
Well, yes, personal friend of mine, and I'll end up saying this, every bit of the business that I have had to this point has been from people from either direct contacts, direct friends, our friends up friends.
We consistently underestimate this in the business culture sometimes that people are more important than money.
And to have meaningful relationships with people where you do everything within your power to try to add value to them and for them and to help them and to serve them and to do anything you can to help them other than building them something for free.
You understand what I'm saying?
But and there's there's just such an opportunity, opportunity that we all have and all the circles where we've operated, we've done business before, people that we come in contact with and businesses, you know, there's just such a huge opportunity for us to find their points of pain by opening up conversations with them.
And that creates an inroad for us to pitch them some sort of a, what I would call an early level solution that can that can end up leading to other things.
Speaker 2
You know, it's interesting because there's like there's something anyone can learn from anyone, any other business or whatever.
Like we could learn some good business principles from bad business people or from bad businesses like drug dealers, right?
I think of 1 industry that's very shady.
I think most people would agree.
And that's MLM's multi level marketing, network marketing.
But what they are is very effective at selling and they're also very effective at having a high margin products because there's so many layers in that pyramid scheme.
Everyone's got to get paid.
But one thing they do really well is when you sit down, like probably many of us have sat down with like a cousin or brother-in-law that was trying to sell us Tahitian Noni juice or a Rubbermaid or something.
But when when you sit down on one of these seminars, it's always like write down a list of everyone you know.
And then it's all that, yes, it's like, Jeez, I'm going to burn all these relationships.
And if you sell on the crap bill of goods, you will, you will burn.
I know, I know people that have done that.
But if you're serving them and genuinely solving problems and using AI to help them make or save more money in their businesses, then you're helping them, then you're being a good friend.
So if we take that principle and like put an ethical twist on it, there's something we can learn there.
Like, like, end of story.
You're more likely to close someone that you know.
Even if you went to high school with them 20 years ago and you haven't spoken to them since, you still know them.
Like you're still warm, warmer than a cold call.
Speaker 1
Right.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Speaker 2
You said two things.
I'm going to add 1 to it.
You said your customers have all come from friends and friends.
The friends.
I would think that the third thing would be what I call like the floodgate principle.
And that's when you, you find a friend that you can serve, you solve a problem with AI and they see what you're capable of.
And then they come back to you and they're like, what about this?
I have this other business, I have this rental home, I have this.
And then now like you're the guy and like I have people in my life that are good at programming or Facebook ads.
They're good at things I'm not good at.
And every time I have a problem in that space, I go to Justin, I go to that guy Kevin.
It's like you're my guy.
And that's like the floodgates.
So it's like there's like the third tier of people is actually the the same as the first.
It's just more jobs from the same person that you already gained trust from that maybe you went to high school with.
Maybe you go to church with.
Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1
Totally, totally so.
And it's it's just let me tell you something, when you develop the reputation of being the type of person that just wants to help help someone out, OK, that you help out someone, even if they don't buy your product or server, you give them some tips.
I'll say this, when I first sat down with the chiropractor and started talking about, yeah, neither he or his wife, they didn't even have any kind of AI accounts.
They didn't have ChatGPT.
They didn't have Claude.
And when I'd walked in through the process of just signing up and had them do some basic things, they're like, you're you're just kidding me.
And I was like, no, it'll end up doing it.
And so anyway, yeah, anything, anything we can do to add value, anything is just super help.
Speaker 2
What kind of qualifying questions do you ask to know if they're even capable of being able to afford 1500 a month, 3000 up front, etc?
Speaker 1
Well, part of The thing is in the investment guy, when I ended up signing him, well, First off, we talked numerous times.
We talked like 7 to 10 hours or more and I didn't even know necessarily what he was on.
He didn't know what he was on.
And then he just said, he just said, well, hey, if I, if I hired you on some kind of kind of a retainer for the, for the next 6 months, what would you, what would you charge?
And I said, well, First off, you need to tell me how many hours you'd want me working for you a week.
And so.
And I said, I said, well, we're talking about 20, talking about 20 to 25 hours a week, maybe helping you do some things, being the building automation.
I'm charging him nothing for the automations because of the amount that he's paying me.
And he said, well, he said, what if we, what if we did or we did 50 fifty 50,000 And I was like, OK, you know, started out with that and then the other one, then the other one with the chiropractor with this laser.
What I knew was he was super pumped up about it.
He's got an established practice.
It's a proven product.
And for for him being a business owner to have me take over the entire product launch was a huge value for him.
One is he didn't know know how to do it.
Could he learned, was sure he could have learned, but there was a huge learning curve.
And so they were just pumped up with it.
I ready to go.
And when I just went over what was possible with a proposal that Claude helped me create, OK, when I went over what was possible, I just started, you know, I already had the $1500 a month set in there and the 3500% and it was not a hard sale at all.
I just said, well, hey, Chris, we would do this, this and this.
We'd go through and do all he said, you mean you would do all that for 3500?
I was like, yeah.
Speaker 2
Anyway, for the investment advisor guy, is that 50,000 / 6 months?
What is the time for?
Speaker 1
Month, six months.
And so it started the first month of the first part of March.
I've gotten 2 checks from him.
I basically get a total of 6 checks.
And then we will reevaluate after that.
But it was like, you know, 83, 33 per per month, OK.
Speaker 2
What, what do you have in the pipeline right now and what do you think is next?
How?
How can you scale growing a business on friends and family?
Speaker 1
Well, First off, I'm going to say this at some point in time, you, I don't believe you can, you can only scale with friends and family.
You got to be able to branch out.
And so I'll say this, one of my flaws that I know is I have not settled in on a niche, OK?
And when I say settle in on a niche, I don't mean like one necessarily one type of customer, but one initial product or service that I've offered.
And I don't know if I listened to the video the guy did on business, business assessments with AI and I thought about doing something like that, maybe have a tier that's free, one that's $250, one that's 1000.
And that provides a foot in the door to be able to offer free, free products to them that they could sign up for, but then to do to do different, different level bills.
Yeah, that's something that I have not yet settled in, but I absolutely love problem solving and being able to build personalized apps for a business that meets the specific needs that they have.
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah, I don't think it's a problem that you don't have a niche yet.
Like you have a revenue, right.
And that's that's more valuable than a niche.
What I really want to know, and I think this is what most humans struggle with, is it sounds like it was a period of months before you started learning the skills and you got your first revenue.
How does one stay motivated?
How do you stay grinding when you've had you sat down at Starbucks with who knows how many people and you have nothing in the bank account to show for it yet also?
Speaker 1
Chris, one of the things that we all know that we don't sometimes tell ourselves is that the greatest battle we all have in starting a business, running a business, learning, growing, is the is the person we look at in the mirror daily.
You know, you know, are we going to do the difficult thing that one of the things that I love that Staben says, He says, you know, am I disciplined to to the thing that I know I need to do and not do the thing that I know I shouldn't do.
So am I disciplined enough to know that being busy does not mean you're making progress in your bill, in your business.
What it may mean is you're being busy doing the wrong things because you're too scared to do the things you know, you need to do.
Brian, Brian Tracy wrote this book years, years ago that says it's called Eat the Frog first.
In other words, do the thing that you dread the most.
And, and I'll say this just in terms of how you have taught with your teachings on your podcast, you try to teach people, look, learn by action, learn by action, get in there and do it.
No, you don't know how to do it.
Start doing it.
And when it comes to the AI agency, we have told ourselves, I mean, all of us at some point, well, I don't know this and I don't know all this about AI, don't know this.
There's so many things that we don't know.
Look how quick a I've run.
Well, that's true.
We don't know.
But guess what?
99% of the business owners that we sit in front of, we know more than they knew do and we know enough that it's possible that we know where to get the answers that we need to help them do The thing is they want to do, even if we've never done it before.
And I'll say this, one of the things I have to continually tell myself because I can be the worst critic of me is that I have to tell myself, Phillip, talk to yourself like you would talk to your kids.
Going through a chat.
I would never shame my children.
I'm not going to speak down to them if they try something and it fails and and they get discouraged.
I'm going to talk to them in such a way that it spurs on their growth to see failure as as a particular event in their life and not as not for them as a person.
So anyway, I'm sorry.
I kind of feel like I'm preaching right?
Speaker 2
Now no, this is amazing.
This is like my favorite part.
Speaker 1
No.
And so, and it's just, I'll say this, this is something that makes me about just jump up and down inside.
I'm amazed that this is in my assessment and a lot of other says, by far the best time in human history to be alive and start a business.
Never.
There's never, there's never Henry Ford never imagined the opportunity.
Solomon in all of his glory in splendor and biblical day, never imagined the access to things that we have. 5-10 years ago all business owners would have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered and if you'd have told them what was coming, they would have told you it was fiction, that it was not possible.
Well, guess what we are seeing now?
A day in time to where we can have a dream about what we want to build that came from a client that has presented something to us and though we've never built it before, AI can help us build it.
What the heck?
Does it get any better than this?
Does it?
Does it get any better?
And and and and I come back to the same same thing with me.
Phillip, your greatest limits.
You, my friend, are you willing to see that what you once thought was impossible, it's so possible now and isn't.
It isn't just for you, it's for others.
And I'll say this, it does something deep inside of all of us that we know is true and right and just or something other to be able to help and assist someone else.
And we have never had more tools at our disposal than we have right now.
OK.
Speaker 2
Oh my gosh, Phil, I'm like, obviously most of you guys are familiar with the podcast.
I don't get into like the motivational stuff, high level stuff, rah rah stuff.
We get tactical, we get granular, but there is a place for this.
I don't get into it because I don't think I'm very good at it.
You're clearly good at it, so you open the door.
Like I just got off the phone with 218 year olds that sell VCRS.
They're making like 7 grand a month selling yes, VCRS.
They buy them on Face Marketplace for $10 and they go for 100 on eBay, 100 because no one makes them anymore.
So there's no, there's still demand.
There's no supply, right?
Millennials want to watch movies with their kids.
Like there's an opportunity.
We pulled up Facebook marketplace and there were hundreds of VCRS for sale within an hour of me for like 10 to 30 bucks.
And then I, I mean, if you guys are on Twitter, I went on DoorDash last week.
I don't even order DoorDash.
And I just, I thought, I wonder how much money I can make in DoorDash.
So I downloaded the DoorDash for drivers app.
I was approved within 10 minutes.
I'm making 30 bucks an hour listening to podcasts, 30 bucks an hour with no experience, no reviews, nothing.
And it's like, I could do this on a moped, a $500 moped.
I can make the same amount of money on a moped, you know?
And so it's like, and then you're talking about this, like there's so much opportunity and I still want to be sensitive to people hearing this because there's people that hear that all the time.
There's so much upward.
It's never been.
It's like, where's my revenue?
OK, I'm trying.
I'm out there, I'm grinding.
It's not here yet.
Like where's my revenue?
That sounds really great, Chris.
That's a great sound bite bite.
But like, I'm not there meeting at Starbucks with my friends and family.
I don't have revenue.
And to what you said near the end, like not talking down on yourself, you open the door for a Nick Saban quote.
So I'll I'll continue it.
I'll I'll, I'll double, I'll double or nothing.
You hear he has a story.
It is a true story.
He was out fishing on the lake and this guy next to him is catching all these crappie and he's throwing back every other one.
And he's like, why are you throwing back the big ones?
Why aren't you keeping the big ones?
Those are delicious.
And he thought maybe, you know, bigger catfish don't taste very good.
Maybe he thought, this guy probably doesn't know that the big ones are actually delicious.
He's like, well, my frying pan is only this big, so I don't keep the bigger ones 'cause I can't cook them.
And he's like, dude, you need a bigger frying pan.
Like get a bigger frying pan, right?
And so it's like dream bigger.
Like if you're talking to a guy and you might have a bigger fish on the line, then you think you're capable of handling like close the deal and then buy a bigger frying pan.
Like figure it out and yes, like don't give voice to your negative thoughts because we all have them.
But this, the moment we vocalize them is when they become more real and they become more hardened in US.
And like the negative thoughts compound even faster than the positive words, right?
Like I, I just try to suffocate all the negative thoughts as best as I can and verbalize the positive ones because compounding works in both directions.
Like you pick, go that way or that way you want to go better or worse, your choice.
So to me, what it sounds like is like you cannot be prideful.
You cannot be unwilling to meet with friends and family.
If you are you, it still works.
Like I'm the guy that's prideful.
I'm the guy that like I was never posting on social media.
I just started, this is number 13.
I just started business #19 I just because I know what people think, this guy, this guy can't.
How was this guy feeding this family?
He's all over the place.
He's got.
I was never advertising what I was doing because I was ashamed and embarrassed.
So I was never selling to my friends and family.
So I created this artificial barrier.
I made it unnecessarily hard for me, right?
So I'm telling you guys, don't do what I did, like be willing to sit down with people from the mindset of like, I'm going to help you make more money.
I'm not trying to sell you a false bill of goods or the next Diet Pill or whatever.
I want to help you make or save more money in your business.
So I feel good about texting you and offering to meet you at Starbucks or whatever because this is going to be a win win for us.
And then I'm asking questions.
Do more talking or do more listening than talking.
Speaker 1
Well, and I'll tell you, let me tell you a quick story.
The first vibe coded thing ever built was in replict.
It was for my brother-in-law to manage his cows and sheep out on his farm that it was that it's possible that that, you know, you can take a picture of the cow to know what Bessie looks like or whatever he calls his cow.
And then, you know, you know, when they blasted their vaccines, you know which, which ones they've given birth to and who's connected to who and told him.
I said my brother-in-law, Greg, I said, man, if you wanted to put GPS trackers on him, we could put it on.
We could put it on Google Earth and find out where the cows were.
But.
But anyway.
So.
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I mean, I think a lot of these solutions that we're building for people are going to become products of their own, right.
Like I think a lot of people in this group, they're going to go solve the most random problem from those random business owner.
And then another business owner in the same industry is like, can you do that for me?
Sure, Copy paste.
And it's like, I'm just going to start.
I'm not doing an agency anymore.
Like that got me from point A to point B, but I want to go to point F and that's through this.
I'm just going to sell access to the software to every single dairy farmer in Northwest Wisconsin or whatever it is.
What have we missed, Phil?
This.
Speaker 1
Is the thing I would challenge you to, OK, sit down with your mobile device, wherever it is you store your contacts and just start writing down names of people.
And the goal is not to sell them something.
The goal is to open up the door to have a conversation with them because because really, even if you knew their business in and out, you still don't know what the pain points are.
And I'll say this just in saying this, I haven't thought about this.
I have not asked any friends that I built stuff where to recommend me to someone else.
Is there somebody else that you know of?
Something like this would be helpful too.
I just thought of that.
I haven't done that.
But anyway, just sit down, have conversations with people, listen to them, find out the pain points, find out the things going on in their business and offer them things that will help.
Speaker 2
Funny you said that you hadn't done that 'cause that was the one thing I was going to add to that is always ask for referrals.
Because like, if, if there's like good, better, best good is like cold calling.
Better is like a friend of a friend.
Best is a friend, right?
Like a friend of a friend is light years better than a cold call.
So do it.
This is amazing, Phil.
I'm inspired.
I'm ready to run through a wall.
OK, Well, Phil, appreciate you.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge and motivation with us.
Thank you, Sir.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Sir.
You're glad to be here.
Glad to be here.
Speaker 2
Guys, I want to tell you about something I've been building behind the scenes.
You've been watching my videos about AI tools and asking the same question.
OK, cool.
How do I turn this into a business?
Not just playing around with AI, but actually getting clients and getting paid.
That's my community.
It's called Playmakers. playmakersai.com.
It's an AI agency program where we show you how to start an AI consultant business where you can charge local businesses 500 to $5000 a month to set up and manage AI tools for them.
It's not a course you watch and forget about.
We do three to seven live training calls every week taught by me and 23 other expert AI agency owners.
You get plug and play templates, Claude code tutorials, AI voice agent frameworks, automation templates and a 30 day road map so you don't fall off track.
This is stuff you can just copy, paste and deploy for clients on day one.
And of course how to find clients as well.
We also have of a five day first client challenge where we can walk you through landing your first paying client in five days.
You also get my frameworks for cold e-mail, Facebook ads, SMS, cold calls.
And then I hand you my leads galore spreadsheets with actual leads in your niche in your area.
We've already got over 200 people in there building real agencies.
If you miss a live call, it's all recorded.
So if you've ever thought about starting an AI consulting business or AI implementation business, go check out playmakersai.com.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The speaker retired in June 2025 and started an AI agency with no coding background, using tools like Claude and GoHighLevel.
He secured a $50,000 six-month consulting contract with an investment firm friend by building voice agents and content creation automations.
He built a free app called Grant Craft for a nonprofit friend, proving concept before charging $3,500 setup and $1,500/month for a chiropractor's laser service.
He emphasizes listening to clients' pain points instead of overselling, and uses a recording pendant (or smartphone) to capture conversations for Claude to generate solutions.
All business came from personal contacts; he stresses adding value to relationships and starting with small solutions to open doors for larger projects.
Summary:
The speaker shares his journey of building an AI agency from scratch after retiring, despite having no prior coding or marketing experience. 4 billion. This resulted in a $50,000 six-month contract for automating social media and content creation.
He also built a grant-finding app called Grant Craft for a nonprofit friend, then charged a chiropractor friend $3,500 setup and $1,500/month for a laser service launch, including a content creation app, automated bot, and CRM management. 5 hours monthly. The speaker learned to listen to clients rather than talk too much, recording conversations with a pendant (or smartphone) to upload to Claude for analysis and solution generation.
He emphasizes that all his clients came from personal contacts, urging a focus on serving and adding value to relationships. He believes this is the best time to start a business because AI enables anyone to build solutions without technical expertise, turning what seemed impossible into achievable projects.
FAQs
Phil used Claude (including Claude Code) for AI analysis and solution generation, and GoHighLevel for building voice agents and CRM automations. He also used a Limitless pendant or smartphone to record client conversations.
He built voice agents for friends using GoHighLevel, which opened a conversation with an investment firm buddy. Through trust-building and small automation projects, he secured a six-month consulting contract focused on content creation and automation.
He built a content creation app for an FDA-approved laser, an automated bot for 7,500 existing clients, and a sign-up form. Despite no coding background, he completed everything in about 12 hours using Claude and GoHighLevel.
Phil records all client meetings with a Limitless pendant or smartphone, uploads transcripts to Claude, and uses the AI to analyze pain points, generate solutions, draft contracts, and prepare for client questions. This approach has been 'priceless' for refining his offerings.
He talked too much about AI capabilities instead of listening to client pain points, losing potential clients. He now focuses on getting them to talk freely without a set list of questions.
He charged a $3,500 setup fee plus $1,500 per month for six months, with additional commissions of $75 per client beyond 10 and $500 monthly for ads. For the investment firm, he secured a $50,000 six-month contract.
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