So the other day I come across this guy named Danny and Danny went in to get a haircut and he talked to his barber who's very busy and said, Hey, have you ever thought about using a voice agent to answer your calls for you while you're cutting hair that way you don't miss out on customers? And he said, that sounds awesome. Danny said, why don't I build that for you for free? He built a form and it changed the game for this barber. Now, Danny builds voice agents for barbers and he charges $2,500 to $5,000 up front plus hundreds of dollars a month to maintain it. But the thing is is that these voice agents can be created with just a few clicks. You can train them just by dragging a screenshot over from their Google business profile. That's it. Or just by linking their website. Better yet, you can sell to the barbers as you're getting your haircut by pulling out your phone, updating the voice agent on your phone. So it answers as Bob's barbershop or whatever the name is of the barber shop that you're at right then. Then you could have it call the barber as he's cutting your hair and use that as a sales tool. I am hyped about this interview. You are going to love it. Danny got his start about 11 years ago, helping people optimize their Yelp profiles. And he said there was a very small window of time on Yelp where you could make a lot of money doing this. And then it went away. And he said today that same small window of time exists with creating voice agents for local businesses. I've talked about this a few times on the pod before you guys love it every single time. This is the first time I've interviewed a business owner that's actually doing it. I've done it a couple times. I have two different episodes where I launch a voice agent business live. But this is kind of a different beast all together. I promise you'll love it. Oh, and if you end up starting this agency or any agency built on top of high level, it would mean the world to me if you use my affiliate link in the comments below, you'll get 30 days free instead of the normal 14. Let's go talk to Danny. One of my barbers, I call him my therapist because I talk to him all every week, right? And just it's cheaper than therapy. And so I was going, I was like, hey, let me rebuild your website because it didn't look that good. And let me start doing some stuff on go high level. He's the number one barber in Huntington Beach, California. And so I felt like if I did this for him for free, he's in one of those buildings where there's all like these like so long suites. Yeah. And he business owners in one room and one room. And I don't that's that's my lead cycle right there. And so like, let me build you this website. You'd be my test dummy at the end of the day. I'll do this all for free. I built on the website, I built on this AI agent and he was absolutely amazed by the AI agent because there's kind of two types of barbers. There's one barber where he's absolutely busy and he can't take any cut like any phone calls because he just constantly booked. And there's another barber who is just not that booked, you right? And so he's like nothing in between. Yeah, exactly. And so he's the booked guy. And so he was, I was like, let me implement an AI agent because how many people are calling you and you just might miss an opportunity from just a scheduled link, right? And so we implemented an AI agent so that whenever he doesn't answer, instead of going to voicemail, the agent picks up, ask him all of these questions. We kind of fed him all of the business information. You're saying that the voice agent, he's in the middle of cutting, he can't answer. So a voice agent picks up and asks a bunch of questions and fills out a form. Yeah. Like we just gave him all the information, but if they want to schedule something, then it would give him the direct link for them to book an appointment right away. I mean, he was getting bookings from that link just the day we turned it on. And so it gave him the freedom to know that like, hey, this works and I don't really have the stress about new clients and like I understand the times money and stuff like that, but this helped a lot. So you made this voice agent and you said there was a scheduling link. Tell me how that worked specifically. If the person said, yeah, can I just like book a time with you? Would it text them that link or would it ask them questions and then fill out the form for them? They would text them that link. We thought that was the easiest way. Most of them are text savvy anyways. And today's day and age and it'll give them a link to then book them directly with their own booking system that they use. Okay. Is your agent telling them that this is a like an AI voice agent or is it just kind of talking them as if it's a person? No, it's full person. We use GoHit level and there's a couple that you could test out. We liked the girl version of it. I mean, unless you ask, I think it tells you that you're an agent, but just conversating with it, it was really really good. Are people asking, you know, no, I mean, so GoHit level gives you like the transcript of the agent. So they're asking for the booking link. They're asking when do you open? They're asking questions about the business. They probably don't know. Yeah. So they didn't know it wouldn't make a difference because they're getting their question answered and that's all exactly. Exactly. At this point, that's what everyone wants. Like give me the answer to the question. Yeah. I want to wait on the phone for a human being if you know, if I could, but it's an easy book. Now if it's the medical practice and stuff like that, this whole different story, we want them to talk to someone on the reps side or book or book a call with them, right? Because now a lot of medical doing our practices are doing the membership route, too, which is what we're going to be implementing in GoHit level as well as for subscriptions. So if this barber is cutting here, are people calling like his personal cell phone number? And if he doesn't pick up in like a certain amount of rings, then it transfers to the voice agent or like logistically, how does it work? Yeah. So he has his own work number that we connected. So there's two ways they could go right away if they call the voice agent picks up or and bring ring ring instead of a voice mail, the voice agent will pick up. We decided to do the second option because in case you was at a launch or had some time to pick up, he would love to still pick up communicate with his customers at the camp. So you already told me this in the beginning, I'm remembering now, but you just replaced his voice mail with the voice agent period, right? Exactly. Okay. That's super easy. So if he's free, he wants answer, he answers and it's him. Do you have any metrics on like what type of call volume he's getting? Like how many voice agent conversations are happening on a daily or weekly basis for him? We're still figuring out the go high level side of it. This was the the free side that we had. So the metrics we do have are I would have to pull them up, but they're all good. I don't know if I'm doing ballpark numbers, he told me specifically because I asked him every week, he's like, this thing made me lazy to a point where I don't want to pick up. So most of the time, he is just not picking up and letting it go. Good. Yeah. I mean, that's because he's seen that it's as good or better than him anyway. Correct. And he's trusting it. Yeah. Keep watching that. Flicks with your wife. Like what? Yeah. And that's what I was saying. I was like, this gives you the option to leave your phone open at all times. Right. Like this is what AI is supposed to do. It's actually give us more time. And in most cases, it's not yet. It's still too early. Right? But it really seems like I keep coming back to voice agents by accident, right? Like voice agents are just such a good use case for AI right now that fits so many businesses because there's 33 million small businesses and like the vast majority of them could use a voice agent. Yeah. Right. And that's the whole theory of like the Yelp that I'm saying. I'm like, this is that Yelp back that Yelp moment. Yeah. Or like the Google business profile moment or like the Facebook ads moment or the the PPC, the paper click moment in Google ads when you know, you could buy clicks for two cents. And those same clicks today are two dollars. Yeah. Yeah. These windows don't last forever. But in a way, they last a lot longer than we think, right? Like they're easy for a short window of time, easier. But then like today, people are still starting web design agencies and finding success like they did in the 90s. Like yeah, I've heard so many stories of people in the 90s that learned HTML that built websites for small businesses. And it's like that was their first side hustle. Now they're a billionaire. Today, people are still they're not having to learn HTML, but they're still building websites for small businesses, you know, like in a sense, these opportunities last for a while. And in another sense, they're only really, really good. They're short amount of time. Yeah. Correct. Now you didn't charge him for this, right? Did you ever charge him after the fact or he's never paid? So I mean, I would get a haircut every week. And that's like now he's gives me free haircuts, you know, he doesn't allow I try and he doesn't allow me and he's pretty expensive. It's like $50 a haircut per week. So ideally, it's around $200. But we have this one. I told them from the get go like, Hey, I wanted to test this out for you because like this is your luck. You're my lead magnet. Not only do you have 20 other businesses in here, but the medical guy like he wasn't a haircut for us right now. And he referred me because of talking out of barber. Like that's a hack to me because like this is a talking advertisement. If you're doing good, right? If you really connect with them and you're, you know, you have a really good relationship with them. It's an easy advertisement that's going on for free. Have you ever asked him now that he knows how much value you've added? Like what would you have paid me? Like play that kind of what if game had I been able to run this wall and show you how much convenience this would add to your life? What would this be worth to you? Yeah. I played that right right at the get go because we're cool like that. I was like, Hey, what would you pay for something like this? And he paid already at $1,000 for like a bad website just recently. And so creating a website that looks amazing and then having a KPI dashboard attached to it to now understand your business because he didn't go to school for business. He went to school for barboring and cutting here. So this value adds, I mean, it's a tremendous value for him because now he really gets to pop up under the hood and figure out his business and figure out marketing and figure out SMS and so so easily $2,500 to answer a question and easily a $200 a month.
Now that's just him. I've asked a couple other people it could go from as low as a thousand to you know Maybe as high as five thousand. I think it really depends on your client and how much they understand the value of this and Understanding what phase they're currently in like I would hate to go into a client That's like there's this their startup and they you know they have this passion They want to do this, but they're all out of money like I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. I'll give them advice You know and I'll guide them, but I'm not gonna try to charge them for their you know all of their money when they're first starting And this is usually how I close my deals all create a website for the client I'm already talking to on Replyt like a like a mockup before I even have their first meeting like I am I am researching them. I'm looking at their websites and I'm asking chat GBT Breaking down their current website saying what what are the flaws in this if any and what can I do to help And through this current website. I'll take that information Create a replet mockup for them. You don't have to publish it You could just show them right then and there with the link that they use I think it lasts like 15 minutes and then like the amount of like You would like all that these guys have because they're used to one people creating websites and taking a month or two for them going back and forth and two Like it just shows like How much your you care for them like you you built this without asking for anything just showing your potential and they're like man This is amazing. It looks good. It's the whole theory of like Alex from OZ like if you if you give them Good stuff like they start thinking well damn like what is how like the paid stuff must be better And it's not you know, but they have confirmation bias so they're expecting like oh this is better Yeah, yeah, like the first mockup like that was like we made a couple changes from then and there But it wasn't major drastically major than what we first did and so it's like I think the theory of just like showing that you did the work without even asking Yeah, goes a long way yeah, because a lot of those people go into these quotes and they're like they kind of they do some research And so their their work isn't visible right so the person that they're selling to has no idea how much research they've done Maybe luckily you say a couple things that indicate that but if you're actually doing work in a vibe coding app like Replic and showing them something their confirmation bias kicks in and like oh dang you really care about this Oh, oh this is legit and it's like that all the sales trick in the book is assumed the sale right and you're kind of doing that in a sense because you're saying I've already I've already built out half this so like when it come time to for me to actually send the voice and get paid for this and fulfill this Already halfway done right so I mean increasing my likelihood of getting the sale and I'm decreasing my amount of work after the sale because I've already done it Scratch Yeah, one stone and then the cherry on top is like what go high level and just other KPI metrics you could add on to help improve their business So that they could continue to grow and scale or even like the fear metric of like did your your potentially losing this much revenue if you're not booking Throughout these days or like I made a KPI dashboard from Replic just based off of what barbers and stuff would use I mean the thing that that it created was stuff that I wouldn't have even thought of like you should Like try booking during these specific days and send these specific emails out or text messages out or if you have a team of four Like figure out who is getting more of the risk schedules and and have like a workshop with that top her I was like do these are all really good ideas that just generated from chat that you could implement in your own business and Understanding that or just kind of informing that to a client is like Very helpful because that's all they're thinking of in business. How do I go? How do I continue to scale? How do I you know? How do I improve like those are the thing like I mean don't try to reinvent the wheel I know a lot of people are here trying to create stuff on AI But instead of that like there's a time and place for everything But figure out what people's current problems are and go that route because a lot of the time you're gonna get paid faster And you're gonna get more clients that way with and you're gonna learn more like how do you continue to build and scale with current businesses? Like that's the beauty of it is so I'm starting to run paid ads directly to my newsletter because right now It's where I'm seeing the most potential because here's the thing social platforms don't let you own anything The algorithm changes and your reach disappears email is the only channel where you actually own your audience and be high This built for people who are ready to grow bigger than ever. It's got a built-in ad network Sponsors come to you directly through the platform you approve you get paid you pay no platform fees on paid subscriptions Whereas sub stack takes 10% be have takes nothing and now you can sell coaches and coaching directly to your list You don't need to stitch five tools together be high let you do everything in one place and you pay zero commission Forever name another newsletter platform that can do all that I've been on be high for over two years and it is without a doubt one of the biggest reasons my newsletter is growing like wildfire So go move your email list over to be high of now and get 30% off your first three months at be high of dot com slash Chris That's be he H I IV dot com slash Chris I don't think trust me. I have my I have my no book with all these ideas And I think I asked you this question the other day I was like man can I sell my ideas because I don't there's there's so much of them But at the end of the day like you focus on Problem solving current problems and people's businesses. Yeah, and helping them identify them because oftentimes They don't even know what their problems are and until you ask the right questions that are the right questions What are the questions you ask to get to the heart of their problems? It's kind of like having a conversation like this with my client at first I'm not here to sell them anything. I'm just trying to understand what their goals are first and so kind of like the questions I mean, I want to break down what they're you know Ideally what their year would look like what they're what their overall goals are in the idea of like marketing or Newsletters or kind of I mean I asked everything and I just have an hour conversation with them Just kind of breaking down their current business and I think just with a amount of knowledge that I've learned through the last 15 years Through the e-commerce side and through the merges and acquisition side and just all of it in the stock market and breaking down Ernie reports like you you could really understand a client just by having a simple one hour conversation Ideally the more the more intel you could get on your client the better you could Figure out directly what they need help with the most and the reason why I went family if if you're a if you're a Super busy barber. That's probably the number one thing you're gonna try to do is you need to expand to other barbers Right, you need to have more people to kind of Guides you or to help spree up your time and so that's kind of you build intel build report and figure and the main thing is build something that you could show them and Be connected with them in a week or two and then at that point once you reconnect with them the end of that is most likely going to be your sale And whether you're going to create a new website for them or they like the website and they want to continue to work or They like the idea of figuring out and know How to improve their business with KPIs and and understanding all that stuff or even not understanding wanting to That's kind of your your approach and I do love the idea in this business that you can literally sell to the person that Is selling to you right like while that cutting your hair you could It's a captive audience. Yeah exactly. I love that like if you approach a barber at close He's probably not gonna say no to one more customer. Yeah, right now how scalable is that you could I don't know You can make the argument. It's not very scalable But at x dollars per month or $2,500 up front. It's worth the time And I would have to think your close rate if if you're self-selecting a high volume barber and you spending 30 to 60 minutes with them Your close rate will be in the double digits that like period is it 20% is it 80% I don't know But at that point it's just a numbers game that there's 76,000 barbers And I love this niche because there's usually a push pull between the ticket size and the number of businesses or like the approach ability of a business like dentists are great to sell to There's a lot of dentists, but it's really hard to get to the decision maker right barbers are cheap right some low ticket price So it's like they don't have a good reputation for selling agency services to them But there's a lot of them there's even more than than there are of dentists and it's a captive audience and like you can They're extremely approachable. You can talk to them one-on-one you don't have to go through a decision maker right pizza shops There's like 200,000 pizza shops convenience stores. There's like 400,000 convenience stores AI opens up all of these like single-person solo businesses to agency services Where it just it didn't make sense financially before AI right like convenience store owner or a piece of shop owner It's not gonna pay 3500 bucks a month to manage your Facebook ads most likely right unless they're at scale They have a few locations etc But with something like this like voice agents like even if we only leave the divorce agents Yeah, that's always gonna say I mean hurt you You have no time like I could have went directly with the voice agent as well and say hey like I'm sure you're busy and and I tried calling and no one answered and that's why I walked in the barbershop Like have you heard of a voice agent before right there you right and they're yes or no and and kind of like man The beautiful thing about a voice agent
is once you set it up for one person, you could test it in front of them as well. And that's what I'm gonna say. That's what I've been doing. Hold your hand out from beneath the cape, right? 'Cause he's cutting your hair. And you just call it and just having talk to it. Correct. And he'll be sleeping. And he's done that. And he's done that to me in front of other salons and stuff. Like the people next time he's like, hey, come here, I want you to meet Danny. He calls the number, he's like talk to it. And next thing you know, I get a transcript of a whole AI voice. Yeah, yeah. They're like, is he cute or not? And they're asking now these crazy questions. (laughing) So it's like, but I mean, once you show, like once you have that, and that's why it was so important for me to have him as my test dummy because I knew the value of having a finished product and showcasing that and seeing how well other people could react on just a nice website. Something that really works. You know, your SMS marketing on it, you have newsletters, you have reactivation tool, you have the whole level, right? And most importantly, like if you have an AI agent and you can call them, you showcase their work and they're like asking all these questions about the business and they actually know about it. They're like, like, sign me up. Like, say, let me create it for you and you test it yourself. And then if they like it after that, then you could close the deal. You're gonna have more success creating it first and it doesn't take that much time. If it's a good lead, you should do this. You're gonna have more success creating the deal and showcasing that, closing the deal after you show them everything that you created. In my opinion. - I mean, you could even take it so far. Like, let's say you walk into a barbershop cold and you're getting some good reception from him. You heard about voice agents and like, he doesn't even know you're selling to him yet, right? - Yeah. - Let me show you this. But before you pull out your phone, you open up high level on your phone and you go to the settings for the voice agent and you change out the name of the business to his business name, right then before you call. And you call it like, hey, this is, he's like, what that's me? And it's like, yeah. - Could you imagine that? - Yeah, that's good. Like, yeah, you could easily set that up. If you know you're gonna go showcase or you show them, like, and they're like, wow. - Yeah. - And that's barbers, salons, nails, massage. All of those type of industries, like that you're gonna schedule appointments and they're asking and they're calling, tackle that. - And I've done this myself. It's literally that easy as going in the voice agent and changing the name of the business. And then click save. And then it updates automatically. - Yeah. And usually, I don't know, I mean, I think we just put in their website and I think agent will extract all of the information. - All the FAQs, the opening hours, et cetera. - So even better, if you put the name and their website, you should, like, if they're going further deep in the conversation asking these questions, it's even better. - Yeah. Are you able to share your screen and show what his dashboard looks like, those barbers? - Let me see. - For those listening are watching KPI stands for key performance indicators. And for years, it was, you know, relegated to Fortune 500 companies, big budget companies, like basically what goals or what metrics are retracking to note that we're being successful or not. And now with AI, like, barbers can know what KPI's mean. Barbers can have KPI's. Whereas that was never realistic for common local businesses. I'm curious what his KPI's are. Like, is it new appointments? Is it, you know, revenue? Is it? - This is our test on my test, so I don't even work on this. - My partner does. Another thing I was going to say, guys, like I couldn't have done this without, without having a good partner on my team as well. I picked a partner who was good at coding, just because like Replic can have difficulties kind of going through that finish line of stuff. And so having a partner where I'm just all sales, all vision, ideas, given her the stuff that needs to be fixed, it really helps out in the long run. - So your business partner is doing the kind of the integrations and stuff and you're focusing on the sales? - Correct. So this was the Miss Call section. We created this on the 28th. And we have 125 Miss calls. I don't think it was right away when they started. Yeah, we didn't implement it right away. We just created this number. - The 28th of December? - I think it was. - November? - Yeah, November. We should go back a little bit. - 125 Miss calls? - Yeah, and you could see, I mean, they're even today they're coming in. And so a lot of people, and you'll, I think you could get the transcripts of these. I don't know if they'll show them here, but throughout, especially holiday season, they're coming in and he was just letting them ride and they were getting booked. He would show, I mean, he would say we're getting booked. He would pair them with the number. And I call these FMC's formally Miss Calls. These are no longer Miss Calls, right? (laughing) - Exactly. We used this with the Go High Level account that we had from you. So we took advantage of it and just kind of went from there. And just used it as a test. I mean, and now we have another Go High Level. And so we kind of, this is my showcase to clients still. - Yeah. - Beautiful. So he's gotten you more barbershop customers then? - Yeah, so it's to a point where we had a pause and we took like two weeks just to kind of dedicate Go High Level and what everything that we could learn from Go High Level. So now we have probably, I would say four or five calls the remaining of the week from Barbers and someone related to him that introduced us. - From one free customer. I haven't spent anything on ads, I haven't spent anything on sponsorships or anything like that. This is just from one free customer. - I just keep hearing this over and over. Like to get your first agency customer, start with your circle, your sphere of experience, and do it for free, right? And if it's not magical, if it doesn't work, then you might not get referrals, which means your product isn't that good anyway, right? You gotta revisit the drawing board, which is okay 'cause you either win or you learn, right? But if it is magical, if it is good, then either you get them to pay you for more stuff or you get them to refer you. - Yeah, exactly. And everyone has their own barber or their own massage person or salon or nail that, you know? So it's like start with that, even if it's a family member, like figure out. - A long guy, oil change guy. - Exactly, yeah, now I'm doing home inspections for one of them. I got a meeting today with a home inspection and their website and their GHL, a drone washing commercial company, washing drones and all that stuff, a remodeling company in the real estate. So like again, all different industries all need the same thing. So it shouldn't be that hard to kind of niche down and figure out the best industry, but they're definitely out there. - What would you have done differently if anything about starting this business? - Star faster. I think the idea that you need to learn every single thing before you start is absurd. Like get in there, get your hands dirty, teach yourself, teach yourself everything you can and be dedicated to helping people, right? I mean, that's the end goal is like, as more people you help, the more that money will come. It's a lot of abundance. - How does your pricing look today versus your first customer? Like what do you think you're gonna charge these next few customers both up front and ongoing? - I think we're still in the beginning phases of things and I think we could kind of customize per client, but I would say anywhere from 2500 to 5000, just because I know as time goes on, there's going to be more tools or easier tools or easier access clients or people are coming in. I mean, there's competition. That's what it is, applying demand, right? And so I know that and I think I think working well on fast is probably my goal. And I think we're gonna up the monthly to two to 500, depending on what all they need. I think that's a good range. I mean, if you have 20 clients, my goal is just passive income for this and to kind of use this money for bigger projects with apps and developments and businesses through AI still. But like I said, I have a book of ideas and I think all of them need money in dedication. And so this is kind of my focus for that. - Beautiful. - Danny, where can people find you? - Danny, proper
[email protected]. If anyone wants to connect, I'm a wealth of knowledge. So feel free to reach out. - Beautiful. - Okay, this episode was a little different. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll notice that other people were watching as I interview Danny, I came across Danny in my paid community, TK owners. He's a member of it and he used some of the tools that he learned from TK owners to build this business. But I had him present this interview to my playmakers community, which is a group of people building AI automation agencies, AI voice agent agencies, et cetera. So if you're interested in either one, check out playmakersai.com or TK owners.com. Thanks for hanging out on the corner office.
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