Modern Creator Network
Build with Rashid · YouTube · 16:11

How I Automated a $30k/Month Business with AI (Skill Systems)

A 16-minute case study where a fractional CFO trades a 40-hour reporting month for a $200 Claude Code subscription — and a hand-drawn lesson plan you can steal for your own creator slides.

Posted
3 days ago
Duration
Format
Tutorial
educational
Channel
BWR
Build with Rashid
§ 01 · The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

The pitch is the dream every solo operator has been sold a hundred times: more revenue, same hours. The proof is more interesting — one of Rashid's clients, a fractional CFO named Kieran, swapped 40 hours of monthly reporting for a 10-minute review pass and doubled his client list without hiring. The mechanic, and the slides Rashid uses to teach it, are what's worth studying.

§ · Stated Promise

What the video promised.

stated at 01:05In this video, I wanna walk through a case study of my client, Kieran, a fractional CFO, who was spending forty hours a month on monthly reporting for his clients and got that down all the way down to ten minutes using a skill system.delivered at 08:34
§ · Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:0001:24

01 · The promise

Service owners are capped by calendar hours; AI as a skill system can lift the cap without more hours or hires.

01:2403:16

02 · Revenue up, hours flat — the dream

Visualizes the 'two-curve' goal: revenue climbs while hours hold or fall. Sets up the diagram that the next chapter inverts.

03:1604:22

03 · The trap — hours climb with revenue

Most owners using AI as a tool watch both curves rise together; they just work faster, not less.

04:2205:22

04 · AI as employee, not tool

The perspective shift: treat AI like a hire you train over time, share IP and context with it, expect skill compounding.

05:2206:36

05 · Skill systems defined

A skill system is a chain of skills AI runs as a workflow; improving any one skill is like coaching an employee.

06:3608:34

06 · Meet Kieran

Fractional CFO for SaaS Series A/B founders, 7 clients capped at 6–8 hrs/client/month, $24K–30K/mo, turning away leads.

08:3410:15

07 · Same ceiling you're in

Before/after card: 7 clients → 15 clients, 6–8 hrs → 10 min, $24K → $52K, hire zero. The result is shown before the method.

10:1512:46

08 · This is what infrastructure looks like

The 8-step pipeline diagram: /run-monthly [client] → Load Config → Pull Data → Calc Metrics → Validate → Gen Charts → Gen Commentary → Render HTML → QA → human review.

12:4614:26

09 · He knew. He just couldn't fix it.

Identifying the bottleneck is easy; carving the time to systematize it while still delivering is the actual blocker.

14:2616:29

10 · Map first. Build second.

Used a business map + bowtie funnel to confirm the bottleneck was delivery, not lead gen — that determines build order.

16:2918:05

11 · Build for one. Template the rest.

Get one client's pipeline to 90% quality (took ~40 hrs), then 70% of the work transfers to every new client.

18:0520:13

12 · Recurring vs one-time cost

8–10 hrs/client/month forever flips to one ~10 hr onboarding, then zero hrs/month after.

20:1323:15

13 · AI does the work around your judgment

AI builds the deck and flags anomalies; Kieran writes the commentary and decides what to say. Judgment stays human.

23:1524:56

14 · Three paths

Stay capped, hire an analyst, or build a skill system. Only path 3 raises the ceiling — at $200/mo on Claude Code.

24:5625:57

15 · CTA — Chief Leverage Officer community

Hard pitch: community launching May 18 for owners who want digital asset systems, skill systems, AI employees. Link in description.

25:5716:11

16 · Recap calls → Strategy calls

Second-order win: Kieran sends a Loom of the numbers before the call, so the live call becomes strategy. Clients value it more.

§ · Storyboard

Visual structure at a glance.

open
hookopen00:00
the-dream
promisethe-dream01:24
the-trap
valuethe-trap03:16
skill-systems-defined
valueskill-systems-defined05:22
meet-kieran
valuemeet-kieran06:36
before-after
valuebefore-after08:34
infrastructure-diagram
valueinfrastructure-diagram10:15
he-knew-but-couldnt-fix-it
valuehe-knew-but-couldnt-fix-it14:26
map-first
valuemap-first16:29
build-for-one
valuebuild-for-one18:05
recurring-vs-one-time
valuerecurring-vs-one-time20:13
judgment
valuejudgment23:15
three-paths
valuethree-paths24:56
cta
ctacta25:57
recap-strategy-calls
valuerecap-strategy-calls26:40
§ · Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

02:45concept

AI as tool vs AI as employee

Treating AI like a tool means you work faster and hit the same hour ceiling. Treating AI like an employee means you train it on your IP over time and let it compound — hours drop while revenue rises.

Steal forany 'why your AI workflow isn't paying off' explainer — works as a 60s short or a long-form opener
03:16model

Skill System (chained skills)

  1. Load Config
  2. Pull Data
  3. Calc Metrics
  4. Validate
  5. Gen Charts
  6. Gen Commentary
  7. Render HTML
  8. QA Review

A skill system is a series of single-purpose AI skills chained into a workflow, triggered by one slash command, ending in a human review pass. Each link can be improved independently like coaching an employee.

Steal forMod Boss / JoeFlow tutorials — turn any creator workflow (recording, editing, posting) into an 8-step labeled pipeline diagram
16:29concept

Build for one, template the rest

Pick one client/use-case, build the full pipeline end-to-end to 90% quality, then 70% of the work copies to every new client with 20–30% customization.

Steal forany 'how to systematize your service' pitch — also applies directly to MCN onboarding templates
15:05model

Bowtie funnel for finding AI opportunities

  1. Traffic
  2. Converters
  3. Products
  4. Funnels
  5. Math
  6. Team
  7. Goals

Map the whole business (lead-gen left side, delivery right side) on one canvas before deciding where to apply AI. Most owners assume the bottleneck is leads; for service businesses it's usually delivery.

Steal forconsulting / coaching content — also a great Killing Excuses sketch: 'I need more leads' vs the bowtie showing it's actually delivery
20:13concept

AI does the work around your judgment

Let AI handle the 80–90% repetitive execution (build the deck, flag anomalies, draft commentary). The owner does the 10–20% that requires judgment (what the numbers mean, what to tell the client). Don't outsource judgment.

Steal fordirectly transferable to Joe's content workflow framing — and to any 'why you still matter in the loop' positioning piece
23:15list

Three paths to scale a service business

  1. Do nothing (stay capped)
  2. Hire an analyst (more management overhead, same ceiling)
  3. Build a skill system / AI employee (ceiling lifts)

The classic three-choice framing — only one option breaks the ceiling. Each option gets its own color-coded card (red/red/green).

Steal forevery offer page where you want to corner the reader into the third option — works for $6 Stack pitches
§ · Quotables

Lines you could clip.

01:05
Kieran was spending forty hours a month on monthly reporting for his clients and got that down all the way down to ten minutes using a skill system.
concrete before/after number, no setup neededTikTok hook
02:42
If you use AI like a tool, you're just gonna work faster. Yes, you might be able to serve more clients, but because you're working faster, you're gonna work more hours.
perfect punchline to the 'AI will save you time' lieIG reel cold open
03:15
The perspective shift we wanna make here is we want AI to work as an employee.
clean thesis statement — works as a quote cardnewsletter pull-quote
08:34
Within two weeks of implementing the skill system, he was able to serve 15 clients.
huge result, tight number — pairs with the before/after tableTikTok hook
09:15
Now he can make around 52k per month, and he doesn't need to hire anyone.
dollar amount + 'no hires' = scroll-stoppingIG reel cold open
21:36
AI should do most of the work, but you should do most of the judgment.
12-word principle, tweetable as-isnewsletter pull-quote
24:34
It works on a $200 a month AI subscription on Claude Code.
low price anchor against a $52k/mo outcome — the whole offer in one sentenceTikTok hook
§ · Pacing

How they spent the runtime.

Hook length84s
Info densityhigh
Filler8%
§ · Resources Mentioned

Things they pointed at.

01:05personKieran (client, fractional CFO at Biyondata)
06:20channelPrevious video on skill systems
15:05toolBowtie funnel (business mapping)
24:10toolClaude Code ($200/mo subscription)
25:00productChief Leverage Officer community (launches May 18)
§ · CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

24:45product
I am launching a community next week on May 18. It's called the Chief Leverage Officer community... if you want that, I'm gonna put more information in the description below.

Soft, value-led — lands after a full lesson, framed as the next step for owners who already buy the 'skill system' thesis. Re-mentioned at the close with no price reveal, deliberately driving to the description link.

§ · The Script

Word for word.

HOOKopening / re-engagementCTAthe pitchmetaphoranalogystory
00:00HOOKIf you're a service based business owner like me, your goal is increase the amount of revenue you make every month without needing to work more hours to generate that revenue. Now the problem with service based business owner is that we have a client capacity that we could serve based on the amount of time we have on our calendar. And traditionally the only way to get more clients is to either work more hours or hire more people to help with clients delivery. Now what if I told you you can increase the amount of clients you serve without needing to increase the amount of hours or hire anyone but with implementing AI into your business. More specifically, you'd implement a skill system that would extract all of your expertise,
00:37HOOKyour intellectual property, and your workflows on how you deliver value to your clients. AI can do that for you. Now this is completely different from using AI like a chatbot where you need to guide it and do everything from scratch while a skill system actually does 80% of the work. All you have to do is review the work, sign it off, and send it to your client. Now if you don't know what a skill system is, in my previous video, I explained exactly how you can build a skill system and how it's different from just having normal skills that you would build on Claude. And in this video, I wanna walk through a case study of my client, Kieran, a fractional CFO, who was spending forty hours a month on monthly reporting
01:11HOOKfor his clients and got that down all the way down to ten minutes using a skill system. And I'll break down exactly how Kieran used that skill system in order to scale his business without needing to work more hours. Alright. So the dream of running a business is, is ideally over time, we want our revenue to go up like so, but we want the hours that we work to remain the same or best yet go down. And that's the goal of AI. Right? Everyone talks about AI automation.
01:37They sell this dream that, hey. We're gonna implement this AI automation, and your revenue is gonna go up and the amount of hours you're gonna work is gonna go down. Now very few business owners actually experience this dream because in order to get AI automation, like I always talk about in all the videos on this channel, it's gonna require a lot of complexity to eat because
01:59AI automation doesn't happen in one weekend, and you get to live this dream of, oh, you start stacking unlimited amount of revenue. You don't need to work at all. That is something that is not true. In order to get AI automation to work, you need to spend time building a skill system, which we're gonna go over in a moment. And if you don't know what a skill system is, in my previous video, I went over that, so I highly recommend you to watch that. So what actually happens for a lot of business owners is because they don't know how to implement AI the right way,
02:25which is implementing skill systems, is the the amount increase amount of revenue they make, like so, but the amount of hours they need to work also increases with them because every client requires their input or they're just using AI like a tool. So if you use AI like a tool, you're just gonna work faster. Yes. You might be able to serve more clients, but because you're working more faster, you're gonna work more hours,
02:48more hours. Now the perspective shift we wanna make here is we want to have work have AI work as an employee, AI employee. And when we work as an AI employee, that means AI is able to be smart enough or we treat AI like an employee. We're gonna be meeting it like a human employee. You'd share it with more context. You'd share with your intellectual property. You'd treat it like someone that learns over time and improves their skills.
03:11So as AI gets better and learns more about your business, ideally, the amount of hours required for you goes down. Right? Now in order to get AI to work as an employee, we need to build skill systems. Skill systems. I'm a do a quick recap over here. Skill systems is a series of skills that chain together that allow AI to run workflows.
03:31And as you improve the skills in the chain, that is kinda like treating or improving the training of a human employee in your team. Let's say you you help them improve their their you improve an SOP. They can do an SOP better. They improve their skill. They actually know the difference between a good quality output and a bad quality output, and that takes time. No one gets that right at the first shot. So AI needs to learn that over time. So once we have skill system,
03:59that allows us to then have AI employees, and then that allows us to eventually generate more revenue in our business while working less hours. Now the big problem is a lot of business owners don't do this. They treat AI like a tool or like a product. They think about, hey. I'm just gonna work on AI this weekend. I'm gonna build this fancy thing or this elaborate sophisticated
04:17system, and it's gonna make me tons of money. Very rarely does that happen. So meet Kieran. Kieran works with SaaS companies as a fractional CFO, and he basically sends them monthly reporting and consulting to help them make smart decisions with their financing in order to grow the revenue or to potentially exit their companies. Now as you can imagine, as a fractional CFO, there's a lot of number crunching, a lot of documentation,
04:40reporting, putting things together. It does take a lot of time and effort. And what was stuck at before was he was spending a lot of hours trying to do all this documentation and stuff. He'd even have an analyst working for him on his team. So was a good case study because when Kieran came to me, he was working with around seven clients,
05:00and he was capped because each of his clients would take around six to eight hours a month to deliver. Now he was making a good amount of money. He was making around 24 k per month all the way up to 30 k or in some cases 50 k per month with his clients. So here is a point where he hit his client capacity. So he hit client capacity, and some clients actually wanted to work with him, and he had to say no. So can you imagine saying no to clients, saying no to money? Well, that's really hard for a lot of business owners. You feel really bad about that. So in this position, Kieran was actually thinking about hiring another analyst because he already has an analyst on his team. He was thinking about hiring another analyst in order for him to serve more clients so he can scale his business. Now Kieran Kieran is not a type of guy who wants to manage a big team. He likes to keep things small, leveraged, and lean. So that's where I came in and helped Kieran with building a skill system. So after building the skill system, what happened was within two weeks of implementing the skill system, he was able to serve 15 clients.
05:58What would take him around six, eight hours per client for monthly reporting would take him around ten minutes take him around ten minutes. Now he can make around 52 k per month, and he doesn't need to hire anyone because he was able to treat AI like an employee in his business that he would train over time on how he delivers work, uh, to his clients.
06:16So how did Kiran's skill system actually look like? So it looked like so. So Kiran would then split up a whole workflow into separate skills or separate phases. So step number one, for example, would be load the configuration for that specific client. So he'd he'd have a YAML front matter that would show Claude where to find the brand colors and the basically, the configuration to create that monthly report. Then AI would pull in the data. It would use Python and Power Query Query to find the data. Then it would calculate the metrics, ARR, MRR, churn moves, everything.
06:50Then it would validate the data before it moves on to anything. It would look for any anomaly detection or mistakes. Then it would generate the charts. Then it would generate the commentary. Then it would create an HTML or in a PDF after that, then it does a quality assurance review, and then Kieran comes into the picture. So all of this stuff is 80% of the work, and Kieran comes in and does 20%
07:13of the work, or this could be even, like, 90%, and he does, like, 10%. And then the output is a client's deck and then a briefing that, uh, Kieran can share with a client. And by the way, if this is your first time seeing, uh, infrastructure or skill system look like this, I have another video in my channel. My previous video just posted. Check that out to explain to you how skill systems actually work. But this is actually what you wanna do. This is what you wanna do if you wanna get AI to actually generate revenue in your business. You wanna break down your workflow into smaller tasks, create skills, and then chain them together into a skill system so it can actually create an output that is
07:4890% quality or more. Now this is what AI automation looks like. AI automation looks like so. It is this going through all these skills step by step and creating an output that is 90% quality. Now in order to get to this level, you have to treat this like an employee again. Right? Each of these skills can be improved over time. You're gonna add more edge cases. You're gonna add more guidance. You're gonna add more intellectual property,
08:13HOOKmore, uh, mental frameworks to get AI to think more like that you do. Now potentially, Keyring can get to a point where it does a 100%, but that again, that will take a lot more time because then AI will need to get the context from these calls. So then Kieran can potentially feed the calls, uh, to AI to run the full thing, uh, a to z. But that's something that I wouldn't recommend to do right now. I think maintaining your judgment is really important, uh, with this stuff because you need to be on top of the strategy. So Kieran knew that the reporting was a bottleneck because he was spending sixty eight hours on reporting, sending monthly reports. As a CFO, you do have to send reports
08:50HOOKon the finances and give some insights to his clients so they can make better decisions, um, in order to grow the business or to egg, uh, or to exit the business. He was specifically working with SaaS companies. So he knew that for months, he said he would keep fixing it, but he just couldn't find the time. So so he was in a difficult position because he was already way too busy delivering the work, and he knew if he had to hire someone, has to do more handholding and wait for them to learn. And he didn't know how to break it apart. He actually need to figure out how to break up his workflow so that the skill system can execute the work for him. So the first thing we did was when we hopped in a call was we mapped out his business so we can understand how his business works, and we can find clarity on how we can get AI to do the work for him in his business and which skill system would be relevant for him. So we started by mapping out a business map where I like to call, and then we identified that what was his problem was delivery, not lead generation.
09:42Kieran thought his problem was was lead generation, but it was actually delivery. So we then focused on that. And that was evident to us because I like to use something called the bowtie funnel, which kinda maps out your business from the lead gen side all the way up to client delivery side. And we saw that a client delivery side was where we could find good AI opportunities to help him scale his business. So what we started was we started with developing a scale system for one specific client at first. So we started by going over reporting scripts, creating some Python scripts, creating some deck templates, creating the brand files for that client, and then, uh, putting it all into a trigger called run monthly that, um, Kieran can run every month for that specific client. So Kieran worked on that and he got it to around 90% quality to get it get it to work. So it got it it got to a point where it was he was satisfied with the result to 90%.
10:34All he had to do was and the last 10% and ship it off to clients and clients were impressed with that. So with this in place, Kieran was unable to then pretty much copy paste this process, tweak it a little bit for other clients because other clients were a little bit more custom. So he just needed to change maybe 20% to 30% of the process. So now he can extend this to all of his other clients. So he had seven clients. He was able to extend it to all of his seven clients like so. And that started by creating one full pipeline or skill system built.
11:04And this took him around forty hours of training AI where specifically he would do the report and have AI shadow him while doing it. This allowed him to not only deliver to his current clients without, uh, firefighting and letting things go while still getting AI to develop, uh, the skill system for him. And the best thing about a skill system is that for Kieran to onboard a new client to run through that monthly reporting process, it would take him around ten hours to onboard just to get the API key, set things up. So that in turn would save him ten hours every single month. So instead of needing to spend, like, eight to ten hours every month doing the monthly reporting himself like so, now he just spends ten hours one time to onboard them, and then AI
11:45does all the work from here. So this is a skill system doing the work for him. So you can imagine how much more time is he gonna get get over time. So this compounds. Right? He's avoiding spending ninety six hours a year on a specific client. So that's a lot of client capacity he can get back. Ninety six hours back per client is a lot. So it onboarding the client so spending around ten hours onboard the client pays itself over the months so on because he doesn't need to spend as much time. So next thing about the skill system is that
12:15Kieran didn't let AI do all the work or 100% of the work he actually let AI do 80 to 90% of the work which is most of the repetitive and execution but when it came to his judgment which is identifying the the diagnosis
12:32and giving advice to his clients, he would take care of that because that's what the clients appreciate. So AI would build out these reports like so, and then Kieran would come in and do the the small adjustments or the small commentary to guide the client because Kieran has all of the context. You know, AI doesn't have all the context. If you are the service delivery
12:53business owner, you you are you're the person on the calls. You're the one who understands the emotions. You're the one who understands what the client needs and everything. So AI can help you probably make some commentary, but at the end, you wanna put in the last 10% because it is an emotional connection or relationship with your clients. So the principle here is AI should do most of the work, but you should do most of the judgment. So you should not let AI do all the judgment. So previously,
13:18Kieran would take three to four hours writing the commentary. AI would do some of it, and he would just come in and do the last thirty to sixty minutes to shift things off, uh, to the So with this in place, generally, most service business owners have, like, three paths in order to scale their business. Number one, they could just do nothing, keep keep the status quo. And for Kieran, in this case, he would just stick to serving some clients, he would just continue working, uh, normally. Number two, he could hire someone. So for Kieran would be like to add an analyst, but that would add training, review, payroll, and that would just add more stress and handholding that he will need to do. Or third path is you could build a skill system or an AI employee
13:56AI employee, and you can increase the client capacity you have like Kieran did. He increased it from seven to 15 clients, and you don't need to hire anyone, and it takes and it works on a $200 a month AI subscription on Cloud Code as an example. I don't know about you, but I would definitely pick the skill system option because the gains here are really high and the cost isn't that much. You know, you're paying $200 a month and you might spend a little bit time upfront
14:22to learn how to use Cloud Code and how to use how to create a skill system, but that skill will pay you really well over the long term because not only would you create one skill system for this, you can create skill system for other parts of your business. Lead generation, sales, delivery, everything, and skill systems stack up on each other. So that's a goal for me as a business owner, and that's what I do when I help with my clients. So if your goal is something similar to this where you wanna build skill systems in your business and you wanna have AI employees that do 80% of the work for you in your business, I am launching a community next week on May 18. It's called the chief leverage officer
14:57community. It's called that because as chief leverage officers, our goal is to grow our business based on leverage. That means we look to implement digital asset systems, skill systems, and AI employees so we can scale up this without working more hours. K? And if you want that, I'm gonna put more information in the description below. So next thing about Kieran is that his calls with his clients became more productive and became more valuable to the client. Before he would recap numbers, he would read from the deck and he would tell them, hey. This is what happened to numbers and so on. Now what Kieran does instead is because AI does most of the number work and everything, Kieran just records a Loom video a Loom video. He's he does what he would do before on the call. He sends a Loom video, and then on the call, he focuses on things that that is decision making stuff, things that require judgment. So the client watches a Loom. The call is more strategic conversation.
15:47CTAYou know? Kieran's more energized. He's not doing a boring call to explain numbers, but he can actually talk about decision making strategy. And clients appreciate that more because now they're spending their time on stuff that they actually value more. So they actually talk about more important discussions. And, again, if you wanna build skill systems in your business so you can get 80% of the work done done by AI, I do have a community. I'm launching on May 18. I'll see you there in the inside.
§ · For Joe

Steal the slide rig, not just the thesis.

Build with Rashid playbook

Rashid's slides are doing 80% of the teaching — the talking head is just a presence cue. That ratio is the unlock for technical content.

  • Build 5–7 hand-drawn lesson cards (Excalidraw works fine) as the main canvas — drop yourself into a PiP bubble in the corner.
  • Number every lesson top-left (`## · LESSON #`) so the viewer always knows where they are. Add a thin rail along the bottom that names each visual element on the slide.
  • Color code religiously: green = the path you want them to take, red = the path they're on, white = neutral structure. Hand-circle the key number on every before/after table.
  • Show the result before the method. Rashid drops the 7→15 clients / $24K→$52K table four minutes in, then spends the next twelve explaining how. Curiosity stays high the whole way.
  • Every claim gets a 2D chart. 'Revenue up, hours flat' is literally drawn as two lines. Visual proof beats verbal proof.
  • Pitch your offer (or product) as path 3 of 3 — make 'do nothing' and 'do the obvious thing' explicit, then show your option as the only one that breaks the ceiling.
  • For Mod Boss / JoeFlow content: take any creator workflow (record → cut → caption → schedule → post) and draw it as an 8-step labeled pipeline. That single slide is the whole pitch.
§ · For You

If you run a service business, here's what to actually try.

If you're thinking about applying this

Before you hire your next person, audit the one deliverable that eats the most hours every month — that's where AI can do real work for you.

  • Pick the single recurring deliverable that takes the most repeated hours (monthly report, audit, recap, onboarding doc).
  • Map it as a sequence of small steps: load inputs → pull data → calculate → validate → draft → render → review. Each step should fit in one sentence.
  • Build the full pipeline for ONE client first. Don't try to generalize. Aim for 90% quality, not 100%.
  • Use Claude Code or a comparable agent so you can keep the steps as files you own and edit — not buried inside a SaaS prompt box.
  • Treat the system like a new hire: when it makes a mistake, edit the relevant step instead of just fixing the output. That's how it compounds.
  • Keep the judgment work. Let AI build the deck and flag anomalies; you decide what the numbers mean and what to tell the client.
  • Onboarding the system to a new client should take a one-time block (Kieran's was 10 hrs). After that, the monthly hours go to near-zero.
§ · Frame Gallery

Visual moments.