Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Every AI side hustle becomes a commodity the moment it succeeds — distribution through a personal brand is the only moat that AI cannot erode.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You have a nine-to-five and want a side income in the $3,000-$10,000/month range without quitting first.
You have been circling AI business ideas for months and cannot decide which one to pursue.
You are comfortable selling or learning to sell, and want AI to handle the delivery side.
You are considering an AI automation agency or faceless YouTube channel and want a framework for evaluating the risk.

SKIP IF…

You are already generating consistent client revenue and are looking for a scaling or systems-level framework.
You want a passive income model with no client interaction — every path recommended here requires outbound or audience building.
You need a technically deep AI implementation guide — this is business model strategy, not engineering.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

AI made it trivial to copy any digital product or automated service, so the product itself is no longer the moat. The video makes this case through a scored matrix of five popular AI side hustles (Etsy templates, faceless YouTube, dropshipping, vibe-coded apps, AI automation agencies) — all rate low on the AI Proof Moat criterion. The alternative argued for is an AI-powered service business anchored to a personal brand: sell first with a verbal promise, deliver using Claude, and use signal-filtered cold outbound via Claude plus Apollo integration to get the first client before a following exists.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 01:07

01 · Layoff hook and host credentials

Job-loss fear hook, personal Oracle story, client results (Sandy, Brandon at $10K/mo)

01:07 – 03:53

02 · Four evaluation criteria

Sandy client story; introduces Speed to First Client, Ease to Start, Total Cost to Launch, AI Proof Moat

03:53 – 07:18

03 · Claude Side Hustle Matrix

Rates Etsy templates, faceless YouTube, AI dropshipping, vibe-coded apps, AI automation agency — all weak on AI Proof Moat

07:18 – 10:12

04 · The winner: AI Powered Service plus Personal Brand

Defines AI-powered service broadly; explains Sell First Build Later; distribution as the moat

10:12 – 11:35

05 · Founder X pitch

Revenue breakdown of a 370K YouTube brand; Founder X and Founder X+ offers introduced

11:35 – 13:50

06 · Finding your business idea

Existing skills vs desired skills; three months to proficiency; ikigai framework introduction

13:50 – 17:12

07 · Live ikigai Claude skill demo

Runs the custom Claude skill to generate offer analysis, recommended pricing, competitor landscape, 30-day plan

17:12 – 19:25

08 · Getting your first client

Two paths: personal brand and cold outbound. Signal-based list building; 10% close rate math; outbound misconceptions

19:25 – 22:48

09 · Live Claude and Apollo integration demo

Finds prospects by criteria, enriches contact data, generates tailored outreach angles, adds to Apollo sequences inside Claude

22:48 – 25:15

10 · Sequencing and CTAs

Start with outbound, add brand later; dual CTA for free live training and Founder X discovery call

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

An AI-powered service is any service where AI does the heavy lifting — and the category will eventually include almost everything.
The AI Proof Moat for Etsy templates and faceless YouTube is effectively zero: if you can make it with Claude, so can a thousand competitors.
99% of people who build vibe-coded apps make less than $100 from them.
Selling a service requires zero capital to launch — the product is a promise on paper that you fulfill after payment.
Distribution, not the service itself, is the only defensible competitive advantage in the AI era.
Cold outbound still works: the critical variable is not volume but signal quality — finding behavioral indicators that a prospect is likely to respond.
A 10% close rate on outbound meetings means 10 meetings equals one client — tracking meetings per month is the only metric that matters early.
The ikigai framework applied to AI offers finds the intersection of love, skill, pay, and world need.
Proficiency in any AI skill sufficient to charge for it can be reached within three months of focused effort.
Personal brand and outbound are not sequential: start outbound for cash, layer in brand content once revenue flows.
Claude can act as a connector between prospecting tools, letting you find leads, enrich contacts, and generate outreach angles inside a single conversation.
Speed to first client matters more than any other launch variable — if the path to revenue takes over a year, the model is wrong for early stages.

Takeaway

Why your AI side hustle will get copied and what to do about it.

WHAT TO LEARN

In a world where anyone can clone your product or service with Claude in an afternoon, the only thing that cannot be copied is the audience that already trusts you.

AI Proof Moat is the one criterion that separates durable AI businesses from flash-in-the-pan ones — Etsy templates, faceless channels, and dropshipping all score near zero because replication cost is zero.
A service business requires no capital to launch: the product is a verbal promise, the delivery is AI, and the client pays before you build anything.
Speed to first client matters more than any other launch variable — if the path to revenue takes more than a few weeks of outreach, reconsider the model.
Signal-based list building — filtering prospects by behavioral indicators like active LinkedIn posts or paid ad spend — dramatically outperforms spray-and-pray cold outreach.
A 10% close rate on booked meetings is sufficient: 10 meetings yields one client, and one client is enough proof of concept to compound from.
Outbound and personal brand are not a choice between — start with outbound to generate cash, then invest in brand content to make inbound compound over time.
The ikigai exercise applied to your AI offer prevents the most common failure mode: picking a niche that is profitable but that you will abandon in three months because you have no genuine interest in it.
AI tools like Claude with Apollo integration collapse what used to be a four-tool workflow — prospect research, contact enrichment, message personalization, and sequence enrollment — into a single conversational session.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

AI Proof Moat: A criterion for evaluating AI side hustles: how difficult would it be for competitors or AI itself to replicate your business model and erode your revenue? Low moat means anyone can copy you once you find success.
AI-powered service: Any service delivery model where AI tools do the bulk of the fulfillment work, including script writing, email marketing, LinkedIn ghostwriting, SEO content generation, and automations.
Signal-based list building: Filtering a prospect list by behavioral or intent signals — such as active LinkedIn posting in the last 14 days or running paid ads — to increase the likelihood of a cold outreach response, rather than targeting by industry alone.
Ikigai: A Japanese concept meaning reason for being. Applied here as a business-idea filter: the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs.
Sell First Build Later: A service business launch sequence where you verbally commit to a deliverable, collect payment, and only then produce the work using AI — eliminating months of product development before knowing if anyone will pay.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

19:55toolApollo ↗

11:35productFounder X free live training ↗

13:50toolIkigai Claude Skill free ↗

24:50linkBook a Call Founder X ↗

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

07:57

“Distribution is the name of the game. If you have a YouTube channel, a LinkedIn profile, anywhere you are building a personal brand, this is what is going to allow you to build a long-term brand for years to come.”

Punchy thesis statement, stands alone with zero context→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

09:00

“You are selling first and building later. You are not wasting six months of your time to build the perfect product.”

Counterintuitive advice delivered crisply→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

10:58

“The hardest part about making money online is getting the customers. That is why I am so focused on building a personal brand so that people come to you instead of you always having to chase them.”

Emotional truth plus practical consequence in two sentences→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

00:00With the explosion of AI, companies are firing employees left and right and no job is safe. Amazon just cut 30,000 employees, Microsoft 20,000, and Oracle 30,000.

00:10That's literally 20% of their entire workforce. And the funny part is that could have been me because I used to be a tech sales rep at Oracle. But fortunately for me, I left before all these layoffs started and built my online business here in Vietnam.

00:23And it's from this very YouTube channel, I was able to get to 370,000 subscribers generated over 7 figures in revenue just from content alone.

00:32Now if you're looking to build a side hustle or an online business using AI, this is actually great news because AI isn't just for the big corporation, it's for you and me, the everyday regular person who wants to build lean, profitable online businesses that allow you to work from anywhere in the world. Now this isn't just a reality for myself.

00:50My clients like Sandy and Brandon are making $10,000 a month, and they started from zero, and they're able to do this because of AI. So in this video, I wanna share with you what are some of the best side hustles you can get into using AI, and ultimately, how you can find your path to build a massively successful one person business that allows you to work from anywhere in the world.

01:11So let's first begin with picking your Claude side hustle. Hustle. So as we get started, I wanna break some limiting beliefs because I know a lot of you guys wanna build a business, but you might be paralyzed or stuck or just in your head planning all the time.

01:24So let's overcome some of these excuses. Right? Some of you guys might say, oh, I'm too busy with a nine to five job.

01:29Maybe you'll say, don't have any valuable skills or it's I nobody knows who I am and you don't have a following yet. And this is reasonable to think, but I wanna share a story with one of my clients, Sandy. So for her, she was actually just a insurance sales manager doing a everyday regular job.

01:45But she really wants to get into the AI space. So when we started working together, the first thing she asked me was, Patrick, how do I get into AI if I don't know anything about AI? Aren't, you know, people are gonna call me an impostor?

01:56And I told her like, it doesn't matter. Every AI expert that you see online, they didn't know anything about AI two years ago.

02:02Right? You can become an expert in anything you want with just a couple of months. And so she started learning some AI stuff online.

02:09And what's crazy is within the first two weeks of really getting into the AI automation game, I helped her get her first AI automation client for $3,300 off in an outreach. And she snowballed that success and she didn't have any testimonials.

02:23She's never even done AI automation before, but I taught her how to sell these skills online and that's how she eventually got her first client. And she snowballed that into a successful YouTube channel that has over 15,000 YouTube subscribers now and all of those really came within the last two months.

02:39And so the crazy part is she's making more than $10,000 a month with her AI business and this is someone who is busy, who has a nine to five, has three kids, but she didn't make any excuses. So hopefully that inspires you to make you realize like, hey, you can do this too. Right?

02:54Now, when it comes to actually getting into a side hustle, there are a couple things you need to look out for because there are many different side hustles available. Whatever idea you choose, you wanna make sure you have speed to first client. So how fast can you realistically land your first high paying client?

03:08Right? If it's gonna take a year or two years before you get started, probably not the best option. Number two is what's the ease to get started?

03:15Right? How easy is it for you to get started even if you don't have an audience, no capital and no technical skills?

03:22Third is what's the total cost to launch? Right? So what is the full cost of all the tools, all the time and all the money that you you have to spend in order to get things going?

03:30And finally, it's your AI proof mode. So with AI and everyone's gonna start using it, how likely is AI itself going to disrupt your business and how likely is your competition going to just copy you and just like, you know, bleed you out.

03:45Right? So you wanna check all these boxes to see whether or not a side hustle is good. And to do that, we're gonna use the Claude side hustle matrix.

03:53Now, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go over all the top Claude side hustles that people are talking about online and I will compare side by side which one is the best and which one makes the most sense for you. Now, the first one is gonna be Etsy templates, digital products. You know, you've seen a ton of videos on this, right, where you're selling like these $10 templates on Etsy.

04:10Well, the thing is speed to get your first client is kinda medium because you have to learn all these skills to create some kind of template and put it on Etsy and it might be a while before you get your first sale. The ease to get started, it is really easy because AI is doing all the work. Right?

04:22Total cost to launch, pretty low, you just put it up. But AI proof mode is very low. Meaning, if you can make a template using Claude and you put it on Etsy and it sells for $10, what stops a thousand other people doing the exact same thing and copying your templates?

04:36Right? There's no defensible mode here when you're using these kind of marketplaces in this way. Now let's talk about faceless YouTube channels and any kind of UGC content creation.

04:44Right? Speed to the first client, it's gonna take a while before you really start making money with this because there's so much skills you have to learn in order to get these massive views. The ease to get started, I would say it could be easy because AI is doing all the work.

04:56Right? Total cost of launch, also easy because you can use so many different AI tools nowadays to get started. But the AI proof mode is just an isn't there.

05:04Right? Faceless, anything, anybody can just literally take your thing and copy you. So eventually, you're just gonna get beat out.

05:10And there are some people that make money today, but are the is their business gonna be around one year from now? Hard to say. What about AI drop shipping?

05:16Right? I would say speed to your first client or first sale is medium. You have to still learn a lot of skills, but, you know, you can run ads and get a client, right, or a customer.

05:24Ease to get started, I would say pretty hard. Right? You get to learn ads, product, landing pages, so many new skills you have to learn even if AI is doing the work.

05:32Total cost, pretty high because you gotta run ads or do some kind of content and get people in the door. AI proof mode, it's not much branding, it's drop shipping, so anybody can copy you very easily and they will if you find any success. And what about vibe coded apps?

05:44Right? Everyone's talking about that. The thing is speed to get your first client or customer is very slow.

05:49Even though you're vibe coding something, it does take a while to still build and majority of people who are doing vibe coding, they don't even make a $100 off their app. I would say 99% of people don't. That's actually an official statistic.

05:59Ease to get started, still very hard to vibe code, something people find useful. Total cost to launch, I would say medium. You still gotta pay for servers and things like that, but it's not incredibly high these days.

06:08Right? AI proof mode, very low. You know?

06:10It's all about distribution. Anybody can copy your product. So it's hard to defend unless you're really good at marketing.

06:17Right? Now let's talk about this one which I think is actually pretty decent and that's the AI automation agency. Right?

06:23You've seen so many videos on YouTube talking about this. Speed to first client, I would say medium because you can reach out to people, some of automation just like my client Sandy did, so it works. Right?

06:31The ease to get started, I would say it is medium because you don't have to be super technical. You can be good at sales, getting meetings, and then once they give you the money, you know, find someone technical to do the work. Total cost of launch, it's pretty much zero.

06:44Right? Because if you can get a meeting, you know, email somebody, it doesn't cost anything. And, uh, AI proof mode, I would say it's pretty low because unless you're building a personal brand around your business, anybody can just copy the same thing you're doing.

06:55Right? Still better, I would say, than the other options, but not perfect quite yet. So now you might be wondering, okay.

07:01So what is the best opportunity if you're trying to get, you know, get into this AI game. Right? And I personally think it's gonna be the AI services and a personal brand combination.

07:10K? Now AI powered service is pretty much just any service you're providing where you're using AI to fulfill. It could be script writing, email copywriting.

07:18Technically an AI automation would be a service as well. And so I'll dive a little bit deeper into that. Speed to first client is very fast.

07:24When you're selling a service that's not really that technical, you're just solving a problem and it's almost the same as just selling something without AI. Right? But AI is a hot word.

07:32It allows you to get in the door a lot faster. Ease to get started, very easy. When you're selling services, you know, there's nothing really to build.

07:38You're just a promise on a piece of paper. You get paid and you do the work. Right?

07:41Total cost of launch, practically zero when you're selling a service. K? It's a promise that, you know, you will fulfill once they give you the money.

07:47An AI proof mode, very high. Meaning, if you have a personal brand and you build it around this kind of service, then it's defensible because even when everyone's doing all this AI stuff, distribution is the name of the game.

07:59So if you have a YouTube channel, a LinkedIn profile, any anywhere you where you're building a personal brand, this is what's going to allow you to build a long term brand for years to come. Right? Not just flash in the pan because AI is hot.

08:10Now I wanna dive a little bit deeper into exactly what an AI powered service is so you get a clear understanding of how you can actually do it. Right? It's really just any service you provide using AI.

08:19It's like anything where AI does the heavy lifting. Right? So it could be you're helping someone with LinkedIn content.

08:24Maybe you're doing YouTube thumbnails and scripts or maybe it's email marketing, webinars or an AI powered DM setter. You can see that all these examples that I'm giving you, they actually can be done without AI. But the thing is with AI, it really does like 90% of the work and that's the beauty of this opportunity right now.

08:42So the difference between an AI automation agency and an AI powered service is that an AI automation agency is just one specific type of an AI powered service. Right? You're going into a business, you're automating something so that a human doesn't have to do it.

08:55Right? That's just one type of service. But an AI powered service, it's literally any service that exists where you're using AI to deliver.

09:04Right? And moving forward from this point on, I would say pretty much everything is gonna be an AI powered service because like why wouldn't you use AI? Right?

09:11Because this is just where the future is headed. And the cool part about this is when you're selling an AI powered service, you're selling first and you're building later. You're not wasting six months of your time to build the perfect product.

09:21Right? You're talking to customers, seeing if they wanna buy it. If they give you money, then you deliver.

09:26Okay? And it's as simple as picking a service, landing a client, and using Claude to deliver the work, and you just get paid to learn from your clients. And that's how my clients like Sandy did it.

09:37Right? She didn't know anything about AI automations when she got started, but this company needed, um, specifically SEO. Right?

09:44And they want to use AI to generate these blogs. And she was like, okay. Well, I I think I can do it.

09:49And so she they gave her a shot. They paid her, you know, 3,000 something per month, and then she delivered results. So good, in fact, that she bumped the pay to 5,500 and, uh, expanded more of what she's doing for that specific company.

10:02Now, I wanna explain the whole personal branding aspect of this because even with a service, eventually it becomes commoditized. Right? People can't copy what you do.

10:10So any product or service in the era of AI can be copied. So the defensible moat is actually distribution.

10:17Meaning, it's your ability to get attention online with content and finding ways to differentiate yourself from everybody else by showcasing your personality, your expertise, and your client results similar to how I have a YouTube channel here. Right? So the markets and technology and the trends are always gonna change, but when you have a strong personal brand, you can adapt to anything and practically sell any kind of offer.

10:38You know, so for me, for example, if you're curious on behind the scenes of what a 370,000 personal brand on YouTube can actually do, you know, I have a few different things I sell. Number one is founder x, which is helping people probably like you guys, you know, quit their nine to fives and start a business.

10:53And so we have a whole program for that. I also have founder x plus where I specifically target businesses and provide a deeper level of service, um, which is very different from helping someone start from zero.

11:03Right? So, you know, and in the future, as I become bigger and I work with different people, I can create AI softwares and really sell any kind of AI powered service in the future if I partner with with different people. There will always be people who are willing to fulfill and do the work.

11:17The hardest part about making money online, would say, is getting the customers. And that's why I'm so focused on, you know, building a personal brand so that people actually come to you instead of you always having to chase them. Now, real quick, if you wanna learn how to build this type of business like me where you have a personal brand and you're selling AI powered services, I actually have a free live training coming up where I'm gonna break down exactly how you can find your business idea, how you can build a personal brand, how you can sign high ticket clients, and how you can deliver all of this using AI, especially using Claude.

11:48So if you wanna sign up for this live training, I put a link in the description. And spots are limited, so make sure you secure your spot as soon as possible before we run out, and I will see you live. So now that you understand the idea of an AI powered business and also personal brand, the next step is actually finding your unique AI business idea.

12:08Because there's so many ideas that you can choose, but you gotta find the one that works for you. So the easiest way to think about it is you need to be selling either a skill that you already have, maybe you learn something at your full time job or you learn something on the side, or it's gonna be skills that you desire to acquire.

12:23And I would say for a majority of skills, it really takes three months of hard work and dedication to become proficient. Right? And even the AI space, you know, every AI expert you see, whether it's me or the other guys have been doing it for just like one or two years.

12:37Right? We all knew nothing about AI back then. We all became experts just from putting out content, trying things ourselves, and sharing our journey.

12:46So if you're starting out and you're like using Cloud for the first time, understand it's okay because probably like 99% of the world hasn't used Claude in general. Right? So this is your opportunity to get ahead of the curve while it's still hot and not a lot of people have realized how big this opportunity is.

13:02I mean, for Sandy, she literally went from 200 subscribers to over 15,000 subscribers in the last two months and makes 10 k a month as someone who was considered a beginner just a couple months ago. So if she can do it while working a full time job, I don't see why you can either. Now in order to find your business idea, I wanna share this concept with you called the And the ikigai is really just a Japanese concept that helps you find your reason for being.

13:27Meaning, it aligns what you love, what you're good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. When you find the intersection of these four things, you're gonna get one step closer to figuring out what kind of business idea you can do that actually makes money, but it's also something that you enjoy because you don't wanna put yourself in another job.

13:43Now, have a free gift for you and created a custom Claude skill where you can download it using the link in the description, double click it and it will automatically install into your cloud. And what it's gonna do is we're gonna help you find your business idea, specifically an AI powered business idea.

14:00So once you actually type this in, it's gonna ask you a series of questions. And then from here, if you just keep answering the questions, it's gonna pull it all together and create your ikigai. Now I actually created an example for you just to show you how this works, and I actually created an offer that solves one of my problems.

14:17Right? So as a YouTuber, one of the biggest challenges I have is script writing.

14:21Because sometimes when I sit down and write an entire script, it takes quite a while, could take many hours, and if I had someone doing this for me or helping me do it, I would be willing to pay thousands of dollars to help me write these scripts every single month. Right? And so if someone created this kind of service for me and they were actually good, and even if they use AI to do all the work, I would pay for that result.

14:42So let's say we have a YouTube script writer, you know, they're getting in the game, they wanna use AI to help, you know, creators write their scripts, and they fill out this ikigai. What happens at the end and what is this gonna look like? So once you fill out the ikigai, it's gonna give you some kind of report that looks like this.

14:56So it's gonna be designed already because I already prompted it in this way. And so this is gonna be the one person AI ed YouTube engine for ad agency founders. Right?

15:04So this example, I said, hey. Let's try to do YouTube script writing specifically for agencies, uh, ad agencies, and let's just, run with it.

15:12Right? So it's gonna give me a score of how good this opportunity might be, recommended price point of like how much I should be charging per client, and then what would it take for me to get to $10,000 a month, which is pretty much just five clients. Right?

15:24So here you see like the ikigai of like what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, what can be paid for, putting it all together to find something that fits your specific needs. Now using the skill I gave you, it's gonna also do extra research to figure out, you know, what are some angles that are already saturated because, yeah, there are YouTube script writers out there.

15:42So how are you gonna differentiate yourself from everybody else? What are the underserved gaps? You know, what are people saying on Reddit, x, Twitter, all the different forms so you can find a specific language, um, to see, like, where the demand is at?

15:54And then we're also gonna dive into, like, which platform you should be building on. Right? And so for this particular offer, it's telling me, hey.

16:01Like, you should definitely be on YouTube, which makes sense. Because if you're script writing and you have a YouTube channel, it's just proof that you are who you say you are. Right?

16:10And not only that, but it's gonna give me all the different competitors who are doing something similar to what I wanna do so I can find a way to not compete directly against them, but find a blue ocean and do something a little bit different that maybe these guys aren't willing to do. And so if you kinda go through this whole thing, you see how in-depth it is of going like, what are other people charging and all this kind of stuff, and it does the research for you.

16:30Right? Then it gives you like, okay, like what are the different offer possibilities that you can sell? And it also puts together a thirty day plan of like what you should be doing every day in order for you to get clients even if you're starting from zero.

16:42So the reason why I created this skill is because I know a lot of you guys, you really get in your head sometimes, right, of I don't know what idea I should do or I don't know if it makes money. How do I know if I'm gonna love it? Well, if you do this exercise, all your questions and objections and reasons for why you can't get started should just disappear.

16:59So again, if you wanna find your AI powered service, check the ikigai skill using the link in the description. So once you have your ikigai and you have an offer, the next natural step is for you to get your first AI client. So when it comes to getting your clients, there's really only two things you're really doing here.

17:16Number one is building a personal brand whether it's on LinkedIn, x, YouTube, doesn't really matter, it depends on the offer you're selling. The second is outbound, reaching out to people and even if they don't know who you are, just do it cold, um, and get a meeting with them. Because if you can get meetings with people, you have opportunity to sell.

17:32So even if your close rate was 10%, well, if you get 10 meetings, you're gonna close one person and that's a good start because that's way better than zero. So your success when you're doing this kind of business is how many meetings can you get per month and that's really all you need to keep track of.

17:47And a lot of people, I know they have misconceptions about outbound. They'll say, oh, it doesn't work anymore. It's too saturated or I tried it once and it didn't work for me.

17:55But the reality is there there's so many people doing LinkedIn outbound, doing cold emails, it absolutely works. How would I know? Because I do it myself still.

18:03Right? So I have a sales team and you know, like I said before, like we reach out to people in the b to b space and we help them with personal branding, YouTube, like all this kind of stuff. And we literally hit them up cold.

18:13These guys have never seen my YouTube channel and, uh, we hit them up, we send them a Loom video and then they watch a Loom video and they're very impressed and then they're like, okay, let's let's book a call and then we get them on the phone and we close them for a high ticket deal. It's as simple as that. Now, when it comes to outbound, the most important thing I would say is actually list building.

18:30Most people get this completely wrong. Okay? So when you're building a list of people you wanna reach out to, the most important part to succeed is finding signals.

18:37You need to be finding these signals or indicators that would increase the chance someone would be interested in buying your services. So an example of some indicators might be, maybe they actively post on LinkedIn in the last fourteen days, maybe they run Facebook ads, maybe they complain about a specific problem on x or LinkedIn.

18:55Right? Like, maybe they can't find engineering talent. Maybe they're really big on YouTube, but you wanna sell them some kind of LinkedIn ghost writing stuff and they're not on LinkedIn.

19:03Right? And so with AI nowadays, you can go so granular, so specific to find these signals so that when you reach out to people, it's not just like a random person like, oh, let's hit up everyone in real estate.

19:15Like, find these specific signals that would increase the chance they will respond. And next, I'm gonna show you how to use AI to do this. Specifically, we're gonna use a combination of Claude, and then we're also gonna use its integration with Apollo.

19:28And Apollo is actually our partner for this video, and it is a product that I do recommend, especially when it comes to finding a bunch of contacts and also doing outbound especially when it comes to cold emailing. So let's go into my Claude and I'll show you exactly how this works. So basically, the new innovation now is that Claude has become like the connector of all different apps.

19:46And Apollo is essentially like a go to market software where if you wanna do outbound, you wanna reach out to people, you wanna get some sales, Apollo is one of the best tools to use. So they built an integration that goes directly into Claude where you can do all your work right in Claude. So you see, I already have these skills where it's like Apollo sequences, Apollo find people, find companies, contact details.

20:06So if I use any of these skills, I can say, hey, give me a list of these kind of people and I'll show you how this works. So going off the idea that, hey, maybe I'm gonna write scripts for YouTubers, right, and help people who wanna do YouTube but aren't good at it. So I'll say, okay, let's use the Apollo find people and find businesses.

20:21So find me creators and businesses who make more than 100 k per month but are not good at YouTube and get very little views. I wanna help them ideate and write scripts, give me 10 people. Right?

20:30So it's just an example. Basically how I do it is we first test it to see like what this list looks like with 10 people and then we work out all the kinks and the bugs. Uh, something, you know, sometimes it's not a fit, sometimes it is a fit.

20:42And then once we get a clean list, then I'll go ahead and do like a batch of a 100 people or 300 people. Right? So you wanna start small first because you know, you have to use credits and stuff like that to get the the data.

20:53So you wanna start small then expand once you get some results. So when I do this, what happens is that it's finding all these people that fit my criteria of like agencies that I wanna help with YouTube and they all suck at YouTube so that's why they're more likely to respond. So it found all these founders for me, it put all the companies, it showed whether they have a YouTube channel or not.

21:11Some of them have like very low subs, some of them don't have YouTube channels. And then from there, it went ahead and put it into a list for me on Claude. Right?

21:18Once I have this list of people is I wanna do some account research to understand what are their problems, go a little bit deeper, maybe I wanna write a custom message or maybe use AI to write the message. So we need more data on these people.

21:30So I went ahead and used the Apollo account research skill and then I went ahead and created all these different outreach angles. Right?

21:37So, you know, um, based on the company, the person is giving me, you know, all these cold email angles that I can take to make it more tailored for them.

21:47Right? Then from there, obviously, you need to get their contact information. Right?

21:51So you can actually enrich right into Claude and then essentially, you're gonna find all these different people's emails and their phone numbers and then, you know, you can contact them. Right? And then finally, the sequencing, if you use the slash Apollo sequence, you can add these particular contacts that you just did research on into any campaign that you have within Apollo.

22:11So you see, this is really the future of how people are gonna be using AI, where you're just talking to Claude, trying to figure out who's gonna be the best fit for your offer and is gonna go back and forth and tell you what works, what doesn't. You can find the right information and use the tools within Apollo all from Claude.

22:25It's crazy. Right? This is how the future is gonna be when it comes to starting these profitable one person businesses.

22:31And the best of all is like if you get lost or you get stuck, you literally just ask Claude like what you should do next or what it recommends for you and then you get yourself unstuck so that you can continue and get clients. So if you wanna give Apollo a try for yourself, I've actually put a link in the description for you to check it out and try it for yourself and let me know what you think.

22:50So obviously, when you get started, the easiest way to get clients is just to outreach them. Don't worry about having a personal brand quite yet. You don't need a big one in order to just reach out to clients code.

23:00For Sandy, for example, literally she had no following and someone paid her $3,000 a month for her AI automation. Now, once you do start getting clients and you're getting money in the door, then it actually does make sense to focus on your personal brand. Right?

23:12Whether it's like LinkedIn, x, YouTube, it really depends on where your audience is. I personally favor LinkedIn mainly because you don't have to have a lot of followers and you can DM people on LinkedIn as well on top of cold emailing and YouTube. Right?

23:24Because YouTube here, you know, when you can post at least one video per week, it can compound into hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And, you know, because of my YouTube channel, we're literally getting a lot of book calls every single day where our salespeople, their calendars are booked out to the max right now.

23:39We are like figuring out like how to hire more people. It's because I created a brand, right, where people come to me, we're getting like tens of thousands of emails, uh, every month. People come into a live webinar, getting the lead magnets, you know, booking calls and this is the power of building a personal brand.

23:54So yes, my brand allows me to attract people by the hundreds of thousands, but at the same time for specific targeted people in the b to b space, we still reach out to them because, you know, it's like if you know who you wanna work with, why not just reach out to them directly. Alright. So now you have the complete framework on how to choose the right cloud side hustle for you, why AI powered services and building a personal brand is gonna be the holy grail of AI side hustles and exactly how you can even find your first clients just using tools like Apollo to reach out to them.

24:25Now you might have different questions like, okay, like what if my idea is not good enough or how do I know if it's gonna work? Can I trust AI completely? And I totally understand where you're coming from.

24:34This is why I actually created the program founder x where I help people quit their nine to five jobs and build an AI powered service business as well as a personal brand so they can actually build a business where they can work from anywhere in the world as long as they have internet connection and a laptop. So if you want some help and guidance on your journey, you can actually book a call with me and my team using the link in the description where we'll help you map out a custom growth plan and guide you on what the next steps should be for you to actually build this kind of business.

25:00And don't forget, I also have that free live training coming up. So if you're not ready for a call yet and you wanna join the live training with me, feel free to check that out. Now, you wanna just check out another YouTube video, check out this one right here where I show you how to build a profitable one person business using AI.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Every few months a new AI side hustle goes viral and everyone piles in — until the returns collapse because the barrier to entry is exactly zero. This video opens with layoff numbers at Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon, then builds a scored framework to separate the side hustles that will compound from the ones that will commoditize.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

03:53model

Claude Side Hustle Matrix

Speed to First Client
Ease to Get Started
Total Cost to Launch
AI Proof Moat

A 4-criteria scoring grid applied to 5 AI business models to identify which has the best combination of speed, accessibility, low cost, and competitive defensibility.

Steal forAny audience evaluating competing business models or service niches

13:22model

Ikigai AI Offer Edition

What you love
What you are good at
What you can be paid for
What the world needs

Japanese framework for finding life purpose, applied here as an AI business idea filter. The custom Claude skill runs the user through it interactively and outputs a scored offer report with pricing recommendations and a 30-day plan.

Steal forOnboarding sequences where customers need to pick a niche before buying a coaching program

09:00concept

Sell First Build Later

Sequence a service business by landing the client and collecting payment before building anything. AI handles delivery. Eliminates the risk of spending months building a product nobody buys.

Steal forAny service offer launch or coaching program that teaches freelancing

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK

11:35product

“I actually have a free live training coming up where I am gonna break down exactly how you can find your business idea, how you can build a personal brand, how you can sign high ticket clients.”

First soft CTA at 11:35 (free training), second hard CTA at 24:20 (discovery call). Both bookend the Apollo sponsor segment. Free training link acts as a low-commitment lead magnet funneling to the paid Founder X program.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA

19:55toolApollo ↗

11:35productFounder X free live training ↗

13:50toolIkigai Claude Skill free ↗

24:50linkBook a Call Founder X ↗

FROM THE DESCRIPTION

AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.