30:46Chris Koerner on The Koerner Office Podcast · Interview
He Asked AI To Make Money. It Did.
A non-coder gave an AI agent a $100 budget. Thirteen days later: $8,400 MRR.
March 20thThe argument in one line.
You do not need technical skills to build a profitable AI automation business. You need the willingness to sit with people you already know, listen for their pain, and let AI build the solution you have never built before.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You are considering an AI agency or consulting business but feel blocked by your lack of coding experience.
- You are mid-career or post-retirement with a network of business owner contacts you have never sold anything.
- You want a realistic, low-overhead revenue path that compounds on existing trust rather than requiring a following or audience.
- You are selling to local or small businesses and want a concrete example of how the first few clients actually happen.
SKIP IF…
- You are looking for a technical deep-dive into AI tools, APIs, or code architecture.
- You want a scalable SaaS product playbook rather than a service or consulting business model.
The full version, fast.
Phil retired, started listening to podcasts about AI agency businesses, and decided to try it with zero technical background. His first step was voice agents in GoHighLevel pitched to roofing companies and friends. One friend, a financial adviser managing 1.4 billion dollars, hired him on a 50000 dollar six-month consulting retainer after months of trust-building conversations. A chiropractor friend paid 3500 dollars setup plus 1500 dollars per month to launch a new laser treatment, an engagement Phil now maintains in roughly 90 minutes per month. The core pattern: business owners universally know they need AI but do not know where to start or how. The person who shows up, listens, and proposes something concrete wins.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
01:19guestPhil
00:00hostChris Koerner
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:19
01 · Cold open
Trailer cuts from deeper in the interview -- 50k reveal, coding disclaimer, best time to be alive.
01:19 – 03:06
02 · Phil's origin story
Retirement in June 2025, AI agency decision via podcast, first voice agents in GoHighLevel, the 50k contract reveal.
03:06 – 05:15
03 · How the investment adviser contract happened
Cold calls to roofing companies failed; texted 1000 phone contacts; 7-10 sit-downs; early mistake of talking too much instead of listening.
05:15 – 08:06
04 · Recording client meetings
Limitless pendant as a tool for AI agency owners; feeding transcripts to Claude for pricing, contracts, and prep questions.
08:06 – 11:13
05 · Grantcraft and the chiropractor deal
Built Grantcraft for nonprofit friend at no cost as proof of concept; spun into chiropractor laser launch.
11:13 – 14:50
06 · What Phil actually built
Content creation app on Zerona Z8 laser; GHL bot to 7500 existing clients; signup form; 90 minutes per month ongoing maintenance.
14:50 – 20:00
07 · Qualifying and closing
Beehiiv MCP sponsor; how Phil priced deals; investment adviser budget conversation; why the chiropractor was an easy close.
20:00 – 27:00
08 · Warm network as the engine
Content creation analogy (town with five stores needs a sign); people are more important than money; ethical MLM principle applied to warm outreach.
27:00 – 33:00
09 · Floodgate principle and mindset
Chris's floodgate model; Phil on motivation, Eat the Frog, talking to yourself like your kids; best time in history to start a business.
33:00 – 36:33
10 · Practical wrap
First vibe-coded app (cow management in Replit); client solutions becoming products; listener challenge: sit down and listen; always ask for referrals.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Business owners universally know they need AI; they just do not know where to start or how -- that gap is the entire product.
- Phil lost most of his early sales not because of AI skepticism but because he talked too much instead of listening.
- Recording every client meeting and uploading the transcript to Claude is how Phil generates pricing, contracts, and prep questions without any staff.
- Phil built a 3500 dollar setup plus 1500 dollar per month retainer for a chiropractor and estimates the ongoing work takes 90 minutes a month.
- The 50000 dollar contract did not start with a sale -- it started with a voice agent demo that was not even the right fit, which earned enough trust for months of follow-on conversations.
- You only need to know more than the client, not everything; 99% of business owners know less about AI than someone who started learning six months ago.
- The floodgate principle: solve one problem for a friend, and they return with every other problem -- the same client becomes your most reliable pipeline.
- Phil admitted on the podcast he had never once asked a client for a referral -- and only thought of it mid-episode.
- Content creation for local businesses in 2026 is not about going viral; it is about having a sign -- and that makes it an easy, low-resistance sell.
- Phil built a knowledge base from 22000 chunks of an investment adviser radio archive and used it to generate branded content automatically in the client voice.
- Vocalizing negative thoughts hardens them; compounding works in both directions and you choose which direction to feed.
- A friend of a friend is light-years better than a cold call, but you never activate that tier if you never tell people what you do.
The non-technical path into AI consulting.
WHAT TO LEARN
Winning your first AI clients has less to do with what you can build and more to do with how well you listen before you pitch.
02Phil's origin story
- Starting with voice agents in a no-code tool is a credible entry point even if the first demo is not the right fit for the client -- it earns trust and opens conversations.
- Listening to a podcast about a business model and just trying it is a complete strategy; waiting for credentials or certifications is not.
03How the investment adviser contract happened
- Texting 1000 contacts from your phone and asking to meet is still one of the highest-leverage sales motions available to a new service business.
- Early sales failures are almost always about talking too much, not about the product being wrong -- the fix is to ask more and present less.
04Recording client meetings
- Recording every client conversation and uploading the transcript to Claude generates proposals, pricing frameworks, and objection prep without any additional overhead.
- A smartphone voice memo app is a complete substitute for a dedicated wearable recorder -- the transcript is what matters, not the device.
05Grantcraft and the chiropractor deal
- Building something for free for a trusted contact as a proof-of-concept is a faster path to a paying contract than cold outreach to strangers.
- A performance-based pricing structure (no billing until results arrive, capped at a percentage of the outcome) eliminates the risk objection for budget-constrained clients.
06What Phil actually built
- Automations that take 90 minutes a month to maintain can still command 1500 dollars per month -- value is set by what the client would have to do without you, not by your hours.
- Content creation for a local business does not require marketing expertise; it requires a clean knowledge base built from what the business already knows about itself.
08Warm network as the engine
- The principle that MLMs use to sell products -- start with the people you know -- is equally valid when you are genuinely solving real problems instead of pushing something worthless.
- Even a contact you have not spoken with in twenty years is warmer than a cold call; the barrier to texting them is entirely psychological, not practical.
09Floodgate principle and mindset
- Talking to yourself the way you would talk to a child going through a hard time is a concrete, transferable practice for managing self-criticism during a difficult business phase.
- Busyness that avoids the most uncomfortable action is a form of procrastination -- the discomfort of the thing you keep deferring is diagnostic of exactly what you should do next.
Terms worth knowing.
- GoHighLevel
- An all-in-one CRM and marketing automation platform popular with agency owners for building voice agents, automations, and client funnels without deep coding knowledge.
- Vibe coding
- Building software by describing what you want in plain language to an AI, rather than writing code by hand.
- Limitless pendant
- A wearable AI recorder that captures ambient conversations and generates transcripts. Announced for Meta acquisition during the interview.
- Retainer
- A recurring monthly fee a client pays to keep a consultant available, as opposed to a per-project price.
- MCP (Model Context Protocol)
- An open protocol that lets AI tools like Claude connect directly to external services. Mentioned in the Beehiiv sponsor segment.
- Floodgate principle
- Chris Koerner term for the pattern where a single trusted client keeps returning with new problems, making the initial relationship your most reliable deal pipeline.
Things they pointed at.
06:20productLimitless pendant
08:06toolGrantcraft (custom Claude app)
30:10bookEat That Frog (Brian Tracy)
Lines you could clip.
00:09
“Didn't know anything about coding. Still don't.”
06:30
“My only goal is to get them talking.”
30:10
“Are you busy doing the wrong things because you are too scared to do the things you know you need to do?”
07:51
“Once I put that into Claude, Claude and I can talk back and forth about it -- work on pricing, draft the contracts.”
Where the conversation goes.
01:19 – 03:06denseOrigin and credentials
03:06 – 05:15denseClient acquisition via warm network
05:15 – 08:06denseAI workflow: recording + Claude
08:06 – 14:50denseProject case studies
14:50 – 20:00steadyPricing and closing
20:00 – 27:00denseSales philosophy and warm outreach
27:00 – 33:00steadyMindset and motivation
33:00 – 36:33steadyPractical advice and wrap
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metaphorstory
00:00The contract that he gave me for the first six months was for $50,000. Holy cow.
00:06Once I got all that set up, we're probably talking about it taking me an hour and a half every month for this. Didn't know anything about coding.
00:13Still don't. I'm still learning all of the ins and outs of Claude. I just started talking to Claude.
00:19Okay? Yeah. A $3,500 for setup and then $1,500
00:25a month for six months. How many hours would you say you spent upfront building the $3,500
00:30ad? Building things in there that I've never built before. I would say maybe twelve hours.
00:36Wow. This is by far the best time in human history to be alive and start a business. Five, ten years ago, small business owners would have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered.
00:48And if you'd have told them what was coming, they would have told you it was fiction, that it was not possible. Well, guess what?
00:54We are seeing now a day and time to where we can have a dream about what we want to build. And though we've never built it before, AI can help us build that. What the heck?
01:06Does it get any better than this? What you once thought was impossible is so possible now, and we have never had more tools at our disposal than we have right now.
01:19Well, Phil, why don't you just start from ground zero? I basically retired from my other work in June
01:252025. Just been doing all sorts of things. Uh, through listening to your podcast, decided to go the AI agency route.
01:33Uh, and I'll say this, by far, this is this is the best business decision I ever made. Okay. So what was the first thing that you did?
01:41Okay. So so the first thing I did was started building voice agents just because it was super easy to build, and I'm not that technical. I didn't have any history in computer programming, anything like that.
01:53Pitched the agents to some friends, and they liked it. Pitched it to some roofing companies.
01:58They liked it. Through a pitch that I made to an investment firm buddy of mine, it opened the door for me to have a conversation with him about AI in his business. The guy's brilliant when it comes to finances, and they manage, like, $1,400,000,000, you know, in the Nashville area, nine offices.
02:16But in terms of him being able to trust AI to help him with something, he just didn't know what it was. And so, anyway, came to an agreement with him the first part of March for initially for a six six month term consulting part time consulting for him.
02:30We we built a I say we like it's there's more than me in the company, but there's not. Okay? But ended up building a a content creation thing for him.
02:41That was the start of it, and we're trying to be able to automate things for him now. But that said, uh, I mean, the contract that he gave me for the first six months will renew after six month months was for $50,000.
02:56Holy cow. I wanna get back to him, but you start by saying voice agents. What were you using to to build these voice agents?
03:04Okay. I was using GoHighLevel. Okay.
03:07Same. Start learning voice agents in GoHighLevel for your friend, and he's just like, uh, this is cool.
03:13It's kinda long winded. Not really my use case, but it gets your foot in the door with him. It earns you some trust with him.
03:19He sees that you kinda know what you're talking about, at least more than he does, which is the important part, which leads you to more conversations over the course of months. And then you just in March, you signed a $50,000
03:29contract with him. Right? Yeah.
03:30Do all kinds of reactions. Just doing random automations for him to help him with his social media. And when I say helping with social media and marketing, this is me trying to help them automate things.
03:41Okay? I I don't have any background in social social media or marketing or something, but I know enough to know that if you were asked the right questions of AI, it can end up guiding you through the process.
03:54And he has people in his firm who have kinda done that before. So I came into it knowing how they functioned, how all of it worked, and that was it. Okay.
04:03So did you talk to any other friends or family between October and March, or was it just this investment? No. No.
04:09Here's the thing. I had I had talked to I had talked to multiple other people. I had talked to I had cold called a lot of roofing companies.
04:18But then what the trigger was for me is Brandon had a presentation one time on getting new clients. And one of the things he said was to start with those you know. And so I basically went through all of the contacts on my phone.
04:34I've got more than a thousand contact, and I just started making a list and just started sending texts. Hey. I've started this AI automation business.
04:41You know, I'd love to be able to sit down with you. And so had probably seven to 10 sit downs with business owners.
04:49My my first encounters with them looking back involved me talking too much, sharing all the things that AI would do rather than letting them share the challenges that they're having, share the pain pain points. And so some of those first clients, probably the majority of those first clients, I didn't get, and it wasn't because of AI.
05:09It's because I was just too chatty. Yeah. Yeah.
05:12You were trying to sell, and, like, the best sell Absolutely. Is to listen.
05:15Yes. It's counterintuitive. Right?
05:17Yeah. Correct. Real quick, please subscribe to my channel.
05:19I know it's kinda lame to ask, but it means a lot. Thanks. When you had these sit downs, did you ever have the problem of you know, you asked the the age old question, like, what what are you struggling with in your business?
05:28What problems are you facing? And they're like, I don't know. Like, they don't they just don't give you much.
05:32Did you ever experience that? No. They were good at giving me a lot.
05:36They were they were good at giving me a lot. But, basically, what I've encountered with most business owners is they they know they need to utilize AI.
05:45Yeah. But they don't know practically what they need to start with.
05:49And the third thing is they certainly don't know how. Okay? And now I'm obviously significantly better at it to just sit down with them and let them talk.
05:58Uh, but, no, my goal mainly normally, I don't I don't even go with a with a list of questions. If it's a business that I don't know a lot about, I'll have AI help me.
06:09Claude help me come up with some starter questions, but but my only goal is to get them talking. Did you record these conversations at all? All of them.
06:16All of them. With this little thing I got from I heard from this guy Oh, yeah. By the name of Chris Corner.
06:22I got one right here, but I I put it through the wash, and it's been declined ever since. And I'll say this. It is the best in my assessment.
06:30It's one of the best tools for an AI agency owner. One is it captures the entire conversation you have with the client. Okay?
06:38So you can focus on what they're saying while they're saying it without thinking I need to write down something. Secondly, once you have that, for me, I plug it into Clogd because clogged knows that the majority of my bills are through, uh, go high level or either clogged code, and then it helps me come up with some solutions
06:54for them. Okay. Now if people don't have that, I'm putting in the chat what it is, limitless pendant.
07:00There's the Plaud, p l a u d. That's, like, their main competitor. Limitless got bought out by Meta.
07:06I think they're shutting that down, and Meta is absorbing it or something. So that pendant support for that pendant is probably going away. I've never used Plaud.
07:13It was I was, like, a religious adherent to this thing until it went through the wash after they announced the merger. And so I haven't been able to buy another one, and I just haven't used anything since.
07:22And I'm not joking you. I I leave the house, and I touch my chest. Yeah.
07:26Because I'm like, do I have it? And it's been, like, four months. So I should get the the other one, but I have it.
07:30Anyway, my point is we all have smartphones. We can just hit our voice notes app. We can just record it that way and then upload the transcription to Claude or whatever.
07:38So has that been helpful to, like, generate questions after the fact that you weren't able to think of or solutions after the fact that you weren't able to think of on this call? Well, I'll say this. It has been priceless priceless.
07:49Because once I put that into Claude,
07:51Claude and I can talk back and back and forth about it. And, you know, can say, okay. And Claude will will give me some solutions, and then we'll work on pricing.
08:01I I mean, literally work on pricing in Claude for me. Claude helps me draft the contracts for the client, helps me be able to be ready for potential questions that they would have in regards to the build.
08:14Yeah. Okay. So do you have any success stories from those other meetings you had with other friends?
08:19Absolutely. The the other success story is is that I have a good friend that owns a nonprofit and through his nonprofit, I built this app in Claude called Grantcraft and built that for him for free.
08:35And, basically, what it does, it finds grants that fits his fits his ministry, and it finds them. It drafts them.
08:43It goes in. It does studies of the grants to find out what you have to fill out to apply for that grant. It drafts it based on the content that we vetted about this ministry.
08:52Then you have a human go in and read it before it is sent in and, basically set it up for him for free, wanted to have proof of concept. And what I what I what I told him was, I said, okay.
09:04This is this is basically how we'll price this. Said I'll charge you $1,500 per grant that I fill out, $2,000 a month for the retainer for the service.
09:14However, I will not bill you anything till you until you have a grant come through, and my billing for you will not exceed 8% of the grant.
09:25Wow. And so and so what that lets me do with him is, one is it's a commission based thing I get paid for for him. But two is I can I can fill out a lot more grants than he's gonna get?
09:36It allows me to have a tax write off to his to his business. And when I first set this up through Claude Code, I was able to have my OpenClaw agent go in there and literally go through the process of filling out all the grants for me and sending that to me and letting us look through those before we actually sent them sent them in.
10:00Okay? And so so started out with that. But so through that project that I started with him, he is a chiro chiropractor.
10:09And so about two and a half weeks ago, maybe well, I take it back. It's could've could've been, like, a month ago. He had this new laser.
10:17It is a body toning laser approved by the FDA. I basically created a a deal a deal for him to help him launch it and manage it.
10:28That was the second project I got. I charged him $3,500 for setup and then $1,500 a month for six months.
10:39After six months, we'll be able to we'll be able to re reevaluate. Then anything more than than 10 clients he gets monthly through this service, I get $75 per client in in addition to the 1,500.
10:55And then in addition to that, he pays for all of his CRM cost through, uh, go high go high level. He also gives, uh, $500 a month towards, uh, marketing for ads and stuff to push new clients into this service that he's got.
11:10So what did you build exactly for him? 34 Basically, what I did what I built for him, one is I built him a content creation app that is built on the Zerona z eight laser, helps create content for him that he that can be, uh, put out there.
11:27Two is set up a a automated bot for him on a go high level that we sent out to all of his existing clients.
11:38He had, like, 7,500 existing clients to be able to answer any questions that they had in regards to the bot. Then I created a sign up form for to for them to sign up for the services and then to sign up for a launch.
11:54And then I'm basically just handling all of the monthly monthly management management of his social social media for this.
12:04Honestly, once I got all that set up, we're probably talking about it taking me an hour and a half every every every month for this. And you're charging 1,500 a month? Yes.
12:14$1,500 an hour. Yeah. 1,500 a month for the first for the first six months, and we would evaluate.
12:20We'd evaluate after that. But then that has led to some other things with him because he's wanting me to help him promote some other laser services he has in his practice. And then Laser.
12:32Yeah. Laser because he's literally got these laser treatment things.
12:36But the other thing that he'd he has never had a functioning CRM, and he wants me to work on something to help him reactivate
12:44some of his clients. He's probably the majority of small businesses are in the same boat. Correct.
12:49How many hours would you say you spent upfront building the $3,500
12:53I'll say this. With me setting up things in their CRM and and and in I go high level, building things in there that I've never built before, I would say maybe twelve hours.
13:06Wow. Twelve hours for the twelve hours for the 3,500.
13:10This tool, it's a it's a, like, a vibe coated wrapper. Right? It's like a It is.
13:14Absolutely.
13:14Okay. It is. Because I know I'll say this.
13:17I don't know. I didn't know anything about coding. I didn't know I didn't I didn't know anything about coding.
13:21Still don't. In fact, I'm I'm still learning all of the ins and outs of clog. Just, I mean, I didn't know anything till the last month about an MD file when you're building in Claude.
13:33I just started talking to Claude. Okay? Yeah.
13:35So and now that I've that I have built through these a couple times, then I've got a little more knowledge about it now. And it's kinda funny that you people keep coming back to content creation. You don't have a background there, do you?
13:46No. But but here's the thing that I mean, I do not have a background in it, but I know that for the average business owner who doesn't who does not have consistent content creation And when it's possible to easily build a knowledge base from what we know about that business and what it does, it is not that hard to create some kind of content creation.
14:06Okay? That is consistent with the voice. For the I'll tell you what.
14:09For the investment firm that I that I did, it has like this guy's been doing investment talk radio longer than Dave Ramsey's been doing his.
14:18And we have 22,000 chunks of data in this knowledge base that creates content for him. You got 570 something commercials.
14:28So it is super easy to create quality content in the voice
14:34of the business owner when you've got so much content. Yeah. Yeah.
14:38And I ended up telling him when we first created. I said, look, Paul. If you don't like it, it is all you, my friend.
14:43It is all you because, I mean, that's it. If you don't like it, you don't like yourself because I felt this on you. I'm trying to think of an analogy because on one hand, it's like content creation is important for businesses, for any business.
14:54On the other hand, it's, like, so hard to go viral and stand out. But the analogy I would think of is imagine imagine, like, a town that had 10,000 residents and only five retail stores. K?
15:06Five re that you grocery store, restaurant, whatever. Like, way more demand for retail stores than supply. There's only five.
15:12So then these five stores didn't even have signs up. Everyone just knew the red brick building is the grocery store, the white brick building is the restaurant, yada yada, until suddenly, like, there's 10. There's 10 retail stores, more competition.
15:24And so now they're like, man, we should probably get a sign. Right? Like, we don't necessarily need, like, a sign spinner, like, human out front to, like, be savvy and bring people in.
15:33We should actually we should probably just have a sign. Like, we need a presence. People need to know that, like, we are the grocery store.
15:39We're grocery store number one now, and the one that just opened is number two. To me, that's what content creation looks like in 2026 and over the next five years. Like, you're not promising people that they're gonna go viral or, like, transform their business with content, and they're not even thinking that.
15:55But, like, at this point, they just need something. You gotta hit publish on something or you you're just not relevant anymore. You need a sign.
16:02You just at least, like, bare minimum, put up a sign. Right? It doesn't need to be good or flashy or nice font or lit up at night.
16:08You just need a sign. To me, that's what content creation for local slash small businesses are today. Yeah.
16:13Any thoughts on that? No. Totally.
16:16Totally. Because, you know, all this stuff that we're creating is just to help them have a presence. It's it's not that I'm we're trying to help anybody go viral with this, but, uh, but yeah.
16:24Absolutely. Yeah. Something just happened with Beehive that I think you might have missed.
16:29You can now connect your Beehive account directly to Claude, ChatGPT,
16:33Gemini, or whatever AI tool that you use through something called MCP. So last week, I connected my newsletter to Claude, and now I can sit in Claude and say, look at my open rates from the last thirty days and tell me which subject lines performed best, or draft next week's newsletter based on the topics my audience clicked on the most this month, and Claude does it.
16:51You can see my real Beehive data, subscribers, engagement numbers, automations, revenue, everything, and I've already cut my weekly production time because I stopped guessing what to write about and started letting the data decide for me. So instead of using AI to just write generic content, use AI to plug into your actual newsletter to make decisions based on what's already working.
17:11Beehive built this MCP so your favorite AI tool can be your newsletter strategist and your data scientist all in one. So move your email list over today and try Beehive 30% off for thirty days with code Chris 30 because this might be the simplest, highest leverage business you can build right now. Okay.
17:29So this doctor,
17:31physician, that was a personal friend of yours as well? Yes. Personal friend of mine.
17:34And I'll end up saying this. Every bit of the business that I have had to this point has been from people from either direct contacts, direct friends, or friends of friends.
17:47We consistently underestimate this in the business culture sometimes, that people are more important than money.
17:55And to have meaningful relationships with people where you do everything within your power to try to add value to them and for them and to help them and to serve them and to do anything you can to help them other than building them something for free.
18:11You understand what I'm saying? But and there's there's just such an opportunity that we all have in all the circles where we've operated.
18:20We've done business before, people that we come in contact with, and businesses. You know, there's just such a huge opportunity for us to find their points of pain by opening up conversations with them, and that creates an inroad for us to pitch them some sort of a, what I would call, an early level solution that can that can end up leading to other things.
18:45You know, it's interesting because there's, like, there's something anyone can learn from anyone,
18:50any other business or whatever. Like, we could learn some good business principles from bad business people or from bad businesses like drug dealers. Right?
18:58I think of one industry that's very shady. I think most people would agree, and that's MLMs, multilevel marketing, network marketing. But what they are is very effective at selling.
19:08And they're also very effective at having high margin products because there's so many layers in that pyramid scheme. Everyone's gotta get paid. But one thing they do really well is when you sit down like, probably many of us have sat down with, like, a cousin or brother-in-law that was trying to sell us Tahitian Noni Juice or Rubbermaid or something.
19:25But when when you sit down at one of these seminars, it's always like, write down a list of everyone you know, and then call them. Yes. It's like, jeez.
19:33I'm gonna burn all these relationships. And if you sell them a crap bill of goods, you will. You will burn them.
19:38Absolutely. I know people that have done that. But if you're serving them and genuinely solving problems and using AI to help them make or save more money in their businesses, then you're helping them, then you're being a good friend.
19:49So if we take that principle and, like, put an ethical twist on it, there's something we can learn there. Like like, end of story, you're more likely to close someone that you know. Even if you went to high school with them twenty years ago and you haven't spoken with them since, you still know them.
20:01Like, you're still warm, warmer than a cold call. Right? Absolutely.
20:05Absolutely. You said two things. I'm gonna add one to it.
20:08You said your customers have all come from friends and friends of friends. I would think that the third thing would be what I call, like, the floodgate principle. And that's when you you find a friend that you can serve, you solve a problem with AI, and they see what you're capable of, and then they come back to you.
20:22And they're like, what about this? I have this other business. I have this rental home.
20:26I have the and then now, like, you're the guy. And, like, I have people in my life that are good at programming or Facebook ads. They're good at things I'm not good at.
20:33And every time I have a problem in that space, I go to Justin. I go to that guy, Kevin. It's like, you're my guy.
20:39And that's like the floodgate. So it's like there's like, the third tier of people is actually the the same as the first. It's just more jobs from the same person that you already gained trust from that maybe you went to high school with, maybe you go to church with.
20:51Any thoughts on that? Totally. Totally.
20:53So and it's it's just, uh, let me tell you something. When you develop the reputation
20:58of being the type of person that just wants to help help someone out, okay, that you help out someone, e even if they don't buy your product or service, you give them some tips. I'll say this. When I first sat down with the chiropractor and started talking about AI, neither he or his wife, they didn't even have any kind of AI accounts.
21:16They didn't have ChatGPT. They didn't have Claude. And when I'd walked in through the process of just signing up and had them do some basic things, they're like, you're you're just kidding me.
21:25And I was like, no. It'll end up doing it. And so, anyway yeah.
21:28Uh, anything anything we can do to add value, anything, uh,
21:33is just super helpful. What kind of qualifying questions do you ask to know if they're even capable of being able to afford 1,500 a month, 3,000 upfront, etcetera? Well, part of the thing is in the, um, investment
21:46guy, when I ended up signing him well, first off, we talked numerous times. We talked, like, seven to ten hours or more, and I didn't even know necessarily what he was wanting. He didn't know what he was wanting.
21:56And then he just said he just said, well, hey. If I if I hired you on some kind of kind of a retainer for the for the next six months, what would you what would you charge? And I said, well well, first off, you need to tell me how many hours you'd want me working for you a week.
22:09And so, uh, and I said I said, well, we're talking about twenty talking about twenty to twenty five hours a week maybe, helping you do some things being building automation. I'm charging him nothing for the automations because of the amount that he's paying me.
22:23And he said, well he said, what if we what if we did or we did $50.50 50,000? And I was like, okay.
22:29You know, started out with that. And then the other one then then the other one with the chiropractor with this laser, what I knew was he was super pumped up about it. He's got an established practice.
22:39It's a proven product. And for for him, being a business owner, to have me take over the entire product launch was a huge value for him. One is he didn't know know how to do it.
22:52Could he have learned? Well, sure. He could have learned, but there was a huge learning curve to it.
22:56And so they were just pumped up with it, uh, ready to go. And when I just went over what was possible with a proposal that Claude helped me create, okay, when I went over what was possible, I just started you know, I already had the 1,500 a month set in there and the 3500%, and it was not a hard sale at all.
23:15I just said, well, hey, Chris. We would do this, this, and this. We'd go through and do all that.
23:19He said, you mean you would do all that for 3,500? I was like, yeah. Anyway
23:23For the investment
23:24adviser guy, is that 50,000 over six months? What is the time frame? Six months.
23:29And so it started the first month of the first part of March. I've gotten two checks from him. I basically get a total of six checks, and then we will reevaluate after that.
23:39But it was, like, you know, uh, $83.33 per per month. Okay?
23:44What what do you have in the pipeline right now, and what do you think is next? How how how can you scale growing a business on friends and family? Well, first off, I'm gonna say this.
23:53At some point in time, you I don't believe you can you can only scale with friends and family. You gotta be able to branch out. And so I'll say this.
24:02One of my flaws that I know is I have not settled in on a niche. Okay?
24:08And when I say settle in on a niche, I don't mean, like, one necessarily one type of customer, but one initial product or service that I've offered. And I don't know if I listened to the video the guy did on business business assessments with AI, and I've I've thought about doing something like that.
24:26Maybe have a tier that's free, one that's $250, one that's a thousand, and that provides a foot in the door to be able to offer free free products to them that they could sign up for, but then to do to do different different level bills.
24:41Yeah. That's something that I have not yet settled in.
24:45But I absolutely love problem solving and being able to build personalized
24:52apps for a business that meets the specific needs that they have. Yeah. Yeah.
24:57I don't think it's a problem that you don't have a niche yet. Like, you have revenue. Right?
25:01And that's that's more valuable than a niche. What I really wanna know, and I think this is what most humans struggle with, is it sounds like it it was a period of months before you started learning these skills and you got your first revenue.
25:14How does one stay motivated? How do you stay grinding
25:17when you've had you sat down at Starbucks with who knows how many people and you have nothing in the bank account to show for it yet? Also, Chris, uh, one of the things that we all know that we don't sometimes tell ourselves is that the greatest battle we all have in starting a business, running a business, learning, growing is the is the person we look at in the mirror daily.
25:38You know you know, are we going to do the difficult thing? One of the things that I love that, uh, Steven says, he says, you know, am I disciplined to to the thing that I know I need to do and not do the thing that I know I shouldn't do?
25:53So am I disciplined enough to know that being busy does not mean you're making progress in your bill in your business? What it may mean is you're being busy doing the wrong things because you're too scared to do the things you know you need to do.
26:09And Brian Brian Tracy wrote this book years years ago that says it's called eat the frog first. In other words, do the thing that you dread the most. And and I'll say this, just in terms of how you have taught with your teaching time on your podcast, you try to teach people.
26:27Look. Learn by action. Learn by action.
26:29Get in there and do it. Know you don't know how to do it. Start doing it.
26:33And when it comes to the AI agency, we have told ourselves I mean, all of us at some point said, well, I don't know this, and I'm I don't know all this about AI. Don't know this. There's so many things that we don't know.
26:42Look how quick AI has run. Well, that's true. We don't know.
26:44But guess what? 99% of the business owners that we sit in front of, we know significantly more than they knew do.
26:51And we know enough that it's possible that we know where to get the answers that we need to help them do the thing that they wanna do even if we've never done it before. And I'll say this. One of the things I have to continually tell myself, because I can be the worst critic of me, is that I have to tell myself, Philip, talk to yourself like you would talk to your kids going through a chat.
27:16I would never shame my children. I'm not gonna speak down to them if they try something and it fails and they and they get discouraged. I'm going to talk to them in such a way that it spurs on their growth to see failure as as a particular event in their life and not as not for them as a person.
27:36So, anyway, I'm sorry. I I kinda feel like I'm preaching right now. No.
27:40This is a maze. This is, like, my favorite part. No.
27:42And so and it's just I'll say this. This this is something that makes me about just jump up and down inside. I'm amazed that this is, in my assessment and a lot of other sets, by far the best time in human history to be alive and start a business.
27:56Never there's never there's never Henry Ford never imagined the opportunity. Solomon, in all of his glory and splendor in biblical day, never imagined the access to things that we have.
28:07Five, ten years ago, all business owners would have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered. And if you'd have told them what was coming, they would have told you it was fiction, that it was not possible.
28:19Well, guess what? We are seeing now a day and time to where we can have a dream about what we want to build that came from a client that has presented something to us. And though we've never built it before, AI can help us build that.
28:34What the heck? Does it get any better than this? Does it does it get any better?
28:38And and and and I I come back to the same thing with me. Philip, your greatest limit's you, my friend. Are you willing to see that what you once thought was impossible is so possible now and isn't it isn't just for you.
28:52It's for others.
28:54And I'll say this. It does something deep inside of all of us that we know is true and right and just or something other to be able to help and assist someone else. And we have never had more tools at our disposal than we have right now.
29:09Okay. Oh my gosh, Phil. I'm like honestly, most of you guys are familiar with the podcast.
29:13I don't get into, like, the motivational stuff, high level stuff, raw raw stuff. We get tactical. We get granular, but there is a place for this.
29:20I don't get into it because I don't think I'm very good at it. You're clearly good at it, so you open the door. Like, I just got off the phone with two 18 year olds that sell VCRs.
29:28They're making, like, $7 a month selling, yes, VCRs. They buy them on Facebook Marketplace for $10, and they go for 100 on eBay. A 100 because no one makes them anymore, so there's no there's still demand.
29:40There's no supply. Right? Millennials wanna watch movies with their kids.
29:43Like, there's an opportunity. We pulled up Facebook Marketplace, and there were hundreds of VCRs for sale within an hour of me for, like, 10 to $30. Guys, I wanna tell you about something I've been building behind the scenes.
29:53You've been watching my videos about AI tools and asking the same question. Okay. Cool.
29:57How do I turn this into a business? Not just playing around with AI, but actually getting clients and getting paid. That's my community.
30:03It's called Playmakers, playmakersai.com. It's an AI agency program where we show you how to start an AI consulting business where you can charge local businesses 500 to $5,000 a month to set up and manage AI tools for them. It's not a course you watch and forget about.
30:19We do three to seven live training calls every week taught by me and 23 other expert AI agency owners. You get plug and play templates, Claude code tutorials, AI voice agent frameworks, automation templates, and a thirty day road map so you don't fall off track. This is stuff you can just copy, paste, and deploy for clients on day one, and, of course, how to find clients as well.
30:40We also have a five day first client challenge where we can walk you through landing your first paying client in five days. You also get my frameworks for cold email, Facebook ads, SMS, cold calls, and then I hand you my leads galore spreadsheets with actual leads in your niche, in your area. We've already got over 200 people in there building real agencies.
30:58If you miss a live call, it's all recorded. So if you've ever thought about starting an AI consulting business or AI implementation business, go check out playmakersai.com. If you guys are on Twitter, I went on DoorDash last week.
31:08I I don't even order DoorDash, and I just I thought, I wonder how much money I can make in DoorDash. So I downloaded the DoorDash for drivers app. I was approved within ten minutes.
31:16I'm making $30 an hour listening to podcasts. $30 an hour with no experience, no reviews, nothing. And it's like, I I could do this on a moped, a $500 moped.
31:25I could make the same amount of money on a moped. You know? And so it's like and then you're talking about this.
31:30Like, there's so much opportunity, and I I still wanna be sensitive to people hearing this because there's people that hear that all the time. There's so much opportunity.
31:38It's never been it's like, where's my revenue? Okay. I'm trying.
31:42I'm out there. I'm grinding. It's not here yet.
31:44Like, it's where's my revenue? That sounds really great, Chris. That's a great sound bite bite.
31:48But, like, I'm out there meeting at Starbucks with my friends and family. I don't have revenue. And to what you said near the end, like, not talking down on yourself, you open the door for a Nick Saban quote, so I'll I'll continue it.
31:58I'll I'll I'll double I'll double or nothing you hear. He has a story. It is a true story.
32:02He was out fishing on the lake, and this guy next to him is catching all these crappie, and he's throwing back every other one. And he's like, why are you throwing back the big ones?
32:10Why aren't you keeping the big ones? Those are delicious. And he thought maybe, you know, bigger catfish don't taste very good.
32:16Maybe he thought, this guy probably doesn't know that the big ones are actually delicious. He's like, well, my frying pan's only this big, so I don't keep the bigger ones because I can't cook them. And he's like, dude, you need a bigger frying pan.
32:26Like, get a bigger frying pan. Right? And so it's like, dream bigger.
32:30You know? Like, if if you're talking to a guy and you might have a bigger fish on the line than you think you're you're capable of handling, like, close the deal and then buy a bigger frying pan. Like, figure it out.
32:39And, yes, like, don't give voice to your negative thoughts because we all have them. But this the moment we vocalize them is when they become more real and they become more hardened in us and, like, the negative thoughts compound even faster than the positive words. Right?
32:53Like, I I just try to suffocate all the negative thoughts as best as I can and verbalize the positive ones because . Like, you pick. Go that way or that way.
33:04You wanna go better or worse. It's your choice. So to me, what it sounds like is, like, you cannot be prideful.
33:10You cannot be unwilling to meet with friends and family. If you are, you it still works. Like, I'm the guy that's prideful.
33:16I'm the guy that, like, I was never posting on social media. I just started business number 13. I just started business number 19.
33:23I just because I I know what people think. This guy this guy can't how is this guy feeding his family? He's all over the place.
33:29Got I was never advertising what I was doing because I was ashamed and embarrassed. So I was never selling to my friends and family. So I created this artificial barrier.
33:38I made it unnecessarily hard for me. Right?
33:40So I'm telling you guys, don't do what I did. Like, be willing to sit down with people from the mindset of, like, I'm gonna help you make more money. I'm not trying to sell you a false bill of goods or the next diet pill or whatever.
33:53I want to help you make or save more money in your business. So I feel good about texting you and offering to meet you at Starbucks or whatever because this is gonna be a win win for us. And then ask them questions.
34:04Do more talking or do more listening than talking. Well and I'll tell you let me tell you a quick story. The first vibe coated thing I ever built was in Replit.
34:11It was for my brother-in-law
34:13to manage his cows and sheep out on his farm. That it was that it's possible that that that, you know, you can take a picture of the cow to know what Bessie looks like or whatever he calls his cow. And then, you know you know, when they blasted their vaccines, you know, which which ones they've given birth to and who's connected to who and told him my my brother-in-law, Greg, I said, man, if you wanted to put GPS trackers on them, we could put it on we could put it on Google Earth and find out where the cows were.
34:37But but, anyway so yeah. I mean, I think a lot of these solutions that we're building for people are gonna become products of their own. Right?
34:44Like, I think a lot of people in this group, they're gonna go solve the most random problem from those random business owner, and then another business owner in the same industry is like, can you do that for me? Sure. Copy paste.
34:53Can you that for me? Sure. Copy paste.
34:54Then it's like, I'm just gonna start. I'm not doing an agency anymore. Like, that got me from point a to point b, but I wanna go to point f,
35:01and that's through this. I'm just gonna sell access to this software to every single dairy farmer in Northwest Wisconsin or whatever it is.
35:09What have we missed, Phil? This is the thing I would challenge you to. Okay?
35:13Sit down with your mobile device, wherever it is you store your contacts, and just start writing down names of people. And the goal is not to sell them something. The goal is to open up the door to have a conversation with them.
35:29Because because, really, even if you knew their business in and out, you still don't know what the pain points are. And I'll say this, just in saying this, I haven't thought about this. I have not asked any friends that I've built stuff for to recommend me to someone else.
35:44Is there somebody else that you know of? Something like this would be helpful too. I just thought of that.
35:48I haven't done that. But, anyway, just sit down, have conversations
35:53with people, listen to them, find out the pain points, find out the things going on in their business, and offer them things that will help. Funny you said that you hadn't done that because that was the one thing I was gonna add to that is always ask for referrals. Yeah.
36:06Because, like, if if there's, good, better, best, good is, like, cold calling. Better is, like, a friend of a friend. Best is a friend.
36:12Right? Yeah. But, like, a friend of a friend is light years better than a cold call.
36:16So do it. This is amazing, Phil. I'm inspired.
36:18I'm ready to run through a wall. K. Well, Phil, appreciate you.
36:21Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge and motivation with us. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.
36:25You're glad to be here. Glad to be here. If you like this content, please share with a friend, hit a like or a comment below, and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A non-technical retiree sat down at Starbucks with his phone contacts, pitched voice agents he barely understood, and walked away with a 50000 dollar contract from an investment firm managing 1.4 billion dollars. Phil never wrote a line of code.
How they asked for the click.
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