A 17-minute argument that AI consulting will outlast AI implementation, with a step-by-step roadmap from cold discovery calls to marketing agency referral partnerships.
Posted
yesterday
Duration
Format
Talking Head
educational
Views
383
20 likes
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Technical AI implementation skills are commoditizing as tools get easier, making the consultant who can diagnose where AI belongs inside a specific business far more valuable than the developer who can build it.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You run or are starting an AI agency and are worried the implementation niche is getting crowded.
You spend hours mastering automation tools and wonder if that skill will hold value in 12 months.
You have a sales-first personality and want a business model that rewards it more than technical freelancing does.
You want a concrete roadmap to land first clients without cold calling or an ad budget.
SKIP IF…
You already have an established consulting practice — this is entry-level positioning advice.
You are purely technical with no interest in client-facing work; the whole argument is built around the sales role.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
The AI implementation window is real and still profitable for the next three to five years, but it is closing. As tools get easier, every business owner will eventually build automations themselves, collapsing the value of pure technical execution. What does not commoditize is the ability to walk into a business, map its specific pain points, and prescribe the right AI fix. The recommended model is a consulting-first agency: free discovery calls to build knowledge, paid audits at $500-,000 to earn trust, then upsell implementation at $5,000-$15,000 when the client has already sold themselves on the ROI.
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Claims under $100 in agent sales; establishes agency scale and AI network contacts to earn the right to say the space is dying.
01:25 – 02:55
02 · The big lie
'Learn these tools and you'll have job security' is called out as obsolete. Python-to-prompting analogy: expert-level skills are being replaced by conversational AI.
02:55 – 05:10
03 · The pivot
His own shift from implementation to consulting-first. Distinguishes two trajectories: implementation demand decreasing, consulting demand increasing.
05:10 – 07:15
04 · The 3-5 year window
Nuance: implementation is still very profitable now. The argument is to build toward consulting while the window is open, not abandon implementation today.
07:15 – 11:05
05 · Delegation and dopamine
Agency building framed around finding your highest-leverage task. Salespeople should sell; developers should build. Doing both is the failure mode.
11:05 – 13:31
06 · From-scratch roadmap
Free discovery calls (10-15) then paid audits ($500-$2,000) then upsell implementation ($5,000-$15,000). Do this before building a website or LLC.
13:31 – 16:54
07 · Outreach via marketing agencies
Don't cold call. Partner with marketing agencies who already have the business-owner clients you want. Offer 10-20% referral commissions plus the ability to add AI to their service menu.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Technical AI implementation is losing value at the same rate coding in Python lost value once AI could write it conversationally.
A business owner with a few weeks of Claude Code experience can build essentially any system a full-time developer could — which undercuts the case for charging to build it.
Nine out of ten business owners in sales calls have never spoken to anyone about AI before; being the first trusted voice in that room is the moat.
The consulting pitch is not 'we build AI for you' — it is 'we find where you are bleeding and show you the exact number it costs you.'
Paid audits at $500-$2,000 convert to $5,000-$15,000 implementation deals because the client made the decision themselves after seeing the math.
Marketing agencies already have the business-owner clients you want; a referral partnership costs them nothing and gives them a new service line to offer.
Cold calling reaches owners who are not thinking about AI; marketing agency referrals reach owners who have been thinking about it for months and just have nobody to call.
Starting with free conversations before building a website or LLC builds the market knowledge that makes every subsequent pitch land better.
Trying to do both sales and development as a solo agency owner is the primary failure mode — identify your highest-leverage task and delegate everything else.
The AI agent adoption curve will follow the business website curve from 20 years ago: every business will eventually use it, making expertise on where to implement it permanently valuable.
Takeaway
Consulting outlasts implementation in any commoditizing market.
WHAT TO LEARN
When a technical skill gets easier, the advisor who diagnoses where to apply it becomes more valuable than the practitioner who executes it.
Technical execution skills lose value as tools lower the barrier to entry — the safer bet is building diagnostic and problem-framing skills that require human judgment.
Paid audits are a trust-transfer mechanism: the client invests a small amount, receives a detailed picture of their own pain, and converts themselves into a high-ticket buyer without you pitching them.
Starting before you have infrastructure — no website, no LLC, no retainer agreement — is not unprofessional; it is how you build the market knowledge that makes the infrastructure worthwhile when you do build it.
The referral partnership model works because you are solving a positioning problem for the marketing agency (they can now offer AI services) rather than just asking for a finder's fee.
Identifying your highest-leverage task and refusing to do anything else is not laziness — it is the only mechanism that lets a small operation compete with well-funded ones.
A sales-first operator and a technical developer have different highest-leverage tasks; forcing either into the other's role shrinks both revenue and output quality.
The three-to-five year window argument implies a specific action: use implementation revenue now to fund a consulting practice, so you are not starting over when implementation margins collapse.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Consulting-first agency
An AI agency structured so that the primary offer is a paid diagnostic engagement (audit) that surfaces bottlenecks, with implementation sold as a natural follow-on rather than the opening pitch.
Paid audit
A fixed-scope engagement where the consultant spends a few days inside a client's operations, maps bottlenecks, and delivers a presentation showing the cost of each problem and the AI solution for it.
Highest leverage task
The specific activity where an individual's skills produce the most output per hour — the argument being that agency owners should do only this and delegate everything else.
Referral partnership
A formal arrangement with a marketing agency where they introduce their existing clients to your AI services in exchange for 10-20% of any resulting deal.
Resources
Things they pointed at.
00:30productVocal Chat
16:50productOne hour free course (AI agents)
Quotables
Lines you could clip.
00:39
“The skill that has made all of us a ton of money over the last couple of years is well on the verge of becoming completely useless.”
Pattern interrupt, no setup needed→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
03:20
“A business owner with a few weeks of Claude Code experience can learn how to build essentially any system that a full-time developer could.”
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
17px
analogystory
00:00So I made just under $100 last month selling AI agents, and I'm gonna tell you why getting into automation in 2026 is probably one of the worst career moves I think that you can make. Before you click off this video, hear me out. I run an automation agency called Vocal Chat, and we've worked with businesses doing $10,000 a month and $30,000,000 a month.
00:17So we've worked in a wide spectrum of businesses, small, medium, and large. I've also personally spoken with some of the biggest people in AI today such as Liam Ollie. And to top it off, I run the most successful AI recruiting ecosystem connecting elite sales focused entrepreneurs with top level developers in order to grow and scale AI businesses fast, which just means I get a ton of visibility on how AI is being sold to businesses today and the way that things are going.
00:40So I bet you've heard a lot of rumbling about this. So the skill that has made all of us a ton of money over the last couple of years is well on the verge of becoming completely useless. I think that there are a select few that are actually positioning themselves correctly for what's next.
00:55So my goal with this video is to add to that number of people who are actually understanding where the AI space is going and how to make money with these AI agents workflows and systems. So here are some uncomfortable truths for you.
01:06AI is advancing incredibly quickly and technical skills are becoming completely useless. But there are a few things that you can learn today that will make you more money than any automation skill ever could due to leverage. Hopefully, by the end of the video, you'll understand why some of the smartest people I know are pivoting away from automation and agents and workflows and towards something a lot more valuable.
01:27So let's get into it. So the big lie that everyone in the automation space is telling you is some variance of, hey. Watch my video.
01:35Learn these AI tools, and I promise you, you will be set for life based off your knowledge of how these workflows and automations work within businesses. You need to jump into nan, mastermate.com, Claude code, understand what an API is.
01:48If you do all these things, you're gonna have job security, and that's just not the case anymore. And I think that anyone with a good head on their shoulders can kinda sniff the bullshit because AI is advancing so incredibly fast right now that learning these tools spending ten hours a day jumping into Claude code and mastering everything is most likely gonna be useless in six to twelve months.
02:10So when everyone, and I'm talking hundreds of thousands of people are going down this route of, oh, shoot. I need to master Cloud Code. I need to understand everything on the back end because that's what's gonna guarantee me job security.
02:21The truth of the matter is you're gonna spend all this time mastering a specific tool and before you're able to monetize that tool, AI will advance and that tool is gonna become useless. And just to be clear, I'm not saying automating stuff is completely useless. I definitely think there's a ton of value to it.
02:36I have a multimillion dollar business and a lot of that business is automated by AI to make my life easier. It's just that the implementation of automation is growing less and less valuable because the barrier to entry is getting lower.
02:50As these AI tools advance, they're only gonna become easier and easier to build out themselves, and as these tools are becoming easier, your time spent in those tools grinding and mastering them is only gonna become more useless. I like to think of it as someone ten, twelve years ago who spent a ton of time in Python learning how to code.
03:09Now just prompting you could probably code something even better. So these tools are getting better and better every week and they can do more of the technical heavy lifting that used to take someone who was super good on the back end. And a business owner with a few weeks of cloud code experience can learn how to build essentially any system that a full time developer could.
03:29So if you followed me until now, you kinda understand this is my main business. Zach, you sell super high ticket agents to businesses who are looking to run leaner and more efficiently and set up a strong foundation in AI.
03:41So you're kinda going against your word when you're saying these AI tools are becoming useless and the average everyday business owner can get into them with a lot less technical experience or having to pay all this money for implementation. But over the last six to eight months or so, I've shifted from strictly AI implementation to more of a consulting package.
04:00I'm talking consulting, auditing, and upselling. The most valuable skill right now in the AI space is understanding what a business is dealing with on a daily basis, identifying their problem, and then giving them an AI solution through a journey of consulting that fixes that very problem.
04:18I know that sounded all over the place, but what I'm saying is you cannot go to a business owner and pitch them an AI receptionist like 99% of the AI space is doing currently.
04:29The reason being no business owner is having a problem with answering calls unless you do a deep dive on their business. Identify that that is their current pain point.
04:43To be a 100% honest with you guys, I was gonna scrap this video and the reason being, there is still so much money in AI implementation for businesses. And I feel like I was coming across, like, you need to stop selling AI agents and workflows now and jump straight into consulting. But what I was trying to convey was the opportunity for AI consulting within businesses is only gonna grow while the demand for AI agents and implementation is only gonna lower.
05:09However, right now and for the next three to five years, there is still a huge window for you to implement AI workflow systems and automations into businesses for super high ticket. What you need to understand in 2026 is the opportunity for AI consulting is only gonna get bigger and bigger.
05:26There's only gonna become more demand for businesses needing your expertise on where to implement AI most effectively. But the opportunity for AI implementation is only gonna lower because as these tools become easier to get into and the barrier to entry lowers, every business owner can build these AI systems in the back end.
05:43And I'm not trying to say that that skill and selling these workflows to businesses is completely useless because in this next window of three to five years, that is still what is gonna make you the most amount of money. But I'm saying if you transition your business into consulting and auditing companies, showing them where their bottlenecks are and giving them the AI solution to fix those problems, and then you could implement AI on the back end and upsell those clients, you'll still have all the benefits of crushing the space and making a ton of money because the truth of the matter is AI implementation makes so much money right now.
06:15And that's why I felt kinda compelled to remake this video is because I make the most amount of money from selling very high ticket AI agents. But I'm also looking into the long term vision of my business and knowing that if I wanna be around and I wanna make a lot of money within the AI space forever, I need to set up my business as a consulting first AI agency.
06:33And what I mean by that is every business gonna implement this technology whether they like it or not. They're going to need to. Just like twenty years ago, every business needed to have a website, and they were like, no.
06:44Wait. Why would I why would I want a website? Like, my customers are in person or they have my phone number that that's how I get my jobs.
06:49Like, I'm never gonna need a website. And come nowadays, every single business has a website. It's a no brainer.
06:54It's gonna be the same exact thing with these AI agents. These businesses now might say, hey. Like, I don't want AI interacting with my customers or I don't think AI is gonna be useful for me in my specific case with my company.
07:05But the truth of the matter is in a few years, every single business owner is gonna use AI. So with that being said, the technology is only gonna become easier, meaning they're gonna need expertise on where to implement the technology.
07:19That's what a lot of people in the AI space aren't seeing. It's these agents are easy to build. Right?
07:24I have the best human developers. We do a great job. Most of the work actually goes into testing the agent, trying to break it, making sure it's ready to actually implement into a real business.
07:34But what I'm saying is the consulting aspect of that process is going to be more important because as the number of business owners looking into this technology rises, they're gonna need expertise on, okay, I've heard all this buzz about AI, AI agents, AI workflows, AI systems, but how do these systems fit within my business for my specific use cases?
07:54And that's where you can consult the business owner, do a paid audit, basically walking them through here are your pain points, here's how much that's costing you, here's the very AI solutions that you should implement, and here's how much money it's gonna save you. And then once they get those numbers in their head, they say, shit.
08:09I need to implement AI now, then you could upsell them. So right now, you and your current position, you're either looking to start an AI agency or you've already started but are looking to scale efficiently as well as set yourself up for the future, what do you do? Well, that question really boils down to where are your highest leverage tasks.
08:27Right? Me, for example, I get dopamine from selling. I get dopamine from hopping on a call with a business owner, identifying their pain points, seeing where they're struggling, and being that person to implement AI into their business, that person that they could trust.
08:40Because what you guys need to also understand is that nine out of 10 of these business owners, it is the first time they've ever spoken to someone about their thoughts of AI. You need to remember, if you're between the ages of 18 and 25, even 30, you were experiencing AI right when it came out.
08:56Chechiuti, Claude, Anthropic, all these different things, you were right there and you were prompting them, you were having it write essays, helping you with emails for work, stuff like that. A lot of these business owners are hearing all this buzz about AI.
09:08They don't even know basic prompting skills. So nine out of 10 meetings I hop on, I'm the first person they've got to answer all their questions about AI. They finally feel like they could ask, hey.
09:19I've been thinking about AI. I'd I have no idea how it works, but if it could do this within my business, it would save me so much money. And me being that person to basically walk them through knowing nothing about AI to eventually being a business owner who has this technology implemented, but you guys need to understand that's where I have leverage and that's where I get my dopamine.
09:36So I like looking at my calendar in the morning and seeing five new meetings for potential AI agent sales. My developers on the other hand, they are killers on the back end. They're they're crushers, but they do not like to talk to business owners.
09:48They're more shy. They're less outgoing. So their highest leverage task is actually doing the development for these companies.
09:55What you need to understand is that whatever you're the best at, you need to double down and only do that, and that's what's gonna allow your business to grow. So many people I know say, I wanna do marketing. I wanna do development.
10:06I wanna hop on all the sales calls. I wanna do all the onboarding. I wanna start running ads myself.
10:11And you're never gonna scale a business like that because one, you're not the best at development. Developers are better than you because they strictly focus on that. So it's gonna take you longer to fulfill jobs as well as you're not gonna do as good of a job as a development team would.
10:24And on top of all that, it's gonna take away from your time on cold calling or doing cold outreach or hopping on sales calls, you're not gonna be able to bring more money into the business because you're focusing on fulfilling a deal. And it's the same on the other hand. If you're only hopping on sales calls, who's gonna do the development work for you if you don't necessarily have a team in place?
10:43The art of delegation, especially in the AI space, is the most important thing. So right now, if you're an agency owner or looking to get into the AI space, understand what you're the best at and where you get your dopamine and double down in those areas. It's ridiculous to me how easy the AI space is to break into if you actually take it one step at a time.
11:01Everyone looks at my story. I'll post a $45,000 AI agent package I sold, or I'll post a specific agent I sold pretty high ticket, and then wanna jump straight into selling super high ticket agents with vetted business owners who understand the technology and wanna get this implemented.
11:16But they don't have a $10,000 a month ad spend like I do. They don't have hundreds of business owner case studies that they've worked with. So if I were starting out from complete scratch, here's exactly what I would do.
11:26Initially, it is all about experience. Talk to as many business owners as you can about AI. If AI had unlimited capabilities, what would AI be doing for your business?
11:36After you have 10 to 15 of these conversations, you'll understand where AI will fit within these businesses, what these business owners truly need. What you need to remember is a lot of these business owners don't even have a CRM. They're tracking everything on a spreadsheet.
11:50So just the thought of implementing AI can scare off a lot of business owners. And when you go in initially saying it costs $10,000 for this implementation, they're gonna turn away every single time.
12:01So start with simple conversations, see where AI can be implemented within their business, and then brainstorm with them on how this technology will actually work and what exactly it is that would be the dream scenario for both you and them. Once you've had some conversations, then you can move into consulting them on those conversations, consulting them on, okay, here's the path that you think AI would fit best within your business, here's what I think based off my experience, here's what you should start with implementing, then you could go for more of a streamlined approach and implement this, this, and this.
12:31Before you make a website, before you start an LLC, before you charge a single client, have these conversations. Build up this knowledge.
12:39Build up this experience of identifying these AI opportunities and consulting them through these opportunities. Then once you've had these conversations, start to do paid audits with these customers.
12:50Right? It's not a huge investment. It's 500, 1,000, $2,000.
12:54Take a few days, deep dive into their business, see how their operations are working on a daily basis, and see where their bottlenecks are, and then research the very AI solutions that could help with their pain points. Once you've gathered all this information, hop on another meeting with the client and identify the problem, show them a presentation on what you've came up with and how this AI technology is gonna transform their business.
13:1510 out of 10 times if you do this correctly, it is gonna be worth their investment. They're gonna say, hey, I spent a thousand dollars on this audit, but now I see the future of AI implementation within my business. I'm going all in on this.
13:26And then and only then can you upsell $5.10, $15,000. Once you've got a couple of these clients under your belt, it's time for you to expand your outreach and hop on as many calls as you can. Do not cold call and don't run ads just yet.
13:40The reason being, cold calling, you're calling business owners who aren't interested in implementing AI. Nine out of 10 times, they're gonna be pissed. They're gonna hang up on you.
13:49You wanna talk to business owners who have been thinking about this technology for a long time and have no idea how to move forward with it. So with that being said, here is the best outreach strategy if you don't wanna cold call and you don't necessarily have the capital to have a very large ad spend. Think about where an ideal agency client lies.
14:05Right? Where is a client that is getting a ton of leads, they're making a bunch of money, but their systems are a little bit outdated and they don't necessarily have a lot of information on AI?
14:15Right? Where are these business owners hanging out? They partner up with a marketing agency to help them scale with things like paid ads and an online presence.
14:23Bingo. That is where your ideal client is. They're working with marketing agencies.
14:28So how can we benefit marketing agencies either monetarily or getting them more leads?
14:34And on the flip side, how can we benefit from getting referrals from these marketing agencies? Because they have such a large client base, if we're able to partner up with these people and they're working with 20 to 30 businesses, that's huge revenue potential off just strictly referrals off their initial client base. The best strategy I have found with partnering up with marketing agencies is one, giving them a percentage of every single deal they obviously refer.
14:58Right? 10 to 20%. And these are high ticket deals.
15:01If they refer a $20,000 deal, they're making $23 off doing nothing except saying, hey, look. I know this AI agency owner. They're a killer.
15:08They're gonna do a great job for you, and you need this technology. I'll put you in touch with them. But that's not the only way you should be pitching this partnership to these marketing agencies.
15:16The reason being, of course, like, they wanna make money off referrals. Great. Right?
15:20But the best reason they would partner with you is the benefit to saying that they offer AI systems. Right? If there's 20 marketing agencies in your local area and they're all saying, we run ads, we help you with the website, we do all these things, we help you build funnels and stuff like that.
15:36And there's a marketing agency that you're working with and they could say, we run ads, we do this, we do this, we do this, and on top of all that, we help with AI implementation for business owners who are looking into the technology. That agency is gonna, by design, sign more clients because they can offer more things, and then when the clients come to the door looking for AI implementation, they simply refer you.
15:57Once you've gotten these partnerships and you have five to six marketing agencies that you're partnered up with, you're getting a ton of leads on your calendar that are strictly coming to you because someone referred you so they're warmish leads who you can consult, audit, and upsell on an AI system. That's when you start to make money.
16:13At this point, you should be at $20.30, $4,050,000 dollars a month. And once you're at that point, you understand the process, you've done it a bunch of times, then you could reinvest your money back into ads to fill up your calendar fully. This is how you're supposed to run a business.
16:26Most people think, oh, I'm going to start a business, I'm going to create my website, I'm going to make an LLC, I'm going to start cold calling, and that's not going to bring in your ideal leads to the door and you're not going to be able to scale efficiently. If you want to get into the AI space but you're not technical, wanna strictly sell these AI agents and build a business so you can focus on your highest leverage task, apply to work with me one on one below.
16:46If you wanna learn more about AI agents and the whole process, watch my one hour free course, and I promise you'll learn everything you need to know to get into this business model.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Zack Kirk opens by undermining his own authority — admitting he made almost nothing selling agents last month — before spending 17 minutes explaining why that was intentional, and why the consultants who diagnose AI problems will outlast the developers who build AI solutions.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:55model
Consulting-First Agency Model
Free discovery conversations (10-15)
Paid audit ($500-$2,000)
Audit presentation
Implementation upsell ($5,000-$15,000)
Reinvest into ads
A staged progression from free conversations to paid audits to high-ticket implementation, designed to build trust and client insight before charging anything.
Steal forany agency or consultancy selling a new category to skeptical small businesses
08:30concept
Highest Leverage Task principle
Identify the one activity where your specific skills produce the most output per hour and do only that; delegate everything else ruthlessly.
Steal foragency owner positioning, team structuring, any conversation about how to stop doing everything
14:15model
Marketing Agency Referral Partnership
Identify marketing agencies in your local area
Pitch the service-expansion angle not just the commission
Offer 10-20% of every referred deal
Land 5-6 agency partners
Referrals fill calendar with warm leads
A channel strategy that uses existing marketing agency relationships to access pre-warmed business owner leads without cold outreach or ad spend.
Steal forany service business trying to build a referral pipeline
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
16:10product
“If you want to get into the AI space but you're not technical, want to strictly sell these AI agents and build a business so you can focus on your highest leverage task, apply to work with me one on one below.”
Soft landing after the roadmap section — positions the offer as the done-with-you version of everything just taught.
A non-technical agency owner makes the case that Claude Code sub-agents can triple outreach and replace a business intelligence team -- no code required.
A 25-minute blueprint for building an AI agency around two high-converting agents — and the delegation model that lets you sell ten times as many of them.
A 17-minute whiteboard blueprint that reframes failure as a sequence problem, not an idea problem, and walks every step from first consulting client to million-dollar exit.
A 41-minute screen-share walkthrough where one agency founder lays out the exact 7-day playbook he would use to rebuild his $25M business from zero, using nothing but Claude and a franchise niche.
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