YouTube Transcript:
How To Scale Your AI Agency So Fast in 2025 It Feels ILLEGAL

Here's how to scale your AI agency so
fast in 2025 that it feels illegal. What
I'm going to do here is run you through
a simple four-step process that I and
many other people have used to make
millions in this industry. It's going to
start with zero to one, taking you from
nothing to something. Then it's going to
go one to 100, turning you from
something to many. Then we're going to
focus on optimization. And then finally,
at the end, we're going to talk about
scaling past the constraints of the
business model. Some reasons why you
might want to listen to me. I scaled my
own AI automation agency from 0 to
$72,000 per month. I've also scaled a
content marketing agency from 0 to
$92,000 per month. And after I did both
of these, I took my knowledge and I used
it to create the coaching and
information product business that I'm
now operating talking to you about this
stuff on this video um to make over
$200,000 a month in profit. So, I know a
thing or two about starting from scratch
and then scaling it up to a reasonable
sum. In this video, I'm just going to
show you more or less everything that I
know about it. Okay. So, very first step
that I want to talk about is in order
for us to proceed, we need to understand
this simple concept, which is that what
got you here won't get you there. Now,
this is something that I just came
across in my community the other day.
Somebody said, "Hey, I don't want to
think small. I don't want to think about
$10,000 per month. I want to think about
$100,000, a million dollar per month."
So, that's what I want to keep my eye
on. And that's the the skills and the
level that I want to operate at. And I
understand the idea here. And I think a
lot of gurus on the internet and stuff
talk with this sort of language here.
And maybe they're well-intentioned. They
want you to think bigger. But if we're
just being pragmatic, the skills and the
tools and the strategies that you employ
to get to maybe your first $10,000 a
month, they're actually very very
different than the steps that you're
going to take if you wanted to scale to
a million dollar a month or something.
Okay? So, if you guys are thinking
really really big, then you're going to
kind of lose the forest for the trees
and you're not necessarily going to be
taking the straightest line path to an
intermediate goal like 10,000 bucks a
month. So my whole like prevailing
philosophy, you know, from when I
started business better part of about a
decade ago has always been do the thing
that works for the level that I'm at and
then squeeze as much juice as I can out
of that and then use that to like fuel
the next step. So maybe I start with 10k
a month and then I do 100k a month. Then
after I do 100k a month, only then do I
do the strategies that take me to a
million. Okay? So I'm going to be
talking in loose terms about this and
and a bunch of other ones, but the very
first step and stage that I want to talk
about is this from zero to one stage
where a lot of you guys are probably at
watching this video. So 0 to one, what
does that mean? That means your first
10,000 bucks realistically. I think you
can define this in a variety of ways,
but if you guys haven't made your first
10,000 bucks on the internet or with
this specific business model, here is
more or less everything that I would do.
Very first thing, and by the way, this
isn't special. Like, anybody can make
$10,000 with this business model. You'll
find that I just repeat the same things
over and over and over again for people
at this stage. So, if you guys are
already at this stage, you guys want to
see more detailed stuff, just skip a
little ahead for the video. But anyway,
the very first thing that you'll do if
you want to go from 0 to one, I
recommend is picking a couple of niches,
okay? And then pre-committing to them
for at least 30 days, ideally longer,
right? And I now recommend 60 or 90 days
to really flesh out a niche and really
make sure that you've committed and
you're intentional with the problems
that you're trying to solve. Now, this
isn't actually that hard. If you don't
even know where to start, if you've
never done anything like that, I have
this cool niche discovery exercise that
you guys could find inside of Maker
School. It's my community. It's right
over here. And basically what it is, we
see there's a bunch of people on it
right now. But what it is is it's a
simple and easy way to just pick a niche
that may or may not work. I don't know.
I give it like 70% probability of any of
these niches working. The reason why I
put this together is I just wanted to
give people like an example, a list of
50 niches or so as well as the tools
that they needed to come up with more.
And what it is is it just starts with a
niche on the lefth hand side here. So
website developers, Instagram
influencers, PPC agencies, SEO
specialists. Then there's a service
line. This is the thing that you are
going to provide for them. Sales
systems, marketing systems, hiring
systems, product development systems.
Then it just iterates over them. And
then you end up with like a bunch of
different what are called positioning
statements or niches down over here.
Okay. So very first thing that you
should do realistically is you should
look at your experience. You should look
at the knowledge that you have. See if
you have any sort of crucial advantage
with knowledge in a specific industry.
If you understand the problems they face
and that sort of stuff, then you should
add that to some sort of niche discovery
exercise. Then just pick a couple. And
the reason we're picking a couple as
opposed to one, is because when you're a
beginner and you put all of your eggs,
it's supposed to be an egg. Happy
Easter, everybody. In one basket, it's
supposed to be a basket. Happy Easter.
Wow, that actually kind of looks like a
basket. Hell yeah. My drawing skills are
improving. If you put all of your eggs
in one basket as a beginner and you
don't really know what works and you
also don't understand how to identify
pain points and solve problems, odds are
that basket is not going to be the best,
right? So, I recommend choosing multiple
niches. The reason why is because you'll
just build out systems for one and then
you're just going to like copy and paste
them into others. So, instead of it
being 3x the work for 3x the results,
you're actually going to get basically
3x the results or maybe like 1.5x the
work. Okay? So, you put in maybe 50%
more work, you'll get 300% uh the
results. So after you've identified and
picked a niche using this discovery
exercise or something else, what I
recommend is you enumerate a couple of
revenue generating activities. So you
find things lead genen activities that
just deliver you a ton of revenue or the
straightest line path to revenue.
Usually it's some simple lead genen
thing which I'll talk about in a second.
Then you literally just do nothing but
those. You you legitimately you focus on
nothing but these lead generation
activities. I see a lot of people in
maker school and make moneywithmake.com
coming from different backgrounds. And
the people that make a ton of money with
the stuff, the people that, you know, we
just had somebody close $7,200 something
dollars in 9 days, the people that like
make those big accomplishments that are
bigger than most beginners could ever
dream to make, literally just do the
exact same boring thing every day for
several weeks or months at a time
before, you know, they cash in. So, what
are some revenue generating activities?
Well, there are a bunch. The simplest
one is obviously Upwork, cuz I pitch it
all the time. Just a freelance platform
where you can like pitch on jobs. If you
optimize your approach on Upwork and if
you're smart about how you do things,
you can very easily land clients upon
your first day of applying. Another big
lead genen mechanism nowadays is cold
email. Cold email is working really well
right now. It also synergizes with a
automation because if you just send 100
cold emails, you could use AI to
customize that 100 cold emails without
actually you having to like physically
manually do it. So you get again kind of
think back to my example here. You get
more results for less work initially.
But there are a variety of other ones.
Communities. You could jump into a bunch
of school communities with those niches
that we talked about earlier, then make
posts that add value, connect with
people one-on-one, DM them and that sort
of stuff. You could do LinkedIn. A lot
of people are crushing it on LinkedIn
right now where they basically cold DM
people. They go through their pages,
they identify connections, and then they
do live roasts or whatever. You could do
X, you could do Instagram, right?
Variety of different ways to do things.
I've even seen a lot of people get
clients the last couple of months on
Reddit as well. They literally just DM
people that are saying, "Hey, you know,
I'm struggling with this problem." And
then they say, "Hey, I know how to fix
this using an automation. Can I come in
and solve it for you?" Okay, so the
point I'm making is what you do is you
just pick three or four of these. So
maybe Upwork, maybe cold email, maybe
LinkedIn, and then you just do them
every single day for a very long time.
Nothing magical here. All you do is you
just pick some sort of minimum. Then you
track religiously. And I'm saying use
something like this. I have a tracker
over here. And this is legitimately the
exact same structure of the tracker that
I used when I was getting up and running
with AI automation. I legitimately just
tabulated the lead generation
approaches. So in this case, I'm saying
Upwork cold email communities. And every
day I would just log how long I spent
doing the thing. And I'd aim for it to
be something like an hour and a half to
maybe 2 hours in total. I have a simple
column on the left hand side here.
Really not rocket science. I think all
of us could probably put together
something like this. And just every day
I do that thing first, then I log the
time. I do that thing second, I log the
time. I do that thing third, I log the
time. Okay? So the reason why I'm
pitching this is so simple is because it
really is. It's not complicated. It's
simple. Just because it's simple doesn't
mean that it's easy. It's simple and
it's hard. But if you can just
consistently do something like this for
a long enough period of time, then
you're good. And then usually what
happens is your very first few gigs,
they'll be um pretty cheap because
you'll get them on some gig platform
like Upwork or something. Or you'll get
your first cold email lead, but you'll
have no idea what the heck you're doing
with them. You won't really be able to
sell them or justify a good price. So,
you'll get them for a small sum, maybe a
few hundred or something like that. And
this is where you kind of like learn on
the job. You know, you kind of try what
works, see what fails, learn a little
bit of client management, and so on and
so forth. After you're done your first
gig though, my recommendation is just
pitch 30% more than what you pitched on
the last one and just do that over and
over and over again until you receive
friction. So, what I mean is, let's say
you start at a $500 gig, like a lot of
you guys probably have. Well, for your
next gig, charge 650. After that, charge
$850. Okay? After that, charge uh
$1,100, and just so on and so on and so
forth. Eventually, what you're going to
do is you're going to run into like the
ceiling. Okay? If this is like your
success rate and this is like the number
of pitches you make, aka the number of
sales calls you have, what you're going
to find is like your success rate will
go down and eventually it's going to get
so low that it's, you know, not really
worth screwing around with. But this is
actually worth the trade-off, right?
Because if you think about it, you'll
make the same amount of money, you'll
just do less work because you'll have
the same number of pitches, you have the
same number of projects, and it's just a
good and easy way to figure out all the
pricing stuff. Most people don't know
how the hell to price. I'll get into
that next, but um yeah, if you don't
know how to price, literally just throw
something at the wall. Next client you
get, charge 30% more. Okay, the whole
goal here when you're at 0 to1 is just
to focus on lead genen and then let the
needs of your leads, that sounds like it
rhymes, guide your learning and
self-education. What I mean by this is a
lot of people try and know everything.
They try and like figure out literally
every last platform for AI automation.
They figure out how to prompt every
different model. They figure out how to
like connect to all these different APIs
and then when they actually get out
there in the market, they find that
nobody actually gives a crap. Nobody
actually cares that you can connect with
some deprecated API or that you can do
the Google specific thing or the
Facebook graph API. You know, instead of
starting with the education and then
trying to cram that into the need of a
few particular leads, just start with
the need of the leads and then use that
to guide your education. And because
this stuff is straightforward, what you
can usually do is you can get an
interested lead, okay? You could sell
them and in the process of your
nurturing and selling before you even
get the contract signed, you can learn
enough in order to deliver a reasonable
uh value project to that lead. So maybe
the sales cycle takes you like a week or
something like that. Well, when you get
an interested reply to one of your
emails or cold Upwork proposals or
something like that, that's when you
say, "Okay, I should probably find out
how that freaking platform works." And
that's actually when you direct your
time. So, a lot of people will call this
hacky. I used to think that this is
hacky. But if you think about it, it
just makes sense. You're not starting
with some opinion. You're not starting
with an assumption of what people want.
What you do is you find exactly what
people want and then you learn exactly
that. Okay? After you're done and you
have a couple clients under your belt,
just get in the habit of sending daily
updates to them. This is one of the
simplest and easiest ways to both retain
clients and then frontload your client
management skills. Okay? And rest
assured, this is not all that I've
mentioned on the 0ero to one game. I
talk about 0ero to1 all the time. So if
you guys want more specific tactical
implementations like how to set up a
cold email system, how to make
applications on Upwork, how to do more
or less everything else that I've talked
about here. Send cold DMs and so on and
so forth, just look through my channel.
There are dedicated videos showing you
how to do literally every one of these
steps that I've talked about here. Okay?
But for brevity sake and because I want
everybody in the same page, that is more
or less how you make your first $10,000
in a automation agencies and PS more or
less any other service-based business
model. Assuming that we've done that,
let's now move on to the next step,
which is phase two. Okay. The next step
is basically taking this little middling
thing, which worked. It got us from like
zero and then one. Okay? And then it's
duplicating this. It's now going
horizontal. So, let me actually draw a
better diagram. 0 to1 is more of a
vertical shift. You guys have ever read
Peter the 0 to1, you'll know what I mean
here. Okay? This is a vertical shift.
From here on out, what we're going to do
is we're going to do horizontal shifts.
Okay? So now horizontal, it's way easier
than vertical because horizontal is
mostly just find the thing that got you
from 0 to one and then just duplicate
this over and over and over and over and
over again. And the real value here is
that when you're good enough, you could
legitimately spam a 100 million of these
and it's not very difficult. We're use
automation here. So we use scale. So
we're just going to use the same
approach that got us from 0 to one and
we're just going to find a way to
systematize it and then spam it. The
term that I give that is strategic
leverage. So you just made $10,000.
Well, here's a quick and easy way to
turn that to $100,000. Okay, the very
first thing that I recommend is you guys
just probably hustled for that first 10
grand or those first few clients. You
probably were sending out those Upwork
apps. You're probably sending out those
cold emails, probably doing those DMs
and videos and etc. And for the most
part, you're actually doing this in a
very unoptimized fashion. Okay, we're
going to talk more about optimization in
the next phase, but the simplest way to
get up and running and streamline this
and just scale, do the thing that got
you here, but just do more and more and
more of it, is to do what I call a
lifestyle audit. We do a bunch of these
in maker school, but essentially what a
lifestyle audit is is it's where you
design your environment in such a way to
minimize friction in your daily revenue
generating activities. It is to design
the work that you are doing. Okay?
Design the structure and the approach
that you're taking to let's say your
cold emails or your job applications or
or whatever and then consciously and
intentionally try and like process
optimize every step. Then make your
environment rewarding. Make it enjoyable
to do the thing that you're doing. build
yourself some sort of accountability and
then just massively increase the volume
of the thing that you're doing. So, I'll
give you a couple of really simple
examples and you guys are probably going
to think I'm lame for this, but
legitimately just optimizing like the
ergonomic setup of like your desk or
whatever. You spend a,000 of the $10,000
that you just generated and use it to
like optimize the ergonomic setup of the
work. I mean like getting a better
computer. Maybe a lot of people that I
see in my communities, they'll do their
videos with like a really crappy
computer and their videos will stutter
and stuff like that. I mean just making
it nice and easy for yourself to do the
thing that you have clearly validated
and demonstrated that you can do for
money. I mean getting like a nicer
computer. I mean getting like a nice
microphone or something like that. I
mean spending $1,000 on some cold email
copywriting course to like tweak the
thing that you've been doing that has
worked and make it two or three times
better. I basically just mean designing
the environment that you're in and
designing not just the physical
environment, also like the knowledge
environment in such a way that you could
just do more of the stuff that you
proven moves the needle. Okay, so that's
the very first thing. The lifestyle
audit is like a structured way of going
about that. But I think you guys could
probably get the 8020 just listening to
me talk about it. The next thing I
recommend is shifting to value based
pricing. So, um, up until now, you've
probably done most your pricing just by
throwing things at the wall and then
just increasing the prices slowly and
maybe asking a few friends or some
community members for advice. And, you
know, you're kind of getting there, but
now is when we shift from this sort of
haphazard, arbitrary approach to like a
very structured one. And I have a very
good video on how to do this over here.
So, just Google the sevenigure agency
pricing strategy that actually works if
you guys want more information on that.
But, I'm just going to summarize it
right now. And that's that basically um
in value based pricing now that you know
more about a business and how it all
operates what you do is a three-step
thing where you identify the value of
this problem or solving this problem I
should say. So if a customer is running
into an issue where like their sales
team can't reasonably attend to leads
and they think that that's costing them
$5,000 per month. The value of that
problem is at least $5,000 per month.
Okay. Then what you do is you charge a
fraction of that price. So if you think
you could save them $5,000 a month, what
you do is you actually charge them a
fraction of the $5,000 a month. You
wouldn't charge them $5,000 a month to
replace a $5,000 a month problem, right?
That wouldn't make any sense. That would
be parody. You want the business to feel
like they're getting something out of
working with you. But what you do is you
charge some fraction of it to represent
the uncertainty in your service
delivery. um I don't know like the
amount of time it's going to take the
additional work that they're going to
have to sol uh uh spend in order to you
know build the system with you and so on
and so forth but basically we charge a
fraction of that value um and then
here's the percentages that I usually
charge if you are solving a revenue
problem so you're increasing their top
line I charge about 30% of that and then
if I char if uh you're solving an
expense problem or you are improving
their bottom line then I charge about
50%. So, in this hypothetical example
where there's some sales system that's
reducing their ability to close $5,000
or something like that, I'd probably
charge them about $1,500 bucks a month
cuz that's a revenue problem. Let's
hypothetically say instead it's like
some software product that they're using
that currently costs them $5,000 a
month. And then I come in and I say,
"Hey, you could actually replace this
all and it would cost you basically
nothing. Do you want me to show you how
to do it?" They say, "Yeah, I charge
them 50% of that, which would be 2500."
And the reason why is a little bit
nuanced, but basically topline, right,
is further away from the the the thing
that people care about. like profit is
down here, revenue is over here, right?
And there's just a bunch of question
marks on everything from from here. Like
um profit is the thing that matters in a
business, not revenue. Revenue is
vanity. Profit is the sanity, right? So
the money that people make off the top
line is a little less uncertain how
valuable that is, but the money that
makes it to the bottom line is a lot
more certain. So because there's less of
a distance between the change that
you're making and the value you're
driving, you can charge more of a
percentage for the expense. Hopefully
that makes sense. You don't need to
understand that in order to make money
with it, though. Okay, so then what do I
do? Well, after you've made your first
20 or $30,000, what you do now is you
run an 8020 on the small set of clients
that generate most of your revenue, and
you just double down on those. What I
mean by this is you at the end of all
this are going to have a list, okay?
It's going to be like your clients, and
you're going to have like, I don't know,
one client's going to pay you 3K a
month. Another client's going to be
paying you 5K a month, and another
client's going to be paying you 1K a
month. The 3K client's going to take you
20 hours to fulfill. Okay? The 5K
client's going to take you 30 hours to
fulfill. And then the 1k client's going
to take you 10 hours to fulfill. Well,
what we do is we actually just run a
little bit of math on all three of
these. So, what's 3,000 divided by 20?
My math ain't so good. 150 bucks an
hour. What's 5k divided by 30? My math
definitely ain't so good. What's that?
Like 166 bucks an hour, I think. And
then what's 1k divided by 10? 100 bucks
an hour. The math just worked out this
way. It's not that the lower cost one is
the least valuable and this is the
second most valuable. This is the most
valuable. But, um, I guess what I'm
trying to say is just work it out in
terms of the rate and then you're like,
okay, well the the 1k client clearly
isn't working for me, so I should double
down on this stuff. How do you double
down on these two? Well, you can offer
more value to the business owner or the
person that you're working with,
literally solving more problems for them
and then pitching more value on your
end, right? Hey, you know, I see an
opportunity for you to make another $5
or $10,000 a month. I'd like to offer
you an XYZ system to do that. You know,
if it doesn't work, uh, you don't have
to pay, but I just wanted to put this in
front of you and see if, you know, there
might be value. If you are good at your
service, if you're a good salesperson,
if they like you, then obviously they're
going to say yes, they're going to tri
it out, and then when it ends up
inevitably working, you can take a part
of that upside. Or it just means you
identify the principles of those clients
that made money and then you just try
and look for clients like that and then
next time you charge a little bit more.
Instead of charging 5K for the 30 hours,
maybe you charge 6K. Give that a try.
Bump it up to 200. Okay, so this is now
basically you see what works. You run
the 8020 and you determine which one of
your clients generate most of your
revenue and then just double down on
that approach. Next big thing is to
build intro offers and recurring
services and then pipe the intro offers
into your recurring services. So the way
that AI agencies work, and I talk a lot
about this in this video here with the
um never beating the robot allegations
with this stuff, am I? No, I am not.
Basically, the way that high throughput
agencies work is they focus mostly on
retention. Okay? So retention just means
client comes in, I guess, and they give
you some money. Then they come into like
your pipeline, okay? And then you do
some sort of value ad to that. You solve
their problem. You consult with them.
You do whatever. And then the client
comes out. And ideally, you make some
multiple on the money that they had
initially. And then you have now like
like this is this is really where the
value that you add to a business is,
right? So the best businesses, they
don't just try and cram as many new
clients in as possible, right? Because
every time you try and get a new client
in there, it actually costs you a little
bit of money. You're usually paying for
it. You're paying for those Upwork apps.
You're paying for the cold email
software. You're paying for the
salesperson's time. The good businesses,
what they do is they actually focus on
retention a lot more. So they will grab
this client. Then they'll say, "Hey, I
know we just helped you make a lot of
money. We can help you make even more
money." So all you do is you just sign
up for this additional package. Okay?
And now you basically gotten all the
benefit of a second client. It's just
you didn't have to spend money for it.
So this is called retention, right? Um
hopefully that makes sense for most of
you. And if it doesn't, I have videos on
how to optimize retention. The issue is
it's very difficult to get a retaining
client, somebody on a retainer, on a
recurring sort of service for you if you
haven't done work with them before. Cuz
when somebody signs up to a recurring
service, they're kind of like, "Hey, I'd
like to work with you 5,000 bucks a
month for a year." It's like, "Holy
crap, a whole year? I've talked to you
for like 2 hours. How am I supposed to
know that you're a good person to keep a
relationship up with for a full year?
You want to do a full year's worth of
work for me, but I have no idea what the
quality of your work is right now. So,
it's hard for like like it's really
difficult for a client to say yes to
that, right? So, what you do, okay, the
evolution of the agency business model
is basically this. You split up your
services into two parts. You have what's
called an intro offer. This is coined, I
believe, by my friend and colleague Matt
Larson, who talks a lot about this
stuff. Definitely check out his channel,
but the concept is the same and has been
restated in many terms. You do an intro
offer, then you do some sort of
recurring service and you develop two of
these. Okay? So, intro offer and
recurring service. Then what you do is
you get new clients in to the intro
offer. And then you try and sell to
every one of those intro offer clients
the recurring service. So now what
you've done is by the time they make it
to your recurring service pitch, you
validated the quality of your service
and you said, "Hey, we just gave you all
these wins. We just made you all this
money. The ROI is clear. Why don't we
get you on a 12-month package for $5,000
a month or or something like that?" I
usually don't lock them in myself. A lot
of people do and they make a lot more
than me because of it. So what this does
is the intro offer, this is usually
small, it's easy, it's a quick win,
right? So you usually have very high
conversion rates on this. Very, very
high conversion rates. And then once
you've converted a large portion of the
people that come in, I don't know, like
20, 30, 40% of the people on your
initial sales call, then when you pitch
them recurring service, the conversion
rates on the recurring service are going
to be a lot higher. And obviously, you
can pitch the recurring service to
people at the start line, too. Don't dis
don't like not do that. don't think that
it's not allowed or something, but this
is just like a good way to get the 8020,
get the vast majority of the people that
would have otherwise wanted to pay you
to not only pay you, but then consider
you for a recurring service. So, what do
you do at this point? If you want to
make, you know, 100 grand, a million
dollars, whatnot, um, you build intro
offers and recurring services. You look
at the 80% or 20% of the clients that
pay you 80% of the money, you say, hm,
what are they doing? What was the
service that I provided them? And then
you build a bunch of intro offers around
that. Or if you're doing recurring
monthly services, you build a bunch of
um, services around that. Okay? Once you
have that, then you have a list that you
could use to pitch back to to people.
Um, so, uh, now you have probably a list
of between 5 to 10 clients, right? And
you have the five to 10 clients. Some of
them are going to be onetime projects,
some of them are going to be recurring
projects. What you do now is you pitch
the recurring services to all of the
currently acquired clients. Okay? So,
you could try and get all of them on a
monthly recurring package. And
realistically, of the five or 10, you'll
probably get a few, maybe even more if
you're good. Maybe get three or four.
And if you get three or four on, let's
say a $5,000 a month package, which a
lot of people do. Well, now you're now
you're printing money, right? Now you're
making like 20k, 30k a month, which is
far beyond what a lot of people think
that they can get to. And then finally,
um, after all this stuff, I'd recommend
you start dialing into like sales
specifically because odds are up until
now, you've probably been approaching
sales in a pretty undirected manner. At
least the way that I teach things, the
way that I try and show people things is
like just dive in there. Don't worry too
much about it. Just have a conversation
with them, ask them questions, press
their pain points, and try and solve
their problems. Don't make this into a
science. All you're doing is talking one
person to another. But reality is after
you get to the point where you're
making, you know, some sort of five
figure amount, sales starts being the
bottleneck. And like your ability to
pitch higher and bigger projects, your
ability to convince people on a call,
basically the percentage conversion rate
when people come into some sort of sales
meeting with you starts being the
limiting factor. So this is where I'd
start reviewing all my sales calls
regularly. I'd start optimizing for my
pitch, for my authority. I'd start
really just making this into the science
that sales actually is. Okay. All right.
So at this point, I know I've drawn a
lot on the page here, but we probably
made somewhere between $100,000 to a
million. The next step is we need to
scale through systems not people. So you
know how earlier I said that the first
one was zero to one then we go from one
to many and then after one to many we do
optimization. This optimization step is
what will allow us to take all the tools
that we develop in the one to many stage
and then leaprog ahead and make a ton
more. Okay. So we're in AI and
automation. So I think we're probably
about as qualified as anybody to know
that automations reduce the cost of
labor and they can improve the output of
a very small team. Like they can
multiply the leverage of a very small
team without needing to hire more
people. That's kind of how automation
works, right? So, I think we're probably
the best equipped to be honest to be
able to deal with this. And when a lot
of people think, hm, I should hire, I
always think, hm, are there ways that I
could build systems to do more of the
work so that I could grow my revenue
without having to increase headcount.
So, my earnest recommendation here,
which a lot of people disagree with, and
that's fine, is if you're going to scale
from here on out, do it with systems
first, not people. Only focus on people
at the very, very end if there's just no
other way that you could see yourself
growing cuz people have a ton of
drawbacks. People are extraordinarily
slow usually to teach. Um it's like an
investment. So you'll invest a bunch of
money in them and then some personal
thing will pop up or there'll be some
problem or they'll get poached by
somebody else disappear. There's a lot
of regulation when you hire people. Now
obviously you can mitigate this with
some strategies like hiring contractors
versus employees. But there's a lot of
regulations you have to deal with and
then you know the outputs tend to be
less consistent. There's also an
additional cost that not a lot of people
talk about and that's the management
cost. Not just management cost but
management time. Okay. So if you just
take into all these things into account
all these cons, it's usually much easier
to just build a system. Even if it does
90% of a person's job, not 100% of a
person's job, you need that last mile to
be solved by a real human being. Well,
now you've just multiplied that person's
leverage by 10x, right? So start here.
Worry about people after. That's what I
always say. Okay. So how do you actually
do this in practice? Well, the very
first thing I recommend is now that
you've done a ton of work, you have one
basically. You now have a business.
You've delivered tons of projects, 10,
20, 30, 50, 100, whatever. you now have
basically a giant list of projects that
you've delivered, systems that you've
built and so on and so on and so forth.
What you do, okay, is you go through all
of those
systems and then you template them out.
You legitimately grab the deliverables.
You go through all the emails. You go
through all the systems that you
developed. to go through your CRM,
whatever system you did, and you
legitimately just grab all of them and
then you you download the templates in
your no code tool or you download the
scripts if you're doing like software
development agency style stuff or you
just turn all of the stuff into a file,
okay? Or a series of files. Then you
convert all these into instead of
services like they were before, now they
are products, okay? Now you standardize
them. The next thing you do is you
create strict templates for client
inputs. The idea here is it's going to
eliminate scope creep and it's going to
have clients give you exactly what you
need in order to fulfill the previous
step which are those templates. Okay?
Because usually like let's say you have
a blueprint or something for some cold
email system or maybe let's keep it
really simple some autoresponder right
if you think about it in any noode
platform you're going to need to hook up
the connection the credential you're
going to have to do like the
configuration API keys. So what you do
is you develop the standardized template
and then you say okay for that template
client needs to give me Google access
and then I need a list of categories
right and now it's it's as simple as
when you get a new client for this
specific intro offer you just ask the
client hey I'm going to need access to
your Google account or you can just make
me a new one and I'm going to need like
three categories that you want me to bin
your emails into. That's it. And now you
get everything you need up front. Now
you've significantly streamlined the
client relationship. Now you can
standardize your pricing and you can
productize and you can scale the hell
out of that. Okay. At this stage, it's
also worth optimizing for the value of
your projects because the second that
you start getting into that, like this
is technically very similar to that as
well, but the second that you start
getting into really drilling down into
what it is that customers actually care
about, you can sprinkle a little bit of
work on some sections of the project and
then deliver outsized results. And as a
result, you could price a lot more. And
you know, one of the quickest hacks to
make more money with the same headcount
is literally just pricing more, right?
So, this allows you to do that. I have a
video on a quick and easy way to do that
here where I basically just turn some
automations that are built in make.com
into full-fledged SAS apps that just
look really cool. This is an example of
increasing the amount of value up front
from the client perspective, hiding a
lot of the complexity and just making it
easy for them to say yes to a big
package. But some other things that you
might want to consider doing are a lot
of system are email based or notice
based. So it's like a Slack notification
when somebody comes into the flow or
it's an email that's sent out to the
prospect when somebody fills out a lead
form or whatever, right? Well, these are
the things that are visible. The client
doesn't see all the logic that went into
building the flow that produced the
email. The only thing that they actually
saw was the email itself. So
legitimately going through all of the
outputs and deliverables of all the
systems that you built for all of your
recurring and then future clients and
then just touching up the emails,
touching up the way that the Google docs
you generate look, touching up the
Google slides, okay, just sprinkling in
a little bit of design basically at this
point can actually enable you to charge
significantly more money because things
just look better from the client
perspective. Okay, after that you create
solutions that clients can pay for
without understanding the technical
details. So now that you have templates
for the input, you have templates for
all this stuff. The these three work in
synergy, you now just have very simple
solutions where it's like, hey, we can
generate you 20 booked appointments per
month every month. All you need to do is
just sign up to this one platform or all
you need to do is just give us a CRM
that we can dump the leads into. Well,
the point I'm making is you vastly
simplify the interface for the client.
And then once it's simpler, you'll find
that by nature, you're just going to
start working with bigger and bigger
businesses because the people at the top
end of those bigger businesses typically
don't care too much for all the
technical stuff. And so you can sell to
bigger and bigger people. And then you
can focus on solving problems as opposed
to like particular technical issues, if
that makes sense, which is where a lot
of your initial clients come from to be
real. Then yeah, you get to start
focusing on higher levered sales
activities as well. And this is what I
personally recommend. So right around
the time that I was uh making about a
million dollars with Aon automation, I
started focusing on higher leverage
sales activities like content and then
scaling up my cold email and then
because I was no longer doing let's say
you know you kind of have two options
with lead genen right I was talking
about that zero to one path and how it's
different from you know like one to many
well like a simple 0ero to one path is
sending loom video to somebody right but
that takes a fixed amount of time if you
think about it like if this is time and
this is number of people contacted then
basically what I'm doing is I'm trading
one unit of my time every time I send a
Loom video for one person contacted. So,
this is cool and all and you can do it,
but notice how this scales linearly. It
only scales like a line, right? At this
point, when you're at the point where
you made about a million, I recommend
that you focus on higher levered sales
activities like scaling the hell out of
your cold email or scaling content. The
reason why is because what you'll do is
you'll spend a little bit of time
initially building all this stuff up,
but then you'll find that the output
will scale like crazy and you don't
actually have to spend too much time in
order to contact a ton of people. So, I
wouldn't do this until you've already
made some money. So definitely don't
focus on content at the start line. Make
some money first, but what you'll find
is after you've made a fair amount of
money, this is the straightest line path
to continuing to scale. As I've
mentioned, what got you here won't get
you there. So just focus on content and
cold email and these more scalable lead
genen activities in the right place. But
if you think about it, like this video
right now is probably being watched by a
few hundred or thousand people
simultaneously, right? It took me a
fixed amount of time to record. Probably
going to end up being about 354 minutes
when all said and done. And then that's
it. I basically spend 35 to 40 minutes.
Well, I don't spend any time after that.
it basically just goes vertical to be
honest. So this is an example of a very
scalable lead genen technique and you
know it has some cons to it of course
most people can't actually make it work
and you have to invest a lot of time and
energy into that initial growth period
but after you get to a certain point
this is sort of how you go from that
million dollars to beyond $10 million
$100 million and so on. Speaking of
scaling beyond this is kind of like
where I'm at right now. There are a few
ways that I think that anybody could do
what I'm about to tell you. I don't
really feel qualified to talk beyond
this point to be honest but I don't
really want to talk about stuff that I
don't understand really deeply. So
obviously everything from step one all
the way up to here I get. But this is
sort of where I'm at right now and some
of the problems that I'm solving here.
I'll peel back the hood so you guys
could see more or less what I'm
thinking. So my humble opinion is at the
start line what you need are you need
actions. But the further along the
business you go actions stop being as
important as habits. And then habits
stop being as important as beliefs.
Okay. So at the start line the most
important thing you need to convince
yourself of is that you're capable of
doing an action. At the middle, the most
important thing you need to convince
yourself of is that you're capable of
maintaining a habit. But at the end, the
most important thing that you need to
solve in order to continue growing is
you need to overcome the fundamental
beliefs that have stopped you from being
able to push past. And so, one of the
big issues that I always see people that
scale past a few hundred,000, okay,
maybe $50,000, $100,000, $150,000 a
month, myself included, is we have a
number of these limiting beliefs. These
are fundamental beliefs that are handed
down by our childhood essentially by our
families, by our early development
experiences, by our friends. And these
are simple beliefs like, you know, I
can't make a ton of money without
working super hard. I can't have an
amazing family and an amazing career. I
have to sacrifice one of these, right?
Or I'm unmotivated or I'm a lazy or I'm
a piece of crap or you know these more
deeper limiters that you know are hard
to sort of confront but when you do you
tend to push through large plateaus. So
big thing that I'm doing right now is
I'm consciously identifying a lot of
these limiting beliefs. And I'm finding
tremendous growth in identifying my
limiting beliefs. I think that this is
probably what's enabled me to get from
170 about 170k last month, 160 something
to, you know, over 230k this month and
counting. So this, you know, this is one
step here that has essentially made me
about $60,000 per month in legitimately
like 23 days or whenever the hell this
video is going to be published. So if
you think about it, like that's a major
ROI on my time. I spent a few days doing
this. I surrounded myself with a few
people. I talked with a few people. I
tried to understand, hey, the people
that don't have these limiting beliefs,
why? After you're done with that, you
should begin allocating a substantial
portion of your revenue to research and
development. These are things with a
less of a clear payoff. You know, early
on I was talking all about how you
should focus on those things that don't
scale like maybe those Upwork apps or or
whatnot. Things that you trade one unit
of time for one result and then later on
you focus on more scalable things,
right? Well, eventually these scalable
things reach saturation or cap as well.
What you need to do past that if you
want to continue being able to, you
know, grow exponentially is you need to
look for things that don't necessarily
have a clear onetoone payoff. And you
basically need to be willing to spend a
little bit of your money to explore new
opportunities. So what I'm doing right
now, for instance, is I'm exploring a
number of different social media
platforms. I'm investing in maybe
untraditional content generation efforts
like creator rewards, for instance.
I'm experimenting with different
products. I'm experimenting with just
different approaches to pricing my
communities and whatnot. The point I'm
making is I'm actively investing a
portion of this money into ways that I
can grow further, but I don't have a
defined payoff. It's not like I know
that this money, this $1 is going to
make me 10. At this point, it's like,
all right, well, I'm kind of running
into the upper limits of what I can do
here with myself and with the current
business model. I wonder what other
models there might be that might be able
to make me some more money. After that
point, because you're making so much
topline, right? If you're at this point,
you're probably making at least six
figures a month. The way to improve the
amount of profit you're making at the
end of the month is just look for
opportunities to improve your margins
however slightly. Since even if you
think about it, let's say you have a
$200,000 a month business. If you
improve your margins by even 5% 5% of
$200,000 a month is it's $10,000 a
month. The reason why I'm saying this is
because $10,000 a month that was your
whole goal initially. That was literally
like everything that you strive for at
the start line of your journey most
likely. Most people like the five figure
mark. So the point I'm making is if you
can find a way to improve your margins
just by 5% that'll net you an additional
$10,000 a month in your bottom line.
Well, that is that might be two
full-time staff members if you want to
hire. That might be you getting a house
in the next like year as opposed to in
the next like three or four years. This
is a lot of money for you to make with
some minor tweaks to your bottom line.
That might literally just mean
unsubscribing from a couple of software
platforms. Might legitimately mean, you
know, spending 2 hours sitting down and
then making an automation for one of
your staff members so that you do
something that is revenue critical just
a little bit faster. The opportunities
to improve margins are basically
endless. But basically the point I'm
making is the higher that the top line
is, the more that minor incremental
improvements in the margins impact the
bottom line, which is just logical.
Okay, after this point, right, after you
make a few a couple hundred thousand
bucks a month, you do really start
running into the upper limits in terms
of what is possible, you really start
pushing, you know, if you're a
soloreneur like I was up until quite
recently, you really start pushing the
boundaries and you start hitting a
ceiling. So, if you want to go further
than that, obviously the recommendation
is you need to hire people in order to
take on the things that you just cannot
feasibly do or design systems for. And
that window is going down, right? The
things that AI and automation can't do
is definitely shrinking with time. Um,
so maybe in 2 or 3 years this calculus
will be a little bit different, but for
me it's right around here. The benefit
of pushing this so far back though is
now you have enough money to actually
hire good people. Like if you tried to
do all this stuff at $10,000 a month and
maybe I don't know because your margins
you make $8,000 a month. Bottom line,
how much of this $8,000 a month you
realistically going to spend hiring
somebody? Very, very little of that.
Why? Because, you know, I mean, if you
try and hire somebody that's like 4,000
bucks a month, you're literally cutting
your entire business in half. So, you're
probably going to try cheaping out.
You're probably going to hire cheaper
people. People that are less qualified,
people that are less experienced. Well,
what's the problem with that? When you
hire people that are less experienced,
okay, these people, unless you're very
good at management, legitimately tend to
cost you more money than they make you.
So, basically, if you're not at a point
where you can confidently spend a
generous amount on a staff member,
compensate good people for good quality
work, I don't recommend hiring at all.
Now, at this point, you are. So instead
of making, you know, uh 10,000, maybe
you're making 100,000. Now you can
actually justify a hire for maybe $5 to
$8,000 a month or something. And these
people just tend to be more qualified,
more skilled, and so on and so forth. So
now is when you hire because you can
hire good people. And then finally, the
very last thing that I would say, and
this is sort of like a mindset thing,
very similar to the the beginning of
consciously identifying your limiting
beliefs. Figure out what you're doing
all this for. Right? At this point,
you've made more money than probably
like well I mean in my case like you
know 99 point whatever percent of every
person in probably your country if
you're at the point where you're now
running a profitable business. So it
kind of begs the question right like
you're doing all this stuff but what are
you doing it for? Now I recommend not
solving this problem first. You know a
lot of people out there are going to say
well dude shouldn't you have already
known what you're doing all this stuff
before you get to this point? I don't
actually think so because I don't think
you could realistically plan for all the
eventualities in your life or really
come up with like the deeper
foundational meaning of your life before
you've actually interfaced with the real
world enough. You sort of need that iron
to sharpen your own iron to the point
where you understand what it is that
you're doing and why you might want to
do it. Not to mention once you have
money you have the means to actually do
most of the things you want to do. But
at this point you know a major limiter
that I see not just in myself but in a
lot of other people is like so what
exactly are you trying to do? You can
make a ton of money and buy a bunch of
yachts and whatnot, but like is that
really the driving core purpose? The
reason why you need to solve this is
because the biggest problem at this
level is you. It's your mindset. It is
your ability to persist and continue
doing this stuff every day for a very
long period of time. If you could just
show up with all the rest of the systems
in place that we've talked about over
the course of the last 40 minutes or so,
if you could just show up every day for
the next 5 years, you will inevitably
scale this much further than anything
that I'm showing you down here. Instead
of you making $250 or $300,000 a month,
if you just show up every day for 5
years, you might be making $50 million a
year or something like that, okay? Or
equivalent of five or $6 million a month
by that time. So the question is just
like how do I keep going? How do I
continue? It's solving questions like
how high could you go? It's solving
questions like why? It's solving
questions like how do I spend my money?
Right? And in essence, um, now that you
have the means, you can actually
confront these problems and actually
deal with the real problems as opposed
to like try and figure out your mission
and your values and all this stuff
before you even had the chance to make
any money. Cuz most of the people that
spend all day trying to figure out like
their mission and their values, I
applaud them and I think it's good that
they're attempting to um, go deep and
figure out basically perform freaking
soul surgery on themselves, but the vast
majority of them will never make any
amount of money that would enable them
to actualize those goals anyway. So, in
my opinion, just like you identify the
needs of your self-education and
progress through the leads that you're
generating, I would frontload the action
and then the habits um and worry about
all that stuff before you get to
beliefs. Hopefully, this gives you guys
some insight into my four-step process,
the same four-step process that many
other people that have joined my
communities and have been outside of my
communities followed in order to get to
where they are today. I just wanted to
give you guys some behind the scenes on
that last section. So, if anybody is at
that point in their own business
journey, would love a comment from
there. You guys could reach out, send me
it over an email, always down to
increase the size of my professional
network. If you want more hands-on daily
accountability to help you get from zero
to one and knock that first phase right
out of the park, definitely join Maker
School. It's my daily accountability
program where I legitimately give you a
step-by-step dayby-day series of tasks
to do in order to get from zero to one,
get that first customer knocked off. If
you guys want to scale and are maybe in
phase two or phase three, then check out
Make Money with Make. I'd consider this
my premier exclusive automation
community that helps you guys get to and
then exceed $25,000 a month and beyond
using a lot of the same tips and
techniques that I talked about here.
Otherwise, if you guys could do me a big
solid like, subscribe, do all the fun
YouTube stuff to bum me up at the top of
the AGO and I'll catch you on the next
video. Thank you very much. This.