He Turned $400 Into $2.5M Using AI (No Coding) — Transcript

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1. 0:00You can be a hairdresser at Super Cuts making  12 bucks an hour and you can afford [music]
2. 0:05everything you need. It levels the playing field.  It opens it up to anyone. There's [music] this
3. 0:10guy, his name is uh John Cheney. He recently  make an app in like in 3, four, [music] 5 weeks
4. 0:15that made him $180,000 without the big investment.  [music] Without the big investment, without other
5. 0:21people, I just woke up and I said, "You know what?  I wonder if I could vibe code a piece of software,
6. 0:26start today, and have my first customer by the  next day." [music] And I ended up getting my
7. 0:30first customer by the following Tuesday and it was  a $15,000 customer. And then from there it blew
8. 0:36up. And you're not technical. You're not a coder.  Not at all. Stop assuming that other people know
9. 0:41more about AI than they actually do. [music] If  you're listening to this right now, you're in like
10. 0:45the 5%. Just cuz you're in this sphere. How could  someone get their first customer? [music] Whether
11. 0:50it's $1,000 one time or $10,000 one time. It's  pretty simple. I just said [music] I'm just going
12. 0:56to start calling businesses. And so I did. and  and over the next 6 weeks or so, I ended up with
13. 1:00about $180,000. [music] We're going to be close to  about 8 million in recurring revenue by the end of
14. 1:05the year. After one year of being in business,  [music] after one year, and you started this
15. 1:09business with $400, give or take 400 bucks. But  the [music] big thing here is that I don't have
16. 1:16anybody to answer to. I can do whatever I want.  I am literally getting on a plane [music] in
17. 1:204 hours to go to Paris with my daughter for  5 days. And it's okay because I'm the boss.
18. 1:28Meet John Cheney. About a year ago, he started a  business that helped other business owners save
19. 1:33and make more money using tools and skills that  basically all of us know how to do. And within
20. 1:37a year, he had made over $2.5 million in revenue  and over a million in net profit. And he didn't
21. 1:43have any employees for most of that time. This  year, 2026, he's on pace to do over $7 million
22. 1:48of revenue. Most of that being profit, with just  three or four employees. This is an incredible
23. 1:53story, and you already know. I'm going to say  John, how did you do it? How can we copy you?
24. 1:57Without further ado, let's chat with John. Well,  John, why don't you tell us who you are and what
25. 2:02you do? Thanks so much for having me, Chris. I'm  the founder of a company called the General AI
26. 2:06Proficiency Institute or Gen AIPI. It's a little  bit easier to say, but but that's really what I'm
27. 2:10focused on these days is helping companies learn  AI, learn how to implement it, and really try to
28. 2:17to not miss the boat. How long ago did you start  this? Little over a year ago. February 27th last
29. 2:22year. I actually founded this company on accident.  I'd been vi coding a bunch and I just woke up and
30. 2:27I said, "You know what? I' I've got an idea."  And I said, "I wonder if I could vibe code a
31. 2:31piece of software and start today, Thursday,  and have my first customer by the next day."
32. 2:37And this is what came out of it. And you know,  it it ended up taking me instead of taking me two
33. 2:40days, took me three days to finish it. I ended  up getting my first customer by the following
34. 2:44Tuesday. And it was a $15,000 customer. It  wasn't just like a little tiny one. I was
35. 2:48like, "Wow, it was like an enterprise customer."  And then from there it blew up. And you're not
36. 2:53technical. You're not a coder. Not at all. No.  I couldn't write a line. If you said, "John,
37. 2:57I will give you a million dollars right now. If  you write me one line of code," I would be like,
38. 3:01I would miss out on that million dollars. As you  were building your last company, you probably had
39. 3:05ideas of what you're going to do once you sold it,  once you exited it. You're an ideas guy like I am,
40. 3:11of all the things you could have done on February  27th. Why did you choose this one? You know,
41. 3:15I think it was just because it was on my mind.  When I first sold my company, I dove in, you know,
42. 3:19I kind of took a break for just a minute, right?  And then and then started diving into some of the
43. 3:23next things. I was working on this ticketing  company. But then maybe I would say I'd say
44. 3:27maybe six months before I started this one, I  had this idea in my mind. I wanted to start a
45. 3:31like a travel social network that was really just  like a a travel log. Like I have on on my wall in
46. 3:38the other room, I've got a map of all the places  I've visited in the world. Like a pin board. It's
47. 3:41like a pin board, right? And so I've got a pin  and every place, you know, I or my wife, we've
48. 3:44been whatever. And I wanted to kind of just make  a digital version of that so I could, you know,
49. 3:48land on Chris Corner's thing, be like, "Hey, I  wonder where he's been." Oh, it looks like he's
50. 3:52been in New Zealand. I'm traveling there. Hey,  Chris, what do I do? Right? And so I could I could
51. 3:55have friends and, you know, trust people a little  bit different. So I had this idea. And I contacted
52. 3:59a dev shop in Ukraine that I had used before in my  previous company. And I said, "Hey, you know, what
53. 4:03would it take to put this together?" And they gave  me a quote and said, "It's going to be $105,000."
54. 4:07And I was like, "Okay, cool." Right? And  that was going to give me this iOS, Android,
55. 4:10web. I was going to launch this cool app. And that  was my idea. And I literally hung up with those
56. 4:16guys after they showed me their proposal. And I  jumped on LinkedIn and I saw this post of somebody
57. 4:20somebody said it was like a VC or somebody. I  don't even remember who it was, but somebody said,
58. 4:25"I just watched a founder build something some  software in like 10 minutes in front of me
59. 4:29with this thing called Replet." And I was like,  "What's a replet?" I had no idea what that was.
60. 4:34And I immediately jumped on and I was like,  "Whoa, it says I just have to describe this
61. 4:38thing and I can build something." And so I  tried something really quick and I was like,
62. 4:41"Whoa, just build a website." And I was like, "I  wonder." And so I took this $105,000 plan. They
63. 4:47they had delivered it to me in like a proposal  format. I was like, "Build this." I just dragged
64. 4:51it into Replet and said, "Build this." And like  20 minutes later, it was built. And I was like,
65. 4:57"Okay, wow. What is going on here?" And so I I  started working on that and I kind of got addicted
66. 5:01to playing with that and figuring it out. And then  um you know I just being being out here I think in
67. 5:06West Mountain where there's a bunch of I would say  less techy people out here you know they're like
68. 5:11they're making 20 $30 million a year in their  businesses but they're like construction companies
69. 5:15cattle you know herders all kinds of crazy stuff  lots of u lots of bluecollar and [clears throat]
70. 5:21they knew nothing about AI. I would talk to them  you know whether I was at church or out to dinner
71. 5:26or if just in the neighborhood talking to someone  or and they just knew nothing. I was like man
72. 5:30they are going to miss out and I need to do  something about it. So that's really what what
73. 5:33led me to start this one is I just was I wanted  to help people see this amazing technology and
74. 5:39what it was doing for me and see if I could help  them be able to improve their own business. Yeah.
75. 5:44So you have this idea for this travel social media  business you get $105,000 quote which I will say
76. 5:50if you go to a dev shop in the Ukraine like that's  going to be the cheaper quote. That's probably why
77. 5:53you went to them right. Totally. So could have  been a lot more expensive. You take the proposal
78. 5:58you drag it into replet which you never heard  of. You learn about the the magic of vibe coding
79. 6:03and then you think man forget that travel idea  like the vibe coding is the idea like yeah vibe
80. 6:09coding plus business owners plus solving problems  with AI for business owners that is the idea and
81. 6:15that kind of led you down this rabbit hole. Is  that accurate? Yeah, you know when I discovered
82. 6:19this replet thing you know I I had the money  to be able to go and you know pay this dev shop
83. 6:25but all of a sudden I needed zero money. I was  able well not zero but I needed like 30 bucks to
84. 6:30be able to see if my idea could come to life and  that change was so different 100,000 to 30 bucks
85. 6:34or whatever right when I when I launched NIPI my  current business it took me about 3 days like I
86. 6:39said took me maybe about 35 hours of vibe coding  it's a pretty intense 3 days 10 to 12 hours a day
87. 6:44and the total cost was about $400 that includes  buying the domain you know setting up my email
88. 6:52setting up Stripe using credits all those  different things right but all in about 400 bucks
89. 6:57And because I had previously raised a bunch of  capital for this other business, I knew kind of
90. 7:03what it would take to build to get a business to  the point that it took me three days to get it to,
91. 7:07right? You would have had to pay tons of  developers for a long time writing all that code.
92. 7:10You'd have to pay a CEO. You'd have a marketing  person. You'd have a salesperson trying to figure
93. 7:14out who's going to buy this. And and it would have  taken I did all the all the kind of calculations.
94. 7:18It would have taken about 18 months to build  that thing. And the salaries and everything
95. 7:22that I would have done the way I did it last  time would have cost me about 3.2 $.2 million.
96. 7:27And so this time I did it in 3 days and it  cost me 400 bucks. And that just lit me out,
97. 7:33man. I was so excited. It broke your frame. It's  like a frame breaking moment. 100%. So that story
98. 7:39reminded me of an email I sent just yesterday. And  I want to read just a snippet of that real quickly
99. 7:44if you don't mind. All right. So the backstory  behind this is this gentleman was emailing me
100. 7:49about an app that he vibe coded and he quickly  got it to 22,000 in monthly recurring revenue
101. 7:55which was mostly profit. So then he sends me this  excited email and I've sent these emails before
102. 7:59over the last 20 years. I've received these  I've sent these. I've been on both ends of it
103. 8:03and it was basically like dude I think we're on to  something much bigger than this. I think if we go
104. 8:07raise VC, if we do this, this is this can be and I  don't want to reveal any details of his business,
105. 8:12but this could be the de facto solution  for this AI solution in the United States.
106. 8:18And so I hate like pouring water on people's fire  because I'm an optimist. Like people have poured
107. 8:23water on my fire and it makes me mad. It fires  me up. So this is like a snippet of what I said.
108. 8:29I said, "Love the idea, but ask yourself this.  What is the percentage probability that your
109. 8:34current biz nets you five figures per month for  this foreseeable future? I'd say 95% because
110. 8:40you're already there. Six figures for per month,  maybe a 30% chance after some more growth in time.
111. 8:46Now, what would the statistical chance be of  this new idea making you life-changing money?
112. 8:50Once you consider raising funds, hiring, growing,  competing with others, etc., I would say 1 to 6%.
113. 8:56Considering all that, knowing everything I've  learned about starting all these businesses,
114. 8:59most self-funded, some venture, I would take the  quote unquote sure thing bet every time. More cash
115. 9:06flow, less headache or friction, more certainty of  amazing money, even if the newest idea pans out.
116. 9:11Sometimes with big exits don't come with big money  to the founders because of liquidity preferences
117. 9:17and down rounds. And for those listening or  watching, liquidity preference is when the
118. 9:21investor gets all their money back first. So if  you raise 13 million and you sell the business for
119. 9:2612 million, you get nothing. The [clears throat]  investors get all of it, right? And then I said,
120. 9:31"Sorry to throw water on your fire. I just think  you have an amazing thing right now in its current
121. 9:36state and it could net you seven figures per  year without a ton of extra work or iteration.
122. 9:42Would love to discuss working something  out." yada yada yada. Believe it or not,
123. 9:45just because you're watching this doesn't mean  you're subscribed to my channel. YouTube's going
124. 9:49to show you stuff even if you're not subscribed  to it. Over half of people that watch my videos
125. 9:53are not subscribed. It would mean the world to me  if you just hit subscribe. Thank you so much. So
126. 9:58that what you just said just reminded me of that  email. I completely agree with you. It's just most
127. 10:03venture funded things don't work out. They don't.  They really don't. And and ours did and it wasn't
128. 10:07like a crazy grand slam, you know, 100 million in  my pocket. It was good and people made a return
129. 10:12and that's fine. But the big thing here is that  I don't at this point have anybody to answer to.
130. 10:20I can do whatever I want. I am literally getting  on a plane in four hours to go to Paris with my
131. 10:25daughter for five days. And it's okay because I'm  the boss. I'm the CEO. I'm self-funded, right? And
132. 10:30I was the CEO of the last one. But I still anytime  I did anything, some investor would be like,
133. 10:35"Dude, [clears throat] like you should be working,  right? Go. I haven't gotten my money back yet. Go
134. 10:40keep working, right?" And you just always have  that. It's like you're in debt, right? I mean,
135. 10:43and and and it's not actually debt, right? Venture  funding is a little bit different, but at least
136. 10:48me, I I I I don't want to just take people's money  and run off with it, right? I I want to deliver a
137. 10:53return. And so, I feel that obligation. With the  new world of AI, you just don't have to do that.
138. 10:59Anybody, you can be a hairdresser at Super Cuts  making 12 bucks an hour with, you know, plus tips
139. 11:05and you can afford everything you need to build  that travel social network idea that I had. Mhm.
140. 11:12That's amazing. It levels the playing field. It  opens it up to anyone. Yeah. So, I want to get
141. 11:18into how you got that first $15,000 customer. But  before we do, after a year of being in business
142. 11:24with no experience in this industry, what are your  numbers look like today? Our goal for this year
143. 11:30is probably to hit I would say I think we're  going to be close to about 8 million in recurring
144. 11:35revenue by the end of the year because of how  we're growing at this point. Right now, we're
145. 11:39more like two and a half um of annual recurring  revenue. So after one year of being in business,
146. 11:45after one year and you started this business with  $400, give or take 400 bucks cash flow positive
147. 11:51literally from day five, right? I mean, I had to  invest those few hundred and then by that Tuesday
148. 11:57had my first contract and that was it's a good  feeling, man. It's so it's such a great feeling.
149. 12:03And you know what's crazy? I've actually almost  made as much money in this business in one year
150. 12:09than I did in seven or eight years raising 13  million bucks. Yeah. With all that headache and
151. 12:13stress and accountability and oversight. Yeah.  And the, you know, the business today, you know,
152. 12:19it's not it's not a SAS business quite in the same  way. There is some SAS and so it's a little bit,
153. 12:22but I wouldn't give it like a 10 or 15 or 20x  multiple. I'd give it maybe a six or seven or so.
154. 12:28And so I already have a $15 million business  sitting on my hands here, right? And you know,
155. 12:32if someone were to come and acquire this, I would  already have personally a bigger exit than I had
156. 12:38back then. Yeah. Right. Life-changing money. So  two and a half million the first year. What is
157. 12:43your profit on that? So I did this is this is kind  of fun. I'm glad you asked this. So I basically
158. 12:49I I really call March one of last year my my start  of the business. When I first started the idea was
159. 12:55to build something that was completely automated,  right? It was a it was going to be kind of kind of
160. 13:00structured like an IQ test. That was actually my  idea was an AI IQ test. How how AI ready are you?
161. 13:06And then if you score bad, I'm gonna I'm gonna  sell you courses to, you know, to do this. But
162. 13:12they're all automated courses. You just get on  and you take them and you learn it yourself and
163. 13:15retake the test, whatever. If you did well on this  kind of free test, this IQ test, I would then push
164. 13:20you towards a an official longer certification  test that you could then use and say, "Hey, I have
165. 13:26a certification from the General AI proficiency  institute." You can put on your LinkedIn, on your
166. 13:30resume, whatever. And this is this is for business  owners specifically or for anyone that wants
167. 13:33It was really for anyone when I first started when  I like that first weekend. That was the idea was
168. 13:38test. If they do bad, I sell them courses.  If they do well, I sell them a certification.
169. 13:43So technically, I can sell anybody that lands on  the site, right? Because people want to know like,
170. 13:47hey, how smart am I? I don't I do, right? When I  see an IQ test, I might know. Yeah. Everyone does
171. 13:50want to try, right? And so so that was the idea.  And then, you know, there was a little bit of a
172. 13:55pivot there even in just the first few days when I  ended up selling directly to a business instead of
173. 13:58a bunch of individuals, which I was expecting to  do. But anyway, long story short, I ended up, you
174. 14:03know, pivoting and working through all this. And  I got to my first million by about 6 months in.
175. 14:08It took me about 6 months and I did it completely  solo. No employees. Only me and my little AI team,
176. 14:15my replet developer and my chat GP project manager  and like a couple contractors here and there like
177. 14:21agencies and stuff. Nothing. No, only  my only I'm saying AI team like my AI
178. 14:27literally like my my my Chad GPT was my team  member and Grock was my team member and all these
179. 14:32right and so I was just like I want to see how far  I can go and then I started getting some bigger
180. 14:36clients Tony Robbins and Dean Graciosi hired me  actually to come big stuff with them and then
181. 14:42another company hired me and then another one I  was like okay it's time to bring on a team member
182. 14:46and I had some people that had had had taken some  of my courses and things like that anyway so my
183. 14:51profit on that that first million was almost 100%.  I mean the only cost was my time, right? And so
184. 14:57there are real costs and of course some credit and  some tokens. Although Yeah. Although I because I
185. 15:01talked about it a lot and people started picking  me up. The Joe Rogan show talked about me just
186. 15:06kind of they just really Yeah. They just mentioned  me and talked to me this the CEO of Replet went on
187. 15:10Joe Rogan. It was like yeah this guy John Cheney  did this and built it and that's how Tony Robin
188. 15:14I know he was on Rogan. I didn't know he talked  about you talked about me which is cool. Right.
189. 15:17So anyway I've gotten a lot of free replet credit.  So I haven't even had that cost. um just because
190. 15:22they because I haven't asked for any of that and I  haven't asked them to pay me, but I've just like,
191. 15:25"Hey man, just give me credits. I'll keep talking  about you guys." They're like, "Cool." So anyway,
192. 15:28so my costs were almost zero. At this point,  I now have five full-time employees besides
193. 15:33myself that all are on benefits and good  salaries and we're delivering for clients and
194. 15:38we'll probably be to I would say 15 employees by  the end of the year would be my guess. Wow. So
195. 15:44over 50% net profit. Yeah. On the two and a  half million. Definitely. Incredible. Okay. So,
196. 15:51it's been a year. You're tracking for 7 mil this  year based on what you have in the pipeline.
197. 15:55What type of work are you doing for what types of  business owners? Are these small, medium, largesiz
198. 16:01businesses and like what's the 8020 of the  services that you're offering? Yeah, totally. So,
199. 16:07this is a good time to talk about my pivot right  in the very beginning. So, again, I had this IQ
200. 16:11test idea. My idea was, hey, I'm just going to run  ads and like, hey, what's your AIQ? Right. And,
201. 16:15you know, I got a lot of people to click on  it that first weekend when I launched it.
202. 16:17I launched it at like 3:00 a.m. Saturday night,  like Sunday morning, right? I finished it really
203. 16:22really late. I was I just kind of pushed all the  way through until it was done. And then Sunday,
204. 16:26I I just rested cuz I was tired and I've been  working for three days straight. Monday, got up,
205. 16:29checked my numbers and I had had about 150 people  or so click on the link and nobody had bought and
206. 16:35I was like, "What the heck, man? What's wrong?"  Had they taken the test though? They had. Yeah,
207. 16:39they'd gotten the test. Do you know how many of  the 150 clickers took the test? I don't think I
208. 16:45looked at that number specifically. I think what  I saw I think what I saw was there were actually
209. 16:51150 people who had entered their email address  and so I guess 150 people actually took the test
210. 16:57because the way I did it was you [clears throat]  know you take an IQ test and they're like okay hey
211. 17:01great job to see the results give me all your info  yeah give me all your info but so what I did is
212. 17:06on mine I just said I'm not going to put that dumb  you know I don't want I don't want a huge barrier
213. 17:11but I'll put an email barrier right to see your  score give me your email you know that'll unlock
214. 17:15you and help you create an Yeah. Right. So, I had  150 of those, but nobody had purchased. And that
215. 17:19was surprising to me. I was like, there's no way  I got 0% conversion. Right. Tell me, what were
216. 17:25you charging? Totally free. What were they not  purchasing? So, yeah. So, the thing that they
217. 17:29would have purchased, right, was courses. And the  courses, there's one for $19. There was another
218. 17:34one for $29. And then the test, the official  certification test, I think at the time, was
219. 17:3839 or 49. It's 59. That's actually become a  a bigger product than I expected. But anyway,
220. 17:44nobody purchased. And I went in, I went through  the funnel and I found out that, you know, I'm a
221. 17:49vibe coder and I was a young vibe coder and I had  messed something up with my stripe configuration.
222. 17:53I couldn't make a purchase. Five minutes. Took  me five minutes to fix it and I tested it like,
223. 17:58"Okay, now I'm good." But I'm a sales guy. I'm  an entrepreneur. I I know how to do it. I'm like,
224. 18:04"Okay, I'm still And by the way, I was doing this  very publicly. I was talking about all my progress
225. 18:07on LinkedIn. Like, okay, here I am. I don't  have any customers yet. This is what I'm doing."
226. 18:10I was like, "But I got this. I'm going to figure  this out." I just kind of reach started reach out
227. 18:14reaching out to some people. It wasn't exactly  like really good friends or anything, but it just
228. 18:17people I knew that own companies and I was like,  "Oh yeah, he probably has a good company." I just
229. 18:21I just started messaging like, "Hey, I've  got this new thing. I'm measuring, you know,
230. 18:24I want I can measure all your employees, see  how good they are at AI and, you know, then
231. 18:28kind of build a plan so you guys can really kind  of get on board because I know you guys probably,
232. 18:32you know, wanting to not miss the boat here."  You know, that was kind of my pitch. Kind of a
233. 18:35kind of a FOMO pitch a little bit, right? And uh  after about six messages, I had one guy say, "Hey,
234. 18:41this is interesting. I was thinking about this.  we were talking about this as a team. He's like,
235. 18:45"Can you jump on a call?" I was like, "Yep,  we jumped on a call." And he had, you know,
236. 18:48a few hundred employees. And I said, "Great. We'll  take him through the test and start helping him
237. 18:52out." And he's like, "How much is it?" I was  like, "15 grand." He's like, "Done." [laughter]
238. 18:56So, I just kind of paid it all up as I  went. I just kind of figured it out. And um,
239. 19:00you know, I I was a little bit it was a little bit  more nuanced than that. But the but the reality
240. 19:04was I had a contract and I had realized that  I I didn't do a full test on, you know, hey,
241. 19:11will people actually go through my IQ test  funnel? I still think that's a good idea,
242. 19:15but I literally haven't put another dollar of  advertising behind that idea because I just
243. 19:21immediately pivoted. I just said, I'm just going  to start calling businesses. And so I did. And
244. 19:25and over the next 6 weeks or so, I ended up with,  you know, I was up to about $180,000 in six weeks.
245. 19:30And uh then it just came from there, right? But I  knew I had something with that kind of reception.
246. 19:35So with this business owner at 15,000, what  exactly was he getting for that? So it started
247. 19:41out really as just kind of measurement. We're  going to do measurement and then I would come
248. 19:45in and I would actually do training, right? I'd  say, "Okay, we're going to get everybody together.
249. 19:48We're going to do this. We're going to train on  some different things." And I would train them on,
250. 19:51you know, chat GBT more advanced usage than just  like using it for Google. And of course I would
251. 19:55show off Replet and show off Grog and show how to  use multiple systems together and different AIs to
252. 20:00check each other because back then I mean even  this is only just a year ago but even back then
253. 20:04there was more hallucination and more things  like you have to double check your work and
254. 20:08figure out how to use multiple models to make sure  you get good answers those types of things. And so
255. 20:12it was really just assessment and then I would  go in and train. That's what it was. So they were
256. 20:15going to take your your quiz basically and you  were going to take the output of that and give
257. 20:19them an in-person training based on the output.  That's correct. Yeah. Were you going to have to
258. 20:23fly to them or were they All of them were local.  The ones I sold were local. But I did start doing
259. 20:27some that were out and and I did I did a bunch  of, you know, Zoom type trainings with like 50 60
260. 20:31employees at a time on there and, you know, really  effective ones and they would just love it. They
261. 20:35would just have a great time. The only problem  with this model was it was a one-time, you know,
262. 20:41I got 15 grand and then I'm done, right? And so  I had I had one client about about I don't know,
263. 20:46maybe four months in, they said, "Hey, you know,  I don't like the idea of you just coming in and
264. 20:51teaching us and then being gone. Like do you  have a model where you'd kind of stick around?"
265. 20:53I was like, "Sure, absolutely. I do. [laughter]  Sounds like recurring revenue to me." Exactly.
266. 20:59And so I said, "Yeah, yeah, we have a" And I  just, you know, I'm making this up on the spot,
267. 21:03right? I'm like, "Yeah, we've  got a chief AI officer service,
268. 21:06you know, a fractional chief AI officer. You just  pay me 15 grand a month and I'll come in and,
269. 21:10you know, we'll we'll do all the same stuff.  We'll get you going, but then we'll follow up
270. 21:13and make sure that you're actually, you know, it's  actually impacting your business." And I mean,
271. 21:17think about it. You're doing 20 million a year  right now. What if I could increase that by 10%.
272. 21:21That's an extra $2 million. you paying me 180  grand a year is nothing. And he's like, "Don,
273. 21:25I want that." And he bought it really fast. And I  was like, "Okay, that was cool." And then I called
274. 21:30up six or seven other businesses over the next  couple weeks and closed half of them with, you
275. 21:36know, $10,000 package, 15. I had one of them sign  up for a $25,000 package because they're a bigger
276. 21:41company and they needed more help. And I was like,  "This is crazy." And that's when I started to say,
277. 21:45"Okay, I need some more people." Yeah. And how did  you price this? Was it based on headcount? Yeah,
278. 21:50initially it was. And then I started pricing it  based on what we were going to be our packages
279. 21:56were hey 10 for $10,000 you'll get you know 12 to  15 hours a month from us and for $25,000 you get
280. 22:0350 to 60 hours a month right that's kind of how  it was. So, it kind of became an hourly thing
281. 22:08and then I changed that actually fairly recently  to be more system driven where it's like look
282. 22:13we're going to be we're going to be building it  because what that does is it puts me in this kind
283. 22:16of consultant kind of place where it's really  easy to get rid of us and I didn't like that
284. 22:21and so we've we've now shifted to to where  it's hey we're going to install our system
285. 22:26we use AI for marketing we use AI for operations  we've got open claw running we've got reput over
286. 22:31here and we're doing this and this is how we  run our company we have systems we're going to
287. 22:34install and manage those systems for you at your  company ongoing forever, right? I mean, so really
288. 22:39trying to build because recurring revenue is the  holy grail. That's what you that's what you want.
289. 22:43Okay. And is there a pattern to the size of the  businesses that you serve or the industries?
290. 22:49Yeah, it's interesting. Most of my first  businesses, it's expanded beyond this,
291. 22:53but most of the first businesses that I closed  were all businesses that did not have a CTO.
292. 22:59So, it was like a painting company, a pool  construction company, a masonry company. I mean,
293. 23:04heck, even, you know, I Tony Robbins, Dean  Gracio, they don't necessarily have, I mean,
294. 23:08they kind of have some tech people. They don't  have like someone driving tech at their company,
295. 23:12you know, and so there's a lot of companies that  just didn't have that piece in place. And so,
296. 23:16they didn't have a lot of automations and  processes anyway. And AI, you know, that's that's
297. 23:20one of the big wins with the big fast wins with  AI is where you can just come in and say, "Hey,
298. 23:25this person used to have to do this manually. Now  we've built a process and AI takes care of it,
299. 23:29right?" And so that frees up that person to go do  something else. And so, so that was kind of the
300. 23:33process. People are spending thousands on custom  AI agents and I'm over here getting the same thing
301. 23:38from Zapier. Most of y'all still think that  Zapier is just when this happens, do that. But no,
302. 23:44Zapier quietly shipped full AI agents. All you  do is tell it what to do in plain English and
303. 23:50then it browses the web. It'll read your data  from Google Sheets, Notion, HubSpot, wherever,
304. 23:55and it takes action across over 8,000 apps. Then  I just built one that qualifies all of my inbound
305. 24:01leads. It researches their company online and then  enriches their record in my CRM and then it pings
306. 24:08my sales team in Slack while I sleep. There's even  a Chrome extension so if you're on any web page,
307. 24:14your agent can summarize it, pull data from it,  and push all that data into whatever app you want
308. 24:20without you ever having to leave the tab. And the  thing that everyone worries about with AI agents
309. 24:25is what if it does something dumb? But Zapier just  dropped AI guard rails built right in so you can
310. 24:31add safety checks to any workflow. It is a full AI  workforce inside a tool that most of you already
311. 24:36have. So go build something on zapier.com.  There's never been a better time in history.
312. 24:42So is it kind of these businesses that are in the  messy middle of a business that like they're maybe
313. 24:47just almost barely big enough to warrant a CTO,  but they don't know that they need it yet or they
314. 24:53don't know that they can afford it yet. Is that  accurate? But a business that's big enough to be
315. 24:57able to afford a five figure check to you. Yeah.  Yeah. So so ultimately we really don't work with
316. 25:03businesses under 10 million a year. That's really  kind of where it where it starts. We we have a
317. 25:08couple and it's not that I'll say no, right? It's  just that usually it's hard harder to sell to
318. 25:12someone who's only making 2 million, right? You  just can't get enough bang for your buck there.
319. 25:16But uh but yeah, so most of our businesses are  in that I I would say really it's actually a
320. 25:20little higher than that. I would say probably the  average revenue for our business is 30 million,
321. 25:25you know, for our customers. And then we have  some that are, you know, much much higher than
322. 25:28that and some that are probably a little under  10, but most of them are going to be right in
323. 25:32that 30 20 to 30 range. Okay. Now, when you say  you're you're like providing solutions, you're
324. 25:39implementing your system into these businesses.  What are some common like automations or systems
325. 25:43that you're implementing? like is it mostly  finance related, sales and marketing related,
326. 25:48you know, administrative assistant type stuff  or what? It it's all of those, but it's really
327. 25:53it's the busy work that we're automating, right?  So, for example, I hate I'm a sales guy. I've
328. 25:58used every Salesforce and HubSpot and you know,  whatever system out there, CRM out there, but the
329. 26:03thing that makes those systems work is data going  into it. And if your team isn't good at putting
330. 26:08the data into it, then it's just kind of a mess  and you can't really get the value out of those
331. 26:11systems. And so for example, we at our company, we  use Slack and a lot of people use Slack and that's
332. 26:17a great great communication system. And we've  hooked OpenClaw into it, right? We call it Jarvis,
333. 26:23right? And now we can if based on the channels,  we have a a channel for every single client.
334. 26:28And we can just say, "Hey, Jarvis, I did this and  I did that and I did that, whatever." And it says,
335. 26:31"Great, I just logged everything over here. It's  in the system." And and we built our own CRM and
336. 26:35our own client dashboard just because we can.  And you know, that's that's what we're capable of
337. 26:39doing. And so we've built our own dashboards and  systems and and now we have AI that's constantly
338. 26:44saying, "Hey, did you follow up on this and did  you do that?" It automatically builds tasks in and
339. 26:48and then it will actually automatically do tasks  that it can do like getting reports out and
340. 26:52and uh you know, queuing up emails and different  things like that. And so that's the type of stuff
341. 26:56that we do. And so sometimes it is for finance,  sometimes it is for sales, or sometimes it's for,
342. 27:00you know, marketing or just the CEO or executive  assistant type stuff. But the bottom line is,
343. 27:04and it's not all open call, right? I mean,  there's a lot of different things that we do. it.
344. 27:08I would say that one thing that a lot of  companies really love that we do as we come in
345. 27:12is usually it's the CEO. The CEO is the buyer.  They are the one that are saying, "Hey, I want
346. 27:17I want to do this. I don't want to miss the boat.  If I miss the boat, it's my fault, right?" And so,
347. 27:23we usually go in and one of the first things  we'll do is we'll build him a dashboard that helps
348. 27:26him see his business better. And we'll connect  into the APIs of all their systems or whatever.
349. 27:30And then from there, we just start optimizing and  automating and just kind of working out until we
350. 27:34have this kind of little central nervous  system that that CEO can turn to anytime,
351. 27:38ask questions. We we make it interactive  so he can, you know, it's it's got AI so it
352. 27:42understands and you can ask it to make custom  reports and different things like that. And
353. 27:46that system has worked quite well for a lot  of companies. What would you say the playbook
354. 27:50is for closing these guys uh when you get them  on the phone? Yeah, you know, it's pretty it's
355. 27:55pretty simple. You ask them, are you guys using  AI right now? And most of the time they're like,
356. 28:02we're not we're not using it at all. We're, you  know, I know a couple of us use JGBT to like help
357. 28:05us with some email stuff and, you know, looking  things up and trying to figure it out. And, you
358. 28:10know, a couple of us are really trying to figure  out, you know, how to like set up some processes,
359. 28:14but we don't really know how to do it. And that  that's what almost everybody says, right? They're
360. 28:18just they're using JGBT is an advanced form of  Google or something like that. And you say, "Yeah,
361. 28:23you know what? Look, you're right. You're you're  right with everybody else. You're you're fine.
362. 28:27The fact that you're even on call with me right  now means you're already ahead. You know what
363. 28:30we do is we come in and we really help in three  ways, right? We want to help you with strategy,
364. 28:34right? To figure out how your industry is going  to be affected, how your business is going to
365. 28:37be affected by AI. What are your competitors  going to do? What can you do to stay ahead of
366. 28:40your competitors? We're going to work with you  and we're going to be active actively involved
367. 28:44in those discussions and really understand your  business. So, strategies number one. Number two,
368. 28:49we're going to help with transformation. We're  going to actually help you build processes and,
369. 28:52you know, speed up things, save money. You know,  you maybe you have to you're looking to hire
370. 28:56someone. And I'll usually ask them, I'll say, "Is  there anybody that you've been wanting to hire,
371. 29:00right? Is there some task or something hire for?"  And they're like, "Yeah, we've got this, you know,
372. 29:03we really need some help over here." I'm like,  "What about this?" You know, that person was going
373. 29:06to cost you, you know, $8,000 a month. What if we  set up something that only costs you $25 a month
374. 29:11to run and it can do this all automatically,  right? And it never turns off and it does
375. 29:15this and it does that. And they'd be like, "That's  amazing, right?" And so I'll give them an example,
376. 29:20right? I'll ask for an example. Hey, what's  something that you could do? Great. Here's
377. 29:23how we would automate that and save you money.  So now we're immediately showing that value.
378. 29:27And then third is training, right? So strategy,  transformation, and training. We really do want
379. 29:32from the CEO to the secretary to know how to  use AI to think differently, right? For example,
380. 29:37and and I'll share this a lot on sales calls. I'll  say, look, software is now you can build software
381. 29:43in 10 minutes that you then use to complete a  task and then throw away and never use again.
382. 29:48Right? this idea of Broadway software, the  you have to learn how to think a little bit
383. 29:51differently. Once you understand how easy it is  to build these tools and how to do these things,
384. 29:56your life will change forever because you'll be  able to, you know, if you had to go find 2,000,
385. 30:01you know, scrape 2,000 pieces of data off of  some system, off of some website, that might
386. 30:05have taken a secretary or some, you know, SDR  or something like that, you know, a week or
387. 30:10two to figure out all that data. And now you can  literally just put an AI agent on it and you wake
388. 30:13up tomorrow morning and it's done and it's in a  dashboard and it's ready. It's autom automatically
389. 30:17set up drafts to send out and it's done all these  things for you. And so you just have to learn how
390. 30:21to think differently. And so that's the product,  right? It's it's that strategy transformation and
391. 30:27training that all comes together in this system  that that really does move the needle. Like our
392. 30:32customers really see differences and it's it's  cool, right? AI really does make a difference.
393. 30:37So if someone is uh listening to this or watching  this and they want to do something similar
394. 30:42with the benefit of hindsight, what could they  do to to better ensure their success that maybe
395. 30:48you did or maybe you didn't do and you would have  done differently? Yeah. Really be careful to not
396. 30:53I mean unless you want to really be careful to  not become a dev shop, especially if you're not a
397. 30:58developer and you don't know how to architect and  how to do all that. If you really put on yourself
398. 31:02like hey I'm going to come in and build a bunch  of processes for you. What that really means is
399. 31:06you just sold a bunch of coding, right? And so  you're gonna either have to do that, someone else
400. 31:10gonna have to do that, and then someone's going  to have to maintain that long term, right? I think
401. 31:14it's much better to build a system around helping  people on their own. Like the best customers we
402. 31:21have, they're vibe coding their own solutions,  right? They're they're director of operations or
403. 31:26you're teaching a man to fish. Totally. Totally.  I'm not just giving him the fish. And in my life,
404. 31:30I do I do a lot of things, right? I've got I got a  piano right here. I'm a pianist and and a gymnast
405. 31:36and I'm a whitewater kayaker and I've been in a  lot of positions where I coach people to do things
406. 31:40every time. Like for example, when I'm teaching  cheerleaders how to do tumbling and you know
407. 31:44maybe like a young like 10 to 12year-old girl  who's kind of just starting to figure things
408. 31:48out. She's getting round up back handspring or  whatever, right? Every time they come to a class,
409. 31:52I would help them do something for the first time  because that's what you go home and you tell your
410. 31:56mom and dad at the dinner table, right? You're  like, I did a back flip today. like the coach was
411. 32:00spotted me, but I did a back flip and I landed it.  Right. Cool. Right. Hey, let's let's throw double
412. 32:05back into the pit today. You know, even if you  can't do it, you're not going to use that skill,
413. 32:08but you're you're seeing you're feeling something  new. And so, I really believe that when you can
414. 32:13enable people and they look, they're like, "Oh,  hey, John taught me that." They just like you,
415. 32:18right? And so, if you you unlock this director of  operations or this finance person or this sales
416. 32:23guy who's just way more productive and building  cool stuff with AI and they're just like, "Man,
417. 32:27I can do anything now. Thank you so much. They  just want to keep you around. They just like you
418. 32:31better, right? So, instead of just coming in and  doing it for them, work with them. And not only
419. 32:36that, have them really be the ones responsible  for it. You're helping and coaching along. And
420. 32:41yeah, you can jump in there and do a little  session with them for an hour if you need to,
421. 32:45but let them figure it out. And then you don't  have to manage the actual like, oh, I'm just
422. 32:50going to grind away. They're grinding away because  they're kind of focused on solving their problem
423. 32:54like a little puzzle. And then they just say, hey,  John, I got stuck on this piece. And then you can
424. 32:58come in, you can offer some support or someone  from your team can or whatever as you grow and
425. 33:02and you can you can help them get over the hurdles  and then hey now now that you've figured replet
426. 33:06out let me teach you about openclaw or let me  teach you about this agentic framework or let
427. 33:10me teach you about this thing. there's always  something new to keep pushing like, "Oh yeah,
428. 33:15I know a lot now, but John still knows so much  more." And because AI is advancing so fast,
429. 33:20it kind of takes care of itself. As long  as I, you know, as the as the AI leader
430. 33:25and staying on top of what's happening every  day and I have systems that help me do that,
431. 33:30I am always going to have something cool to share  with people where they're going to be like, "Man,
432. 33:34John knows so much." I'm not trying to like make  myself cool. It's just it gives me something to
433. 33:38constantly offer them. I there's always a next  step and that will keep them around. Yeah.
434. 33:42It's funny because it's like it's like learning  the piano, right? Teaching someone to play a very
435. 33:47simple song that they love in that first month is  kind of an intangible. It might not be relevant
436. 33:52to what they're learning long term, but it's it's  more for motivation and getting them excited about
437. 33:58it and engaged and practicing, right? That's kind  of what I'm hearing as opposed to just tactics
438. 34:03tactics tactics skill skill skill. cuz then people  whether they're learning how to vibe code or how
439. 34:07to tumble or how to play the piano, they just get  burned out cuz it's not fun. So what I'm hearing
440. 34:12is like you try to do things strategically to make  it fun for them so it can be more sustainable,
441. 34:17longasting, and impactful for both them and their  organization. Whenever I teach a class, you know,
442. 34:23there's 60 people in the room and we're going  to, hey, is it who here is is a coder, right?
443. 34:27And a couple people maybe raise their hand. Most  people have never done it before. I say, okay,
444. 34:30great. The first thing we're gonna do here is  we're gonna open up Ched PT or Grock or something
445. 34:34and we're gonna vibe code a game. You're gonna  make like Tetris or like some dinosaur chasing you
446. 34:39through the woods or Flappy Bird or whatever, but  you're going to actually get to code it and you
447. 34:43get to set the colors and you can change the thing  and you can do this just by talking to it, right?
448. 34:47And so the first thing they do is this really  fun thing just like you said where you learn
449. 34:52this cool song like, "Oh, I want to learn this  Coldplay song or I want to learn Jurassic Park or
450. 34:56Pirates of the Caribbean." something that  they they already connect to that's not,
451. 35:00you know, drudgery and work. It's fun. And that  turns then the whole pro the whole process into,
452. 35:05okay, how do I learn more fun things? Yeah, I love  it. How could someone get their first customer,
453. 35:10whether it's $1,000 one time or $10,000 one time?  Yeah. You know, honestly, there's no vibe coding.
454. 35:18There's no vibe marketing shortcut here. You  just got to reach out to people and talk to them.
455. 35:23There's probably some I could probably you know  actually find some vibe types some AI use cases
456. 35:29for that. Really what you can do is you can go on  to something like Manis right or I mean TP is okay
457. 35:33but Manis is probably going to be a little bit  better that type of a tool that can do a little
458. 35:36bit deeper research and just say hey find me 20  customers you know that that live in the you know
459. 35:42this area Utah Valley or whatever if I'm talking  about where I live that are you know this kind of
460. 35:47business. Give me the CEO's information. Give me  their phone number and then you just got to call
461. 35:50them. You just got to call. I mean, that's that's  what happened, right? Is I I landed the first one
462. 35:54and I just like, I'm going to call more people and  I called more people and I just kept doing it. And
463. 35:57not only that, I am a huge believer, as I know  you are, Chris, in social media, in just posting
464. 36:05and talking about what you're doing. The best way  to get no customers, the best way is to make sure
465. 36:10nobody knows what you're doing. We're not talking  about like becoming a creator or an influencer,
466. 36:14just like on your personal Facebook or LinkedIn  page, telling people what you're doing, what
467. 36:19you're building. Even if you have 300 followers,  doesn't matter. I've asked people. Yeah. And and
468. 36:23think about this, right? Think about a room with  300 people in it. Like that's a party. That's a
469. 36:27big room of people. Well, and 10% of them are  business owners. 10% of adults are business
470. 36:32owners. So there's 30 business owners reading  that you're smart about AI. Smarter than they are%
471. 36:37at least. And that's all you have to be.  That's one thing a lot of people listening
472. 36:39to this going to say, I just I just don't know  it. Look, if you know more than the next guy,
473. 36:43you know more. And and trust me, if you just spend  two weeks and just play with things and do things
474. 36:48and try stuff and vibe code and jump in there,  you become that expert. You become that thing.
475. 36:53I I taught a course at one of these cohorts of  this how to build a business in a weekend with AI.
476. 36:57I taught one a few weeks ago, one of the head kind  of vice presidents over at Thanksgiving Point,
477. 37:01which is big organization here in Utah, big, you  know, they have about three and a half million
478. 37:04visitors a year. They do all kinds of fun,  you know, dinosaur museums and butterfly bios
479. 37:09and all kinds of stuff. You know, she's she's  probably about, I don't know, 50some years old
480. 37:13or whatever. has a has like a 22 23-y old son who  has a job. Anyway, she came and took this course
481. 37:18from me, learned Replet, learned all these  probably about 15 platforms. It's just kind
482. 37:22of this process I do on how to build a business.  And she just told her son about it and you know,
483. 37:27talked to him for like an hour and he's like,  I'm going to go try it. And he gave himself
484. 37:30a challenge. He said, I'm going to go see if I  can completely automate myself out of a job. So,
485. 37:35he has like a desk job. He works for a company.  He's like, I wonder if I can automate everything
486. 37:39that I do so I literally don't even have to like  go to work. That's a fun challenge. Yeah. just
487. 37:42can I automate myself out of a job? And about two  days later, he just like got into it. It was like
488. 37:4810 hours a day kind of thing, kind of like I did  when I first started this business. Just kind of
489. 37:51got into it and he was just blown away by what it  could do. And he comes back to his mom. He's like,
490. 37:55I did it. I don't have to go to work anymore. And  he's like, I'm kind of scared because, you know,
491. 38:01they don't need me anymore and I'm kind of afraid  to tell my boss. And his mom's like, go tell your
492. 38:05boss. Show them what you did. and he went and told  her, he went and told the boss, immediately got a
493. 38:12promotion. Immediately was tasked with teaching  everybody else how to do that. And that's what
494. 38:17you do. Now he's the AI guru. And how long has he  been doing it? Like four days. He's the AI guru,
495. 38:23right? Because he he he's the one that figured it  out. No one else had figured it out yet. And so
496. 38:27be the person at your company, right? If you have  your own company, if you work for someone else,
497. 38:32be the person at your company that figures out  how to automate yourself out of a job. And don't
498. 38:35be afraid if you're the one that does like it's  like you're going to start to rock the boat. And
499. 38:39if you're the one rocking the boat, you're kind of  in control. You're pushing. You know where you're
500. 38:42if you're sitting in the back and someone starts  rocking the boat, you might fly out, right? And so
501. 38:47be the one that rocks the boat. You're going  to win. I I just love that story. That's an
502. 38:51amazing story. I want to highlight something  else is stop assuming that other people know
503. 38:55more about about AI than they actually do because  [clears throat] they don't. If you are watching to
504. 39:00this or listening to this right now, you are in  like the 5%. Just because you're in this sphere,
505. 39:05most people have no idea. They've never heard  the word replet. They they might use chat GPT
506. 39:10once a week to make a recipe for them. That's it.  Like it is very detrimental to assume that people
507. 39:16know more about AI than they do. I love that so  much. Do you ever close deals without a sales
508. 39:22call? And do you recommend that at all or do you  just got to do the harder thing? A lot of my deals
509. 39:27at this point are coming from referrals. And so  they're kind of already sold by the time I get on
510. 39:31the phone with them. And so for those calls,  I will I will hit on the STE, that strategy,
511. 39:37transformation, education piece. But a lot of  times I just get on I'm like, hey, you know,
512. 39:41tell me about your business. And they just tell  me about it. I'm like, where do you think I could
513. 39:45help? Here, here, here, here. I agree. Right?  Like, I'm working with your buddy. That's why,
514. 39:49you know, you're here. You know, I'd love to work  with you. And they're like, yeah, how do we sign
515. 39:53up? I mean, I go for the close-, especially if  you're in a referral type situation. Go for the
516. 39:58close much much faster. By the way, if you guys  are loving this so far, which I hope you are,
517. 40:03you need to check out playmakersai.com. That's my  business. That's my community. I'm in there every
518. 40:07week and it's a little different from TK owners  because it's only for people that are starting
519. 40:11an AI implementation or automation business from  scratch. Or you could just call it AI consulting.
520. 40:17I genuinely think that is the biggest opportunity  right now is to help small businesses implement AI
521. 40:22and to get paid thousands of dollars a month for  it. So check out playmakersai.com and we'd love
522. 40:27to have you join our community. I've had a lot of  one one call closes where it's just like an intro
523. 40:31call and by the end of it I'm sending them the  contract for, you know, 15 grand a month or 20
524. 40:35grand a month or whatever. Yeah. It's it's amazing  how if they're getting on the phone with you, they
525. 40:40want it. [laughter] They need it. Like if they're  on the phone, everybody hates sales calls. No one
526. 40:46wants to sit on a sales call with a guy or a girl  or whatever. They just they've got other things to
527. 40:50do. No one has time for that. And so if they're  taking time to talk to you about AI automation,
528. 40:56they want it already. Sell it to them. Yeah.  The question is, what do you hate more,
529. 41:01sales calls or being broke? Yeah, totally. Do you  think that the local aspect of this is important?
530. 41:07I've been saying that it is like even though  it's an internet business, this AI consulting,
531. 41:11people connect with people that are local. Even  if you never even meet up with them in person,
532. 41:16like someone 10 minutes away and you've only ever  zoomed with them, I feel like that's an important
533. 41:20distinction. What do you feel about that? I  think the most important thing is that they
534. 41:24feel connected to you somehow. And so if that's  because yeah, you're a local you're a local guy or
535. 41:28you're a friend from high school, maybe you live  in Arkansas now and you used to live in Texas,
536. 41:33you know, but you know each other because you  both went to the same high school. there's
537. 41:35that connection there. You know, we said earlier,  you know, you can post to Facebook. I I often ask
538. 41:40people when I'm in big rooms and big classes,  I'll say, "How many of you have ever posted on
539. 41:45your personal Facebook what you do for work?" And  it's crazy. 99% of people keep their hands down.
540. 41:52One or two people raise their hand and they'll be  like, "Yeah, I have." You know, it's like, "When
541. 41:55was the last time you did it?" "Yeah, I haven't  in a while." Right? But most people don't do it.
542. 41:58And then on the flip side, on LinkedIn, how many  of you have posted on LinkedIn about something
543. 42:02not related to work? like, "Hey, I went kayaking.  It's freaking fun." Yeah. Great to relax on the
544. 42:07weekend. Do you know how much how many people on  LinkedIn have reached out to me because they're
545. 42:13like, "Dude, I saw I love to kayak." Yeah. Cuz  they're connected with you through kayaking. Now
546. 42:17we're connected and now they're just like, "Oh,  you do AI also, right?" They connected because
547. 42:21of the kayaking and now they dig in a little  bit. Oh, man. You like I need I own a business,
548. 42:25right? And I'm gonna do this and whatever  or it's basketball or it's gymnastics or
549. 42:29you're you connect over BYU football, right? or  whatever the heck it is you post about anything.
550. 42:35Just be out there. Just be out there and people  will identify. They your your people, your tribe
551. 42:39will come to you and you can help them. All right.  So, John, earlier you mentioned an STE framework
552. 42:45for the Is it for the sales calls? Is that right?  Yeah. This, you know, you're selling to the CEO
553. 42:50and they care about these specific these specific  things. Strategy, transformation, and education.
554. 42:57Those three things. If you can hit on each of  those and help them understand, look, we're
555. 43:00going to raise the level of all of your employees.  We're going to train them up. We're going to we're
556. 43:04going to literally transform your process as an  operation with transformation and we're going to
557. 43:09make sure you're doing it right and staying ahead  of your competition with strategy. That's going to
558. 43:13save you money, make you more money, and put you  in a position to win. And you as the CEO are going
559. 43:18to say, "Yeah, I'm I'm taking care of AI like I  need to be." Okay. So, in the STE framework, the S
560. 43:23stands for strategy. And that's like big picture.  You're speaking directly to the CEO. We say CEO,
561. 43:29it's not like a publicly traded company. This  is like an eight to$30 million business, right?
562. 43:34And you're just kind of painting a picture for  him on what his organization could look like once
563. 43:40AI is implemented in it and what the industry is  looking like today and where it's heading with AI
564. 43:46at the forefront. Is that right? Exactly. And you  know, again, I've been the CEO of a few companies
565. 43:51for, you know, maybe a little over a decade or so,  and I I know how hard it is, how many things just
566. 43:55pile up on a CEO's desk. There's just so  many things like, man, be really awesome
567. 44:00if we had had someone we could hire someone  for that. And so, I really love, especially
568. 44:03in that transformation section where I'm trying  to sell that. I'm trying to help them. I'm trying
569. 44:07to sell them something that's 10, 15, $20,000 a  month. Like it's not a it's not a cheap thing,
570. 44:12but when I can illustrate like look, you wanted  you have this need. You got to hire this person.
571. 44:18It's going to cost you 8,000 here and another one  that's going to cost you 5,000 here, another one's
572. 44:21going to cost you 15,000 here. And and and I can  go through and I can make a few examples of things
573. 44:26that they are wanting to do. And and if I can  help them understand that we can build a system,
574. 44:32an AI system that automatically does that, they  won't have to hire that person. they're going
575. 44:36to be saving money, making more money, and then  positioned to scale because systems scale better
576. 44:42than than people do usually, right? Especially  when you're talking about, you know, margin and
577. 44:47profitability. So, is the transformation step,  the second step, is that when you bring up like
578. 44:51who are you about to hire, is that when you tie  your cost to their ROI specifically? Totally.
579. 44:58I use that. So, I talk about strategy and  that's good. That's kind of good. Then I get
580. 45:01to transformation and I will bring up I I'll ask  them. I'll say, "What are some things that you
581. 45:05wish you could do better at your business?" Right?  Or who do who would you like to hire? Right? I'm
582. 45:09we start to have a conversation about I'm I'm  having them tell me what they want me to say,
583. 45:14right? That's all I'm doing. I'm just saying,  "Hey, tell me what your problem is. Let me show
584. 45:18you how I can do that with AI." Then we've  got the ROI already covered by the time I'm
585. 45:22done with S and T. Right? When I then get to E,  the education and training, I say, "Now look,
586. 45:28we're already making a huge impact." But what  if we could get 20% more productivity out of
587. 45:33the rest of your existing staff, your  60 employees that you have already?
588. 45:37How much more money would you make? How much, you  know, if we freed up your time and this for all
589. 45:40these people? How much better would the business  be? How much happier would people be? How much,
590. 45:45you know, what if we made 10% more revenue on  your business? So now I have them thinking, okay,
591. 45:50I don't have to hire people that's going to save  me money. I have process that's going to automate
592. 45:53and then we're going to train everybody up and I'm  gonna make 10% more. Right? Even though I'm not
593. 45:57actually saying that, I'm just saying what if you  could do that. Now they're tying, you know, their
594. 46:0220 or $30 million business to two to3 million of  impact. And then I say, yeah. And so we'll do this
595. 46:08for $15,000 a month, right? And they're like,  "Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a no-brainer."
596. 46:12Yeah. Now, I talked to another guy who's doing  something similar, and he says that he's very
597. 46:16careful. He has a different framework for it, but  basically when he gets to this part of the call,
598. 46:21he's very careful to not give like very specific  advice like you need to use this Zapier connection
599. 46:27with this to solve this problem that you just  told me about cuz that just kind of gets him in
600. 46:31the weeds. Yeah. He likes to keep it more broad  like all right well your accounting function is
601. 46:35going to Would you agree with that or do you do it  a little different? I would agree. I what I'll do
602. 46:40sometimes actually I actually really believe that  people buy from people that they think are smart
603. 46:47right and so what I'll do is I'll kind of  sometimes say yeah you know for that thing you
604. 46:52could actually set this and this up but you know  what you know we don't really need to get to that
605. 46:55right now but we can definitely do that right I'll  kind of start to get down that line I'll say maybe
606. 46:59a few words or I'm like yeah we can go into replet  we can build this system and we just API that
607. 47:03into here we connect that you'd have a dashboard  yeah almost like I'm thinking on the fly which I
608. 47:09I'm not I'm not BSing it really, but it is a real  strategy. Like the things I'm saying are real,
609. 47:14but I kind of start and I let them kind of  be like, "Okay." And then I'm like, "Yeah,
610. 47:18but you know what? This isn't something you need  to worry about. This is why you hire us. We're
611. 47:20going to come in. We're going to make this happen.  We can do this." But then they're really confident
612. 47:23like, "Oh, yeah. He's already building for me  in his head, you know?" And so, yeah, I agree.
613. 47:28I don't like to go too technical, but sometimes I  like to drop in a little technical kind of process
614. 47:33just so they're like, "Hey, this guy knows what  he's talking about." Or like, "I don't know what
615. 47:36that is. I need to hire this guy so we can help."  And it kind of gets him excited for the future,
616. 47:39right? The future with you. Well, John, this  has been amazing. Is there anything that
617. 47:45any advice you'd like to leave us with that you  we might have missed today? I hope you didn't
618. 47:49miss that. I'm really not anything special as  compared to you listeners. You guys all have
619. 47:54ideas like I have ideas like Chris has ideas and  with AI it fills in the gaps, those knowledge gaps
620. 48:00that I have like I can't code for example and I  can't do a lot of things but I know how to ask.
621. 48:05I'm not afraid to ask. And obviously you don't  have to be afraid to ask AI, right? But I've
622. 48:08I've always been I've always been curious, right?  When I when I raised a bunch of money and had,
623. 48:13you know, 50 or 60 developers working for me  and super smart, you know, CTO's and people,
624. 48:18they would say things and I'd say, I don't know  what that means. Will you help me understand what
625. 48:21that means? I really I really want to know. And  what that did is it turned me into that kind of
626. 48:25smarter technical guy where I would get on a call  with Lego, you know, was one of my amazing clients
627. 48:31in my last company or Nestle or Meta even, right?  I had great clients because I could get on a call
628. 48:37and I could talk about things that even though  I didn't know a lot, I knew a little enough
629. 48:41that I that I knew what I was talking about and  I knew that our that our solution could bring,
630. 48:46you know, benefits related to those kind of  ideas. So, just don't be afraid. Don't be
631. 48:50afraid to venture into places where you you're  like, man, I just don't know if I can do that.
632. 48:54You can. You absolutely can. and AI is a perfect  tutor or coach that literally in a couple days
633. 49:00like this like this guy that that went and figured  out how to replace his own job. He became the guru
634. 49:04in a few days, right? By just diving in, do a deep  dive for a weekend. Put down the Call of Duty,
635. 49:10you know, and just do this for a weekend  and you will all of a sudden, you know,
636. 49:15be in this upper echelon of of knowledge related  to AI and you'll just feel like you're cheating.
637. 49:21You really will feel like you're cheating.  Like I have a I remember when I first got my
638. 49:25Tesla XPlaid. That thing felt like a spaceship  to me. And I would zip past people and I'd barely
639. 49:32push in the accelerator and just I mean just  go so fast. It just made other traditional cars
640. 49:39feel like they were from the last century. When  you learn how to just harness that technology,
641. 49:44again, I didn't build that technology. I didn't  build the Tesla. I didn't learn how to do that.
642. 49:47I just I learned how to use it. And again, this  is a very simple example because everybody can
643. 49:51push on an accelerator or a brake, but as soon  as you're in that position of I can go faster,
644. 49:57it's amazing what happens. And you you can  anyone can go faster. You just jump in and
645. 50:03figure it out. Well said. Beautiful. John,  thank you for your time. Where can we find you?
646. 50:08Would love to connect with you guys. Like I  said, LinkedIn is kind of my main I I mean,
647. 50:11if you look for me on Facebook or Instagram,  I don't know, Tik Tok, you'll find me usually
648. 50:15chenypiano. So, at C H Ney piano, I'm a  pianist and and I love to do that. But, um,
649. 50:22but I post about my farm life out here and piano  and AI and entrepreneurship and I don't know,
650. 50:29kayaking down a waterfall or something like that.  And then LinkedIn, uh, if you just look up John
651. 50:33Cheney, J O N C H N E Y, you will find me. And,  uh, would love to connect with you. Love helping
652. 50:39entrepreneurs. Reach out to me if you, you know,  if you want, you know, link to any of these things
653. 50:43I've talked about or whatever. I'm happy to  happy to point you in the right direction.
654. 50:47Okay. Thank you, John. Really appreciate it,  Chris. Thanks. All right. What' you think?