The Easiest Way to Make Money With AI Right Now — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00hit more than a million dollars by this year. So,  super exciting. Yeah. Around a $2,000 setup fee,
2. 0:05it's already built. You're just selling it to  them. Now, it's finally become possible for normal
3. 0:10people who aren't technical. You can automate all  this process. You can and you should. And then the
4. 0:14monthly retainer that you charge them on top of  that, you're not even doing anything. Yeah. For
5. 0:18that 500 bucks a month. It's doing it for you.  What did that cost you all in? About 50 bucks.
6. 0:23Wow. My guest today tried eight different AI  businesses in the span of 6 months while he still
7. 0:28had a job. And the ninth one he tried makes over a  million dollars per year of profit with no office
8. 0:34and three people helping. But the part that should  interest you is that people with zero coding
9. 0:39skills are charging $2 to $3,000 to set this up  for local businesses and $500 to $1,000 a month to
10. 0:46keep running it. And a robot writes the monthly  report. And his 19-year-old son just signed a
11. 0:51client that said his service will save him over a  hundred grand a year. So, you make over a million
12. 0:57dollars a year selling AI services to small  businesses. Yeah. By the end of this episode,
13. 1:02will people have enough knowledge to start to  do the same thing? Yes, definitely. Selling
14. 1:07AI agents is the biggest business opportunity I  think of our generation. Yeah, I agree. We make
15. 1:12it easy for you and I'll show you how easy it is  to automate that full process and do it without
16. 1:18having any technical knowledge needed at all.  Okay. Well, Aaron, why don't you start by telling
17. 1:22me who you are and what you do? Yeah, I'm Aaron  Edwards. I'm the founder of Docspot and we help
18. 1:26build AI agents for businesses. So, primarily  they're used for customer support. That's like
19. 1:31a huge use case for AI agents for business that  provides a lot of value to them. Okay. How long
20. 1:35have you been doing this? Yeah, the business has  been going like three and a half years and before
21. 1:39that I spent 6 months just trying to launch any  product I could cuz I got that entrepreneur itch
22. 1:45listening to podcasts like yours and being like,  hey, I need to be doing something for myself.
23. 1:49So tried eight different things in 6 months and  this is the one that stuck like perfect timing,
24. 1:54perfect place, figuring out the right niche and  been growing since then. Okay. What were the ones
25. 1:59that you launched and failed? Yeah. So the first  it was like all AI image stuff. It was right when
26. 2:04AI images started becoming like possible and right  when it became available I was like I need to jump
27. 2:09on this wave you know this new AI wave and images  are just so visual and everything. So first I made
28. 2:14a WordPress plugin kind of went viral on Twitter  X. Oh that's cool. but didn't get any revenue from
29. 2:19it at all. Everyone loved it. No one wanted  Yeah. No one wanted to pay. Exactly. And then
30. 2:24we kind of pivoted. I'm like, maybe this could be  like for businesses, you know, if they want to do
31. 2:27product photos or things like that. So tried that.  Couldn't figure out how to sell it to anyone. I
32. 2:32think the technology was still very early, you  know. And then we found the AI profile picture,
33. 2:38viral wave. I don't know if you remember that  where like on Twitter. Yeah. Like everyone's
34. 2:42like creating that and so we're like, "All right,  let's jump on this bandwagon because it already
35. 2:45does that." And so that was kind of the first  success. We made like 10 grand in like two months.
36. 2:50Wow. Just selling AI profile pictures, you know.  Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. So that was fun. But
37. 2:56the fad died off, you know. Of course. So you're  always kind of tinkering, but with a full-time
38. 3:00job. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And didn't didn't quit  anything yet, but Yeah. Eventually found something
39. 3:06that worked and that was AI agents. What was the  like the spark of the idea that led to you trying
40. 3:11this? Yeah. just I knew that AI was kind of the  new technology wave, you know, just like in the
41. 3:16past like I grew up like in the.com era, you know,  with websites and the web and all this stuff and
42. 3:22uh seeing kind of that wave and how that launched  a whole new wave of businesses and then even like
43. 3:26mobile like mobile apps and things like that and  I was like this time AI is going to be that next
44. 3:31wave and I need to be on that. So I need to learn  everything I can to figure out how to do it. I had
45. 3:36no idea how to like code that stuff. It was  just like try to hack something together and
46. 3:40MVP and see if people would pay for it. Yeah. So,  what was the very first thing you did? Yeah. So,
47. 3:45the very first thing, well, I talked about kind  of the plugin and things like that. And then after
48. 3:49the profile pictures kind of died out, then my  wife was like, "Hey, I've always wanted to make
49. 3:53a children's book. What if we use that technology  to do like a custom children's book for kids?" So,
50. 3:59we did this one like we called it like imagine AI  and the kids would upload or a parent would upload
51. 4:04the photos. Oh, that's awesome. And it would like  transform the children like into the pages of the
52. 4:08like a educational like inspirational book for  them. And I'm like, this is the billion-dollar
53. 4:13idea, right? I mean, you're merging like uh  virtual and physical, right? Yeah, exactly.
54. 4:19And parents and they want to see their kids  and educate and this stuff. And so we sold like
55. 4:24an initial wave or whatever, but we could not I  could not figure out how to do ads, then convert,
56. 4:29you know, it was like around Christmas time. I  was like, it was the perfect holiday gift. And it
57. 4:33was just a struggle. I was like, it's I realized  how hard it is to sell to like consumers. They
58. 4:38have a limited budget. And something like this, it  actually cost a bit. I mean, paying like 60 bucks,
59. 4:4340 to 60 bucks for a book is a lot. You know, a  stretch for some people. Yeah. Because they're
60. 4:48custom printed each one. Yeah. But we did have  some success with it and even someone discovered
61. 4:53it in our like local magazine and Southwest Dallas  and they kind of did a cover thing interviewing us
62. 4:59and then uh Dallas Morning Show. Basically, they  saw that and the producers called us up and like,
63. 5:05"Hey, we want to feature you, you know, way  on Good Morning Texas." Yeah. And we're like,
64. 5:09"Okay, that's scary." A big uh jump. So, we  showed up there, kind of did a live interview,
65. 5:15showed off the book. It was like really fun. But  the funny thing is like not a single sale from
66. 5:19any of that. Not one. Not one. Holy cow.  Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just I mean,
67. 5:24if people are shopping for something like that,  it's going to be like a click on a website and
68. 5:29then then make that kind of quick purchase, you  know, and if they watch it on TV or whatever,
69. 5:34yeah, they think it's cool, but yeah. So after  that like the real pivot into what business works
70. 5:39was docbot and that's AI agents for customer  support. So right after chat GBT came out, I
71. 5:44was thinking like what is the perfect use case for  this that a business like would find value for and
72. 5:50pay for like right away. And customer support was  one of those cuz the company I worked for before,
73. 5:54I saw how we had so many thousands of tickets  coming in, you know, and they're answering the
74. 5:58same questions over and over again and we're  hiring these huge teams that maybe have to man
75. 6:03the live chat 24/7 and it's like AI can do like  most of that, you know, answer a good percent,
76. 6:08you know, maybe even 70 80% of the questions,  you know. What was the company you worked for
77. 6:12where you saw this? Yeah, it was called WPMU Dev.  Okay. Yeah. And they were my first customer. Oh,
78. 6:17cool. Okay. Yeah. How were you still working  for them when you got them as a customer? Yeah,
79. 6:22pretty much. Yeah. It was more like a proof of  concept thing through them and then I was like,
80. 6:26"Hey, I'm not going to like give this to them.  This is going to be my thing, you know." So,
81. 6:31so there definitely was a transition period like  building this up and getting more customers and
82. 6:35things like that before I finally quit and  just went full-time for myself. I mean,
83. 6:39that's an interesting framework is if you have a  full-time job, but you want to do your own thing,
84. 6:43what problem can you solve for your employer?  Yeah. That might make that your first time
85. 6:48customer, right? Yeah. What did you charge them  and how did you come up with what to charge them?
86. 6:53Yeah. Starting out, I believe we had like a entry  level plan for like 20 bucks a month and then like
87. 6:5950 bucks a month and 100 I think was the max or  something like that. Is that like per user or
88. 7:05this was just like for the whole product? So they  deploy it like in their company to like start like
89. 7:10basically create a chatbot. That's how it started.  And you put that on your website or whatever and
90. 7:14then it can answer your customers questions and  then if it gets stuck or it can't answer then it
91. 7:19escalates to creating a ticket or to a live chat.  Yeah. Hey, if you're liking this episode, please
92. 7:24smash the subscribe button. It would mean a ton.  Knowing what you know now, if you could go back
93. 7:29in time, what would you have charged them or like  how much could you have charged them back then?
94. 7:35Yeah. knowing how much value you had adding and so  I think I was lucky and that I had kind of like a
95. 7:41lot of influence from like entrepreneur Twitter  and things like that like telling me hey charge
96. 7:46more than you think you should. So we always had  like some bigger plans like 500 bucks a month and
97. 7:51always had that thing like contact us if you want  enterprise and that worked out really well cuz
98. 7:55like even one of our early customers was Sony over  in Japan. I mean, that was a huge customer. Like,
99. 8:00what do I quote them? I have no idea, right?  Yeah. And so, I thought I shot high. Now,
100. 8:04looking back at the numbers and what I've learned  about enterprise sales, it's like a tiny amount
101. 8:08compared to the contracts that they're used to  signing, you know? Yeah. But you learn. Yeah.
102. 8:13Yeah. I spun that out and kind of shared it with  people that I knew and in that kind of space,
103. 8:17you know, and say, "Hey, is this something you'd  be interested for your business?" And I put like
104. 8:20a weight list sign up form on there and just  like sign up if that's what you want. And even
105. 8:24had a survey like what were what the core features  you would need, you know? So that kind of gave me
106. 8:28like I got like two or 300 people on that weight  list that were like business owners and stuff.
107. 8:33Yeah. And they told me exactly what features they  needed. So I'm like, "All right, this is my MVP,
108. 8:38you know." Yeah. I just need to like do these  few check marks just to get something going.
109. 8:42And I just worked, you know, 247 for like two  weeks and got it out there. Love it. How many
110. 8:47Twitter followers did you have then? Uh then it  was small, like a few hundred, you know, and I'm
111. 8:53not huge now. Yeah. I don't want people to hear  this and think, "Oh, great. He's this big tech,
112. 8:57right? That I had it close. Yeah. Like anyone  could get 300 followers, right? And that that's
113. 9:02not to downplay 300, but it's like we all know 300  people. We all have 500 Facebook followers. So,
114. 9:07yeah. Exactly. And actually, what really kicked  off the product was going viral on Twitter with
115. 9:13300 followers. Yeah. With 300 followers. So, I  just posted like videos, demos of me building it
116. 9:19and and stuff like that. And some tech influencer  in Japan, I have no idea how he found me,
117. 9:24he reposted it. He like created like a bot in  Japanese and he's like this is like great AI for
118. 9:29Japanese. And so this is like a Sunday and I wake  up in the morning and I have like two 300 support
119. 9:36tickets all in Japanese. Wow. And and the whole  servers, right? Yeah. And the servers are crashed
120. 9:42and everything like that. I'm like what is going  on, you know? And turns out like it went viral.
121. 9:46Like that tweet had like three million views  or something in Japan. Yeah. Yeah. And luckily
122. 9:51with AI like you can serve customers anywhere in  the world, you know. So you say support tickets,
123. 9:56these are people that had signed up as users. Yes.  And then had support tickets about the experience
124. 10:00and paid and then something went wrong or it  crashed or whatever, you know. I mean this was a
125. 10:05a very rough MVP. We didn't even have like really  good support for other languages yet, you know? I
126. 10:10mean the AI could answer questions in that, but  the dashboard was still in English. All this
127. 10:14stuff. Yeah. You built something and then you were  willing to post about that. Exactly. Willing to
128. 10:19share my story. Yeah. The phrase build in public  has been played out and a lot of people like, "Oh,
129. 10:24there's no benefit to building in public." I've  heard that a lot recently. Like, it's just you
130. 10:27invite competitors. And I could not disagree more.  I don't care if no one if I get three views on
131. 10:32this, I'm going to post it regardless because all  it takes is one dude in Japan. Exactly. You never
132. 10:37know. Yeah. You never know. And he he used it and  tried it and posted about it because he liked it.
133. 10:42What a great story. Okay. So, that was like month  one. Yeah. Okay. Mhm. And so you had hundreds of
134. 10:49users at this point or thousands, I mean hundreds  of support tickets. So yeah, probably like uh
135. 10:54hundreds of customers. I think we got like 3  months we hit like 10k MR and that was where I was
136. 10:59like this might actually be a thing. And you still  had a job. Yeah. Yeah. I might actually be able to
137. 11:04quit, you know. And so like I talked to my boss  and he was real sweet about it. is like, "Hey,
138. 11:09like I'll you can like do like part-time and just  help like with the transition, like train up like
139. 11:14your replacement over the next year, you know,  and just act as like more of a consultant kind of
140. 11:18role." So, that was awesome. So, I had the time  to kind of focus on the business more and still
141. 11:22have like a good chunk of my old salary just in  case, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Could
142. 11:28you have like today, could you build the software  that you have now with like a vibe coding app? Is
143. 11:35it possible? You definitely can to some extent and  that's 80 90% of the way there. Yeah. And that's
144. 11:41one of the hard things that we've had like we've  had some I was looking at my numbers of people who
145. 11:45cancel, you know, cuz we're software as a service.  It's a monthly subscription kind of deal. Mhm. And
146. 11:50what we're seeing like over the last year is it's  increased from like 1% like I'll build my own to
147. 11:55like about 13% of people who cancel. Okay. That's  the reason why. But what I found the people who
148. 12:01cancel like that, they really weren't a good fit  customer anyway. Sure. Like they're just maybe
149. 12:05a single person. Yeah. It's not worth the cost  to them. An indie developer. Exactly. Right. A
150. 12:11soloreneur. Exactly. Yeah. Those are great. Those  are awesome. But for your business, they weren't
151. 12:15good customers. Yeah. And the good customer is  like some a company that's big enough that they
152. 12:19have like a support team. They have employees.  Yeah. People need a dashboard to log into where
153. 12:24they can see the stats and improve it over time.  All the stuff that like vibe coding doesn't like
154. 12:29really work for. Like you can get that proof of  concept or something janky out there, but you need
155. 12:33someone that can maintain it constantly, keep it  going, all that kind of stuff. I'm smiling because
156. 12:38it's the customers of yours that have the most  resources, the most talent, the most people, the
157. 12:43most money, and the most money to save by building  it themselves are the ones that are not doing it.
158. 12:49Exactly. They're just writing a check every  month, which is great for you. Yeah. And it's
159. 12:53the hustlers out there that you said it went from  1% of your cancellations initially said I'm just
160. 12:59going to build this myself to now 13%. Yeah. Yeah.  But surely that's a much much smaller percentage
161. 13:07of your lost revenue because they're small  customers. Yeah. Do you have a free plan? We do.
162. 13:11We always put kind of a free plan just so we could  say like no credit card required. And one of the
163. 13:15things I love that I did at the first is I didn't  have like a free like trial or whatever. It was
164. 13:20just like you pay us and show us you're serious.  We'll give you a refund if it doesn't work for
165. 13:24you. Yeah. But like show us you're serious. And  that as like a single founder that probably saved
166. 13:29us I can't even imagine how much time you know.  Yeah. And avoiding hiring people and stuff cuz
167. 13:34only like serious people uh would actually  like sign up and try it you know. What are
168. 13:38your pricing plans today? So we have kind of like  a personal geared one for like that someone just
169. 13:43getting started kind of thing or a tiny business  like at 50 bucks a month. And then our main plan,
170. 13:48and this is kind of our average customer is on 150  a month. Okay. Um and then we have like a business
171. 13:52self-s serve that's 500 and then enterprise if  they need some crazy stuff above that. Okay. So
172. 13:59150 is your most common plan. What is your average  monthly price? Yeah. Our ARPU a revenue per p per
173. 14:07user is I think like about 130 something like  that. Yeah. So it's very close to that standard
174. 14:13plan. And what is your churn and lifetime value?  Yeah, lifetime value, last I checked, it's u it's
175. 14:20a little over $2,000. Wow. Yeah. And then churn is  like our revenue churn is around 3%. So Wow. Churn
176. 14:27has always been hard. We've done a lot this year  to like improve that. Um but there's some things
177. 14:31you just can't fix. You know, if there's the wrong  customer, it's the wrong customer. Yeah. Well,
178. 14:35if they stick around for a month or two, they're  probably going to stick around for years,
179. 14:39right? Yeah. That's the idea. Okay. Do you provide  any services? Like do you build custom agents for
180. 14:44people or just you offer your software? Yeah.  So here's kind of the shift that I've seen in
181. 14:48the last year is before like we got our customers  like classic like software like SEO you know word
182. 14:55of mouth things like that you know and we've  seen that drop so much and so this year we've
183. 15:00really had to push into like more of like a  service like actual talk to people you know
184. 15:04and make it happen for them. Now we can use AI on  the back end to automate 95% of that but and this
185. 15:11is the opportunity for everyone watching here  is that like building AI agents for like small
186. 15:16businesses like most of them they don't have the  expertise they don't want to learn even like how
187. 15:21to use a new software no matter how simple I make  it. Yeah. They're installing water heaters. Yeah.
188. 15:26Exactly. So they need that person that can  take like okay here's the problem they have
189. 15:31and here's how I can use AI to solve it with the  solution. And that's really where the opportunity
190. 15:35is. Yeah. Are you doing any of that? Yeah. For the  company, we've kind of pivoted a lot to that. So,
191. 15:40right now, like most of our effort goes into like  courting agencies and and implementers instead of
192. 15:46like going directly after customers because the  customers who are kind of technically savvy enough
193. 15:51to like sign up and and set it up themselves,  no matter how easy we make it, you know,
194. 15:55that's kind of dried up and there's so many other  competitors out there. So now we have kind of a
195. 15:59service offering like where you have like a white  glove setup and then like a maintenance for the
196. 16:04first 90 days or whatever you know to to show them  that value and really get them onboarded and then
197. 16:09all our agency partners who are spinning up agents  and showing them to small businesses for us you
198. 16:14know and making a lot of money in the process.  So are they white labeling that stuff to you?
199. 16:18Yeah. Okay. So you're doing the work on the back  end and they're they're your sales arm basically
200. 16:22your referral partners. Yeah. So there's different  levels. Sometimes they're like white labeling it.
201. 16:27So they're just having signing up with their own  account from us. Mhm. Reselling bots, you know,
202. 16:32cuz our platform supports teams and multiple bots  and things like that. And so they'll create like
203. 16:36an agent, do a pilot for a business, sell it to  them, upcharge like a big amount. They can have a
204. 16:41monthly like fee on top of that for like service,  maintenance, reports, all that kind of thing. So
205. 16:47the business doesn't have to worry about anything.  Okay. What are they charging for it on average?
206. 16:51Yeah. So, the a good price point we found for  like a good fit customer is roughly like around
207. 16:56a $2,000 setup fee. That's what your agencies  are charging their business customers. Yeah.
208. 17:01$2,000 setup fee. Mhm. Okay. As much as 500  bucks a month like like maintenance. So, and
209. 17:07it's going to depend on the size of the business.  Obviously, you have to think about like what value
210. 17:11you're providing them too. If you think maybe the  average like support agent that a company hires,
211. 17:16maybe their salary is like 40 grand a year, you  know, that's probably like base like 20 bucks
212. 17:20an hour and only goes up from there. And if you  think like each support ticket like save or it
213. 17:25takes about 5 minutes of employees time, right,  to answer you can kind of like math that out,
214. 17:30but most companies I mean with the plan we provide  you can do as much as without paying any extra as
215. 17:35much as like 15,000 tickets a month. Mh. So I mean  you're talking about like $10,000 exactly dollars
216. 17:42a month that they're saving. They'd be paying an  agency 500 bucks a month and theoretically saving
217. 17:477,500 bucks a month. Yeah. Exactly. Two full-time  employees. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Did you know that
218. 17:52beef prices have never been higher? It is a great  time to get in the beef business, but you need
219. 17:57people to find you. So whether you're selling  to businesses or consumers, you're going to need
220. 18:01people to find you. And getting the perfect  domain name is a great start. So, don't let
221. 18:05your.com obsession kill your momentum. And I've  been there. I get it. You think of the best name
222. 18:10like grass-fedbeef.com. Check if it's available.  It's not. So, you're going to start adding words
223. 18:16grass-fed beef north Texas or throwing in hyphens,  adding fluff that will ultimately prevent you from
224. 18:22getting more clicks, and suddenly your clean,  memorable brand name turns into something that
225. 18:27nobody can even remember or spell. Meanwhile,  that exact name that you wanted, grass-fed beef,
226. 18:33it's probably available right now atonline. And  here's the part that matters for getting found.
227. 18:38The word online shows up in keywords searched  over 500 million times every single month. 500
228. 18:45million. That's a little boost of SEO working in  your favor just from your domain name. Online is
229. 18:51the second largest new domain extension with over  three and a half million businesses using it. So,
230. 18:57stop overthinking it. My listeners can use code  kerner koe r ne to get theironline domain for
231. 19:03only 99 cents or you can just scan the QR  code in the description. Grab your name,
232. 19:08launch the thing, and let's keep moving. And  then for that 500 a month or whatever, what are
233. 19:12you charging the agency? Is it just your normal  software fee like 50 bucks or 150 bucks? Yeah,
234. 19:17like between like 50 if if they're white labeling  it, then between 50 and $20. Yeah. Per agent. So
235. 19:23what's changed with you is you're still a software  company. You're just trying to better sell your
236. 19:28software to service companies. Yeah. Whereas  before you were a software company selling your
237. 19:33software to businesses directly. Is that right?  Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And then there's people that
238. 19:37are just starting from scratch like my son. He's  only 19, you know, fresh out of high school and he
239. 19:42started shilling AI agents to companies and he's  got his first big contract that he's working on
240. 19:47right now like setting everything up for them and  he doesn't know how to code. But I mean he's vibe
241. 19:52coding the whole thing and using Docspot for some  things and stuff like that. What type of business?
242. 19:57This one is a contractor. So just local. Yeah,  local contractor family friend or someone I I
243. 20:04knew and he's like hey I need AI so bad. He's like  here's my son. Like he'll he'll help you out. You
244. 20:08know what's he going to be able to charge for  this? Gosh, I'm not sure what it's going to be,
245. 20:12but like the value that he mentioned to me,  like this this contractor, he's like, I could
246. 20:17see this saving me like $100,000 or more a year.  I'm like, your son's like, "Yes, your son's like,
247. 20:23I'll charge him 500 a month." And you're like,  "No." Yeah. I was like, "Let's think about that."
248. 20:28Like, talk to me before you pitch him. A good rule  of thumb, I've heard, and this is for software,
249. 20:32like it may be different for other businesses,  but you want to provide 10 times the value that
250. 20:36you charge. Yeah. So, if you're charging 500 bucks  a month, make sure that they're getting $5 a month
251. 20:41and walk them through the math. Right. Exactly.  All right. So, you said five minutes per ticket,
252. 20:44right? Right. 2,000 tickets per month. Right.  Right. I say conservatively, we're going to knock
253. 20:49out 50% of those. Probably 70, but let's  be conservative. We're going to save you
254. 20:53$7,000 a month. We're only going to charge you  500. Exactly. That makes it kind of a no-brainer
255. 20:58offer, right? Mhm. What are your numbers today?  And how have those grown over time? Yeah. So,
256. 21:03it's been three and a half years. We hit more than  a million dollars uh in ARR. Holy crap. This year.
257. 21:08So good for you. Super exciting. Yeah. How much  of that is Well, I was going to say how much is
258. 21:12service versus software, but it's all software.  Exactly. You're selling to service businesses,
259. 21:15but you're still software. Yep. Okay. Yeah. What  would you have done differently from the outset if
260. 21:20you could go back in time? So, I kind of had that  kind of bootstrapper mindset like, you know, make
261. 21:24the profit like take the profit, you know, sock it  away. Like I would have like as soon as I was able
262. 21:30to like financially, I would have like reinvested  a lot more like in ads and like faster growth and
263. 21:35things like that. I never wanted to go down like  that investment path like the kind of VC thing,
264. 21:39right? Even though in the beginning like of course  they're calling me because they're like want to
265. 21:44get in anything AI, you know, at that point in  time. Um maybe that was a bad decision. I don't
266. 21:48know. But I love the lifestyle and that's what's  important to me. I prefer the lifestyle business.
267. 21:53Yeah. Yeah. So for me now it's like I can work  as much as I want, you know, usually like 20 to
268. 21:5840 hours a week, but like this month I probably  took like six weeks of vacation and this summer,
269. 22:04you know, like interspersed between because  so much is automated now with AI and I just
270. 22:09love that. And now we've grown. I hired like my  best friend like from high school going back,
271. 22:14you know, best man. And he's kind of joined the  company. So it's great not being alone anymore,
272. 22:18just having him like helping out. And my older son  is working for us too, fresh out of college and
273. 22:23he's like learning marketing and sales and and how  to like get by in this world and it's great having
274. 22:29that opportunity and you can't do that maybe if  you're like a VC back hyperrowth kind of company,
275. 22:34right? What are your margins? Yeah. So the net  margin like it's greater than 90% is our gross
276. 22:40margin. Yeah. So do you have employees? Yeah, just  that one partner who I've hired, my friend and my
277. 22:45uh oldest son. That's awesome. And but how long  did it take you to get employees? A long time. you
278. 22:50were you were making really good money without  any employees. Exactly. Yeah. For a long time
279. 22:54and I didn't necessarily have to hire them, you  know. It was more like a choice like I don't want
280. 22:59to be alone anymore, you know? Yeah. All right.  So, how much are some of these agencies making
281. 23:05um doing these services for small businesses? What  have you heard from your customers? Yeah. I mean,
282. 23:10I've heard all kinds of numbers, you know. I  mean, like that mid price point I've heard is
283. 23:14like two to three grand for setup and then $500 a  month, you know? Mh. But you think about that that
284. 23:20recurring revenue it stacks you know especially  like when you add that service part to it and what
285. 23:24works best that I found is like usually like it's  an implement agency or if you want to start this
286. 23:29for yourself like figure out what niche you want  to target and what's cool about this AI agents is
287. 23:33it works for almost any business and even customer  support like any business that gets any kind of
288. 23:38like customer support whether it's tickets live  chat phone calls whatever they need this right
289. 23:43and so it applies to almost anyone but we have  everything from like a good fit would be like
290. 23:48manufacturing like product or manufacturers. So,  we'll have like companies like a like a lighting
291. 23:53company or one that sells like construction like  panels or one that sells like generators, right?
292. 23:58And they have all these product manuals, you  know, that have all these crazy tables and specs
293. 24:02in them, you know, and they have customers asking  questions all the time about the specs for this or
294. 24:07this, you know, will this work for this use case,  etc. And that's a perfect case for AI. Do you
295. 24:12know how your these service businesses are finding  them specifically? Are they going to their family,
296. 24:17friends, Facebook ads, like cold outreach on  LinkedIn? What are they doing? Yeah, I'll tell you
297. 24:22some good techniques that I learned. So, like in  order in person, you can't beat that. You know, if
298. 24:27you have a relationship, you meet someone at the  chamber of commerce, at a conference, whatever,
299. 24:31like that's like the best lead you're going to get  because they get to know you face to face. So, we
300. 24:36do a lot of that ourselves, you know, and that's  what's works works for those agencies as well. Uh,
301. 24:40next I would say is like a phone call. Like  pick up the phone, call a business, you know,
302. 24:45like you want to save money with AI, you know, I  can help you like and you don't have to be like an
303. 24:49AI expert. You just have to know a little bit more  than them, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then text,
304. 24:54you can do cold texting, you know, that's  probably like next best and email is possible,
305. 24:58but it's down there. And that's a that's a very  hard uh thing to do. Yeah. So, what are you doing
306. 25:03at conferences? What what is this guy right here?  Yeah, this guy is fun. I don't know how to build
307. 25:08things in real life. I just sent this to my AI  agent, coding agent, and I said, "Hey, create
308. 25:12like the 3D models for me to print and like tell  me how to plug everything together and what to buy
309. 25:17on Amazon." And the idea was like we were going  to these conferences like in person, making leads,
310. 25:22connecting with agencies, whatever. I was like,  I don't want to pay 25 grand for a booth. I mean,
311. 25:27that's expensive. And I don't know how I could  ever pay that off no matter how many leads I get,
312. 25:32right? So, how can we like grab attention on the  conference floor? And so I had AI help us build
313. 25:38these little guys, these little robots and they  just sit on your shoulder. There's actually like
314. 25:42unbag shoulder. Okay. That changes everything.  Yeah. Cuz if you have a big table and it's sitting
315. 25:46there, you might not even notice it. Exactly. Cuz  I mean we're like 6 in tall. Yeah. Okay. So you
316. 25:52put it on your shoulder. Yeah. So it mounts to our  shoulder like with magnets. So we're just walking
317. 25:56around. Everyone in the whole place magnet under  your shirt. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Everyone in the
318. 26:02whole place, they came up and talked to us. You  know, you can't miss the the the two guys walking
319. 26:07around with a robot on their shoulder, right?  Cool. And it's a perfect kind of like conversation
320. 26:12starter. And it also we actually had it connect  to our voice agents uh with Docspot. So,
321. 26:17you can actually like talk to it and like have a  conversation. It's kind of like a live demo of our
322. 26:21product. Yeah. So, what does it do? Does it talk?  Yeah, it can ask me a question, tell me a joke, or
323. 26:27tell me about your business. So you can interact  with it like Yeah, you can talk to it and interact
324. 26:32with it and things like that. Yeah. What model?  Super cool. What model are you using for that? Uh
325. 26:37internally it's powered by Docspot and we're using  the latest like open AI like voice real time live
326. 26:42models you know. Okay. What did that cost you all  in? About 50 bucks. Wow. I mean a lot of time the
327. 26:48first one surely with the help of AI. Yeah. How  many do you have? I made three for now but I mean
328. 26:54we can make that could be a whole business.  I know that could be a whole business. You
329. 26:57sell those for 200 bucks. Almost everyone on the  floor was like, "I want one of those." I'm like,
330. 27:00"Maybe we're in the wrong business. We should be  selling. We should just have a second business."
331. 27:04Right. Exactly. I know you're you're probably not  exactly, but if you were to back of the napkin
332. 27:09attribute x number of sales or monthly recurring  revenue to that little guy, Yeah. what would you
333. 27:15say it is? Well, so far we've taken them just to  one conference. So, we probably got like 10 to 20
334. 27:21leads from there. Okay. Um at least two customers  so far. And we're we're still talking to all
335. 27:25those leads, you know, and each customer is worth  2,000 bucks. Yeah. And a lot of these there were
336. 27:30like agencies and stuff. So, we're not necessarily  selling to them. We're trying to help them sell to
337. 27:35their customers, right? Yeah. Well, that's quite  the uh the ROI. Yeah. I mean, it's thousands of
338. 27:41dollars from a $50 investment. And I love that  you just have to think different. Like that's
339. 27:44what marketing it is. It's like being unique. It's  not being like everyone else. And even in the age
340. 27:49of AI where you can make like amazing videos,  amazing content, amazing websites, whatever,
341. 27:54you got to figure out how to stand out. So you got  to do something different. I mean, people could do
342. 27:57that for any business. It's just a conversation  starter. Exactly. That's a what a great takeaway.
343. 28:02Yeah. Are you or your customers building any  other types of AI agents or is it still like
344. 28:07customer support? Yeah, so our platform is kind of  flexible like it can be used for like sales teams,
345. 28:13collecting leads. We have voice agents too. So  the same like bot that has that can shout on your
346. 28:18website. You can call it with a phone number um or  connect it to your own systems or app or whatever
347. 28:23and and do the full like voice thing as well, you  know? But that's not really our target is like
348. 28:28like the classic like blue collar service business  that needs like a AI receptionist like you can do
349. 28:32that probably for cheaper like would go high level  or something like that. It's more like if you
350. 28:36want that complex like you got product questions,  things like that that are complicated um policies
351. 28:41and things that you need to make sure that AI  follows all that kinds of stuff. We're really good
352. 28:45at helping with that. Okay. But like the 8020 of  it is customer support. Yeah. From day one until
353. 28:51today to most people. Yeah. We've really had to  niche down on that because before it's like, oh,
354. 28:54you can use it for your internal team. And that  is a good use case. Actually, some of our bigger
355. 28:59customers, they don't even deploy it to their  customers publicly. It's used internally like for
356. 29:05their team. Maybe there's a HR bot that people can  ask benefits questions within Slack or whatever,
357. 29:10you know, for the team or different use cases like  that. So there is definitely more niche than just
358. 29:15that customer support. Please, I need you. I need  you to send me your stories. If you or someone
359. 29:20you know made thousands of dollars in a short  period of time with a business, a side hustle,
360. 29:25a growth hack, I don't care what it is. I want  you on this podcast to give you free publicity
361. 29:30and to help grow my podcast. So if that's you,  go to tko yes.com, fill out the form. If it's
362. 29:36a friend of yours, send them tk.com. Have them  enter your name and I'll give you a,000 bucks
363. 29:41for the referral. That's tko yes.com. What models  do you recommend for customer support bots? So,
364. 29:47it's really just comes down to like a cost benefit  ratio. Um, and they're changing all the time. So,
365. 29:53we're always like integrating the latest stuff and  figuring out, okay, what's the best like balance
366. 29:57of cost and quality for this use case and we  do all the testing internally, so you don't
367. 30:02really have to worry about that. But, I love like  some of the newer OpenAI models like uh GPD6 Luna
368. 30:07and stuff. They're so cheap and efficient and  super smart compared to like when we launched.
369. 30:13Yeah. What do you think like the killer offer is  people can give to small businesses? Yeah. So the
370. 30:20kind of steps that that we do for this and that  that people who sell this is you need to figure
371. 30:25out like first make sure that like they have  knowledge. So you can use AI agent to like you
372. 30:29know scrape websites, find leads or things like  that and it's going to find those businesses.
373. 30:33Maybe they have a knowledge base. Maybe they  have like a old style chatbot on their website,
374. 30:37you know, and you can use like BuiltWith or  things like that that actually tell you, okay,
375. 30:41here's all the websites that are using this Help  Scout widget or whatever. And there's your niche
376. 30:46right there. You can target all of them. Say,  hey, uh, Help Scout, you have customers asking
377. 30:51questions. Help Scout just points them to the docs  or whatever. We can give you AI agent that's going
378. 30:55to solve like 70, maybe even 80% of your tickets.  So, that frees up your team. You have to hire less
379. 31:00people. But you can prove that value, you know.  Yeah. What were your sales over time? So, it's
380. 31:06been 3 years. You're at over a million in annual  occurring revenue now. How did that grow? Yeah.
381. 31:10So, it was kind of almost like a a straight line  the whole time of like 3 to 4% per month growth.
382. 31:16Okay. Which is great. It's not like a hyperrowth  exponential thing, but that was great. And even
383. 31:20like big companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, like  they've hired these big agencies to implement AI.
384. 31:25And we can build the best agent or software or  model or whatever, but it's still not going to
385. 31:30get into the hands of these small medium-sized  businesses unless someone actually goes there,
386. 31:34talks to them, helps implement it for them. And so  they're actually investing billions of dollars in
387. 31:39that as well. They know the deal. And that's kind  of the opportunity, you know, is is shilling AI
388. 31:44agents to business. And I think it's still going  to be an opportunity in 10 years. I mean, there's
389. 31:4930 million businesses in America. Yeah. Yeah.  So, $2,000 upfront. Yeah. $500 ongoing is could
390. 31:56be more, could be less. What all is included with  that? And how much time do people spend on that
391. 32:01client every week or every month? Yeah, exactly.  That's that's the thing. And with AI, it's like
392. 32:05become more and more automated. So, essentially  what we do is what we've built it is we made it
393. 32:10easy for our implementers. We have like a plugin  for Chad GBT, Claude, Grockbot, whatever you use.
394. 32:16link. That's the best $20 subscription you can  buy. By the way, you know, chat GV2, your cloud
395. 32:21automates so much with that 20 bucks. But you  connect it to our platform and you can just say,
396. 32:26"Hey, here's this business website." Or actually,  you could say, "Go find businesses, manufacturers
397. 32:31that are doing this and that have a knowledge base  on their website, but no chatbot. It goes out,
398. 32:35finds those clients for you." What model would you  use for this? Sorry. So, Cloud or OpenAI, Fable
399. 32:425.1, Opus 5.5. Yeah, I mean the models change  every day. Right now, Opus 5.5, that's amazing.
400. 32:49And then the GPT uh like six, Luna and Opus, those  are great. Yeah. And you get tons of usage from
401. 32:57that for your 20 bucks a month. Yeah. So 20 bucks  a month, ask it to go find these customers for
402. 33:01you. Then you're going to ask for uh like point of  contact, I imagine. Yeah. So you do need to figure
403. 33:07out like how you contact these people. So, one tip  that I found is I used to like pay like for HRES,
404. 33:13pay for like Apollo to get leads, you know, all  these different services. There's one that I found
405. 33:18is called TEG and it's essentially a router for  all these APIs. How do you spell that? T R E G T.
406. 33:24Okay. Yeah. So, Google Zapier kind of. Uh, yeah.  Or open router if you're familiar with that. So,
407. 33:30basically, you just put like deposit 20 bucks of  credits in there. It already has they're reselling
408. 33:36API access to Apollo to all the SEO providers.  You're going directly to the source. Yeah. All
409. 33:41the things where you collect get information about  leads and stuff like that. And so you just attach
410. 33:46that to your chatbt or claude and then suddenly it  has like a hundred different tools where you don't
411. 33:51have to pay for all these subscriptions. That's  amazing. Yeah. And you only pay whatever it's
412. 33:54like one cent per lead that it needs to scrape  or whatever, you know. That's like an MCP. Yeah.
413. 33:59Right. Or a connector. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You're  you're getting an account on Tre. You're putting
414. 34:05in the URL, connecting it to ChatGpt or or Claude.  Yeah. And then you're saying like, "All right,
415. 34:11what is the position at this company? Who is the  person? What is their contact in?" It'll find that
416. 34:16for you. Another another good technique is look  for people who are hiring customer support agents
417. 34:22and that can do that too. is it can scrape, you  know, like LinkedIn and different job websites and
418. 34:27find that cuz you know they're about to invest a  bunch of money in a new agent when you could sell
419. 34:32them instead an AI for like much much cheaper  that's going to allow them to scale infinitely
420. 34:37without hiring more people. So they already got  the budget, they're already ready, you know, they
421. 34:40have the the ticket load. Um they're a perfect  opportunity to target. If I were prompting this,
422. 34:45I would go a step further and say, "All right,  LinkedIn's great, email's great. They're already
423. 34:49getting blown up there, I'm sure. Mhm. I want  to know their Strava link. I want to know their
424. 34:54PayPal. I want to know their Venmo. I'm going  to send them a dollar on Venmo. Get deep. Yeah,
425. 34:59absolutely. Because you got to stand out. You  got to be unique. If I get their home address,
426. 35:03I'm going to mail them a box of chocolates or  something, a box of donuts. I'm going to door
427. 35:08dash them some tacos. Like $2,000 per customer.  It's worth investing a little bit because your
428. 35:13your close rate isn't going to go from 0.1%  to 2% if you do these unique expensive things.
429. 35:19It's going to go from.1 to like 12%. Right. Like  it really makes that big of a difference. Wow. If
430. 35:26it's if it's cheap outreach, then it's just that  it's cheap. Yeah. Cold email is free. It's cheap.
431. 35:31DMs on LinkedIn. So, it's like not effective at  all anymore and getting less. So, yeah. Yeah. And
432. 35:38the great thing with AI is you automate that  whole thing. You know, the outreach things,
433. 35:42even creating things in real life to mail to them,  you can automate all of that. Oh, yeah. the tools
434. 35:47and APIs and things like that. And then if you're  using like Docspot, I'm sure other providers,
435. 35:51we have competitors too that you can use different  price points, but we have like an MCB plugin as
436. 35:56well. So you can say, "Hey, find those customers  now. I want you to create a bot based on their
437. 36:00help desk or they've scraped from the website.  It'll automatically create that for them. Create
438. 36:04a demo link that going to automatically send to  them. So they can just click and see it already
439. 36:09working." Yeah. On their content, on their  docs. So you don't even have to do anything,
440. 36:13you know? Amazing. And then you're just selling  it. It's already built essentially. You're just
441. 36:17selling it to them. Now it's finally become like  possible for normal people who aren't technical to
442. 36:22to use these kind of agent employees. So there's  no excuse anymore. No, you can automate all this
443. 36:28process. You can and you should. Yeah. And then  like the monthly retainer that you charge them on
444. 36:32top of that like the value you're providing there  is you're showing them every month like how much
445. 36:37value you're providing, you know? So you're  telling your you just say, "Okay, Chad GBT or
446. 36:41Claude, I want you every month this is my client.  I want you to go through, look at all their stats,
447. 36:46their logs, analyze it, create a nice PDF report  with my logo on it, you know, and email it to this
448. 36:51customer. So, you're not even doing anything.  Yeah. For that 500 bucks a month, it's doing
449. 36:55it for you. It's identifying like, okay, here's  questions I couldn't answer. So, now you're going
450. 37:00to ask that client say, "Hey, you're missing  a support doc for this topic." You know, uh,
451. 37:04you should make that. It'll make your bot better.  You know, things like that. You're providing
452. 37:07that value and proving it every month, and you  don't even have to touch anything. Yeah. Aaron,
453. 37:12this has been amazing. Thank you for your time.  Yeah, thank you. Where can people find you or your
454. 37:16businesses? Yeah. Well, if you want to follow me  on X, I'm uglyroot. Just one word, ugly robot. And
455. 37:22I'm always building a Pelug talking about what I'm  building and AI. And if you're interested in like
456. 37:27creating AI support bots and selling those to any  kind of business at all, uh we'll help you out.
457. 37:32We got a partner program. We can help you with  everything. And that's at docbot. That's docsb.ai.
458. 37:39All right. Thank you, Aaron. Yeah. Thank you. If  you like this content, please share with a friend,
459. 37:43hit a like or a comment below, and  we'll see you next time on the Kerner