How a Regular Guy Started a 1-Person Business with AI

The contract that he gave me for the first 6 months was for $50,000.

Holy cow.

Once I got all that set up, we're probably talking about it taking me an hour and a half every month for this. Didn't know anything about coding. Still don't. I'm still learning all of the ins and outs of Claude. I just started talking to Claude. Okay. Yeah. $3,500 for setup and then $1,500 a month for 6 months.

How many hours would you say you spent upfront building the $3,500 building things in there that I've never built before.

I would say maybe 12 hours. Wow. This is by far the best time in human history to be alive and start a business. 5, 10 years ago, small business owners would have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered, and if you'd have told them what was coming, they would have told you it was fiction, that it was not possible. Well, guess what? We are seeing now a day and time to where we can have a dream about what we want to build, and though we've never built it before. AI can help us build that. What the heck? Does it get any better than this? What you once thought was impossible is so possible now, and we have never had more tools at our disposal than we have right now.

Well, Phil, why don't you just start from ground zero?

I basically retired from my other work in June of 2025, just been doing all sorts of things. Through listening to your podcast, decided to go the AI agency route. And I'll say this, by far, this is, this is the best business decision that I ever made.

Okay. So what was the first thing that you did?

Okay. So the first thing I did was started building voice agents just because it was super easy to build. And I'm not that technical. I didn't have any history in computer programming, anything like that. Pitched the agents. Pitched it to some friends and they liked it. Pitched it to some roofing companies, they liked it. Through a pitch that I made to an investment firm buddy of mine, it opened the door for me to have a conversation with him about AI in his business. The guy's brilliant when it comes to finances and they manage like $1.4 billion, you know, in the Nashville area, 9 offices. But in terms of him being able to trust AI to help him with something, he just didn't know what it was. And so anyway, came to an agreement with him the first part of March for initially for a 6 6-month term consulting, part-time consulting for him. We, we built a— I say we like it's, there's more than me in the company, but there's not. Okay. But, uh, ended up building a content creation thing for him. Uh, that was the start of it. And we're trying to be able to automate things for him now. But that said, uh, I mean, the contract that he gave me for the first 6 months will renew after 6 months, months was for $50,000.

Holy cow. I wanna get back to him, but you start by saying voice agents. What were you using to, to build these voice agents?

Okay. I was using GoHighLevel.

Okay.

So same thing.

You start learning voice agents in GoHighLevel for your friend.

Yeah.

And he's just like, ah, this is cool. It's kind of long-winded, not really my use case, but it gets your foot in the door with him. It earns you some trust with him. He sees that you kind of know what you're talking about, at least more than he does, which is the important part, which leads you to more conversations over the course of months. And then you just, in March, you signed a $50,000 contract with him, right? To do all kinds of—

Correct. Just doing random automations for him to help him with his social media. And when I say helping with social media and marketing, this is me trying to help them automate things. Okay. I don't have any background in social, social media. Or marketing or something, but I know enough to know that if you ask the right questions of AI, it can end up guiding you through the process. And he has people in his firm who have kind of done that before. So I came into it knowing how they functioned, how all of it worked, and that was it.

Okay. So did you talk to any other friends or family between October and March, or was it just this investor?

Yeah. No, no. Here's the thing. I had, I had talked to, I had talked to multiple other people. I had talked to, I had cold called a lot of roofing companies. But then what the trigger was for me is Brandon had a presentation one time on getting new clients. And one of the things he said was to start with those you know. And so I basically went through all of the contacts on my phone. I've got more than 1,000 contacts and I just started making a list and just started sending texts. Hey, I've started this AI automation business. You know, I'd love to be able to sit down with you. And so had probably 7 to 10 sit-downs with business owners. My first encounters with them, looking back, involved me talking too much, sharing all the things that AI would do rather than letting them share the challenges that they're having, share the pain points. And so some of those first clients, probably the majority of those first clients, I didn't get. And it wasn't because of AI, it's because I was just too chatty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You were trying to sell and like the best salesperson is to listen. Really? It's counterintuitive, right? Correct. Real quick, please subscribe to my channel. I know it's kind of lame to ask, but it means a lot. Thanks. When you had these sit-downs, did you ever have the problem of, you know, you ask the age-old question like, what are you struggling with in your business? What problems are you facing? And they're like, I don't know. Like they don't— they just don't give you much. Did you ever experience that?

No, they were good at giving me a lot. They were good at giving me a lot. But basically what I've encountered with most business owners is they know they need to utilize AI. Yeah, but they don't know practically what they need to start with. And the third thing is they certainly don't know how. Okay. And now I'm obviously significantly better at it to just sit down with them and let them talk. But no, my goal mainly— normally I don't even go with a list of questions. If it's a business that I don't know a lot about, I'll have AI help me, Claude help me come up with some starter questions. But my only goal is to get them talking.

Did you record these conversations at all?

All of them. All of them with this little thing I got from, I heard from this guy. Oh yeah. By the name of Chris Koerner.

I got one right here, but I put it through the wash and it's been defunct ever since.

And I'll say this, it is the best, in my assessment, it's one of the best tools for an AI agency owner. One is it captures the entire conversation you have with the client. Okay. So you can focus on what they're saying while they're saying it without thinking I need to write down something. Secondly, once you have that, for me, I plug it into Claude. Because Claude knows that the majority of my bills are through GoHighLevel or either Claude Code, and then it helps me come up with some solutions for them.

Okay, now if people don't have that, I'm putting in the chat what it is— Limitless pendant. There's the Plaud, P-L-A-U-D, that's like their main competitor. Limitless got bought out by Meta. I think they're shutting that down and Meta is absorbing it or something. So that pendant support for that pendant is probably going away. I've never used Plaud. It was I was like a religious adherent to this thing until it went through the wash after they announced the merger. And so I haven't been able to buy another one and I just haven't used anything since. And I'm not joking you, I, I leave the house and I touch my chest. Yeah. Cause I'm like, do I have it? And it's been like 4 months, so I should get the, the other one, but I haven't. Anyway, my point is we all have smartphones. We can just hit our voice notes app.

Yes.

And just record it that way and then upload the transcription to Claude or whatever. So has that been helpful to like generate questions after the fact that you weren't able to think of, or solutions after the fact that you weren't able to think of? Oh.

Well, I'll say this, it has been priceless because once I put that into Claude, Claude and I can talk back and back and forth about it and, you know, can say, okay, and Claude will, will give me some solutions. And then we'll work on pricing. I mean, literally work on pricing in Claude for me. Claude helps me draft the contracts for the client, helps me be able to be ready for potential questions that they would have in regards to the build. Yeah.

Okay. So do you have any success stories from those other meetings you had with other friends?

Absolutely. The, the other success story is, is that I have a good friend that owns a nonprofit, uh, and through his nonprofit, I built this app in Claude called GrantCraft and built that for him for free. And basically what it does, it finds grants that fit his fits his ministry and it finds them, it drafts them, it goes in, it does studies of the grants to find out what do you have to fill out to apply for that grant. It drafts it based on the content that we fed it about his ministry. Then you have a human go in and read it before it is sent in and, uh, basically set it up for him for free. Wanted to have proof of concept. And what I, what I told him was, I said, okay, this is, this is basically how we'll price this. Said, I'll charge you $1,500 per grant that I fill out. $2,000 a month for the retainer for the service. However, I will not bill you anything till you, till you have a grant come through. And my billing for you will not exceed 8% of the grant. Wow. Okay. And so, and so what that lets me do with him is one is it's a commission-based thing I get paid for, for him. But two is I can, I can fill out a lot more grants than he's gonna get. It allows me to have a tax write-off. To his, to his business. And when I first set this up through Claude Code, I was able to have my Open Claw agent go in there and literally go through the process of filling out all the grants for me and sending that to me and letting us look through those before we actually sent them, sent them in. Okay. And so, so started out with that, but so through that, project that I started with him. He is a chiropractor. And so about 2 and a half weeks ago, maybe— well, I take it back. It could have, could have been like a month ago. He had this new laser. It is a body toning laser approved by the FDA. I basically created a deal for him to help him launch it and manage it. That was the second project I got. I charged him, uh, $3,500 for setup and then $1,500 a month for 6 months. After 6 months, we'll be able to, we'll be able to reevaluate. Then anything more than, than 10 clients he gets monthly through this service, I get $75 per client. And in addition to the $1,500, and then in addition to that, he pays for all of his CRM costs through GoHighLevel. He also gives $500 a month towards marketing for ads and stuff to push new clients into this service that he's got.

So what did you build exactly for him?

So basically what I did, what I built for him, one is I built him a content creation app that is built on the Zorona Z8 laser, helps create content for him that he, that can be put out there. 2 is set up an automated bot for him on GoHighLevel that we sent out to all of his existing clients. He had like 7,500 existing clients to be able to answer any questions that they had in regards to the bot. Then I created a, a signup form for them to sign up for the services and then to sign up for a launch. And then I'm basically just handling all of the monthly, monthly management, management of his social, social media, uh, for this. Honestly, once I got all that set up, we're probably talking about it taking me an hour and a half every, every, every month for this.

And you're charging $1,500 a month?

Yes.

$1,500 an hour.

Yeah. $1,500 a month for the first, for the first 6 months. And we would evaluate. We'd evaluate after that, but then that has led to some other things with him cuz he's wanting me to help him promote some other laser services he has in his practice. And then in— Laser? Yeah, laser, cuz he's literally got these laser treatment things. But the other thing that he did, he has never had a functioning CRM and he wants me to work on something to help him reactivate some of his clients.

He's probably— the majority of small businesses are in the same boat.

Correct.

How many hours would you say you spent upfront building the $3,500?

I'll say this with me setting up things in their CRM and in, and in GoHighLevel, building things in there that I've never built before, I would say maybe 12 hours. Wow. 12 hours for the, 12 hours for the $3,500.

This tool, it's a, it's a like a vibe-coded wrapper, right?

It's like—

it is.

Absolutely.

Okay.

It is because I know I'll say this. I don't know. I didn't know anything about coding. I didn't know. I didn't, I didn't know anything about coding. Still don't. In fact, I'm still learning all of the ins and outs of Claude. Just, I mean, I didn't know anything till the last month about an MD file when you're building in Claude. I just started talking to Claude. Okay. Yeah. So, and now that I've, that I have built through these a couple times, then I've got a little more knowledge about it now.

And it's kind of funny that people keep coming back to content creation. You don't have a background there, do you?

No, but, but here's the thing that, I mean, I do not have a background in it, but I know that for the average business owner who doesn't, who does not have consistent content creation, and when it's possible to easily build a knowledge base from what we know about that business and what it does, it is not that hard to create some kind of content creation. Okay. That is consistent with the voice for the, I'll tell you what, for the investment. Firm that I did, it has like— this guy's been doing investment talk radio longer than Dave Ramsey's been doing his. And we have 22,000 chunks of data in this knowledge base that creates content for him. We've got 570-something commercials. So it is super easy to create quality content in the voice of the business owner when you've got so much content.

Yeah.

And I ended up telling him when we first created it, I said, look, Paul, if you don't like it, It is all you, my friend. It's all you because I mean, that's it.

If you don't like it, you don't like yourself because I built this on you. I'm trying to think of an analogy because on one hand it's like content creation is important for businesses, for any business. On the other hand, it's like so hard to go viral and stand out. But the analogy I would think of is imagine, imagine like a town that had 10,000 residents and only 5 retail stores. Okay. 5 re— that you grocery store, restaurant, whatever, like way more demand for retail stores than supply. There's only 5. So these 5 stores didn't even have signs up. Everyone just knew the red brick building is the grocery store. The white brick building is the restaurant, yada yada. Until suddenly like there's 10, there's 10 retail stores, more competition. And so now they're like, man, we should probably get a sign, right? Like we don't necessarily need like a sign spinner, like a human out front to like be savvy and bring people in. We should actually, we should probably just have a sign. Like we need a presence. People need to know that like we are the grocery store. We're grocery store number 1 now. And the one that just opened is number 2. To me, that's what content creation looks like. In 2026 and over the next 5 years. Like, you're not promising people that they're going to go viral or like transform their business with content, and they're not even thinking that. But like, at this point, they just need something. You got to hit publish on something or you're just not relevant anymore. You need a sign. You just at least like bare minimum put up a sign, right? It doesn't need to be good or flashy or nice font or lit up at night. You just need a sign. To me, that's what content creation for local/small businesses are. Today. Yeah. Any thoughts on that?

No, totally, totally. Because, you know, all this stuff that we're creating is just to help them have a presence. It's not that I'm— we're trying to help anybody go viral with this, but, but yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Something just happened with Beehive that I think you might have missed. You can now connect your Beehive account directly to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or whatever AI tool that you use through something called MCP. So last week I connected my newsletter to Claude., and now I can sit in Claude and say, look at my open rates from the last 30 days and tell me which subject lines perform best, or draft next week's newsletter based on the topics my audience clicked on the most this month, and Claude does it. It can see my real Beehive data, subscribers, engagement numbers, automations, revenue, everything. And I've already cut my weekly production time because I stopped guessing what to write about and started letting the data decide for me. So instead of using AI to just write generic content, use AI to plug into your actual newsletter to make decisions based on what's already working. Beehive built this MCP so your favorite AI tool can be your newsletter strategist and your data scientist all in one. So move your email list over today and try Beehive, 30% off for 30 days with code CHRIS30, because this might be the simplest, highest leverage business you can build right now. Okay, so this, uh, doctor, physician, that was a personal friend of yours as well?

Yes, personal friend of mine. And I'll end up saying this, every bit of the business that I have had to this point has been from people from either direct contacts, direct friends, or friends of friends. We consistently underestimate this in the business culture sometimes, that people are more important than money. And to have meaningful relationships with people where you do everything within your power to try to add value to them and for them and to help them and to serve them and to do anything you can to help them other than building them something for free. You understand what I'm saying? But, and there's, there's just such an opportunity that we all have in all the circles where we've operated, we've done business before, people that we come in contact with and businesses, you know, there's just such a huge opportunity for us to find their points of pain. By opening up conversations with them and that creates an inroad for us to pitch them some sort of a, what I would call an early level solution that can, that could end up leading to other things.

You know, it's interesting because there's like, there's something anyone can learn from anyone, any other business or whatever. Like we could learn some good business principles from bad business people or from bad businesses like drug dealers. Right. I think of one industry that's very shady. I think most people would agree and that's MLMs. Multi-level marketing, network marketing. But what they are is very effective at selling. And they're also very effective at having high margin products because there's so many layers in that pyramid scheme. Everyone's gotta get paid. But one thing they do really well is when you sit down, like probably many of us have sat down with like a cousin or a brother-in-law that was trying to sell us Tahitian Noni juice or a Rubbermaid or something. But when, when you sit down in one of these seminars, it's always like, Write down a list of everyone you know and then you call them. Yes. It's like, geez, I'm going to burn all these relationships. And if you sell them a crap bill of goods, you will. You will burn them. Absolutely. I know people that have done that. But if you're serving them and genuinely solving problems and using AI to help them make or save more money in their businesses, then you're helping them. Then you're being a good friend. So if we take that principle and like put an ethical twist on it, there's something we can learn there. Like, end of story, you're more likely to close someone that you know, even if you went to high school with them 20 years ago and you haven't spoken with them since. You still know them, like you're still warm, warmer than a cold call, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely. You said two things. I'm gonna add one to it. You said your customers have all come from friends and friends of friends. I would think the, the third thing would be what I call like the floodgate principle. And that's when you, you find a friend that you can serve, you solve a problem with AI and they see what you're capable of and then they come back to you and they're like, what about this? I have this other business. I have this rental home. I have this. And then now like you're the guy. And like I have people in my life that are good at programming or Facebook ads. They're good at things I'm I'm not good at. And every time I have a problem in that space, I go to Justin, I go to that guy, Kevin. It's like, you're my guy. And that's like the floodgates. So it's like, there's like the third tier of people is actually the same as the first. It's just more jobs from the same person that you already gained trust from that maybe you went to high school with, maybe you go to church with. Any thoughts on that?

Totally, totally. So, and it's, it's just, let me tell you something. When you develop the reputation of being the type of person that just wants to help, help someone out. Okay. That you help out someone, even if they don't buy your product or service, you give them some tips. I'll say this. When I first sat down with the chiropractor and started talking about AI, neither he or his wife, they didn't even have any kind of AI accounts. They didn't have ChatGPT. They didn't have Claude. And when I'd walk them through the process of just signing up and had them do some basic things, they're like, you're, you're just kidding me. And I was like, no, it'll end up doing it. And so anyway, yeah, anything, anything we can do to add value, anything, uh, it's just super helpful.

What kind of qualifying questions do you ask to know if they're even capable of being able to afford $1,500 a month, $3,000 upfront, et cetera?

Well, part of the thing is in the, um, investment guy, when I ended up signing him, well, first off, we talked numerous times. We talked like 7 to 10 hours or more, and I didn't even know necessarily what he was wanting. He didn't know what he was wanting. And then he just said, he just said, well, hey, if I, if I hired you on some kind of, kind of a retainer for the next, for the next 6 months, what would you, what would you charge? And I said, well, well, first off, you need to tell me how many hours you'd want me working for you a week. And so, uh, and I said, I said, well, we're talking about 20, talking about 20 to 25 hours a week, maybe helping you do some things, being building automation. I'm charging him nothing for the automations because of the amount that he's paying me. And he said, well, he said, what if we, what if we did, what if we did $50,000? And I was like, okay, you know, started out with that. And then the other one, then the other one with the chiropractor with this laser, what I knew was he was super pumped up about it. He's got an established practice. It's a proven product. And for, for him being a business owner, to have me take over the entire product launch was a huge value for him. One is he didn't know, know how to do it.

Could he have learned?

Well, sure. He could have learned, but there was a huge learning curve to it. And so they were just pumped up with it, ready to go. And when I just went over what was possible with a proposal that Claude helped me create, okay. When I went over what was possible, I just started, you know, already had the $1,500 a month set in there and the $3,500 for sign. And it was not a hard sale at all. I just said, well, hey Chris, we would do this, this, and this. We'd go through and do all that. He said, you mean you would do all that for $3,500? I was like, yeah.

Anyway, for the investment advisor guy, is that $50,000 over 6 months? What is the timeframe?

6 months. And so it started the first month of the first part of March. I've gotten 2 checks from him. I basically get a total of 6 checks and then we will reevaluate after that. But it was like, you know, uh, 83. 33 per month.

Okay. What, what do you have in the pipeline right now? And what do you think is next? How, how, how can you scale growing a business on friends and family?

Well, first off, I'm going to say this at some point in time, you— I don't believe you can, you can only scale with friends and family. You've got to be able to branch out. And so I'll say this, one of my flaws that I know is I have not settled in on a niche. Okay. And when I say settle in on a niche, I don't mean like one necessarily one type of customer, but one initial product or service that I've offered. And I don't know if I listened to the video the guy did on the business, business assessments with AI. And I've, I've thought about doing something like that. Maybe have a tier that's free, one that's $250, one that's $1,000, and that provides a foot in the door to be able to offer free, free products to them that they could sign up for, but then to do, to do different, different level bills. Yeah. That's something that I have not yet settled in, but I absolutely love problem solving and being able to build personalized apps for a business that meets the specific needs that they have.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's a problem that you don't have a niche yet. Like you have revenue. Right. And that's, that's more valuable than a niche. What I really want to know, and I think this is what most humans struggle with, is it sounds like it was a period of months before you started learning these skills and you got your first revenue. How does one stay motivated? How do you stay grinding when you've had— you sat down at Starbucks with who knows how many people and you have nothing in the bank account to show for it yet?

Also, Chris Koerner, one of the things that we all know that we don't sometimes tell ourselves is that The greatest battle we all have in starting a business, running a business, learning, growing is the, is the person we look at in the mirror daily. You know, you know, are we going to do the difficult thing? One of the things that I love that Stephen says, he says, you know, am I disciplined to do the thing that I know I need to do and not do the thing that I know I shouldn't do? So am I disciplined enough to know that being busy does not mean you're making progress in your build and your business, what it may mean is you're being busy doing the wrong things because you're too scared to do the things you know you need to do. Brian, Brian Tracy wrote this book years, years ago that says, it's called Eat the Frog First. In other words, do the thing that you dread the most. And, and I'll say this just in terms of how you have taught with your teachings on your podcast, you try to teach people, look, Learn by action. Learn by action. Get in there and do it. Know you don't know how to do it. Start doing it. And when it comes to the AI agency, we have told ourselves, I mean, all of us at some point, well, I don't know this and I don't know all this about AI. I don't know this. There's so many things that we don't know. Look how quick AI's grown. Well, that's true. We don't know. But guess what? 99% of the business owners that we sit in front of, we know significantly more than they do. And we know enough that it's possible that we know where to get the answers that we need to help them do the that they want to do, even if we've never done it before. And I'll say this, one of the things I have to continually tell myself, because I can be the worst critic of me, is that I have to tell myself, Philip, talk to yourself like you would talk to your kids going through a challenge. I would never shame my children. I'm not going to speak down to them if they try something and it fails and they get discouraged. I'm going to Talk to them in such a way that it spurs on their growth to see failure as, as a particular event in their life and not as, not for them as a person. So anyway, I'm sorry. I kind of feel like I'm preaching right now.

No, this is amazing. This is like my favorite part.

No. And so, and it's just, I'll say this, this is something that makes me about just jump up and down inside. I'm amazed that this is in my assessment and a lot of others by far the best time in human history to be alive and start a business. Never. There's Never. There's never— Henry Ford never imagined the opportunity. Solomon in all of his glory and splendor in biblical days never imagined the access to things that we have. 5, 10 years ago, all business owners would have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered. And if you'd have told them what was coming, they would have told you it was fiction, that it was not possible. Well, guess what? We are seeing now a day and time to where we can have a dream about what we want to build that came from a client that has presented something to us. And though we've never built it before, AI can help us build that. What the heck? Does it get any better than this? Does it, does it get any better? And I come back to the same thing with me. Philip, your greatest limit's you, my friend. Are you willing to see that what you once thought was impossible is so possible now? And isn't it? Isn't just for you, it's for others. And I'll say this, it does something deep inside of all of us that we know is true and right and just or something of the— to be able to help and assist someone else. And we have never had more tools at our disposal than we have right now.

Okay. Oh my gosh, Phil, I'm like, obviously most of you guys are familiar with the podcast. I don't get into like the motivational stuff, high-level stuff, rah-rah stuff. We get tactical, we get granular, but there is a place for this. I don't get into it because I don't think I'm very good at it. You're clearly good at it. So you open the door. Like, I just got off the phone with two 18-year-olds that sell VCRs. They're making like $7,000 a month selling— yes, VCRs. They buy them on Facebook Marketplace for $10 and they go for $100 on eBay. $100 because no one makes them anymore. So there's no— there's still demand. There's no supply, right? Millennials want to watch movies with their kids. Like, there's an opportunity. We pulled up Facebook Marketplace and there were hundreds of VCRs for sale within an hour of me. For like $10 to $30. Guys, I wanna tell you about something I've been building behind the scenes. You've been watching my videos about AI tools and asking the same question. Okay, cool. How do I turn this into a business? Not just playing around with AI, but actually getting clients and getting paid. That's my community. It's called Playmakers, playmakersai.com. It's an AI agency program where we show you how to start an AI consulting business where you can charge local businesses $500 to $5,000 a month to set up, and manage AI tools for them. It's not a course you watch and forget about. We do 3 to 7 live training calls every week taught by me and 23 other expert AI agency owners. You get plug-and-play templates, Claude code tutorials, AI voice agent frameworks, automation templates, and a 30-day roadmap so you don't fall off track. This is stuff you can just copy, paste, and deploy for clients on day one. And of course, how to find clients as well. We also have a 5-day first client challenge. Where we can walk you through landing your first paying client in 5 days. You also get my frameworks for cold email, Facebook ads, SMS, cold calls, and then I hand you my Leads Galore spreadsheets with actual leads in your niche, in your area. We've already got over 200 people in there building real agencies. If you miss a live call, it's all recorded. So if you've ever thought about starting an AI consulting business or AI implementation business, go check out PlaymakersAI.com. If you guys are on Twitter, I went on DoorDash last week. I, I don't even order DoorDash and I just I thought, I wonder how much money I can make on DoorDash. So I downloaded the DoorDash for Drivers app. I was approved within 10 minutes. I'm making $30 an hour listening to podcasts, $30 an hour with no experience, no reviews, nothing. And it's like, I could do this on a moped, a $500 moped. I could make the same amount of money on a moped, you know? And so it's like, and then you're talking about this, like there's so much opportunity. And I, I still want to be sensitive to people hearing this because there's people that hear that all the time. There's so much opportunity. It's never been. It's like, Where's my revenue? Okay, I'm trying. I'm out there, I'm grinding. It's not here yet. Like, where's my revenue? That sounds really great, Chris. That's a great soundbite. But like, I'm out there meeting at Starbucks with my friends and family. I don't have revenue. And to what you said near the end, like not talking down on yourself, you open the door for a Nick Saban quote. So I'll continue it. I'll double or nothing you here. He has a story. It's a true story. He was out fishing on the lake and this guy next to him is catching all these crappie. And he's throwing back every other one. And he's like, why are you throwing back the big ones? Why aren't you keeping the big ones? Those are delicious. And he thought maybe, you know, bigger catfish don't taste very good. Maybe he thought this guy probably doesn't know that the big ones are actually delicious. He's like, well, my frying pan's only this big, so I don't keep the bigger ones because I can't cook them. And he's like, dude, you need a bigger frying pan. Like, get a bigger frying pan, right? And so it's like, dream bigger, you know? Like, if, if you're talking to a guy and you might have a bigger fish on the line than you think you're you're capable of handling, like close the deal and then buy a bigger frying pan. Like figure it out. And yes, like don't give voice to your negative thoughts because we all have them. But the moment we vocalize them is when they become more real and they become more hardened in us. And like the negative thoughts compound even faster than the positive words.

Right?

Like I just try to suffocate all the negative thoughts as best as I can and verbalize the positive ones because compounding works in both directions. Like you pick, go that way or that way. You want to go better or worse? It's your choice. So to me, what it sounds like is like you cannot be prideful. You cannot be unwilling to meet with friends and family. If you are, it still works. Like I'm the guy that's prideful. I'm the guy that like, I was never posting on social media. I just started business number 13. I just started business number 19. I just, because I know what people think, this guy, This guy can't— how is this guy feeding his family? He's all over the place. He's got— I was never advertising what I was doing because I was ashamed and embarrassed. So I was never selling to my friends and family. So I created this artificial barrier. I made it unnecessarily hard for me. Right? So I'm telling you guys, don't do what I did. Like be willing to sit down with people from the mindset of like, I'm going to help you make more money. I'm not trying to sell you a false bill of goods or the next diet pill or whatever. I want to help you make or save more money in your business. So I feel good about texting you and offering to meet you at Starbucks or whatever, because this is gonna be a win-win for us. And then ask 'em questions, do more talking or do more listening than talking.

Well, and I'll tell you, let me tell you a quick story. The first vibe-coded thing I ever built was in Replit. It was for my brother-in-law to manage his cows and sheep out on his farm, that it was, that it's possible that, that, that, you know, you can take a picture of the cow to know what Bessie looks like or whatever he calls his cow. And then, you know, you know, when they blasted their vaccines, you know, which, which ones they've given birth to and who's connected to who. And told him, I said, my brother-in-law's Greg. I said, man, if you wanted to put GPS trackers on him, we could put it on, we could put it on Google Earth and find out where the cows were. But, but anyway, so yeah.

I mean, I think a lot of these solutions that we're building for people are gonna become products of their own, right? Like I think a lot of people in this group, they're gonna go solve the most random problem from those random business owner. And then another business owner in the same industry's like, can you do that for me? Sure. Copy paste. Can you do that for me? Sure. And then it's like, I'm just gonna start, I'm not doing an agency anymore. Like that got me from point A to point B, but I wanna go to point F and that's through this. I'm just gonna sell access to this software to every single dairy farmer in Northwest Wisconsin or whatever it is. What have we missed, Phil?

This is the thing I would challenge you to, okay? Sit down with your mobile device, wherever it is you store your contacts and just start writing down names of people. And the goal is not to sell them something. The goal is to open up the door to have a conversation with them. Because, because really, even if you knew their business in and out, you still don't know what the pain points are. And I'll say this, just in saying this, I haven't thought about this. I have not asked any friends that I've built stuff for to recommend me to someone else. Is there somebody else that you know of? Something like this would be helpful too. I just thought of that. I haven't done that, but anyway, just sit down, have conversations with people, listen to them, find out the pain points, find out the things going on in their business and offer them things that will help.

It's funny you said that you hadn't done that, cuz that was the one thing I was gonna add to that is always ask for referrals. Yeah. Cause like if, if there's like good, better, best, good is like cold calling, better is like a friend of a friend, best is a friend. Right? But like, a friend of a friend is light years better than a cold call. So do it. This is amazing, Phil. I'm inspired. I'm ready to run through a wall. Okay, well, Phil, appreciate you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and knowledge and motivation with us.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. You're glad to be here. Glad to be here.

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