In this episode of The Koerner Office, host Chris Koerner interviews James, Brendan, and Carter, the 21‑23‑year‑old founders of Certified AI Partners. The trio recounts how a casual idea sparked while listening to a previous podcast led them to launch an AI consulting firm that acts as an outsourced AI department for mid‑market companies. Starting with free AI assessments for local small businesses, they quickly realized the need to target larger firms. Their primary lead generation method was a massive outreach campaign: sending personalized iMessage texts to every contact in their phone, then expanding to LinkedIn DMs, asking for advice to build rapport and referrals. This approach landed them a $30 million construction company client. They conducted a paid $1,000 assessment, surveyed employees, identified bottlenecks, and built a live AI demo that reduced a one‑hour proposal process to five minutes, impressing the C‑suite and securing a $15,000‑per‑month retainer (after anchoring with $10K, $15K, $25K tiers). They discuss pricing anchoring tactics inspired by Alex Hormozi, the importance of mini‑working demos, and a repeatable sales funnel: outreach → call → assessment → interview → presentation → retainer. The founders also share their tool stack—Claude (especially Claude Code/Codex), Railway for hosting AI agents, and Composio for managing multiple MCPs—and prompt‑engineering tips such as role‑playing famous experts. They advise aspiring consultants to start sending messages immediately, leverage personal networks, and assume they have more AI knowledge than most business owners. The conversation ends with mentions of future large‑client prospects, sponsorship plugs, and where to find Certified AI Partners online.
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The smallest one was ten grand a month. The medium plan was fifteen grand a month, and the highest was twenty-five grand a month. And they ended up closing at fifteen grand a month. We were looking at the twenty-five grand plan, and we were like, okay.
You're like, yeah. I'm sorry, sir. That's actually not available. That's just a price anchor. I learned about it from Alex Hormozi. You're not actually supposed to pick that.
This took their employees about an hour per proposal. It cut it down to about like more or less five minutes.
Ask for money, and you get advice. But ask for advice, and you get money twice. I
don't want people watching this to be like, oh, you had a rich uncle, how nice, right?
No.
Yeah.
No.
Never met him.
Meet James, Brendan, and Carter. They are 21 to 23 years old, college students. And 4 months ago, James was on a treadmill listening to an episode of this podcast and an idea hit him. So he called Brendan and they texted every single contact in their phones asking for advice. And one of those texts turned into a $30 million construction company paying them $15,000 a month. No office, No employees, no rich uncle, no connections, just college students. And one of them dropped out of BYU to do this. And by the end of this episode, you're going to know the exact text they sent. Please enjoy. Why don't you guys tell me what you do? What is your business?
Yeah, so we run Certified AI Partners. We become a company's AI department. So think like an IT department, kind of, that handles everything IT, but we just do everything AI. But rather than locking things down, we unlock things And unlock their capacity to grow with AI.
Okay. What gave you this idea?
Funny enough, just super quick background. We all kind of did our own AI companies before. I was selling voice agents to HVAC companies. Brendan was doing AEO for companies and Carter was selling Open Claw. But so we're all kind of looking for ways to grow and make more money because we were selling to small businesses. But funny enough, like I said, I was listening to your podcast with Corey Gannon. And he talked about doing an AI assessment for companies and like a light bulb just struck. I remember I was working out in the gym. I was like, that is genius. I got home the next week. I was on a trip and I called Brendan up. I was like, we should do this. And so we started walking into local companies offering AI assessments, identifying opportunities. And then from there we're like, why are we going for small fish? Why don't we do this for bigger fish? So we kind of moved to like mid-market companies. And from there, from doing AI assessments, we're like, well, why don't we just become their AI team rather than selling one-off automations and pricing each one? Let's just do everything for them. And so that's kind of how it started. Just a little bit long-winded answer.
Okay. So when you say you start, what you started at was walking into small businesses. What did that actually look like? Were you physically walking into businesses and what types of businesses were they?
Yeah, it was, it was just here in Provo and it was, any and all kinds of businesses like orthopedics, dental offices, insurance companies. It was like, hey, I'm James, he's Brendan. Can we do a free AI assessment for you? It takes 15 minutes. And then that kind of got our foot in the door and they're like, okay, well, how about we do a bigger one? And then we just kind of kept hitting a wall with the smaller companies of they had the problems, but they didn't necessarily have the budget. And so that's kind of when we pivoted to bigger companies.
So we kind of realized, we were like, okay, with these smaller businesses, we're walking in, we're able to find the owner easily, right? But with these mid-market companies, there's a little bit more of a barrier to entry, right? And so what really has been working for us is using our existing networks. And so like reaching out to everyone we know in our contacts and saying, hey, who do you know that owns a business of this size that needs help with AI? So literally sending out like hundreds of messages to all of our contacts. And asking them that question. And so that's been our number one source of clients and leads is just using our existing network.
That's such like an obvious answer, but it's not— I'm not cutting you down. It's the answer.
Yes.
I don't care if you have a taco truck. I don't care what you're selling, lemonade stand. You start with the people that you know. Yeah, the people in your sphere of influence. And people, myself included, shrink from that because it's awkward. It's embarrassing. I don't want to sell to my friends. I don't want to ruin the relationship. But at the end of the day, A business is simply solving problems for other people. So if you love your friends and if you have people that you want to do right by, then try to solve their problems, in this case with AI. So what did that actually look like? Are you sending texts, LinkedIn DMs, Facebook messages? Like,
so it started off with just texts. And so just like literally sending out iMessages to our contacts saying, hey, we just started this company. We're looking to help business owners between $10 million and $50 million a year in revenue, and we want to help them with AI, implementing AI in their company. And some of the texts would even say like, hey, we just want to get your feedback. We just want to get your advice on the business model, what you think, right? There's that funny quote by Pitbull where he says, ask for money and you get advice, but ask for advice and you get money twice. And so—
That's pretty good. I've never heard that. Mr. Worldwide strikes again.
It's in one of his songs, but basically by asking for advice, You build rapport, you build trust, and they're more willing to give you referrals or even themselves become a client of yours. Even in the LinkedIn DMs, we'll sometimes glaze the experience. We'll sometimes say like, hey, we noticed you have a ton of impressive experience in construction. We've been helping out some construction companies. Could we get your advice on what we're doing? And that way we're able to book a call with 'em and get 'em on a call.
Now, are you DMing people on LinkedIn that you don't know as well, or were you back then, or just people that you were like already connected with?
So we started with our existing iMessage contacts, and then once we went through all of those, then we just started going to LinkedIn and looking for our ideal customer and then connecting with them. And once they accepted the connection, we sent out a DM.
Okay. And how old are you guys?
So I'm 21. We're all in our early 20s.
Yeah, I'm 23. A little bit older.
I'm 23 as well.
Okay. And are you all in college right now?
Yeah, Carter and I are full-time.
I dropped out. I'm working full-time on this.
Okay. All right. Love it. Hey, if you like this episode, please hit subscribe real quick. Thank you. So what was your first like big break when chasing these middle market businesses?
Yeah, so our first big break is we reached out to a CEO of a construction company that covers Utah, Arizona, California. And again, we literally just asked for advice. We're like, hey, we're looking for advice. He reached out back to us and was like, hey, I actually think my company needs this, so let's hop on a call and talk about it. And so that was the beginning of our engagement with our first client.
And how did that client end up going?
Yeah, from there we kind of got our foot in the door by doing a full paid assessment. It was like $1,000, you know, and from there we were kind of like, where do you see bottlenecks in your company? He gave us a few areas and we're like, okay, give us all the people that we need to interview. And then we just sent a survey out to them. And at the end of the survey, they had to book a 30-minute call with us. And so what the survey just kind of twisted on those bottlenecks, got more information, what softwares they're touching. So then when we hopped on the call, say if it was you, Chris, we'd be like, okay, Chris, you said these were the bottlenecks, expound on that. And then we just got more information, have an AI note taker in there. And then from there, we just kind of gathered all this information and made this clean, simple presentation for their C-suite on ranking their AI opportunities, how much ROI it would give them based off of what the employees and the C-suite had told us. And then from there, we priced our retainer at either the smallest one was $10,000 a month. The medium plan was $15,000 a month and the highest was $25,000 a month. And they ended up closing at $15,000 a month.
Where did you get the nerves of steel to come up with that pricing structure?
Completely transparent with you. We would've been so happy at $10,000 a month. And I've done door-to-door sales before. I know a little bit about sales, but I'm like, okay, How about let's anchor super high so we have a lot of room to negotiate. Let's just throw up a $15,000 and a $25,000 pricing plan. And so we presented to them, and a helpful thing in these assessments is we build mini working demos. So after we meet with the employees, we're like, send us examples of the work papers or the invoices that could be redacted or whatnot. And so they gave us examples and we could build these mini working demos of it actually doing the work. And so they get really excited during the call. They're like, oh, they've kind of already solved the problem. But getting back to the question is we just kind of threw out those prices so we could anchor high. But we ended up meeting with the CEO separately like a few days after and he's like, yeah, you know, we were looking at the $25,000 plan. And we were like, okay.
You're like,
yeah,
I'm sorry, sir. That's actually not available. That's just a price anchor. I learned about it from Alex Hormozi. You're not actually supposed to pick that.
No, all of us were smiling and we're like, we were just like, we were just letting him talk himself into it. But then he wanted to negotiate a few things. We ended up at $15,000 a month. So higher than that we wanted.
Right. Was this like your first big fish?
This was the first big fish. Yeah.
And I forget where you said he came from. Was that a LinkedIn DM?
No. So that was just iMessage outreach. So just reaching out to people we had in our contacts and asking for referrals and advice.
So is he a family friend or how well did you know this person?
No, he was just a connection that we knew in the Utah County area. So someone we didn't have like really previous connections to, but just a mentor in the area that we reached out to.
Okay. So it's not like, I don't want people watching this to be like, oh, you had a rich uncle, how nice, right?
No. Oh no. Yeah. No.
Yeah.
Okay. Never met him.
So did you charge $1,000 for the assessment as well?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Okay. Now I imagine they had like a bunch of problems. What's like a very clear example of a problem that they had that you solved with AI for them?
So we just broke it out into areas, right, of the biggest operations that we— we didn't interview everyone, but we interviewed a lot of people, and this is what we like categorized it as. A good example to answer your question was this construction company. They do a lot of maintenance on these big storm wells, and so they have to go out, clear out debris, water if it's clogging it up. And so they get an inspection report of those wells. And about how much time it's going to take them to clean. And from there, they create a price proposal for how much that job is going to cost, send it off to the HOA or whatever property, and they either approve or deny it. And so on average, this took their employees about an hour per proposal based off of everyone that we interviewed. And so we just mapped out how they do it now, and then we mapped out the steps that AI could take off their plate and how much that would save them. And Based off, we can show you the demo as well. It cut it down to about like more or less 5 minutes. And so we built this demo with the examples that they sent to us of how they went through it. And this is a working, working demo with the ones that they sent us. It just kind of goes through, counts the amount of structures that they're going to have to clean, how much debris is in there, and then prices it based off of that. And so this is what we presented to the C-suite.
Were they just like floored?
Oh, you should have seen their faces. They were like, oh my gosh, like this is working. Like they gave us their problem and then in front of them, they're seeing it being solved. And so you can see like, here was what the real employee got. They ended at $3,575. And with our first try with the automation and all the info we gathered, we ended at $3,375 and they can adjust the pricing in here, but Yeah. So them seeing it live was like shock factor for them.
Yeah. What was the revenue of this company?
They're doing about $30 million a year.
Okay. I'm assuming like boomer-owned or close to it. Been in business for a while.
Yeah. Yeah. The owner's about in his like 40s. And so—
Okay. How long have you been at this? Like a few months, right?
Yeah. This was about like a month ago. So this is like maybe 2 and a half months in.
Yeah. So this was like your big break at this size of a business. Has anything happened in this, in this range since?
Yeah, I would say so. We're on our, on track to sign like 2 more clients around the same size. And like just yesterday, just because of what we've been doing and what we've been talking about on LinkedIn, like we got invited to present at a company that does $12 billion in revenue a year. And we are going to do an assessment with them. And we're very confident that once we show 'em the assessment, once we show them the things that's possible, they're very likely to sign up on another retainer just like these guys.
What happens when you exhaust your, all your iMessage contacts?
Move to LinkedIn, right? LinkedIn gives you 20 fresh connections every day. And so you just go on LinkedIn and literally search in the bar like CEO construction Utah or COO construction Utah, go connect with 20 each day. And then maybe a few of them will connect back with you and you can reach out, DM them.
So your funnel looks like this. You're doing cold outreach to your network and to LinkedIn. Cold or warm outreach.
Yeah.
You get them on a call. Always seek to get them on a call.
Yep.
Yeah.
Is that call the pitch? Like you're recording that call, you're asking them what problems they're having with their business or no?
Yeah. So that initial call, it's not a pitch. It's more so like getting to know them, building rapport, and then also asking like inspired questions. to get some more information out of them to get like, okay, where are you seeing inefficiencies within your business? Where are, where, where does work slow down? Right. And so that we can get more information to use later on.
Yeah. I, I would also just quickly add, we oftentimes just show them what we showed you and say like, what are your takes on that? How do you see this in your business? And then they, they start to get the cogs turning.
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Yeah. I think, uh, one way that's very helpful, and this is for anyone, like just get the business owner talking about their business. So like, imagine, tell them, hey, imagine I have no idea what you do. Explain to me what you do on a day-to-day. What is your business?
Yeah.
And then, okay, how do you do that? How do you, how do you fulfill that client's needs? How many people do you have on your team? What do those people do? And so just the more you can understand the business, the more I think both of us, the business owner and us, can understand, okay, maybe there, maybe we should focus on this. Maybe we should focus on the sales side a little bit, or maybe we should focus on your operations. And then just asking questions one step deeper. And so they don't have to be the super inspired questions right off the bat, but if you understand Or get them talking about what their business is, it makes it easier.
Okay, so you have this call and it, I'm assuming it lasts as long as you, they would let it last, right? You want them to just keep talking as long as they want to talk.
Yeah.
You record the whole thing, you upload it to Claude, you put your own brainpower against it. And are you striving to book a second call from the first one?
Yeah, always. Before you end, like, you always want to set that next call with them. Like, would Next Tuesday or Wednesday, we're committed to follow up on this or something like that. So if not, it becomes this follow-up and just chasing the rabbit.
Backfac, right? Book a call from a call every time.
Exactly.
It's a true principle.
Maybe a proposal or it may be assessment. Like that's, that may be the next step. Um, and so starting the interview process of interviewing their leadership and then interviewing their employees.
Okay. So are you trying to get on more calls with more people in the business before you pitch them? At what point does that happen?
Yeah, I'd say it goes like we hop on a call with the owner and they agree to do an assessment. Then we interview the employees and we present the assessment findings and the ranked opportunities. And then from there, that's where we pitch the retainer. And so it was like assessment, interview, retainer.
Okay. Do you think it's important to reach out to people locally or does it not matter?
That's a good question. I think it helps with rapport for sure, but it could be done anywhere.
Yeah. Like, for example, with this one, this first client that we signed, we said, hey, we're here in Utah County, we're here local. And yeah, it builds trust. Like James was saying,
it's one of those things that's— it's kind of like survivorship bias. Like, it's hard to know that it helps. No one is ever going to tell you, no, I don't want to take that call because you're not local to me. It just means like if you're going to start somewhere geographically, might as well start where you are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. A lot more leverage.
100%. We started where we're at and now we're— we have the trust there. But another thing we figured out too is like in our circle of connections, if we say we know 500 people that trust us, if you reach out to those 500 people, each one of those probably has 500 people that trust them. And so our way of branching out of that is starting with the people local to us, but then figuring out who they know, and then the trust can instead be conveyed from the location, but through the people that we know. And so like anyone, if you think you don't know a lot of people, like you probably have a couple hundred followers on Instagram, followers on LinkedIn, you got contacts in your phone, and then those people don't all live next to you. And so that's how we can start growing outside of just Utah County.
Yep. What advice would you have for people wanting to start a business like this?
I think the best advice is just find something to sell, like find a repeatable problem and then just send outreach. Honestly, it's just about taking action before thinking about it too much. I think too many people get stuck in the loop of like redefining business ideas over and over. But honestly, when we started, like we didn't even have the idea fully formed out. We just started reaching out to people. We just started sending a ton of texts every single day and it ended up with a huge client. And so you should start sending those messages.
I mean, there are over 1.2 million management consultants in the US alone. 10 years from now, how many AI consultants will there be? Probably more.
More.
Yeah, probably more. So the ocean is very, very large when it comes to this type of business.
Yeah. One thing I would just add to that is Corey Gannon kind of touches on this, but it can be daunting to feel like, you know, who am I to know more about AI than these companies? But I mean, we're talking to business owners every week and it's very apparent that They're at the— they're using it as like a search bar side of things. Yeah, they're at the beginning right now. And if you know even just a little bit more than them, like you could be going in and teaching them about here's how to use chat, here's how to connect it to your softwares. And that alone is invaluable. But then you start to identify all these other things that you can do. So just get started.
There's a lot of places in life where it's, it's a mistake to be overconfident. Like if I walk into the gym and think I can bench 500 pounds, I could kill myself.
Yeah.
But when it comes to AI and like selling AI consulting services, you need to assume that you are better at AI than the vast majority of people.
Yeah.
And if you're just listening to this podcast right now, you're probably in that group.
Exactly.
It's when we think like, what do I know? Who am I? Don't assume that people are better than AI than you, because that means you won't have the confidence to ever talk to them and do anything. Like, even if it's a false confidence, at least just Have it so you can start talking to people and learning as you go.
Yeah, because that stuff alone is more than what 90% of people touching AI are doing. Like, it may seem normal to us, or because I've listened to your podcast for the past 2 years and heard all the AI stuff, it kind of seems normal by now. But it's like, then you step outside of it and you're like, oh, they're nowhere near where we are yet.
Yeah, my brother-in-law works for a $60 million business in Alabama, and it sounds like the type of business that you would work with. And he was in a board meeting and there were like 20 people in there and he asked them like, how many of you guys use ChatGPT? And I think 3 hands went up.
Yeah.
And this is like, this is in like 2026.
Yeah.
Like, what are we doing? $60 million company. And he started showing them stuff and he's like an alien from another planet. He's like their god now.
Yeah.
And he's just like prompting ChatGPT. He's not making agents or anything like
Yeah,
just don't assume.
No, do not assume at all.
And I think that's why there's such a big opportunity for people like us. Like, as far as like the industry, we are on the bottom of the totem pole. We have very little experience in the business industry. We're young, but people are looking to us as the experts on AI just because we have a little bit more experience than them. And so I think like everyone listening to that can fit into that category. Like,
oh yeah,
you just learn a little bit about AI. You can be known as the expert in AI to these massive, massive companies that are out there.
What, what tools out there are worth learning today? Like as of today, that if people want to do what you do, they should learn these tools to better monetize.
Yeah, I would say for sure you need to be on Claude for sure. I'd say preferably Claude Code or Codex. And honestly, the 80/20 of it is you need to know how to use those tools. and how to connect like MCPs and APIs. If you know those 2 things, you have a lot of weight that you can throw around and things that you can do in the business, 'cause that unlocks a whole different world of things that you can do.
Yeah, guys, in case you haven't heard me talk about this yet, these 3 guys, James, Brendan, and Carter, they're doing AI consulting. I have a community and a course and a whole like 300+ people doing this exact same thing. It's called Playmakers, playmakersai.com, and people are finding customers paying them thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a month doing exactly what we talk about on this podcast. So if you want to join me and 23 other experts teaching, instructing, holding each other accountable, cheering each other on, then check out playmakersai.com. Link is in the description.
One that I really like is Railway. It's super easy to connect to. And basically what it does is it hosts things so you can host your website, you can host custom apps or agents that you build on it, and it also has database to store information. So essentially you could spin up an AI agent that works like an employee in a company just with Railway, and it's all right there. So I would say Railway. Another, another tool that I've really been loving is called Composio, and it solves the problem of MCPs. So you can connect any number of MCPs to Composio, and then it's one single MCP to your Claude. And so like I have 5 Gmails connected to my one Composio and it's one MCP for Claude.
That's cool. Oh, I've been looking for that actually.
It's amazing. I was gonna say, because you probably have lots of emails that you work with. Oh,
I've got like 7 and I'm over here like disconnecting MCPs like a Neanderthal and reconnecting because like, go search for this now, search for this.
Yep.
Yeah,
it's brilliant. When it comes to like doing AI audits or making these presentations, Do you have any like prompting tips?
Yeah, I would say—
Or model tips to use?
I would say a lot of it comes from like obviously garbage in, garbage out. So if you can make sure that your interview with them, and we just have a simple survey that we send out to them that kind of identifies the bottlenecks, what softwares they're using, and that's before the interview. And so if we can gather as much ammo as we can before we go to Claude and say, okay, What are the opportunities? Well, let's identify what's possible. What does that mean for them ROI-wise based off of what they told me, how much hours they spend on XYZ task, how much they get paid, or how much they're paying this specific team. There's no special prompt. It's more just making sure you get as much ammo before you go to Claude and spin up your presentation. That will help you a lot in the end.
Okay.
Yeah, I would just add to that something that's helpful to me because I may not be an expert in sales, or I may not be an expert in automating things, but other people are. And so one thing you can do, like, I know Elon Musk has a very, has a 5-step process to automating things. And so you can tell your Claude, hey, act like Elon Musk and apply his 5-step automation process to this problem that we're trying to solve. And then it thinks in a way that is using the expertise and wisdom of other people. To be able to give you a really good output. And so like if it's sales, like, hey, act like Alex Hormozi here. How would you draft this, um, proposal to a company? And so I think that's an easy way to prompt without having to follow like a specific prompt structure.
Yeah,
I agree. And I think that one line is so smart, like act like so-and-so, because it's, if you don't tell it that, it's gonna get the average, right? It's gonna get the average of all the advice out there on the internet about the one thing. And average is just that, it's average. You have to ask it or it just won't know. It doesn't know what's in your head.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guys, where can we find you if we wanna learn more?
Yeah, so you can find us at certifiedaipartners.com. All 3 of us are on LinkedIn. We're all active posting a lot on there. Also the LinkedIn company page, Certified AI Partners. Um, and we're also on every social out there. So
beautiful. Anything else that people should know about you?
I think I'll say like, just start, like If we can do it, like we're all in our early 20s, we don't have much career experience, and if we're able to close these big of deals, like anyone can do it.
Yeah.
Love it. All right. Thank you guys.
Yeah. Thank you, Chris.
Hey, if you have an interesting business that made a lot of money in a short period of time, go to tkoyes.com, fill out the form, and we'll have you right here in this chair. If you like this content, please share with a friend, hit a like or a comment below, and we'll see you next time on the Koerner Office.
