So You’re Building AI Agents... Now What?

So you're building with AI, but now what? Well, according to the data, 41% of you guys want to monetize AI, 26% are business owners leveraging it, 16% build purely out of passion, and the rest of you guys want to use AI to become better employees. Now, I've personally been in every one of those positions, so I get it. In this video, I'm going to break down exactly what I did once I asked myself, what's next? I'm also going to lay out the options clearly so you can decide what's right for you. By the end, you'll have total clarity on how to take your AI skills further, whichever direction you choose. So I thought it would make sense to start off by telling you guys about my story and exactly how I got to the position that I'm in today, running an AI business with my co-founders called True Horizon, and also running the largest school community for AI automation. I've always been very entrepreneurial in spirit, but I wasn't some teenage mastermind that built a business overnight that just absolutely exploded. I always knew I wanted to start my own business, but I took a very traditional path. I went to college at the University of Iowa. I got a double major in business analytics and marketing, so no formal coding education. And from there I graduated and was working a full-time job at Goldman Sachs. I was working in automation, so I became very familiar with, you know, thinking in terms of systems and saving time. But up to this point, I had hardly used AI practically. It was just your typical ChatGPT, write me a poem, fun use cases. Now I really started to look into how I could make myself more valuable at work, and that's when I fell into the rabbit hole of AI automation. Because in almost every project that I would do, somewhere in that automation, there was a point where a decision had to be made. And I remember thinking to myself, like, man, I wish I could just plug this automation into ChatGPT. Little did I know, you actually could. So I started building stuff in my free time after work, learning other no-code workflow builders similar to what I used at work. So I was pretty familiar with terminology and the concepts, but I just started making videos online, posting to YouTube about what I was building, even though I wasn't an expert. Now what really shocked me is before I had even 500 subscribers and my most viewed video was like 1,500 views, I was getting a couple emails a week where business owners were asking me if I could help them build an automation or just sell them one that they had seen on my YouTube channel, even though I was saying in my videos, you know, I'm just kind of learning this stuff. I'm not an expert. So that's exactly how I made my first buck in the space was selling an AI workflow for $1,200 just to help someone create LinkedIn posts faster. And the build took me like 2 hours. And this is when I got really addicted to building automations. As soon as I would get home from work, I would sprint to my desk and just start building things and making more YouTube videos. And I was doing this because I genuinely loved it and it got me really excited. So I was passionate about learning rather than doing it to make money. It got to the point where all day at work I was sitting there and like just daydreaming about building automations, which sounds really nerdy, but it's the truth. But that made my actual day job far less enjoyable. So I really started to think about how would I like to be spending my time every day? And I realized that if I was making the same amount of money that I'm currently making, but every day I'm doing something that I was genuinely really excited by, I think that's a trade that anyone would make. So the motivation wasn't to start making money, it was to do what I enjoy for money. And let me just like zoom back for a sec. Remember earlier when I said that I started learning AI automation to make myself more valuable at work? Well, if I were at a small firm, I think that very well could have been the case and I would have stuck around and looked to quarterback an entirely new initiative of AI automation within that company. However, I was at a large firm, lots of internal regulations, so I just kind of knew that that was not going to be possible. And because I felt pretty secure with my YouTube channel starting to grow, getting some inbound leads consistently for freelance work, I decided to make a relatively safe transition and become an AI freelancer full-time. Now, in this era where AI automation is blowing up, NNN's starting to explode, you know, Google search trends, AI agents is just a hockey stick. Lots of hype comes with it. People start talking about how easy it is to start and scale an AI agency. Gurus saying quit your job, go all in, get rich quick with AI. And that stuff didn't really resonate with with me, especially with the way that I had actually made my transition from a full-time role into my new venture. And honestly, that's why on my channel so far, if you were to look through the videos, I haven't really talked much about the business side of AI. I've purely been focused on teaching automation foundations. Anyways, because I had a lot more time every day to do what I loved, my content and my automations just got better and better. Soon after that, I made my first $3,000, $6,000, and finally $10,000 as an AI freelancer just doing one-off custom projects that business owners wanted. And I think that's a really, really great place to start because now having gone through that, I can say that I have, you know, had experience conducting discovery calls, scoping out projects, closing the sales, developing the projects and delivering them. The natural progression from there was I started to think about, you know, I have these leads coming through, but I don't have enough bandwidth to take on more projects. So how can I do more projects? That's when I started to think about bringing on some people to help me out. And because I had already filled those positions myself for some time, like I said, closing sales, doing discovery calls, stuff like that. I knew exactly what I'd be looking for in a salesperson or developer when I start to make those hires. I also then started to think about the fact that I was selling these things for a one-time fee when there may be an opportunity to sell AI as a solution and work on longer-term partnerships rather than handing someone over a JSON file template that I had built. And then we go our separate ways. And the key mindset shift for me was learning to diagnose problems and then pitch how I can help them solve that problem with AI rather than just selling a template to tons of different people. Especially nowadays with how commoditized AI automation templates are becoming. And that's not even to say that that is the best business model and that's what you guys should all do, or like that I've cracked the code or something, because obviously bespoke and custom solutions are not nearly as scalable as a product. Anyways, my point being, I started as an AI builder, passionate about learning and wanting to make myself a more valuable worker. I started to see the demand as an AI freelancer, making some side income, and then went full-time on learning and taking on projects. Then I stepped into a role as an AI consultant and met up with my co-founders, and we started hiring for other gaps. But I'm sure you're wondering now, how does this apply to you? And does monetizing your skill make sense in your specific situation? That's what we'll take a look at now. There are different ways to think about monetization, and I think that the way that you think about it depends on where you are in life. If you're passionate about AI and you're starting to learn, monetization validates that you have a skill that people are willing to pay you for. And this money obviously will allow you to dedicate more time or resources to these passion projects, which is a great place to start out, especially if you're not yet looking to make this some sort of full-time job or create a new company because it's this extra income can give you some more freedom. Now, if you're an aspiring entrepreneur, you're building the skill set of AI automation that is in extremely high demand and will be for a long time with a relatively low supply of good people right now, which means you can build a business around this if you take it one step at a time. In my mind, what that looks like is wearing all the hats to start, sort of like I touched on earlier, genuinely being excited about what you're doing, and then finally, probably most importantly, is that knowing what you're building provides value and being able to communicate that value very, very clearly. From there, I would say you want to go partner or co-founder, especially if this is your first time building a business. Trust me, it's just going to make it 10 times better. If you're a business owner, this one should be pretty clear too. Automating your work and using AI to make your company more efficient is going to save everyone time, focus, and energy, and you can use all that time, focus, and energy to grow the business more. And finally, if you're an employee, do what I planned to do, which was make myself more efficient, a superhuman when it comes to productivity. This will naturally lead to you getting promoted, getting paid more, adding more value to your company, and never getting replaced. So now you know why monetization makes sense, but you still may be wondering which path you should take. So if building with AI is something that you're passionate about, you need to ask yourself, do you enjoy it more than your day job? Would you want to do it all day long? If yes, then start as an AI freelancer after work, going at your own pace, getting some experience, making some money on the side. Once you feel comfortable with it, then become an AI consultant. If you want to make money with AI as an aspiring entrepreneur, it's great to be committed but don't just recklessly jump in. Take gradual steps. And because of all the hype and because of stuff you may be seeing online, it may seem like this space is a goldmine and that it's really easy to build a business that can run on autopilot. But don't just quit and take that gamble. Get proof of concept. Learn to build and sell automations as an AI freelancer, then become an AI consultant. You'd much rather be a doctor than a pharmacist. Help people diagnose the problem and provide them a solution rather than just giving them something that someone else told them that they needed. And if you're a business owner already, start to leverage AI automations step by step. Think about what is something that I do every single day or that my employees do every single day and look to automate that process. After that, just do it again. What's something that we're still doing every day or still happening every week? Then automate that process. Just make sure you're understanding the value of these automations and how much time you're saving your business. And before you know it, you're your own AI consultant. And if you're an employee, write down each area of your role that AI can be used and then start implementing it there. Start educating other people on your team how they can leverage AI and custom automations to make them 10 times more productive as well. Eventually, you'll be viewed as an AI expert at work and everyone will understand how valuable you are to that business. Now for the part you've all been waiting for. Many of you love to see real examples and use cases where people do this practically. So I went to my community and I found an example of every type of person using AI in some way that followed these paths. So the first bucket that we touched on was selling AI without going full-blown business owner, kind of as an AI freelancer. Dan built a finance-focused workflow that does a budget versus actual analysis and identifies key drivers behind these variances. He shared this build on LinkedIn and started to receive tons of positive feedback, leads, and even a job offer. And I don't think he had built up a huge following or personal brand beforehand. Most importantly, this LinkedIn post led to his first client as an AI freelancer. The goal of the system is to save them over 10 hours a month on manual financial planning and analysis work. Really goes to show the power of putting yourself out there and creating content even even if it's not YouTube or, you know, you don't feel comfortable showing your face, that sort of thing, you can write articles on LinkedIn, Medium, and still get your brand out there. Dan was literally able to get a client to reach out to him, hand him money, and even if he didn't get his first lead from this project, he still built himself a system that he can use every week. My point being, if you're going to go through the process of building out a system either way, you may as well document it and share it with some people. If your first thought is like, you know, imposter syndrome, why should I be putting content out there if I'm not an expert? Take it from me, take it from Dan, and think about everyone else in your shoes that feels like they're not an expert but looking to do stuff in this space, they're going to really relate with your content and have a lot more trust in you because you're showing everyone that you are a human being. All right. So the second bucket is starting as an AI freelancer and then launching a consultancy or some sort of AI business. Lars was able to do this by starting with his friends and people in his warm network and building them some automations that they could use. And he did this kind of, you know, as an AI freelancer. And now that he's gotten some experience wearing multiple hats and gotten some good case studies and testimonials, he's starting to launch his AI agency along with a team. He's also starting a YouTube channel to create content to generate another source of inbound leads, which is awesome. Him and his team are not only delivering solutions like personalized LinkedIn posts, automated blog posts, and other type of content generation systems, but they're also diving into doing the scoping and helping people understand exactly where in their business they can use AI automation. The third bucket is a business owner using AI automation within their own business. Aiden was running a car detailing company in order to pay the bills. He was running local meta ads, which were spitting out leads for $8 a pop. He decided to build a system for his business where he could attach a lead form to the front of these ads. The leads that see the ad could then submit their information about the type of car they have, and they would get back a fully automated PDF report that was personalized for how to protect their car. After he implemented this system into his own business, his lead costs dropped from $8 to $1. That's so insane. And then because he was getting all these leads for cheaper, he had to build a voice agent to be able to get back to those leads even quicker than he could. That's such a good example of how building an automation for your own business can really scale it, especially if it's just you working in the business. And finally, the fourth bucket is an employee who uses AI automation to improve their performance at work. Brian built an AI Slack bot called Vicky, and Vicky helps them solve a major onboarding bottleneck. New team members getting onboarded used to take 6 to 8 weeks to ramp up and be ready to go, but now they get their answers instantly from a RAG-trained assistant, Vicky, that pulls from playbooks, SOPs, transcripts, stuff like that. After implementing Vicky, they have compressed the onboarding time from 6 to 8 weeks to 2 to 3 weeks. That's a massive time save and a wonderful example of using AI as an employee. And those 4 members that I just shared with you, that's just a few examples. There are over 100,000 people in this community, and I think everyone is looking to monetize their skills in AI automation in some form. If that's not already enough of an incentive for you to hop in and connect with some like-minded individuals in the community, I'm also gonna be dropping this document in the community, which you can access for completely free. Pretty much just breaks down what we've talked about today in this video and linking to those community members who I just featured. So that right there is my free community, and if you're looking to take it even deeper, then definitely consider becoming a member of my Plus community. Community. In there, you're going to get free tech support. I do a Q&A once a week. But I think most importantly, you're going to connect with people that are also paying to be a Plus member. So everyone's super committed and building with n8n every day. But anyways, guys, I would love to see you in those communities. But that is going to do it for today's video. If you enjoyed it or if you learned something new, please give it a like. It definitely helps me out a ton. And as always, I really appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video. I'll see you on the next one. Thanks, everyone.