This Is How I'd Sell AI To Make My First Million In 2026

The fact of the matter is this. Most businesses fail or they rot in the middle. Right? They're not cheap enough to scale, but they're not premium enough to breathe. I know this better than anybody. It might sound dramatic, but I've lived literally through this. Depression built me, it built this, six months of it. The only thing that got me out of bed was my two days a week that I had with my daughter. That was it. Fourteen years later, I've generated over £800 million in revenue. And right now I'm using the exact system that I'm about to show you to sell AI services. If you're a business owner, if you are selling any service, pay. Pay attention. So why do I know that businesses die in the middle? Well, it's because I own multiple seven figure companies and I've learned along the way. I've managed ad accounts spending over one and a half million a month. I've closed over 100 million deals in my life. I've built businesses that generate 6, 7, 800 leads a month with one salesperson. And here's what 14 years has taught me. You either charge a premium to a select few or you build a system that scales to everybody. The middle is where businesses go to die. And guys, I get it, I know it sounds dramatic, but I've watched it happen and, and I've almost nearly lived it. So in order for you to understand this, you have to understand why it's a problem. And the reason it's a problem is because the middle is where you're too expensive for volume, but you're too cheap to be profitable. And that means that you're stretched to deliver either well. So let me show you what getting out of the middle actually looks like. And it starts with the most boring business you can imagine. So I work with a conveyancer. Yeah, conveyancing, property transfers, paperwork, solicitors. Yeah, it's not exactly the stuff that increases libido, if you know what I mean. But here's what happened. It's a fantastic example and one you should engrain pain in your mind. We scaled their ad spend from 24,000amonth to 115,000amonth. And this is the part that matters. Profitability went up by 78%. Now, most people hear that and think they must have found a new audience. They've just done a very good job managing their PPC campaign. Some new creative, some new hack. No. Right. The same service, same team, same market. They just added a premium tier. They call it Festive Fast. It here's the offer, you pay more. And we guarantee that you move into your home before Christmas. That's it. The same solicitors internally in their team, the same process. They're just prioritized over everybody else. Think about that story. Someone's at a Christmas dinner and they say, all of us solicitors told us that we wouldn't be able to move in in time. These guys got us in. So in the next few minutes, I'm going to show you exactly how you can do this. But if that's not a story that spreads, then I don't know what is. And here's the kicker. So, 60% more profit, no extra cost to deliver, internal prioritization. No vendors paid more. Pure margin. Now, you might be thinking, that's great, Mike, but I don't have a premium tier yet, and I'm not sure how to implement one. Neither did I until I figured this out. Okay, My average retainer is around $3,000 a month. Now, I would say my largest ever client paid me 33,000 per month. Eleven times my average. And I want to tell you exactly what you got, because this is how you build a premium offer. This is how you build a premium tier in your business. He got three personal calls with me every single week, daily reporting and my mobile number. Nobody else gets my mobile number. And naturally your thought process right now is that that sounds exhausting, but it isn't, because there's only one of him. I'm not running around doing this for 50 clients. I'm doing it for one. One client who values access to me enough to pay me 11 times what everyone else pays. And that money, it funded the next phase of growth. That is what a premium tier does. It doesn't drain you. Everyone says it drains you. And that drains your time. It fuels everything else that you're trying to do. And for transparency, I have to explain this because I didn't start here. And the path I took is probably going to be similar to yours, but it could be different. When I started, I did what most people have to do. I priced low to get clients in the door. I had a mortgage to pay. I had a daughter. You know, I needed cash flow. I only had $3,000 in the bank account. Like, I was broke. I needed cash. So I took anyone who would pay. I personally ran my first 25 plus client accounts, every single one of them delivery and sales. Learning how to do the actual work whilst running the business and learning how to talk about it in a way that wins deals. And here's what happened. Volume forced evolution. Client number 15 needed weekly reports instead of monthly, so I gave it to them and charged them more. Client number 22 want a direct access to me, so I gave it to them and charged a little more again. And slowly, without realizing it, I drifted into premium pricing. But here's the part that nobody tells you. That middle period where you're serving too many clients at prices that don't reflect the work that is the danger zone. You're not cheap enough to scale with volume. You're not expensive enough to be profitable per client. You are just stuck. I was stuck there for longer than I'd like to admit, to be honest with you. So how'd you get out? Before we go into detail, I have to change your concept of something because there's this idea that successful people don't trade time for money. That's nonsense. Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett, they trade time for money. He just doesn't call it that. Okay, do you think when Warren Buffett is making decisions with that amount of money, he just wakes up, sticks his finger in the air and shoots? Of course not. There's research, analysis. And how many investments does he say no to before he finally says a strategic yes? And he knows that it'll be a tremendous deal. That is time that all of those no's a significant amount of time before he says yes. The difference isn't whether you trade time, it's what you charge for it. Premium clients get me. I run the strategy, I'm in their account. Smaller clients get my team, seasoned account managers who are excellent at what they do. And that's not arrogance. That's just the product. It's the way that it's designed. Access to me is the premium tier. I've closed over 100 million in deals. And I can tell you the thing that separates people from selling premium services to the people who don't. They say the number and then they shut up. Most people do this, so it's £10,000, but that includes everything. You know, we'll do X, we'll do Y. No, this is what you do. This is £10,000. It's the highest likelihood path to getting what you want. The return on investment that you want, and then you wait. The silence is uncomfortable. Yes, but the silence is where the sale happens with the conveyancer. Most people don't choose festive fast. 65%, 70% go standard, and that's fine. But the percentage you say yes, 60% more profit, same service, same team. That's where the margin lives. I have a business that generates six to 800 leads every single month with one salesperson 30 seconds. That's how long it takes for a new lead to get a text back. The speed there is the margin. If you're in the middle right now, too expensive for volume, too cheap to be profitable, you have two paths that you can choose. You either build systems that lets you scale without headcount of staff or staff members, or you add a premium tier that funds everything else. So here's your action step. Stop being a pussy and charge more. Simple as that. Add a zero to your offer. Write down what you'd include, then make it available. Take everything about your service, write it down on a bit of paper and about what you can offer in addition and then add a zero. An amount greater than zero will say yes to that offer. And when that happens, you'll stop questioning whether you're worth it.