The Most Profitable Solo Business You've Never Heard Of Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 do about a million dollars a year just  myself. These are loweffort, lowcost, lowrisk startups. You can just spin up a website  tomorrow and then you're set, right? Which is a huge opportunity right now because AI is so dang  good that you could take something like that and scale it to the moon and back. Everyone needs it.  Usually, you get instant customers with it.

00:15 And it's totally free. On a Friday, I had the idea.  On a Saturday, I built the thing. On a Sunday, I launched it on Product Hunt. And on Monday, my  life was not that ever the same. Did you have an audience then? No. No audience? No. Nothing. I  was completely anonymous. Nope. Nope. I think it was about $10,000 the first day it was side  income for me.

00:35 I held my full-time job until I was making 80,000 a month and then I quit. 80,000?  Holy crap. Yeah. And I was making 75,000 a year at the other job. I kept a full-time job for 4 years  while running Design Joy. So, you were making more per month in profit than you were per year  from your full-time job that you held back. Yes, I was. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

00:58 What is your net profit  per month? I think the peak was 200,000 a month, but it usually averages somewhere in the 60  to 80,000 a month. It's probably about a,000 a month in expenses. Oh my gosh, that's wild.  What productiz agencies right now you see out there in the world that are very successful that  other people could copy? Yeah. Is it okay if I give two?

01:20 I want as many as you got. Okay.  I think there's two primary ones right now. Meet Brett. He's making about 80 grand a  month in net profit all by himself. No team, no contractors. This guy launched an agency on  a Sunday and had 10 grand in recurring revenue by Monday. No audience, no followers, nothing.  He was a nobody in a town of 500 in the Midwest.

01:44 Not just that, but he kept his day job  for four years while running the business, making more per month in his business than he  was making per year in his day job. And today, he works 30 hours a week, and his clients pay  him six grand a month before they ever talk to him. So, we're going to talk about this thing  called productized services. And not just his, but other productized services that you guys  can launch in all kinds of different industries.

02:08 Enjoy. One of the important things like noting  like who might be watching this is like I don't want this to conversation to totally be focused  around just design these these principles and like the what I've done here can really be applied  to any sort of like mainly digital skill whether it's marketing copywriting you know maybe you're  running social media for a brand or something like that and it's small like any of this stuff can  be technically what I call productized which just basically means selling it off

02:32 the shelf right  so instead of filling out a form on a website, getting a quote, jumping on a call, having,  you know, three or four meetings to discuss pricing and proposals and estimates and all that  sort of stuff. It's just you go to the website, you buy the service, you pay for it, then and  then you can consume it. So, it's really, I like to call it like lowering the the TTV, which is  time to value.

02:51 So, when you purchase, getting that thing back as quickly as you possibly can. In my  case, it's design work. In somebody else's case, it's maybe it's it's a blog post copy or something  like that. I think it's the model that serves that best in terms of lowering that TTV, which I think  is is key more now than ever. You know, a lot of companies value speed over quality, as weird  as that is to say.

03:12 So, that's where Design Joy comes in. And this whole model really, I think,  flourishes. So, I run what is now, you know, called a productized design agency. So, basically  selling design services via subscription. I guess one of the more notable things is I do it all by  myself. So, been running it since 2017. do about a million dollars a year via that just myself.

03:35 So  there's very little cost involved and other than the you know the time that I invest in in the  startup. Yeah. So it's what I do. I do design work for software product branding like you know  you name it I do it. I keep a certain number of clients at a time on basically a retainer and and  that's that. So Okay. So 2017 what prompted you to launch this?

04:00 Yeah. So the company that I worked  for, they were hugely disrupted by Uber and that that whole boom. It was a transportation company  and I saw the writing on the wall. So while I knew I had time, I started building something on the  side just as a safety net. And I actually story goes, you know, on a Friday I had the idea.  On a Saturday I built the thing in Webflow.

04:26 On a Sunday, I launched it on Product Hunt and  on Monday, my life was not that ever the same. That's the way it went. It was that It was that  quick. Just like a few days and then Did you have an audience then? No. No audience. Nothing. I was  completely anonymous. Nope. Nope. No audience. I literally shared my story on forums. That's it.  Yeah. Explain to people what Product Hunt is if they're not familiar.

04:48 Yeah. So, Product Hunt is um  it's primarily for tech products. There are some physical products on there, but essentially what  you do is it's called an upvoting system. So every day the list refreshes and you could submit your  startup to it, your product, whatever it is. And in my case, I had to get friends and family  to upvote me. And the more upvotes you get, the closer to the top you get.

05:07 And the closer to  the top you get, you might go on the homepage, right? And there's people like me who are product  obsessed. We like to discover new products. We like to figure out what's what's next and what's  new. So, we go to Product Hunt as consumers to check out what the new products are. Well, if your  product happens to be there, you get quite a bit of hits.

05:26 Usually, you get instant customers with  it. And it's totally free. You just have to have the network of people to upvote it. In my case,  literally, it was it was my personal network was my friends and family I went to school with on  Facebook. That was all I had at the time. And I got Design Joy to a million dollars a year that  way before I even started tweeting.

05:40 I started tweeting four or five years after I built Design  Joy. So, how high up on Product Hunt's list that day did you reach? Number four. Yeah. Number four.  How many were you competing with that day? Total numbers from that day, the the unique website  visits were about 36,000, which for me from starting just the day before was insane. To your  page, you had my page 36,000 unique.

06:02 All spurred from your your just friends and family from a  hometown Newberg, Missouri, 500 people. Yep. Yeah. 36,000 uniques. I can't remember quite the  exact figures on revenue. I think it was about $10,000 the first day was I gotten what you  would call reoccurring revenue. It's a little early when on the first day to call it reoccurring  because you don't quite know how it's going to go, but it's technically reoccurring.

06:26 So about 10k and  then I rode that wave for about a year at that at that level because it was side income for me. As  the story goes, I held my full-time job until I was making 80,000 a month and then I quit. So I  was making Yeah. And I was making 75,000 a year at the other job. So, oh my gosh, they kept giving  me raises and raises and raises to get me to stay.

06:50 So, I was like, "Okay, at this point I'm only  working like I did most of my Design Joy work like during my meetings that I had at that job." So, I  I was managing both very simple. I mean, I I took on as fit much as 50 clients at a time at Design  Joy. So, like one one client at my full-time job is literally peanuts to me, you know? So, it's  super super easy.

07:06 I can get it all done. So yeah, I um I kept a full-time job for four years while  running Design Joy. So you were making more per month in profit than you were per year from your  full-time job that you held at the same time. Yes, I was by about 5 years. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Hey,  YouTube's fine, but what about when you're driving around? What about when you're mowing the lawn?

07:28 You need my audio podcast, The Kerner Office. Just look up TKO Pod in Apple, Spotify, or wherever  you get your podcast. Anyways, I quit my job and then two year two two months later revenue doubles  from 80 to 160k and that's when my f had my first like oh crap moment. What do I do here? How like  how do I manage this? And then I had breakdowns. I had price increases every time I would double  my price.

07:51 I thought this will finally like curb the the demand but it just exponentially increased  it because it just put me into another category which is a lot of things people don't understand  about pricing that I had to learn. And then yeah, so I I I stayed at that for a while. Worked  myself literally into a hospital like almost to death. Like I I was dying.

08:11 I was working  so much. And then yeah, right now though, I've I've gotten my systems faster. I've gotten  better at what I do, more selective with my clients. And so now I have a very easy life.  I work less than a full-time designer. So what were you charging per month per client those first  few years? Oo, good question. So, I started out at a measly $449 a month day one.

08:33 Wow. For unlimited  design. Unlimited design. One at a time. I hit my first big wave. That increased to $849 a month.  And then I went from that to $1299 to 2500 to 3,200 to 4,000 to 5,000 to 6,000 all the way up to  8,000. Then I kind of dialed it back a little bit. So every time I felt like I was hitting a wall  and wanted to shut things down, I just my my gut reaction was just like just going to increase  prices and see what happens.

08:58 Yeah. How many hours a week are you working now? It's about probably  30. Okay. And what is your net profit per month nowadays? So it varies. So one thing about my  business is MMR monthly recurring revenue like it swings a lot. Like I could have 50 $60,000 a month  swings and one of the reasons is because you have churn, you have people pausing. So, on average,  it's about 70 to 80,000 a month.

09:21 My total expenses outside of taxes, which I won't include in this  conversation because they're pretty astronomical in my sense because I don't really have many  expenses. Outside of taxes, it's probably about a,000 a month in in expenses. Oh my gosh,  that's wild. So, you have $40,000 months, you have $120,000 months, but you're netting out averaging  out 70 to $80,000 a month, which net profit.

09:45 Yep. It's been as low as 40 40,000 per month. It's been  as high. I think the peak was 200,000 a month, but it usually averages somewhere in the 60 to  80,000 a month, but you'll get those peaks and valleys. As a design agency owner, like what does  that actually mean? What are you designing on a regular basis? Yeah, in my case, I do a lot of  branding, so logos, you know, just the overall aesthetic of what these brands look like.

10:15 I do a  lot of websites, you know, design and development of these websites. I do a lot of, you know, social  media stuff. I do a lot of, you know, presentation decks. You name it, I pretty much do it as long  as it's it's digitally focused. So, how would a productized service like yours, specifically a  design agency, how does it differ from traditional uh design agencies?

10:37 Yeah. So, in in a lot of ways,  right? So, um if you just want to talk pricing for example, traditional design agencies are are  relatively very expensive because there's a big headcount involved, right? So when you have a  website project, you're not only paying the salary of the person actually working on that, you're  also paying the PM, you know, the project manager, the CEO, the CFO, you know, these companies  are they have to pay these people.

10:58 So their prices are significantly higher. In my case, it's  just myself and in other cases like design like companies like design joy, it's like a few people,  right? Very small kind of intimate agencies. So pricing is usually much more affordable. Speed  is the big thing. So with traditional agencies, if anyone has ever hired one to embark on, whether  it's a brand project, a website project, these things take weeks to months, in some cases to  years.

11:25 In my case, if you if you were to subscribe to DesignJoy, you would have a, you know, let's  say a homepage back tomorrow. So it's very fast, no contracts, no calls required. You could decide  to sign up today and get designs back tomorrow. So it's like Fiverr, but like on steroids. and  actually like good good work, right? So, yeah, that's the main thing and it's a subscription.

11:51 So,  one of the big things right now is the economy, right? So, it's like people are very hesitant  to hire full-time people. Um, especially in the tech world, so they like to use contractors,  but even then, if as long, you know, if you don't have work for them, you're still paying them.  With a model like DesignJoy, you can subscribe and pause anytime you want to.

12:10 Meaning, if if work  dries up and you don't really have a need for it, you can just pause your subscription. You're no  longer paying for it. you come back whenever you do need more support. So, it's very flexible in  that regard as well. Now, I'll ask you a question that you're completely you'd be completely biased  on answering on these vibecoded apps and websites that kind of all look about the same generic.

12:28 Could that be not fully but largely fixed with better prompting, screenshots from other websites  that have good design? I know like the answer to that could put you out of a client, you know, but  like sure is it not bad prompting or is it just like AI is just not there yet and it maybe won't  be for a while on the design side of things. Yeah, I may not be as biased as you'd think here cuz I'm  not so naive to think that everyone requires top tier design to be successful, right?

12:54 The majority  of people out there could get by with launching with something made from claude, right? Like it's  good enough. Where I like to exist is the tier above that where it's like we're not fine with  just being like good enough. We want to separate ourselves apart from everyone else doing this  and everyone that will come behind us and copy us.

13:17 The only way to really do that is to layer on  a design layer onto that that separates us from a branding perspective. You know, branding is still  just as important if not more important than ever has been. More important, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And  so, you know, the second you build a successful product, you have to assume that there are 300  people behind you that could spin up something like that within a week.

13:37 If if they have a team,  probably days, right? Yeah. So, what is it that you're going to what's the moat that you're going  to build around that product? One of those moes is distribution. Of course, you know, you understand  that more so than ever with because now it's easy to build the thing. It's harder than ever to sell  the thing. Exactly. But moat is is obtainable.

13:56 You can hire distribution partners, things like  that. But it's still it's still a huge moat and a huge advantage. The other advantages is branding  and design. So those two things I think will be increasingly more important. I'm having like this  realization as we're talking that like design has never been more important. You know, it has just  like distribution has never been more important because it's so easy to build the thing and like  you and I we go to websites every day that all look about the same and you're

14:19 like let me guess  lovable. Let me guess wind surf. Let me guess replet code. You name it. Like we've all seen it.  And so now it's more important than ever to stand out. If you look at the number of websites that  are live on the internet, it is like parabolic these last three years. Yeah. Because it's so easy  to make a website. And when you think of like you might agree, disagree with this.

14:39 Two of like the  companies that have really they call it designled growth. Is that a thing? I've heard of that. Yeah.  Yeah. I can't speak on it, but I've heard of that term. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's Airbnb and Apple  and maybe even more so Airbnb because the two founders are were designers at heart. And I feel  like the best products, the best digital products are incredibly complex under the hood, but  incredibly simple on the surface, right?

15:00 That's in my opinion, that's what good design is and that's  what Airbnb is. It looks so simple, but there's so much going on there. And I hate it when people  bring up Craigslist as an example of like design's overrated. Look at Craigslist or Amazon. Yeah,  either one. Yeah, dude. Craigslist died. Like Craigslist is dead. Go look at Similar Web. They  went from hundreds of millions of views a month to like four.

15:24 Like Facebook marketplace ate their  lunch. And so it's like that's not a good example. I think Yeah. And then Apple like and Tesla,  right? Those are designled companies. And um and it shows in their market cap. They're trillion  dollar companies. Not that you know correlation is causation, but I'm terrible at design. And it's  something that I've always neglected because I'm very much like a done is better than perfect.

15:45 move fast and break things like ship it, you know, sell it before you have it, all that. That's  my whole thing. And so by the time it comes around to design, it's like, we're working, you  know, it's Yeah, it works, right? Yeah. But it's like you just never know how much better it could  work with better design. I'll ask you a question that's probably one of the most frequently asked  questions you've gotten these last three years.

16:04 On one hand, with AI, it's like we can vibe code,  we can prompt anything, we can design anything easier than ever before, right? So that would be  a notch against you, against your business model, right? On the other hand, like we just talked  about, these things need to be designed. They need good design at least after a certain point. Most  websites will never get to that point because most businesses fail, which is fine.

16:27 Sure. So like it's  a rising tide situation, right? Your TAM, your total addressable market has gotten bigger than  ever, but at the same time, the tools have gotten more user friendly than ever. So for your business  net of net, has this been a net good for you this AI these last three years or a net negative? For  me personally again just speaking anecdotally it's been a a definitely a net a net positive.

16:48 It's a net positive for two different reasons. It's a net positive in the sense that there's more  businesses and startups being built more than ever before in human history. You know a day is equal  to six month period you know a couple years ago. So there's more need. There's more entrepreneurs.  Uh there's there's more things being built that require design more than ever before.

17:10 Guys,  tkowners.com. That's my community where people are building businesses. I do AMAs Q&As's every  week live. You can ask me anything you want. You can have accountability partners. It's about  a thousand people in there building, starting growing businesses. Check out TKO as in the Kerner  office. tkowners.com. The second way and obviously design comes into that.

17:31 So I I get to kind of  ride that wave. The second way is just my internal abilities have roastly expanded in terms of what  I'm able to produce internally and how quickly I can produce and and the type of assets that I can  produce now that I would have had to turn away because I didn't have the talent on the team. You  know the team is me. I didn't have the talent.

17:48 But now AI does enable me to do a lot of those things.  And then when it comes to like product work like man like the way that my system works is there's  not like I said there's not that like highlevel synchronized communication that's available. So  when I embark on a huge product design request and I mean like you know a piece of software  maybe it's like a medical medical software that's very intricate and it does oftentimes  require a lot of conversations and a lot of like requirements gatherings.

18:18 I don't need to do  that anymore because I plug in what it is they give me. I work with claude to come up with all  the requirements, all the features, all the flows just myself in isolation from even the client. And  then I have a I can just bring that pull that into Figma and then just start designing. It does a lot  of the UX thinking for me. So it just allows me to speed up things and not have to really even think  that much.

18:39 Yeah. What AI tools are you using in your business right now? Yeah, good question.  Midjourney a lot. Uh again, I'm a designer, so image generation, video generation is huge  for me. So I use Midjourney a ton. I use Crea. Crea is like my one of my favorite ones because it  plugs into all of these other AI model, you know, image generation, video generation models.

19:00 I use  that mainly for that. I do a mix of those for image generations. For for coding and prototyping,  I primarily will use Claude. That's kind of my go-to right now. But again, you ask me tomorrow,  it's probably be something different. So that's just the way the way it goes right now with those.  I use AI inside of nonAI products, you know, like Photoshop and Loom even, like a bunch of  stuff like there's all these like, you know, AI features, but those are the primary AI products  that I use currently.

19:23 Okay. For the non-designer, like someone who's design illiterate such as  myself, what AI tools do you suggest they use if they can't afford you? You can get away  with using Chad GBT for almost everything, right? So, or Claude. I think Claude is better  if you're looking to like not hire a designer. claw. There's magic path. There's magic patterns.

19:44 Those three are probably the best at getting you the closest to what a like a true designer  would output. They're not quite there yet, but again, they're good enough for probably  most people watching that don't have high design standards. What about nano banana? Oh, so  for image generation, so there's two things here, right? So image generation is like there's  either you're looking to generate artwork like viby super aesthetic like artwork that you  really want like a really unique style like I do I like to play a

20:18 lot with like Renaissance like  themed artwork like I do a lot of that sort of stuff kind of like Shopify's latest like page that  they did. Midjourney is great at that. Nana Banana Pro is like better at like specific things. So  like if you're looking to generate, you know, a model holding something, go Nana Banana Pro all  day long. It's so freaking good.

20:34 So yeah, I would say Nana Banana Pro for 90% of people listening.  Okay. What if someone's vibe coding a website or an app in Replet or Cloud Code, any of those vibe  coding apps and they really wanted to have amazing design? What should their tech stack be? Should  they go find, you know, apps and websites that they they find personally beautiful, screenshot  it, send it over there?

20:56 What kind of prompt should they put alongside it? Should they ignore replet  for design altogether and use something like kria? What what would you do? Claude is the best. Like  what I what I often do is I do the simple approach where I will screenshot. Let's say I want to add  a section below, you know, the top section of my landing page and it's just like testimonials,  right?

21:16 Or something like that. I'll oftentimes just screenshot a testimonial section that I like  and reference that inside of Claude. Say, hey, referencing the screenshot that I've attached,  you know, generate a testimonial section. And that that gets you like it's gonna be okay, right?  That's that's what I would do. That's the simplest approach versus like explaining how to use these  how to connect claw to Figma and do all of that, right?

21:39 It's going to be over people's head. Can  you give me the names of some websites that you designed that you're particularly proud of just  so we could show people what you consider to be good design? Yeah, so Origin Finance is one  that I've recently done that's really big. Um, there's others that I wouldn't necessarily  classify them as the best designs, but they they work for what they were built for.

21:59 So, yeah. Is it  this one here? Use origin.com. Yeah. Yeah. And so, again, like design is completely subjective,  right? And and this isn't necessarily what I would consider like the pinnacle of design, right?  But it's clean and it works and it converts really well. Looks pretty. I've done other things like  the tea app, the dating tea app. Have you heard of that?

22:20 Tea. Yeah. Did you ever hear about all that?  No. I've never used a dating app in my life. Well, I know. I know. But it was all over X because they  they uh Yeah. So, Oh, this is like a Gumroad vibe. Yeah. So, these guys I designed this literally  like three years ago and crinkets. I thought it was dead as dead as all get out and then all of a  sudden it's number one on App Store.

22:40 It's number one on the Google Play Store. But they had a data  leak and it was not good. No, I was not a part of it, but they hugely successful app like just beat  everything by a super wide margin. I did I did basically kill them. It did on the app store on on  the iOS app store. They're still on Google Play, but I mean they got millions of users on like day  one.

23:04 It was everywhere and I was the guy that that designed it. That's cool. Did you design the app  too or just the website? Yes, the brand, the app, the whole the whole shebang. What was it? Buy me  a coffee. I've done a ton of work for I'm sure you've probably seen the buy me a coffee button  around for creators and things like that. I've done a lot of work for them.

23:26 That's great. And  they're all so different. But that's the thing is like you know a lot of these projects as  a designer it's really hard because you you are oftentimes very constrained. Any other like  prompting ideas or prompting hacks when it comes to design that you would recommend? The biggest  prompting hack that I can give to people and this may sound very common sense to some people  listening to this because they're like obviously I already do that is to use chat GBT to write your  prompts.

23:51 So prompt whether you're prompting within JGBT or any other LLM. Exactly. Yeah. Especially  in in other LLM. So if I if I go to make a video in runway, which runway is a video generation  AI tool, or if I go to generate an image in Midjourney or an image in in Nanobanana Pro,  the first place I start is typically in Chat GBT and I'll say something to the effect of,  "Hey, write me a prompt for Nanabanana Pro that does this XYZ."

24:25 Right? Very generic. Very  generic. And what it spits out is very specific. It's better than what I could write as far as  a prompt goes. It used to be like we had these prompt engineers like that was going to be a job  and now AI prompts better than people can. So lean on like use AI to do the AI stuff that like you  need help with. Like you shouldn't have to sit there ever and like write your own prompt unless  it's just something really quick or whatever.

24:45 But yeah, use use chat to write your prompts. Why  why is Chat GPT better at writing prompts than say Claude, which most people I think today would  argue that Claude is a better LLM? So it depends if you ask these people it depends on what they're  doing. So if you're prompting perhaps like a I don't know let's say Bolt which Bolt is a it's a  text to app platform where you can just say like you know write create this app or whatever kind  of like claude is.

25:12 So if you're writing something more technical I will use cloud for that. Or if I  want to write a script for my web flow site like a piece of code that like does this special hover  effect on this element I'll use cloud for that. If it's something more of like uh image generation  or more creative or just personal use even like I want AI to analyze a tax document or whatever  it is.

25:31 I've just personally anecdotally found chat to be better at writing more conversational  stuff versus claw being very technical. So those people that usually say like claude's better for  this, they're usually much more technical use cases for that. But they're both I mean honestly  they're both good, right? Like you can't really go wrong. It's just a personal preference.

25:50 Well,  to me there's two big unlocks there in what you said. Like I've been doing that for a while,  right? Ask it what to ask it. Cool. But like A, I wasn't using ChBD to do that. I've been  using Claude to ask Claude what to ask Claude, right? So that's an upgrade. And B, I haven't  been telling, you know, in the LLM in the prompt, I'm going to do this in Nano Banana.

26:10 I'm get this  is a I need you to give me a prompt for replet, for lovable, for claude, whatever. Because the  LLM knows how those LLMs want to be spoken to, right? So theoretically it should give you a  better prompt that's more befitting for that LLM right that's it will like an example is like  midjourney a midjourney uses parameters so there's style parameters there's ratio parameters  so chatbt will know that um you can also one unlock too is setting up a rule sheet in chat  GBT so that anything you prompt inside

26:36 of this project will reference a rule sheet so like when  I'm generating runway videos runway takes into account the type of camera you want to use, the  type of zoom lens you want to use, the type of cinema color grading. So, I can feed that into the  rule sheet. So, anytime I prompt a runway thing, it'll reference all that, include all of those  parameters inside of that.

26:59 So, it just expedites the process and gets you a much more precise  fine-tuned prompt for whatever tool you're using. Yeah, I love that. Listen, I need more people like  this to interview on my podcast. So, if you know of someone with a side hustle or a business  that's unique and cool and super profitable, email Molly M o ly@cof-founders.com. That's one  word.

27:16 co-founders.com. Mollycoounders.com. Tell her your story and we'll give you a hundred  bucks if we end up interviewing them. What is your productized service shiny object right now?  Like what what service out there you think is ripe for the picking to be a productized service  that you're too focused on to chase after that you think other people should chase after?

27:38 Yeah. Is  it okay if I give two? I want as many as you got. Okay. I think there there's two primary ones right  now. The one is more general. It's AI first design and development. That is the big thing, right?  Because it's easy for us technical people to sit back and say just use cloud. It's super easy. But  the second you have to connect that to a database or the second you have to connect that to Stripe  or the second you have to actually host the thing most people who are nontechnical that's where they  stop

28:04 because it's easy to build it but actually distribute it out is a whole other thing right. So  a lot of these companies will like are right now um off menu is one of them for example that  they they've transitioned and pivoted to something that's like AIdriven product design and  development. So let us run cloud for you and then let us distribute it and let us build the thing  and let us host it.

28:26 Let's take care of all the complexities. I think that's a big big thing. The  other thing on a biased front would be branding. So not product design, not website design, just  branding. um that is if I were to create another agency given my skill set today, that would be I  think where the next big big thing will be inside of actually the design industry specifically is  branding.

28:50 So those are the two biggest. I love it. If you were to go with a branding agency,  let's say I'm not inherently creative. I don't have good taste. I don't have an eye for design.  Is AI to the point where we can lean on that where with some good prompting Claude can like give  us something to at least start with Claude or anything? So, first off, like I hate this.

29:09 I hate  this word. And if you're on X a lot, you hate it, too, if you're in my world, but taste, right?  Taste is if you don't have taste, you're you're only going to get so far with prompting, right?  So, if you take somebody with actually good taste, and good taste is obviously subjective, but  there's generally this in the higher tier of these industries, there's agreed upon what good taste  is, it'll get you there for something.

29:26 Where AI is helpful is photography generation. So, you don't  need to go out and hire photographers anymore. Or if you have a let's say a cosmetic a cosmetic  product like you can get super super high quality photography done with AI just general background  images and supporting assets for blog post and illustrations and things like that iconography.

29:48 AI  is fantastic for that as well. So I like what I do is I will bring on a tech company. I'll assign an  aesthetic to them. Let's say it's a Renaissance theme and that's just like it's Renaissance  imagery with their product on overlapped on top and that's kind of like their aesthetic,  right? It's like this old age kind of whatever neo renaissance.

30:06 I can set up a system for them  in AI to be able to replicate and build images out in that style for them to use on their blog  posts and that's all very easy to do. So AI for that sense is really good with the branding side  and creating these cohesion between assets. Yeah. But it's not so good at other things. Now break  down a little bit more the AI agency like what what would that look like?

30:26 Let's say I you own  that agency. I come to you. What need do I have and what solution do you want? Yeah, absolutely.  So let's say like for example you want to build out in your case I'll give you a specific case  like you want to teach other aspiring YouTubers how to do what you've done you know get hundreds  of thousands of subscribers you want to build this very comprehensive system with resources and  connecting class members and things like that to each other you could go to cloud and do that right  like you

30:50 could maybe get something done but like you're going to probably hit a point if you're not  super technical and you've never actually launched a full product yourself with development you're  probably going to hit a point where you just get stopped or you get in these like vicious endless  loops of like trying to have claw troubleshoot and you're just burning through tokens and spending  so much money on tokens, right?

31:08 All these things happen all the time. You don't hear about it,  but like everyone runs into this issue that's non-technical. Instead of you doing that, why  don't you just hire someone that they have they have actual developers on staff? So when they  actually need developers to plug in to the AI, they can do that, but they can they know how to  leverage AI to get that thing up in like a month, right?

31:31 Or like a couple of weeks. And so for  you, it's like, okay, money is not really an issue. So you're like, I might as well just  have someone who knows what they're doing, who knows how to leverage these tools at the  right time, at the right place, in the right way, but also has the resources in house to be able to  have people that oversee this to make sure it's all done up to par, right?

31:46 Like security is up  to par, payment payment management is up to par, all that sort of stuff. And I have a resource to  go to if something breaks. So that's where like that's where you would hire somebody like that.  And I think that that is the future of agencies inevitably. It's not going to be like individuals  building their own software. I don't think it'll be companies building their own software.

32:04 I think  it'll be hiring someone that uses AI to get it done at a tenth of the time, but done well,  right? And so that's where these AI agencies, I think, are going to plug in. They're already  they're already popping up everywhere. So, what would you be able to charge for either one  of those? Probably a lot. And you need to charge a lot because tokens are not cheap currently, and I  don't think they're going to get much cheaper.

32:21 So, that's the that's kind of the unspoken thing  about this is like, yeah, it's free. you're doing it yourself, but a lot of people are spending  thousands of dollars a month on tokens and running into the limits and stuff. So, you'll need to  charge a lot. If I were to give a range, it would be somewhere like if I were to do it, it'd be  somewhere in the $10 to $20,000 a month range.

32:38 If I did like a retainer for for people. Yeah. Now,  a lot of people do don't charge subscriptions, so it's going to be oneoff pricing, which could  be anything depending on the scope of work. what productiz agencies right now are like don't  tickle your fancy but you see out there in the world that are very successful that other people  could copy.

32:56 So Offmanu is one of them that does that does more of like development and design if  you want something built like that they're doing they're doing pretty well they've done it pretty  well. Hunter Hammonds runs that we're buddies he's a cool guy they they run a really cool operation  have a really talented team. What's his name? You would know who exactly who I'm talking about.

33:14 Dang  it. M but they run one for copywriting actually, which is a huge opportunity right now because AI  is so dang good at copywriting that you could take something like that and scale it to the moon  and back and not have to hire too many people. Everyone needs it. Like it's sort of Oh, Alex  Lieberman, you you know who that is, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

33:38 Yeah. So, we we had a chat  uh he like pinged me on D on DMs. He was like, "Hey, can we hop on? I'm thinking about building  like a productized copywriting agency. And then we had that chat and then I swear like two months  later he was like just crushing it with it, you know? And I think they do more than that  now. But there's another one right now called Viral Cuts.

33:59 I think they're still around. Yeah,  I know them. Yeah. Yeah. So they that's a Hunter Hammond's thing as well. So they do it for short  short videos for content creators like yourself, which is obviously a huge industry right now. Um,  so they take your long form videos and clip them up and cut them into into different short form  clips that you can leverage and uh that does really well.

34:21 YouTube thumbnails, I can't think of  the name, but there's somebody that does YouTube thumbnails as a as a subscription, which is one of  the best use cases for it because I agree. Unlike branding, which is really a one-off thing, you get  to capture that revenue. Great. But that may not reoccur. Things like short-term video, short form  videos, podcast editing or thumbnail design is is a reoccurring need.

34:44 Yeah. So those those type of  things do really well and you can keep going on and on and on, but there's a lot of justification  for making 10 to 20 thumbnails per video cuz finally AB testing is now native YouTube. So  we're making tons of thumbnails per video. Oh, sure. And it never stops. like we might make new  ones a month after it's been published just to see if we can fire it back up again.

35:04 And it  was a good business model before AI. Like I I pushed that before even AI was really a thing.  But now with AI, it's even more so. Like the the the ability for you to scale now is wilder than  it ever has been before. Like if you were to talk about thumbnail design 5 years ago, like a team  of two or three people could crank out hundreds of thumbnails a day if they needed to, right?

35:24 So  these are loweffort, lowcost, lowrisk startups. you can just spin up a website tomorrow, figure  out how to get distribution, and then you're set, right? Like there's service based I love service  based businesses because there's not there's not that like risk of if it fails, okay, so what? It's  basically just a website and maybe a couple of like processes that I set up, you know, it's not  yeah anything crazy.

35:44 So Brett, I think I'm out of questions, but this has been excellent. Thank  you for your time. Where can people find you if they want to find you? Yeah, I just saw X. Um,  I think it's Brett2T's from DJ from Newjo. Yeah, Brett from DJ. Okay. Yeah, thanks Brett.  Thank you. 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 Ker