Sounds Too Simple, But One Client Pays $15K/Month Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 The smallest one was 10 grand a month.  The medium plan was 15 grand a month. And the highest was 25 grand a month. And they  ended up closing at 15 grand [music] a month. We were looking at the 25 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 Hormosi.

00:18 You're not actually supposed  to pick that." This took their employees about an [music] hour per proposal. It cut it down to  about like more or less 5 minutes. Ask for money and you get advice. But ask for [music] advice and  you get money twice. I don't want people watching this to be like, "Oh, he had a rich uncle. How  nice." Right. No. Yeah. No.

00:33 Never met him. [music] 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, [music] 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 [music] a month.

01:00 No office, no employees, no rich uncle,  no connections, just college students. And one of them [music] dropped out of BYU to do this. And  by the end of this episode, you're going to know the exact text they [music] 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.

01:13 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.

01:36 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 I funny enough, like I said, I was listening to your podcast with Corey Ganon  and he talked about doing an AI assessment for companies and like a light bulb just struck.

01:56 I 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?"

02:15 So we  kind of moved to like mid-market companies and from there from doing the AI assessments  we're like well why don't we just become their AI team rather than selling oneoff 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?

02:34 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 Brandon. 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?"

03:01 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?

03:21 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.

03:43 That's such like an obvious answer, but it's not.  I'm not cutting you down. It's the answer. Yes. Like I don't care if 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.

03:58 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?

04:13 Are you sending text, LinkedIn DMs, Facebook messages? Like so it started off with  just texts and so just like literally sending out IME messages 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."

04:33 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 a funny quote by Pitull  where he says, "Ask for money and you get advice, but ask for advice and you get money twice." And  so it's pretty good. I I've never heard that. Mr. Worldwide strikes again.

04:52 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.

05:09 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 them and get them 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.

05:30 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 old. I'm 23 as well. Okay.  And are you all in in college right now? Yeah, Carter and I are full-time. I dropped out. I'm  working full-time on on this. Okay. All right. Love it. Hey, if you like this episode, please hit  subscribe real quick.

05:51 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 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.

06:10 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. And  it was like $1,000, you know. And from there, we were kind of like, "Where do you see bottlenecks  in your company?"

06:29 He gave us a few areas. 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, and be like, "Okay, Chris, you said these were the bottlenecks.

06:51 Expound on  that." And then we just got more information, have an AI noteaker in there. And then from there,  we just kind of gathered all this information and made this clean, simple presentation for  their seuite on ranking their AI opportunities, how much ROI it would give them based off of  what the employees and the seuite had told us. And then from there, we priced our retainer at  either the smallest one was 10 grand a month, the medium plan was 15 grand a month, and the  highest was 25 grand a month.

07:17 And they ended up closing at 15 grand a month. Where did you get the  the nerves of steel to come up with that pricing structure? Completely transparent with you. We  would have been so happy at 10 grand a month. And I've done doorto-d dooror sales before. I 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.

07:36 Let's just throw up a 15 grand and a 25 grand 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, like send us examples of the workpapers 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.

07:58 And so they get really excited during the call like, oh,  they've kind of already solved the problem. But getting back to the the question is we just  kind of threw out those prices so we could anchor high. But um 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 grand plan and we were like we're like okay you're like I'm sorry sir that's  actually not available that's just a price anchor I [clears throat] learned about it from Alex  Hormosi you're

08:30 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 grand 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.

08:48 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 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.

09:08 Okay. So, it's not like I don't want people watching this to be like, "Oh, he had a rich  uncle. How nice." Right. No. Yeah. Okay. Never met. Did you charge a thousand for the assessment  as well? Mhm. 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?

09:29 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 it we like categorize 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.

09:49 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 a priced 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.

10:12 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 five minutes. And so we built this demo with the examples that  they sent to us of how they went through it.

10:28 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 seauite. Were they just like floored? Oh, you should have  seen their faces.

10:47 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 3575 and with our first try with the automation and  all the info we gathered we ended at 3375 and they can adjust the pricing in here but yeah so  them seeing it live was like shock factor for them.

11:16 Yeah. What was the revenue of this company?  They're doing about 30 million a year. Okay. I'm assuming like boomerowned or close to it. Been  in business for a while. Yeah. Yeah. The owner is 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 two and a half months in.

11:33 Yeah. So this was like your big break at 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 two more clients around this 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 dollars in revenue a year.

12:02 And we are going to do an assessment with  them. And we're very confident that once we show them 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? [laughter] Move to LinkedIn, right?  LinkedIn gives you 20 fresh connections every day.

12:22 And so you just go on LinkedIn, 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 over  warm outreach. Yeah.

12:39 You get them on a call. Always seek to get them on a call. Y 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?

13:01 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. Quick word about today's sponsor, Beehive.

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13:59 A quick community post is easy to write, and the feed is easy to scroll. So now you can  keep your short form and your long form in the same place instead of renting that space on social  media. Get more juice from everything you produce. The links in the description below. Now, I know a  lot of people have trouble with the ask questions about what they're struggling with in their  business part because it's a good enough question, but oftentimes it it's not a creative enough  question to get their gears turning.

14:24 Cuz I've had this these conversations. It's like, "What  are you struggling with in your business?" Oh, I don't know. As opposed to like, "When was the  last time you had a sleepless night because of something that happened in your business?" And  it's like, "Oh, this. What happened that?" And then that just opens the floodgates of all the uh  of all the things that they're struggling with.

14:46 Whereas if you just come straight at it, they're  like, I don't know, you know, find more customers. Like they give you lame answers. 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.

15:02 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 one step deeper.

15:34 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. Yep.

15:47 You record the whole thing, you upload it to Claude,  you put your own brain power 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 work better to follow up on this or something like that. So  if not, it becomes just followup and just chasing the rabbit.

16:13 Backf fact, right? Book a call from  a call every time. Exactly. It's a true principal 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?

16:30 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?

16:55 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.

17:14 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. You have a lot  more leverage. 100%. We started where we're at and now what 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

17:39 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.

18:05 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 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.

18:26 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,  start sending those messages.

18:39 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? Like probably more. More.  [laughter] 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 Ganon 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

19:14 apparent that they're at the they're  using it as like a search bar side of things. Like they're 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.

19:33 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 lb, 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.

19:55 Exactly. It's when we think like what do I know? Who am I? Don't assume  that people are better than AI. Yeah. 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 that stuff alone  is more than what 90% of people touching AI are doing.

20:18 Like it may seem normal to us or because  I've listened to your podcast for the past two 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 Chad GPT?"

20:42 And I  think three 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 Chad GPD. He's not making  agents or anything. Like yeah, just don't assume. No, do not assume at all.

21:06 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.

21:27 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 you need to be on claude for sure.

21:49 I would say preferably cloud code or codecs  and honestly the 8020 of it is you need to know how to use those tools and how to connect like  MCPs and APIs. If you know those two things, you have a lot of weight that you can throw around  and things that you can do in the business because that unlocks a whole different world of  things that you can do.

22:05 Yeah, guys, in case you haven't heard me talk about this yet, these three  guys, James, Brendon, and Carter, they're doing AI consulting. I have a community and a course and a  whole like 300 plus 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.

22:29 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 also has database to store information.

22:52 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 Composeio and then it's one single MCP to your clock.

23:15 And  so like I have five Gmails connected to my one Composeio and it's one MCP for clock. That's  cool. Oh, I've been looking for that actually. It's amazing. I was going to say because  you probably have lots of emails that you work with. Oh, I've got like seven and  I'm over here like disconnecting MCPs like a Neanderthal and reconnecting because  like go search for this now search for this.

23:40 Yep. Yeah. That'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 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 we just have a simple  survey that we send out to them that kind of identifies the bottlenecks, what softwares they're  using and then that's before the interview.

24:07 And so if we can gather as much ammo as we  can before we go to claude and say, "Okay, what are the opportunities?" Let's identify what's  possible, what does that mean for them ROI-wise based off of what they told me, how how much hours  they spend on XYZ task, how much they get paid, or you know, how much they're paying this specific  team. There's no special prompt.

24:23 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 in the in the end. Okay. Yeah.  Yeah, I would just add to that uh something that's helpful to me because like 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 five-step process to automating things.

24:49 And so  you can tell your claude, hey, act like Elon Musk and apply his five-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 Herozi here. How would you draft this um proposal to a company?

25:12 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 going to get the average, right? It's going to get the average of all the  advice out there on the internet about the one thing.

25:33 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 you want to learn more? Yes. So, you can find us at certified  partners.com. All three of us are on LinkedIn. We're all active posting a lot on there. Also,  the LinkedIn company page, Certified AI Partners.

25:52 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.

26:07 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 tkos.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 Kerner