Happy Thursday!

Really quick before I dive in, I get this question all the time: “How do I actually make money with all these AI tools?” Thats why I built Playmakers- my AI agency program where I teach you how to charge local businesses $500-$5,000 a month to set up and manage AI for them. You get three live calls a week, plug-and-play automation templates you can deploy for clients on day one, a 5 Day First Client Challenge, and my personal lead lists with businesses in your area ready to connect.120+ people are already in the community building agencies right now. Go to playmakersai.com and check it out.

Okay, let’s get into it!

Nine months ago, Sandy Lee had never touched AI. She had a full-time job, three kids under the age of eight, and a habit of applying to jobs she wasn't remotely qualified for. Today she makes over $52,000 a month.

She didn’t get there by being an AI expert. She got there by selling first and figuring out the rest with AI. Anyone can do this. I want to walk you through exactly how it works so you can start this week. And if you get fired up about this idea like I did, find out more listening to our conversation on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Sandy's first client paid her $3,000 a month for SEO. She knew nothing about SEO.

When she searched Upwork, she noticed that anything labeled "AI automation" or "AI SEO" was brutally competitive. So she dropped that buzzword. She searched plain "SEO" instead. Same skill, far fewer applicants, because everyone else was crowding into the AI keyword.

Do the same. Pick a service businesses already spend money on, like SEO, email marketing, content, or lead generation. Then describe it in the least trendy way you can. The boring keyword is where the money is.

Sandy sent seven applications before she landed that first client. She had no testimonials and no portfolio in the traditional sense. What she did have was her own history. She went to ChatGPT, told it everything she had done in past jobs, and asked how to connect that experience to automation. Waiting tables, retail, whatever it was, all of it became relevant when framed the right way.

Stop treating "no experience" as a wall. Feed your background into an AI tool and ask it to translate your past into the language of the service you are selling… then apply.

Sandy did not build a working system and then go looking for someone to buy it. She pitched the idea first, saw what the client actually needed, and built it afterward- once they were interested. If you build first, you have spent hours on something no one actually asked for. If you pitch first, the client tells you exactly what to make.

Get on a call or send a pitch describing what you can do before a single thing is built and let the conversation shape the product, not the other way around.

This is what won Sandy the job over people with real experience. She recorded a two to three minute Loom video walking the client through how she would help them. You can use any screen recording tool- but Loom is pretty solid and you can make free videos up to 5 minutes.

She re-recorded a few times until it sounded right, then sent it. Two to three minutes was the sweet spot: long enough to show she understood the problem, short enough that a busy owner would actually watch it.

The video does two things. It lets the client feel your energy before they hire you, and it makes you look like someone who takes the work seriously. Sandy even had AI map out a workflow that looked impressive on screen. She barely understood it herself at the time. The client saw something that looked handled and thought, "She has got this, I will pay her."

Record a short video for every serious pitch. Practice it until you no longer hate it, and then send it.

This playbook gets you the client. It does not touch the follow-ups, the booking, the leads going cold while you're stuck at your day job. Landing the work and running the operation are two different jobs, and the second one is where most people quietly drown.

HighLevel handles that second job. CRM, automated follow-ups, booking calendars, text and email campaigns, all in one place. The system chases leads and books calls for you, so the part you actually enjoy stays the part you spend your time on. You can also white-label it and resell it in your niche, which is exactly the kind of extra income stream Sandy stacks on top of her client work.

My readers get 30 days free at gohighlevel.com/tkopod.

Sandy’s not an engineer. She used AI tools, with Claude Code as her favorite, to build the actual deliverables. Then she learned just enough to talk about them intelligently.

Her method for learning was almost funny in how simple it is. Right before she needed to explain something, she would ask the AI tool how to do it, read the answer, let it sink in, and then get on the call or hit record.

Use AI to build the thing, then learn the thing right before you have to deliver or explain it. You do not need to master the field. You need to stay one step ahead of the conversation. People and companies are paying for help because they don’t have time to do it themselves.

Once Sandy's SEO work was clearly getting results, she went back to that same client and raised her rate from $3,000 to $5,500 a month.

She did it by expanding the scope. She had automated blog content in English and Japanese, so she offered to add Spanish and Korean. For the client, it was a bargain, because doing it fresh would have cost double. For Sandy, it was mostly copy and paste.

Prove the results first, then expand the offer. Raising your price is easiest when you are adding something the client can clearly see is worth more than it costs you to deliver.

This is how Sandy went from chasing clients to having them come to her: She started making YouTube videos. When she had only 200 subscribers, she was already referencing those videos in her cold outreach, because they gave her authority. People could check her out and see that she knew her material. Then the inbound started. Companies emailed asking her to consult, to be their marketing officer, to teach their teams.

Her filming trick is the same as her client trick. If she didn’t know a topic, she asked her AI tool how to teach it, learned it, and hit record. She also copied video formats that were already working instead of trying to be original. When you are starting out, copying what works beats reinventing the wheel every time.

Publish now, before you feel like an authority. Reference your own content in your outreach. You do not need to go viral- the right hundred people matter more than a random million views.

You are allowed to figure it out as you go.

Sandy treats the feeling of imposter syndrome as a green light. If you feel it, you are stretching past your current pay grade. She thinks about it in a way worth stealing: on their deathbed, people regret the things they did not try, not the things they did. You either win or you learn.

So:
Pick the boring keyword.
Send the seven applications.
Pitch before you build.
Record the video.
Let AI handle the technical part.
Deliver, raise your price, and start publishing.

And again- if you get fired up about this idea like I did, find out more listening to our conversation on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Have a great week!

Chris

P.S. I share deep dives on business ideas and complete playbooks three times a week on YouTube and every podcast platform.