Happy Thursday!

In case you forgot, I’m that guy (@thekoerneroffice on the socials) that you probably found in a short form video talking about random business ideas or from one of the podcasts I’ve done. Chris Koerner: Dad of 4, husband of 16 years and proud Texan. I’ve started 75+ business (3 worth over $10m) and give away all of my learnings for free in a once/week email. Bookmark this toolkit with 1,000+ free business plans!

And 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.

A buddy of mine named Brandon flew to Texas a few months ago and we sat down on camera to brainstorm business ideas that an AI agent could build from scratch. Then he went home to actually try them. A month later, he came back with $8,000 a month in monthly recurring revenue from one of the experiments.

An AI agent found the customers, built the product, designed the outreach materials, and mailed them. A part-time sales guy closed the deals. Brandon ran the whole operation from his phone over iMessage.

I am only going to talk about the most successful idea of the three- if you want the full conversation, to learn even more, go listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

His Business that Worked: AI-Built Websites for Local Businesses, Sold as a Marketing Retainer

Step 1: Set Up an AI Agent

Brandon uses OpenClaw, an AI agent platform that connects to pretty much any model out there, including Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. He integrated it into iMessage so it lives in an app he already uses constantly. (Frictionless access means you actually use the thing.) Set yours up wherever you already spend your time, whether that's iMessage, Slack, or email.

You’ll also want to connect it to Google Docs and Google Drive so it can deliver research and output somewhere useful.

Step 2: Scrape a Target List

Prompt your agent to find local businesses in your area that are listed on Google Maps but either have no website or have a clearly outdated one. Brandon focused on Utah and landed on landscaping and HVAC companies, but you also could do: plumbing, electrical, cleaning companies, pool upkeep, roofing, anything.

Ask the agent to pull name, business name, email, and phone number from each Google Business profile. Brandon's agent found 350 businesses and pulled all the contact info without him opening a single browser tab.

Step 3: Build the Websites

Prompt your agent to build a simple one-page site for each business using publicly available data. Brandon told his agent to keep token costs low, so it defaulted to more efficient models for the actual builds. Total token cost for 350 websites came out to roughly $10 to $20. Thats essentially a handful of cents per site- it’s a crazy time we live in.

Tell the agent to host them on test URLs rather than custom domains at this stage. You don’t want to pay for hosting on businesses that have not agreed to anything yet. The sites just need to be live and accessible via a link. Brandon's sites included basic service descriptions, contact info, and a click-to-call button. Just good enough to impress; that's all you need at this point.

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Step 4: Mail the Postcards

This is the part you’ll probably want to skip because it costs real money and requires real effort. Don’t skip it though- it’ll make you stand out above all the cold emails everyone else is sending.

There are simple ways to do this. Brandon used a service called Lob (lob.com), a direct mail API that lets you send physical postcards programmatically. He prompted his agent to design the cards and handle the send through Lob. The front of each card said something like: "We built you a free website. Scan the QR code to see your new site." The back had his company's contact info.

Each postcard cost a little over a dollar. The agent sent 350, so the total spend was around $400. Of the 341 that were successfully delivered, roughly 20% of recipients scanned the QR code. That's 68 people who voluntarily went and looked at a website an AI built specifically for their business. Those 68 became warm leads.

Every business owner in America is drowning in cold emails and AI-generated LinkedIn messages promising them leads and Google rankings. A physical postcard with a custom QR code that links to a site built specifically for their business? That cuts through in a way a cold email never will. It signals that you spent real money, that you are real, and that you care. People respond to that differently than they respond to another "I can get you on page one of Google" email of the week.

Just like I’ve been preaching this last year, the more everything turns towards AI, the more the pendulum swings toward offline. The easy move is mass emails or cold texts. But what actually works is the one that costs a little something and requires “showing up”.

Step 5: Call the Scanners

Brandon had a part-time salesperson work through the full list of 350, but the priority was anyone who had scanned the QR code. Of the 68 scanners, roughly 14 converted to paying clients. With a handful of closes from his broader cold call list, and he ended up around 20 customers total.

The pitch is simple: "Your website is live and ready. It's yours free as long as you sign up for our marketing package." Brandon's packages start at a few hundred dollars a month. The average revenue per customer came out to around $400 a month. Twenty customers at that rate is $8,000 in monthly recurring revenue, from a $400 postcard spend and a few hundred dollars in token costs.

What to Sell:

You do not need to build a full agency overnight. Start with one clean offer: basic SEO, Google Business profile management, monthly content updates, or work with AI to come up with another offer. Price it between $300 and $700 a month. The website is the hook, and the retainer is whatever service you provide.

Your Week-One Action Plan:

Total cash outlay to run this yourself is somewhere is around $400- $600 depending on list size. Brandon's total experiment spend was roughly that, plus some hours of time and a part-time sales guy making calls. The return was $8,000 in monthly recurring revenue from about 20 clients.

He didn’t have some unfair advantage- just an AI agent, a phone, and a willingness to do three hard things at once instead of one easy thing. That gap, between the people who do the hard version and the people who default to cold email, is where all the money is sitting right now.

And again-if you’re inspired to do the same, and want the full conversation, go listen to it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Let me know after you’ve done you’ve gotten your first client from the postcard!

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.