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.
My guest this week tried eight different AI businesses in six months while he was still working a full-time job. The list included a WordPress plugin, AI product photos, AI profile pictures, and a custom AI children’s book. But it wasn’t until the ninth idea that something really took off. Three and a half years later it does over $1 million in annual recurring revenue at gross margins above 90%, and he runs it with his high school best friend and his oldest son.
His name is Aaron Edwards, and his company is DocsBot, which builds AI agents that answer customer support questions for businesses. The part I think you should copy is what his partners are doing with it. People with no coding background are charging small businesses around $2,000 to set up one of these agents and $500 to $1,000 a month to keep it running. Aaron’s 19-year-old son, fresh out of high school, just signed a local contractor who told him the system could save him over $100,000 a year. He doesn’t know how to code either.
If you want to learn more, the full conversation is on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
What You’re Selling:
Every business with customers gets the same questions over and over. What’s your return policy? Will this part fit my model? What are the specs on this unit? Somebody on payroll answers those by email, live chat, or phone, and Aaron says a well-built AI agent can handle 70-80% of them on its own. When it gets stuck, it hands the conversation to a human.
Most small business owners have no interest in learning new software, no matter how simple it is. As Aaron put it, they’re busy installing water heaters. They need someone local who can look at their problem, set up the agent, and keep it working. That someone is you. Your startup costs are about $20 a month for ChatGPT or Claude, plus $50 to $150 a month per client for a platform like DocsBot, which has a partner program built for exactly this.
Step 1: Pick a Niche With a Real Support Load
Aaron’s best-fit customers are companies big enough to have a support team. Manufacturers are his favorite. He has clients selling lighting, construction panels, and generators, all with thick product manuals full of spec tables and customers constantly asking whether a product will work for their use case. That’s ideal material for an AI agent. Pick one industry and go deep. Your pitch, your demo, and your case studies all get sharper when every client looks the same.
Step 2: Find Businesses Already Feeling the Pain
Aaron likes two lead sources. First, use a tool like BuiltWith to find every website running an old-style help widget like ‘Help Scout’. Those companies already have customers asking questions and a knowledge base you can build on. Second, search job boards and LinkedIn for companies hiring customer support reps. They have the ticket volume and they’ve already set aside budget for a salary. You’re offering a cheaper option that scales without new hires.
You can hand most of this research to Claude or ChatGPT. Ask it to find manufacturers in your area that have a knowledge base on their site but no chatbot, then track down the right decision-maker and their contact info.
Once you have five or six clients paying you every month, the business stops being about building bots and starts being about keeping everyone happy. That means tracking who’s up for renewal, booking check-in calls, and making sure no new lead slips through while you’re busy.
HighLevel runs all of that from one dashboard with your CRM, booking calendars, automated follow-ups, and text and email campaigns. And since you can white-label it, it becomes another line item you can offer clients who already trust you. My readers get 30 days free at gohighlevel.com/tkopod.
Step 3: Build the Demo Before You Pitch
DocsBot connects directly to Claude and ChatGPT, so you can tell your AI to scrape a prospect’s website and help docs, build an agent trained on their content, and generate a demo link. Your first message to that business owner includes a working bot that already answers questions about their own products. You’re selling something that’s already built, and they can test it in 30 seconds.
Step 4: Reach Out in Ways People Remember
Aaron ranked outreach channels by how well they work. In person is the best by far, whether that’s your chamber of commerce or an industry conference. A phone call comes next, then a cold text, and cold email lands at the bottom. You don’t need to be an AI expert to make these calls. You just need to know a little more than the person you’re talking to.
If I were doing this, I’d go further. When a single client is worth $2,000 up front plus recurring revenue, you can afford to spend real money standing out. Mail the decision-maker a box of donuts. DoorDash their office some tacos with your demo link attached. Everybody’s inbox is buried in cold email, and a small, unexpected gesture is what gets you remembered.
Aaron proved this- he didn’t want to spend $25,000 on a conference booth, so he had AI help him design and 3D print a little talking robot that mounts to his shoulder with magnets. It cost about $50. At one conference it pulled in 10 to 20 leads and two paying customers.
Step 5: Price on Value & Walk Them Through the Math
A good rule of thumb is to deliver 10 times the value of what you charge, so do the math with the owner out loud. Aaron estimates each support ticket eats about five minutes of an employee’s time, and a support rep costs around $20 an hour at the low end. A company handling 5,000 tickets a month is paying for roughly 400 hours of labor, which is over $8,000. If your agent handles 60% to 70% of that, you’re saving them $5,000 or more a month for $500. That’s an easy yes.
Get the numbers before you name a price. (Aaron’s son was ready to quote the contractor $500 a month on a system that could save him six figures a year, and Aaron had to slow him down.)
Step 6: Let AI Run the Monthly Retainer
Each month, you ask Claude or ChatGPT to pull your client’s stats and conversation logs, analyze them, build a PDF report with your logo on it, and email it over. The report flags questions the agent couldn’t answer, so you can tell the client exactly which support doc they’re missing. They see the value every month, the bot keeps getting better, and you barely touch it.
The Numbers: Land 10 clients at a $2,000 setup and $500 a month. That’s $20,000 up front and $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue, against roughly $1,500 a month in software if every client is on a $150 plan. Get to 30 clients and you’re at $15,000 a month in recurring revenue before a single setup fee. There are over 30 million businesses in America, and Aaron believes this will still be a wide-open opportunity 10 years from now.
Pick your niche this week, build one demo for a business you already know, and go show it to the owner in person.
Again, if this AI bot sales hustle interests you, listen to the full walk-through on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts., and by the end, you will have everything you need to start bringing in real money.
Lastly, I'm always looking for cool, unique businesses to share on my podcasts. If you have one and are comfortable sharing your journey, drop your info here!
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.
