Transcription
Starting a one-person business with Claude is the biggest opportunity for 2026. On one end, you have people literally building billion-dollar companies by themselves, but on the other end, you have everyday regular 9-to-5 employees making their first $10,000 online just using Claude. And I know by now you've probably seen a ton of YouTube videos on how to make money online with AI. But let me ask you, after all those hours watching these videos, how much money have you made? Zero, right? And you're not alone.
And it's because almost every single creator on YouTube is teaching you the wrong thing. These guys are so obsessed with the technicals of how to opening terminals, making things super complicated, but nobody has time to watch a 4-hour course that doesn't even teach you how to get clients. So, in this video, I'm going to show you the exact opposite and walk you through step by step exactly how you can get your first high-paying client in the AI space in the next 30 days. And I know this works because I've been teaching this method for the last 2 years.
Sandy, one of my clients, for example, was literally just a 9-to-5 employee insurance sales manager. And within the last 6 months, she was able to grow her YouTube channel to over 38,000 subscribers. And she went from a complete beginner to AI, not even knowing what Claude was. And now she's making over $30,000 with her AI side hustle. And this is honestly multiple times of what she makes at her full-time job. And for me, I used to be a regular 9-to-5 employee, too, working in tech sales. But I was able to escape. Got my YouTube channel to over 380,000 subscribers. And now I make over $100,000 per month using AI.
And the best part of this all is when you start your own AI business, you can do this online. You can work from anywhere in the world. I'm filming this video for you in Vietnam. And just this morning, I had time to just train Muay Thai. So, as long as you have an internet connection, a laptop, you are good to go. So, I'll show you exactly how you can start your one-person business and potentially escape your 9-to-5. But first, let me show you how big the opportunity is building a one-person business with Claude.
So, it's no secret in 2026, AI is probably the biggest business opportunity and narrative, period. And this reminds me a lot of when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone and the App Store. Back in the day, this was revolutionary, right? It's not just a phone that Apple created. They created an entire ecosystem that companies can build on top of. So in the App Store, you have apps like WhatsApp, Google, Poly Market, Cap Cut, you know, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, all these different apps. Airbnb, Uber, right? These weren't really possible until the App Store came about. And these billion-dollar companies are built on top of the App Store. But not only that, there are a lot of other small independent solo entrepreneurs building calculator apps and these random tools and still making millions of dollars.
So when I look at Claude, I think of it in a very similar way. Claude itself is an ecosystem. It's an AI that allows you to do things that wasn't before possible. And so people are building their startups on top of it. You see all these VC-backed companies spending millions of dollars building on top of it. You see solo entrepreneurs, one-person businesses, and lean small agencies also build on top of it as well. So think of it like a platform that you build your business on top of. And this is the future for every business. If you're not building on Claude or any other AI tools, you're going to be left behind.
So I've been helping people start their AI businesses for quite a while now. And I've learned a lot of people like the idea of being an entrepreneur, but they always have some things that are holding them back. So what are these things that prevent people from getting started? Why are they afraid? And how can you overcome them? Right? Some people don't start because they say, "Oh, I can't get into AI because I'm not technical or I don't know how to code." But it doesn't actually matter the method I'm going to show you. Second thing is everyone's already using AI. It's already too late. The reality is less than 1% of the population in the world have even downloaded Claude. Like we are in the early days. The last thing is I don't have any client testimonials. I don't have any proof. Who's going to pay me any money if I, you know, I just never done this before?
And that's also a fair point, but you have to understand that because Claude is so new and it's a brand new ecosystem that really only popped off a couple months ago, we are in the early stages. So if you look at the adoption curve of any technology, whether it's internet, cell phones, uh, now AI, we pass the innovator phase where all the nerds, you know, who try all the new tech, they they've already like used it. We're getting into the early adopter phase, meaning more business-savvy people are just beginning to understand it. Everyday regular people are starting to use it in their everyday work and lives. But it's still early days. So this is exactly where we are. And because only less than 1% of the world population have even downloaded Claude, we are in the early days. Meaning if you start learning how to use it now, all the other guys that come on later, you can sell services and products to them because you are ahead of the curve.
So take Sandy for example, one of my clients who really got into this AI space around 5-6 months ago. In the beginning, she had no audience, no proof. She was just a 9-to-5 employee selling insurance, nothing related to AI. And by going through the process, which I'm about to show you in this video, she was able to go from zero to 36,000 subscribers on YouTube. Um, she's one of the fastest-growing females in the AI space. She went from zero dollars in AI to making over $30,000 a month in her AI business. And she's still working a 9-to-5 job all while doing this and taking care of her three kids. So, if someone who's extremely busy and has a 9-to-5 job and they have kids and they're able to pull this off, why not you?
And by the way, I want to let you know that I have a free 3-day live training where I'm going to walk you through exactly how you can be starting your business using AI. I'm going to show you exactly how to find your business idea, how to build a personal brand like Sandy did and get thousands of YouTube subscribers, and actually how to find clients, whether you create content to get them to come to you or whether you want to reach out to them to sell them different services. So, it's going to be a three-day live training event led by me. And I'm even going to do some live sales role plays so that if you ever get on the phone with a potential customer, I will show you exactly what to say and how to say it to get them to buy your products and services. Even if you don't have any social proof and you're just getting started. So, if you want to see me live on this 3-day live training, make sure to check the link in the description. Sign up before seats run out. Last time we had over a 1,000 people register and obviously we can't have too many people live. So secure your spot now and I will see you there.
So at this point you understand Claude is a major opportunity. But the next thing we will talk about is how do you actually start your business from scratch from zero even if you don't have much experience using AI. Now I want to first talk about why most people get stuck when it comes to picking a business idea. Right? In the beginning stages of entrepreneurship, you just have to pick an idea and commit. A lot of people are afraid that they might pick an idea that it's just not going to work. They need to know 100% for certain that this idea is going to work if I'm going to invest my time and money into it. The reality is if you want to be an entrepreneur, there's nothing there's no 100% guarantee, right? You can only check as many boxes as you can to increase the likelihood of success, which I will show you how, but nothing is guaranteed. So, you need to understand that first. Second is they're not sure why anyone would buy from them or take them seriously if you're starting from zero. And I will show you how I got my client Sandy, for example, to get her first client for $3,300 without any experience. Right? So, I'll show you that in a second. And the third reason why people don't do anything is they think, "Oh, there's too much competition and they just like, I'm going to give up and it's already saturated." And like I was saying before, how is it saturated if less than 1% of the world has even heard of Claude? Right? We are in the early stages.
Now, the easiest way to get started when it comes to finding your business idea is using the business opportunity matrix and there's going to be four quadrants, right? So, you can see on the x-axis, the line in the middle, you have low competition and high competition. On the y-axis, right, up and down, you have high demand, low demand. Okay? So, let's walk through these one by one. If you have something that is high competition, like a business opportunity, high competition, low demand, I call that the dead zone. There's no point entering that market because too many people are doing it and nobody wants to buy it, right? It's a horrible business idea. More to the left, you have low competition, low demand, meaning there's not a lot of competitors but not a lot of people buying. So, it's going to be too niche and difficult to make money. Now, you might say, "Okay, let's go for something higher demand but high competition." This is typically where beginners will copy other big creators or other businesses that already have a brand name. Problem is, yes, there is demand, right? But it's a bloody red ocean, meaning the competition is so high, it's hard for a beginner to break in.
So the clear solution is to find business opportunities that have high demand, low competition. And this is what we call a blue ocean. This is where you want to start, especially if you are a beginner because if there's high demand, everybody wants to buy it. Low competition, they look around, they don't see any options. So when they see you as an option, they don't really compare you to your neighbor or your next competitor because what competitors are there? And this is what I see in the AI space where literally people with just 9-to-5 jobs, they don't know anything about AI. They're getting started and they're convincing businesses to pay them thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars for some kind of AI automation or some kind of service. And understand, there are no experts in AI. We're all just figuring it out. I'm just figuring it out. All my clients are figuring it out. But then we are just ahead of the curve. And if you're selling to businesses, most businesses, they have no clue about any of this stuff, right? So you are ahead. If you're just one step ahead of them, you can sell them anything pretty much. And when demand is high, people, like I said, don't pay much attention to your previous success case studies because who has case studies about how to implement Claude into your business if Claude only became popular in the last couple of months? It's a fresh green field.
Okay, so Sandy, for example, no audience, no proof, 9-to-5 employee with three kids. That's how she started. And her first client actually came from Upwork. So she went on Upwork, she sent a bunch of Loom videos and there was this one company looking for AI automated SEO blogs. And she just made them a Loom video and said, "Hey, I can do the job for you. I, you know, I can do all this stuff. Let's get on a call." She got on a call with them and sold them. Now, I have another client, Allison. So, she recently quit her job to go all-in on her AI business. And she sent me a message the other day where she said, "Hey, Patrick, just want to say thank you. You know, I helped her with the sales and saved one of her deals." And she was able to sign this pretty big client. It's a multi-million dollar company for 23K upfront and 3.9K monthly recurring to maintain that system. And this is the first time she's actually doing it for a big company. And then that same month, just yesterday, she sent me another message. She said, "Hey, I just closed another deal for 28K using LinkedIn connections and your sales template, too." These people just had normal jobs like 6 months ago, and they figured out using the method I'm about to teach you.
And you might be wondering, "Okay, Patrick, so I'm seeing all this proof. Everyone's making money with AI within a couple of months. What's the secret?" And the secret is you want to sell before you build. So here are the common pitfalls when it comes to building a business using AI. People will typically build for months without getting a single customer. They try to make everything perfect because they're trying to build confidence to even reach out to somebody, send a Loom video, hit someone up on Upwork, right? I need the perfect system before I can talk to anybody. Or worse, they're just watching 4-hour courses on YouTube on how to build a website using AI instead of just talking to clients, right? I'm telling you, as a YouTuber myself, and I also make content on AI, those videos are pretty much a waste of time because yes, they teach you the technical aspects. Everybody understands the technical aspects at this point, right? What they don't understand is how do you actually get people to pay you money? Sure, you might watch a video of, "Oh, I'm going to help you build a website for $10,000." Realistically, 99.9% of people watching those videos don't even make a single dollar.
So, let's just reverse that and I will show you how to get the client and not just sell websites, but literally sell anything you want as long as it's related to AI. So, if you want to build your AI business, the most important thing in the beginning is you need to create an offer. So to explain this concept, we're going to use the offer triangle. An offer is essentially asking three questions. Number one, what is it that you sell? Is it an AI automation? Is it helping people create content using AI? Like what is the thing? Number two, who are you selling it to? Right? Who's your ideal customer? Is it a business? Are you helping other people escape their 9-to-5s? Are you helping solo entrepreneurs? Like who's going to buy the thing? Right? Sounds pretty obvious. And the last piece is pricing. Once you know your what and your who, how much do you want to charge? And I'll give you a hint. You do not want to charge by the hour. That's the worst way to charge. You charge by the result. And I will tell you in the AI space right now, the easiest thing to sell if you don't have any experience is going to be an AI-powered service. You might be wondering, okay, Patrick, what is that?
An AI-powered service is essentially just taking any service a human already does or does at their 9-to-5 job. It could be in marketing, sales, copywriting, building websites, administrative work, right? Literally anything a human does at their job. The magic of AI is that Claude now can pretty much do 90% of the work that a human can do. So, if you go to a business and you sell that and they can replace their employees, then you can sell this thing for, let's say, $2,000 a month, $5,000 a month, really depends on what you're selling. And if we go back to one of my clients, Allison, she sold one of her clients. It's an ERP system. I'm not going to go into the technicals of all that kind of stuff, but it's just manages the inventory for a store essentially. One-time payment, 23K upfront to just build the thing, then 3.9K every single month to maintain the thing. And that's not even including once they do a good job, all the new AI things that they're going to add into the business. And for Sandy, she started with just using Claude to create blogs. It's not even an AI automation, right? It's just an output, meaning they post a blog on their website, they get traffic, and they make money. And she just produces blogs every day, and that's all it is. So, she started at 3.3K producing blogs, you know, every day. And then it was so good that they upped the pay to $5,500 to create more. And again, like it doesn't have to be super technical. Technically, a human can make these blogs, but nowadays, Claude can do it better, faster, and cheaper.
Now, you might be thinking at this point, why would a company pay these kind of people when they can just do it themselves? The reality is majority of businesses don't want to do it themselves. They're busy and they have money. So, they're willing to pay for agencies or employees to do the actual work because they don't want to figure it out. They don't want to go on Claude watching all these videos like you are right now. So if you learn all these new AI tools, you can be the AI person and sell it to businesses. And the next question you might have from here is, okay, so what kind of AI service can I actually create? And this is where we're going to get into using a custom Claude skill I built for you called the AI Business Idea Generator. So the concept is this. I created a free download which you can get using the link in the description. You want to take this Claude skill, you double-click it, you install it into your Claude, and it will help you find your business idea. When we have this idea, I will show you how to sell it before you even build anything. Okay? Sell before you build. All you need is this one-pager, two-pager, and you're ready to get your first client.
So, here's how it's going to work. You're going to open your Claude. You can use chat, but I would recommend using Claude Co-work. You type in `/PDAI business ID generator`, which is a skill you should have installed into your Claude, and you press enter. So, what's going to happen is it's going to ask you a series of questions to help you with your offer triangle, figuring out what to sell, who to sell it, and what price point to sell it at. So, as you can see, once I entered it in, it's going to ask you a series of questions to help you figure this out. And the beautiful part of this is we want to make sure that you're entering a business that you actually want to do. So, it's going to pick up your skills, knowledge, and experience. Combine that with what's trending in AI, put it together to figure out what is the best way uniquely for you to be making money with AI. And I already went ahead and did an example for you just to save time. This hypothetical example, let's say I have one of my clients who, you know, is a marketer. He wants to get into the YouTube game, wants to use AI to help people build their personal brands on YouTube. And using the skill, we found that hey, for this particular person with the unique skills, knowledge, and experience that they have, he's going to help VC-funded founders, he's going to help VC-backed founders turn the knowledge in their head into content on YouTube that helps them raise money, win deals, get more clients, and just overall build their personal brand so they can recruit more employees, right? It's going to go through the offer triangle. What is it you're selling, who, and pricing, right? Okay. And so this example, it's helping people basically create a YouTube content machine for VC founders. Pricing can be 1.5K, 3K, 6K. It can even go higher. Really depends on who you're talking to. And I know this offer works because I actually have friends that do this. And uh, they'll charge money for the thumbnails, for the scripts, uh, for the ideations of which ideas to even pick, the editing, and then posting. So all these aspects, you can actually do it manually with a human or you can use AI. For example, for me, when I write my YouTube scripts, I'm not writing it by my hand. I'm using AI to create a majority of it. And if you did that for other people and AI is doing 90% of the work and you're coming up with the ideas and getting AI to like write the scripts and you're selling it to the client, they're going to pay because they don't want to do it themselves and you are the expert in this.
So, it's going to go through like what are you selling? Um, how you're going to use AI to make the process so much easier. And when I say AI-powered services, this is what I mean. These are all jobs that can be done without AI. But if you use Claude for the research, you can use tools like Descript or other editing tools to and CapCut to edit it faster. And then for the writing, obviously you can use Claude as well because it's going to go into the pains of the audience, why they would buy something like this, who the competitors are. It's going to give you links to their profile. So you can see, okay, like this is how much they're charging, what can it do different, who are the content creators in the space that you should take inspiration from, and then a general pricing, right? And you don't want to trust AI 100% off the bat. Think of it like it's going to get you 70-80% there in a general direction, but you still have to look at it and and really think like, okay, does this make sense? Is it realistic? Who are the competitors? And really go through all the um competitors that it gives you so that you have an idea of whether this idea is going to work. And it's also going to give you a 7-day action plan on what you need to do to actually get the client. So, if you want that skill that will help you map out your entire business idea, check the link in the description to get that for free. And I want you to understand that when you go through this process, you're going to have a general idea of what to sell, who to sell it to, what price to charge. And from here, you don't have to build a single thing. Okay? All you need to do next is get a meeting with a potential client. And if they pay you money and agree to your terms, then you do all the building. So you don't waste time. Focus on sales.
So I'll give you an example. Uh, one of my clients, Melissa, who just joined the Founder X program, which is the program that I coach people through. Uh, she posted this in the Wins channel. She's like, "Hey, not sure if this is a win yet. Um, I just made my made a cold uh LinkedIn connection request. I reached out to a founder and then somebody actually responded and she actually booked a call with them." This is someone who really has no experience doing this kind of stuff, getting into the AI space, just sent someone a message on LinkedIn and it actually worked. And the funny part is she's letting everyone know like, hey, I don't quite have an offer, but I do know I want to work with training and the curriculum design, just general direction. Okay? And then obviously cuz she's in the program, I'm going to help her figure out what the offer should be, what to say on the call. But you see, my point is, even if you don't have a solid offer, people will still get on a call with you and you can figure it out based on the pain points that they have. All right? So again, you don't have to make everything perfect because Melissa is a perfect example of just shooting your shot, sending the messages, getting on a call, and figuring it out. What is the alternative? Watch another 4-hour course on how to build a website. Please do not waste your time and just take action.
So, now that we have your offer, let's get into how to actually sell your AI-powered services. And we're going to do two things. So, let's go into some sales misconceptions, right? Some people think, "Ah, nobody's going to respond because I don't have an audience." Not true because all the people I showed you did not have an audience when they started, right? And they didn't even have an offer either. Number two, cold outreach doesn't work anymore. I just literally proved that it works, right? Even if you have no following. Number three, nobody will respond if I don't have anything built. Do you think Melissa has anything built? No, she doesn't even have an offer, but people still respond. So, just get that limiting belief out of your head and get to work. And uh, I want to share one of my clients, Brandon, actually, when we started working together, he was making $750 on the side on top of his full-time job, right? It was a lot of work for very little money. Literally, just showing by going through the process I'm about to show you on LinkedIn, he was able to get to $750 a month to $10,000 per month selling marketing services, helping construction companies with their marketing. And of course, can you use AI to speed up the process? Absolutely.
Now, when it comes to selling, really, you need to get a meeting with a potential customer. And there's two ways to do it. Number one, you build a personal brand. So, similar to what I have on YouTube, or maybe you want to create content on LinkedIn, people come to you. The second way to do it is you just reach out to them cold. Whether it's LinkedIn, cold email, Upwork, etc., right? It actually does work. Now, I do have other videos on how to build a personal brand and content systems. But for today in this video, I want to talk about the direct outreach part because that's something you can do right now and potentially get your first client this week. So, I recommend starting with LinkedIn first. It's easy. You probably have a profile. You probably have work experience. And you don't need much of a personal brand to get people to respond. All you need to do is this. Create five posts a week. Okay? They don't even have to be good. It doesn't matter if it gets five likes. You just need to post something so people know you're not like a like a bot. And from there, you want to connect with 200 people per week. That's only 40 connections per workday. And out of those 40 connections, maybe 40% will accept. Meaning, you're going to send maybe 16 to 18 DMs every single day. And out of those 16-18 DMs, you will get some meetings and you will get some closes.
So, Kiz, for example, who recently joined me not too long ago, you know, he's a UX/UI designer getting into the AI space, helping other brands with their UI/UX, building products, right? And I remember in the beginning, he was kind of in his head of like, oh, uh, you know, I'm really worried about how people think of me online. And I was just like, "Just post it, dude. It doesn't matter." So, he started posting and literally like the third or fourth post, one of his posts went viral about talking about AI. Yeah. It's got about like 900 likes. So, this one definitely got like over 100,000 impressions, right? And he's booking calls from LinkedIn. And this is someone who just started posting content like one or two weeks ago.
So, let's get into how to sign your clients in the next 30 days with LinkedIn. Number one, you want to use Claude to build targeted lists, right? And a targeted list is just making a list of people that are highly likely to buy the offer that you have. Okay? And I'll show you how to do that with Claude in a second. Step two, you want to connect with these people. Send LinkedIn messages. Step three, if no response, send a Loom video. Step four, if they respond, have a conversation in the DMs and get them on a call.
So, let's use my custom Claude list builder skill, which you can get for free using the link in the description, and I will show you how to build these lists. So, using the link in the description, you should be able to download the PD list builder. You install it into your Claude. You type it in and then you say, "Hey, I'm looking to build a list to sell my offer. Make me a list of 10 people that, you know, build me a list of B2B SaaS founders looking to build their YouTube." So, what's cool about Claude is it's going to use the skill search all over the internet to find people that fit your ideal customer using the offer that you created earlier. And then it's going to give you that list. And the cool part is it's finding all these signals. So it's going to think, okay, what are the signals that it needs to find online that somebody wants to build a YouTube channel and they're a SaaS founder. So it checks their LinkedIn, it checks their YouTube, it checks like whether or not they're getting uh followers and subscribers. So if a founder is very active on LinkedIn, for example, but they are posting on YouTube and they barely get 50 likes a post, they probably want to be the face of their company but they probably just suck. And if they suck and you can see that and you build your list of people that all want to build a YouTube channel but are not good and you message them, the chance of them responding is so much higher. How do I know this works? Because I've done it myself. So this is one technique of many techniques that I teach. But if you want to do outbound cold, you know, this guy doesn't know who I am. I all I do is just agitate a pain. Then I offer some kind of free audit, right? So in this example, it's like, hey, just watch your YouTube channel. Your team definitely has some knowledge, but the package and the topic, you know, isn't really YouTube native. I can have my team share some ideas for adjustments. Want it? Like it's so simple. It's not nothing even crazy, right? And they're like, "Oh, hey, Patrick. Interested to learn more? Like, send it over." So, I actually have one of my sales reps. It It wasn't even me making the video. My sales rep made the video and then they're responding for me, right? And they're saying, "Oh, uh, you know, this person made it for you." We send the video, they didn't respond. We follow up. Hey, did you take a look? And then put their first name, question mark, and they're like, "Oh, hey Patrick, sorry for delay. Finally watch your video." And then whatever, right? Then we booked the call. Now, obviously, when you have to call, you have opportunity to close. So, we've done this a lot and it 100% works no matter what it is that you're selling.
Now, if you're creating content on LinkedIn and people see your profile and you connect with them and you want to talk to them, there's another strategy. So, if they're kind of coming inbound from the content, you just say, "Hey, you know, great to connect, [first name]. Congrats on something relevant on their profile." Then you ask a this or that question. Hey, you know, are you here for the content? Are you looking to build your personal brand and charge more for your consulting services? Right? It's not really that customized, but it feels customized because we're making it tailored to the fact that they start their own consulting business and they're like, "Oh, hey Patrick. Really cool that you reached out personally. You know, I've been listening to your content lately." And you know, obviously you book a call like that, right? That's essentially the two methods to do it. Either outbound or inbound. And that's all you really need to get the ball rolling to get your first high-ticket client. And yes, this works for me. You might say, "Oh, cuz Patrick has a personal brand." But again, Allison, she literally made like $50,000 this month. Quit her job a couple months ago to do her AI automation business. 23K, 3.9K monthly, 28K on another deal, literally just from this exact LinkedIn process and sales template that I'm giving to you absolutely for free. So don't think you need a big following to do this. Even for Allison, she's only getting like five or 10 likes every post that she makes on LinkedIn and it still works.
All right, so now we've covered everything that you need to know when it comes to signing your first clients and building your AI business. At this stage, you really have two next steps. You might need a little help and you want more education on how to actually get started, uh, build your personal brand, create content. Maybe you want to do YouTube, or maybe you're a little confused on the sales side. So, if that's you, number one, I invite you to join the free live training. It's going to be a 3-day in-depth training where I'm going to go deeper into all these subjects and also give you some of my best Claude skills that I use on a daily basis. So, if you want to sign up for that free training, link is in the description. And if you want to jump the line and just talk directly with me and my team to see how we can help you build this kind of business, you can book a call using the link in the description and we will come up with a custom plan for you. Now, if you want to watch another video, check out this one right here, where I show you some of the best AI side hustles to.