Transcription
I started with zero experience in AI, and within just 2 years, I've built multiple AI businesses that have generated almost $3 million in revenue collectively. And that's without any formal coding experience, without a degree, and without any investors either. It's just a proven blueprint that actually works.
So in this video, I'm going to give you that exact blueprint for starting an AI business from scratch, even if you're a total beginner. The same blueprint that worked for me and for the thousands of successful AI entrepreneurs in both my free and paid communities. And when I say thousands, I mean it. From the data that I've collected of over 37,000 people in my free community, over 5,000 of those are already making between $1 and $10,000 per month with their AI business.
Furthermore, 585 of them are already doing over $10,000 every month, and this is when they first joined the community. So the numbers are probably a lot higher than that. The proof is really in the numbers here.
By the end of this video, you'll know exactly what kind of AI business you should start. You'll have a step-by-step six-month roadmap to your success, and you'll have access to all of the resources that I used to get here completely free.
So, this video is going to be split into three key parts. Firstly, we'll be diving into the AI business landscape, including what the top five opportunities are out there right now, and why it's the perfect time to start, even if you're a complete beginner.
It's in this section that I'll be sharing my own learnings from running each of these five different business types myself and how I used them to go from knowing nothing about generative AI to generating over $2 million in 2 years.
Next, we'll cover the three phases of starting an AI business. These are the exact steps that I followed and that every successful AI entrepreneur in my community has gone through too. Finally, we'll map out a crystal-clear and actionable six-month roadmap that you can follow to reach your first revenue milestone. By the end, you'll have a step-by-step guide that includes how you can access all of the resources like contracts and proposal templates that I use to build my success for free.
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of starting your own AI business, let's briefly talk about what's happening in the global economy right now and why it's so important that you understand what's at stake for you, for me, and for everyone with our careers moving forward.
The brutal truth is the middle class is being wiped out right in front of our eyes, and AI is only going to accelerate that. The days of having a comfortable living from a regular career are disappearing fast, as I'm sure you may have encountered in your own life or seen firsthand from your parents or other people around you who are suddenly having to work so much harder just to keep up and just to survive.
The stats here don't lie: In 2024, 44% of companies replaced workers with AI, and PWC predicts that by the mid-2030s, up to 30% of all current jobs will be automated. No career is safe, not even the ones we thought were untouchable, like law, accounting, and even medicine.
Unfortunately, most people are going to come out of this AI wave as net losers, meaning that they are worse off than where they are today. Their jobs are going to be gone, their skills are going to be outdated, and their income is going to be slashed. They're clinging to the false hope that the old way of making a living will survive. It's really a losing bid at this point.
But it's not all doom and gloom. The reality is that there's going to be a small number of people who will ride this wave and come out on the other side as winners. They're not just going to be surviving this AI revolution; they'll thrive through it. They'll build businesses, they'll stack wealth, and they're going to be mastering the skills that the world will be desperate for.
I mean, I've done it. There are thousands of other people in my community who have also done it, and in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how you can do it too.
So here's the choice basically: Are you going to sit back and watch AI wipe out everything you've built or soon will build, or are you going to take control, get ahead, and come out of this AI revolution wave as a winner? I certainly know what I'm trying to do over the next few years.
If you are ready to take action on this, then I've made this video specifically for you. Let's dive into part one, where I'm going to be breaking down the AI business landscape and showing you the biggest opportunities that you can capitalize on, even if you're just starting from zero.
There are tons of AI opportunities popping up these days, and I've pretty much tried all of them personally over the past 2 years. In this section, I'm going to be breaking down the top five AI businesses that complete beginners are using right now to launch their careers in the AI space and start making money.
As I said, over the past two years, I've personally run or am still running all five of the business types we're going to cover in this section. So I'm going to be giving you the real-world experience and insights into the pros and cons of each of them, and really how much money you can expect to make from them.
At the end of the section, I'm going to be recapping things and explaining which business is best for you to start. So let's dive in.
First up, we have AI influencing. Here's the deal: People are hungry for simple and easy-to-understand info on AI right now. Your job as an AI influencer is to take all of the complicated stuff about AI, like what new tools are out there right now and how businesses can use them to benefit from them, and then explain it in a way that anyone could understand.
You can kind of think of it as being a translator for AI, but you're on YouTube or social media, and you definitely don't need to be a genius. You just need to understand a little bit more than the average person or average viewer.
You can share your insights through videos like this on YouTube, you can write posts on Twitter or Medium, and if people like what you're sharing, then you can make money from ads, from partnerships, or from promoting other people's products as well.
I started out my journey as an AI influencer as a complete newbie to generative AI in January of 2023. You can even go back and watch all my old videos and see how little I knew about it and how stupid I was. Now that I watch them, it's kind of painful to see.
But within 7 months of posting consistently, my YouTube channel hit 100,000 subscribers, which was a shock even to me. What I learned from my growth is that it's in these new and hyped spaces that it's so much easier to grow a large following if your content is actually good.
And yep, the AI influencer model does make a bit of money too. You've got ad revenue firstly, which is money from ads that are run on your YouTube video or on your content. You've also got affiliate marketing, which is when you get paid for sending signups to other AI tools that you recommend.
Then you've got video sponsorships, where brands pay you to mention their products. You can start making anywhere from $2 to $55,000 per month, even with a small audience. But you are going to have to work consistently and create high-quality content for about 3 to 6 months before you start seeing any meaningful revenue from the business.
The pros for this model are that you've got super low startup costs—just you and a camera. You've got quick growth if you pick the right topics, like I did in the first seven months, and you only really need a phone and a laptop to get started.
The cons are that it doesn't make the big bucks compared to the other models we're going to touch on later. Plus, getting on the camera can be a pain in the ass if it's really not your thing. Influencing via YouTube and long-form videos like this is by far the best. So if you're not willing to be on camera, then you might have to do, say, writing on Medium or Twitter, and it's not going to get as good results as long-form YouTube like this, right?
So next, let's talk AI consulting. This is where businesses pay you for advice. They want to know how AI can make their businesses better or what to avoid so that they can survive this transition. Basically, they're going to be paying you to tell them what to do or help them understand the new tools that are coming out and stay up to date.
When I was doing this, it felt like I was doing AI therapy for some of these businesses who were really stressed out or they see big opportunities and they want to talk to me—essentially as kind of an AI therapist to get an expert opinion on things and soothe their nerves.
To become an AI consultant, you don't need a degree or some fancy qualifications; you just need to know, again, a little bit more than the businesses that you're helping do and be able to explain it clearly to them. For example, within the first four months of starting my YouTube channel, I was pulling in $4,000 a month—I think $4,200 in April of 2023—from my consulting calls alone.
I was charging $300 per call and eventually jacked that up to $997 for a 45-minute session, and yes, people were buying even at that price as well. So consulting can be a very natural step from AI influencing, as it's a more effective way to monetize your personal brand without having to create your own products or build your own complicated services as well.
The pros of this model are that it's easy to start. You can scale this quickly by raising your rates as you get more clients. I just continually increased my prices as I got more demand, and it's a great way to build confidence and real-world experience of working with clients and helping businesses, which is really where the money is in the space right now.
The cons for the AI consulting model are that you're still really trading your time for money, and while that can be fine at first, it's not a long-term path to wealth. You're only going to get paid for your time that you're actually working.
Also, I found that consulting wasn't the most exhilarating work; if I had my whole day booked out with consulting calls, I didn't feel excited and jumping out of bed to hop on these calls. That's another thing to factor in as well.
Now we're getting into the serious stuff: the AI automation agency, or what is known for short as the AAA model. This is where you get businesses to pay you to set up AI tools for them. You can kind of think of it like a website design company, but instead of building websites for companies, you are helping businesses to use AI to save time or to make more money.
The best part about this is that while a development background is a nice to have, you don't have to know how to code to get started. This is what myself and my team at Morningside figured out in 2023, about midway through the year—that we could sell AI solutions using no-code and low-code tools.
Our clients didn't care that it wasn't custom coded, and since then, we've really mapped out dozens of low-code and no-code AI tools that allow you to basically drag and drop to create AI solutions for your clients. This means that there's no technical skills needed to get started.
For example, one of my students, Isaiah, still doesn't know how to code, and he scaled his own AI automation agency to $225,000 per month selling AI appointment settings to coaches and consultants. I've actually got an interview with him on the channel here, so I'll put that in the description if you want to check that out.
Personally, I started my AI automation agency, Morningside AI, in March of 2023, and with my business partner, we scaled it to over $100,000 per month. We got there by landing huge projects—I'm talking our biggest Morningside project being over $115,000 for the initial phase.
I've done a full breakdown of this project on my channel, so again, I'll put it in the description if you want to check that out. While reaching this $100,000 per month point wasn't easy, we had a lot of late nights and painful mistakes, which I try to help you guys through on this channel. Our success proved that with the right marketing and the right team, there's a ton of money to be made with the AAA model.
So for the pros of the AAA model, we have low startup costs because you don't need to have a fancy product built first. You can just start with a few subscriptions to low-code and no-code tools. Secondly, there's huge demand; businesses are desperate for AI systems and tools that can help them adapt, be more efficient, and make more money.
The AAA model is very scalable meaning that you can start small and grow fast once you pick up traction.
Now for the cons: I would say that the learning curve of the AI automation agency model is steeper than the AI influencer or AI consultant route, meaning that it is going to take you relatively more time to get the hang of it. But once you do, you're in a great position to make serious money and scale up much more than you'll be able to do with, say, just AI influencing or an AI consulting business.
Once you've got some experience, you can actually make money by teaching other people about AI, and there's huge demand for this right now. This is what we'll call the AI education business model. It means creating online courses or ebooks or webinars, which are like online classes for people.
For example, you could teach realtors or real estate agents how to use AI to find more clients, or you could even show parents how to help their kids use AI for school so they can get good grades. There's so much out there you can do right now, but the catch is you've actually got to know what you're talking about and have discovered something interesting that you can make an educational product around. It's not something you can easily fake, and you definitely can't fake it over the long term.
The best way to actually learn something that you can make an educational product around is by running an AI automation agency because by working on real projects with clients, it gives you some real hands-on knowledge that you can then package into a course or a product.
The pros for the AI education business model are that it can scale like crazy, meaning that you can sell your courses and your books to lots of people without having to do more work each time you sell a new copy. You get high profit margins in these businesses because once a course is made, it doesn't cost much to sell it to more customers.
From my experience of running an education business, it feels really good to help people, and I've built some awesome relationships through the people that I have helped in my education business. I even went to the wedding of one of my students last month in Italy.
I'll put a photo up here of me. Now, for the cons: It actually takes time to become an expert. You've got to go out and learn something new and actually get results before you can start to teach it. You can try to do it without doing that, but realistically, you're not going to last that long in the AI education space.
Finally, the big one: AI SaaS, which stands for Software as a Service. This is where you create a software tool that solves a specific problem, typically for businesses, using AI. Instead of doing the work for yourself or a business, you basically build a platform that businesses pay to use.
You can think of it like Netflix, but instead of movies, you're selling access to an AI tool that you've built that businesses want to use to make more money or save time, etc. In October of 2023, I saw an opportunity to build an AI SaaS that would help AI automation agency owners like myself and like many people in my community to put their OpenAI GPTs onto platforms like WhatsApp, onto websites, Instagram, and more.
The videos that I did on these topics got hundreds of thousands of views, so I knew that there was a lot of interest in a solution like this. Now, a year later, I've put over $300,000 into this business, we've got over 25,000 users on it, and we're just starting to make money from it because we're rolling out monetization as we speak.
But it took a lot of time and a lot of cash to get here, is my point. The pros of the AI SaaS model are that, firstly, you get, in most cases, recurring revenue, meaning you get paid every month from each customer. Secondly, it's very scalable if you do it right; once the software is built, you can sell it to lots of people with very little cost of replication, which is similar to the educational product we mentioned.
Of course, if you do it right, you can sell the whole business for a big payout, which is called exiting your company.
For the cons, as I mentioned, it is very expensive to set one of these things up relative to the other business models I've mentioned. You're probably going to need to spend a lot of money before you even start to see a profit from it because you have to build the whole software first. Then eventually, people come to it, and you have to modify it to their needs, basically.
You have to keep improving it until you get to a point where people are happy to pay you money for it. Because AI and the AI market is changing so fast, your software could become outdated overnight. So you put in all this effort into building this entire software, and then overnight, OpenAI releases something or Anthropic, etc., and your whole SaaS is just done and useless.
So there's a big risk of that because you're investing a lot of time and energy into doing one thing.
After having those five business models thrown in your face, I bet you're wondering: where should I start? Let me make this very simple. The AI automation agency model is by far the best choice if you want real momentum and to have lots of options later on in your AI journey.
Here's why: Firstly, AI automation agency owners learn the most valuable skills in the AI space. Influencing and consulting can be good to get you started, but they don't actually teach you the skills that matter the most.
With a AAA, you end up learning how to set up AI tools for businesses. You can automate their tasks, you can build systems that actually save time and money, and these skills are what businesses are willing to pay top dollar for. My success at Morningside and the other guys in the community are testament to that.
These businesses will keep coming back for more as the technology continues to improve, and they need to keep up. The AI automation skill set that you pick up from being a AAA owner is what will make your future basically bulletproof. Regardless of what happens to your business, what happens to the economy, there's going to be demand for these AI automation experts who know how to implement AI into businesses to create value for them.
Secondly, you're going to make more money. While consulting might earn you just a few thousand a month, and influencing can bring in some ad revenue and some sponsorships, they're both still very limited. With an AI automation agency, you're going to be landing bigger contracts—thousands, tens of thousands, or like I have, hundreds of thousands of dollars per project.
That's exactly how my agency, Morningside AI, hit over $100,000 per month for the first time: by stacking projects and building long-term relationships with our clients.
So basically, the earning potential of the AAA model is way higher than the others, while also still being accessible to beginners to start.
Thirdly, the AAA model is the gateway to bigger opportunities in the AI space. If you want to create a course or even build software, running a AAA successfully gives you the real-world experience and results which you can then turn into courses that people will pay for.
It’s also incredibly useful for helping you spot software opportunities like I did when I built my AI SaaS. The AAA model is the only path that naturally opens these doors for you to AI education and to AI SaaS as well.
Finally, we are still so early to this. The truth is that most businesses still don't get what AI can do for them. They think it's just some tech buzzword that they might have to pay attention to in a couple of years, but that's where you come in. Right now, there's a huge chance to become the go-to expert in AI automation in your niche before everyone catches on.
It's basically like being one of the first digital marketers back when websites were still new. The people who got it then made a fortune, and the people who came later to things like SMMA got the crumbs left under the table.
So if you want to start strong and learn the most valuable skills in the AI space and have the most options for the future, the AAA model is by far the best way to go. From my experience and what I see in my communities as well, it's not the easiest of the bunch, but it is a good balance between easy to start while also having the biggest payoff long term for you.
Now that you know where you're going, I'm going to show you how to get there. In the next section, we're going to be breaking down the steps of how you can find your first client, how you can deliver your first project, and how you can scale it into a full agency.
Let's get into the three key phases of starting an AI business.
Alright, so now that you've got a good sense of the AI business landscape and why the AI automation agency model is the best place to start as a beginner, it's time to break down exactly how you're going to make this happen. How are you going to get your agency off the ground?
This is really where the rubber meets the road. There are three key phases that you'll go through to build your agency from scratch. Firstly, learn; secondly, apply; and finally, monetize.
Each of these phases is designed to take you from knowing absolutely nothing about AI automation to running a profitable agency, with a clear path laid out the entire way. In these phases, you'll build skills, you'll gain real-world experience, and you'll start earning money as well. I've already mapped out all of the steps for you in the next section, which is the six-month profit path to start an AI automation agency.
You're going to need some basic skills, but don't worry; as I said, coding skills are not mandatory. Of course, they can help, but they are not mandatory to get started thanks to the hundreds of awesome no-code tools that have popped up in the past few years. Anyone can learn to build valuable AI solutions for businesses using these tools.
Over the past 2 years, I've spent a lot of time teaching beginners these basic skills because I had to learn them at one point, and I've got a full free course that I'm going to give you access to at the end of this video. So if you're worried about how you're going to learn these skills, don't worry because I've covered everything in that six-month roadmap in the next part of this video.
When it comes to learning skills, by far, the most important thing you need to learn as an AI automation agency owner is prompt engineering. If you think that using ChatGPT a bit has made you a pro at writing prompts, you need to think again because building prompts that actually solve problems for businesses is a whole different ball game.
It's more complex, but in your six-month roadmap, I've provided all of the resources you'll need to master it easily. Once you've got a handle on prompt engineering, the next thing you'll be doing is figuring out where to focus as an AI automation agency owner.
There are three main areas in the AI automation space right now that you can focus on and specialize in: Firstly, we have text-based AI chatbots. These are the kinds of bots that you see on websites that help answer questions or help with customer service. There's a lot more to it, but that's the high level of what you need to understand about them.
Secondly, we have AI voice agents, and you can think of these as super smart phone operators that can directly talk to customers or people over the phone. Thirdly, we have AI workflow automation, which is about using AI to handle the repetitive tasks like managing schedules or processing data so that businesses can save a bunch of time, and you create value for them, and you can get paid for that as well.
Don't worry; the six-month roadmap has everything you need to dive in and start learning how to build AI solutions as a beginner.
After you've learned the basics of AI automation skills, the next phase is to start applying those skills in the real world. This is where you'll start working with businesses or working with friends and family, getting hands-on experience, and learning how AI can deliver real value to your clients.
For these first couple of clients, you won't be charging them just yet. Firstly, it's about building up your experience, and working with a few clients for free is going to help you avoid beginner mistakes. It's going to boost your confidence, and it's going to teach you things that you can't learn just from watching tutorials from me, like adapting to your clients' needs and solving real-world problems.
There are a lot of things that you can't learn from a theoretical level or by watching tutorials; you just have to dive in, and you build up this real-world experience, which is really the gold of this AI automation space right now. If you can get these successful deliveries and learn things like this by doing, you become far more valuable in the AI space.
When it comes to finding those first few clients, it's actually a lot easier than you think. My free school community, firstly, is packed with over 37,000 AI entrepreneurs and business owners who are looking for help with AI automation. So get active in there, and share your process, and offer your services. It's very easy to connect with people who need what you're learning.
The skills you develop in Phase One, you then basically publicize a little bit and say, "Hey, I'm interested in doing some projects with people. Is there anything I can do for anyone?" Remember, we're going to be covering the exact steps for doing this and finding these clients and how to get the most out of this phase two of applying in the next section in the six-month roadmap.
For now, just know that gaining real-world experience early on is key, and I've got you covered on how to do that in the plan we're going to touch on next. Finally, once you've gained some experience, you're ready to start the monetization phase. This is where you start turning your skills and experience into real income.
There are two main ways I recommend beginners to start pricing their services when you actually start charging your clients. Firstly, with an hourly rate, where you charge based on your own time. If you're delivering the projects yourself, you're kind of like an AI freelancer. You estimate how many hours the project is going to take you, you set yourself an hourly rate—say, I'm worth $50 an hour—then you bill the client for the total hours.
It's very straightforward and gives you a clear way to start earning based on your time. The second option is to hire a developer. If you don't want to do all the technical work yourself, you can hire a developer to handle it for you.
Here's how the pricing for that works: Firstly, you'll need to estimate the total number of hours that the project will take. Then you're going to pay the developer their hourly rate—say $30 or $40—and then you're going to charge your client two to three times the amount you paid the developer. So, a 2 to 3x markup is the best way to get started.
This is called cost-plus pricing, and I've done an entire video on this channel. That video will be linked in the six-month roadmap document for you. By pricing this way, you get to cover all of the costs of the developer and then make profit without having to do all the hands-on work yourself.
Finding and paying clients becomes a lot easier once you've proven yourself with a few successful projects. By staying active in places like my free school community, delivering great results, and then sharing your wins in school and on social media, these are all great ways to attract more clients.
But remember that we're going to break down the exact process of landing those clients in the next part; it's going to be built into the roadmap. You've got a ton of great resources you can use there.
Once you've started monetizing your services, here's where the really big opportunity comes in for automation agencies: niching down. This means focusing on solving one key problem for one type of business.
This matters because it makes everything easier for you and much more profitable for you over the long term. You're not starting from scratch on every new client; instead, you're offering a solution that you've already mastered and made before, making it much easier to scale.
You basically just take what you've done on the previous project, modify it a little bit to the new client's needs, and then you can get the same amount of money as the last one without having to completely rebuild it from scratch. It's a lot more profitable and a lot more scalable too.
Again, there’s no need to make these decisions right now; in the next part, I'm going to walk you through how to find your niche and build a repeatable process that makes growing your agency simple and predictable.
That's it for the three phases. Now that you know the phases, here's how to put them into action with a simple six-month plan to get started. You can grab the six-month roadmap checklist, which is going to be the first link in the description. It's completely free; you can access it right there, and it's going to have everything you need: step-by-step instructions, contract links, template links, guides—everything you need to get started with your own AI automation agency.
A big part of this roadmap is my free course in school, where I teach you all the key skills you need to know to build your own AI automation agency. It's going to be no guesswork; just follow the plan on that document—the first link in the description—and you'll be ready to launch your own AI business.
Here's a quick overview of what the six-month roadmap is going to cover for you: The first two months will be working through my free course, which is going to help you to understand the AI automation agency. Firstly, it's going to teach you the crucial skills like prompt engineering and exploring the different types of AI automation systems, like chatbots, voice agents, and workflow automations.
All the tutorials on there are going to show you how to build them yourself. The checklist in the description is going to guide you through each step of this course to make sure that you're building a solid foundation.
In the next two months, you'll start applying those skills that you've just learned by working with a few free clients. The roadmap will show you exactly how to find those clients, whether that's through my school community or by reaching out to your friends and family, what we call warm connections, which is by far one of the easiest ways to get clients.
On the roadmap, you'll be getting step-by-step scripts and tips for making those first few connections and gaining real-world experience. Finally, once you've built up some experience, you'll move on to getting paid for your work.
The roadmap covers how to create social media posts that actually attract clients to your business, how to set your rates, how to focus on just one platform to get results like LinkedIn or YouTube, and how to build your reputation and turn interest into paying customers.
Remember, this is just a quick preview. The full plan is in the six-month roadmap doc—the first link in the description—along with every contract, template, and guide you'll need along the way.
I hope that you are buzzing with excitement for the journey you're about to embark on. I'm certainly excited for you because starting an AI business—and my AI automation agency—has completely changed my life for the better in every imaginable way over the past 2 years.
I've seen it not only in my life but in thousands of other people in my free and paid community, so I know that it is possible for you to do it as well. I'm not going to stand here and say that it's going to be easy, because it's not. It's going to be a lot more difficult than you expect. It's going to take a lot more time than you expect. But that does not mean that it's not worth it.
I promise you, I promise you that the end result that you're going to work towards is worth it. As we covered earlier in this video, the world is changing. This technology is coming for all of us, whether we like it or not. You have a choice now to take action and actually do something to position yourself to come out of the other end of the AI revolution better off than you were when you started.
Billions of people are going to be negatively affected by this stuff, and I've just given you the information and the awareness to make a decision right now on the life that you want to live—not only in the next year, 2 years, but 5, 10 years, and beyond.
By investing your time in learning AI skills and building a business in the space, I can't tell you how much of a relief it is for me knowing that I don't lose a wink of sleep at night about whether my future is at risk or whether I'm going to be made redundant or something.
Because I'm in this future, I'm in this AI space, and I'm creating the future actively through my businesses. I don't have to lose a wink of sleep all night about whether or not I'm going to be able to eat next year.
So take it from me. Take it from all the other people in my community. Go in there, have a chat with people; there's so much opportunity here. You now have an opportunity to take this and run with it.
If at any point over the next 6 months you have issues implementing the roadmap that I've given you in the description, then you can join the free school community and ask questions to me directly in my free community Q&As, which are once a week.
You can go to the calendar section, put it on your calendar, and come in and talk to me directly. I'll help you and guide you through the steps you need to start.
I'm so excited for you to get started. I'm not going to ramble anymore, but I will see you in my free community very soon. If you want to learn a little bit more about me and how I got here before you make the decision to jump into this business model, you can check out my full My Story video up here.
But aside from that, guys, that's all for the video. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one.