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#149 · Generating leads for AI services live (no-fluff, no-guru)

youtube ↗Pricing

How much has your school community grown? Would you say it's now generating more revenue than your AI agency, especially with them teaching around automation systems and AI?

My AI and automation agency makes significantly less money than my coaching. Coaching is extraordinarily scalable—when you run a YouTube channel with distribution like I do, the optimal next choice is to sell something hyperscalable with zero delivery or logistics, which is what my coaching stuff is. If you're a total beginner, your optimal choice changes depending on whether you have distribution: with distribution, you'd go for e‑commerce or info‑product with a templated service; without distribution, you'd run an agency because agencies let you get your first 10, 20, $50k in revenue super quickly. Agencies allow you to make a lot of money very quickly, but you tend to plateau relatively fast, with further gains being incremental. Contrast that with an information product business (like a community or SaaS), which has zero marginal cost after a fixed development cost, so you make little money at first but way more later. Does this make sense? From my perspective, when I started my agency I was up here, made money quickly, hit resistance, wanted to scale with as little headcount as possible, moved over here, and now I'm significantly higher. Would I recommend doing what I'm doing now to total beginners? No—many people throw away their businesses after starting coaching because they stop doing the main service, become disconnected from implementation, lose skill, and start teaching the wrong way. That's why this YouTube channel is valuable: I'm showing you how I actually generate leads for my agency. I want to change the fraction of my total revenue that comes from this channel; I don't think it's the most effective use of my time per dollar, but I believe it will indirectly lead to more money through authenticity, so I'm getting back to selling outbound for the agency, setting up more inbound funnels, adding calls‑to‑action at the end of videos, and going to hire a team eventually.

agencycoachingrevenuescaling

Related answers

youtube ↗Lead Generation

I work with a digital marketing agency that wants to add an AI chatbot to a client's website, but the site gets little organic traffic. Is it worth implementing the chatbot, or should we first focus on getting traffic to the site?

What a great question. This is more a consulting and strategy perspective than a building one. Naturally, if you're trying to make more money and thinking, 'Ooh, what's a way to make more money? I know AI is all the rage—maybe we'll add an AI chatbot to our website,' but if the chatbot doesn't talk to anybody, it won't make you more money. You've stumbled on a universal problem for many service businesses: they just don't have any leads. The real point of value, the bottleneck you could fix, is usually lead generation. I don't know how many people visit their site daily, monthly, or yearly, so it's hard to suggest exactly what to do next, but you're on the right track. The usual thinking is: get leads first, then worry about optimizing how you deal with them, nurture them, and improve conversion rates later. In your opinion, what's the best automation to sell? Could you make a video on it? The best automation to sell is something that increases or encourages lead generation, which we discussed. One of the main systems I sell is a cold outreach system where I build distribution for someone from scratch for about $200–$300 a month ongoing. They start with zero leads in their pipeline—usually an agency—and after the system is set up, they get roughly 30 leads per month that want to book calls. This is a game-changer and easy to justify as an investment for companies whose bottleneck is lead generation, like most businesses under $50k–$100k per month in revenue. Think of it this way: I'm solving their most dire problem—no leads entering the business. I charge them $3,000–$4,000 a month, which is fine because without me they wouldn't even have a business making more than $3k–$4k a month. In my experience, the best automations to sell for small to mid-sized businesses are those that help the top of the funnel. If they already have an outbound system but aren't getting many leads, I'd recommend a speed-to-lead system. Anything close to the top of the funnel—whether outbound or inbound—helps a lot, and that's what I'd recommend.

lead generationai chatbotcold outreach
youtube ↗Lead Generation

what's your view on AI consulting? What's the current cost per acquisition for an AI agency client?

My view on AI consulting is that there’s no real difference—it’s just consulting repackaged. Whenever you see terms like AI automation, AI consulting, AI growth systems, or AI operators, they’re all the same thing; people are just trying to sell a business model and differentiate themselves in a crowded space, which in content is called packaging. At its core, this is foundational marketing: nothing has really changed since the SMMA craze; we’re still selling marketing systems, just rebranded as AI automation. Most AI automation sellers are actually selling marketing systems—content repurposing, social media automation—so it’s just repackaging. Regarding cost per acquisition for an AI agency client, it depends entirely on your lead‑generation mechanism. If you run an inbound funnel with massive distribution, your CPA is essentially just your time on new inquiries—near zero. If you’re doing Upwork applications at $2 each and need about 33 applications to land a client, your CPA is $66. If you run a cold‑email campaign spending $450 per month and sending roughly 3,000 emails to land three clients, your CPA is about $150. However, CPA alone means nothing unless you also know the order value or lifetime value of the clients. For example, if Pete’s CPA is $64 and he sells a product for $1,000 on average, his CPA is 6.4% of revenue. If Samantha’s CPA is $150 and she sells for $10,000 on average, her CPA is only 1.5% of revenue. You also need to factor in referrals and other variables to judge which business is truly more successful. After that, I mention I’m running out of time because I have a podcast with Jack Roberts. We’ve become fast friends after initially being hesitant to collaborate due to a scarcity mindset. We now chat regularly, run a podcast together, and plan to play video games like Halo, Fortnite, or League of Legends while streaming, which I think will be fun and more engaging. I’m even considering buying a gaming computer just to stream with Jack weekly. Ultimately, I’m moving into Twitch streaming to play video games all day.

ai consultingcost per acquisitionltvlead generation
youtube ↗Marketing

You give away automation tutorials for free on YouTube, yet you also sell the same automations to businesses. Aren't you worried that businesses will just use your free tutorials to build their own solutions instead of hiring you? How does this seemingly contradictory approach work for your business? I'm curious about your strategy.

Well, logically I get what you're saying, but you're assuming it's a zero‑sum game—that if I give away my secrets they benefit and I gain nothing. Actually, it's not a zero‑sum game at all. Putting this content out there has significantly increased market demand for these services, creating a positive feedback loop where the demand growth outpaces whatever I've given away in knowledge. We live in a knowledge economy, and knowledge is the main thing. By giving what feels like very little knowledge—because I've already done all the work—I can provide overwhelming, ridiculous amounts of value, and you see that as a ton of value. That makes you far more likely to join my paid community, my programs, hire my agency, or work with me in a consulting context. In reality, I lose very little: people already know how to put together a proposal generator; I'm not exactly reinventing the wheel, and when I first started sharing, a lot of copycats appeared, but I'm fine with that. I firmly believe knowledge should not be gatekept. What I do gatekeep and charge for is the accountability—the one‑on‑one time with me. That's why this approach has worked well for me. Sam Ovens, the literal king of consulting, featured me in a video saying I make about $269,000 a month with my school (an information product). And giving this free YouTube content, despite not selling anything directly, has worked exceptionally well.

free contentbusiness modelknowledge economyone-on-one
youtube ↗Marketing

Started my YouTube channel 3 months ago. Your idea that outbound is better from a sales perspective and overall and inbound got me intrigued. I have no problem putting in hours on my YouTube channel. Would appreciate an explanation of how and why outbound is better. I'm looking to get as much leverage as possible.

He explains that the advantage of outbound versus inbound depends on your distribution, money, and power. When you have no distribution (no audience, no money, no power), outbound is the straightest-line path to making money because you go directly to a person who suffers from a problem and present yourself as the unique solver, guaranteeing a return on investment. Inbound—relying on content that draws people to you—requires distribution to be effective; without it, you're just shouting in a town square alongside billions of others doing the same. He notes that in his own video he said outbound is a much straighter line path to money at your current stage, but overall it's not better than inbound; if it were, he'd drive the vast majority of his traffic through inbound, which he doesn't. As you gain distribution, money, and power (more followers, success, revenue), the optimal strategy shifts from outbound to inbound because you can leverage ads, funnels, and scale. In your case—starting a YouTube channel three months ago with no real distribution—outbound remains the better leverage approach. He adds that he himself is now mostly inbound because he has built distribution, money, and power, and expects that to continue.

outboundinboundleveragedistribution