I'm in Algeria with limited hours due to health issues, no Stripe, and limited skills. How should I start an AI agency, what should I sell (automation or AI agents), and what guides do you recommend?

youtube ↗Agency Operations

I'm in Algeria with limited hours due to health issues, no Stripe, and limited skills. How should I start an AI agency, what should I sell (automation or AI agents), and what guides do you recommend?

No problem at all. I don't think your situation is necessarily the hardest question I've gotten. You have four hours a day, which is more time than many people have—not to minimize your conditions. My father has scoliosis, which really affects his back; your girlfriend has asthma, and I've heard of adrenal insufficiency before, which can interfere with motivation, stimulation, sleep, etc. Obviously, that's a massive pain. Anyway, you've got four hours a day—a synthetic constraint. Artificial constraints, believe it or not, are actually good over the long term because they force you to be as effective and efficient as possible with every available minute. Whereas someone else might have a full day to do whatever they want, you don't; you have a rule set in place, an evolutionary pressure that will make you better and more effective with your time. So it's harder, but the flip side is you'll be significantly more effective five or ten years out. Where would you start? I'd recommend typing in 'nix arrive 80% of automation basics in 29 minutes'—a solid video that covers what you need to know to get up and running with AI automation. From there, you could take my AI automation NAD course, which is six hours and runs you through everything needed to build automations with NAD, because you'll have hit the 80/20 moment right before this, understanding some business fundamentals. Then, if you just go on my YouTube channel over here, you'll find the daily updates channel—a compilation of daily updates and other stuff—and my video 'Watch Me Start and Sell.' This one's a while ago, but okay; check it out as well—it's one of the most viewed videos on my channel. It runs you through AI automation basics, how to build a system out in an automation platform like NIN, and some AI fundamentals. How do we actually go about putting this in front of people? That's more or less it. Okay, so start there; as long as you're consistent and motivated, you've got this buddy. Okay, guys, I think I'm going to leave it there. One big thing I'm doing right now with the retrospective I'm writing—the big lifestyle audit and the big blog post—is just auditing where I'm spending my time. I've realized the daily update videos are unfortunately growing into more of a behemoth than I initially planned. The average post time over the last ~20 videos is about 47 minutes—too long. So it's hard for me to stay on top of all this stuff. I'm instituting a 20 to 25 minute maximum. I don't exactly know how fast I'll do these, but this will necessitate a change in the structure of the daily updates. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for a lot of people I was doing unstructured Q&A sessions for—which is all good—I'm still going to do Q&A and show up every day, but for my own time I'll have to change the structure and how I do it. I'm going to obviously try to implement, as I was just talking about EMOD, some sort of structure that lets me use this constraint positively: deliver more value per unit time, not less. That will buy me back about a half hour of my day, which is very much needed right now. A couple other things I'm going to do: I'm going to change how I'm doing my administration by hiring a virtual assistant again, and having the VA take care of a lot of my mundane email admin stuff. I've been dealing with all of my refund requests entirely on my own, which I understand is not optimal, but I've always just been like, 'well, screw it.' I've been dealing with one-off questions about the program entirely on my own. Somebody reached out to me asking, 'Hey, Nick, you know, how do I access my subscription portal for Maker School?' I'll actually go through and answer that question. I have like five or ten variants of those questions every day. If everyone takes a minute, you could see how these sorts of things add up—right? I answer one-off questions about, 'Hey, does Maker School include this?' or 'Does make money with Make.com include that?' It just ends up being a boatload of time. I'm going to be changing a little bit about how the agency is operating as well. I有

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Related answers

youtube ↗AI & Automation

Nick, I want to start working in the AI sector and I'm thinking of beginning with AI automation. The problem is that everything changes so fast. New tools keep coming out, so I'm confused about where to start. At first, I planned to learn NA. Then I started seeing agentic workflows everywhere. Now there's AIOS as well. Over the last 3 to 4 months, I watched videos on different topics, but instead of getting clarity, I'm just become more confused. Since you work on advanced AI project yourself, I'd appreciate your guidance to hit $10,000 per month. If you starting from scratch today, what would you learn first? When would you start offering services? And how do you get your first few clients?

First, I’d join a community like Maker School—not just to use my own products but because membership gives you deep discounts (often a 10x return) on AI platform credits and payment‑processing fees. With those savings I’d start by learning a visual drag‑and‑drop automation builder (such as the n platform) for about four to six hours; that teaches you the fundamentals of systems, workflows, JSON, HTTP requests, etc., which accelerates everything else. Next I’d spend another four hours on a Claude‑code course that covers the technical setup, agent communication, model selection, and so on—roughly ten hours total. After that foundation, I’d devote virtually all remaining time to acquiring customers; the first 90 days would be less than 1% spent on learning and the rest on outreach. You need a customer to actually enter the arena, so I’d use Maker School’s day‑by‑day accountability to hit call and outreach targets, then loop back to upsell from any lower tier to higher ones as the relationship grows.

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youtube ↗AI & Automation

How do I start an AI automation agency as a beginner, what skills should I learn first, and what’s the fastest roadmap from scratch?

I can’t walk you through every detail, but here’s a practical roadmap. Start with the Make.com playlist I’ve created – it’s a simple no‑code builder that introduces automation basics. Watch the first 12‑13 videos, then move on to live builds. After that, join Maker School, my day‑by‑day accountability program where I guide you through tasks and check in multiple times a day. Once you’ve got the basics, set up an Upwork profile. Upwork lets you see what clients actually pay for and what problems they need solved, turning you from an academic into a real‑world business person. Browse job listings, apply to those where you have at least a 50 % chance of success, and be prepared to send out 20‑30 proposals before landing a bite. Your first gigs will likely pay $30‑$50 an hour (adjusted for your region). Use the work to understand client needs – usually simple connectors between platforms, data duplication, or dashboards. Keep applying consistently, experiment with the platforms, and schedule calls with potential clients to solidify the work. This approach – Make.com basics, Maker School accountability, then Upwork for real client work – is the fastest way to launch an AI agency as a beginner.

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youtube ↗Niches

Should I stick with the CRO niche for startups or start testing AI automation, and if I stay with CRO what strategies do you recommend to grow it?

It’s very difficult to know whether to stick with CRO or test AI automation without knowing your revenue or how long you’ve been at it. At the end of the day, those are the only two variables that matter for deciding whether to keep doing something or move on. If you’re asking this question, you’re likely not achieving the results you expected; that could be due to your expectations or your actual performance relative to reasonable expectations. AI automation is a solid niche, but CRO is directly defensible from a revenue perspective. Imagine a company making $100,000 a month with their CRO. If you offer to double their CRO, you’re offering an additional $100,000 per month because their funnel is their only revenue source. At $100,000 a month, you can charge 10‑15% as a service provider, yielding $10,000‑$15,000 per month from that client alone. All else equal, that’s a 7‑10x ROI—a strong offer right out of the gate. You can pair it with a fixed‑price guarantee (e.g., guarantee X improvement in conversion rate or you don’t pay, money‑back, free landing page) to get them in the door, improve CRO, and move to a longer‑term, performance‑based relationship. I don’t think CRO is a bad niche, nor is it at risk of being automated away; automation or AI would actually let you do more with it. The fact you’re asking this suggests you’re doing something wrong. Specific strategies: How many customer contacts are you making per day? Are you contacting and selling to at least 100 people daily for this service? If not, and you haven’t done that for 90 days straight (≈9,000 contacts), keep going until you hit that mark. After about 9,000 contacts you’ll have a reasonable sense of how it works. If you can’t do it, can’t hack it, or just suck at it, there’s no shame in moving on to something that works. I believe AI automation is probably the best service‑based business model to start, which is why I teach it in Maker School (my 90‑day accountability program), but I’m not dismissing your model because you’re not winning yet.

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youtube ↗AI & Automation

AI Biz Sis asks: Can you explain how Maker School works? Is the content drip-fed month by month? I'm happy with most automation skills but need to focus on sales. What help does Maker School provide with email outreach? I'm busy, so I like the idea of cold email running in the background.

Maker School works like this: you join, then go through a pre‑program where I walk you through my methodology and mindset for building a new business, giving you my high‑level view of how I've approached every business I've run. Next, you choose a path. If you lack automation experience, you enter the automation program, which covers an end‑to‑end process including cloud code. I now have a full course on generating media because I see that as the next frontier now that text is saturated. After finishing that (if you still lack automation experience) you move into the main program; if you already have automation experience you can jump straight into the main program. The main program is simply a daily checklist: each day you show up and I tell you what to do—like 'do this, do that.' As part of the checklist I share a video where I actually perform the task, so you learn by reading and watching, then you apply it to your own business. It's not drip‑fed; you can only advance further if you ask me directly and show evidence that you already have a successful business or similar result. I don't let everyone move forward automatically because most people's biggest obstacle is themselves—they get stuck thinking about future content, feel overwhelmed, and lose focus on the daily actions.

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