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 ↗Mindset

How would you make the switch from full-time employment to running an AI automation agency?

I wouldn't do it all at once, as sexy as it sounds and as incredible as the big gurus on YouTube make working for yourself seem. There are a lot of problems with it too. The main one is you're going from an environment where everybody essentially has their day structured for them to an environment where you actually structure every waking moment of your day completely yourself. One of two things happens: it's really overwhelming and you end up not utilizing that time effectively, which leads to you making less money. That's basically the only thing that happens. You're starting this off as an infant — if this is the first time you've ever done self-employment, you have to learn that skill. It doesn't matter how long you've been in IT or how much time or energy you've invested in a specific niche; you're learning an entirely new skill from scratch. So rather than going from 100% corporate to 0% corporate overnight, I'd recommend tranching it or breaking it up. What we'll have people in Maker School do is try to get to 80% of their time in a full-time job. If they can get to 80%, most of their work's already done for them, because the jump from 100 to 80 means you can now introduce 20% of fully self-structured time where you work on your own business. Maybe instead of working 9 to 5, you work 9 to 3:30 — even an additional hour and a half. The second you learn to utilize that hour and a half effectively, it'll carry over to the rest of the time, and usually you don't even have to work a full 8 hours a day head-down after you've learned to be extraordinarily effective with that hour and a half. That's what I would do. I wouldn't go 100 to zero, because I did that for myself and I was completely lost for a very long time — on the brink of eviction multiple times, living in a converted garage, eating rice and beans all day. You don't need to make it that hard for yourself, especially if you're not going to be saving 6 to 12 months of expenses, because it's very difficult and not really worth it. The exhaustion you feel at your current job is probably going to be multiplied tenfold if you do the exact same thing and then switch. Alternatively, you'll make far less money, which leads to a different type of existential threat or exhaustion.

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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 ↗Niches

Should I create content teaching automations or content for businesses that need systems?

It depends on your goals. If you teach people how to build automations, you’ll attract those who want to learn automation—mainly AI‑automation enthusiasts—leading to coaching, info‑product, or consulting opportunities. If you create content for businesses that need a system (e.g., HVAC, fitness, manufacturing), you’ll attract clients seeking implementation work, such as building a cold‑email system for a recruiting company. So decide whether you want to be known for knowledge‑based work or hands‑on implementation. Regarding what I shared next: I’m currently reviewing applications for an editor and a strategist. For editing, I’ve narrowed it to two candidates—one local and ambitious but less experienced, the other more experienced but with a time‑zone issue. I plan to make a decision by Friday after a paid trial: I’ll pay $150 for a 48‑hour test task, then evaluate the result and pick the best fit. For the strategist role, the main issue is writing quality; I need someone who can craft outlines and scripts that require minimal edits. I’ve shortlisted about five people and will decide soon. My hiring process uses a NAD canvas: start with a general app, then a pipeline where applicants fill out a general application, answer simple cues to show they can represent themselves and write well without relying on ChatGPT, then a paid trial, then evaluation and selection. In the meantime, I haven’t posted on my main channel for five or six days, but I plan to return to a daily publishing schedule. I believe I’m among the top producers in the AI‑automation space, and even less‑polished, consistent output will win over time. My goal is to maximize the minutes I spend sharing knowledge online, so I’ll keep publishing regularly. Finally, thanks to everyone who applied—if you like the content or find my answers helpful, please keep engaging.

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youtube ↗Mindset

What advice do you have to a college student interested in starting an AI agency? How do I begin? I found myself going down the YouTube rabbit hole but don't ever feel motivated to start.

The reality is that motivation is fleeting and temporary—it often strikes in the middle of the night when you're not expecting it, leading you to watch motivational videos, but you can't rely on it day-to-day. To grow a business, you need to shift from motivation to discipline: small, consistent actions over time, like the gradual progress seen in muscle building. For example, doing 60 bicep curls every two days for a year yields more growth than attempting 10,000 curls in one day. As a college student, the most important thing is to build accountability and habits rather than waiting to feel motivated. Start with the simplest possible action you can do today—such as creating an Upwork profile or recording a Loom video of one of your automations—and repeat it daily for about a week. Once you have basic skills, focus on lead generation first. Finish the 'Make Money with Make.com' playlist, watch at least the first twelve videos, and put in a dozen hours of practice. Then begin lead generation activities: set up Upwork profiles, launch cold email campaigns, and if you have some spare cash, sign up for Maker School to be guided through the process. I also want to acknowledge the supportive comments I’ve received—like the crying emojis from Juan Jones and Phil Glover’s note that he wishes my video gets millions of views and suggests running ads for the channel. I agree: I’ve been dragging my feet on ads, but I’m now working with someone to manage retargeting ads. Because I’ve seen how retargeting can create a big revenue spike—potentially a 1.5× increase—I’m planning to hire someone to run retargeting ads for the Maker School 'About' page, aiming to spend around $1,500 per month and see how it goes.

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