What can I exploit now as a great side hustle involving AI as a teenager to develop an actual useful skill?
Great question. I would probably flip things on Marketplace, Kijiji, Craigslist, and I would use AI in order to auto-negotiate across the board. So set up a bunch of AI agents to auto-negotiate on various purchases for you and then just flip those. Basically do the exact same thing on the other side. You could probably manage like 50 to 100 of these. The only issue is going to be coordinating pickups and drop-offs and stuff — that's going to be a little bit trickier. But you'll probably be able to make up the negotiation to purchase or request drop-offs for smaller fees as well. So if you want to have somebody drop something off and then come and pick up that same product later on for more money, it's very straightforward arbitrage. Obviously, use an address you're comfortable with.
Avoid reels and short-form content; instead, send personalized Loom DMs to influencers you admire, offering a quick 30-second solution to a problem they may not even know they have. Focus on minimizing friction, not making their life too easy. Check out my main channel and the 'How to start an AI automation agency in 2025' playlist for business fundamentals that help high schoolers launch quickly.
You’ve already built a DM qualification skill that let you charge 40% more on a client deal, plus LinkedIn content automation that generates one to two inbound leads per day. That gives you solid social proof, but you need to frame it in concrete, dollar‑sign metrics. Instead of talking about the system itself, talk about the results it can deliver – for example, 20 to 40 meetings per month and an estimated pipeline value of $25,000. Position yourself as helping small‑to‑medium business owners who aren’t massive enterprise CEOs – think a 30‑something running a three‑person agency who wants to relax a bit. Provide clear value to that audience. As for offers, you can sell virtually anything: the DM qualification skill, LinkedIn and content automation systems, management services, social‑media brand growth, niche video editing, AI‑enabled video editing, or even content edited with tools like Hyperframes or Remotion. Lead sources are typically scraped from LinkedIn Sales Navigator where prospects voluntarily share a lot of information.
Define what you mean by scratch. If you mean scratch in terms of my ability to use AI tools, but not scratch in terms of my ability to sell, I think I could go to $10,000 a month this month — probably in the next 15 days or so — with zero knowledge of any of the stuff. Because you'll find that the bottleneck is not really the tech skills. You could learn everything you need to know in presumably two or three days of full-time, 10 hours a day blasted against the keyboard. At the end of that three-day pipe, you'll be a very different person — you'll be able to use these tools far better than most other people can. From there, I would spend the other 13 or 14 days just pounding marketing and then eventually pounding sales. I would probably sell a fixed-price offer, keeping in mind that when you sell, you're selling in the domain of ideas. You're not necessarily selling a physical thing — you don't need to create a product in order to sell it. You just need to talk to a bunch of people about something that could be a product. Then I'd blast it. Assuming my outreach machine is more or less what I talk about in Maker School, I could probably book a meeting a day, two meetings a day, so I'd probably have like 20 meetings in the next 1.5 to 2 weeks, and then I'd probably close like a quarter of them — that's a pretty low conversion rate, but I'd probably close a quarter. So I'd just have to sell like $2,500 fixed price. If I absolutely crush it on one deal that I start today, then by the time 12 days comes around I might have even done a delivery, and that delivery might have allowed me to do an additional upsell. So maybe the LTV of a client would have been like 4K and I really only would have needed 2.5. That's probably what I would do if my goal was to make $10,000 a month.
Not for beginners — if you already have a big brand, YouTube channel, and a working Instagram funnel, you could sell an AIOS, but as a total newbie, don't. Instead, pick a specific lane, ideally something tied to reach/acquisition: creative-generation systems (ad creative testing across Google, Facebook, TikTok, etc.), automated prospect research for cold email/LinkedIn icebreakers, and speed-to-lead systems (immediately following up with anyone who opts in from an ad, maximizing show/booking rate — even something as simple as calling a lead twice instead of once, or texting back a missed call automatically, can double conversion). Also strong: automated follow-up across SMS/email/DM for anyone who's expressed interest, and inbound lead-magnet systems (e.g. ManyChat-based funnels tied to a creator's content). The common thread: focus on a narrow, specific lane that produces a clearly measurable revenue outcome — that lets you proportionally scale a client's revenue in a way that's easy to prove and sell.
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