#202 · 60min open Q&A on how I make $400k/mo
Focus on revenue‑proximate automations—sales, marketing, and lead generation—because they directly increase income. Upwork is the simplest and most accessible platform, though it costs more than alternatives; its ease of use makes it a good starting point.
Accept any and all work on Upwork—think of it as an elevator that instantly connects you to large businesses you’d never meet otherwise. Even as a total newbie, you can land a client doing $10–$20 million a year within a week, giving you a powerful case study like 'I helped a $10 million/year business achieve X, Y, Z.' At this stage, don’t worry about qualifying or tightening the funnel; go broad to bootstrap experience, collect case studies, and start making money. The creator shares a personal example: a friend who jumped on Upwork while he was door‑to‑door went from zero to a legitimate $30 000/month income in three‑to‑four months by maximizing opportunity and landing a big‑ticket client whose needs matched his skill set—something the creator missed while grinding door‑to‑door for $5 000/month.
On Upwork, avoid narrowing your niche; there simply aren’t enough specialized clients (e.g., dog‑walking businesses) to sustain you. Instead, treat the platform as a way to get repetitions—apply to any automation job you can find and take whatever work comes your way to build experience and reputation.
Manufacturing is already about automation (think assembly line). To find automation opportunities I start at the top of the funnel: reach, acquisition, conversion, expansion. For reach I look at AI‑driven creative generators, speed‑to‑lead systems (branded numbers, power dialing, follow‑up automation). For acquisition I automate quote production—saving time and improving quality by removing manual document review. For conversion I use high‑quality proposals, automated contractor dispatch, reminder systems. For expansion I follow up with promo offers and ideate solutions. The biggest gains come from automating front‑end sales and marketing rather than back‑end processes.
We have a bunch of people in Maker School experimenting with a wide landscape of niches, which is a benefit of being in the community. You can see which niches are working and which aren’t. HVAC, dentists, and law firms aren’t making a ton of money with automation because there aren’t enough of them to apply high‑volume, iterative strategies. I don’t recommend focusing on local services; instead go entirely digital and target industries with large headcounts that can benefit from automation without hurting profitability. The biggest boom right now is recruitment, which saw a surge of interest and will likely rise again. I also suggest experimenting with recruitment, older‑school agencies that haven’t caught up, MSPs, IT consultants, and similar businesses that can source leads automatically via tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator.