How have things changed in the past year for someone starting a B2B services agency, are no‑code platforms becoming obsolete because of agentic AI, should a beginner still learn Make or n8n, is Upwork still the best way to start, and what would you do if you had to start from scratch today?
There’s a lot more emphasis on cloud‑code based solutions and education now. It’s become viable to sell education around cloud‑code rather than just implementation services. A few years ago teaching tools like Make, Zapier, or Power Automate was difficult because of the steep learning curve and cost justification. With cloud‑code you can run a workshop and see ROI within a week, making education a sellable product. On job platforms like Upwork you now see many requests for cloud‑code coaching, workshops, and short‑term coaching series, which you can sell to both large enterprises and SMBs. The calculus has shifted: instead of spending all day becoming the best implementation specialist, you can spend part of your time learning agentic AI and the rest on sales, marketing, and outreach, then sell that knowledge delta. You can position yourself as a cloud‑code educator, offering workshops, two‑month coaching programs, or internal upskilling for companies, and charge a premium for the ROI you deliver. This approach works across large and mid‑size businesses, and you can even guarantee results to make the offer more compelling.
Yeah, it's a great question. For those who don't know, I run Maker School community, and I'm currently number three on the revenue leaderboard with about $292k. My success comes from how I package the community. I position it as a B2B offer where members pay $184 a month to learn how to get their first paying customer for an AI or automation service. In 90 days they earn back the money they spent (not counting tool costs), effectively getting a customer that pays around $1,000, which feels like a five‑to‑six‑times ROI. While Jack's community and other AI automation groups were first movers just by being the go‑to place for AI talk, I took a sniper‑rifle approach: I niche down to teaching how to build a business, not just how to use AI. Now I'm integrating AI and automation curriculum directly into Maker School—I've finished a make.com and an NAN accelerator and just need to record the videos. We also still do Q&A and similar offerings. Most other automation communities stay broad and less differentiated; I solve the specific problem of wanting to sell something with AI/automation and then actually doing it.
I started with Harvard CS50, then taught myself computer science from the ground up, excluding languages and compilers, distributed systems, and operating systems. I completed nanotech to Tetris, building a computer from scratch. After that, I learned AI from scratch via a course that just listed introductory material, then I began training models—first a TensorFlow model called Stalan 2 that generated faces, then Gwarn's 'This Wu Does Not Exist' which I turned into an anime face generator, which I found hilarious and turned into a business called One Second Painting. I scaled that to about $3,500 per month by selling AI-generated art, but Midjourney's release destroyed that business. I had been selling NFTs, which gave me hands‑on AI experience. I then used that experience to freelance write while aiming for $10k/month, employing GPT‑3 for content. I also spent six months to a year locked in my room learning make.com and Zapier, building automations for my One Second Painting business and later for a second venture with a business partner. Eventually the money came from disproportionate time invested, leading to a compressed business model: get your first customer quickly, then worry about everything later. I realized most of the low‑level AI skills I learned aren’t used today, but the practical experience with automation platforms like make.com and Zapier, plus building info products, allowed me to scale to $100k/month through a blend of an AI automation agency and information products.
I get some version of this question basically every day. The reason you're asking it is because you don't yet understand the problems most businesses actually suffer from. The vast majority of businesses I work with — mostly B2B agencies and B2B tech/SaaS products — tend to struggle with three things: front-end lead generation, inefficient client onboarding systems, and bad fulfillment/project management full of unnecessary manual work. Once you understand those problems, it's not hard to know what people will pay for — anything that solves one of those three and helps them make more money. Practically, the fastest way to get unstuck: spend an hour picking 2-3 candidate niches (say, videographers, B2B creative agencies, recruitment companies), join Reddit communities for people who own those kinds of businesses, and scroll top to bottom reading what questions and problems people are actually posting about.
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.