Over the next four months, what should I focus on—content creation, learning new skills, building projects, finding clients, or something else? I'm an 18‑year‑old with limited cash but plenty of time and ambition. What should I do?

#238 · audit your life in 64 fifteen-minute blocks

youtube ↗Agency Operations

Over the next four months, what should I focus on—content creation, learning new skills, building projects, finding clients, or something else? I'm an 18‑year‑old with limited cash but plenty of time and ambition. What should I do?

My recommendation is to get the paid versions of the AI tools as soon as possible – they’re significantly better than the free tiers and will let you work the way businesses actually use them. Use a modest amount of money (e.g., $20 a month from a parent’s credit card) to subscribe and start delivering real value for someone, even if it’s just helping your mom with a task so you can practice. Don’t wait four months; you can start today. After you’ve set up a small service, keep consuming content like mine and look for problems people are struggling with. When you spot a pain point, reach out with cold emails, DMs, LinkedIn messages, or short videos offering a solution. I’ve found that many agencies have low‑hanging inefficiencies – for example, they don’t follow up quickly or personalize communication. By signing up as a client yourself, you can see these gaps and then build a service to fix them. Start sending a consistent number of cold outreach messages each day, scrape public creators to identify gaps in their funnels, and pitch ways you can improve their business. This proactive, value‑first approach, especially when powered by AI, is the fastest way to land your first clients and grow an agency.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Client Acquisition

Dylan asks: As a software engineer with 4 years of experience expecting to be a father, I want to earn extra income on the side. Should I get a job doing AI implementation for agencies or start my own freelancing AI implementation business? What would you advise for the next 6 months?

Great question, and congratulations on the upcoming baby. If you're asking whether to take a job doing AI implementation for agencies or start your own freelancing AI implementation business, I'd recommend the freelancing route. You'll have far more freedom and flexibility over your schedule, even though you may need to outwork the alternative in the short term. In the long run, owning your time is a major part of what I enjoy discussing. Acting on knowledge is more important than just learning it. In Maker School, many people in your situation—working a stable job but wanting something more—find success through daily consistency: build an outreach habit where you connect with business owners who might need your services, and repeat that effort virtually every day. Over six months, that's about 180 days. Doing 10 unique, high‑quality custom outreach pieces per day yields roughly 1,850 touches. If those pieces are truly high quality and unique, the chance of not getting at least a 2‑3 % booking rate is very low—2 % of 1,850 is about 36 meetings. It's also unlikely you'd fail to turn at least one of those meetings into a paying client. If you really want to get started, just throw the kitchen sink at it: use every tool and tactic you can to generate leads and demonstrate value.

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youtube ↗Mindset

How do I know if I'm hitting the hammer right when starting an agency? Should I spend time looking for projects or learning the skill first, or a combo?

He says you first need to anchor what a lot of money means. AI automation agencies have the lowest barrier to entry and lowest capital cost—comparable to website design agencies in the late 1990s or social-media marketing agencies in the early 2010s. In this space, a lot of money is probably just a few hundred dollars. Any business outside this vertical will cost significantly more than a few hundred to get up and running over a three-month period, so you should expect to spend money to make money. Regarding your specific situation—bidding for email-setup projects on Upwork—lack of experience isn't a time issue; it takes only a couple of weeks to become proficient with any tool well enough that someone will pay you to save them time. So you should combine learning and prospecting. He recommends doing Maker School's introductory automation agency tutorials to gain foundational knowledge and learn to read the language of the tools. Once you understand the language, you can communicate with AI, use Google to find answers to specific questions, and you don't need to know how to do everything right away. The key question is whether a future version of you could solve this problem in the next couple of weeks—and the answer is almost always yes.

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youtube ↗Lead Generation

I'm 15 and trying to sell web design services to solo or 2‑3 person agencies. What system would they be interested in right away? Would a proposal generator work or should I offer free AI audits? Also, how can I get good at marketing, especially cold emails and DMs?

You actually have a big advantage at your age because you intuitively understand how to reach people online. The biggest bottleneck for tiny web‑design agencies is simply not having enough leads. If you can specialize in lead generation you become far more valuable than any downstream tool. A proposal generator can help, but it’s secondary to getting more leads, so I wouldn’t waste time on free AI audits—they solve problems that come after you have enough business. The core skill you need is outreach. The best way to improve is to just do it a lot: send ten cold emails right now. Go to LinkedIn, find people in your target niche who could use your service, and email them. No template is required—just write a short, honest pitch and hit send from your Gmail. The worst that can happen is nothing, and you’ll learn by doing. Mastering these soft‑skill outreach habits will pay the biggest ROI for the next 20 years.

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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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