Should you work with local businesses for an AI or automation agency?
If you are selling AI or automation services, working with local businesses is sort of a double-edged sword. The reason it's great is because you're working locally with businesses that typically don't have a lot of technical experience, so there's usually a big overhang between what is achievable with technology and what they are currently doing. Even a couple of little sprinkles of AI can really change their workflow and revolutionize their business. But the bad part of that double-edged sword is they're typically not very technically capable, which means they might struggle understanding the value of technology. You might actually have to build that value up in your explanations and sales calls from the floor all the way up to where the value actually is. A lot of people won't even realize why they might want to automate something like a purchase order automation — they'll just be like, well no, this is the same way we've always done things, and that's fine, and I don't really want to grow all that much anyway. That is pretty difficult to convince. If somebody's in a position where they're like, ah no, I'm cool doing it the same way I've always done it because they don't want more work anyway, how are you going to sell them on a big return on investment? Unfortunately, the same thing that leads to a lot of local business owners only having one simple brick-and-mortar storefront is the same thing that leads to them not really wanting to buy a service like this, because they just don't give a [care] about growth. Another thing is their data isn't scrapable, which is a problem. If you're trying to sell them voice and chat agents, it might be difficult to get enough of a base of local businesses in an email list to even pitch them a chat or voice agent to begin with. Your only way of doing that might be through something like cold calling, because a lot of these local businesses don't look at their email as much but they'll certainly look at their phone — they'll be around the front desk when people come into their shops. So that necessitates a change in strategy. These are all reasons why I don't really like local businesses. If you're wondering how you can implement AI features in digital businesses instead of local businesses, know that you are typically dealing with an audience that is more B2B oriented. They typically understand the economics of value exchange a little bit more. They understand the whole idea of, hey, I will provide you massive return on investment and I'll make a little bit for that, and here's how. They typically already use AI or have experience with AI, so it's not going to be starting from scratch — it'll just be a lot easier across the stack. And just be careful what you're selling them. For voice and chat agents for digital businesses, don't pick voice and chat agents before you've verified the niche. In general, don't pick the thing that you're going to sell before you know who you're going to sell it to. Experiment with a bunch of different approaches to a bunch of different people and then just go based off what works.
local businessdigital businessai agencyniche selection
What a great question. This is more a consulting and strategy perspective than a building one. Naturally, if you're trying to make more money and thinking, 'Ooh, what's a way to make more money? I know AI is all the rage—maybe we'll add an AI chatbot to our website,' but if the chatbot doesn't talk to anybody, it won't make you more money. You've stumbled on a universal problem for many service businesses: they just don't have any leads. The real point of value, the bottleneck you could fix, is usually lead generation. I don't know how many people visit their site daily, monthly, or yearly, so it's hard to suggest exactly what to do next, but you're on the right track. The usual thinking is: get leads first, then worry about optimizing how you deal with them, nurture them, and improve conversion rates later. In your opinion, what's the best automation to sell? Could you make a video on it? The best automation to sell is something that increases or encourages lead generation, which we discussed. One of the main systems I sell is a cold outreach system where I build distribution for someone from scratch for about $200–$300 a month ongoing. They start with zero leads in their pipeline—usually an agency—and after the system is set up, they get roughly 30 leads per month that want to book calls. This is a game-changer and easy to justify as an investment for companies whose bottleneck is lead generation, like most businesses under $50k–$100k per month in revenue. Think of it this way: I'm solving their most dire problem—no leads entering the business. I charge them $3,000–$4,000 a month, which is fine because without me they wouldn't even have a business making more than $3k–$4k a month. In my experience, the best automations to sell for small to mid-sized businesses are those that help the top of the funnel. If they already have an outbound system but aren't getting many leads, I'd recommend a speed-to-lead system. Anything close to the top of the funnel—whether outbound or inbound—helps a lot, and that's what I'd recommend.
Local AI deployments for companies afraid of giving their information to the big LLM companies like OpenAI or Anthropic are a quickly emerging niche. A lot of companies are shifting to Chinese open-source models that are quantized and fast enough to run on local infrastructure while still being good enough for knowledge work. So I think it's a good niche. The problem is you'll probably find that the people thinking that many steps ahead are already technically endowed enough not to need your services. You could probably do it as a consultant, but as a repeatable, reliable, recurring service it doesn't seem super viable right now. Most companies that even realize they need this kind of strategic shift will likely want to do it in-house, because if they're that privacy and compliance minded, they're probably big enough to have hired people in compliance and privacy. It could work, and I might be wrong, but it'd probably be pretty tough to scale unless you become known as the local AI guy, which would almost certainly come through some kind of inbound brand. And if you already have an inbound brand capable of generating customers like multi-billion-dollar enterprises, you might as well sell other things, because it'll probably make you more money.
Yeah, for sure. But I think you went about this the wrong way. You started spending tons of time building this product. Now you're considering whether to sell this or something else. A lot of this is wasted time. You might have actually spent time selling a product that nobody cares about. Just to be blunt. The reality is, as beginners, we don't really know what we don't know. So the best way is to put as many possible things in front of as many people as possible. Put as many possible things in front of as many people as you can and let them guide you in the right direction. If you put five possible offers in front of 5,000 people and people disproportionately choose offer number three, then you can invest the time and energy necessary in building the product. This is the modern way of go to market: you go to market first, then build the product based on what people want. People respond positively to this. These are the questions I'm always getting about whether your automation does this or that. So that's what I'm going to build into the freaking thing. Does that make sense? So, it's putting the cart before the horse. Don't lose the forest for the trees. But that's my recommendation there.
No, you're absolutely right—warehouse management systems, enterprise resource planning, and inventory management systems are essentially dressed-up CRMs. If you understand how spreadsheets work, you'll understand how WMS and similar systems work; their UX is often clunky, but that's fine. Regarding VR 180 cameras: they're stereo cameras with a wide field of view that feel immersive in a VR headset; still early days with resolution needing work, but they could become a big industry in 5–10 years. I haven't used them yet, but they look exciting—two lenses recreating human field of view. I film them with OBS Studio. On your AI automation ideas for cold email: AI meeting note‑taking that sends key subjects and actionable steps to participants and updates the CRM is great. Automated email tagging and filtering is great. An AI concierge for Airbnbs and hotels answering common questions is reasonable. I'm not aiming to become a millionaire; I just want to sell simple sub‑$1K services to get off the ground. For mailboxes, I wouldn't recommend Hostinger for cold email—there's a reason big players avoid it. I'd suggest Zapmail at about $3.50 per mailbox (up to 10 or 100 mailboxes), which also handles DNS setup. Regarding pivoting into AI and automation: if I didn't think it made sense, I wouldn't be making videos about it all day, so my work already shows it's a good move. On starting an agency with no clients: outreach isn't a simple yes/no; it's about volume. How many outreach pieces did you send? How many Upwork or freelancer applications? How many community posts? How many people have you talked to, and over what time? If you haven't done enough, it's not that you're not good enough—it's just that you haven't put in the reps. Expecting results without sufficient effort is unreasonable. Why people fail to make money online: mostly because they can't stick with something long enough to see results. They expect success after a few days or weeks, like learning piano to a concert level in two weeks—impossible. You need years of effort; don't compare your chapter one to someone else's chapter 100. On hiring versus doing it yourself: hiring someone on Upwork or Fiverr to build templates isn't more efficient if your metric is cost or time, because you pay for work you could do yourself and add communication overhead. The only real efficiency gain is doing less of the work you dislike, but at this stage I'd optimize for making $100K rather than avoiding work you enjoy. On growing a coaching business: first, stop over‑analyzing your 'why' and start acting. Determine a set of daily revenue‑generating activities you can do every day for the next year that will drive the results you care about—financial goals. Define what you're selling (information/coaching). Put your offer in front of people, articulate how it solves their problems, and improve the offer as you deliver it. Learn and deliver in tandem. Reinvest profits to systemize outreach, lead gen, and sales, freeing time for systematization and growth. For example, join school communities and each day respond to ten women with health‑improvement suggestions, then move conversations to DMs, calls, and present your coaching offer. As you earn money, you can make the process more sophisticated.