What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone just starting out in the AI automation space?
Nick’s top advice for newcomers to AI automation is to show up daily for an extended period and focus on levers that truly move you toward making money. Key levers include talking to customers and putting yourself in front of 10 to 100 people each day; doing this for a year means contacting between 3,650 and 36,500 people. He stresses that the sheer serendipity of creating your own luck will eventually yield results, sharing his own experience of fundraising for child‑sponsorship charities by talking to hundreds of people a day for months, becoming a local celebrity and receiving party invitations—even without selling anything. He concludes that consistently putting yourself in front of many people will lead to winning.
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.
AI will create ads, films, and music videos much faster and for far less money—no production or audio teams needed, as the AI handles scripting and auto‑fixes everything. The output comes from natural‑language prompting; those who know how to prompt the models will do best, though that skill will fade as models become better at prompting themselves. You can definitely earn $10k/month with this right now, maybe for a couple of years. I’m still a beginner in AI automation agencies, but I know some basics and have built a few automations. Your next step is to get in front of paying customers, articulate their needs and problems, and show how your solution helps. There’s no other path—it’s messy, like entering a gladiatorial arena with tigers; you have to win your first fight to earn praise. Start by signing up on Upwork or freelancer.com, treat yourself as a low‑paid API endpoint, gain experience and money, then move to cold email, ads, or other channels to build a sustainable method.
The typical influencer pitch—selling AI operating systems or audits—only works because they already have trust. As a total stranger you need to find a single problem the prospect likely has with a big financial pain point, like wasted spend on lead generation or PPC. Then guarantee you can solve that problem with a monetary reward. If you don't deliver, you either refund them, don't ask for payment, or keep working for free until you achieve the result. The formula I use is: I guarantee 20 booked appointments in 60 days or you don't pay. I repeat that over and over. I never say I'll run an AI audit with vague outcomes; that offers no clear ROI.
I don’t recommend B2B door knocking as a reliable way to earn money; it’s extremely tough and ego‑destroying, and you’re unlikely to make direct income from it, especially early on. However, doing it once or twice can teach valuable skills—generating attention, handling rejection, and persistence—similar to a commission‑based charity job I had where I earned about $15 CAD/hour standing at a transit station. The experience builds resilience and gives you a realistic sense of the effort required in sales, much like the old door‑to‑door vacuum sales model where you had to ‘eat what you killed.’ Use it for personal growth, not as a primary client‑acquisition channel.