#279 · why AI agents aren't making you money

youtube ↗AI & Automation

Can you share a guide on your software setup, especially the framework behind your AI agents and how you cue tasks from your phone to orchestrate more complex workflows?

When I make videos like this, I constantly balance how deep to go on one person’s question versus covering enough to help many viewers. That’s why I don’t go super deep on niche topics like AI agent orchestration from a phone—most people are dealing with more fundamental issues, like the ones Muhammad and Sam raised. It’s also a matter of top‑of‑funnel versus bottom‑of‑funnel content. My recommendation is to stop worrying about queuing tasks from your phone and instead focus on the actual bottom‑line ROI you’re generating with your current workflow. Many people try to apply AI agents to everything because it sounds cool, but in my own experience, only a small fraction of my most valuable actions over the past week involved agents. I do use them for preliminary research, scoping, scaffolding, or creating outlines, but the core revenue drivers—what actually makes me money—come from me, not the agents. The real ROI lies in simple, repeatable systems like Getting Things Done by David Allen: having a place to capture ideas, checking back to decide if something is actionable, and then working through a clear next‑action flow. It may sound boring, but that’s where the real secrets are—rooted in proven, past‑tested methods, not chasing the latest AI trends.

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Related answers

youtube ↗AI & Automation

Can you make a video about agent loops and agent harnesses?

Loops have been interesting to play with. The simplest way to get started: before you go to bed, give your AI agent a goal, and have it loop every X minutes as part of achieving that goal — this solves the problem of a model finishing a goal too early, and lets you trade tokens/time for quality since it doesn't matter if it takes 8 hours while you're asleep. Example: I wanted to scaffold out possible structures for a free community, so I set a goal and had it loop every 15 minutes overnight — over about 8 hours that's roughly 32 independent passes, each consulting the master list of ideas so far and adding a few new ones, ending with a massive list of options. A second major use is loops for software optimization: set up a loop where every X minutes an agent spawns and tries to improve some metric you care about (like page load speed) on a live property — it's essentially 'auto-research in a box,' logging what it's tried before and improving a test metric over time. The downside nobody talks about much: loops burn a ton of tokens — creators pushing loops are often fine spending $2-3K/month on AI tokens, so if you don't have that kind of budget, it can be a rough way to work.

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youtube ↗AI & Automation

Are not enough people using agentic workflows, leaving the market open? Can you give an example of the distribution bottleneck?

Most people see AI as a simple chatbot that answers questions like a search engine, not realizing it can be woven into a business’s core infrastructure—such as decision‑making routing—to act more like an intelligence that moves information through a network to solve problems faster. Over the next few years, companies that implement AI infrastructurally will see major gains in speed to market, customer‑need identification, and product development. For example, when I posted a job for packaging and ideation, applicants didn’t send simple pitch ideas; they built full applications showing how my YouTube titles and thumbnails would look with real‑time data, demonstrating how deeply AI can surface and address user needs.

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youtube ↗AI & Automation

I’ve built an AI voice agent that qualifies leads and makes bookings, but after seeing your comment that AI agents aren’t effective, I’m not sure what else to sell. What should I focus on now?

I didn’t say AI agents are ineffective overall—I said the AI agents built on the NADN platform aren’t ready for prime time. The agents themselves are great and will fundamentally change the economy, but the current NADN‑based versions don’t add enough value beyond a simple linear automation. Since you’re building an AI voice agent, you’re probably not using NADN, so that specific limitation doesn’t apply to you. Keep doing what you’re doing, but avoid using AI agents in the wrong contexts. A human will still outperform an AI voice agent for many tasks, but the main benefit of an AI voice agent right now is 24/7 availability. For example, a dentist’s front‑desk staff can’t be on call all night, but an AI voice agent can handle calls for just a few dollars a night. Even if the audio quality isn’t perfect, you have constant uptime and can politely tell callers that no one is available, offer to schedule a callback, or direct them to the next steps. In short, continue using the voice agent for low‑touch, always‑on interactions, and look for revenue opportunities that leverage that 24/7 availability rather than trying to replace high‑touch human work.

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youtube ↗Mindset

Should I stop making AI videos and focus on consistency and discipline instead?

Thank you. I had a great rest last night and I'm on fire today. If you want to talk about consistency and discipline, the best way is to get 8 to 9 hours of sleep each night—it makes everything easier. You asked about making a video on how to create an AI appointment setter; that would help a lot. Are you referring to an AI voice agent? If so, check out my AI voice agent—search for it, as Googling my content helps boost my rankings. One of my daily updates videos appears there, and there's also Nick's AI net worth search, which is funny. Another option is the AI agent, probably the website agent I built, which does some setting for you—give it a try and let me know your thoughts.

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