How to Scale Your AI Agency (Forward Deployed Engineer Model Breakdown)

One of the biggest questions right now in the AI agency market is how to scale effectively without fully niching down to a productized service model. And one of the top contenders for the answer to this question is the FDE or forward deployed engineer model that was popularized by Palanteer. In order to dive deeper into the strategy and the pros and cons of it and how it works in reality, I've brought on Brandon who's going to be breaking down how he's been doing at his agency to scale his agency with a quality of clients rather than a quantity. This is very closely aligned with how my team at Morningside have been delivering for our clients recently. So, it's going to be great for you guys to hear from another perspective, how this is being put into practice. In this video, Brand and I are going to be breaking down what this model actually is, how it works in motion, and the tips and tricks around pricing and scoping to ensure that if you're going to put it into action, it runs smoothly for you. And I can tell you this video is essential if you're an agency owner struggling to get consistent revenue. I hope you enjoy it. Brandon, thanks for coming on, man. I'm excited to get into this. I think this is one of the most important topics to be talking about around scaling an agency in 2026. It's definitely made the rounds in the news recently. um and all the startup scenes about using this model. So, I thought I'd bring you on as someone who's actively been using this to uh scale your agency and give us a source on how this model actually looks within an AI agency format. I think

firstly, let's just get clear on what the what a ford deployed engineer is. I think that's the first thing people are going to want to know. So, what is a forward deployed engineer? What is the forward deployed engineer model? Uh and how does that look when you apply to an agency? — The Ford uh deployment engineering model uh was first pioneered by Palunteer. uh they started working specifically with this sort of methodology. Um there's also four deployed strategists. So uh typically it's a echo and delta team where uh the echo team actually works strictly with the business side um and tries to figure out on the front lines what that team needs and bridges the gap between tech and the data. And so the delta team is the tech team essentially, but they would um also work with the echo team to figure out how much inefficiencies that they can sort of remove or improve processes for. So linking this to say like the AI transformation partner model like you've said we're going into companies to do a really deep audit of their operations figuring out where the blockages are where the opportunity is for automation with AI and sort of custom apps internally and just generally uh where the inefficiencies are and then handing them over to the dev team and that sort of end toend process of like identification uh development and there might be some education and training on the back of it. How is say this different to just an AI agency doing a like me sending one of my consultants? We sent two of my consultants and he my business partner went out to do an inerson audit um in the United States with our MBA uh client and they I guess they were a team of four deployed engineers out there. — I think the there's a couple things that make it different. Uh the first thing is how rigorous the audit process is. So um it goes into like being included in their group chats, being a part of their CRM, like a member in their CRM. So you're monitoring a lot of the processes that happen digitally. You're also thinking about the product. So you're not only looking at the processes that happen internally or externally, you're looking at what possible things have overlap um in keeping the product in mind. So if there's anything that's repeatable across other clients for example we target service based businesses but even more niche right a vertical within service base would be dispatching for scheduling for sales training right so how can we use that data that we've gathered to build that product build that scalable product so I guess this is you could say in a way a bit of a reskin or renaming of the AI transformation pattern model in that like you've a consultant. Ideally, the consultant is like what we've found at Morningside is like having the consultant like my head of consulting Nick who is familiar enough with the technical side to be dangerous and to know how to whip up an automation or a mockup or you know use claw code to whack something together. um to be able to we found showing in person when we were doing the inerson audit over in the states uh that we could go from a week of intense interviews and really getting to understand the business to then within a few days being able to turn those into rough demos and workable demos to be able to show them what hey this is what the portal or the dashboard or the tool that we've just talked about here would look like. So you're finding people who make that skill set and then you're deploying them into you're sending them out or digitally sending them out to one of your clients and are you like aligning that one to one? So it's one one employee, one of these engineer consultant hybrids that's deployed into your company and like what's the split? Are you having them working at multiple or is it more of a one for one uh setup? Currently we have it as a one for one. So uh me and my co-founder and then we have a small dev team. um we try to take one client at a time although we could process multiple clients if we needed to but yeah with the advent of AI it makes it so that we can actually build to the need right so it's counterintuitive to trying to find a product that meets everyone's need or scaling at least it's actually the most unscalable thing it's very custom so we actually are building to the need and then they can see those results right away and provides a lot of value up front and there's I feel like there's nothing wrong that. But the only issue is that it doesn't it's not sexy. That's for sure. — Before we jump into how you sort of got to this point for the person who's

maybe at an agency running 10 20k a month, uh but it feels like it's all over the place. It's get they're going from 20 or 30k down to like five and backing up and it's just really spotty income. Um and struggling to scale uh like smoothly, I guess. What is what we're going to talk about here? Like how is that the medicine to what they're experiencing there? How is it different to what they're currently doing? Um I know you've got some stuff to talk about on the Legion side, but if I'm struggling to scale, um why is this the medicine I might be looking for? If you're struggling to scale, then um it would be looking for other things that client might need. So being able to get that recurring revenue, I think that's the first step. So seeing why they're not coming back, why is it that is it the customer journey? Is it the price? Um, and then once you like lock down that, it's it is more of a in-depth relationship. So, it's built on a lot of trust. — Essentially, you take by taking the time to put someone over there, really take the time to get to know their business, go through the full order process. We've found it, too. Like, we'd much rather have a handful of clients that we work with for like years at a time, which is where we're at right now. Um, and they just keep paying more checks and checks because they have this with the bigger organizations, there's infinite amount of work to do. there's always new stuff to to work on. So, the connection you have and the trust you build up is the solution to the scaling problem is to be able to latch on to a few people and just have like a couple clients that are paying you essentially big monthly retainers, but it's actually just for doing more work. I suppose you could get into the retainer eventually. Um, but you're saying that's what this model offers. — Yeah, it's more relationship based like you said. It's um us going out into the field. So, we're you can't really build, let's say, an inventory system if you're not inside their warehouse. So, a lot of the clients we have, they're local to LA. They're in Orange County. They're um even the state of California. So, we can't really do a lot of these things through Zoom. Unfortunately, it actually has to be seen with our own eyes. And I think with the industry that we've tackled, which is service based, they do like actually seeing us in person cuz they're very visual learners and they do see what they want to see. I said that in my um my predictions vid for this for 2026. I think people who get out there in person, there's a huge opportunity for these AI agencies and AI service providers to get the out there in person and meet these people. Well, like you would not believe the relationship that we've been able to build up with our clients, but actually getting in person like building a real relationship where it's like that mutual respect. It just unlocks a different level to the game and it's like we will be able to work with these people and make them money. They will make us money for as long as we're able to deliver on our promises. And that's something that I think the digital side of things doesn't really capture fully. So um I think that's a good sort of primer on this model and how it's different. It's you could I suppose for those who are new to this it's like the AI transformation partner model is primarily uh is scaled through using these for deployed engineers to go out there and get in person. It doesn't necessarily have to be in person but it can be. Um, but by sending a consultant who's likely a little bit more dangerous on the technical side to really understand their business and having someone who's like the point of contact, who's super deep to be able to identify those, uh, those opportunities and then report that back to, uh, the dev team to be able to build those and he's sort of middlemaning those from there. So, um, you want to just jump into a bit of a backstory here on, um, your marketing, how we go into pricing and stuff like that. Okay guys, very quickly. If you're an aspiring entrepreneur and wants to start your own AI business and you haven't already joined my free school community, it's down there in one of the links in the description below. Has my full free course on how to start your own AI agency as a complete beginner. And you're surrounded by over a quarter million people who are also striving towards the same thing. There's no better place on the planet right now to be surrounded by like-minded people. And you get free weekly Q& A with me where you can ask questions directly to me about how to start and scale your business. I'll see you in there. My job

as CEO is mainly to make sure that we have enough opportunities on the plate for the people that work for me. So, um it's a lot of networking, doing speaking engage engagements like this, but also connecting with people at a level that they can understand. So, um that's the marketing and networking side. Like I said, we've spent no money on sales or marketing, but I think the biggest thing is referrals and like finding leads uh internally. And I want to just touch on a little bit too like some of these automations don't need to be agentic all the time. So some of our first clients that we had, they were just purely AI automation. So it's like digitizing a form for instance. So it doesn't always have to be an AI agent. It can just start off as something smaller that they think they need or that provide a lot of value and then after that they're hooked and then you can basically pitch them more things and then it can become a recurring model after that. — Yeah, I think a lot of the time the agent is actually not necessary. Um, and I've been planning a big AI agents tutorial for beginners. And I was like, hm, could I have just done this with a like linear kind of automation with a classification step or something, and if the answer is yes, then it's like makes more sense to just do it with a more linear like automation with some AI in it. It's like the agent really shines when there's varied input and a bunch of different options that it could do with that and routes it could take that afterwards. So, that's a great point. While we're there, you didn't quite reveal how you're getting your leads. You're you going to networking events? — Yeah, a little bit of everything. So, I was just in Vegas for CES a couple weeks ago. Um, investor dinners I get always invited to like once a week. Uh, found a trash day, bro. How are you doing that? — I'm a part of a lot of communities. So, there's one community, AI LA, if I can shout them out. There's creator communities here in LA. So, LA, not the hugest hub for AI. I mean SF is you're going to be your AI hub but ALA has its own culture and personality that focuses more on like creatives um but also um they like AI too. So there's a couple of techies in here um on beach they call it. — Okay. So for people in any kind of major city uh see what groups there are communities there are around AI and start showing up in person. — I think that's it like there is even something extreme as just like leveraging your contacts list as a CRM. So, just hitting up everyone that you know, say, "I'm starting an AI a AI automation agency or something. " If you know anyone that has a business that can give me a shot, uh, or you know, would like to get a free audit. — Warm outreach, Brandon. — Seriously. Yeah. — Absolutely. It's a warm lead. So, even um I'm here, this is my office. It's called Salt Box, but there's businesses all around here, and I've been door-knocking uh to see if anybody would need help with their business. And most of these companies are e-commerce businesses. So um it goes down to door knockocking too. So you just have to put yourself out there is what I have here. — So we got targeted networking events — uh warm leads hot lead conversion rate 100%. — So yeah basically um yeah it's pretty small diagram but essentially a discovery call via countly or you can even go in person and schedule a call to do the audit at their business. Uh which is some of the things that we've done before. Um and then in that moment you can build out their mind map of their business hierarchy or you can start asking them um interviewing some of their employees and really get a really good idea and this is usually like a this could be from a day depending on how large the business is to a week or to two weeks. Um but it's a really good spot to actually build that relationship and then also get an idea of what things you can tackle uh and you can propose for the next week. I read a really interesting article from A16Z recently uh called the pelterization of everything. It was basically talking about how every it's like back in the day it used to be that we're like the Facebook of X or like we're the Uber of Y and that was what startups were saying and now everyone's saying we're the palunteer of X, Y. Um, and then this was just a basically a big exploration of like you're not really you're just like a you're a services company at this point. Like a lot of AI startups um uh frame themselves as being using this fl for deployed engineer model. Um but they're completely missing all the things that made make Palanteer so good such as the industry that it's in. There's very high like there's lives at stake on these sort of things. People are willing to pay ridiculous amount of money. Um, and Palanteer has their own uh products and they're very opinionated in the way that they work with their clients. It's like you're going to pay us a lot of money. We're going to set you up on our systems, our products that we've built and the Ford deploys engineers are there to scope things out, figure out what products from our bag of products are needed and then uh go and actually set them up on those and do the sort of tricky integration works needed. Um, so that's the role of the Ford deployed engineer with them and I think that's important as an agency going into this. It's not like sure you can afford deployed engineer to go and uh use that model to do the audit to get familiar with the business as talking about scaling solutions. Uh you've the options always been to just niche your agency down and say we only solve a certain set of problems or we work with these companies only and essentially you are taking that palenty model of building up a stack of like your basket of systems that you can sort of hand out to a given niche or to solve a certain problem. to be looking at where you can build your own products um and force your clients to essentially migrate over to your system and to be integrated onto a platform that you've created is really where I think uh the scale comes from because you start to instead of solving the new problems every single time you're able to kind of repeat solve uh some of the main problems through that product and the Ford deployed engineer is just getting them set up on it. So that's an important thing to put a pin in and you can't just run this as like a purely completely general development and consulting agency because that will still be difficult to scale. — Yeah, you will always uh start off as a generalist but then um as you start to grow, you'll get more into the verticals that are specific to what the product needs to be and you'll start to see those as you grow, which is the best part about it. And of course then you can make that choice whether you want to go that route or stay in that agency route. So at least you have the option. — Right. What we got next? One of the longest standing pr principles of the FD model is placing builders close to users produces better outcomes which sounds very obvious in practice but of course it's very difficult because you have to understand basically the business side and why certain things exist and so can get into politics and other things but you have to figure out a win-win situation for everyone. So, I think that's probably the echo team's job, but if you're in a small agency, then you're going to be doing that side of things as well. So, um if you're in front of a decision maker, then one of the first things you want them to do if they can is build out their business hierarchy, like a mind map of their business. Um, as well as if you can't get access to things, if they if you have that trust and relationship. um be able to job shadow some of their employees, the very like management, but then also employees that are like front desk, you know, people who are outside the company as well, 1099 contractors. So, you're getting an idea now of how their business works as a whole, how they get leads, how they convert those leads, how do they maintain those leads, right? Um how they make — this just comes down to audit process, right? Whether it's like the more digital style where it's like okay let's map out the stakeholders let's figure out who like how deep we need to go who we need to interview do those interviews get the information back map their processes on a process map kind of thing. So this is just I suppose for the inerson it's you can actually do physical job shadowing and that's the model that you guys are using. — Yes we actually prefer that. So a lot of the things a lot of the clients that we do have are based around where we live. We are trying to move sort of across those flyaway states like into different locations but we really do enjoy the um personal connection. — That's so cool man. Good on you. — The next step would be to build a prototype and propose uh and make a service proposal on that on the opportunity matrix that you found. So quick wins if you found any. Uh I forgot to mention that in the AI audit you also figure out their tool stack. So you want to meet them where they are. Let's say they're already using uh G Suite, you don't want to move them over to Microsoft. Or if they're using a Jot Form, don't move them over to Tally, right? Try to keep it all within the same ecosystem and see if a lot of that stuff will not will be unchanging. So, um even if their brand changes or if their if they decide to uh collect money a different way, their industry is still going to be the same as long as their business stay the same, then you can still rely on those core technologies. So, um hence the word data flow. Um, and then you can start proposing things that will make sense to them. — Can we just get a little zoom in on your proposal there if people are curious? — So, this is uh one of the most recent ones we did for a med spa in Beverly Hills. Um, we actually helped with understanding what is it they would need to take their data to the next level. So, what they were doing was collecting data from uh, Tally, but none of that was data was being processed. So we decided that it would be best to build an automation around tally and then build emails and propose that as their first automation. — This is going from like you got the FTEEs out there digging around doing the audit [snorts] and then you're proposing on one like you just kind of like I keep using this analogy. It's like when you're looking for like a roll of tape you're like going around trying to find the edge, right? And so in the audit you're trying to find that edge. the first thing that you can like start peeling so that you can get a foot in the door. So, this is just looking at the quick wins that you identified and going, "Hey, look, we think this is the best place to start. " Or you stacking a couple in that first contract. That's a great analogy cuz there's if you're looking for that once you find that piece where the tape ends, you're going to actually build a lot of trust in that relationship and you're going to be able to provide them a lot of value up front um right away. So, it's nothing too daunting. it will be and oftentimes you'll have to offer a discount for that first engagement. Um, but that's sort of the risk that you take when you work with anybody. I feel — we see the same thing if it's a big client as well, big brand name. Yeah, absolutely. You're going to be willing to take a discount on that and be like, look, can I just get break even on this just to get in the door? Hell, can I like do this? Maybe I'll lose a bit of money, but if I can land this, the amount it's going to do for my agency and the length of the relationship we could build off this. Um, so this is a this is an interesting point um, strategy wise. — So then it moves into development. Um, I

do also want to mention as well, I think a cool little tip is when you're proposing, do it in a do it either in person or over Zoom so you can show the prototype too. Uh, what that do that'll do is all business owners like to get their wheels spinning. So they like to see what the possibilities are before they buy. So this is opportunity for you to actually close the sale. uh whether just show whe whether instead of just emailing them a proposal — and seeing if they reply back, you're actually getting them on the call and then closing it there. So we noticed that a lot of actually what we do is pretty reliant on Replet and Zapier and you can pretty much accomplish a lot of your beginning projects with just those two. So you have Replet offering a web hook to any API which is crazy. If Zap year doesn't have that built in or make. com or go high level then you can pass it to replet server. Um we do partner with Zapier so we're using a lot of Zapier inhouse as well but this it gives us a lot of options um regarding like what we can do with the tools that we have available to us. — Okay. Yeah. So just walk me through that. You've got a replet web hook dashboard. Give me an example of like how this works around a problem that you likely to face. — Yeah. So one of them was Jot Form. So um a client that we used had um used Jot Form but we needed to do some hard like pretty heavy duty calculations on the form that Jot Form didn't do natively even with all the plugins and widgets that it had. Zapier would not be able to do it either because it would require a lot of looping. So we pass it over to riplet and riplet was able to actually perform with looping from the payload and then pass it pass the data back to zap year pre-calculated or already calculated. So this reduced a lot of firstly costs on the zap tasks but it also reduced a bottleneck that zap year had which was being able to do all of those calculations at once. — Okay. So it's like this is I mean this is interesting where the automation space is going of using custom code to do a lot of the heavy lifting now that we've got such incredible coding models. So you're saying there's any particularly like grunty parts of the automation. You're just like vibe coding up the automation and then uh making that accessible via web hook in and zap. — Exactly. Yeah. It opens as long as there's an API connection to it or if there's um if Zap year doesn't already connect to it then you can use it. Well, during the testing phase, you're often looking for edge case scenarios. You're looking for errors that might crop up, which they will. You're looking for different SOPs that might happen after the fact. So, let's say the customer wants to make edits to it or enhance it or there's things that change on the fly. So, you're accounting for all those edge cases in the testing phase. So, you're seeing if the architecture that you've built is resilient enough to handle these and if possible to build SOPs around it that they can follow to make themselves sufficient. And then once you have I would say at least 95% of this ironed out then you can hand off and go live. So you would bring it to their side of the fence. So you'd be able to have them sign up for you know Zappier or replet and then go ahead and move that code over and then instantiate it in their environment. So the next step would be after that they test it you get more errors and that's where the support comes in. So support is going to be a lot of I would say doing more of the same thing in the testing phase but understanding that the scope of work is limited to a certain point. So then if it's beyond whatever you guys agreed upon in the proposal then you can start building for that. But you do want to have you know be good be in good faith with it. So um don't nickel and dime for everything. You want to be able to at least say this is beyond sort of the scope of work. this is going to be another hour for example and then they'll be able to make that decision with you. — Yep. The support's key um and often under scoped for as well. Um very easy. I mean the testing is easy to miss in the scope and be like oh yeah we just add a couple hours in there for testing. Um if it's something like a voice agent that can take a lot longer. Um, so this is something we're even like constantly dealing with at Morningside is how can we we're basically increasing prices all the time because uh it's easy to underestimate the amount of testing involved and then also the ongoing support after. So there's probably a good chance to slot in uh just the pricing. So uh say for this first build you're scoping it out. And I mean, I think for people who are maybe a little bit confused here, this is like such a interesting thing to hear from someone that you literally just walk into a business, you shadow people for a bit, you pick one thing that needs fixing, and then you build automation for it. It really is that simple. Um, and people tend to over complicate it a lot because they're like trying to start off with the most scalable niched offer and find the specific thing. It's like if you come to a company and you say, "I'm willing to sort of shadow you. I'm willing to do the work to get to know your company. " and then we're going to start picking off the best use cases one by one. It really can be this simple. Um so I think it's a refreshing thing for people heading into 2026 to know that this kind of model does exist whether you're doing it in person or whether you're doing your audits online. Um but I love that you can just like streamline it down to one pretty chunky automation here. Um whether it's agents or you got voice agents in there or just uh straight AI automation. Uh but it's uh it's really important that uh people know that this is the route. If you're a business owner who's interested in what generative AI can do for your business, you can get in touch with me and my team at Morning. AI in one of the links in the description below and we can start your entire AI transformation process going all the way from the education and training of your staff to the identification of the best AI use cases for your company all the way through to development and beyond. We've worked with some of the world's biggest sports teams and also publicly traded companies. So rest assured you are in good hands. One thing we've noticed at uh at morning soap when we do our audits is when you are working with a company who's pretty much on their first step and a lot of the time people are dealing with people who are companies who are not necessarily cuz say if you make content or if you've been doing some sort of other marketing you'll get people coming to your com to your agency and being like hey I want you to build X and that's a very different client to someone who is like I have no idea what to do can you guys help me take my first step into this and that's the audit is the new website is what I keep saying like it's their first step into the AI first move on the chessboard for companies. And when you take them from that position just like and do the order properly, there are so many like ridiculously simple automation. It might not even be AI automation. It might just be a like straight like non AI automation at all that can provide a huge amount of value for it. So, do not underestimate just how far behind a lot of companies are and you with your like all of you watching these videos with your understanding of what AI can do, you've probably got a decent grip of automation. You can provide a ton of value just by taking time to get to know them. And I think it's easy to go into and be kind of scared like, "Oh, am I actually going to find something that is going to be valuable enough? " And that's something that even we face. It's like, "Oh, some of these sports teams, they're already quite advanced with their tech. Are they gonna be way ahead? " and we go in there and we're like, there's so much stuff to work with here. So, if you're scared about doing the order, throwing yourself into it, just like kind of take my word for it, take Brandon's word for it, is that there's so much if you're really deal dealing with a companies on step one, you will find so many like basic transcription, basic automations, basic classification, basic like drafting. There's so much there. Uh, and it's so often so much easier than a lot of the use cases you've probably heard floating around where you need this whole like in to-in conversational uh, AI system. Um, it's something as basic as like drafting a contract or something. Yeah, I think one of the big things like you said is uh, you may not find anything, but I think the confidence in knowing the tools and knowing what's out there is where you're building your skill set. So, um, as you build your toolbox of skills and AI and keep up with the news, you're actually going to find something. I'm pretty sure of it and it is a very nice thing if a customer already knows what they want. But, you know, uh most of the time they're not going to really know what they want or the thing that they think they want is not exactly what is going to provide the most value. And um if you do that, — that's the inbound ones. They're often like think they know what they need but and like a lot of the time you're as an agency just like okay, I mean they're offering to pay me for it. I'll just do it. And those end up being way harder. Like you get a bit of PTSD from trying to do those builds sometimes. And then you realize like how difficult the thing they're asking for here is. And it's like there's probably six other things that you could have done that were way easier and would provide a much clearer ROI. — So it is important. — Yeah. 100%. I see there's like three different categories of leads. There's the outbound you reach out to and they're like kind of on the fence like I don't really I don't know like you're kind of trying to convince them that they need AI that they need an audit that they need something. And so those are always the hardest and most prone to waste your time. Then you have the people who are maybe coming inbound to you or you've reached out to them and they're kind of like, "Hey, no, we're ready to do this. I'm curious and like, can we take our first step? " And that's like a pretty good pocket to be in. Um cuz you can start this whole process with them. And then there's the uh inbound where they know exactly what they want and they're like, "I want you to either do this or dive into this area. " And so there's three kind of uh pockets of leads that you're going to run into as an agency depending on how you're doing your marketing. And it's important to know the difference between them because uh you'll end up offering very different services to them. But anyway, let's uh let's keep it moving. — Yeah, I talked a little bit about the prototype and proposal. There were some proposal considerations that I was going to mention. So — just on the prototype, how do you so defining a prototype versus the production build? Is this like your we call these like PC's. Can we just get the core functionality of the build working? Like that's the biggest question mark. Are you charging for this uh this PC? And it's just like say for example it's extracting some information out of a of an image using a vision model like the whole build is everything out the scaffolding around it the app it's built in the testing and every like everything else around it is kind of like is a given but it's like can the AI do this one specific thing in it and that's what you're honing in on in the prototype and how are you charging for that? Is that just like a couple grand or just based on the estimated hours? — It does depend on the client. So if we are like you said willing to take the risk for that client then we will do it uh free of charge but it often times does come with a retainer um but this would be removing a lot of the non-negotiables or roadblocks for the proposal. So um if they had said something like this is a non-negotiable where let's say in their go high level they needed to send from their phone number without using a Twilio or something else. So this would be something that we research into during the prototype and if we're able to remove that roadblock then that could be the selling point to it. So we it would be beneficial for us to build out that prototype um within reason. So of course a prototype will just be a mere skeleton um of what it could be or what it should be. So it'll almost be 40% of the way there. — And so you're back to building on this though. You've got your audit. You might have scoped that as look this is going to take I don't know what like 10 hours and we're going to charge like x amount or like 20 hours I'm going to charge x amount per hour and then after that you're saying here's all the opportunities we found here's what we think we should move on first the cost for a prototype of this so that we can like essentially what we we'd call exploration milestones as well at morning side it's like let's do an expiration of this let's so we can properly scope it basically and we'll give you all the data back on like okay yes this non-negotiable is available this this a little bit of trouble on this last one and this is our main concern and that's how you agree on the final scope. — Yeah, I think there's a part of it where you have to like know that if you're going to build it there's a little bit of risk involved but usually if let's say someone were to find a doctor and there that doctor knows everything about their body and they have their medical records usually they're not going to change doctors. So after we've done the audit, we've already invested so much time into them that it would be almost a disadvantageous for them to go somewhere else but also it relies on the confidence of our team to be able to pivot if we need to. So uh there's qu there's like sales tactics we can do you know saying like is it the price that is the issue or is it the is it the product that you're having issue with so then we can negotiate on that. — Is this prototype another fee? Are they paying another like two, three, four grand or whatever? Or is this going to say it's included based off like this is what we've done in order to scope this? Uh I suppose this depends on where you are with your agency. If it's early stage and you really need to land it, you may be willing to do this for free. But if you're a bit later stage and you might just be like, hey, look, you need to pay for this. Is that where do you sit on that? — I believe with that it goes longevity of the business. Um you can start to ask for a little bit more upfront. I believe that in the beginning it was a lot of free work. I think people try not to do free work, but I think it's inevitable to do free work for every business. So, if you're going to start doing this, I would say don't charge for the prototype because they're going to people are going to ask like, why am I paying for a prototype? But because you have that experience, you have the ability to charge. — Yep. 100%. When you can say, look, this is just how we do it. This is how we get results and this makes sure that we're all winning here. um once you've got those case studies to back you up — and yeah we pretty much talked about this already this was understanding their tool stack and seeing how you can build that prototype from what they already know and this is the u getting the access so understanding the opportunity matrix this is also part of the proposal so we'll go ahead and start here um testing scenarios so I believe that building SOPs and documentation is huge being able to get your client to be self-sufficient will build that trust um and then you can start charging for support after it reaches the scope of

work one of the things that we really do with our clients that they like uh is an AI unwrapped report. So every quarter we'll create a report on like how many hours they've saved, how many tasks they run through Zapier. Um and they can actually see it from you know a report like if it's actually been beneficial for them. So um it's something that we've kind of developed in our own in-house for our own practice but we think it's something that is really important. — Yeah, I love this. I think um ROI is way like it's kind of like oh we just set the automation up agents running and sweet sort of job done. But I think as businesses start to get more and more layers and layers of automation and agents and it's like I think imagine how satisfying it's going to be as a business owner. I think in the near future where you literally have like AI monitoring all of the oncreen um and potentially in person like productivity and metrics so you know like what tasks are getting done like how much is being done from your human team and then also you're able to see in real time like how many agents are actively working. You can see like real time agent headcount. Okay, we've got like 60 agents working on tasks right now. And hopefully you'll see that increase over like a 12-month period. Tasks completed, like uh tickets closed, uh true like productivity measuring is finally on the table for businesses through like AI screen monitoring and stuff like that. Um and of course just tracking what your agents and automations are doing. And you can attach a uh say if it's a it's AI appointment setup, uh voice agent or a speed lead system. Say that each of those calls took 5 minutes and it would have taken it's like reach out to a lead and qualify them and book them in. That might have taken after all the messing around the CRM might have taken 10 or 15 minutes. Once you can start to track those and be like literally like minutes saved, I think that's just going to feel so empowering as a business owner when you can start to see all of these gains stacking up. So I think for agencies the smart play um well one for you going back to the scalability question, this is something that keeps them around, right? like having a report each quarter that updates them and being like, "Hey, look, we are monitoring the stuff. Here's how much our services have been worth keeps giving them that reason to go to the board if they need and say, "Hey, look, this is how much our investments returned on us returned us so far. We can we want to back the truck up and give more money to these guys. " So, I think this is a genius thing to do, man. And uh more of us should be doing it. — Scaling R and product building. So essentially what we decided was it would be best if we moved away from the demystify AI LLC model that we moved into something uh that was more productized. So we created a C corp called dataf flow pros and this is where we actually do a lot of our service- based business under. So um a couple of benefits to that is that it's niche and it's vertical to the industries that we've been working with but also um it is a core entity. So it allows for funding and investors to come in to essentially look at a product and see a pitch deck and invest. — So let's uh just walk through like going back to what we said before about the plague of the the early stage AI agency owner kind of off the ground but struggling with consistency. We're saying the solution is to find a company that you can work with long term and take the time to really get to know their business and then have a uh sort of gradual drip feeding of like proven like just stacking up win after win and taking the time to really find those lowest hanging fruit for them to nibble off to start with. Um and by keeping them engaged with things like uh the reports that you give them every quarter, this is how you can fight that uh the sort of crashing revenue monthto monthth by like okay this quarter we want to onboard two new clients and if you can just via this model you make the highest necessary suddenly it goes from having to scramble for like taking in like five sales calls a day just to try to keep enough uh just to keep the lights on. Okay. Also the like the sort of lubrication of the whole model that trust offers when you don't need to go through that entire like getting to know them and like the contracting and stuff when things can be like hey we need this okay great you just p you the last contract oh the latest contract here's the invoice bank paid and get start you do not underestimate how much fat that cuts out of your agency when you have these say you just have four or five clients that you're working with longterm um and you could potentially get them on like we've been looking at morning side of uh for things like annual retainer for being their kind of AI strategy partner that would be keeping them up to date similar to that quarterly report like we're going to assess your company go back to the audit back process flows um we're going to see if there's any updates any latest things that we can uh we can um update you on so there's also annual aspects of this that we're exploring is that uh what we've got the law firm thing here um how does that all fit together as well with this — there's more so building like legally binding contracts to our clients to um formally instantiate that partnership. So it almost makes them almost part of our portfolio as um shareholders in our data flow pros company. So I think that's more of a powerful uh relationship than is just them paying us per month. So it gives some sort of return at the end and they're realizing that this is not just a company that's going to go away and that they can rely on us for any other solutions. We don't have like C corps in uh in New Zealand as far like we don't really have the same. So explain it to a non- US resident citizen. Um how this differs from just any other kind of company. — Yeah. So we have a couple different structures. You have an LLC, UFC corp, S corps, but unfortunately LLC's uh are not able to be funded. They don't have the idea of shares don't exist in LLC's. Um so ownership is seen differently. Um in C corps you do have uh board of directors, shares um shareholders and stocks. So those can become uh IPOed type businesses. So the idea for a C corp is to actually garner investors. So if you ever see someone uh in Y cominator or if you go to crunchbase and you look up a company, most more often not they're going to be C corp or S corp. — Got you. Okay. And so for your clients, how does that make you more attractive to them on it? like why could you not just get a recurring contract as an LLC? What's the difference there? — It's not so much them that it is the company itself can actually obtain funding. So it does a couple things. It silos off the data that we're the product that we're building to just the company. Um so it's able to have some sort of separation where demystify can sort of hold sort of the larger um concept of AI which is demystifying AI. [snorts] Um, but for our customers or their clients, I realize that we can also issue them shares. So, they're also mutually invested in a business. — Cool. Love it. That's really interesting way of doing it. Um, and so for these clients, talking about products like at so far from what you're doing, you're doing a lot of like sound like logistics and shipping stuff. Are these leading you already towards within your first couple of audits to areas that you're looking to build out a product or is that not already on the horizon for you yet? — That's going to be this year. So, we're still looking to build that product um using the our findings. Um currently we're running still as that sort of agency model, the FD model, but I believe that with cloud code and cursor and um another example is OpenAI built Swarm that was an FTE project. So, um I believe that eventually the way the foundations that we've laid um open the doors up for those options here. — I think a lot of agency owners in the space right now feel a little bit lost. They're like I don't know where my like the agency model is not the be all end all guys. Like we've I've never said that. I've said it's a stepping stone. It gives you the like cash flow. skills and experience understanding of how I can help business to shoot for anything. If you want to go into coaching, SAS, if you want to become an investor, it's the springboard from there. And it's tough for people sometimes to be like, they're always looking for the most scalable thing. It's like, oh, my business isn't like, I haven't found the most scalable offer. And it's like those people don't tend to make it because they can't just sit in the pain of well you should be trying to streamline the business of course but they can't sit in the pain of the hard work of doing project after project that isn't super scalable so that you can build up your like work on your dev team's experience you can like start to feel out different niches you can slowly build relationships because I can tell you from our experience the best opportunities for like when we look at products from our current clients and from the work we've It's from the ones we've been working with for the longest where you really like you understand that industry just as well if not better than them in terms of like how the businesses actually work especially from a technical standpoint. So if you're not willing to go through that tough period of uh like teething and being kind of general uh not feeling super scalable, you're not going to get to the point where you can have one of these long-term clients that really can reveal and help you to see as well. Like they will kind of point it out to you. uh the product opportunities that will make you rich like generational wealth kind of rich and so people like yourself I'm super bullish on that you can sit like this uh I mean just do the d do the tough work um until you find that opportunity because it doesn't happen overnight I can tell you that much — yeah you have to reframe your idea of what long-term means and um instant gratification is not something that this is not instant gratification model uh it's providing value and being fulfilled every okay, doing what you do and then with the hopes of having a product, but maybe we don't find a product. So, it's really about trusting the companies that you're with and building those relationships and having fun while doing it. So, um I don't think it's for everybody, but I think for the people who do find the FD model, they're going to find out that it does bring a lot of purpose and meaning to life. And so, um I encourage everyone to at least try it and put themselves out there. And um it will be a lot of learning. You're going to up your skills and at the end of the day there's a lot of jobs that uh are FTE jobs that are coming out. So you can easily get something like that and it pays really well. — Interesting thing on this is that when you look at like the most the guys who are like scaling their AI agencies the hardest. They've niched down to something like AI lead genen that like every business needs this. They've done like AI lead gen 4x like that was already a like lead gen was already a business. They've just kind of like strapped AI onto it. Of course, it's going to be a lot more scalable, but they I feel like they're trading in the short term for the long term because like you're going to go into logistics and find some incredible product idea and make $100 million and they're just going to make like 100 grand, 200 grand a month with their AI legion agency and they're going to find an opportunity, but like it's nothing that revolutionary about like there's going to be so many AI lead genen related like that whole pipeline is pretty much standardized. Like you're just putting AI in a different piece of the puzzle. It's like conversational AI pipeline to catch things that fall through the cracks that might make you money in the short term, but it's like the long-term opportunities and the uh potential of it. You're just like I think the real money-making opportunities is sitting in these industries that no one's really looking at getting hands on doing exactly what you're doing, Brandon. Um and finding the uh finding the software opportunities or even it might be like licensing model. There's just much bigger stuff that is waiting to be discovered um by agencies out there. So, I'd really urge people to ask a question of whether they want the short-term cash or the $100 million exit because that's really what you're picking between here. So, Brandon, mate, thank you so much for coming on um for sharing this course — um for going out there and really putting this stuff into action. I love seeing people take what we've uh like the AI transformation partner model and you're really putting your own stamp on it here with uh taking that palent style model with it. If you guys want to get this whole board, there's a lot more source that we didn't really get to dig into. That'll be linked in the first link in description with all of the other resources from my podcast. Uh but yeah, random mate. Appreciate it. If you got any last minute words of wisdom before we wrap. — Thank you so much, Liam. Uh it's a pleasure to be here and have you driving me. But um yeah, that's pretty much it. And uh everyone, I hope you guys have a great journey. So that is all for this episode of the podcast, guys. If you want to see something similar that I really think you'd like, you can click up here to watch another one. And remember, if you think you have a story worth telling and some valuable insight you can share with the community, you can fill out my podcast application form in the description below. I'd love to have a chat with you and get some exposure for your business. Aside from that, guys, that's all for the video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next