How Two Best Friends Built a $25K/mo AI Agency (Tech Skills)

And we were very much in the mindset that we have to make this niche work. If we pivot, we're failures. And we just kept pushing and pushing. And it wasn't until the start of this year, 2025, that we actually took a step back and said, well, maybe we're not failures if we pivot to a different niche, but maybe we're just not pigeon holing ourselves into something. — A lot of people that are watching probably think that they need to like have their niches set up perfectly ahead of time. They think that they have to have like all their marketing GTM strategy set up ahead of time. I get all these people every day being like, "Well, Nick, how do I do it? I don't know my ideal customer persona. What about my mission and my values? " And I'm like, "My dude, we're making 10 grand a month. We don't need missions or values. Like, you need to get out there and start talking to people. " And it sounds like you guys embody that. — I think it's just funny cuz we never really thought about Upwork apps as one of the avenues to do. And then that was, you know, the fastest wins for us. — Just having like a tiny bit of technical skills makes you mega dangerous. What is one piece of advice that you two would give to somebody who's on the fence about starting their journey whether or not it's automation related just business in general? — I think a big one that I come back to even for myself is

— All right gentlemen. So how much did you make last month with your automation business? Last month we hit 25K which was pretty insane for us initially given that historically we've never been anywhere close to that and since joining Maker School we sort of been doubling our revenue month on month initially I think it was about 10 and then now about 25K and then prior to Maker School we had a couple of rough months I think our lowest was about 2 or 3K so have seen some exponential growth since jumping in which has been awesome. — Yeah, I'd love to hear that. That's really cool, man. I remember when you joined, which I believe was early April or late March, then like exactly one month later, you had a win that was like $7,500 in our first month in Maker School. It just blew my mind and it was extraordinarily interesting to a lot of the people that was in the group. — Yeah. And at the time was awesome to land and now it's awesome to be ahead of that in a 25k. I was talking with Kate earlier and for us we've always had in our head I think 20K 25K has been a number that we've always wanted to hit and we've always thought that once we hit that we will feel successful we've made it we'll be on top. Uh but it very much feels the same to us where you wake up you do some Upwork apps you optimize your cold email campaign and you work. And I think it's going to always feel like that regardless of the number coming through. I'm not sure Nick if you have a similar experience in that regard. Yeah, definitely. It's only very

recently that it's actually struck me the degree of impact that I've had with the channel, but then even before that with the automation agency and then content agency. I think part of it is just because of like most of the work that we do is digital and so we're usually just like staring into a screen in some way shape or form and just like the human brain has not evolved to deal with that. You know, I feel like it's different if you're in an in-person business where you really see the scale of your operations. I work from home so I don't have an office or anything, but I was chatting with a friend of mine that does have an office and I was like, "So, how big is your office? " And he's like, "Oh, it's like two floors of that skyscraper over there. " And I was like, "That's impact, right? " Like that's pretty chunky. And I'm thinking about like my own money and I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I could probably get like five floors of a skyscraper or something. " I don't know. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. But um I think you did touch on a really important point, which is that like the flashy business is very different from like the effective business. And it sounds like you guys are doing effective business. Yeah. — Yeah, definitely. And I think it sort of we made this mind up that we would have a certain um image around the business when we get to certain revenue goals. And like Jake said, it just doesn't feel like you're at that point because you're not, you know, driving like I'm still driving the same car. I don't have a plan to buy a different car. But the dayto-day very similar to when we started. It's just you see the actual, you know, remuneration side of it um a little bit differently now. — Yeah, definitely. Y'all are out in Australia, right? Yeah. — Yes, we are. It is freezing here. — Freezing? Really? — I think it's actually colder than Canada. Like substantially. — I don't buy that. Not for a second, dude. Bro, I was like -40 last winter, man. If you stayed outside for more than like 30 seconds, you would legitimately get frostbite all over your body. — That's bad.

— What were you guys doing before you started this? I mean, how long ago did you start as well? — Yes. So, obviously, you mentioned when we started Maker School, I think approaching month five now, uh, in maker school. had some experience before that um more so with sort of social media marketing um you know very much uh that like a whole wheelhouse uh for about two or three years had some experience I'd say on sales calls and communicating with clients but like Jake said the revenue was very uh much on the lower end and then joining maker school a few months ago sort of bit slow to start but then that first month when we hit that 7. 5k win we were like okay I think there's a lot of merit here to really ramp things What were you guys um doing before you joined Maker School? Uh let's just say on like the outreach side of things. Those first couple of months where you're catching your bearings. — Yeah, main acquisition channel was cold email and paid ads. And I think it's just funny cuz we never really thought about Upwork apps as one of the avenues to do. And then that was, you know, the fastest wins for us, especially uh in that first month while we obviously scaled up cold email. But yeah, mainly just cold email and advertising. And then obviously from a cost perspective the like cost per lead with ads and customer acquisition cost was much higher than with Upwork. — Yeah, definitely. I find that if you just make every platform like agnostic and then just go based off of whatever the lowest cost per acquisition and highest lifetime value is. You get away from all like the BS, right? Like you know every platform and every way of generating leads tends to have connotations. Upwork's main connotation obviously being that clients there are all uh penny pinchers and you know they're nickel and dimming you and while that's true like that's also true in cold email and there's also a lot of people that nickel and dime you in ads and so on and so forth. So I find just like being super agnostic and taking the approach that you guys did where you guys are just like okay what is the lowest cost per acquisition? What makes us the most money? What's the most consistent most scalable? And let's just like quadruple down on that. I found that to be the best. So kudos there. — Yeah, definitely. — When you guys just started, what would you say was like the goal here? Did you guys want to hit $100,000 a month right off the bat? You know, like where did you guys see this agency going? — Yeah, I think for us 100,000 has it sounds sexy and it would be awesome to hit. For K and I, we have for the last couple of years also been working retail jobs and I've been working in the family business as well. And our main goal has always been to go full-time on the business and be able to support ourselves with that. And if we're being brutally honest, we probably could have done that at a lower revenue goal and then sacrificed our personal lives. Maybe we cancel the gym membership and work out at the park and we eat ramen. Um, but I don't want to do that. So, we're sort of balancing the two jobs and now we're both full time, which has been awesome. And it feels a lot more real on the dayto-day in terms of okay, this is what I do as opposed to yeah, I work here and then on the side I've got my own thing um going on type of thing.

— Yeah, definitely. Um so you guys are fully into the business now, fully out of those retail jobs, huh? — Yep. — How was that transition like and when did you guys do that? That must have been fun. — For me, I'm still in the transition because the way it's set up without putting you to sleep, uh it's very hard for dad to find someone else. So I'm sort of transitioning that at the moment. Um Cade I think was about 2 months or a month ago. — Yeah. So I was very much uh have more flexibility. It's not being a family business. You know, they can replace me pretty quickly. It's uh on them. Um but my manager was super understanding. I said, you know, we're very busy. Can I have some time off almost? She was like, "Yeah, you know, obviously this isn't what you want to do full-time. It sounds like what you're doing on the side is what you want to do full-time. " So made that transition. And I remember I recorded a little selfie video in my car on my last shift like after I'd clocked out just as like a way to document it. Such a uh a surreal feeling. I think I was talking to Jake and um some friends about it where you know I wake up and I'm in complete control of my day. There's no one I have to report to and it's sort of like an extra level of I guess maturity that you have to get the work done. There's no one you have to answer to. — To a degree kind of have to answer to Jake. He yells at me sometimes, but uh — yells at me, too. What's going on with that guy?

— Yeah, it makes sense. I uh find that really interesting because on the flip side, you don't have to answer to anybody. But you also And so it's, as you mentioned, a positive and it's a negative. And if you're the sort of person that I suppose can't build your own schedule, I can't follow some sort of structure that you put out yourself. You know, I see a lot of people take those first few steps in entrepreneurship and then just say, "I'm gonna quit my job. " And then they quit their job and then they just have zero constraints and they just go off the deep end. So, I think you guys got good heads on your shoulders. I like what you did. You um transitioned organically. Like when I was going into entrepreneurship, I did the quit my job thing and let me tell you, it was like a rough couple of years initially. Uh had no runway, had no ability to like make longer term financial decisions that actually made sense. Everything was just like how do I make 20 bucks now so I could, as you mentioned, buy the ramen packet, right? So, I consider you guys to basically be like the stereotypical great path forward and like the I guess the route that I would recommend that most people do that are looking to juggle full-time jobs and then some sort of side hustle. You know, that like slow gradual but incremental and consistent shift in time allocation. So, killer work, guys. — Appreciate it. Okay, so let me run you

guys through a couple of questions then because I know the audience is definitely wanting to know. Let's break down the actual strategy that you guys followed. So, what did you guys choose uh niche-wise? Why did you pick the niche? What was like your first client like when you guys ended up getting the first client? And you can do the first client pre-maker school if you guys had one and then the first client postmaker school. uh just run me through kind of everything for those first yeah those first few weeks um which ultimately ended up resulting in that 7. 5k. Okay, I might start then I'll handle off here. With the niche wise for us pre-maker school, it was very much gym focused for about two or 3 years. And we were very much in the mindset that we have to make this niche work. If we pivot, we're failures. And we just kept pushing and pushing. And it wasn't until the start of this year, 2025, that we actually took a step back and said, well, maybe we're not failures if we pivot to a different niche, but maybe we're just not pigeon holing ourselves into something. And there's no medal for making one path work because it's harder compared to something else. — So with that, um, it was very much a Leian focused premaker school. We ended up pivoting to more so focus on trades within Australia. So things like plumbers, electricians, painters. So then when joining mega school we sort of had that mindset going into it. So in terms of a niche it wasn't so much picking law firms or consultants uh but I think it was more so just anyone who could benefit from cold email was our initial thinking. Within that we ended up picking two or three. I think agencies stood out to us because we had been in the space for the last couple of years as well. So when writing the cold email copy and just on being on sales calls with people, we sort of had that rapport and understanding of what they're going through. So I think that helped us from a niche perspective. But in terms of picking something, um I think our frame was not wanting to pigeon hole ourselves in.

— Yeah, I think that was the thing. We didn't want to niche too much on sort of a group of people off the bat because we weren't sure how we could help them. So we very much said, "Okay, we've got a cold email system. uh we've got a lot of experience with cold email, let's niche around the product and then that obviously led us to you know talking to a lot of agencies through that and then I think just by default like Jake said we sort of fell into that as more of a holistic niche just because of the experience we have um in the space but I think the first client we closed on Upwork from maker school was just like a random $200 like yo could you fix this m this make automation thing for me? We're super excited. We like spent ages like planning it out like how are we going to do the onboarding and we jumped on the call with him and like made sure it all worked and then uh we're like yeah we can do it for less just to make sure we got that first job he's like no you guys seem pretty cool I'll give you I'll do it I'll pay 200 or whatever it was and we were like oh yeah sweet and remember we're like so uh so excited over it just because it was a new avenue completely like we've never gotten the client through Upwork and then it's like okay this actually works let's just if we got one after doing however many apps let's just yeah 10x that we'll get 10 clients. So, it was u a pretty interesting start. — Pretty straightforward when you think of it that way. Well, it took us X to get Y, so why don't we just do 10X and then we'll get 10 Y. Yeah, I think about that a lot. I think there's so much magic and everybody has their own opinion on the various ways that you could do lead genen and how you should structure a business. But honestly, man, like you just dial back all the complexity. It's kind of like a caveman problem. Just hit the thing over and over and over again. If you do it well enough and often enough, like you will find the result. I like too that you guys took this approach where you didn't want to make any I guess presuppositions about what the best niche was and you guys were I think self-aware in so far that you were like well to be honest we don't really know so we just try a bunch of stuff then we'll see how the client engagements go. We'll see how easy it is for us to deal with. We'll see we we'll just try it and then we'll let like the market tell us what to do next. I think a lot of people that are

watching probably think that they need to like have their niches set up perfectly ahead of time. They think that they have to have like all their marketing GTM strategy set up ahead of time. I get all these people every day being like, "Well, Nick, how do I do it? I don't know my ideal customer persona. What about my mission and my values? " And I'm like, "My dude, we're making 10 grand a month. We don't need missions or values. Like, you need to get out there and start talking to people. " And it sounds like you guys embody that. I I'm just curious were do you guys ever like run into issues on that front where you get like I don't know you guys ever find yourself like overthinking it? Did you know Jake pull Kade out of an overthinking loop or did the opposite happen or I think that's one of the uh the advantages of having two of us is we can bounce ideas off and like you know if I'm having a day where I'm like this is not going to work. We're never going to make any money. Jake's like let's calm down. I think we're doing okay. But um yeah, very much like we initially didn't change our website from uh agency like social media marketing agency focused. So we were sending cold emails and people would like search the domain and they like do you guys do advertising or do you do automations? And it was just because we were like okay let's just focus on cold outbound first and then go from there. But in terms of overthinking I think initially we were sort of the opposite. we're like, "No, let's just hit the outbound reps. " And then sometimes we're like, "Okay, is this niche super scalable? " Like with the cold email offer, for example. Um, could we expand it? And I think that's just, you know, like Jake said earlier, we don't want to pigeon hole oursel into, okay, we're cold, we're a cold email agency now, but it's just sort of one avenue of a few products. Yeah, I think for us it's very much we've learned over time to just throw stuff at the wall and whatever shows some form of promise, okay, let's 10x that and can we leverage that and scale that opposed to pre-planning, oh, what do we think's going to work out? I think this and let's build a whole business around that and you spend 2 months doing that before you've actually reached out to anyone and then there might not even be a market for that. So, more so letting the market tell you um what they're wanting and then scaling that.

that. — Agree entirely. Yeah. just one of those fundamental I guess disconnects between the way that you know an MBA would teach business and then the way that like the real business environment would teach business. Like you learn so much more through organic get out there, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. When people ask me what the wider strategy is behind my automation agency, it was literally like the same thing that I talk about in maker school all day at like 100x the volume. Um when it was like, "Hey Nick, how did your maker make money with make or maker school scale to this big thing? " and I'm like, I just made a lot of YouTube videos and I linked it in the bio. Like, doesn't have to be super complicated. The super crazy highle strategy funnels and stuff like that, they just tend to be mostly fluff in my experience. So, glad that you guys are doing what works. Did you guys um scale uh sorry, did you guys change anything as you scaled or was it just still the same approach, same sorts of products? I mean, now that you guys are at $25,000 in a month, is there like a different distribution of what you're selling than there was when you hit $5,000 in a month? — Yeah. I think for us, we're more so wanting to streamline the delivery side of things. Initially, it was a lot of custom work. And now, we've sort of built up a bank of templates that we can deploy for clients. So, it's more so scaling cord volume, for example, and then leveraging blueprints in something like make. com to then deploy for them as delivery opposed to building out something custom that tends to be a lot more timeconuming.

— You guys have the draw to go to nad or um you mentioned make. com a couple times. How's fighting that constantly every 5 seconds? — I think it's um I remember you one of your videos you spoke about like how if you try to get too like in the weeds with every single tool like you just don't spend time on what you need to be spending time on. remember one client they um it was it wasn't even a client. I think it was just an Upwork um job that I wanted to apply to and it said something about NAN and I was like I'm pretty sure I can make it and make but I'll just join the NAN um free trial just to see and then I joined it and I was like what am I doing? Like I could have applied to five other jobs in the time I've spent you know signing up and trying to figure out where everything is like it's just not uh super optimal. So I think at the moment we're sort of happy with make. Obviously, there's benefits from N8N as there is with Zapia. There's some clients which already have it and they're like, "Oh, can you just plug it in? " So, I think it's more something we want to cross when we get there. But, I mean, if that's maybe then be the uh the secret source to get us to that next level, then I'm going to join Nad after this call. I can confidently say that you could sell ICE to Eskimos. You could sell anything to anybody. You could deliver anything using whatever platform you want. Like at the end of the day, it's not really about the implementation so much as it is about like the consistency and then the value that you guys are capable of driving. So whether you're driving that value using a make. com automation or an NAON automation or one of the other um many tools that are out there cuz there's like 10 being released every day, that's

really all the clients tend to care about. Obviously, you know, on platforms and stuff like that, you have keywords associated with searches and there's some minor tactical things that you could do to improve your probability of landing them. But you guys got good heads on your shoulders, let me tell you. Because shiny object syndrome is like probably one of the biggest killers here. So many people start off with grand aspirations. They want to do this, that, and they'll do lead genen for three or four days, then they'll be like, "Oh, but this new AI model came out that can, I don't know, clone a chimpanzee and give me Bigfoot uh Bigfoot Veo3 ads or something. " You know what I mean? Like there all these little like funnels that you fall into and then you just get trapped because it takes like a month to figure it out. I'm glad that you guys haven't. — Yeah, appreciate. I think for us it's almost to the opposite degree where we'll refuse to pivot because I think as I said earlier it just feels like if we pivot we've just been like from countless YouTube videos people have always said if you pivot you're probably giving up too early. It's like okay no we need to do this for 100 years and then if it doesn't work we can pivot. It's like whoa let's take a step back. Maybe there is opportunity and benefits to looking at other newer tools as well, but maybe we wait before jumping on them straight away.

— Yeah, very well said, man. Very well said. Okay. What's the distribution of responsibilities in the business? You guys both doing the same thing? Does Jake specialize in one thing, Kate specializes another? — I think Kate does everything and I just take all the money — pretty much. It's very 50/50. Me and even Jake saying like we are very big on tracking our time as well so we know where time is being allocated cuz if we sign a client say for $3,000 and we end up spending 400 hours on their build. It probably wasn't a good client even though it's all a shiny Stripe notification for 3,000 bucks. So very much we both do the sales calls, we both do cold outbounds, we both look at cold emails. I feel like just out of I guess convenience, we've sort of fallen into one of us specializes in one thing. Jake's very much setting up the cold email stuff. Secretly, I just don't want to set up a bunch of cold email accounts. It seems pretty boring. So, uh I've told Jake he's very good at it. Um and then, you know, with other stuff, I'll — That's the secret. Dude, you're incredible at this. Oh my god, that's awesome. You should do the bookkeeping, too. — Yeah, — that's what Jake said to me. And now I'm stuck in zero every Monday. He's like, "I just don't understand numbers. " I'm pretty sure I sat next to him when Manson would copy off his homework and he's like, "No, you're way better. " So, — hey, actually, that's a good point to touch on. Y'all are childhood friends. Yeah. You guys went to school together and stuff. — Yeah. — That was really cool, man. That's so

cool. One of my first business partners, one of the most charming suave men I've ever met in my life. I met him randomly at the mall. Um, I was with a friend of mine and I uh was just chatting with him and like I think he was getting out of a relationship or something. I was like, "You got to go, man. You got to approach that girl. You got to talk to that chick. You got to like put yourself out there. " And he's like, "You think so? " And I'm like, "Yeah. " And then some girl walked by or something. And he was like, "Oh my god, she's so pretty. Should I do it? " I was like, "Yeah, man. " So, I went and I, you know, shoot him off and then he went and he did it. And while he was doing it, some dude came up and approached me and he's like, "Hey, I like the way you look. " And I was like, "Oh here we go. " Anyway, that was what ended up being my business partner. We ended up being best friends for a better part of a couple years. Started our door to door marketing agency or whatever. And I'm not going to lie, I uh I'm doing this big journal entry thing right now to try and figure out like what my priorities are in life, where I want to take the business and stuff like that. And part of it is you assessing when you were the happiest you have ever been. And the happiest I've ever been was when I was working on that business from the ground floor with my partner at the time. We were going door to door. People were telling us to screw off, getting chased out of plazas by security and like that. Dude, nothing like being on the ground floor of a business with your best mate. So, that's cool as hell, guys. — Yeah. And I think one of the benefits of having the partnership is if I'm having a rough day, Kad's there to support me. And likewise, if he's having a rough day, I'm there for him. And it's sort of just keeping each other accountable as well. And saying, "Hey, it's actually it's not that bad. Look at what we've achieved so far. " And it really does help on those days where like, "Ah, you got to do all this work. Is it even worth it? It's you have that person to lean on and support you there too and make memories with jokes all the time which lightens the mood and it just makes it a lot more enjoyable to be in the business. — Yeah, totally. Yeah. Just like zooming out a little bit, right? Like you get so into what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. You don't even realize how impressive it is or it would have been to former you, right? Like you guys looking at some business a year ago being like they make $25,000 a month. It's like holy crap, that's incredible. like we want to be like them. Now that you're on the other side, you know, a lot of the time we take these things for granted just due to the minutiae of day-to-day work. So, I think that that's a positive thing to have in

partnerships for sure. — I remember being on a sales call like when we were doing the agency space and I got off a sales call and I said to Jake, "Oh, they're definitely going to close. They're doing 20 grand a month. Like they got so much extra money and this was like a brickandmortar business which would have rent, you know, they got staff, they got all these other things. " And I was like, "They're doing 20 grand a month. They could buy us like four times over and they didn't close. " But it's uh it's yeah funny have the uh the shoes in the other foot. — They're literally like 25 cents and a used toothpick in their bank account. It's like you think they're going to close. It's like 4% margins. — Yeah. — They can be brutal, man. That's why I stay away from those local businesses to be honest. I mean just like having to deal with rent. Think about it. a line item that's just an additional 5 to 10% off your margin off the top. Like that's that just sucks. I don't want to do that. I get the benefits to offices, but then you have to deal with like inventory and logistics and shipping. I don't know. Depends on the business model, but for me, definitely wasn't worth it. Can I ask what services or offers ended up being the most profitable ones for you guys? Like, so what's the bulk of what you're selling right now? I think cold email has been probably the most profitable but just because we've pushed it the most with our own outreach and then initially when applying for Upwork jobs we were favoring the CDML jobs and hammering those ones out. Um, but I think we've also done quite well with integrating some form of chatbot, whether it's for an agency or a business who has too many leads coming through and maybe they're leaving money on the table or not getting as much juice out of the pipeline. I think those have been the most profitable for us. — That's pretty cool. So like inbound and outbound, eh, tell me more about these chat bots. So what exactly are you guys building? Yeah. So, it's really just an open AI module prompted and trained based off of the business and then it's essentially just there 24/7 to reply to leads. So, they might have go high level, for example. But they're not actually responding to inbound leads. And they say, "Oh, my leads are garbage. No one wants to come in. " Well, are you communicating with them? No. Well, maybe that's bottleneck and then just helping them do that. — Gotcha. So it's like some GHL reply received web hook over to make and then you're doing AI respond to them directly in GHL. That seems like a pretty interesting offer. I know that JHL has their own like built-in as well. I would say it's like the best. I find the second that you know like a sprinkle of automation you could take all these out of the box solutions and just like absolutely rinse them. Sounds like that's what you guys are doing here.

— Yeah, definitely. That's sort of one of the things we say. Um I feel like another sort of offer that we I guess fell into because of experience was automations involving go high level because with the agency we were using that for — you know 3 years or so and then the chatbot being based on that. We just sort of said, you know, I'll just go high level. You know, job is asking if they can integrate with a Google sheet and people have no idea how to do it. But then, you know, like you said, a tiny bit of automation knowledge. We can just send a web hook and then catch the web hook and do whatever we want um with that as well. So, makes it super dangerous, man. Yeah. I firmly believe that like as much as I rag on technical skills and how they're not very important um moving into you know this like AI age that we're going into just having like a tiny bit of technical skills makes you mega dangerous. Do you guys have any like super difficult client stories? I mean just given the fact that you guys have been doing this now for what 5 months. What's like the worst client that y'all ever had? — I think um in the advertising space we had some really bad ones like they paid us like $300 and they want us to fix their entire business. Um, I do think that like with the automation space, it would be different connotations around what we do. People very much more see you as the expert. Whereas with advertising, they were like, "Oh, there's just some guys that can help me run a Facebook ad. I can run a Facebook ad. " But, you know, what do they know? Where it's like you ask them, "Oh, do you guys have API access? " And they have no idea what you're talking about. So, like, these guys know their stuff. — Um, we've had a few which are purely, I think, from our own issues is we didn't clearly define the scope of work. So, it's expected that we do a lot more. And I think that's probably been the biggest issue we've had with clients um with, you know, the first two or three bigger ticket ones, but I think that's purely just something we've learned from, and now we very clearly say, look, we can do that, but it's out of scope, so we have to we price it up.

— Yeah. Well said. I like that you guys are putting blame for that squarely on your own shoulders. You know, one of the cool things about, as we were talking about earlier, being fully in a business and not at all having, you know, your money coming in from some sort of employment is like when things f up, at some level it is your fault. You know, like at some level, you might have picked the wrong client for Christ's sake. That was where you went wrong, right? Still your fault even though they're total ass hats. So, I know scoping for me was a really big one and it's something that I'm still grappling with to be honest, especially on like larger higher ticket deals. Uh because you know if you have something that's even like remotely custom then expectations tend to balloon and so on and so forth. And to be honest I think that's probably like the biggest elephant in the room that most people that start automation service businesses don't fully realize. They don't realize just like to what degree they need to wrangle that scope down after you figured out your initial lead generation stuff like you young guys have here. The big thing is just like how do we make sure that these projects don't go out of control? How do we ensure, you know, that we're selling things that are tightly scoped, packaged, and then do not scale with our involvement like a lot of custom projects and stuff like that do? So, that's uh pretty cool to see. But sounds like scoping another fallen soldier to scope creep and whatnot. It's got to be one of my favorite things to say in Maker School. Every time somebody's like, "Help. Client wants something that's not in the scope. " I'm just like, "Another man down. " Was there ever a moment where you guys wanted to quit? just say screw it. You alluded to something like that earlier, but like actually ready to, you know, hand it in and just get the hell out. — There's been quite a few where it's I'm quitting. I'm done. That's it. But deep down it's like, no, I'm probably not going to quit. And I think me personally, I think there's been maybe one or two times where I've been like, what am I doing? Like, I've spent all this time and I've lost money on this. Like, I could have been working a 9 to 5 and have this much money. But then I think Homozi has a great quote from the Matrix where she opens the door and she goes, "No, you you've been down that path. You know where it goes and you know it's not where you want to go. " And I just always think about that. I'm like, "Yeah, I don't want to do this. I want to have my own thing. I want to be 80 years old, look back and be glad that I took risk, took a leap of faith, uh rather than becoming an old man full of regret. " I think that's another one from uh Inception or something. — Movie quotes, man. Guide my whole life, too. In all honesty, a lot of wisdom

buried in there. — Yeah. The amount of times where I've been trying to figure something out on make and it just keeps erroring for some reason, I'm like, "That's it. Wrap it up. I'm going back. Get start working on my resume. We're done. " But um yeah, it's very much as cliche as it is looking at it when you know you have a difficult client or I think for me it most occurs when we get like a big no. Like we had one client where he was like, "Yeah, let's go ahead. " And it was like a $10,000 project. By far the biggest project we'd ever had. And this was, I think, one or two months ago, so we were still pretty early revenue-wise. Like we did 7,000 for the whole month. We have one client saying, "Yeah, I want to do the $10,000 one. " We're like, "Okay, this is huge. " And then, you know, he jumps on board. He says, "Yeah, I'll do it. I'll give you access to email staff, sends, you know, some passwords across. " And he goes, "Oh, sorry, guys. Can we put this on pause? " And he hadn't paid yet. And we like hadn't started the work, so we're like, "We'll wait till he pays. I want to, you know, can our chickens before they hatch? " But then you I think that it's just at that moment it's like why do I even bother? Like I got so excited for this and I feel like that's sort of the point where sometimes we're like is it even worth it? But then you know two weeks later we have another client that's pretty happy to do a pretty high ticket deal. So it's um you know all in the larger I guess scene of things. — Yeah. It's interesting how that works. It's always like the promise of a client that is pulled away from you that always hits the hardest. I've had a number of very similar situations and that's always just like the absolute worst for not just my own morale but also team morale if you got other people on board with you get everybody stoked up about a big project. I used to do this if I had people on my team I'd be like guys we're in talks with this big person we might close this big deal everybody's like and they're super excited and then it's like oh um hey you know but last week this is the worst feeling in the whole wide world. So I've just tried to make it a rule in my own companies that like I don't ever count anything as closed till I have money in my hands. Not even if it's a signed agreement. Signed agreements as we probably know mean basically freaking nothing these days. Um but if I don't have actual money in my hands, no real point. Could I ask like, and this is just me shilling Maker School a little bit here, but how important would you say the community aspect was to success? And then if it was important, which I certainly hope so, then like what portion of that was important to you? I think for us because

we'd been in the space just business-wise for a couple years prior, uh we had the community aspect in a couple of other groups as well. And I think it's just great to see other people where you scroll through their school post, for example, and they're like, "Oh, first month in maker school. " And then a couple months later they're like, "I've hit 10K. " And then it's I've hit 20K. It's like, "Wow, these people actually doing it. It's not just Nick who is a god and he's a genius and he can make it work, but the common people are doing it as well. So, I think that's the inspiring part of it. And then just having somewhere to keep yourself accountable as well and then ask questions and then bounce ideas off of other people has just been great in helping us move forward with the business. It's sort of like if you were on your own, you have that business partner there which is the community of people doing the same thing as you. And I think that's always inspiring, especially if you live somewhere where maybe it's not the norm to go out and do your own thing. Maybe people don't even know what an automation is. They don't know what Google is even. Uh it can be great to have that community around you there, too. — Yeah, I'm glad you said that, man, cuz I distinctly remember you just making Q& A posts and just asking questions about how to connect various automations together. You replying to people that were winning and, you know, stoking them up and being grateful for their success. Like it is really cool to me that school as a platform but also just communities in general specifically for moneymaking will show an unbroken path from the person joining to like post history where they're asking questions. How do I get started? How do I do this? that? To conversations like hey got my first call with a client. How should I do this? Is this good? Is this bad? To literally like hey guys sent over a proposal. I'm waiting for it to go to like hey I'm running a business that's running making $50,000 a month now. Like it is insane to me because there are hundreds uh soon to be thousands of user stories in Maker School and other communities as well showing that and it's like the clearest and cleanest and most transparent way. I think that you can break your limiting beliefs cuz you see just a bunch of people that started at literally the exact same place as you. — Yeah. And I think that's the cool thing to track their journey clicking on their profile looking at their post and it's like wow they've done it. Why can't I do it? — All right. One final question here just to wrap this puppy up. What is one piece of advice that you two would give to somebody who's on the fence about starting their journey, whether or not it's automation related, just business in general. — I think a big one that I come back to even for myself is I would rather try and fail than have the regret of not trying. I've had a couple things in life that I didn't do and I can't go back and change them and they sort of sit with me and I don't want to have any more moving forward. So, it's just what's going to be worse. The like worst case scenario, if you do it and you fail, you're not going to die. be homeless. Um, but the regret of not doing it will probably eat you up inside. — How about you, kid? — Yeah, I'm probably going to go with a uh a quote as well. Um, I love the quote from Steve Jobs where he says, "You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward. " And it's just about taking that leap, whether it's, you know, joining maker school like it was for us or sending an Upwork application. Like eventually it probably will pan out. And like Jake said, if it doesn't, like you haven't really lost anything. Like you're not, you know, putting your house on the line to join maker school or to send an Upwork application or to, you know, sign up to Google Workspace to create a cold email account. It's very minimal risk, but like the upside potential is um yeah, as you can see, pretty uh pretty good. — Well, I certainly hope you're not putting your house up in order to pay for Upwork Connects and or Micros. If you are, please don't join. I don't want that responsibility. Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming on the call. Congrats again on the success. Really stoked at seeing you guys quadruple that in a few months and come back to do another one. — Definitely. That's Yeah, that's a goal. — Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having us.