# He Quit His Job After His AI Automation Agency Hit $12K/mo

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Nick Saraev
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V9GIUnKNtc
- **Дата:** 10.05.2025
- **Длительность:** 39:26
- **Просмотры:** 14,465

## Описание

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Summary ⤵️
One of my earliest Skool members—Emir Foric—now makes $12.5K/month with AI automation. From humble beginnings selling jailbroken iPods in school, he now helps businesses with CRMs & gets clients by building authority in business communities.

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Why watch?
If this is your first view—hi, I’m Nick! TLDR: I spent six years building automated businesses with Make.com (most notably 1SecondCopy, a content company that hit 7 figures). Today a lot of people talk about automation, but I’ve noticed that very few have practical, real world success making money with it. So this channel is me chiming in and showing you what *real* systems that make *real* revenue look like.

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:12 Interview

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V9GIUnKNtc) Introduction

You're never gonna know everything. I think people need to understand that. It's like you just have to decide one day. It's like this is enough and I'm going to figure out the flag. Like my first little side hustle was selling like jailbreaking iPod touches to kids in elementary school. Oh, that's an entrepreneur right there. There's something to be said about the constraints as well. Like believe it or not, constraints aren't negative. If you learn to operate under a constraint, you're so much more effective when you don't have that constraint. So don't just dive into like a completely unconstrained schedule or unconstrained day. Like if you are working a 9 to5, don't get me wrong, it's hard as hell to do this, but if you're working a 9 to5 and you have 6 to8, try running that business 6 to8 first. Like I made this absolutely horrible deal and I would get 0. 5% of the building purchase price of like what you would buy. What? Let's hypothetically say Emir has to start at zero tomorrow. Mhm. And you lose all the connections that you have. You're not in any of these communities or whatever. Yeah. How would you approach the process of starting an AI and automation company from scratch? Well, seriously, I would probably Hey, this is how one of my earliest make money with make members quit his job and then scale his agency to 12,500 bucks a month in just a few months. Emir, what's

### [1:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V9GIUnKNtc&t=72s) Interview

going on, big dog? How you doing? Good, man. Good. Excited to get to finally put a face to a name and chat with you. I've been watching your YouTube videos for a while, so it's cool to actually meet you in person. Likewise, man. super stoked on your growth over the course of the last half year. I know that you've already added a ton of value back to Make Money with Make, the first community that I think you joined more than half a year ago. So, I'm excited to hear about that journey and I know there have been some ups and downs. Let's get into all this. Where are you based out of? I am based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Saskatoon? That sounds like a fairy tale place. Yeah, it doesn't sound real, right? I don't think I've ever heard of Saskatoon before. What's life like down there, man? Saskatoon. It's honestly there's not a whole lot going on. I would argue like you're familiar with Edmonton. It's like a lot smaller Edmonton basically. So, spend a lot of time indoors. Minus 50 winters. You know how it is. Yeah. Minus 50, man. Hold on. Is this minus 50 for our freedom loving friends or minus 50 for like Canadians? For Canadians. Holy crap, man. I' I've hit some cold days like it was minus 34 or something in Calgary a while back but minus 50. Yeah. So I guess that's what you need all that money for, huh? Really thick gloves. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. Mirror, how much did you make in the last 30 days with your automation business? $12. 5,000. Holy, man. Yeah, dude. Tell me about that. How's the journey been? Yeah, so the journey is pretty crazy like how I even got into this. So I initially like started my career in mechanical engineering. I worked in the polish mining industry essentially like fertilizer mining and I had this cool opportunity where right out of school I did my internship there and they're like hey if you start a business we'll hire you on like a six-month contract. That 6 months turned into like 4 years and in that time like I learned a whole lot about like project management and all this stuff. And it's funny enough that like now my business the tools I was using back then to like manage my life like ClickUp and Air Table is like what I'm helping businesses implement now. So it's like kind of came full come full circle. Yeah. In a sense. Yeah. So yeah, I did that for about four years and just like I was actually watching one of your daily updates, you know, a few days ago and you were talking about how you were about to launch this business in CO and you woke up one morning and you're like, man, I can't do this, right? I had that same feeling where I was like I woke up one morning and I was like, I can't go to work anymore. I just like felt empty, you know? And I was like, I need to go find something new to do. I'd always been obsessed with like technology and I grew up in like an entrepreneurial family. So, I was like, I need to do something related to tech. Funnily enough, like my first little side hustle was selling like jailbreaking uh iPod touches to kids in elementary school. Oh, that's an entrepreneur right there. Yeah. So, you know, started there and so I was like, okay, what do I do now? It's like I need to learn sales to run a business, right? That was like the first thing I thought I need to learn how to code. So, I was about to go to the University of Calgary. There's like a master's program for engineers for like a masters of software engineering. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to go do this. Like, this makes a lot of sense. " Then, you know, you do the math and like we have the internet now and it's like, why don't I just like teach myself to code, right? Yeah. So, I started teaching myself to code and also got a job at like a managed service provider here in town as a business analyst. So, I got to work with like a variety of businesses analyzing their tech stack and seeing kind of what they were doing. And I did that for like about a month and then the sales director got one that I was like a really good project manager. They're like, "Hey man, like we want to migrate from like HubSpot to Salesforce. Can you like help manage this project? " I was like, "What in the world is like a CRM? Like I don't even know what this is. " Like but I was like, "Yeah, sure. Like why not? " Cuz I wanted to get more sales experience and like getting exposed to them. I was like, "Oh, maybe there'll be like an opportunity to get a more like consultative sales role in the business. " So did that for 4 months. And then they asked me, they're like, "Okay, what do you want to do now? you want to go back to your old job or do you want a sales job? And I was like, well, they just had come out with this new role where it's like a mini CIO for small businesses, like a technology adviser. And that CIO meaning chief integration officer, information officer, like basically like small businesses who don't have an IT department themselves. they would hire us and then part of my role was almost like customer success and sales combined where I would just essentially keep the client happy retention and figure out ways we could like help their technology stack improve basically. So I absolutely crushed it came naturally to me cuz I love tech. I hated inefficiency. I was like let me like help these people. So I did that for about a year and in that time I found your YouTube channel. So I was still like trying to learn to code while I was doing this cuz I wanted to start that business on my own eventually anyway and I was getting the B2B sales experience. this feels more aligned. Like it feels more practical. Like the make money with make, just the name of like your program, right? Like it was just like this is actually practical. No fluff. I tried to like learn some stuff from a guy who like used to work at make. He posted like a tutorial thing on YouTube and it was the most technical thing on planet Earth. Like it was just like this doesn't make any sense. I was like at least like I have an engineering degree so I understand a little bit of this stuff and like but like most people would just be completely lost trying to watch this guy's YouTube channel. And then you came out and I was like, "Oh, thank goodness. " And I I'm pretty sure I've never commented on a YouTube video before. And it was just like one of your first videos. I was like, "Man, like, thank you for doing this. " The other people out here just like don't know what they're doing. They're just making it way too complicated. So that's kind of how we ended up. And then I didn't take any action. Watch your YouTube videos, take any action. The classic. Yeah, the classic. Right. I was like, "Yeah, you know, I'm like worried about like is this a conflict of interest with like my existing job and like all this stuff, right? " Right. So, there's like that element of it. Yeah. That was like probably like last May maybe. I like been comfortable enough and confident enough that I knew what I was doing. But I didn't do anything till like October. So, at one point I was just like, I've saved enough money from, you know, the jobs I've had. I can live without like making any money for like a year was my plan. I was like, if I don't make a dollar from this, at least I know I tried, you know, like I was like, at least I gave you a good solid effort. So, I was like, you know what? I just got to quit. Like, just burn the boats. And like I don't recommend this to people. Like if people ask me like unless you've got like money in the bank like do not do this like this is a bad idea. And I'm pretty sure in my message like I sent you even said you're like it's good to have that safety net in a sense because you can you won't feel stressed of like taking all these bad deals or like you know figuring out where you're going to eat from and all that stuff, right? So I think that's super important. Yeah, I entirely know what you mean. I get so many people that are just like hey man I'm about to burn every bridge in my life and just do an automation. I have $53 and a toothpick in my pocket and I think I'm gonna make it. Like dude, like relax, man. Can you just keep going for a little Okay, real talk though. The benefit of having a job or any sort of revenue stability. It's just that allows you to like go up a little bit, see a little bit further. You're not constantly looking at your shoes in the dirt, you know, being like, "Oh my god, you know, like how do I take that next step forward? " You have the, I want to say, privilege of being able to invest a little bit of money in things that might move you a little bit further, but take a little bit of risk as well. And I mean, I had to add this to like my VSSL video sales letter for my communities, but like if you're not in a financial position where you're like 100% confident that this is the right move, and it sounds like you were because you had some backing, you had some savings or whatever, there's nothing wrong with having a job. Like there's no ego in here. We're just looking for the straightest line path to more revenue, to more money. Automation is obviously much higher leverage than working like the standard 9 to5 for the vast majority of industries. So that's the determination you should make, not the whole like I'm self-employed and I got to burn all the bridges. Do you know what I mean? So I'm really glad that you brought that up. Yeah, 100%. And I think it's like don't get me wrong, even before I quit my job, I was still working on this stuff like taking fake action in the sense I wasn't applying to jobs and stuff, but I was like, you know, learning more and doing things in the morning before my actual job. So I think there is that window of like 6:00 a. m. to like 8:00 a. m. that people need to take advantage of and explore these things, right? if you don't and you just like go all in like you're going to like you said you're looking at your shoes you're like where do I go from here? So there's something to be said about the constraints as well. Like believe it or not constraints aren't negative. If you learn to operate under a constraint you're so much more effective when you don't have that constraint. So don't just dive into like a completely unconstrained schedule or a constrained day. Like if you are working a 9 to5 don't get me wrong it's hard as hell to do this. But if you're working a 9 to5 and you have 6 to 8, try running that business 6 to 8 first before you try running it, you know, 6 to freaking 9. Like Yeah. Seven days a week. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And anyway, I cut you off a little bit there. What happened next? Yeah. So, I ended up quitting October and the day before my last day, I got my first client off Upwork. Holy gone yet? That wasn't even gone. Just talk about like serendipity in a sense. Like it was just like this is like meant to be. This is amazing. Like let's do this. So yeah, landed that first client went really well. Built like this really interesting automation. He would get leads from like a pixel for his clients and we would analyze like all the web pages they visited and like figure out their intent of like what they were thinking of buying and then like piping those over to their CRM which is pretty cool. Damn. Yeah, that does sound really cool. That was your intro to automation? Yeah. another email autoresponder like that sounds wasn't nothing basic though it was just like this guy was like getting creative he's like I want to like get into data instead of just like marketing services I like okay sure like let's try it you know let's say no sounds cool did you um was this like a one-off initially you said he got him through Upwork yeah so it was just like that was the oneoff and then he just like kept asking for more things and then he referred me to his friend who's like still like my one of my top clients today so like that's pretty cool there was like some funny stories that I can share of like Upwork situations. Like there was this one, please. Um there's this one where this guy was like a real estate investor and he initially came to me for like air table help. I like told him like this is not the constraint in your business. Like business is like you actually need to go buy more buildings. Like you're just not talking to enough people. And like I sold them on the cold email stuff, right? But the deal was absolutely horrible. Like I was like, "Yeah, it'll be like 250 bucks. " Like I just like and like I made this absolutely horrible deal and I would get 0. 005% of the building purchase price of like what you would buy. What it Okay, bro. So wait, you did like a share like a like a share on a freaking building purchase price for one. That's insane. And then for two, your freaking revenue thing was 0. 005. Yeah. So it's like it was like $10 million. If you bought a $10 million building, I would get five grand. It was like horrible. That's very interesting. I mean, that's what he pictured cuz he didn't want to pay for it. He just says like, you know, like you don't know what you're doing. You've never done this before. And I was like, okay, like let's figure out a deal. And he just did not want to pay for it. It's like, and then I realized I was like, I'm going to be paying for this guy's like smart lead and like scraping all these leads for like how long does it take to buy a $10 million building? Like 6 months, a year. I was like, there's no way this is going to work. Holy, dude. I've never set anything up like that myself. That's it. A bad very bad deal. So, anyways, I like I just like it felt horrible and I was like, there's no way. Like, so like we agreed to it verbally and I'm just like I send him a proposal and he's like, I don't know like I don't even know want to pay this like 250 bucks. Like I just want you to cover it and just like I'm like hey man like I don't want to do this deal. He's like come on like let's do it. like really wanted me to like follow through on it. I was just like I just realized this is just a terrible idea. And that's like a scarcity thing, right? Cuz I was like, "Oh my god, this guy wants to work with me. Like let's just like work together, right? " And I think maybe someone who didn't have like the financial position I had would have been like, "Yeah, let's do it. " Right? To me, like I wasn't I never optimized for money anymore cuz I did that in my first like career, my little project management business. And I was like so sad because it's just like, you know, I want to actually enjoy learning and like doing the things I'm doing and like working with my clients, right? Right. So now I optimize for enjoyment. Like the money kind of just comes as long as you show up every day is what I found so far. That's really interesting. It's like you're optimizing for the input, not the output. The output just happens. Yes. That's kind of how I've been operating in the last like six which is like different than what I used to do. And it just like feels way more aligned. Like I get up every day and I'm like excited to like work on these things cuz I'm like I can really help these businesses and they don't have to do [ __ ] manually anymore, you know? Yeah. Facts. The 500th piece of paper. Yeah. That's cool, man. Yeah. The 005% revenue share, that's an X for anybody that's listening that was considering doing that on Yeah. Do you not do that, please? Purchases. You got any more? Just while we're on the topic, I have one where like I sent a guy a Loom video, showed him how to solve his problem. It's like a VC and he hops on the call with me and he's like, "Yeah, like you really know what you're doing. Like why don't I like give you access? " I just kind of like explained to him like how to do it. He's like, "Okay, yeah, like I'll pay for it and like I'll pay you tomorrow and like give you a review and like everything like that. " never heard from the guy again. So, it's like that felt kind of gross in a sense, you know? It was just like, oh man, I feel used. But whatever, it is what it is, you know? Man, I got to say, don't get me wrong, giving value is incredible and it's amazing. And I think that that's just the way to operate today. But when you do give enough value, there will be some people out there that will take advantage of you. I can't tell you the number of times I've sent some super detailed proposal and in it I say something along the lines of, "Hey, here's how I would do your project if I could and you know, I want to do it for you, but here's exactly what I would do. " And then they just, you know, they disappear. They hire somebody off of Fiverr or something for $7. 50 an hour and they're just left in the dust. Yeah. I mean, I prefer it that way, you know, because I prefer to work with people that really like working with me, that are stoked to, that see the benefit of the valuedriven approach on job one, and then think, "Holy crap, this guy's giving me this much value before I've even started working with him. How much value is he going to give me when like we actually sign a deal? " Right. Exactly. It also gets into that congruence thing that you talked about where like, you know, you focus on giving and solving and get getting really stoked about the sort of work that you do and then everything else sort of falls into place. I feel like that's important. Yeah. like and being willing to like tell your clients like their idea is bad is huge too. I think a lot of people especially starting out are scared to do that. There's the guy that I got referred to, he wanted like the same setup for his business but just like it didn't have enough traffic, right, for the types of leads he was getting and it didn't make sense and he was going to pay me a bunch of money to like build the same thing. I was like, "No, no, no. Like that's that doesn't make sense. Like let's do like a $100 like it'll take me like 20 minutes to like build this automation. " And I built this automation. I was like, "Look, like we can just like do a little MVP, pilot it, see if it actually provides value. And then if it does, we can build like the whole big system. " And it turned out like it didn't make sense to do the big system. But now that client is paid by far like the most money out of like all my other clients, right? So like being willing to like, you know, not take $1,000, but take a $100 just in that one moment led to all this other stuff on the back end. So and yeah, if you didn't have that stability, if you weren't in a position where you could actually say, "Hey, I don't need that $100 right now. " And I think that that's leading to a,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 over the course of the next 6 months, you wouldn't have been able to do that, right? Yeah. So on like a meta level, it's all incentive alignment. And you know, if you don't get yourself in those really sketchy situations that we were talking about, you know, like some of the fortunate souls that join my programs, um you're able to align your incentives with the clients, not necessarily just yours. You don't just have to be like, "Oh my god, like $100. Okay, let's let's grab it right really quickly before this opportunity runs out. Even if it doesn't actually lead to any benefit on the client end. And you know what? That guy probably saw that. You know what's really interesting? What I found is like is you get higher and higher pitch these bigger ticket projects. Some people actually do this sort of stuff on purpose. I know this sounds weird, but some like big business hot shots actually like seed with problems that they aren't that they know aren't worth solving to see if you're the sort of person that can call them out on their [ __ ] It's like, hey, is this just a yes man that's going to do everything for me? Or is this some, you know, I think this person's intelligent. really keen. Maybe I could work with them long term. But are they going to like just tell me what I want to hear? Or are they going to be like, "Hey, man. This makes no sense and this is what I would do if I were you. " Yeah. That's actually Yeah. I didn't even think of that. They play that game. They're like, they're qualifying you in a sense instead of you qualifying them. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Okay. So, I think you've done a pretty solid job outlining the journey. You got a couple Upwork jobs to start. From there, you kind of bundle that into referrals. Have you tried other lead generation strategies aside from that? And if so, what have you gone through? Yeah, for sure. So, I ended up joining another like coaching program as well back in like Novemberish. And it was my main lead generation strategy has been relationship building and just providing so much value to people that they're just like know me now as like the in this community that I'm in as the automation and project management systems guy. So, in that community, they have an AI use case call every week and there's a guy that hosts it and then I would join it every week, but then I ended up somehow becoming a co-host. Like, it's just like every week he's like, "Am what do you think? " And it's just like I'd be like, "Oh, like this is what I did for a client. This is what I would do now. " All this stuff. So, somehow I like ended up becoming a co-host and then the whole community views me as like the expert now. So then they all just come to me inbound or you know I'll reach out to them just have like a talk like this you know it's like hey let's get to know each other and then they're like oh like I actually need this like can you help me with this? Um dude that's cool as hell. It's almost like social media just on like a really small niche scale with a bunch of people that like have a problem that you could solve. Yeah. It's a community of my ICP which is like crazy, right? So, it's just like I have it's not I'm scraping a bunch of leads and all this stuff and you know sending a bunch of emails. It's just like I'm having onetoone conversations. The best part is now that I've signed some of them as my clients. They're now my salespeople in the community. So, like they're up at all hours of the night cuz they're business owners that like someone will post like, "Hey, I need help with this. " And then they're like, "Am the guy like he made my systems work so well. " It's like, so it's like I have like these built-in sales people now too, which is like super interesting. and they're just my clients. So Oh, that's so cool, man. That's like leveraging. Yeah, that's leveraging people. It's like Naval says, right? There's code, media, and then people. And that's like the third. Selling while you sleep. Dude, it's funny that you mentioned this because I think that's lost on a lot of people that try in maker school. Now, I talk about three primary lead generation methods. There's like cold email and I show you and I teach you how to do it. Upwork, I show you to And then there's communities. And like a lot of people struggle with the community stuff. And I think it's because they don't understand what you hit the nail on the head of back there that it's about relationship building and giving like dummy amounts of value without expecting anything in return. Then leveraging that to become an authority within the group. Then once you're in authority, you inherently have, as you mentioned, people selling for you, people reaching out to you, you're trusted, you're vetted. So that's really cool. Do you take any sort of like systematic approach to this stuff or is it just like you I don't know you pop up to the weekly call you like reply to posts and stuff like that? Yeah, that's it's pretty much like part of my flow of like checking my LinkedIn and then Slack communities are in there and like stuff like that. So I'll just check see what people are talking about and then join that call and answer questions. There isn't like I'm like necessarily bringing things. I did do get the opportunity to do a guest coaching call though. So that was cool on project management systems. So bringing in, you know, some of the stuff I learned from my experiences with ClickUp back in the day from like 2017 and like through to now and then stuff I learned from you with like the automation piece and stuff. So sharing that with the group and then yeah, I got some leads from that. Yeah, it's just like getting becoming friends with people, providing a lot of value, doing some free work as well. That is the other thing I offer is someone like oh I don't know how to do this automation. I'm like just like give me your account like let me take care of this for you. social insurance number. Yeah, exactly. Um and then they're like, "Okay, now like I want to still work with you. Like what can we do? " It's like, "Okay, like here's let's do this a retainer or fixed price project, whatever the case may be, right? " So, you got the vibe, man. You got the vibe to like crush it in the modernday knowledge economy. All of the people that I've hired, every single one has done exactly that. They just like, "Hey, I think you're suffering from this. Do you want me to fix it for you? Let me fix it for you. I'll do it for free. Here's a bunch of free [ __ ] Just take it. I don't expect anything in return. And then you're just so overwhelmed. I'm like drowning in value that I'm like, "Oh man, I feel like I have to pay this guy something. " Yeah. It just like comes naturally to me. I don't know. The money ends up being a byproduct, but obviously I'm running a business. I want to make a lot of money. That's true. But like it's just the approach is different. It comes naturally. It must be just a Saskatoon thing. Must be must be. We have nothing better to do but just provide free value. That and potach. Yeah. just bust your balls. Okay. If we could narrow down the systems that you build primarily then I don't know like two or three categories what would you say they are out of all the possible systems like what is Emir building for the most part? Project management systems and CRM primarily right now I'm like even helping companies like implement HubSpot right now for example. So it's like gotcha. So it's not even like just dude it's W just so many thoughts there cuz earlier you were like HubSpot what the hell is a HubSpot you know like that was part of your journey right and now you're just like oh yeah this is all I do baby. Well I did leave out one part actually that something you touch on a lot was when we were working with that consultant who was helping us implement Salesforce. There was something I really like noticed. It was like a light bulb in my head where it was like we would ask him like you know what are business best practices like how can we like leverage this to make more money in the business and like all this stuff and the guy was just like so technical he's like I know how to like put the properties in but like I don't know anything about business right so I think there is that level where I like had a light bulb in my head where I was like why can't I be the guy who's both technical and understands business why can't I do that like that would bridge so many gaps here and like it would make for way better client experience as if like if I was that consultant and now I am that consultant right so I think there's that aspect where I was like that like really flipped the switch in my head was like why can't a person do both right like you know there's this false dichotomy almost this thing in like the business consciousness that like well you know if you're a business guy you're not a tech guy and if you're a tech guy you're not a business guy but really with the convergence of all these technologies and like the simplification with AI and like drag and drop no code there's no there's really no reason why you can't be you don't need to go to computer science school like you were earlier for like freaking six years anymore to like get a grasp of this stuff. Just drag and drop, baby. Literally though, that that was uh speaking of drag and drop. It's like, you know, I made my first internet money with dragging and dropping modules around. Like that's crazy when you like say that out loud. It's like wild. Yeah, dude. And like, you know, then it comes through like a tiny little tube and deposits in your bank account. And yeah, it's like this is real. Wow. the like zooming out just how crazy it is that we could do all this stuff is nuts, you know, like um yeah, man, that's dope. The CRM and the project management stuff is cool. Well, what I like about you, man, is you're talking about the lead genen approach you're taking, which is non-standard in the community. Probably like less than 10% of people achieve success using the method that you're talking about. The vast majority of them are like cold email and Upwork. And then you talk about a deliverable and service that not a lot of people do which is project management and CRM cuz you know they I don't know they just seem like it's inherently not sexy or whatever and you're crushing it with that. So yeah, you're really like showcasing how possible it is to do a lot of the things that might not be as sexy on the surface but that do drive a lot of results for clients which I'm happy to see. For sure. I did give cold email a shot. I think I paid for smartly like for like three months before I like started actually using it which I was just like scared. I was like I don't know what to do. Like I don't even know how to write copy. Like what is this? I ran a campaign. I got some responses. I sent some moon videos back. Like nothing ever really came of it. And like I am looking to start doing that again now that I'm more established with some of these existing clients. I'm like I need to I watch a lot of your videos. You're like growth solves all the problems. And I'm like okay I got to get back out there, you know? So it's like dating. It's like I've kind of stopped dating as much, but I'm like I got to like, you know, get back on like I would say cold email is like the Tinder of like outreach, you know? It's like there's That's great. Yeah. I mean, you actually got a point. What What's your pickup line going to be? I'll build you a CRM. That's really cool, dude. I love that. I feel like I should change part of the program to include that. Like cold email is basically cold emails like Tinder but for money. Yeah. But actually, Tinder is Tinder but for money for some people, too. So, yeah, that's true. Did you ever have any times during this process that you just wanted to quit? That you were like, man, this is way too hard in way over my head. There's no way I could do this. Not really, to be honest. Like, I don't want to like lie to you and say I did, but like no, like there wasn't really anywhere where I was like I wanted to quit along the way. I think there was there is this overcoming like you got to kind of go through the outreach thing. I think that's the hardest part of this whole process. Like learning make. com like you said you probably figure out in like a couple weeks but like the actual outreach thing like I think back in December I made $200. Like that was it because I spent the whole month figuring out how to make a website on like framer. Like you know it's just like so stupid. Like it's just like what am I doing? And but like this was like something like you would tell yourself in your head like I got to have the perfect website and like even though like people say like don't do that but like you still for whatever reason you feel like you like you're compelled like I have to they're not going to trust me if I send them a cold email I don't have a website like what are they going to say you know? So just like all this like crazy like mental gymnastics you do in your head. So I would say like there was times like that where you know you're like what am I doing? Like why am I not making money? talking to people? It's like cuz you're not talking to people. That's why people right? So very important 100%. Dude, I'm glad that you touched on that. I can't tell you how much silly [ __ ] I used to do instead of talk to customers. I would spend like dozens about like weeks, months just touching up random things. Oh, my LinkedIn profile isn't good enough. It's like, bro, nobody's seen it. You open up a window, yell, and you'd reach more people than that LinkedIn profile's reaching over the course of the last couple months. Like, that [ __ ] ain't working. You got to just like send those DMs, man. You got to get out there and join those communities, right? Yeah. So, I feel you. Um All right. So, I feel like I got a picture of your business and your journey and stuff like that. So, you know, $12,500 in the last 30 days. What's next, I guess, for the business? Like, where do you want to take it into the future? We we've discussed the past, but let's look forward. Yeah. So, I'm looking to basically, it's funny how I didn't mention how like I ended up more in this CRM and project management system stuff. It was like initially I was like selling these like custom automations of like whatever people bottleneck pain point was. I was like oh you need this and twice in one week I had sold automations and they both came back to me and said actually I think I want ClickUp first cuz I told them I was like you should probably have like a central source of truth and a place to like manage all your work because like the way you guys are doing this is like chaos. I told both prospects that and they both paid the invoice and then like an hour later both sent me emails and were like, "Hey, I actually want the project management system first. " So I was just like, I guess I like this is what I do now. I just do project management systems and it's been very successful. I think I want to stick in that lane where it's like I want to come into a business, set them up with a project management system if they don't have one, then look at bottlenecks, theory of constraints like you talk about. And that fractional CO stuff makes sense to me. Like I feel like that's where I want to be where it's essentially like I'm a partner in your business and helping you implement tech and just like eliminate bottlenecks so you can focus on like your sales and growing your business overall as like the CEO, right? So that's kind of where I'm positioning myself. I'm also looking to build out an intro offer of like if you don't have a CRM or project management system like here's templatized for most marketing agencies or digital agencies that'll work and I'll give you like videos on how to use it properly and like how to check in on it every day and like manage it and all that stuff. So I'm thinking about doing that as well. So that's kind of the next steps in the evolution taking what I've learned so far and then building that product in a sense. Yeah. Exactly. like productizing, templateizing, more leveraged consulting. You're not looking to hire, I guess, in the near term. You're looking to sort out this offer first. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. That's the game plan. Well said. I usually recommend people do this in lie of hiring because um I think we've all heard over the course of the last four or five years, I mean, you know, at least our generation, Amir, it's like the second that you um you know, hit a certain amount of money, delegate. Throw that project away. Like you shouldn't be minding yourself with tiny little things like that. You're better than this. But there's actually so much value in instead of hiring immediately, try and build systems that allow you to make more money as a soloreneur or as a small team anyway. And then only when you really truly do hit the limit, aka the revenue ceiling, you know, for yourself, then hire. Cuz when you're at that point, like a couple things happen. One, like we'll all eventually have to hire anyway. But when you hire, now you hire for a role where that person will be able to generate $50,000 of revenue for you, not just 5,000 or 10,000 because now you have systems for them to work with. And then two, you'll probably be able to hire like a better person because you're not going to be stuck, you know, counting pennies and pinching your wallet. Like a big issue that I had when I was hiring for Leftclick, which is the AI automation agency, to be honest, we just didn't really have too much money. Like, you know, I was right around the size that you're at now. This must have been like about $15,000 a month, something like that. And I was like, "Oh, I'm really running to the ceiling. I can't do anymore. " Maybe 20 grand. I don't really entirely remember. But yeah, I was just like, "Oh man, like this person's $3,400 and that person's $3,700. Like, hm, I'm going to hire the $3,400 one. " And then like when you're forced to make these decisions, you end up with a shitty hire anyway. And when hire, the shitty hire introduces more complexity in your business. And then you end up just like wasting a bunch of time because they ended up leaving, you know, they end up leaving, they end up delivery anyway. The whole point I'm trying to make is don't even do any of that [ __ ] You probably squeeze like $40 $50,000 a month with a templated productized offer amir changing literally nothing else than you're doing right now, right? And when you get to that problem, you know, then cross that bridge. Yeah. I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with constraints, right? If you put those constraints on yourself and you're like, how can I actually if I only had this much, you know, time and money to do this work, how can I do this myself? And fig trying to figure out how you can actually do that is way more valuable than like you said, hiring someone subp part. A big problem too as I've heard what you say and other people that I've talked to say is like it's hard to find people like ourselves that have that both they can think about business and can think about technology. It's like as soon as you give someone like, hey, build this automation, but if they can't tell you why it's, you know, driving revenue or increasing leverage in a business, like why they're doing it, that's where it's like, okay, now I need two people. Now I need a business analyst and I need a developer. Like it's just it starts getting way bigger, right? So, and then also an interesting phenomenon is the more people in your team, the less of each of their attributable time goes towards solving problems and the more of their time goes towards communicating between them. And communication time does not do anything for the client. The client doesn't see it. The client doesn't care about it. It's not value. So, if you were at a business that was a soloreneur company like yours, I believe it's called Probotify. Yeah. 100% of all the time Amir spends is time that he is spending delivering value to clients and so he gets to charge and be compensated on committent with that. But if it's air and somebody else, well, now 90% of air's time is towards the clients. But 10% is just chatting with his assistant or chatting with the engineer. Clients don't see any of that stuff, right? It's coordination and coordination costs scale very drastically, which is unfortunate. First, that's cool as hell, man. Um, I mean, I still have like a ton of questions that I want to ask you, but I do want to be mindful of time. So, maybe I'll just ask you, let's hypothetically say Emir has to start at zero tomorrow and you lose all the connections that you have. You're not in any of these communities or whatever. Yeah. How would you approach process of starting an AI and automation company from scratch? And I have no money. No money. Well, I mean you, you know, like a Can I buy Maker School? Like a few thousand. Man's asking the right questions. Of course you can buy Maker School. Okay. Well, seriously, I would probably watch Nick's like make money with make playlist. Like that would be a really good place to start. That's where I started. Like I'm being 100% serious. cuz I'm not just like saying it cuz Nick's here. And then if you think you're serious, you know, go to Upwork, apply to some jobs. I'm pretty sure you showed to us set up a profile on YouTube, too, for free. Like, I'm pretty sure you show a lot of that anyway. So, like I'm pretty sure everything's out there if you follow some of Nick's videos. I would start there and just like, yeah, it's about showing up every day and just like doing the crappy part. It's like a mountain. You got to just like go through it. And that's how I would start is just like showing up and applying to those jobs and making the Loom videos as much as it's, you know, not comfortable to sit in front of a camera and talk and like all that stuff. Like you just got to be uncomfortable. Yeah. Like I you know, I feel like a lot of people are going to look at your eventual crazy success. You know, if you're if you made $12,500 in the last month with your a automation agency, you might be making $50,000 a month in X months or something like that, right? Obviously, you're a rising star and I can tell just by the way that you speak, that you're quite competent and good at what you do. But I think it'll be easy for a lot of people to look back at that and be like, "Oh, Amir figured it all out ahead of time. " You know, this was his strategy. He started with this, then he did this. But in reality, what you did is you just dove into learning and then you put yourself out there and then you acquired some sort of feedback from a few of these initial clients and small little projects and then were like, "Huh, people like CRM. Maybe I should do more CRM. " Then you said, "Okay, let me join a few communities, see how I can scale stuff. " Hm. people are preferentially coming to me from the community. Maybe I should spend more time in the communities. The point I'm getting at is this is feedback over planning. If you're a beginner and you're on the fences and you're like, "Oh my god, how do all these people have all this stuff figured out? " The reality is none of them had anything figured out. They just got started and then be through feedback they ended up determining the right direction to continue moving in. So I feel like that applies pretty well to you too if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. But to be clear, from like June of last year to October where I would argue I knew enough and I did spend like some time in Europe at that time for vacation and stuff, but I would argue like I had the knowledge I needed to like go, you know, like go do what I need to do, but like I just didn't act. And you know how much money I made in that time? zero negative dollars because I was paying for like framer and smart lead and all this random stuff like you know like it's just like I lost money make you know like all this stuff. So like I think there's something to be said is like you're never going to know everything. I think people need to understand that it's like you just have to decide one day it's like this is enough and I'm going to figure on the fly. Like you have AI, you have Google, like everything's out there at your fingertips now. Like if you can't figure out how to do some kind of API connection, like you'll figure it out, you know, like especially if someone pays you money, like you have no choice but to figure it out. I love that, man. Yeah, that's motivating as hell, I think. Especially to the people that are like still afraid to kind of put that foot down and take that first step. So, I appreciate it. One more thing on that point. I see a lot in our community, people will come up with problems before they're problems. And I just really wanted to touch on that where they'll be like, "Okay, what if I apply to an Upwork job and I start talking to them and they'll like change the scope dramatically and like they want like 10 more things like can I like change the price? Is that okay? " Like or like am I just stuck at like that low price I gave them cuz I didn't know all this other stuff. And it's like that is not a problem you need to solve right now. Like the first step is like you need to apply to that job and then like maybe they'll answer your proposal and then maybe you'll hop on a call and then like you'll figure it out in the moment like but before then like this is not a problem you should be stressing yourself with 100%. Another really interesting and related thing to that is people qualifying all their leads ahead of time. So, I'm talking specifically about cold email, but I can't tell you the number of people that come to me and say something like, "Hey, my ICP is exactly this. " And so, I'm looking for people with revenues of 500,000 to a million dollars a month, and you know, those are exactly the customers I want. And then in reality, you can't actually do all of that targeting ahead of time. So, because you can't, the implementation's very difficult, and they don't end up getting started. In reality, what you can do is you could just talk to a ton of people, whether it's on Upwork or cold email or whatever, and then when people say yes to you, you could figure all that [ __ ] out later. You could find out how much money they make later. you could qualify at the end, not at the beginning. The problem is not a problem until it becomes a problem when the person is on the phone saying, "No, I don't make 500,000. " You know, you kind of get my point. Yeah. So, this is a more I think central it's like a more fundamental paradigm shift. And I wish there was this maybe there is a simple and easy way to just state this in a way that beginners understand. I've been trying for the better part of a year and I've been able to, but Amir, you're good with words, man. Maybe you got it. Yeah, I Yeah, it's like I think there's also value in having those reps, right? So, like this whole unqualified qualified thing, it should even be a question in the beginning. Like your whole role is to just like get in front of customers, figure out what their problems are and see if you can solve them. And like they'll pay you something for it. Like it doesn't matter how much it is, but like they pay you something at the beginning. Then the qualification stuff when you start getting like too much work and all this stuff that's when like it starts to matter. I think that's more important for beginners in my opinion because they haven't been exposed to business owners and working with different types of people, right? So yeah, cross that bridge when you get to it in a nutshell. Amir, awesome having you on, man. Anything else you'd like to say before we wrap up? No, this it was awesome to have the opportunity to speak and talk about my journey and I'm looking forward to sending you a DM when I'm at 50k a month. I can't wait to see it, man. Thank you very much for coming by. Looking forward to that, man. Peace.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/12087*