How I Turn One AI Project Into $5K Monthly Retainers

Today I'm going to talk about how to turn a one-time project revenue into recurring revenue, which is one of the most important skills that I think an AI agency owner can have. So, we're going to solve this very particular problem over the course of the next little bit. I'm going to make sure it's short, to the point, and ultimately high value. So, first of all, what is retention? Why is it important? I focused on retention a ton when I scaled my automation agency to 72 grand, and my copyrightiting agency to 92 grand. But there are a couple reasons. The first is this is what your agency looks like without retention. Okay, month one, you might make $25,000. Isn't that so cool? Month two, you'll make $15,000. Month three, you'll make $45,000. But then month four will come and you'll hit $12,000. Okay, what are we seeing here? We are seeing a very big variance between one month and the next. Now, this isn't the right term. It's stats and I'm not very good at stats, but essentially if we could just graph this. When you don't have a recurring product, this is what your revenue looks like monthtomonth. Okay. Now, how is a business supposed to be able to project and anticipate its needs and demands if this is the revenue over time? Let me tell you from experience, not very well. It's very difficult to confidently invest in a software platform. It's very difficult to hire reliably. It's very difficult to basically do any sort of capital allocation when your revenue goes all over the place cuz you don't have a stable base. Now, if you contrast that to what things look like with recurring revenue, okay, basically, instead of you starting at some massive figure like $25,000, month one, you might make 10K. Month two, you might make 12K. Month three, you might make 15K. Month four, you might make 20K. Month five, you might make 25K. Month six, 30K. So on and so forth. Okay, so what does this mean? Well, the variance or the variability between one month's revenue and the next is actually pretty low and usually it's trends positive because it's not like, you know, when the month finishes your freaking revenue falls off a cliff and you got to restart the whole sales engine again. You actually have a stable base. You don't start from zero every month. What you do is, sure, you might have a little bit of churn. You know, maybe 10K goes to 9K because you lose a $1,000 a month maintenance subscription or something, but it's much easier to add that back on. Okay, so that's reason number one why you might want to focus on MR and the monthly recurring. The second is that acquisition is really expensive. Nobody really talks about this and I'm kind of to blame for this because I always talk about how you should frontload acquisition wherever possible. You should always be focusing on the Upwork apps and cold emails, the community posts and the ads and the the DMs and so on and so forth. These are great, don't get me wrong, and you should be putting a ton of your time and effort in them. But after you've gone from 0ero to one and you have a couple clients under your belt, the game changes a bit and it becomes less about how do I get new acquisition through the door and becomes more, hey, how do I take full advantage of this massive book of business I've already built? So acquisition's expensive. Let's say you win a 10K project as an AI automation agency. Okay, right off the top, before you even get a scent of that $10,000, you got to pay money to acquire. So maybe you spend $500 on the cold email systems and leads in order to get that project. Maybe you spend another $500 on the sales, maybe your time, maybe the salesperson's salary, maybe you, I don't know, actually have this land in your lap because it's some sort of referral. And you pay the referee um 5% on the amount. Well, if we take this into account, that's $1,500. Meaning of our $10,000. Okay, we have just lost $1,500. We're only going to make $8,500. So this 10K project now is literally right off the top already down 15%. And we're not even talking about the other expenses that you have like you know let's say you have a team you actually need to fulfill you let's say you have software like make. com expenses tokens right you know when you factor in the cost of goods sold COGS you know you might actually be left with 35 to maybe 50% margins that's really not good how much better would 50% to 65% margins be in this case well the difference between business A at this number and business B at this number is usually the difference between the business that lives or dies okay and we want to be business B so Hopefully, I've made a very short case for why you need to focus on retention versus acquisition. Let me make even more of a

case for it below. So, as we know, retention is free, whereas acquisition costs money every time. When you have a one-time project, you get fixed return. When you have a retainer, you have an ongoing revenue stream. Now, if we just math it out, acquiring new clients costs an insane amount more money than retaining existing ones. I said five to seven times here based on personal experience and just numbers I found on the internet. I think some companies are paying way more than this. So, companies that are in that situation should focus on retaining their current client base as opposed to spending a ton of money in order to acquire new ones. Okay, retained clients also usually end up with higher profit margins. Why? Well, there are a bunch of reasons why, but the biggest one is you know them. Okay, you know what happens when you know them? Well, you can optimize your work. When you optimize your work, you optimize the allocation of staff members. you you optimize the software products and platforms that you're using. Um things get easier. You can also upsell them because you know their business. Now, when you know their business, you can offer specific, more nuance solutions that solve more nuance, deep problems that they're suffering from and then demand more money for it. Okay? So, you're going to make more money retain clients anyway. And then the way that all this stuff works is let's say you try and convert totally cold traffic to a retainer. Okay? So, this is a new lead. they come in and then you are trying to convert them into some sort of retainer. Well, if it's totally cold traffic, think of how much more difficult it is to sell a retainer product where it's like, "Hey, I want to work with you for a very long period of time. You have zero idea who I am. You have no idea what sort of results I've delivered. I have basically no authority or no credibility here. Do you want to sign this contract at $5,000 a month for the next 12 months? " That's a $60,000 capital outlay. the lead has to make a decision on whether to do it. How many people are actually going to convert totally cold into a retainer product? Very low. You have like good sales mechanisms 5 to 10% maybe 15%. Okay. Whereas if you uh stagger this, you have a lead come in. What you do is you start off with a onetime project like many of you guys do which is great. How much easier is selling a simple maybe $1,000 or $1,500 onetime project. Okay, you could convert like 30% of these people. And then after you do the onetime project to retainer conversion when you you know follow up and try to retain them maybe you convert another 30%. Meaning that here you know you're getting 9% you know mathematically you're getting 9% of these leads anyway but you're also getting a onetime project. So you just you're getting to double dip basically you just get to make double the money. So I mean I could go on and on there actually a number of more reasons why retention is better than acquisition. But I hopefully have made a case for once you've acquired a few clients, why you guys should focus less on acquiring more than more on, okay, how do I actually squeeze as much juice out of this towel as I possibly can before I move forward? Obviously, eventually you have to acquire more clients. Everybody does. But if you already have a pretty good client base that you haven't done any sort of upselling to and you haven't really pitched any sort of retainer, we're going to dispel those notions this video. We're going to make you really good. Okay. So, let's say client acquisition costs you 500 bucks and then you make $3,000 with that retainer. If you do not convert it, you make $3,000. You just spent $500, meaning your margins on this deal are 80, I think it's 84% or something like that. Okay, let's say you end up converting that to a monthly $5,000 retainer. Okay, not only did you make the 3K, but you also made, let's say for a full year, another 60K, which is 63K. And if you do the math, um, how much do you spend to acquire that? $500 over $63,000 is uh 99. 2% margins. Now, wouldn't you rather be in this camp? I know I definitely would. All right, so let's actually talk

about practically how to do this, not just why. Um, what I do is I do what's called setting the foundation. Okay, so when I pitch a retainer, I will legitimately pitch a retainer during the very first sales conversation I have with the person. I won't make this a big deal, but usually when I do the pitch during both the sales call and then during the initial like lead gener outreach, I will say something along the lines of, "Listen, my goal is to get you on a long-term monthly retainer because from experience, that's how I deliver the most value to clients. It aligns my incentives because I get to know how your business works and I get to figure out the nuanced ways to add value. I'm confident that if you work with me on a long-term retainer, I will multiply the investment you make in me by 5, 10, 20, or more, just like I've done for X, Y, and Z client. " Okay? Now, I've actually done this multiple times. This is just a simple um Upwork conversation that I had. Maybe you guys that are on Upwork will recognize the font and stuff like that. This is somebody that I legitimately jumped on a sales call with and then I drafted a proposal for a monday. com CRM build. Okay? And then down over here, I legitimately say, "While I deliver the proposal for a one-time project, my end goal would be to get you on a retainer for monthly services since it lets me interface with and learn your business deeply. I'm very confident you'll be able to make a significant multiple 5 to 10x on whatever I charge you. Not to mention the improved growth as a result of better follow-ups, etc., but you can let me know how amendable your team is to that. And then, you know, I was heading on a cool snorkeling trip. So, um, that's obviously why the guy signed the deal cuz he knew that I was cool enough to go snorkeling. The point that I'm making is when you make your intentions abundantly clear from the very beginning, you never run into a weird conversation later on. You know, you have to be like, "Hey, I think we could do something else. " point that I'm making is um by making your intentions abundantly clear uh upfront and being confident that you can deliver return on investment and implying that you do these sorts of retainers all the time sets you up much better for success later on. So I position for the retainer during literally sales call number one um hell uh a marketing message number one sometimes I do it in the Loom videos I will send prospects my goal is to get shown a long-term monthly retainer because it aligns incentives. It helps XY and Z. I'm confident I can deliver a multiple on the investment that you make in me. You also have the ability to select initial projects that naturally reveal additional opportunities. Now, what do I mean by this? Well, I mean sales projects. If you build a sales system for somebody, you have to hand off leads to somebody on their team. You learn pretty quick what the bottlenecks are on their front end. If you do some sort of fulfillment system, maybe you help people draft, I don't know, ad copy or ad creative. You hand that off to staff members, you learn pretty quickly where the bottlenecks are in the fulfillment process. Okay? When you do long-term retainers, when you actually make a pitch, like I did back over here on that Upwork example, I always talk about long-term partnership potential because I also like to set the ground for maybe a potential revenue share later on. Highly recommend. And then the way that I do it is I structure the actual proposals themselves to position my retainer as a natural next step. I don't actually, you know, like in the proposal itself, I will either mention a retainer or I will talk about retainers I've worked on with other clients to achieve similar results. Uh, the point that I'm making is I'm always putting seeds essentially that this is not just a one-time thing. If you work with me and I deliver crazy results for you, well, why wouldn't we want to work together again? Doesn't that just make sense? You guys want to look at what actual examples of this look like, definitely check out Maker School, my automation community. We just hit 2,250 members as of the time of this recording, and we make the price go up every 100 members. So, you know, essentially this is like the SOP, and I really like doing these because this is just a simple operating procedure or checklist that you could make every time that you go through a sales conversation. So, every time you have a sales conversation, you plant seeds of long-term value. You discuss how most of your other clients are on long-term retainers and they see value because of X, Y, and Z purpose. You're confident that they could multiply their investment in you if you, you know, get to the point where you are able to deliver said long-term retainer. Then, select a strategic initial project. Establish measurable KPIs. What are some KPIs? ROI. Okay, things like uh cycle time for fulfillment. That's how long a project takes to go through their queue. It's things like, I don't know, savings, right? How much money they're spending on software. Then you deliver the initial project. You track the value that initial project creates. And a lot of the time this is going to be estimated. But basically now what you have is you have a list of bullet points that you could use in a retainer conversation later on. I'm going to show you exactly what those retainer conversations look like. Okay. All right. Next up, while you're actually

doing the project is probably one of the greatest opportunities to show a client what an actual long-term relationship with you would look like. And one of the simplest and easiest ways to do this is project updates. Okay? Now, I've done a bunch of different project update templates over the years. This is probably the simplest one that I found, but basically, okay, once every day or two, depending on how involved you want to be with your clients. If you can get to a cadence where you do this every day though, you'll be a lot better. You say something like, "Hey, blank. Hope you're having a great blank. Just wanted to check in with an update on where we're at. Here's number one thing that we did. Here's number two No action needed or action needed. Simply giving you an update. I know it's a busy day if you use your best luck at the conference. This is one that I sent and I've since obfiscated, hence the uh the specifics. But hopefully you guys see the idea. Very quick and easy constant contact where you show proactively that you are doing work for them and they don't necessarily always need to like babysit you through it because that's really important in retainers. It's also important because if the client is the one that's always driving the retainer, okay, they usually try and run you at 100% utilization. This is kind of a nuanced point, but a lot of the time in retainers, you end up making a ton more money because the client just doesn't utilize you 100%. They'll utilize you like 90%. Well, what does that mean realistically? That just means you made an additional 10% of your entire revenue with that client per unit time that you spent on that client because they're just not utilizing you 100% because you're kind of autonomous. You kind of direct and drive your schedule. And it's just a quick and easy way to make more money. I mean, you know, if we're being real here, that's a big chunk of what makes subscription products so good. A lot of people don't like remember to turn their subscription product off or whatever and then like the next month they just get build again. I don't like it. You know, it's not the best way to drive value in the world, but uh it's definitely like a kind of a pragmatic look into how businesses actually conceptualize making money. And you know when you drive and are autonomous and you don't require handholding and you do the work yourself, you get to start creating systems and optimizing workflows on your end without the customer or the client interfering. You can usually end up a lot more efficient and effective as a result. Okay. All right. So that's number one. Number two is strategically overd deliver in areas that showcase retainer potential. What do I mean by this? I mean if there is an area of the person's business that you know that they struggle with, whether it's related to the project you guys are doing, maybe it's tangential, okay, overd deliver on those. like actually do work that solves problems that you noticed while doing the first project without even asking. It's better to beg for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. I don't mean go in and like implement a system on their actual business or anything like that, but while you do your initial project, say, "Also, I noticed X, Y, and Z issue. I was wondering if you wanted me to solve it. Whether or not you do, I thought I'd put something together for you to solve it proactively. So, if you end up wanting to work with me later on down the line, I can implement this for you. " If you have somebody on the team that can, um, then that's cool, too. and then give it to them. Give it to them for free. Okay, this is like your advertising cost. The time that you spend doing this now becomes your acquisition cost. But notice how that's not like uh it's not a dollar value that's coming out of your account, you know, it's time. Not to mention, when you do this right, you end up being able to command a significantly higher price for retainer later on. So, you don't actually end up out anything, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Next up, instead of positioning yourself as a builder like a lot of people do, okay? Don't position yourself as a builder. consultant. Okay? Position yourself as a strategist or position yourself as a partner. These are all way more powerful than builder. A builder is just somebody that you hand a project off to and say, "Hey, here's a bunch of specs. I've already done all the work and I'm looking to get this finished as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Do it. " A strategist is somebody that sits down with you and says, "Hey, here's where we're at. Here's where I think we can be. Here's why I think that. And here's how I believe we can bridge that gap practically. Do you want me to do it? find somebody to do it? Is there somebody in your team that I can give it to? This is significantly higher up the value chain. Okay. You're no longer a builder. the I don't know the the grunt. You're no longer the hands. You're also no longer a manager. What you are is you are strategic. And this is very much closer to where the business owner is. Wouldn't you rather be um here as opposed to here? I know I would. I want to minimize that perceived value gap as much as possible because the closer I am to their value, the more I can position myself as their partner, the easier it is for me to pitch, let's say, a retainer re plus revenue share later on down the line. I've literally gotten equity in businesses as a result of doing this approach. Um as much as 25%. So, this isn't something that I'm just talking about the theoretically. This is like an actual day-to-day step-by-step road mapap on how to do this for small to mid-size businesses. Okay. While you're fulfilling the project, note a bunch of opportunities for your retainer pitch. If you see issues with their business that you don't want to solve for them, just write them down. Make sure that you know what issues that business is going through when you end up making the retainer pitch, which we'll cover. And then as you're finishing the project, just document all the value you've created. Basically, just tabulate, hey, how much value am I providing? because you're going to want to be able to take that to them at the end when you do that retainer pitch later on. So, here's our little SOP again, okay? When you kick off the project, frame your updates in ROI terms. When you say, "Hey, I just did X, Y, and Z. " Don't just say, "Hey, I did X, Y, and Z," but say, "Hey, I just did X, Y, and Z. " So, we've now solved that $50,000 a month problem. Remind them constantly of your value when possible. Then, strategically overd deliver on things that you think are important. Ask consultative questions. Pitch yourself not as a builder, but as a strategist, as a partner, as somebody that's on their level. Document the value created. Identify additional opportunities. These are all essentially case points for your retainer pitch later on. Okay. Now, I want to talk about the strategic delivery process. So, if you think about it logically, when is the best time to make the retainer pitch? pitch somebody on a massive, massive value ad or a big deal or whatever is immediately after giving them everything that they paid for and then a little bit more because you want them to be as overjoyed with you as humanly possible when it comes time to make that big pitch. And so the way that I do things is I take advantage of reciprocity. It's this cognitive uh psychological bias humans have where when you give somebody something, they want to give you something back. When I deliver my project is when I will pitch my retainer because when I deliver my project and then I go above and beyond the expectations and make them very happy, they are significantly more likely to want to say yes to you. This is how you get high conversion rates. Okay. So project delivery is your highest leverage moment for retainer conversion. Okay. So my recommendation is provide comprehensive documentation and training that hints at future possibilities. One big thing I always talk about in make money with make and maker school is when you do your deliveries always add like free wins or free scoped line items essentially. So don't just you know deliver the project deliver a blueprint or whatever um in your scope deliver like a make. com configuration plus setup deliver um Google doc textual SOP deliver loom video documentation on how to do the thing. So add a bunch of additional line items usually related to documentation. And when you do that documentation, during the documentation, talk about things like assuming we extend this system, assuming we take this system forward, this is what another solution might look like or this is what uh you know some potential add-ons to the system that you might want to get done would look like to make this thing even better. Okay? Then follow the 7030 rule. This is my personal litmus test or rule of thumb for how I do things. I will talk and celebrate 70% of the time. Then that other 30% of the time while I, you know, deliver the great news or whatever, then I say, "Listen, I think there's an opportunity here for us to make a little bit of money. I'll show you guys an actual email template in a second. " So, this is my uh this is like an example of a delivery that I did for an actual client. U and in it, just to make a long story short, feel free to pause the video and read this if you want. This is an Upwork client to mine that started off as an extraordinarily low hourly rate initially and then we moved to fixed price and then uh we ended up actually on a retainer, a very long-term retainer. And I said, "Hey, name project is good to go. I had a lot of fun working on this. " Then I linked a video. This is my Loom. Not only is this a video of me delivering the project, it's me documenting how the project works. And then if they took this took them, let's say 7 minutes to read through this. I made like 30% of my email about the opportunities that they had. And had are, hey, I'd also like to discuss that retainer. I seen a reason why I can't add 5% or more onto your margins with just a few changes. This is how you pitch yourself as a consultant and a strategist and as somebody on their level. You talk about the things that they care about which if we're frank are money. Okay? We don't care about relative metrics like efficiency. number of new leads. What we care about is how much money can I make you over the course of the next month assuming we work together. And in my case, I said 5% or more. I believe that this was a reasonable assumption at the time and it ended up working out a little bit better than 5% although it did take uh longer than I initially anticipated. And then I said, "Hey, here's more or less what I want to do. I want to build a dashboard. I want to create a streamlined work management system. I want to automate discounts and assignments and so on and so forth. And then here's my calendar if you're interested. So I actually dropped all this stuff in the delivery email. He ended up booking using my calendar link and then voila, before we knew it, we were on a call where I obviously pitched him deeper on the specific things I wanted to build. He said yes and then boom. When you deliver, okay, use video documentation. This increases your perceived value and it highlights scaling potential. It's also a lot more personable than, you know, just sending a bunch of text or something like that. And then while you are doing the project and delivering the project, while you're jumping on that call, just plant seeds of FOMO. That stands for fear of missing out. Talk about other clients that are on retainers. Talk about how retainer is the primary way that you do work and so on and so forth. Okay. So if we had an SOP here again, it would be to complete the initial project as you complete it, create comprehensive docs, then record training videos. And then when you are on the call, you don't have to do a call in order to deliver the project. I just do it through email. But after when you are on that call, okay, spend a lot of your time celebrating wins, but then introduce some new opportunities using that 7030 approach. Okay. Finally, it

comes time to actually pitch the retainer itself. How do I recommend doing this? Well, I recommend timing your retainer pitch so it's immediately after project delivery. Don't wait a month or a week or a year. Okay? When you give somebody something valuable and then you overd deliver on that and give them even more, they will be in the sense of reciprocity where they are significantly more likely to give you something that you ask for. Take advantage of that by timing your retainer immediately after the project delivery. When you send the calendar, like I talked about before, reduce the total number of bookable days that they can't book after a week or something like that. Try and get them in as quickly as possible. Okay. Now, when you're on the call, okay, spend most of it celebrating the wins like I talked about, but then start talking about some untapped opportunities and some ROI expansion. So, one of the main reasons I wanted to get you on this call today was because while I was doing X, Y, and Z project, I noticed some other stuff. And I thought that I might be able to solve that then make you a ton of money. XYZ margins, minimizing your expenses, XYZ top of funnel, whatever the specific thing that they're suffering from is. I thought that I could offer a ton of value and I just wanted to see if you were open to it. And I want you to know that even if you're not open to it, I'm just going to give all the stuff to you anyway so that you have everything that you need. So whether you choose to work with me or you want to hand this off to your internal team, you have everything you need because I've really enjoyed working with you. Okay? This is the vibe that you want to give people while you're on that call with them. This is also, even if they choose not to work with you on this project, going to significantly improve the probability they're going to want to work with you on another one. Okay? Then another thing you can do is you can position your retainer as a discount compared to individual project pricing. So, what I see a lot of people do, okay, is let's say, so there's kind of two examples of this, just like hourly. We'll cover hourly. Let's say you're working with a client and you're at $120 an hour. Now, on average, they work with you for 10 hours or let's say 20 hours a month. So, that means that, you know, usually you end up making $2,400 a month off that client. Okay. The thing is, this is variable. This is up and down. Some months you'll get the full 20, other ones you'll get less. Sometimes you'll be over capacity, sometimes you'll be under. What you do is you position it as a benefit. You say, "Listen, instead of you paying me $120 an hour for 20 hours a month, because that's how much we've been averaging over the course of the last few months, I'm happy to lock that in and give you a 20% discount approximately. Instead of paying me $120, why don't you just pay me 100 bucks an hour, okay? And then we'll lock in the 20 hours a month. This will give me stability. It'll give you a discount. And for both of us, it's going to be a win-win. you'll save $400 and then I'll know how to pre-plan my schedule, um, juggle you alongside my other clients and so on and so forth. So, that's what hourly looks like. If you're doing some sort of like fixedric project basis, which is usually what I what I recommend, just pitch them a certain amount for the project that you had in mind, and make this pretty big. and then say, "Well, how about instead of this, I could work with you on a retainer for, I don't know, maybe this is $10,000. Maybe uh, you know, for onetime project. This one is $3,500 per month. " Okay? What you say is, "In addition to all of this money, I'm not just going to do that project for you. I'm also going to do a weekly strategy call. unlimited maintenance on all of your past projects, including that last one. I'm also going to do 12 till 2:00 p. m. PT. I don't know, Slack availability. So, you'll be able to reach me anytime you want. I'll also do one monthly training session. Notice how these are not things that take a standard number of your hours. Even the 12 to 2 p. m. Slack availability is not time you will actually spend fully utilized, but it delivers a big perceived value upfront to the client. Okay, these are all ways that you can significantly improve the probability of somebody wanting to transition between some very big scary number to some sort of maintainable monthly thing because the monthly thing also includes all these benefits. The idea is make the retainer like a no-brainer. Okay, wouldn't you rather spend 100 bucks an hour versus 120 bucks an hour? Obviously. Yeah. So, somebody gives you that option, I'm going be like, "Check, let's do it. " Absolutely. That's the vibe that you want to give your clients as well. Okay. Use price anchoring and no risk trial periods to overcome objections. Say stuff like, "Let's start with one month. There's no lock in. There's no nothing. I just want to show you how much value I can provide to you in 30 calendar days. And if at the end of the 30 calendar days, you don't want to work with me anymore. Then all good. I'm going to give you everything that you need to either take that in house or hand that off to somebody else. And I'm going to make sure that there's zero interruptions to your business. But I like, you know, I'm really putting all my cards on the table here. I think I can offer a lot of value to you, which is why I'm willing to do this. Then finally, another little tip you can do here, this is more of a tactical tip, is when you do your retainer, don't just offer one price like I talked about back there. Don't just offer 2K for 20 hours. Have multiple tiers. Say we could do 1K for 8 hours. We could do 4K for 50 hours. Obviously, make sure that this is not a linear step up because you want there to be incentives. The more money that people pay you, the bigger of a discount that they get. You know what is 4,000 divided by 50? This is 80 bucks an hour. This is 100 bucks an hour and this is 125 bucks an hour, I believe. So, obviously, you know, this is the cheap one if you think about it. It's an expensive one, but it's also the cheap one. But maybe this is the one that you want. when you give them multiple options, then you get to anchor and you get to frame the one that you really want as maybe like a the good alternative for where they're at. So, these are all tactical tips, guys, but I just wanted everybody here to be on the same page. Retainers are where you make a ton of money with AI and automation, both for the utilization thing that I talked about earlier, also because there's significantly more leverage when you work with a client for a long time. Also, because when you install one system in their business that performs repeatedly every month, that's time that you are not spending working that is still spent delivering value for the client, which is ultimately going to stack up and justify. You also get more nuanced problems like I talked about. It's all positives. Okay, here's the SOP. Schedule your strategy call. Review the results. Present the untapped opportunities. Outline a road map. Now, I do 90-day road maps. I actually have an example of a 90-day road map in make moneywithmake. com or maker school, but I believe you have to wait till the fourth month, which is, you know, four months in. I'll unlock a resource which walks you through literally a step-by-step example of a proposal that I pitch a 90-day road map with. Then present some tier retainer options. Position as a discount versus individual projects. Offer some sort of no- risk trial period or maybe like a one month you guys can uh get off at the end of the month, no problem. Off-ramp them, then ultimately secure your retainer agreement the same way that you secure any other acquired new project.

Hopefully, I've provided a bunch of context to you guys as to why retainers are the way to go with AI and automation and a practical roadmap that you guys can implement yourselves to turn this plethora of new acquisition opportunities into actual retained deals that deliver that MR that I'm talking about. I think both from a revenue stability standpoint, also from like a partnership an interest standpoint, and also from like a potential standpoint, especially when you get into like recurring percentage revenue share deals, which is sort of like the final tier of, you know, the big final boss of AI and automation partnerships, I think that retainers just the way to go. And if you're not currently utilizing retainers, you're leaving most of your money on the table. If you guys like this sort of stuff, you like this tactical and strategic talk about how to take your business from 0 to one and then scale it from 1 to 100, you'll definitely like Maker School, my introductory day-by-day accountability roadmap, then make moneywithmake. com, my higher level community capped at 500, which focuses specifically on taking a winning product or service, which you already have that's making you money, and then scaling that through AI and automation. Really appreciate everybody's love. Thank you very much for getting me to over 80,000 subscribers now. And I'm looking forward to seeing you all in tomorrow's video. Have a lovely rest of the day. Cheers.