Build With AI

In this solo episode, I walk through the exact three-stage roadmap I used to build my AI services business past $10K a month in under a year: the free mini assessment, the paid assessment, and the AI concierge model. I break down what each stage actually looks like on a call, how to price them (including the exact math that gets you to 10K/month), and the three biggest ways this business breaks if you're not careful. I also hand you my AOA framework - Audit, Optimize, Automate - which is literally how I turn a client's manual process into a Claude skill during every concierge engagement. By the end of this episode, you'll have the full playbook for landing your first AI services client and scaling to recurring revenue.

Join our AI Operator Academy Community where we help entrepreneurs start and scale a profitable AI services business: https://www.skool.com/aioperatoracademy/about

Timestamps

00:00 Overview of the three-stage roadmap to 10K/month
01:15 Stage 1: What a free mini assessment actually is
03:00 Stage 2: The paid assessment (3-7 tools vs. 1)
04:30 Stage 3: The AI concierge recurring revenue model
06:00 The AOA framework: Audit, Optimize, Automate
07:00 Why unlimited Voxer access is high perceived value
07:45 The math: How many clients you need to hit 10K/month
09:00 Who to sell this to (ideal client profile)
10:00 Action step: Text 10 business owners today
11:00 Three ways this business breaks (and how to avoid them)
12:00 How the free assessment call actually runs
14:00 How the paid assessment works and quantifying ROI
17:30 How AI concierge calls run using the AOA framework
19:30 Pricing strategy: Raise by $250 every time you get a yes
20:30 Recap and where to get the free resource library
Key Points

The business runs in three stages: a free mini assessment to get testimonials, a paid assessment ($500-$2,000) to prove deeper value, and AI concierge (done-with-you consulting) for recurring revenue.

The free mini assessment is intentionally small: a 15-minute call to identify one pain point, followed by a 5-10 minute call to prescribe one tool or workflow. No implementation, no building — just a roadmap. Only do this for your first one to three contacts to earn testimonials.

The paid assessment is "the free assessment on steroids" — a 45-60 minute discovery call that surfaces 3-7 opportunities, scored on an effort-versus-impact matrix to find the high-impact, low-effort quick wins. Priced at $500 to start, with $1,000 as the sweet spot and $2,000 as the ceiling once you have proof.

AI concierge is where the real money is: two 45-minute strategy calls a month plus unlimited Voxer access, priced $1,000-$2,000/month, using the AOA framework (Audit the manual process, Optimize it, Automate it into a Claude skill inside Claude Cowork).

The math to 10K/month: 10 AI concierge clients at $1,000/month, 7 at $1,430/month, or 5 at $2,000/month — all before counting a dime of assessment revenue.

The best clients are owner-led service businesses doing $3-10M+ in revenue with repetitive manual work, visible bottlenecks, and budget — they already know they need AI, they just don't know where to start.

The three ways this breaks: doing free implementation work instead of stopping at the roadmap, letting concierge calls turn into unlimited ad hoc Zoom sessions instead of a fixed cadence, and building a custom tool stack for every client instead of standardizing on Claude Cowork and Claude skills.

Raise your price by $250 every time a prospect says yes — if someone pays $1,000, pitch the next person $1,250, and keep climbing until people start saying no.

SaneBox – the AI email triage tool most commonly prescribed during assessments to cut hours of inbox time - https://www.sanebox.com

AI Tools Assessment Report template – the free consulting-style report template used to deliver paid assessment roadmaps - https://audittemplate.ai

Voxer – the walkie-talkie app used to offer unlimited AI concierge access with a 12-business-hour response window - https://voxer.com

Claude Cowork – the tool used to build and standardize Claude skills for every AI concierge client - https://claude.ai

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

 X/Twitter: https://x.com/coreyganim 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coreyganim/
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyganim/ 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@coreyganim

In this solo episode, I break down a hidden Codex feature most people are sleeping on and show you exactly how to turn it into a client-getting machine. I walk through the entire offer from scratch: how to target local service businesses with bad or missing websites, how to use Codex Sites to build them a free homepage preview in under two minutes, and how to turn that free preview into a paid website, a monthly care plan, and eventually an AI assessment and managed AI services retainer. Then I open up Codex live, off the hip, and build a real homepage for an actual Charlotte pressure washing company using voice mode, find their broken quote form, fix it, and generate outreach templates to contact the owner directly. By the end of this episode, you'll have a full repeatable playbook you can run on literally any local service business in your area.

Join our AI Operator Academy Community where we help entrepreneurs start and scale a profitable AI services business: https://www.skool.com/aioperatoracademy/about 

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro to the Hidden Codex Feature
00:45 - Picking the Target: Local Service Businesses to Go After
02:15 - Building the Free Codex Sites Homepage Preview
03:45 - Pitching the 2-Minute Loom Walkthrough
04:30 - Pricing the Full Paid Website Build
05:15 - The $99–$299/Month Care Plan Upsell
06:00 - Uncovering Speed to Lead & Follow-Up Problems
07:30 - Selling the $1,000 Paid AI Assessment
08:45 - 3 Pitfalls: What NOT to Do When Pitching
10:30 - Live Demo: Talking to Codex in Voice Mode
12:00 - Finding a Local Business & Building the Site
14:30 - First Look at the AI-Generated Homepage Draft
16:00 - Comparing It to the Real (Broken) Website
18:00 - The Audit: Uncovering a Broken Quote Form
20:00 - Iterating Live: Fixing Logo, Layout & Quote Form
24:00 - Testing the New Speed to Quote Form
27:30 - Finding the Owner's Contact Info & Socials
30:00 - Drafting Outreach Email, Text & Cold Call Script
33:00 - How to Attach the New Site to the Client's Domain
35:00 - Wrap-Up & AI Operator Academy Invite

Key Points

The best prospects for this offer are mom-and-pop local service businesses selling a higher-ticket service (tree services, roofers, HVAC, commercial pressure washing) that have great Google reviews but a weak or missing website, and where you can reach the owner directly by phone.

Codex Sites lets you build a fully custom, hosted homepage in minutes using nothing but voice chat, using only verified public information about the business so you're not misrepresenting them to a prospect.

The free homepage preview is a foot-in-the-door offer, not the moneymaker. The real path is: free preview to paid website ($500–$1,000) to a $99–$299/month care plan to a $1,000 paid AI assessment to ongoing managed AI services that can run $1,000–$2,000+ a month.

Never let Codex invent facts about a business, never promise traffic you can't control (sell trust instead), and never upsell before you've actually delivered — those are the three fastest ways to torch your credibility with a cold prospect.

In the live demo, Codex found a real Charlotte pressure washing company, built a homepage with a working speed-to-quote form in about five minutes, and the form actually generated a real quote range ($975 to $3,225) and let the user text themselves the estimate — instantly beating the business's real website, whose quote form was completely broken.

Codex can research the business owner's contact info, LinkedIn, and social channels, then draft a full outreach sequence (email, text, cold call script, DM script) for you, giving you seven-plus ways to get in front of a decision-maker without writing a single word yourself.

If a prospect worries about the technical side of attaching a new website to their existing domain, the answer is the same as everything else in this workflow: ask Codex to handle it. It's turnkey and can be bundled into the price you charge for the build.
FIND ME ON SOCIAL

 X/Twitter: https://x.com/coreyganim
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coreyganim/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyganim/ 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@coreyganim

Find the exact 10-page prompt I used to build this app here: Steal the prompt I used to build the SEO machine in Letaido
All Ahrefs customers get 1 month of Letaido for free. Sign up for Ahrefs here: https://ahrefs.com/ 

Right now there's a massive opportunity in AI that most companies have no idea how to solve: they don't know how to show up in AI search results. In this solo episode, I walk through how to build a standalone app inside Latito (Ahrefs' new agentic tool) that finds exactly where your competitors are getting cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity while you're invisible, then writes, previews, and one-click publishes content to close that gap. I show the whole build end to end, from the exact prompt I used to generate the app, to pulling live opportunity data on real competitor sites, to publishing a finished article straight to my website. By the end of this episode, you'll have a repeatable system you can turn around and sell to local and mid-size businesses as an AI visibility audit, a content service, or a full monthly retainer.

Join our AI Operator Academy Community where we help entrepreneurs start and scale a profitable AI services business: https://www.skool.com/aioperatoracademy/about

Timestamps

00:00 - Why AI Search Visibility Is the Opportunity Right Now
01:30 - Introducing Latito: Ahrefs' Agentic SEO/GEO Tool
02:30 - The Exact Prompt Used to One-Shot the App Build
04:00 - Setting Up Brand, Competitors & Target Platforms
06:30 - Finding Opportunities: 47 AI Answers Analyzed in Seconds
08:00 - Breaking Down the Top Opportunity ("What is Poppy AI for?")
10:30 - How a Competitor's Article Is Winning AI Citations
12:00 - Generating a Competing Article Automatically
14:30 - Why AI Search Rewards Numbered Lists, Tables & FAQs
16:00 - Previewing the Article Before Going Live
18:00 - Turning Off Test Mode & Publishing to the Live Site
20:00 - Tracking Daily AI Citation Performance Over Time
21:30 - 4 Ways to Monetize This as a Service

Key Points

Traditional SEO has shifted into GEO/AEO (generative/AI engine optimization) — the game now is getting cited inside AI answers on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot, not just ranking on a Google results page.

The Latito app connects directly to Ahrefs' data to scan AI answers across all platforms, flag which competitors are getting cited, and surface content gaps as concrete "opportunities" ranked by how winnable they are.

In one demo run against two real competitor sites, the app pulled 47 AI answers, found 47 answers where the brand was missing, and narrowed that down to 5 final content opportunities worth acting on.

The app doesn't just diagnose the gap — it writes a full article (with meta description and URL slug), validates its own draft for quality, and lets you preview it live on your actual site before anything goes public.

AI citation engines consistently favor a specific content structure: numbered lists, comparison tables, and FAQ sections at the end are what get pulled into AI answers, and the generated article included all three by default.

Publishing is deliberately friction-heavy for safety — you have to verify facts and sources, then type PUBLISH in all caps before anything pushes live to the site via GitHub/Vercel.

Once published, the app tracks daily whether your brand is mentioned, whether your page is cited, and your AI share of voice against competitors — the exact data needed to sell this as an ongoing retainer with a monthly ROI report.

Latito - the agentic SEO/GEO tool from the makers of Ahrefs used to build this app - https://www.letito.app
FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://x.com/coreyganim
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coreyganim/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyganim/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@coreyganim

In this solo episode, I break down the exact 7 AI service offers that small business owners are lining up to pay for right now, starting with the one that requires zero AI experience to sell. I walk through the what, why, build process, and real pricing for each one, from the $999 AI assessment that converts 50-60% of clients into bigger engagements, to the AI concierge retainer that's currently my biggest personal income stream, to full implementations that can run $5,000 to $10,000 or more. I share real client stories along the way, including a fintech CEO whose weekly memo process we cut from two hours to 15 minutes, and an Amazon seller whose 25-step ad reporting process we trimmed to 10. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly which offer to start with, how to price each one, and how they stack into each other so you're never stuck pitching something you're not ready to fulfill.

Join our AI Operator Academy Community where we help entrepreneurs start and scale a profitable AI services business: https://www.skool.com/aioperatoracademy/about

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro: The 7 AI Offers Small Businesses Want
00:20 - Offer 1: The AI Assessment (What, Why, Build, Price)
02:40 - Free Report Template (audittemplate.ai)
04:00 - Offer 2: The AI Concierge (Corey's Top Income Offer)
06:30 - Turning Client Intake Forms into Claude Projects & Skills
07:40 - Concierge Pricing & Effective Hourly Rate Math
08:40 - Client Story: Automating a Fintech CEO's Weekly Memo
09:40 - Offer 3: Process Redesign (Fixing Broken Workflows First)
11:20 - Case Study: Cutting a 25-Step Amazon Ad Process to 10
12:20 - Offer 4: Simple Automation Builds with Zapier & Make.com
13:40 - Case Study: Automating a Wedding Venue's Asana Onboarding
14:50 - Offer 5: Knowledge Systems (Custom GPTs Trained on Client Data)
16:10 - Case Study: Business Broker's Custom GPT Cuts 500 Emails to 10
17:10 - Offer 6: Custom Workflows & Claude Skills
18:30 - Case Study: The Podcast Production Orchestrator Skill
19:50 - Offer 7: Full Implementation (Mix and Match Everything)
21:00 - Why You Start with the Assessment, Not the Full Build

Key Points

The AI assessment is the best offer to start with because it requires no AI expertise to sell. It's a paid diagnostic: a 45-minute interview uncovering bottlenecks, delivered as a report showing 3-7 off-the-shelf AI tools the business can implement immediately. Priced at $999, and 50-60% of clients convert into a bigger implementation engagement.

The AI concierge is a done-with-you monthly retainer where you sit side by side with the business owner and turn their manual processes into Claude skills. Priced at $1,000-$2,000 a month for two 45-minute calls, which works out to $750-$1,250+ an hour, because you're pricing on hours saved for the client, not hours worked.

Never automate a broken process. A process redesign strips the waste out of a workflow before any AI or automation touches it. One Amazon seller paid $3,500 just to cut his 25-step, 10-hour-a-week ad analysis process down to 10 steps and about an hour a week, before automation was ever on the table.

Simple automation builds using Zapier or Make.com work best when the input and output are concrete and repeat the same way every time. A wedding venue business paid $1,500 to fully automate a manual Asana onboarding duplication task that was eating an hour of a project manager's time every week.

Knowledge systems are custom GPTs or Claude projects trained on a client's content to answer repetitive questions. A business broker went from 500 buyer emails per listing to about 10 after we built a custom GPT trained on his marketing package, priced at $3,000.

Custom workflows turn a client's existing scattered AI use into one-click Claude skills. One client's podcast production process, previously 30-45 minutes of manual copy-pasting into ChatGPT, became a five-minute run of an orchestrator skill. This tier prices at $3,000-$5,000, based on the deliverable, not the hours.

Full implementation is the mix-and-match top tier, combining any of the previous six offers into one engagement priced at $5,000-$10,000 or more, plus a monthly retainer worth roughly 10% of the build price to maintain it. Don't pitch this until you've done 5-10 smaller projects first.

Links mentioned

Free AI assessment report template, the exact one used to deliver $999 assessments - https://www.audittemplate.ai

Fathom, the AI notetaker used to transcribe discovery calls - https://fathom.video

Claude, used to analyze call transcripts, find matching tools, and build client-specific Claude Projects and skills - https://claude.ai

Gamma, one of the tools used to build assessment report deliverables - https://gamma.app

Jotform, used to build the AI concierge client intake form - https://www.jotform.com

Zapier, used for simple workflow automation builds - https://zapier.com

Make.com, used for simple workflow automation builds - https://www.make.com

Asana, the project management tool automated in the wedding venue case study - https://asana.com

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://x.com/coreyganim 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coreyganim/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyganim/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@coreyganim

If you use BOTH the following link and code COREY, you'll get your first 3 days of Orgo free, then 20% off your first 3 months: https://www.orgo.ai/?r=COREY

I sat down with Phil Goodwin, a completely non-technical designer who sold his last business this past November and, just months later, built a managed AI agent business he now runs under the name Sidecar. Phil walks through his exact stack, how he prices setup fees and monthly per-agent retainers, and the "guinea pig" pitch he used to land his very first paying clients without a following or an email list. We get into real client use cases (a one-man directional drilling company, a short-form video editor), the group-chat trick he uses so clients actually learn to talk to their agent, and a dead-simple weekly value tracker that quantifies exactly why a client should keep paying every month. By the end of this episode, you'll have a working blueprint for pricing, pitching, and delivering a managed agent offer even if you've never written a line of code.
Join our AI Operator Academy Community where we help entrepreneurs start and scale a profitable AI services business: https://www.skool.com/aioperatoracademy/about

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro: The Promise of This Episode
00:41 - Phil's Non-Technical, Design-First Background
02:43 - What "Managed Agents" Actually Means
04:14 - Coaching Plus AI Employee, Not Plug-and-Play
05:31 - How Phil Built Agents for Himself, Then Friends
08:23 - Setup Fee Plus Per-Agent Pricing Model Explained
09:55 - Why "We Fix It Before You Notice" Is the Real Value Prop
11:53 - Real Client Use Cases Across Industries
12:30 - Drilling Company Client and the Telegram Group Chat Trick
15:21 - The Value Ledger: Tracking Hours and Dollars Saved Weekly
17:00 - Short-Form Video Editing Use Case
18:41 - Give Agents a Human-Readable Source of Truth, Not Just Markdown
19:53 - Finding First Clients Through Friends and Referrals
23:21 - Pick the Offer You Enjoy Fulfilling, Not Just the Lucrative One
24:31 - The Exact Text Phil Sends to Pitch Free "Guinea Pig" Work
26:29 - Pricing Breakdown: From $250/Month to a $1,500 Setup
29:37 - Should You Skip the Free Phase and Go Straight to Paid?
31:23 - Step One Advice: Pick Orgo and Land Your First Client
34:22 - Where to Find Phil and Sidecar

Key Points

Managed agents aren't plug-and-play. Phil's offer is a hybrid of coaching, consulting, and a deployed AI employee — he acts as the ongoing manager of the agent, not just the person who installed it, which is why clients pay a few grand a month instead of walking away after setup.

Phil started by pricing pure infrastructure setups at $500, then raised it to $1,000, $1,500, and $2,000 as people kept saying yes — but he learned that handing off infrastructure without ongoing coaching causes clients to abandon the agent within weeks because they don't know how to talk to it.

His current pricing model is a setup fee plus a per-agent monthly fee, a deliberate departure from flat unlimited-agent pricing (like the $5K/month unlimited model his podcast guest Nick uses) because most clients only need one or two agents, not unlimited access.

The single most valuable "pro tip" from this episode: have the agent maintain a value ledger that logs every task it completes and assigns it a time and dollar value, then send the client a weekly report. One client saved 63 hours and $6,300 in his very first week — a number that makes churn almost impossible.

Phil sets up a three-way Telegram group chat with himself, the client, and the agent, so the client can watch him interact with the agent and learn how to prompt it, while Phil can see exactly what tasks are being requested and coach in real time.

Client acquisition ran entirely on free work and referrals — no social following required. Phil did free setups for close friends to get testimonials, and those friends referred him to paying clients in bigger cities, expanding a small-town Georgia network into clients across the country.

Not every profitable offer is the right offer for you. Phil explicitly avoids multi-tool consulting and audits (the AI Concierge model) because it's not what he enjoys fulfilling — his advice is to find the intersection of what's lucrative and what you actually want to deliver.

Orgo, an AI agent infrastructure platform - https://orgo.ai

Watch Corey's prior episode with Nick, co-founder of Orgo, referenced in this conversation - https://www.youtube.com/@coreyganim

Sidecar, Phil's managed AI agent service (Sidecar SMB, with an enterprise tier in development) - https://runsidecar.com

FIND ME ON SOCIAL 

X/Twitter: https://x.com/coreyganim 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coreyganim/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyganim/ 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@coreyganim

FIND PHIL ON SOCIAL 

Phil’s X: https://x.com/fhlcreative
Sidecar Website: https://www.runsidecar.com/