The AI revolution is here. AI agents are about to start replacing whole teams and Google search is slowly dying. The world is going to change forever.
But I don't want you to be left behind. So, I'm going to share the eight simple steps that I'm personally following to take advantage of this window of opportunity and how you can use these same steps to get rich with AI, even if you're starting from zero. Now, before you can start making money with AI, you need to pick the right industry.
I've built and sold three software companies. I've invested in over a hundred. I've been building technology companies since 97.
I saw the internet boom. I've seen the web 2 boom. I've seen the mobile boom.
I've seen it all. I haven't been this excited in the tech industry since '97 with the internet. But what I saw a lot of people do back then is pick the wrong industry.
And what I believe is true is the right industries are the boring ones. The ones nobody wants to talk about. See, in life, as in technology, as in AI, we need to focus on what's true, not new.
Being too early, too technology advanced, is just as wrong as being too late. So, I'm going to present to you five industries that you can get involved and use AI to make a lot of money today to take advantage of this gold rush. The first one is supply chain.
Think about all the logistics that goes around. I mean, I don't buy anything at a store anymore. It's literally over an app.
So you think about all the challenges these companies are going to have around forecasting around route optimization for deliveries. Everything around supply chain management is ripe for disruption to make a lot of money using AI. The second is admin.
And this is where you see a little bit of innovation happening right now. But think about billing, scheduling, filing, sorting. AI that's able to read the information systems that team members can use like the Drpboxes or your CRM like HubSpot to do administrative type work is going to be a huge money maker.
Number three is home services. Think roofing, Hback, plumbing. Anytime a truck has to go to a home, there's a whole lot of processes involved that if you use AI to help automate it and make it better, those local industries combined are the trillion dollar industries in this world.
Number four, legal services. Pretty much the first thing that people start playing around when they get into chat GPT or other AI tools is stuff around contract analysis or creating drafts of things. I remember last week I got an email for a deal I was about to do and I was asking some questions and I was like why am I even asking?
I just grabbed everything put into AI and it gave me the questions to ask and when I called my legal team they're like how do you even know to ask those questions? I'm like AI people building tools to implement structure and workflow into that are going to make a ton of money. The last one, number five, is team training.
This is an area I'm very excited about. If you think about the idea of every company in the future having an AI that joins for all the Zoom calls, that you're able to talk to it, that is your buddy for onboarding at a company that has access to all the steps, the processes, the SOPs, essentially is the company AI. It will allow people to be so much more efficient and have everybody have the answers to their biggest questions in real time.
So, now that you've got your industry, you need to figure out how to help them. Which brings us to step number two. Pick a high margin model.
Margins are your moat. They stack to that moat you've already started. It protects your business.
Most people don't understand what a margin is. If you sell a product for $100, but it cost you $20, your margin is $80, which is about 80%. The key is is you don't want to be in a business that has margins that are only 20 or 30%.
Think restaurants or brickandmortar businesses with a bunch of overhead. Those are bad businesses to be in. So to win in today's market, you have to pair AI with a high margin business model.
These are the four for 2025. Number one, AI services with about 70% gross margin. This is building workflow and automation for people that want AI in their business.
And it's literally getting paid to set up make, Zapier, NAN, or my favorite, Gum Loop. Number two is AI consulting, and that's where you can get into 80% gross margin. And this is being a lot more hands-on with these companies to help them understand not only how to build the services, but also build the strategy behind deploying AI and making their business AI first, not getting sidelined by other people using AI.
Number three is AI software with gross margin at 90%. That's my world. That is literally looking at a workflow or a process and thinking about if I use AI as a primary driver for solving that problem, how would the software work?
And the crazy part is is there's no more workflow. A lot of the AI software is powered through text like chat, voice, or just does on the back end and you never see anything. Like I believe in this one so much that I've gone all in on building an AI venture studio.
One of the products that we're building at Martell Ventures is an AI powered business dashboard to tell you where the problems are in your business and how to fix them. Number four is AI digital products. And this is 95% because if you build one program on AI and you sell it a thousand times, there's no real cost other than the hosting.
And I've seen a proliferation on all the social platforms around people that are building massive audience like my buddy Dave Eilar where he's got 15,000 people in his community and he's monetizing using these digital products that help them go get better in their craft. And then he has this massive community that he gets to serve which brings us directly to step number three. Sell to a rich customer.
So Dan Kennedy, the marketing godfather, had this great quote. He said, "It's easier to make a million dollars selling to millionaires than to make a million selling to everyone. " So to win in today's AI world, you have to find millionaires in those boring industries.
So these are the five hacks, the last one's going to blow your mind, that I use to meet these millionaires. Number one is industry specific events. This means you either go to them or you help create them.
When I moved to San Francisco in 2008, I didn't know a soul. But a friend of mine said that all the people that you want to get to know are speakers at the event. So go to the events.
But better yet, what I did is I reached out to the organizer and I asked them to help out. So then I got access to the green room where the speakers were and that's how I started to build my network. Number two, hyperpersonalized email.
When I say hyper, I mean like write the freaking thing. I remember years ago I got a cold email from a guy named Chris and he's like, "Hey Dan, I know you don't know me. This is a cold email, but I follow your content.
I kept reading and he said, "I can make you money with your email. Give me a shot. " Because of that hyperpersonalized email, I let him take a shot.
We sent the email. It made me money. Chris today makes seven figures working on my team.
Number three, offer an interview. I think using a podcast to build your platform to get you access to the world's top millionaires in your space for where you're building your AI solution is a beautiful way to network. Think of it as flattery marketing.
You know you want to sell to this customer, you need to talk to them. Your ask initially is to get them on your podcast. They probably are going to ask you what you do.
You tell them, they go, "Geez, that's what we need. Could you come talk to my team about that AI thing you do? " And that's how you build relationship at scale to meet the millionaires to make money.
Number four is host the meetup. And I'm doing this every week. I literally go through social media, find people that are doing cool things, and then I reach out to them to join a roundt on Zoom.
So, I keep it super simple and we just connect, share what we're learning in the industry and offer to be helpful to everybody else. So, you don't have to make it more complicated than that. People just want to meet other people just like them.
If you're going to do the work to organize a meetup or a Zoom call or a mastermind, they're going to show up. Five, host a founders dinner. And this is for me a theme dinner.
Think of like AI founders dinners. So, coming up, I'm going to be in San Francisco. I'm organizing a founders's lunch AI focus, a founders dinner AI focus, and I'm going to find people on Twitter and online that are living in those cities.
Invite them to those meals and get to connect with them breaking bread. So, now that you're crystal clear on your customer, let's start building your offer. Which brings us directly to step four.
Create a high cash flow offer. See, in business, I realized that profit's cool, margins are cool, but if you don't have cash, then your business is really tough to grow. When I was building Spheric, my first company, we grew so fast that there was this sound of cash flying out the door that always made it hard for us to scale until a mentor came into my life and showed me how to set my pricing and get my offer right so that I stopped financing my customers problems.
What most people don't realize is for a company to grow, it requires money. And most businesses don't create their offers to be able to finance the growth. So then you end up acting like a bank to help your customers pay to solve their problems.
See, revenue in a business, that's vanity. Profit is sanity, but cash flow is for your vitality. So here are the key components to building a high cash flow offer.
Number one is anchor pricing. And this will change the game for you. Doesn't matter what business you're in.
In your pricing options, you want to have something that's really expensive. usually three to five times more than the second tier in your pricing cuz then it makes everything else look cheap. So for example, if you sell AI consulting, make sure the top tier is three to five times more expensive than your middle tier or your lower tier to make those ones easier options for people to say yes to.
Number two is implement scarcity. And you have to say this cuz it's probably true that there's only a few spots for you to be able to help those customers. So if they want to get started, they need to put a deposit down today to lock in their spot for you to get started.
If not, there's no reason for them to make a decision today. Number three is add a bonus. The best bonus, something extra to give, is usually the solution to the problem you're going to create after you solve the problem they came to you for.
So, if you're helping them build an AI agent, well, the next problem they're going to have is training their team. So, your bonus would be free training after you build the AI agent. And my rule of thumb is I want to make the bonus even more valuable than the initial offer so that they feel like it's a no-brainer.
Number four is volume pricing. And I know I said no discounts and this is not a discount. This is what you do if you can get them to buy a lot more of what you got.
So if your initial pricing is for one year, but you can get them to buy two, 3 years worth of what you've got, then offer some volume discount. If it's for one seat of your software, what if they buy a 100 seats? How much cash can you get upfront from the customer transaction?
Because all that money that you're prepaying for a service that you deliver on later is your cash flow you're going to use investing growth. To make this even simpler, if you want my internal offer template, just go find me on Instagram at Dan Martell2 Martell on Instagram. Just message me YouTube offer and I'll send you my internal playbook.
Now that you got your offer, what do you do? Which brings us directly to step five. Sell before you build.
Most people end up sitting down getting ready to do business and then finally go out to the world and say, "Hey, buy my thing. " to find out nobody wanted to buy the thing because the way you designed it, the way you packaged it, the way it works is just not what they want. I've seen business person spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, find out nobody wanted to buy their AI solution.
What I recommend is create the designs of what you want and then go to the market and have that conversation because no business survives first contact with the customer. Your key is to pre-ell your AI solution to then fund your development so that you don't build something nobody wants. So here are the four key steps that you need to learn on how to pre-sell your AI solution.
Number one is prototype. This is the gamecher today. We live in this world that you can prototype your solution using paper.
That's an easy one. Figma is a more advanced one. Balsamic is really cool.
Or go as crazy as like invision and really highfidelity mockups where it's literally almost photorealistic simulation of your AI solution so that you can demo it to people and say here's what it costs and get them to buy. Number two is find your early adopters. These are people within your industry that are willing to take a little bit of risk.
They're the founding 50, I call it. Those 50 get to co-create the software with you so that they help drive the product roadmap, but they're your early adopters. These are your customers that are going to be on board for the long haul.
And those ones, you want to give them a bonus. You might give them time with your team. You might allow them to shift priorities in your road map.
I've had people put the name of their founding 50 on the about page to thank and acknowledge them for supporting them in the early days. Whatever it is, make sure you go find those early adopters. Number three is ask for advice.
Here's what I've learned. If you want to sell, don't try to sell. Ask for advice.
If you ask for money, you'll get advice. If you ask for advice, you get money twice. Okay, that's a pitbull lyric, but it works the same.
If I reach out to people on LinkedIn and say, "Hey, I'm building this new AI. I'd love to get your advice. " And then you demo this prototype software.
They go, "Wow, that's amazing. How do I get access to it? " He says, "Well, it's still early, but if you want to be part of the founding 50, here's how it works, and you'll get first access in the next 90 days, cuz then you take all that money and you go build it, and then you deliver the software.
" Step number four is one conversion tool. This is how you sell your solution. Maybe it's going through partners that allow you to present your solution on a big webinar or it's using sell by chat cuz you have a big social media audience or you're just picking up the phone and doing outbound calls.
Just choose one and go deep. And to do this the best you want to automate it and have a tool to do this. So for example, sell by chat, use Revio.
If you're going to do calls, you want to use a tool for that. But that's how you scale that one conversion tool to really get your first money to scale your AI solution. Now that you got some money in the bank, it's time to build.
Which brings us directly to step six. Build your MVP or what's called your minimal viable product. You know what's crazy?
Years ago, one of my buddies called me up cuz he needed a favor. And he asked me if I could look into this software product he built. And he was 3 years building this software.
He hired an agency. They took all his money. They never told him to ship it.
They never told him to do anything different cuz why would they? They're getting paid. And I asked him how much money he was in so far for this software.
$3 million. essentially had a profitable business that turned out to be less profitable because it financed the software. Don't do that.
I'm going to teach you how to build an AI MVP that doesn't break the bank. Number one is no code. This is using pre-made tools like gum loop I mentioned earlier, go highlevel, make, nadn, there's literally existing noode platforms where for most of you that are building AI solutions, you can just use that and keep selling it over and over and over again.
Number two is AI code. If you need something more advanced, there's literally new coding platforms powered by AI. It's kind of like this new thing called Vibe Coding.
And I mean tools like Replet and Bolt and Cursor and many others. You can even use Chad GPT to write the code and do things that are more advanced. And if you don't know how to use these tools or deploy your code, ask Chad GPT.
It'll literally walk you right through the whole thing. Third is hire an AI developer. I literally hired one today.
And for me, it's all about test project first to see if they know what they're talking about. culture fit. Have that conversation with them.
Tell them the way you work so they're not surprised. And then be sure when you hire them that you've done the pre-elling because you have the wireframes in the solution that you've sold to give to the AI developer to build so they hit the ground running. But without this next step, you're going to overwhelm yourself with work.
Which brings us directly to step seven. Automate the delivery. Here's what most people don't realize is that automation turns your offer into a machine.
One that works while you sleep. I had a friend Rachel years ago come to me because she was running an agency and she got a bunch of business and she was overwhelmed and she's stressed out. And I'm like, "How much of your thing that you just explained to me did you set up and automate?
" She was like, "What do you mean? " I was like, "Well, when you sell something and they pay you, do you have like onboarding automated or scheduling or the reporting for them or all the stuff that doesn't take you? " And she's like, "No.
" Today, especially with AI, you have a massive opportunity to automate all the busy work in business so that you can do the thing that gets you paid. So, these are the four areas of business that you need to automate. Starting with the first one, purchasing.
I still see people not being able to take payment. It sounds crazy, but in a world of Stripe and Web Flow to Gum Loop, you can set this up for yourself. Number two, account login and setups.
I mean, once somebody pays you, you can have all of the account membership, the creation, all that stuff set up on the back end. I think of membership. io.
It literally automates your whole membership experience. So, if you sell an AI membership, use that platform, connect it to a Gum Loop in your billing platform, and the whole thing gets automated. Number three, onboarding.
When Rachel showed me the amount of time she spent taking information from her clients and going back and forth, I'm like, that's a type form. You take that whole intake, you give it to them. They got to fill it out to schedule their first call.
And then you can automate a bunch of cool AI processing. Many people use that as the inputs to actually do the work. Number four, support.
Post purchase, post deployment, post customer using it, they're going to have questions. You want to make sure you create a knowledge base with all your support questions that AI uses as emails come in to scan your answers and automatically reply as a support agent. And the more you add to that knowledge base, the better your agent can add to those support emails coming in from your customer.
Which brings us directly to step eight, get greedy. Now, let me explain. It's kind of crazy cuz I see this all the time.
I had an entrepreneur come to me recently and he was like four or five months in the business and he had an opportunity to sell. My whole thing is is what you're trying to build. Do you want to be short-term greedy and take some cash off the table a little bit or do you want to be long-term greedy and build some real wealth?
Here's the three S's that I think about to create AI wealth in today's market. Number one is sell. And that's short-term greed.
That's literally deciding to build a little tiny app or a little tiny service. And if somebody's willing to pay you some money to save some time, you could sell. The problem with that one is you just didn't learn.
You're just starting. And the real value in all businesses is not necessarily the money you make. It's the experience that you gain.
Number two is scale. Keep that thing that's making money. Keep printing money and keep going.
I remember my friend Chris at Wistia, he had an opportunity to sell and he realized that if he sold the business, he would just start the exact same business. So instead of selling, he raised a bunch of debt to then buy out his early little investors and then kept with his partner building the business that he enjoyed so much. Number three is stack.
And that's exactly what we're doing at Martell Ventures. We work with some of the smartest AI minds building technology for small businesses to essentially build a portfolio of companies that are going to be the solutions for the different categories of problems small businesses have around the world. If that's you, just find me on Instagram and message me the word AI ventures.
