As someone who’s made millions with AI products in my company, Martell Ventures, I’m going to show you the five AI businesses I’d build if I was starting from scratch with zero employees.
I’ll even show you how you can start any of these businesses with a simple four-step process. At the end, I’ll actually pick one and walk you through the first step myself. I’ll also break down the cost, effort, and income potential for each one of them.
This isn’t some get-rich-quick bullshit. These are real money-making opportunities you can start today. So let’s dive in.
#5: The AI Appointment Setter
One of my favorites is the AI appointment setter. Essentially, businesses are going to pay you to take their inbound calls, put AI in the middle, and get them setting appointments so they can get sales.
It’s such an easy thing to sell because you’re essentially taking somebody that’s full-time, that costs money to answer that phone, for a fraction of the cost to actually perform better than they can.
- Cost: The cost is low for you to get started because it doesn’t cost anything.
- Effort: The effort is medium because you do need to learn some new skills, like a little bit of sales and a little bit of configuration.
- Income Potential: The potential is massive. Literally, you could be making $500 to $1,000 a day easily just by talking to businesses that want to make more money.
Now, I understand this can sound a little bit crazy, but I’m going to show you through an example. There’s a company called youratlas.com, which is essentially an AI appointment setter. You can go to the website right now and try it out for yourself.
Here’s how it works:
- [AI Emma]: Am I speaking with Dan?
- [Dan]: Yeah, hey Emma, this is Dan.
- [AI Emma]: Great, thanks for confirming, Dan. How’s your day going?
- [Dan]: It’s going amazing, Emma. I’m a little busy, can we make this really quick? I was just checking out the website, I wasn’t sure what it is, but I’ve got a small business and I need to automate my sales calls or honestly any appointment calls people call me.
- [AI Emma]: I totally get it, Dan. To keep this quick, Atlas is the world’s first AI revenue engine that ensures you never lose a lead to slow follow-ups… Does automating your calls and appointments like this sound like the kind of solution your business could benefit from?
- [Dan]: Yeah, that’s actually why I’m calling.
- [AI Emma]: That’s fantastic to hear, Dan. Let’s get you connected with our founder for a quick demo… Would you prefer a time today or later this week? All appointments are in Atlantic time.
- [Dan]: I’m busy today, let’s do it tomorrow at 4:00. Do you have an opening?
- [AI Emma]: Okay, I’m just checking on that one sec… It looks like tomorrow we don’t have a slot free at 4:00 p.m., but we have availability on August 26th at 6:30 p.m. or 7:30 p.m. Atlantic time. Would one of these slots work for you?
- [Dan]: Yeah, that works. So let’s do 6:30.
That was all AI. Isn’t that freaking crazy? Like human-level conversation. I gave it objections, I told it times, it confirmed the call, and it’s going to send me a text message. I mean, it’s wild. There’s no way businesses don’t buy that.
The AI Startup Ladder
So now I want to teach you the AI Startup Ladder, because these are the exact steps you’re going to want to go through to actually start your AI company.
- Validate: You have to pick a niche and outreach to them. It’s essentially a way to prove that people want to buy what you’re selling. So you might start with med spas, or lawn care, or maybe agency founders that are looking to book sales calls.
- Pre-sell: That’s where you sell and collect the cash before you ever build. It’s actually pretty simple. You just create a document with the offer of what you do, and in there, you have a Stripe link so that they just buy by clicking the link.
- Deliver: As soon as somebody buys from you, put all things aside and go and deliver on that thing you sold. If you want to scale and get referrals, don’t wait. Act fast. Getting a customer a win in the first 48 hours is how you build your reputation.
- Build: Now we build. That’s where we take what we’ve sold and productize the service so that you have some stability and can automate the deployment to scale and grow it.
(Just to make it clear, if you want to try out any of the tools I mentioned in this article for yourself, the link is below in the description. But if you’re building real AI innovation right now and want to partner with me and my team at Martell Ventures, just message me “ventures” on Instagram and we’ll see if it’d be a fit.)
#4: AI Content Repurposing Service
Essentially, companies will pay you to take long-form video content like podcasts or webinars and then repurpose them as short-form clips on all the different platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. This gets them more reach and eyeballs back to the long-form content to get them sales.
- Cost: The cost is low because you don’t need a lot of tools to get started.
- Effort: The effort is medium because there are some skills you need to learn.
- Income Potential: The income potential is $750 to $1,000 a day.
It’s kind of crazy because there’s a freelancer I know that used an AI tool to scale podcasts to shorts. That was their service, and now they earn $30,000 a month from only seven clients.
We’re living in a world where the amount of content and the desire to get a message out there has just scaled. Somebody that can take all that information a business is already producing and trim it down into short form and manage the publishing schedule—they’re going to be in so much demand. So if you’re in the content game in general, this one’s for you.
#3: AI Sales Chatbot
Now let’s get into the biggest opportunities of the next decade. An AI sales chatbot is where you help somebody set up an AI that takes all of their chats—I’m talking social media chats, text messages, emails—and converts those conversations into sales for the business.
It’s wild. I literally know hundreds of people that make tens of thousands of dollars every month doing this for businesses. Most business owners don’t have the time to actually respond to people, so you create an AI chatbot that takes that conversation, turns it into a sales conversation, and turns those follows into leads.
- Cost: The cost is medium because there are a little bit more tools and some custom coding involved.
- Effort: The effort is also medium because there are some skills you need to learn, especially like how a good sales chat goes.
- Income Potential: The income potential is even higher because of the volume. You could potentially be making $1,000 to $1,500 a day on the low end.
The income is so high because it’s such a unique process. When you come in, it feels like free money to them, so they’re willing to pay more because they’re essentially starting to do something they weren’t doing before.
For example, there’s a product called GetRev.io that went from zero to $60,000 per month in under seven months taking advantage of this chat economy. That’s $2,000 a day. This world is not going to go away, and it’s an opportunity anybody can take advantage of right now.
#2: AI Data Cleanup Agency
So far we’ve covered calls, content, and even chat. Now let’s talk about cleaning up data and getting paid for it.
Essentially, what you do is you offer the service to clean up the internal information within a business. Right now, most businesses have this messy, crazy collage of information—everything from their emails to their CRM to spreadsheets. Imagine if somebody could come in, clean up all that information, and put an AI on top of it so that the business owner can ask a question about their business and get the exact, quality answer.
- Cost: The cost is medium because you are going to pay for some other tools to clean up and convert the information into a vectorized database.
- Effort: The effort is also going to be medium because you’re going to have to learn some unique skills for that kind of cleanup and processing.
- Income Potential: The income potential is really high, like $1,500 to $3,000 a day, because now you’re getting into the business consulting space where your decisions could save them $50k, $100k, or a million dollars a year.
My friend Matt built a company called precision.co that scaled from zero to $700,000 in 7 months using this process. And again, to be successful, run through the four-step process in the AI Startup Ladder so that you get paid upfront before you build anything.
#1: The AI Inbox and Calendar Manager
This one I’m personally biased about, but I think it’s the biggest opportunity of the next decade to unlock people’s productivity and make a ton of money.
This one’s so fun. Essentially, you’re going to get paid to build an executive assistant using AI to help business owners manage their emails and meetings. The last thing that entrepreneurs and CEOs want to do is manage their own freaking inbox and their calendar. Having somebody come in and automate 95% of that is going to feel like the most powerful thing that’s happened to their life.
- Cost: The cost is actually low because it doesn’t take a lot to set this up.
- Effort: The effort is medium because you are going to have to sit down and work with these CEOs to understand their workflows.
- Income Potential: The best part? You could be making $3,000 to $5,000 a day helping these CEOs buy back their time.
For example, there’s an AI company called Fixer that went from $1 million in annual revenue to over $10 million in just the last 5 months. That’s $27,000 per day. This opportunity is massive.
Let’s Do Step 1 Together
Now, as I promised you at the beginning of this article, let’s do the first step of the AI Startup Ladder together. The business I would pick to start this year, drum roll please… The AI Inbox and Calendar Manager.
It’s a no-brainer. I wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time. This one is the nearest and dearest to my heart. So here’s how I would do it. I’m going to call somebody I actually know. They have an assistant, and I’m going to walk you through how I’m going to identify the pain, figure out the cost they associate with that pain, and then offer them a solution.
Here’s my call with my buddy, Josh:
- [Me]: Hey Josh, how you doing?
- [Josh]: I’m good, how are you?
- [Me]: I’m doing incredible. Quick question, you have an EA, correct? If you could wave a magic wand and make it super awesome, what are things that are not perfect right now?
- [Josh]: Honestly, dealing with a lot of my household stuff with my rental properties and things like that… like I got some places in Mexico. Like, remote has probably been the biggest challenge for me recently.
- [Me]: And is a lot of that stuff that you’re managing, does that come through your inbox?
- [Josh]: 100%.
- [Me]: If that was absolutely dialed in, what do you think the gap in opportunity is worth to you?
- [Josh]: For me, saving 5 to 10 hours a week is worth… at least 10 hours a week of that stuff that I wish I didn’t have to deal with.
- [Me]: Wow. So if you’re saying 10 hours a week at thousands of dollars, at a minimum, $10,000 a week would be the upside?
- [Josh]: Correct. Crazy.
- [Me]: All right, well what I’ve got, I’ve been working on this new offer that’s essentially an inbox and calendar manager that takes exactly what you’re saying… and actually gets this automated for you… The coolest part is I train it off of you and what you know, so that it acts just like you… Does that make sense?
- [Josh]: So it deals with my ideas? All of it?
- [Me]: Yeah, because it can learn everything from your inbox… I’m going to schedule a call with you and do a product demo to actually show you how it works, and then we can talk about moving forward then. Does that make sense?
- [Josh]: Cool, let’s get it scheduled.
He actually thinks that I’m selling this. Here’s the big idea: it’s about doing the reps. It’s about picking up the phone. All I did is very simple: I nailed the problem, then I talked about the potential, I quantified it quickly, and then I said I had a solution that would solve the problem. From that place, I scheduled the next call.
AI today, when it works well, it feels like magic. When you get that first customer, the second customer, the third customer, and you build that proof point and collect those testimonials, it creates the snowball that makes you the number one person in your niche. And that’s how you build a business in this new AI economy.
Now, I know this is a little overwhelming. The key is to look at your situation, ask yourself what business you find the most fascinating, and pick one and go all-in. Follow the AI Startup Ladder. Validate. Pick up the phone. Call, call, call. I’m telling you, that is the skill. AI can give you answers, but it can’t do the action for you.
If you want to learn the 15 AI tools you need to build a million-dollar business, click the article and I’ll see you on the other side.
