Grow Your Business With AI Agents

Are you a coach or consultant who is struggling to incorporate AI into your business?

In this episode, I sit down with AI implementation expert Chad Owen to explore how to create AI Agents that take over operational tasks in your business to both save you personal time and grow your revenue.

You'll discover:

00:57 - Why systems and automation are a key business growth driver 
02:37 - What an AI Agent is and how it differs from using ChatGPT
04:30 - Typical day-to-day operational tasks that AI Agents can do on autopilot
07:05 - How AI Agents can grow revenue, cut costs, and save time
10:16 - The trick to ensuring AI Agents don't make mistakes
13:20 - How to build an AI Agent in an afternoon
16:07 - The way to create time freedom in your business
18:28 - How to connect with Chad to get a free AI Agent 

Key Insights: 

–  Using ChatGPT for writing and brainstorming is level one. AI agents that run your operations are a completely different game

– You can't scale what you can't repeat. If you personally touch every part of your business, you have a demanding job, not a business

– The right places to start with AI are the tasks draining the most time and energy, not the work only you can do

– Never automate the core of your coaching. Instead, automate everything around it so you can show up fully for clients

– AI agents can grow your revenue and cut costs simultaneously.  They are not just a time-saving tool

– Trust in AI has to be earned. Start with one small, contained task and build from there, just like onboarding an intern

– You can build a functional AI agent in an afternoon that saves 3 to 5 hours a week

– The coaches and consultants who embrace AI agents first, not just as writing assistants but as operational team members, will reclaim their time and scale without growing their headcount

🎁 Free Resource Mentioned:
👉 Free AI Agent: https://stimulus.io/

Thanks for listening to the Seven-Figure Life-Fulfillment podcast.

🎁 Claim Ken's free gift — Find out how ready your business is for another $20K revenue per month. Take the Revenue Growth Readiness Scorecard.
👉🏻 https://scorecard.kensteven.com/ken-ldxawjii

Transcript

Ken Steven 0:00

If you're a coach or consultant who's been struggling to incorporate AI into your day-to-day business operations, you're going to love my special guest today. Hello and welcome to the Seven Figure Life of Hillment Podcast, where we share strategies to help coaches and consultants grow their revenue while working fewer hours so they can finally build a life they enjoy. I'm your host, Ken Steven, and my guest today is Chad Owen. Chad helps solopreneurs and small business owners use AI to scale their businesses without scaling their teams. And today we're going to talk about how AI can help you capture and automate the systems and processes you already use in your day-to-day operations and free up more of your time for the work that only you can do, the kind of work that drives your revenue and serves your clients and grows your business. So, Chad, I'm I'm happy you could join us here today. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Thanks for having me, Ken. I'm really excited to dive into the conversation today.

Ken Steven 0:56

I'm excited too because you know what you do, the kind of work that you do directly relates to the systems and automation driver of my five-driver revenue growth framework. And the reason why this driver is so vital is that without robust systems, the business basically is just based on the stamina of the founder. So like there's only so many hours in the day, and you can't scale what you can't repeat. So if you have to personally touch every operational aspect of the business in order to run the business, you haven't really created a business. You just created a really demanding job for yourself, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Or a hamster wheel.

Ken Steven 1:36

A hamster wheel, right? So um AI can definitely help free up some time here. And I think the way people have been using AI so far is maybe something like Chat GPT, maybe it's helping them with their writing and maybe a little brainstorming of ideas and things like that. And that does, in fact, save a little bit of personal time. But but the kind of work you do takes takes the use of AI to a whole new level, right? Like you're you're actually not just using AI to help people with their writing. You're using AI to develop, well, they're AI agents, right? And these AI agents actually have the capability to start doing some of the work that you would normally do. It's taking over operational aspects of the business, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Yeah. And um, you know, it's probably not going to be too long before there's AI agents that are running entire businesses themselves without human intervention that's making money and delivering value to the marketplace. I'd be surprised if there weren't a few of those actually already existing today that we maybe haven't heard about yet.

Ken Steven 2:34

Hey, well, this is this is this is great. So let's dive right in. Let's start by helping everyone understand like what's the difference between using something like chat GPT and then an AI agent. What's an AI agent and and let's start there?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

So there's different levels of applying AI to your business. I think there's roughly seven or eight different levels. And the first level is the chat bot. So by now everyone's probably familiar with ChatGPT or just uh a chat bot where you're going back and forth. It's kind of like an advanced Google. Uh you give it a prompt and it'll respond with an answer. Um if you aren't using that today, just hop on to chatGPT.com or Gemini.google.com and and begin to use it today. There's no reason you shouldn't be using that uh today, even if it's just uh as a replacement or addition to Google. That's one end of the spectrum, level one. If you go all the way up to level eight, that's where I was talking about an agent orchestrator that has its own team of agents that are operating different parts of the business. And its job is to essentially act as the CEO of that business. And so you would have an entirely autonomous business uh run by AI agents. If you've maybe heard part of the hype around these dark companies or dark software factories, which just means like you know, in robotic manufacturing nowadays, there are factories out there that are manufacturing goods where the lights are off because there's no humans on the floor. The robots are just acting on their own. And there's companies that are building software and tools that same way where there's no humans in the loop when it comes to building software. So that's all the way on the advanced end of the spectrum. And there's many steps in between. And I love uh taking solopreneurs, coaches, consultants on that journey from level one all the way to level eight.

Ken Steven 4:28

So, okay, so let's talk about that journey. So, what what are some of the typical day-to-day operations that an AI agent could help a solopreneur, coach, or consultant with?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

The best places to start are where you're spending a lot of your time and a lot of your energy is being drained. So imagine you're a coach and you help people get on a stage and deliver a perfect keynote presentation. I would imagine that your best application of your unique ability to that client is diving in with them and you know helping them have the stage presence and crafting the right story and being sure that there's uh you know clear takeaways for the audience and maybe even a call to action at the end. And you don't ever want to uh automate that away or hand that off to AI. You want to do just that and automate everything else. So that might be well, how do you find these speakers that are on the speaking circuit that may want some help with their keynote so that it's a research uh function that you could offload to AI? Or maybe you have a nice funnel of potential leads that you could coach, but you're kind of bad at follow-up, or you you know, miss some emails and things like that. So you could have a whole kind of nurture sequence or follow-up sequence uh that AI could help you with uh to turn those leads into potential customers. And then you know, the whole scheduling and onboarding uh of those clients so you can um have AI analyze your sales calls and automatically follow up with proposal drafts for you to review uh before sending to your client. And then the whole onboarding sequence where you know scheduling client engagement calls and you know the management of back and forth of their keynote drafts and and all of that, those are all areas of the business that AI could help you with so that your your time is really focused on just showing up with that client and delivering that that coaching uh and value to them in person in real time. And AI can can can handle everything else.

Ken Steven 6:35

Okay, so like do you have an example with a client that you're actually working with and how by developing AI agents to handle these different aspects of the business, how it's actually saving time in a way that can be measured. Okay, so that frees up their time and also ways that it's it's contributing to revenue growth. Because remember, that's what we're all about here at Seven Figure Life Fulfillment, is is you know how you can grow your revenue while working fewer hours.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah, I love looking at AI applications in two lenses, uh pretty similar. It's like how can I grow the business, grow revenue, and how can I cut costs and save time? I think it's it's a great framework. So I've worked with a uh coaching and training business in kind of the I'll just say kind of wellness of space. And they have a coaching program where they go through a sequence of calls. It's it's a whole curriculum, 12, 14 calls, listen one-on-one uh coaching as well. And uh the business owner quickly realized that you know she was so busy uh operating this business that she couldn't show up and do the actual coaching for these wellness business owners. And so the first thing she did, you know, was hire uh one additional coach. And this is a good signal that you're ready to work with AI because if you haven't collaborated with a freelancer or a VA or even your first hire, I feel like if you don't have that experience of understanding your business, documenting it, and delegating it, that you're gonna have some false starts with AI. So she hired her first uh additional coach so that they could split the coaching calls with their clients, but then they were getting so much more business that it outstripped their ability. And so what we did for them was the business owner wanted to hire more coaches and remove herself from the direct coaching and really only come in and solve client problems. So we created an agent that would manage the booking of calls so that the scheduling of these calls with clients was automated by this agent. And she didn't really have a high level of trust with the coaches that she was hiring. I mean, she she got them through referrals and and vetted them, but you know, she didn't want to have to listen to and review every single coaching call that she wasn't on to be sure that you know she was delivering the best service to her clients. So there was an AI agent that after every uh coaching call took the transcript and graded it and gave that grade to her, the business owner, to review. So she wakes up every morning at 8 o'clock and reviews all of the previous days' calls, and she can set aside maybe 20 minutes to 30 minutes a day. That saves her five or six hours of reviewing the previous day's calls. And she has the confidence that, yes, okay, you know, five out of six are green, but one of them is yellow, and the agent is even suggesting to her, hey, here's how you could coach this coach on how to be a better coach to the clients. Um and that's just one of the agents that we've built for them in that business. But what it's allowed her to do is scale up her coaching team. And you know, I think she went from maybe 12 enrollees in this program going through the coaching cohort at a time, and now she's over 50 uh concurrent clients that she and her team of coaches are coaching in this program.

Ken Steven 9:56

You've you've just given a great example of how AI is taking over a big hunk of someone's business. Now, obviously, if AI is doing everything correctly, this is this is really good for the business owner. But you know, I've had all kinds of experiences working with Chat GPT where I give it a prompt and it hallucinates horribly, right? And so how do you how do you ensure that while you're building these AI agents, that you you can trust that they're going to be doing exactly what you want them to do and not starting to make things up as they go along.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah. Yeah, you said the T-word, trust. Um it has to be earned. And I think the only way you can earn it is to continue to use the tools, be hyper-vigilant in uh what its responses are, and just always be sure that it's delivering business value or customer and client value in the end. So in this coaching, uh this wellness coaching business uh example, notice that we didn't start with just giving the clients like an AI coach. Oh, just like use this AI coach and they'll they'll give you all the advice and everything that you need. No, no, no, no, no, no. So these are you know business owners themselves that are running the same kinds of businesses that their clients are, and we want to keep them you know interactive and synchronous and in conversation and coaching uh with their clients. We never want to put AI as the coach to those clients. Instead, what we did was we took the parts of the business that the business owner didn't have visibility into or was just taking a lot of her time to review and was really draining. Oh, I I hate listening to all these calls, it takes up a bunch of my time, and like most of them are really, really good, but maybe one in five, one in ten, I need to make a little correction. Um, and that's where we chose to apply AI. But you're like, okay, Chai, like how do I even get started? Like, what's just that one area of business you spend a lot of time in that you could create one small tool and get iterative feedback on, is this helpful and working, or is this not? So, like in the content creation case, um, maybe instead of having it design your whole 2026 social marketing uh campaign and generate all of that content at once, just say like, hey, I want you to be a thoughtful editing partner for me when I'm writing my email newsletter. Here's some of my ideas, how might I structure it and where should I begin? And just go back and forth with it in conversation. Don't take what it gives you as what your email newsletter is going to be, but continue to give it your ideas and it can be a thoughtful editor. And then at the end, you'll come out with something where you're like, huh, is this better than what I've written before or not? And you know, how might I use this tool uh to kind of overcome some of my shortcomings? Like maybe I write too much and I need to write uh less, or maybe I'm not being concrete enough with the stories that I'm telling. Um but just start like with that one newsletter instead of having it try to boil the ocean.

Ken Steven 12:53

Right. So what I hear you saying is that don't don't try to have it run everything all at once. Just give it little bite-sized pieces and use it like building blocks, like give it and responsibility, just as you would with an intern, for example. Like you would you would say, hey, I'm gonna train you on this thing, and when you get good at it, we're gonna promote you and you're gonna get to do some other things. And that's how you that's how you go about training an agent. Is that how it works?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

In a nutshell, yeah.

Ken Steven 13:17

In a nutshell. So it's interesting. I noticed on your website you're saying that you can help people create an AI agent in an afternoon. Tell us more about that.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Okay. Can we really do it in an afternoon? I mean, the the answer is yes. Um, if you go to my website, stimulus.io, you'll find my own agent there on the website, and it'll give you a chief of staff agent to begin with. And the purpose of that chief of staff is kind of like what I would do in an initial conversation with a client, where you go back and forth and just are interviewed about your business. You know, who are you, what do you do, who do you serve, what's your unique ability, you know, how are you delivering value to clients? And you know, what are the areas that you're spending a bunch of your time? And with that context, it can know enough about you and your business to say, you know what, actually, I think you're spending a lot of time here. It sounds like you don't really enjoy it, and so let's see how we might uh help you. So a very concrete example uh that I just built for myself just this past week um is I don't have social media, but I want to get on a lot of podcasts to to create, you know, a a relationship network and connect with folks like yourself. And I was like, you know what? I could spend like three or four hours in doing the research and preparation, but yeah, I think this is a perfect application for AI. So I went into my AI tool of choice and I said, I want to get on podcasts, I want to do five a week, I want to do it for five weeks, and these are the kinds of folks that I want to connect with. And I said, Okay, you know, what do they look like? Who are their audiences, what are example podcasts you have. So I I was talking to it for about 30 minutes, and then it said, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna, you know, create something that'll help you do research on the shows. I'll do outreach for them, and I'll even tell you, you know, the podcasts that you should listen to before you go on those shows and give you topic ideas uh before you show up. I was like, great, that sounds like it's gonna save me three or four hours a week. It took those instructions and through the AI coding tools uh created an agent for me that I call uh Polypodcaster. I like to I love alliteration and I love to give uh names to my agents and anthropomorphize them. Um so Polypodcaster, now I said, you know, last night I said, hey, I'm recording with Ken. You know, can you help me prepare for that session? And came back with a Google Doc that had all the preparation for me that I needed uh so that this morning I could listen to one of your recent episodes, you know, on my way in here to record with you. And it only took about 90 minutes for me to do that. And some of the coding I had it do overnight. Um, but those are the sorts of agents that with some targeted uh you know conversation and interviewing um with AI, uh you can have something that'll save you, you know, three to five hours a week.

Ken Steven 16:04

Wow. Chad, this sounds like something that everyone should start seriously thinking about. I mean, now with AI, it it's clear it's good it's here to stay, it's not going away. I mean, I mean, the sooner everyone embraces it and learns how to leverage it. Coaches and consultants, for example, I think the sooner they start to add AI agents to the business, not just as a as a writing assistant or a brainstorming assistant, but actually to start taking over some of the day-to-day operations, that's when they're actually going to start being able to reclaim their personal time.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Absolutely.

Ken Steven 16:43

Okay, like let's face it, a lot of people go into business thinking that, okay, geez, I'm gonna, I'm leaving my nine to five job, I'm hanging up my shingles as a consultant or a coach. And this is great because now I'm totally in control of my time and my destiny. And that that 40 hours a week that you used to work is now is now 60 hours a week and maybe even more, right? So you you can now use AI to reclaim that personal time that you've lost by setting up your business, right? So now that the business doesn't totally evolve around you being there every single minute of the day, you can you can start to build a life you actually enjoy by being a solopreneur.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah. It's the blessing and curse of striking out on your own. When you work at a company, I wouldn't know because I've only ever worked for myself. But my understanding is when you work at a company, you know, everything like HR and payroll and uh IT, it's all handled for you by other folks at the company, and you can kind of be an individual contributor and you know focus on what you're doing. You strike out on your own, and then all of a sudden you have to take on and wear all these different hats of the business that you never had to wear before. And almost to every single coach or consultant I have talked with, their most valuable thing is FaceTime and interactions and conversations with their clients. So anything that is taking you away from being in front of and delivering value to your clients, you should think about creating systems, tools, and automations with AI so that you can just spend your time focused on serving more clients.

Ken Steven 18:18

Hey, that sounds like exactly what everyone should be doing. So, Ched, how can people reach out to you and maybe get your help in starting to do just that?

SPEAKER_01 18:28

If you go to my website, stimulus.io, I have uh an interactive agent bot there on the website that will uh you know ask you a little bit about your business and how you might get started in thinking about uh you know what's the one thing that you wish ran without you in your business. Um you can get a free chief of staff agent um from that tool that you can use in in any of the the standard AI platforms, and it'll actually ping me on my phone on Telegram and say, hey, like you know, someone's interacting on the website. So you could even get in touch with me through the website. But that that's the first thing I would do is get the chief of staff or even just chat with a chat bot, like say, hey, you're a chief of staff in my business, interview me about the business and where I could get started, and spend 20 to 30 minutes, and you'll be much further ahead than most folks.

Ken Steven 19:23

Okay, that sounds great. Uh everyone, check out Chad's website, stimulus.io. Um, I I think this is a really cool idea. Chief of staff. I think every business should have a chief of staff. I'm intrigued by that idea myself. I think I'll check it out. Chad, I want to thank you for all your insights today. Um, and and I want to thank you for being such a great guest.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Thanks again. It was a pleasure.

Ken Steven 19:43

All right. Everyone, we'll see you again soon on the next episode of the Seven Figured Light Fulfillment Podcast.