He Turned $400 Into $2.5M Using AI (No Coding)

You can be a hairdresser at Super Cuts making 

12 bucks an hour and you can afford [music] everything you need. It levels the playing field. 

It opens it up to anyone. There's [music] this guy, his name is uh John Cheney. He recently 

make an app in like in 3, four, [music] 5 weeks that made him $180,000 without the big investment. 

[music] Without the big investment, without other people, I just woke up and I said, "You know what? 

I wonder if I could vibe code a piece of software, start today, and have my first customer by the 

next day." [music] And I ended up getting my first customer by the following Tuesday and it was 

a $15,000 customer. And then from there it blew up. And you're not technical. You're not a coder. 

Not at all. Stop assuming that other people know more about AI than they actually do. [music] If 

you're listening to this right now, you're in like the 5%. Just cuz you're in this sphere. How could 

someone get their first customer? [music] Whether it's $1,000 one time or $10,000 one time. It's 

pretty simple. I just said [music] I'm just going to start calling businesses. And so I did. and 

and over the next 6 weeks or so, I ended up with about $180,000. [music] We're going to be close to 

about 8 million in recurring revenue by the end of the year. After one year of being in business, 

[music] after one year, and you started this business with $400, give or take 400 bucks. But 

the [music] big thing here is that I don't have anybody to answer to. I can do whatever I want. 

I am literally getting on a plane [music] in 4 hours to go to Paris with my daughter for 

5 days. And it's okay because I'm the boss. Meet John Cheney. About a year ago, he started a 

business that helped other business owners save and make more money using tools and skills that 

basically all of us know how to do. And within a year, he had made over $2.5 million in revenue 

and over a million in net profit. And he didn't have any employees for most of that time. This 

year, 2026, he's on pace to do over $7 million of revenue. Most of that being profit, with just 

three or four employees. This is an incredible story, and you already know. I'm going to say 

John, how did you do it? How can we copy you? Without further ado, let's chat with John. Well, 

John, why don't you tell us who you are and what you do? Thanks so much for having me, Chris. I'm 

the founder of a company called the General AI Proficiency Institute or Gen AIPI. It's a little 

bit easier to say, but but that's really what I'm focused on these days is helping companies learn 

AI, learn how to implement it, and really try to to not miss the boat. How long ago did you start 

this? Little over a year ago. February 27th last year. I actually founded this company on accident. 

I'd been vi coding a bunch and I just woke up and I said, "You know what? I' I've got an idea." 

And I said, "I wonder if I could vibe code a piece of software and start today, Thursday, 

and have my first customer by the next day." And this is what came out of it. And you know, 

it it ended up taking me instead of taking me two days, took me three days to finish it. I ended 

up getting my first customer by the following Tuesday. And it was a $15,000 customer. It 

wasn't just like a little tiny one. I was like, "Wow, it was like an enterprise customer." 

And then from there it blew up. And you're not technical. You're not a coder. Not at all. No. 

I couldn't write a line. If you said, "John, I will give you a million dollars right now. If 

you write me one line of code," I would be like, I would miss out on that million dollars. As you 

were building your last company, you probably had ideas of what you're going to do once you sold it, 

once you exited it. You're an ideas guy like I am, of all the things you could have done on February 

27th. Why did you choose this one? You know, I think it was just because it was on my mind. 

When I first sold my company, I dove in, you know, I kind of took a break for just a minute, right? 

And then and then started diving into some of the next things. I was working on this ticketing 

company. But then maybe I would say I'd say maybe six months before I started this one, I 

had this idea in my mind. I wanted to start a like a travel social network that was really just 

like a a travel log. Like I have on on my wall in the other room, I've got a map of all the places 

I've visited in the world. Like a pin board. It's like a pin board, right? And so I've got a pin 

and every place, you know, I or my wife, we've been whatever. And I wanted to kind of just make 

a digital version of that so I could, you know, land on Chris Corner's thing, be like, "Hey, I 

wonder where he's been." Oh, it looks like he's been in New Zealand. I'm traveling there. Hey, 

Chris, what do I do? Right? And so I could I could have friends and, you know, trust people a little 

bit different. So I had this idea. And I contacted a dev shop in Ukraine that I had used before in my 

previous company. And I said, "Hey, you know, what would it take to put this together?" And they gave 

me a quote and said, "It's going to be $105,000." And I was like, "Okay, cool." Right? And 

that was going to give me this iOS, Android, web. I was going to launch this cool app. And that 

was my idea. And I literally hung up with those guys after they showed me their proposal. And I 

jumped on LinkedIn and I saw this post of somebody somebody said it was like a VC or somebody. I 

don't even remember who it was, but somebody said, "I just watched a founder build something some 

software in like 10 minutes in front of me with this thing called Replet." And I was like, 

"What's a replet?" I had no idea what that was. And I immediately jumped on and I was like, 

"Whoa, it says I just have to describe this thing and I can build something." And so I 

tried something really quick and I was like, "Whoa, just build a website." And I was like, "I 

wonder." And so I took this $105,000 plan. They they had delivered it to me in like a proposal 

format. I was like, "Build this." I just dragged it into Replet and said, "Build this." And like 

20 minutes later, it was built. And I was like, "Okay, wow. What is going on here?" And so I I 

started working on that and I kind of got addicted to playing with that and figuring it out. And then 

um you know I just being being out here I think in West Mountain where there's a bunch of I would say 

less techy people out here you know they're like they're making 20 $30 million a year in their 

businesses but they're like construction companies cattle you know herders all kinds of crazy stuff 

lots of u lots of bluecollar and [clears throat] they knew nothing about AI. I would talk to them 

you know whether I was at church or out to dinner or if just in the neighborhood talking to someone 

or and they just knew nothing. I was like man they are going to miss out and I need to do 

something about it. So that's really what what led me to start this one is I just was I wanted 

to help people see this amazing technology and what it was doing for me and see if I could help 

them be able to improve their own business. Yeah. So you have this idea for this travel social media 

business you get $105,000 quote which I will say if you go to a dev shop in the Ukraine like that's 

going to be the cheaper quote. That's probably why you went to them right. Totally. So could have 

been a lot more expensive. You take the proposal you drag it into replet which you never heard 

of. You learn about the the magic of vibe coding and then you think man forget that travel idea 

like the vibe coding is the idea like yeah vibe coding plus business owners plus solving problems 

with AI for business owners that is the idea and that kind of led you down this rabbit hole. Is 

that accurate? Yeah, you know when I discovered this replet thing you know I I had the money 

to be able to go and you know pay this dev shop but all of a sudden I needed zero money. I was 

able well not zero but I needed like 30 bucks to be able to see if my idea could come to life and 

that change was so different 100,000 to 30 bucks or whatever right when I when I launched NIPI my 

current business it took me about 3 days like I said took me maybe about 35 hours of vibe coding 

it's a pretty intense 3 days 10 to 12 hours a day and the total cost was about $400 that includes 

buying the domain you know setting up my email setting up Stripe using credits all those 

different things right but all in about 400 bucks And because I had previously raised a bunch of 

capital for this other business, I knew kind of what it would take to build to get a business to 

the point that it took me three days to get it to, right? You would have had to pay tons of 

developers for a long time writing all that code. You'd have to pay a CEO. You'd have a marketing 

person. You'd have a salesperson trying to figure out who's going to buy this. And and it would have 

taken I did all the all the kind of calculations. It would have taken about 18 months to build 

that thing. And the salaries and everything that I would have done the way I did it last 

time would have cost me about 3.2 $.2 million. And so this time I did it in 3 days and it 

cost me 400 bucks. And that just lit me out, man. I was so excited. It broke your frame. It's 

like a frame breaking moment. 100%. So that story reminded me of an email I sent just yesterday. And 

I want to read just a snippet of that real quickly if you don't mind. All right. So the backstory 

behind this is this gentleman was emailing me about an app that he vibe coded and he quickly 

got it to 22,000 in monthly recurring revenue which was mostly profit. So then he sends me this 

excited email and I've sent these emails before over the last 20 years. I've received these 

I've sent these. I've been on both ends of it and it was basically like dude I think we're on to 

something much bigger than this. I think if we go raise VC, if we do this, this is this can be and I 

don't want to reveal any details of his business, but this could be the de facto solution 

for this AI solution in the United States. And so I hate like pouring water on people's fire 

because I'm an optimist. Like people have poured water on my fire and it makes me mad. It fires 

me up. So this is like a snippet of what I said. I said, "Love the idea, but ask yourself this. 

What is the percentage probability that your current biz nets you five figures per month for 

this foreseeable future? I'd say 95% because you're already there. Six figures for per month, 

maybe a 30% chance after some more growth in time. Now, what would the statistical chance be of 

this new idea making you life-changing money? Once you consider raising funds, hiring, growing, 

competing with others, etc., I would say 1 to 6%. Considering all that, knowing everything I've 

learned about starting all these businesses, most self-funded, some venture, I would take the 

quote unquote sure thing bet every time. More cash flow, less headache or friction, more certainty of 

amazing money, even if the newest idea pans out. Sometimes with big exits don't come with big money 

to the founders because of liquidity preferences and down rounds. And for those listening or 

watching, liquidity preference is when the investor gets all their money back first. So if 

you raise 13 million and you sell the business for 12 million, you get nothing. The [clears throat] 

investors get all of it, right? And then I said, "Sorry to throw water on your fire. I just think 

you have an amazing thing right now in its current state and it could net you seven figures per 

year without a ton of extra work or iteration. Would love to discuss working something 

out." yada yada yada. Believe it or not, just because you're watching this doesn't mean 

you're subscribed to my channel. YouTube's going to show you stuff even if you're not subscribed 

to it. Over half of people that watch my videos are not subscribed. It would mean the world to me 

if you just hit subscribe. Thank you so much. So that what you just said just reminded me of that 

email. I completely agree with you. It's just most venture funded things don't work out. They don't. 

They really don't. And and ours did and it wasn't like a crazy grand slam, you know, 100 million in 

my pocket. It was good and people made a return and that's fine. But the big thing here is that 

I don't at this point have anybody to answer to. I can do whatever I want. I am literally getting 

on a plane in four hours to go to Paris with my daughter for five days. And it's okay because I'm 

the boss. I'm the CEO. I'm self-funded, right? And I was the CEO of the last one. But I still anytime 

I did anything, some investor would be like, "Dude, [clears throat] like you should be working, 

right? Go. I haven't gotten my money back yet. Go keep working, right?" And you just always have 

that. It's like you're in debt, right? I mean, and and and it's not actually debt, right? Venture 

funding is a little bit different, but at least me, I I I I don't want to just take people's money 

and run off with it, right? I I want to deliver a return. And so, I feel that obligation. With the 

new world of AI, you just don't have to do that. Anybody, you can be a hairdresser at Super Cuts 

making 12 bucks an hour with, you know, plus tips and you can afford everything you need to build 

that travel social network idea that I had. Mhm. That's amazing. It levels the playing field. It 

opens it up to anyone. Yeah. So, I want to get into how you got that first $15,000 customer. But 

before we do, after a year of being in business with no experience in this industry, what are your 

numbers look like today? Our goal for this year is probably to hit I would say I think we're 

going to be close to about 8 million in recurring revenue by the end of the year because of how 

we're growing at this point. Right now, we're more like two and a half um of annual recurring 

revenue. So after one year of being in business, after one year and you started this business with 

$400, give or take 400 bucks cash flow positive literally from day five, right? I mean, I had to 

invest those few hundred and then by that Tuesday had my first contract and that was it's a good 

feeling, man. It's so it's such a great feeling. And you know what's crazy? I've actually almost 

made as much money in this business in one year than I did in seven or eight years raising 13 

million bucks. Yeah. With all that headache and stress and accountability and oversight. Yeah. 

And the, you know, the business today, you know, it's not it's not a SAS business quite in the same 

way. There is some SAS and so it's a little bit, but I wouldn't give it like a 10 or 15 or 20x 

multiple. I'd give it maybe a six or seven or so. And so I already have a $15 million business 

sitting on my hands here, right? And you know, if someone were to come and acquire this, I would 

already have personally a bigger exit than I had back then. Yeah. Right. Life-changing money. So 

two and a half million the first year. What is your profit on that? So I did this is this is kind 

of fun. I'm glad you asked this. So I basically I I really call March one of last year my my start 

of the business. When I first started the idea was to build something that was completely automated, 

right? It was a it was going to be kind of kind of structured like an IQ test. That was actually my 

idea was an AI IQ test. How how AI ready are you? And then if you score bad, I'm gonna I'm gonna 

sell you courses to, you know, to do this. But they're all automated courses. You just get on 

and you take them and you learn it yourself and retake the test, whatever. If you did well on this 

kind of free test, this IQ test, I would then push you towards a an official longer certification 

test that you could then use and say, "Hey, I have a certification from the General AI proficiency 

institute." You can put on your LinkedIn, on your resume, whatever. And this is this is for business 

owners specifically or for anyone that wants It was really for anyone when I first started when 

I like that first weekend. That was the idea was test. If they do bad, I sell them courses. 

If they do well, I sell them a certification. So technically, I can sell anybody that lands on 

the site, right? Because people want to know like, hey, how smart am I? I don't I do, right? When I 

see an IQ test, I might know. Yeah. Everyone does want to try, right? And so so that was the idea. 

And then, you know, there was a little bit of a pivot there even in just the first few days when I 

ended up selling directly to a business instead of a bunch of individuals, which I was expecting to 

do. But anyway, long story short, I ended up, you know, pivoting and working through all this. And 

I got to my first million by about 6 months in. It took me about 6 months and I did it completely 

solo. No employees. Only me and my little AI team, my replet developer and my chat GP project manager 

and like a couple contractors here and there like agencies and stuff. Nothing. No, only 

my only I'm saying AI team like my AI literally like my my my Chad GPT was my team 

member and Grock was my team member and all these right and so I was just like I want to see how far 

I can go and then I started getting some bigger clients Tony Robbins and Dean Graciosi hired me 

actually to come big stuff with them and then another company hired me and then another one I 

was like okay it's time to bring on a team member and I had some people that had had had taken some 

of my courses and things like that anyway so my profit on that that first million was almost 100%. 

I mean the only cost was my time, right? And so there are real costs and of course some credit and 

some tokens. Although Yeah. Although I because I talked about it a lot and people started picking 

me up. The Joe Rogan show talked about me just kind of they just really Yeah. They just mentioned 

me and talked to me this the CEO of Replet went on Joe Rogan. It was like yeah this guy John Cheney 

did this and built it and that's how Tony Robin I know he was on Rogan. I didn't know he talked 

about you talked about me which is cool. Right. So anyway I've gotten a lot of free replet credit. 

So I haven't even had that cost. um just because they because I haven't asked for any of that and I 

haven't asked them to pay me, but I've just like, "Hey man, just give me credits. I'll keep talking 

about you guys." They're like, "Cool." So anyway, so my costs were almost zero. At this point, 

I now have five full-time employees besides myself that all are on benefits and good 

salaries and we're delivering for clients and we'll probably be to I would say 15 employees by 

the end of the year would be my guess. Wow. So over 50% net profit. Yeah. On the two and a 

half million. Definitely. Incredible. Okay. So, it's been a year. You're tracking for 7 mil this 

year based on what you have in the pipeline. What type of work are you doing for what types of 

business owners? Are these small, medium, largesiz businesses and like what's the 8020 of the 

services that you're offering? Yeah, totally. So, this is a good time to talk about my pivot right 

in the very beginning. So, again, I had this IQ test idea. My idea was, hey, I'm just going to run 

ads and like, hey, what's your AIQ? Right. And, you know, I got a lot of people to click on 

it that first weekend when I launched it. I launched it at like 3:00 a.m. Saturday night, 

like Sunday morning, right? I finished it really really late. I was I just kind of pushed all the 

way through until it was done. And then Sunday, I I just rested cuz I was tired and I've been 

working for three days straight. Monday, got up, checked my numbers and I had had about 150 people 

or so click on the link and nobody had bought and I was like, "What the heck, man? What's wrong?" 

Had they taken the test though? They had. Yeah, they'd gotten the test. Do you know how many of 

the 150 clickers took the test? I don't think I looked at that number specifically. I think what 

I saw I think what I saw was there were actually 150 people who had entered their email address 

and so I guess 150 people actually took the test because the way I did it was you [clears throat] 

know you take an IQ test and they're like okay hey great job to see the results give me all your info 

yeah give me all your info but so what I did is on mine I just said I'm not going to put that dumb 

you know I don't want I don't want a huge barrier but I'll put an email barrier right to see your 

score give me your email you know that'll unlock you and help you create an Yeah. Right. So, I had 

150 of those, but nobody had purchased. And that was surprising to me. I was like, there's no way 

I got 0% conversion. Right. Tell me, what were you charging? Totally free. What were they not 

purchasing? So, yeah. So, the thing that they would have purchased, right, was courses. And the 

courses, there's one for $19. There was another one for $29. And then the test, the official 

certification test, I think at the time, was 39 or 49. It's 59. That's actually become a 

a bigger product than I expected. But anyway, nobody purchased. And I went in, I went through 

the funnel and I found out that, you know, I'm a vibe coder and I was a young vibe coder and I had 

messed something up with my stripe configuration. I couldn't make a purchase. Five minutes. Took 

me five minutes to fix it and I tested it like, "Okay, now I'm good." But I'm a sales guy. I'm 

an entrepreneur. I I know how to do it. I'm like, "Okay, I'm still And by the way, I was doing this 

very publicly. I was talking about all my progress on LinkedIn. Like, okay, here I am. I don't 

have any customers yet. This is what I'm doing." I was like, "But I got this. I'm going to figure 

this out." I just kind of reach started reach out reaching out to some people. It wasn't exactly 

like really good friends or anything, but it just people I knew that own companies and I was like, 

"Oh yeah, he probably has a good company." I just I just started messaging like, "Hey, I've 

got this new thing. I'm measuring, you know, I want I can measure all your employees, see 

how good they are at AI and, you know, then kind of build a plan so you guys can really kind 

of get on board because I know you guys probably, you know, wanting to not miss the boat here." 

You know, that was kind of my pitch. Kind of a kind of a FOMO pitch a little bit, right? And uh 

after about six messages, I had one guy say, "Hey, this is interesting. I was thinking about this. 

we were talking about this as a team. He's like, "Can you jump on a call?" I was like, "Yep, 

we jumped on a call." And he had, you know, a few hundred employees. And I said, "Great. We'll 

take him through the test and start helping him out." And he's like, "How much is it?" I was 

like, "15 grand." He's like, "Done." [laughter] So, I just kind of paid it all up as I 

went. I just kind of figured it out. And um, you know, I I was a little bit it was a little bit 

more nuanced than that. But the but the reality was I had a contract and I had realized that 

I I didn't do a full test on, you know, hey, will people actually go through my IQ test 

funnel? I still think that's a good idea, but I literally haven't put another dollar of 

advertising behind that idea because I just immediately pivoted. I just said, I'm just going 

to start calling businesses. And so I did. And and over the next 6 weeks or so, I ended up with, 

you know, I was up to about $180,000 in six weeks. And uh then it just came from there, right? But I 

knew I had something with that kind of reception. So with this business owner at 15,000, what 

exactly was he getting for that? So it started out really as just kind of measurement. We're 

going to do measurement and then I would come in and I would actually do training, right? I'd 

say, "Okay, we're going to get everybody together. We're going to do this. We're going to train on 

some different things." And I would train them on, you know, chat GBT more advanced usage than just 

like using it for Google. And of course I would show off Replet and show off Grog and show how to 

use multiple systems together and different AIs to check each other because back then I mean even 

this is only just a year ago but even back then there was more hallucination and more things 

like you have to double check your work and figure out how to use multiple models to make sure 

you get good answers those types of things. And so it was really just assessment and then I would 

go in and train. That's what it was. So they were going to take your your quiz basically and you 

were going to take the output of that and give them an in-person training based on the output. 

That's correct. Yeah. Were you going to have to fly to them or were they All of them were local. 

The ones I sold were local. But I did start doing some that were out and and I did I did a bunch 

of, you know, Zoom type trainings with like 50 60 employees at a time on there and, you know, really 

effective ones and they would just love it. They would just have a great time. The only problem 

with this model was it was a one-time, you know, I got 15 grand and then I'm done, right? And so 

I had I had one client about about I don't know, maybe four months in, they said, "Hey, you know, 

I don't like the idea of you just coming in and teaching us and then being gone. Like do you 

have a model where you'd kind of stick around?" I was like, "Sure, absolutely. I do. [laughter] 

Sounds like recurring revenue to me." Exactly. And so I said, "Yeah, yeah, we have a" And I 

just, you know, I'm making this up on the spot, right? I'm like, "Yeah, we've 

got a chief AI officer service, you know, a fractional chief AI officer. You just 

pay me 15 grand a month and I'll come in and, you know, we'll we'll do all the same stuff. 

We'll get you going, but then we'll follow up and make sure that you're actually, you know, it's 

actually impacting your business." And I mean, think about it. You're doing 20 million a year 

right now. What if I could increase that by 10%. That's an extra $2 million. you paying me 180 

grand a year is nothing. And he's like, "Don, I want that." And he bought it really fast. And I 

was like, "Okay, that was cool." And then I called up six or seven other businesses over the next 

couple weeks and closed half of them with, you know, $10,000 package, 15. I had one of them sign 

up for a $25,000 package because they're a bigger company and they needed more help. And I was like, 

"This is crazy." And that's when I started to say, "Okay, I need some more people." Yeah. And how did 

you price this? Was it based on headcount? Yeah, initially it was. And then I started pricing it 

based on what we were going to be our packages were hey 10 for $10,000 you'll get you know 12 to 

15 hours a month from us and for $25,000 you get 50 to 60 hours a month right that's kind of how 

it was. So, it kind of became an hourly thing and then I changed that actually fairly recently 

to be more system driven where it's like look we're going to be we're going to be building it 

because what that does is it puts me in this kind of consultant kind of place where it's really 

easy to get rid of us and I didn't like that and so we've we've now shifted to to where 

it's hey we're going to install our system we use AI for marketing we use AI for operations 

we've got open claw running we've got reput over here and we're doing this and this is how we 

run our company we have systems we're going to install and manage those systems for you at your 

company ongoing forever, right? I mean, so really trying to build because recurring revenue is the 

holy grail. That's what you that's what you want. Okay. And is there a pattern to the size of the 

businesses that you serve or the industries? Yeah, it's interesting. Most of my first 

businesses, it's expanded beyond this, but most of the first businesses that I closed 

were all businesses that did not have a CTO. So, it was like a painting company, a pool 

construction company, a masonry company. I mean, heck, even, you know, I Tony Robbins, Dean 

Gracio, they don't necessarily have, I mean, they kind of have some tech people. They don't 

have like someone driving tech at their company, you know, and so there's a lot of companies that 

just didn't have that piece in place. And so, they didn't have a lot of automations and 

processes anyway. And AI, you know, that's that's one of the big wins with the big fast wins with 

AI is where you can just come in and say, "Hey, this person used to have to do this manually. Now 

we've built a process and AI takes care of it, right?" And so that frees up that person to go do 

something else. And so, so that was kind of the process. People are spending thousands on custom 

AI agents and I'm over here getting the same thing from Zapier. Most of y'all still think that 

Zapier is just when this happens, do that. But no, Zapier quietly shipped full AI agents. All you 

do is tell it what to do in plain English and then it browses the web. It'll read your data 

from Google Sheets, Notion, HubSpot, wherever, and it takes action across over 8,000 apps. Then 

I just built one that qualifies all of my inbound leads. It researches their company online and then 

enriches their record in my CRM and then it pings my sales team in Slack while I sleep. There's even 

a Chrome extension so if you're on any web page, your agent can summarize it, pull data from it, 

and push all that data into whatever app you want without you ever having to leave the tab. And the 

thing that everyone worries about with AI agents is what if it does something dumb? But Zapier just 

dropped AI guard rails built right in so you can add safety checks to any workflow. It is a full AI 

workforce inside a tool that most of you already have. So go build something on zapier.com. 

There's never been a better time in history. So is it kind of these businesses that are in the 

messy middle of a business that like they're maybe just almost barely big enough to warrant a CTO, 

but they don't know that they need it yet or they don't know that they can afford it yet. Is that 

accurate? But a business that's big enough to be able to afford a five figure check to you. Yeah. 

Yeah. So so ultimately we really don't work with businesses under 10 million a year. That's really 

kind of where it where it starts. We we have a couple and it's not that I'll say no, right? It's 

just that usually it's hard harder to sell to someone who's only making 2 million, right? You 

just can't get enough bang for your buck there. But uh but yeah, so most of our businesses are 

in that I I would say really it's actually a little higher than that. I would say probably the 

average revenue for our business is 30 million, you know, for our customers. And then we have 

some that are, you know, much much higher than that and some that are probably a little under 

10, but most of them are going to be right in that 30 20 to 30 range. Okay. Now, when you say 

you're you're like providing solutions, you're implementing your system into these businesses. 

What are some common like automations or systems that you're implementing? like is it mostly 

finance related, sales and marketing related, you know, administrative assistant type stuff 

or what? It it's all of those, but it's really it's the busy work that we're automating, right? 

So, for example, I hate I'm a sales guy. I've used every Salesforce and HubSpot and you know, 

whatever system out there, CRM out there, but the thing that makes those systems work is data going 

into it. And if your team isn't good at putting the data into it, then it's just kind of a mess 

and you can't really get the value out of those systems. And so for example, we at our company, we 

use Slack and a lot of people use Slack and that's a great great communication system. And we've 

hooked OpenClaw into it, right? We call it Jarvis, right? And now we can if based on the channels, 

we have a a channel for every single client. And we can just say, "Hey, Jarvis, I did this and 

I did that and I did that, whatever." And it says, "Great, I just logged everything over here. It's 

in the system." And and we built our own CRM and our own client dashboard just because we can. 

And you know, that's that's what we're capable of doing. And so we've built our own dashboards and 

systems and and now we have AI that's constantly saying, "Hey, did you follow up on this and did 

you do that?" It automatically builds tasks in and and then it will actually automatically do tasks 

that it can do like getting reports out and and uh you know, queuing up emails and different 

things like that. And so that's the type of stuff that we do. And so sometimes it is for finance, 

sometimes it is for sales, or sometimes it's for, you know, marketing or just the CEO or executive 

assistant type stuff. But the bottom line is, and it's not all open call, right? I mean, 

there's a lot of different things that we do. it. I would say that one thing that a lot of 

companies really love that we do as we come in is usually it's the CEO. The CEO is the buyer. 

They are the one that are saying, "Hey, I want I want to do this. I don't want to miss the boat. 

If I miss the boat, it's my fault, right?" And so, we usually go in and one of the first things 

we'll do is we'll build him a dashboard that helps him see his business better. And we'll connect 

into the APIs of all their systems or whatever. And then from there, we just start optimizing and 

automating and just kind of working out until we have this kind of little central nervous 

system that that CEO can turn to anytime, ask questions. We we make it interactive 

so he can, you know, it's it's got AI so it understands and you can ask it to make custom 

reports and different things like that. And that system has worked quite well for a lot 

of companies. What would you say the playbook is for closing these guys uh when you get them 

on the phone? Yeah, you know, it's pretty it's pretty simple. You ask them, are you guys using 

AI right now? And most of the time they're like, we're not we're not using it at all. We're, you 

know, I know a couple of us use JGBT to like help us with some email stuff and, you know, looking 

things up and trying to figure it out. And, you know, a couple of us are really trying to figure 

out, you know, how to like set up some processes, but we don't really know how to do it. And that 

that's what almost everybody says, right? They're just they're using JGBT is an advanced form of 

Google or something like that. And you say, "Yeah, you know what? Look, you're right. You're you're 

right with everybody else. You're you're fine. The fact that you're even on call with me right 

now means you're already ahead. You know what we do is we come in and we really help in three 

ways, right? We want to help you with strategy, right? To figure out how your industry is going 

to be affected, how your business is going to be affected by AI. What are your competitors 

going to do? What can you do to stay ahead of your competitors? We're going to work with you 

and we're going to be active actively involved in those discussions and really understand your 

business. So, strategies number one. Number two, we're going to help with transformation. We're 

going to actually help you build processes and, you know, speed up things, save money. You know, 

you maybe you have to you're looking to hire someone. And I'll usually ask them, I'll say, "Is 

there anybody that you've been wanting to hire, right? Is there some task or something hire for?" 

And they're like, "Yeah, we've got this, you know, we really need some help over here." I'm like, 

"What about this?" You know, that person was going to cost you, you know, $8,000 a month. What if we 

set up something that only costs you $25 a month to run and it can do this all automatically, 

right? And it never turns off and it does this and it does that. And they'd be like, "That's 

amazing, right?" And so I'll give them an example, right? I'll ask for an example. Hey, what's 

something that you could do? Great. Here's how we would automate that and save you money. 

So now we're immediately showing that value. And then third is training, right? So strategy, 

transformation, and training. We really do want from the CEO to the secretary to know how to 

use AI to think differently, right? For example, and and I'll share this a lot on sales calls. I'll 

say, look, software is now you can build software in 10 minutes that you then use to complete a 

task and then throw away and never use again. Right? this idea of Broadway software, the 

you have to learn how to think a little bit differently. Once you understand how easy it is 

to build these tools and how to do these things, your life will change forever because you'll be 

able to, you know, if you had to go find 2,000, you know, scrape 2,000 pieces of data off of 

some system, off of some website, that might have taken a secretary or some, you know, SDR 

or something like that, you know, a week or two to figure out all that data. And now you can 

literally just put an AI agent on it and you wake up tomorrow morning and it's done and it's in a 

dashboard and it's ready. It's autom automatically set up drafts to send out and it's done all these 

things for you. And so you just have to learn how to think differently. And so that's the product, 

right? It's it's that strategy transformation and training that all comes together in this system 

that that really does move the needle. Like our customers really see differences and it's it's 

cool, right? AI really does make a difference. So if someone is uh listening to this or watching 

this and they want to do something similar with the benefit of hindsight, what could they 

do to to better ensure their success that maybe you did or maybe you didn't do and you would have 

done differently? Yeah. Really be careful to not I mean unless you want to really be careful to 

not become a dev shop, especially if you're not a developer and you don't know how to architect and 

how to do all that. If you really put on yourself like hey I'm going to come in and build a bunch 

of processes for you. What that really means is you just sold a bunch of coding, right? And so 

you're gonna either have to do that, someone else gonna have to do that, and then someone's going 

to have to maintain that long term, right? I think it's much better to build a system around helping 

people on their own. Like the best customers we have, they're vibe coding their own solutions, 

right? They're they're director of operations or you're teaching a man to fish. Totally. Totally. 

I'm not just giving him the fish. And in my life, I do I do a lot of things, right? I've got I got a 

piano right here. I'm a pianist and and a gymnast and I'm a whitewater kayaker and I've been in a 

lot of positions where I coach people to do things every time. Like for example, when I'm teaching 

cheerleaders how to do tumbling and you know maybe like a young like 10 to 12year-old girl 

who's kind of just starting to figure things out. She's getting round up back handspring or 

whatever, right? Every time they come to a class, I would help them do something for the first time 

because that's what you go home and you tell your mom and dad at the dinner table, right? You're 

like, I did a back flip today. like the coach was spotted me, but I did a back flip and I landed it. 

Right. Cool. Right. Hey, let's let's throw double back into the pit today. You know, even if you 

can't do it, you're not going to use that skill, but you're you're seeing you're feeling something 

new. And so, I really believe that when you can enable people and they look, they're like, "Oh, 

hey, John taught me that." They just like you, right? And so, if you you unlock this director of 

operations or this finance person or this sales guy who's just way more productive and building 

cool stuff with AI and they're just like, "Man, I can do anything now. Thank you so much. They 

just want to keep you around. They just like you better, right? So, instead of just coming in and 

doing it for them, work with them. And not only that, have them really be the ones responsible 

for it. You're helping and coaching along. And yeah, you can jump in there and do a little 

session with them for an hour if you need to, but let them figure it out. And then you don't 

have to manage the actual like, oh, I'm just going to grind away. They're grinding away because 

they're kind of focused on solving their problem like a little puzzle. And then they just say, hey, 

John, I got stuck on this piece. And then you can come in, you can offer some support or someone 

from your team can or whatever as you grow and and you can you can help them get over the hurdles 

and then hey now now that you've figured replet out let me teach you about openclaw or let me 

teach you about this agentic framework or let me teach you about this thing. there's always 

something new to keep pushing like, "Oh yeah, I know a lot now, but John still knows so much 

more." And because AI is advancing so fast, it kind of takes care of itself. As long 

as I, you know, as the as the AI leader and staying on top of what's happening every 

day and I have systems that help me do that, I am always going to have something cool to share 

with people where they're going to be like, "Man, John knows so much." I'm not trying to like make 

myself cool. It's just it gives me something to constantly offer them. I there's always a next 

step and that will keep them around. Yeah. It's funny because it's like it's like learning 

the piano, right? Teaching someone to play a very simple song that they love in that first month is 

kind of an intangible. It might not be relevant to what they're learning long term, but it's it's 

more for motivation and getting them excited about it and engaged and practicing, right? That's kind 

of what I'm hearing as opposed to just tactics tactics tactics skill skill skill. cuz then people 

whether they're learning how to vibe code or how to tumble or how to play the piano, they just get 

burned out cuz it's not fun. So what I'm hearing is like you try to do things strategically to make 

it fun for them so it can be more sustainable, longasting, and impactful for both them and their 

organization. Whenever I teach a class, you know, there's 60 people in the room and we're going 

to, hey, is it who here is is a coder, right? And a couple people maybe raise their hand. Most 

people have never done it before. I say, okay, great. The first thing we're gonna do here is 

we're gonna open up Ched PT or Grock or something and we're gonna vibe code a game. You're gonna 

make like Tetris or like some dinosaur chasing you through the woods or Flappy Bird or whatever, but 

you're going to actually get to code it and you get to set the colors and you can change the thing 

and you can do this just by talking to it, right? And so the first thing they do is this really 

fun thing just like you said where you learn this cool song like, "Oh, I want to learn this 

Coldplay song or I want to learn Jurassic Park or Pirates of the Caribbean." something that 

they they already connect to that's not, you know, drudgery and work. It's fun. And that 

turns then the whole pro the whole process into, okay, how do I learn more fun things? Yeah, I love 

it. How could someone get their first customer, whether it's $1,000 one time or $10,000 one time? 

Yeah. You know, honestly, there's no vibe coding. There's no vibe marketing shortcut here. You 

just got to reach out to people and talk to them. There's probably some I could probably you know 

actually find some vibe types some AI use cases for that. Really what you can do is you can go on 

to something like Manis right or I mean TP is okay but Manis is probably going to be a little bit 

better that type of a tool that can do a little bit deeper research and just say hey find me 20 

customers you know that that live in the you know this area Utah Valley or whatever if I'm talking 

about where I live that are you know this kind of business. Give me the CEO's information. Give me 

their phone number and then you just got to call them. You just got to call. I mean, that's that's 

what happened, right? Is I I landed the first one and I just like, I'm going to call more people and 

I called more people and I just kept doing it. And not only that, I am a huge believer, as I know 

you are, Chris, in social media, in just posting and talking about what you're doing. The best way 

to get no customers, the best way is to make sure nobody knows what you're doing. We're not talking 

about like becoming a creator or an influencer, just like on your personal Facebook or LinkedIn 

page, telling people what you're doing, what you're building. Even if you have 300 followers, 

doesn't matter. I've asked people. Yeah. And and think about this, right? Think about a room with 

300 people in it. Like that's a party. That's a big room of people. Well, and 10% of them are 

business owners. 10% of adults are business owners. So there's 30 business owners reading 

that you're smart about AI. Smarter than they are% at least. And that's all you have to be. 

That's one thing a lot of people listening to this going to say, I just I just don't know 

it. Look, if you know more than the next guy, you know more. And and trust me, if you just spend 

two weeks and just play with things and do things and try stuff and vibe code and jump in there, 

you become that expert. You become that thing. I I taught a course at one of these cohorts of 

this how to build a business in a weekend with AI. I taught one a few weeks ago, one of the head kind 

of vice presidents over at Thanksgiving Point, which is big organization here in Utah, big, you 

know, they have about three and a half million visitors a year. They do all kinds of fun, 

you know, dinosaur museums and butterfly bios and all kinds of stuff. You know, she's she's 

probably about, I don't know, 50some years old or whatever. has a has like a 22 23-y old son who 

has a job. Anyway, she came and took this course from me, learned Replet, learned all these 

probably about 15 platforms. It's just kind of this process I do on how to build a business. 

And she just told her son about it and you know, talked to him for like an hour and he's like, 

I'm going to go try it. And he gave himself a challenge. He said, I'm going to go see if I 

can completely automate myself out of a job. So, he has like a desk job. He works for a company. 

He's like, I wonder if I can automate everything that I do so I literally don't even have to like 

go to work. That's a fun challenge. Yeah. just can I automate myself out of a job? And about two 

days later, he just like got into it. It was like 10 hours a day kind of thing, kind of like I did 

when I first started this business. Just kind of got into it and he was just blown away by what it 

could do. And he comes back to his mom. He's like, I did it. I don't have to go to work anymore. And 

he's like, I'm kind of scared because, you know, they don't need me anymore and I'm kind of afraid 

to tell my boss. And his mom's like, go tell your boss. Show them what you did. and he went and told 

her, he went and told the boss, immediately got a promotion. Immediately was tasked with teaching 

everybody else how to do that. And that's what you do. Now he's the AI guru. And how long has he 

been doing it? Like four days. He's the AI guru, right? Because he he he's the one that figured it 

out. No one else had figured it out yet. And so be the person at your company, right? If you have 

your own company, if you work for someone else, be the person at your company that figures out 

how to automate yourself out of a job. And don't be afraid if you're the one that does like it's 

like you're going to start to rock the boat. And if you're the one rocking the boat, you're kind of 

in control. You're pushing. You know where you're if you're sitting in the back and someone starts 

rocking the boat, you might fly out, right? And so be the one that rocks the boat. You're going 

to win. I I just love that story. That's an amazing story. I want to highlight something 

else is stop assuming that other people know more about about AI than they actually do because 

[clears throat] they don't. If you are watching to this or listening to this right now, you are in 

like the 5%. Just because you're in this sphere, most people have no idea. They've never heard 

the word replet. They they might use chat GPT once a week to make a recipe for them. That's it. 

Like it is very detrimental to assume that people know more about AI than they do. I love that so 

much. Do you ever close deals without a sales call? And do you recommend that at all or do you 

just got to do the harder thing? A lot of my deals at this point are coming from referrals. And so 

they're kind of already sold by the time I get on the phone with them. And so for those calls, 

I will I will hit on the STE, that strategy, transformation, education piece. But a lot of 

times I just get on I'm like, hey, you know, tell me about your business. And they just tell 

me about it. I'm like, where do you think I could help? Here, here, here, here. I agree. Right? 

Like, I'm working with your buddy. That's why, you know, you're here. You know, I'd love to work 

with you. And they're like, yeah, how do we sign up? I mean, I go for the close-, especially if 

you're in a referral type situation. Go for the close much much faster. By the way, if you guys 

are loving this so far, which I hope you are, you need to check out playmakersai.com. That's my 

business. That's my community. I'm in there every week and it's a little different from TK owners 

because it's only for people that are starting an AI implementation or automation business from 

scratch. Or you could just call it AI consulting. I genuinely think that is the biggest opportunity 

right now is to help small businesses implement AI and to get paid thousands of dollars a month for 

it. So check out playmakersai.com and we'd love to have you join our community. I've had a lot of 

one one call closes where it's just like an intro call and by the end of it I'm sending them the 

contract for, you know, 15 grand a month or 20 grand a month or whatever. Yeah. It's it's amazing 

how if they're getting on the phone with you, they want it. [laughter] They need it. Like if they're 

on the phone, everybody hates sales calls. No one wants to sit on a sales call with a guy or a girl 

or whatever. They just they've got other things to do. No one has time for that. And so if they're 

taking time to talk to you about AI automation, they want it already. Sell it to them. Yeah. 

The question is, what do you hate more, sales calls or being broke? Yeah, totally. Do you 

think that the local aspect of this is important? I've been saying that it is like even though 

it's an internet business, this AI consulting, people connect with people that are local. Even 

if you never even meet up with them in person, like someone 10 minutes away and you've only ever 

zoomed with them, I feel like that's an important distinction. What do you feel about that? I 

think the most important thing is that they feel connected to you somehow. And so if that's 

because yeah, you're a local you're a local guy or you're a friend from high school, maybe you live 

in Arkansas now and you used to live in Texas, you know, but you know each other because you 

both went to the same high school. there's that connection there. You know, we said earlier, 

you know, you can post to Facebook. I I often ask people when I'm in big rooms and big classes, 

I'll say, "How many of you have ever posted on your personal Facebook what you do for work?" And 

it's crazy. 99% of people keep their hands down. One or two people raise their hand and they'll be 

like, "Yeah, I have." You know, it's like, "When was the last time you did it?" "Yeah, I haven't 

in a while." Right? But most people don't do it. And then on the flip side, on LinkedIn, how many 

of you have posted on LinkedIn about something not related to work? like, "Hey, I went kayaking. 

It's freaking fun." Yeah. Great to relax on the weekend. Do you know how much how many people on 

LinkedIn have reached out to me because they're like, "Dude, I saw I love to kayak." Yeah. Cuz 

they're connected with you through kayaking. Now we're connected and now they're just like, "Oh, 

you do AI also, right?" They connected because of the kayaking and now they dig in a little 

bit. Oh, man. You like I need I own a business, right? And I'm gonna do this and whatever 

or it's basketball or it's gymnastics or you're you connect over BYU football, right? or 

whatever the heck it is you post about anything. Just be out there. Just be out there and people 

will identify. They your your people, your tribe will come to you and you can help them. All right. 

So, John, earlier you mentioned an STE framework for the Is it for the sales calls? Is that right? 

Yeah. This, you know, you're selling to the CEO and they care about these specific these specific 

things. Strategy, transformation, and education. Those three things. If you can hit on each of 

those and help them understand, look, we're going to raise the level of all of your employees. 

We're going to train them up. We're going to we're going to literally transform your process as an 

operation with transformation and we're going to make sure you're doing it right and staying ahead 

of your competition with strategy. That's going to save you money, make you more money, and put you 

in a position to win. And you as the CEO are going to say, "Yeah, I'm I'm taking care of AI like I 

need to be." Okay. So, in the STE framework, the S stands for strategy. And that's like big picture. 

You're speaking directly to the CEO. We say CEO, it's not like a publicly traded company. This 

is like an eight to$30 million business, right? And you're just kind of painting a picture for 

him on what his organization could look like once AI is implemented in it and what the industry is 

looking like today and where it's heading with AI at the forefront. Is that right? Exactly. And you 

know, again, I've been the CEO of a few companies for, you know, maybe a little over a decade or so, 

and I I know how hard it is, how many things just pile up on a CEO's desk. There's just so 

many things like, man, be really awesome if we had had someone we could hire someone 

for that. And so, I really love, especially in that transformation section where I'm trying 

to sell that. I'm trying to help them. I'm trying to sell them something that's 10, 15, $20,000 a 

month. Like it's not a it's not a cheap thing, but when I can illustrate like look, you wanted 

you have this need. You got to hire this person. It's going to cost you 8,000 here and another one 

that's going to cost you 5,000 here, another one's going to cost you 15,000 here. And and and I can 

go through and I can make a few examples of things that they are wanting to do. And and if I can 

help them understand that we can build a system, an AI system that automatically does that, they 

won't have to hire that person. they're going to be saving money, making more money, and then 

positioned to scale because systems scale better than than people do usually, right? Especially 

when you're talking about, you know, margin and profitability. So, is the transformation step, 

the second step, is that when you bring up like who are you about to hire, is that when you tie 

your cost to their ROI specifically? Totally. I use that. So, I talk about strategy and 

that's good. That's kind of good. Then I get to transformation and I will bring up I I'll ask 

them. I'll say, "What are some things that you wish you could do better at your business?" Right? 

Or who do who would you like to hire? Right? I'm we start to have a conversation about I'm I'm 

having them tell me what they want me to say, right? That's all I'm doing. I'm just saying, 

"Hey, tell me what your problem is. Let me show you how I can do that with AI." Then we've 

got the ROI already covered by the time I'm done with S and T. Right? When I then get to E, 

the education and training, I say, "Now look, we're already making a huge impact." But what 

if we could get 20% more productivity out of the rest of your existing staff, your 

60 employees that you have already? How much more money would you make? How much, you 

know, if we freed up your time and this for all these people? How much better would the business 

be? How much happier would people be? How much, you know, what if we made 10% more revenue on 

your business? So now I have them thinking, okay, I don't have to hire people that's going to save 

me money. I have process that's going to automate and then we're going to train everybody up and I'm 

gonna make 10% more. Right? Even though I'm not actually saying that, I'm just saying what if you 

could do that. Now they're tying, you know, their 20 or $30 million business to two to3 million of 

impact. And then I say, yeah. And so we'll do this for $15,000 a month, right? And they're like, 

"Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a no-brainer." Yeah. Now, I talked to another guy who's doing 

something similar, and he says that he's very careful. He has a different framework for it, but 

basically when he gets to this part of the call, he's very careful to not give like very specific 

advice like you need to use this Zapier connection with this to solve this problem that you just 

told me about cuz that just kind of gets him in the weeds. Yeah. He likes to keep it more broad 

like all right well your accounting function is going to Would you agree with that or do you do it 

a little different? I would agree. I what I'll do sometimes actually I actually really believe that 

people buy from people that they think are smart right and so what I'll do is I'll kind of 

sometimes say yeah you know for that thing you could actually set this and this up but you know 

what you know we don't really need to get to that right now but we can definitely do that right I'll 

kind of start to get down that line I'll say maybe a few words or I'm like yeah we can go into replet 

we can build this system and we just API that into here we connect that you'd have a dashboard 

yeah almost like I'm thinking on the fly which I I'm not I'm not BSing it really, but it is a real 

strategy. Like the things I'm saying are real, but I kind of start and I let them kind of 

be like, "Okay." And then I'm like, "Yeah, but you know what? This isn't something you need 

to worry about. This is why you hire us. We're going to come in. We're going to make this happen. 

We can do this." But then they're really confident like, "Oh, yeah. He's already building for me 

in his head, you know?" And so, yeah, I agree. I don't like to go too technical, but sometimes I 

like to drop in a little technical kind of process just so they're like, "Hey, this guy knows what 

he's talking about." Or like, "I don't know what that is. I need to hire this guy so we can help." 

And it kind of gets him excited for the future, right? The future with you. Well, John, this 

has been amazing. Is there anything that any advice you'd like to leave us with that you 

we might have missed today? I hope you didn't miss that. I'm really not anything special as 

compared to you listeners. You guys all have ideas like I have ideas like Chris has ideas and 

with AI it fills in the gaps, those knowledge gaps that I have like I can't code for example and I 

can't do a lot of things but I know how to ask. I'm not afraid to ask. And obviously you don't 

have to be afraid to ask AI, right? But I've I've always been I've always been curious, right? 

When I when I raised a bunch of money and had, you know, 50 or 60 developers working for me 

and super smart, you know, CTO's and people, they would say things and I'd say, I don't know 

what that means. Will you help me understand what that means? I really I really want to know. And 

what that did is it turned me into that kind of smarter technical guy where I would get on a call 

with Lego, you know, was one of my amazing clients in my last company or Nestle or Meta even, right? 

I had great clients because I could get on a call and I could talk about things that even though 

I didn't know a lot, I knew a little enough that I that I knew what I was talking about and 

I knew that our that our solution could bring, you know, benefits related to those kind of 

ideas. So, just don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to venture into places where you you're 

like, man, I just don't know if I can do that. You can. You absolutely can. and AI is a perfect 

tutor or coach that literally in a couple days like this like this guy that that went and figured 

out how to replace his own job. He became the guru in a few days, right? By just diving in, do a deep 

dive for a weekend. Put down the Call of Duty, you know, and just do this for a weekend 

and you will all of a sudden, you know, be in this upper echelon of of knowledge related 

to AI and you'll just feel like you're cheating. You really will feel like you're cheating. 

Like I have a I remember when I first got my Tesla XPlaid. That thing felt like a spaceship 

to me. And I would zip past people and I'd barely push in the accelerator and just I mean just 

go so fast. It just made other traditional cars feel like they were from the last century. When 

you learn how to just harness that technology, again, I didn't build that technology. I didn't 

build the Tesla. I didn't learn how to do that. I just I learned how to use it. And again, this 

is a very simple example because everybody can push on an accelerator or a brake, but as soon 

as you're in that position of I can go faster, it's amazing what happens. And you you can 

anyone can go faster. You just jump in and figure it out. Well said. Beautiful. John, 

thank you for your time. Where can we find you? Would love to connect with you guys. Like I 

said, LinkedIn is kind of my main I I mean, if you look for me on Facebook or Instagram, 

I don't know, Tik Tok, you'll find me usually chenypiano. So, at C H Ney piano, I'm a 

pianist and and I love to do that. But, um, but I post about my farm life out here and piano 

and AI and entrepreneurship and I don't know, kayaking down a waterfall or something like that. 

And then LinkedIn, uh, if you just look up John Cheney, J O N C H N E Y, you will find me. And, 

uh, would love to connect with you. Love helping entrepreneurs. Reach out to me if you, you know, 

if you want, you know, link to any of these things I've talked about or whatever. I'm happy to 

happy to point you in the right direction. Okay. Thank you, John. Really appreciate it, 

Chris. Thanks. All right. What' you think?