Show Notes
John writes: "I'm six months in, building AI agents for follow-ups, email, lead management. I've spent weekends on it. Nothing's working. I feel like I'm getting further behind."
The belief shift: AI agents work best when the process is already proven.
If you're six months in and still figuring out what success looks like in sales, lead management, and pitching—you can't hand that to AI. That's like hiring an employee and saying "figure it out." They'll struggle too.
The hidden tax: AI agents require onboarding, maintenance, troubleshooting. In the early days, that falls to you. Scott spent Easter weekend keeping his AI agents running after Anthropic changed their terms.
The real shortcut is a human. You can add a VA within 48 hours. Train them. Get traction. AI and automation come later—once you know the processes work.
The five levels: You need oxygen first (cash, deals). Then profit. Then order. AI falls within order. If you're automating before you have sales, you're out of sequence.
The prescription: Stop building AI. Go to a human. Fix one task. Get them good for 90 days. Then integrate AI back into the workflow.
The math doesn't work when you're shouldering AI maintenance and trying to launch at the same time.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:00)
Can you actually try to automate your business too soon? That's really kind of John's question here. He writes in, he says, Hey, I'm six months into my business and I've been trying to build AI agents to handle my follow-ups, my email, my lead management. I've watched tutorials, I've spent weekends on it, but nothing's working the way that I want it to. I feel like I'm getting further behind than when I started. What should I do? Well,
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you build a business that you love. I'm your host, Scott Todd. I've built multiple seven figure businesses after leaving my Fortune 300 job where I was a VP. I left that, built multiple seven figure businesses. And let's just do the same thing for you. So here's the deal there is there is something that's sexy about building this business.
That's all operated in an automated environment with AI and well, no employees. Look, I admit it. Like it's it's easy. It's easy to fall for the hype. But here's what's happening. And a lot of people are are kind of falling within this, you know, this mindset. And the thing is, is that AI agents, they actually work best when the process is already proven.
Now, think about that for a minute. When you're trying to start a business, you're trying to launch this thing, you don't really know what success looks like in terms of lead management, sales, pitching. You have to work that stuff out. And to just take this and say, here, AI agent, figure it out, that literally is like saying to an employee, here, I'm gonna hire you and I don't know how you're gonna do it, but just figure it out.
They're going to struggle too. So in the beginning days, it's important that you understand that really you have to work through a process that is first automatable. And what's trying, what we're trying to do here is a lot of people are trying to skip that step. They're trying to skip right to the automation. And look, in some in some businesses, that might make sense. In some technology driven businesses, it might make sense.
in what most of my audience follows, where it's more of an investment business or ⁓ kind of a service business, it really doesn't make sense. Now there's certain things that we can add automation to later on, but that's really the the biggest struggle here is that we've skip skipped the step of the human. And what that does is it actually builds in this hidden tax. You see, AI agents do require onboarding.
They do require maintenance. They do require troubleshooting. And the early days of a business, well, guess who that falls back to? You. It falls back to you. How do I know? Well, because even today, where I operate multiple businesses, when I've messed around with AI agents, ⁓ guess what? When it broke, it fell back to me back a couple of episodes ago.
I talked about, I think it was episode 65. I think this is 68, I think three episodes ago. I talk about the Easter weekend story where ⁓ Anthropic made a change on Good Friday, and I spent Easter weekend trying to keep my AI agents operating. Okay. So what happens is while you're trying to launch the business at the same time, what you're trying to do is you're trying to struggle to keep up.
With all of the AI building and the automation building and you know kind of the maintenance of it. And that's a big load to bear. And the math doesn't really work in your favor there. Now, if you think about how you could add a VA or you could add a person to your team within, let's say, 48 hours, and then you could spend some time training them on, hey, here's a way that we can do this, and we can leverage people, which I'm a big believer in leveraging people.
If you're trying to start a business on your own, well, that is also a hard, hard road because frankly, you're not going to be good at everything. There's going to be people that can bring talents to the to the team that you can't bring. But you can bring someone on within 48 hours. You can get them working within a very short period of time. And the argument might say, well, you can do the same thing with AI. Maybe, maybe, but that also means that now you're shortering.
All of that weight yet again before you have early traction. When I wrote the book that's ⁓ on the screen behind me, Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors, one of the things I talked about was the five really the five levels of a business. You have you need you first of all, you need oxygen, which is cash or deals. The next thing that you need to worry about is profit. The third thing that you need to worry about is order. And AI and automation fall within order. Okay.
So when you're trying to launch a business, if you have no sales, yet you're trying to mess around with AI, you're taking it in the wrong order and you're making it harder to operate. You're making it harder and you're not giving yourself a break there. So that's really the hardest part about this whole thing is one, we have to shift the mindset that really says that in the beginning of a business, the shortcut should be a human.
And AI and automation comes later once we know that the processes were.
And I want to pause and make sure that we capture that for a minute, that we want to make sure that the processes work. I see too many people that there's a lot, there's a lot of hype out there that just says, just build all of this stuff with AI. Yes. And what they're telling you is build it once you know that it works, but they're not saying that.
The other thing that I see out there is the hypers that are saying, like, this skill, this AI skill just eliminated the need for these types of people. Well, maybe or maybe not. See, maybe the world has to transform around them. But I would much rather leverage AI to help my team become more productive than to try to build an organization that's missing the core piece of it.
Which is the humans. The human piece is the biggest piece of this whole thing. Okay. So I think that that's really the mindset shift that we have to kind of take up think about. And we can't just listen to the AI hypers that are out there. That I mean, the number of AI employees that they continue to have just, I don't know, is exponentially growing. Okay. Okay. Maybe. But look, I've got AI, I got AI ⁓ agents that are doing work for me. I've built multiple workflows.
Multi agent workflows. I've done it. I've done it. Someone someone in the comments the other day said he probably hasn't done it. I've done it. I've been doing it for years. Trust me, I've been doing it for years. So my action, my recommendation to you, John, is one to stop stop building the AI. Stop trying to build the the automation and go to a human. Let's leverage the human first and let's fix one task. Let's find that one task that is really your weakness. It's the thing that you cannot stand doing.
And instead of trying to mess around with AI agents or automation to kind of go do that thing, let's let's put it on a human. Let's get them good, really good for 90 days. And then we can just see how we can integrate AI and automation back into that workflow. It will make the whole process a lot easier, but also at the same time, give your business the traction that it needs, which by the way, if you're new, if you're new,
Business, you probably need to focus more on the lower pyramid, the lower rung there, which is deal flow and cash and sales. That's probably where your business needs you the most and needs the most attention today. So that's my ⁓ r advice and recommendation to you. I appreciate the question. And if you have a business question, I want you to head over to Scott Todd.net forward slash ask, a read every submission, and let's see if we can get you on the right track. And I will see you in the next episode.
Can you actually try to automate your business too soon? That's really kind of John's question here. He writes in, he says, Hey, I'm six months into my business and I've been trying to build AI agents to handle my follow-ups, my email, my lead management. I've watched tutorials, I've spent weekends on it, but nothing's working the way that I want it to. I feel like I'm getting further behind than when I started. What should I do? Well,
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you build a business that you love. I'm your host, Scott Todd. I've built multiple seven figure businesses after leaving my Fortune 300 job where I was a VP. I left that, built multiple seven figure businesses. And let's just do the same thing for you. So here's the deal there is there is something that's sexy about building this business.
That's all operated in an automated environment with AI and well, no employees. Look, I admit it. Like it's it's easy. It's easy to fall for the hype. But here's what's happening. And a lot of people are are kind of falling within this, you know, this mindset. And the thing is, is that AI agents, they actually work best when the process is already proven.
Now, think about that for a minute. When you're trying to start a business, you're trying to launch this thing, you don't really know what success looks like in terms of lead management, sales, pitching. You have to work that stuff out. And to just take this and say, here, AI agent, figure it out, that literally is like saying to an employee, here, I'm gonna hire you and I don't know how you're gonna do it, but just figure it out.
They're going to struggle too. So in the beginning days, it's important that you understand that really you have to work through a process that is first automatable. And what's trying, what we're trying to do here is a lot of people are trying to skip that step. They're trying to skip right to the automation. And look, in some in some businesses, that might make sense. In some technology driven businesses, it might make sense.
in what most of my audience follows, where it's more of an investment business or ⁓ kind of a service business, it really doesn't make sense. Now there's certain things that we can add automation to later on, but that's really the the biggest struggle here is that we've skip skipped the step of the human. And what that does is it actually builds in this hidden tax. You see, AI agents do require onboarding.
They do require maintenance. They do require troubleshooting. And the early days of a business, well, guess who that falls back to? You. It falls back to you. How do I know? Well, because even today, where I operate multiple businesses, when I've messed around with AI agents, ⁓ guess what? When it broke, it fell back to me back a couple of episodes ago.
I talked about, I think it was episode 65. I think this is 68, I think three episodes ago. I talk about the Easter weekend story where ⁓ Anthropic made a change on Good Friday, and I spent Easter weekend trying to keep my AI agents operating. Okay. So what happens is while you're trying to launch the business at the same time, what you're trying to do is you're trying to struggle to keep up.
With all of the AI building and the automation building and you know kind of the maintenance of it. And that's a big load to bear. And the math doesn't really work in your favor there. Now, if you think about how you could add a VA or you could add a person to your team within, let's say, 48 hours, and then you could spend some time training them on, hey, here's a way that we can do this, and we can leverage people, which I'm a big believer in leveraging people.
If you're trying to start a business on your own, well, that is also a hard, hard road because frankly, you're not going to be good at everything. There's going to be people that can bring talents to the to the team that you can't bring. But you can bring someone on within 48 hours. You can get them working within a very short period of time. And the argument might say, well, you can do the same thing with AI. Maybe, maybe, but that also means that now you're shortering.
All of that weight yet again before you have early traction. When I wrote the book that's ⁓ on the screen behind me, Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors, one of the things I talked about was the five really the five levels of a business. You have you need you first of all, you need oxygen, which is cash or deals. The next thing that you need to worry about is profit. The third thing that you need to worry about is order. And AI and automation fall within order. Okay.
So when you're trying to launch a business, if you have no sales, yet you're trying to mess around with AI, you're taking it in the wrong order and you're making it harder to operate. You're making it harder and you're not giving yourself a break there. So that's really the hardest part about this whole thing is one, we have to shift the mindset that really says that in the beginning of a business, the shortcut should be a human.
And AI and automation comes later once we know that the processes were.
And I want to pause and make sure that we capture that for a minute, that we want to make sure that the processes work. I see too many people that there's a lot, there's a lot of hype out there that just says, just build all of this stuff with AI. Yes. And what they're telling you is build it once you know that it works, but they're not saying that.
The other thing that I see out there is the hypers that are saying, like, this skill, this AI skill just eliminated the need for these types of people. Well, maybe or maybe not. See, maybe the world has to transform around them. But I would much rather leverage AI to help my team become more productive than to try to build an organization that's missing the core piece of it.
Which is the humans. The human piece is the biggest piece of this whole thing. Okay. So I think that that's really the mindset shift that we have to kind of take up think about. And we can't just listen to the AI hypers that are out there. That I mean, the number of AI employees that they continue to have just, I don't know, is exponentially growing. Okay. Okay. Maybe. But look, I've got AI, I got AI ⁓ agents that are doing work for me. I've built multiple workflows.
Multi agent workflows. I've done it. I've done it. Someone someone in the comments the other day said he probably hasn't done it. I've done it. I've been doing it for years. Trust me, I've been doing it for years. So my action, my recommendation to you, John, is one to stop stop building the AI. Stop trying to build the the automation and go to a human. Let's leverage the human first and let's fix one task. Let's find that one task that is really your weakness. It's the thing that you cannot stand doing.
And instead of trying to mess around with AI agents or automation to kind of go do that thing, let's let's put it on a human. Let's get them good, really good for 90 days. And then we can just see how we can integrate AI and automation back into that workflow. It will make the whole process a lot easier, but also at the same time, give your business the traction that it needs, which by the way, if you're new, if you're new,
Business, you probably need to focus more on the lower pyramid, the lower rung there, which is deal flow and cash and sales. That's probably where your business needs you the most and needs the most attention today. So that's my ⁓ r advice and recommendation to you. I appreciate the question. And if you have a business question, I want you to head over to Scott Todd.net forward slash ask, a read every submission, and let's see if we can get you on the right track. And I will see you in the next episode.