How to Start an AI Business That Doesn't Die (The 7-Day Protocol)

You don't have a bad AI business idea [music] problem. If you give me 30 seconds, I'm going to show you why. Every time you sit down to start an AI business, there is a [music] window, maybe 30 seconds long, where the idea that you have either turns into something you're building or dies. Most people lose it. A new tab opens, a different tutorial plays, a different what niche should I pick rabbit hole takes its place. The original idea is gone at [music] that point. McKinsey actually puts the AI opportunity at 4.4 trillion dollar in new value every year. The biggest one this generation will probably be handed by far. Most of it claimed by people who got past the 30-second window. So, let's do a quick test and be honest. Is that you? You get the idea, you feel it land, you open a notebook or a tab or a tutorial, and somewhere between idea and action something paralyzes you. Three weeks later, you're researching a different idea. Six months later, you don't have a folder of starting points. If that's the loop that you're in, if starting an AI business feels exciting and the next moment paralyzes you, then this video is for you. I'm going to share a simple five-step framework to start an AI business that does not fail. Based on a study of 27 serial entrepreneurs who each built multiple companies worth over 200 million dollars. This is proven. This is tested. It's not theory, okay? This is the method they actually used and that now gets taught in top business schools. In 2001, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon named Saras [music] Sarasvathy walked into the offices of 27 of the most successful serial entrepreneurs in America. People who had founded multiple companies worth at least 200 million each. [music] She brought a tape recorder and a hypothetical business problem. She wanted to find out one simple thing. When real expert entrepreneurs start a business, what are they actually doing in their head? And what she recorded basically broke the conventional model of how to start a company. Because in every business school in America, students were being taught a single model. [music] Predict the future and then control it. Beat the market, forecast the demand, validate, build, sell. It's the model behind every business plan template, every pitch deck workshop, every accelerator playbook. But, >> [music] >> Sarasvathy gave her 27 expert entrepreneurs the same imaginary product idea and asked them to think out loud while figuring out what to do with it. Not one of them used the predict then control model. Not one in 27. >> [music] >> Instead, they all did some variation or version of the same thing. They [music] asked, "What do I have right now? Who do I know? What am I willing to lose? Who would build this with me?" And then they would take an action and then another. The business emerged from action, [music] not from the forecast. Now, what followed is that she put the finding into a peer-reviewed paper that is now cited thousands of times. She built the framework into the curriculum at the University of Virginia's Darden School, and it's actually also taught at Wharton, Babson, at IE, and on Harvard Business Review. Almost no one teaching AI business on YouTube has ever heard her name. She called the method effectuation. I call it the bird in hand method. It's easier to remember. But, here are her five principles fast built in a protocol. So, principle one, she calls it bird in hand. The bird is who you are, what you know, and who you know. >> [music] >> Every expert entrepreneur Sarasvathy studied started from those three things, not from where the market was hottest. The amateur version basically said that someone watches a video about AI agents for real estate and starts one without knowing a single real estate agent. The expert version is you have a community, a career, skills, relationships that you understand at a level outsiders never will. Your first AI business solves a problem inside one of those. If you part of my community, you would have heard me talk about this at length. If you spent 10 years in finance, your bird is finance. If you've run a yoga studio, your bird is wellness operations. You already know the language, the pain points, the people. Building an AI business there is dramatically easier, trust me, and you start with a head start that no outsider can replicate. Now, bird in hand is principle one. It's also step one of the protocol. So, hold that. Now, if you're building an AI products business or an agency selling AI to clients, here's something that most people completely overlook, your domain name. I mean, think about it. You're setting up your storefront. You go to register a .com and it's taken. Most of them are, right? The exact name that you want, it's gone. So, you start adding dashes or random prefixes and you end up with something like try-mybrandname.com. Now, obviously, that does not scream credibility. It actually screams, "I settled." So, here's what smart founders are doing instead. They are going to .online, right? Your brand.online. It's clean, it's memorable, and actually available. It does not look like a backup plan. In fact, it looks like a business that belongs on the internet. Over 3 and 1/2 million businesses already use .online domains. >> [music] >> Service providers, consultants, e-commerce brands, AI founders just like the ones we're talking about today. And here's the SEO edge that a lot of people miss when it comes to this. The word online gets over 500 million searches a month. Having it built into your domain actually gives you a visibility advantage that a hyphenated.com never will. You can grab yours on GoDaddy or Namecheap or Squarespace, even lovable, wherever you build. And right now, it's just 99 cents for your first year. Link is going to be in the description. Go to get.online/aifounders3 and go and lock in your name today. Thank you .online, by the way, for partnering with us on today's video. Now, principle two. That is called affordable loss. So, Sarasvathy's expert entrepreneurs did not start by calculating expected return. They actually started by calculating affordable loss. Before they wrote a single line of code, they decided one thing. This much money, this much [music] time, that's the floor. Again, I talk about this at length in our community. The amateur version is someone pours 5, 10, 20,000 into eight tools and ads on an idea they haven't sold a single customer. And they clearly, their runway is short, they run out of money, they feel like a failure, and the idea might have been fine, but they never set a floor. The expert version, however, is two numbers. Maximum dollars, maximum weeks or days or months, however you want to calculate it. Write them down and when you hit either, you stop, you pivot, or you learn. The real killer of AI founders is not bankruptcy, it's exhaustion. So, affordable loss prevents both, especially with the shiny object syndrome that everyone goes through nowadays. There is a new idea coming up every other day. So, think about your affordable loss. Now, principle three, Sarasvathy calls this the crazy quilt. [music] For an AI business, it's better clients. Expert entrepreneurs did not start by researching a market. They started by talking to three to five people who self-selected into building with them. Not pitched, not sold, build with. For AI specifically, this is the move that compresses time more than any other because AI products are not predictable. You do not know what works until someone is using it for real work, for real consequences. Better clients turn your first 60 days from a research project into an actual tested product. So, the real question is who would I want to text right now and ask if they pilot this with me? If you can't name three people, how do I put this? Your quilt is too small. Now, principle number four is lemonade. Yes, you heard me right, lemonade. Expert entrepreneurs treated every unexpected event as [music] data. Customer using the product wrong? Perfect, that's data. Feature request that you didn't plan for? Data. Market's shifting? Data. They rooted around the original plan and followed the surprise. [music] The amateur defends the plan. The expert asks one question. Why is the customer using it differently? And is there a bigger business hiding there? Almost every successful AI business has a lemonade story. Some multiple. They set out to build one thing and then customers showed them a different thing. And then they pivoted in weeks, not months. So the original idea was the trigger, but the real business was the second idea. Now, the rule is small. Before you react to a surprise, ask if it's telling you something. >> [music] >> And then go and dig. Be curious. Question it. Try to figure out why. And then go and [music] pursue it. Now, principle number five. That is pilot in the plane. So, Sarasvathy's expert entrepreneurs did not believe the future was something you predict, cuz it's not, especially nowadays. They believed it was something that you create by acting in it. The amateur tries to forecast which model will win, which market will explode, which tool will dominate. But the expert says, "I do not control any of that. I control what I do this week and what I focus on." I have a founder in my community who spent eight months doing market research on an AI business that never moved forward. I actually also have another one who shipped an ugly V1 in 14 days and got better clients. Because they used their existing audience, they hit the floor twice, pivoted a couple times, but they're now closing client after client. The second one is not smarter. They're just steering. Okay. Now you know the five principles, but we cannot stop here because making intellectual sense is not enough. We need to apply and practice. So here's the exact protocol that I run my founders through to start and that I recommend you also think about. Seven days, five actions, one AI business idea moving forward by next week or next Monday, depending on when you're watching this. Okay? So on day number one, you need to inventory the bird. Okay? Make three columns on a piece of paper or in your Notion or whatever, Google Docs. Okay? Who I am, what I know, who I know. Most founders write five to eight items. Stop only when your page is full. Trust me, you'll be able to fill it up. Day number two, set the floor. Two numbers, maximum dollars, maximum weeks. Write them on the same page as the bird. Both numbers should make you slightly uncomfortable. Neither should make you panic though. Day number three, build the better client list. Look at column three from day one and list 10 people who already trust you and have the problem that you're considering solving. If you can't list 10 of them, your bird and your quilt are too small, so move on. You need to widen [music] it before you continue. Now, day number four, text three of them. Not a pitch, a specific question. Something like, "I'm building an AI tool that does X for people like you. I want to give the first version away to three people in exchange for feedback. Would you want to be one of them?" Send three texts. [music] That's the entire action for day four. Day five, build the smallest useful thing. Not the product, the smallest version that gives them value. It's called an MVP. We don't have time to go into that. Trust [music] me, just do it. That could be a manual workflow that you run yourself, or a Loom walking them through it, or a Google Sheet wired to an AI agent. Just give it to them in 48 hours, not eight weeks. And then day six and seven, deliver to your three and watch what [music] happens. That's all, one week, the entire protocol. Okay? What you do in week two is determined by what happens in week one. That's where lemonade kicks in. You follow the surprises. And also pilot in the plane. You steer based on what you learned. Now, if you want version of this protocol, I'm going to break everything down in a full road map to getting the first client and I spend a lot more going through this inside my founders community. So, you are more than welcome to come join us. The link is here in the description below as well. We also have a free community, the Trailblazers Hive, where you can get just as much value, but not so much hand-holding, completely for free. So, I hope to see you on the other side, whether it's in the Trailblazers Hive or in the founders hive. And until next time, thank you again so, so much for watching. I really appreciate you taking the time to stick until now. You have no idea how much it means to be. I'm so, so grateful for you being here. Thank you again. Like this video if you did. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't done so. Share it with anyone in your circle of friends or family or co-workers who you think needs a little kick to get moving with their AI business idea. And until next time, I suggest you go ahead and watch this video here and I'll see you there. Bye.