[0:00]What is up, people? I'm back, and I have some mega, mega source to share with you guys today, so, uh, you read the title, this is about selling iOS or AI operating systems as a service, where I think the market is hitting, and I just want to give you kind of my read on the market right now. I'd have to kind of take a step back from YouTube for a bit, and I mean it's just getting so crazy, man, like, I made a video a while back, like AGI is here, um, and I got clowned a little bit for it, but like more and more people now, people a lot smarter and I guess more successful than me are saying the same thing now. So I hope that's helping to corroborate my position. Um, I've been gone for long walks, getting a bit of sun, uh, and trying to wrap my head around this thing, not only for my sake, on how I want to position my business moving forward, what we want to do at Morning Side, what I want to do with my accelerator, and how I want to train people in different ways. It's times like these when things get really, really crazy, there's two responses. You can either just like put the pedal to the metal and go hard, or you can take a step back and be like, what's the, the bigger picture or the trends going on here. And in this video, I want to just like boil down some of those trends for you guys, give you maybe a bit of clarity and confidence as we go into this next era of the AI agency and AI transformation boom, and it really is just the, the pulling together all the different threads that we've been working on for the past, um, few years, really. So, It's a great time to be in this business and, uh, I just want to start with that, really. So, first things first, uh, what we are seeing right now is a fundamental shift in the way that we do automation for businesses and how we do AI transformation. Um, I remember way back when I started, it was using a text completion models, Da Vinci 003, and wrapping things around them to try and make a chat GPT clone for businesses and adding in custom context. That was like what I was doing back in the early 2023, when I was doing this for businesses and consulting on them, as well. And we've gone down the direction where you do a an audit, you do a big consulting project for a company, you get the layer of the land, you understand what solutions they they need, and then you'd go from an audit into a development phase. Like we are still doing this with our clients at Morning Side, where we've got all this backed up like a roadmap that we did for clients, and now we just have a big sequence of work that we're working our way through, and it's like build after build after build. Um, but there's a, I think we're going to see this kind of flip on its head, in that these systems typically are kind of stand-alone, or it's an agent that you build, or an automation that you build that has to kind of hook into different various data sources. It might be pulling in, if you're putting it on 180 or make or whatever it is, where you're integrating into existing platforms, it's pulling that data in, and it's trying to contextualize the agent as much as possible. And so they're kind of like what you could call point solutions, and that they like target a specific point, and we are automating a specific process or part of the business, and trying to get as much context for it to work as possible. That has definitely worked, but I honestly think that is just scratching the surface of what's to come for businesses, and that there's a massive jump. I've just finished a workshop at my accelerator where I was explaining this. I seriously think we've been scratching the surface, and a lot of the work that your business owner and you've been really investing in AI, you're going to hate me for saying this, but I honestly think a lot of the work that's been done by AI agencies to this point has been, uh, it will be uprooted and completely changed in this next phase that we're heading into. Um, and that is a, a good thing all around. Maybe not for the businesses who are a few hundred grand deep in investment, but that are definitely going to be further along the lines and they're still going to benefit from it. They're definitely taking the steps they need to, so it's not a complete waste, but we've been doing it basically the hard way for quite a long time now. And this flipping it on its head is, is what I've seen from, I've been installing these cloud code AI operating systems with businesses in person. I did a mastermind in Cape Town, um, where I was there with like seven different founders of all different backgrounds and types. And levels of technical ability, as well. Seeing how to set them up, see how this thing can kind of flex and change to different business types. I did another one here in Bali, as well. So I've been on the front lines. That's kind of why I've been a little bit out of the, out of the picture, uh, recently, because I wanted to get hands on with the stuff. I wanted to see with my own business. I wanted to see with these other companies I've been working with, as well. And these other founders, um, what the, the shape of this is moving forward, and what I'm seeing is a a flipping of the entire model of AI automation from the point solutions, where you can top down to what you could kind of call it bottom up, where in order to speed up the auditing, in order to speed up the development, you need to start first and foremost with some kind of contextualized base, or workspace, or operating system, an AI operating system, like I've been saying. And once you have that base, and in the case for these setups that I've been doing for founders is, it's at the right template to start with. It's at the right folder structures. It's getting their chat GPT or code history, in most cases, pulling all of that, exporting it, baking it into what I'll call a context OS. The first step on the rung, and this is basically stopping them having to copy and paste all the context around when they're using chat GPT or Claud. That is by pulling all of that in, and giving the contextualized workspace, a base. And then on top of that base, it's plugging in their connections to different platforms that they use. It might be their stripe, it might be their CRM, it might be their Facebook ads, um, might be the Google analytics. Plugging in all of this, so that not only do they have a contextualized workspace, but they have the ability to pull in additional information via custom skills, and then also on top of that, being able to write back up to them, as well. So not only being able to pull in data, but for founders being able to write up and actually operate their whole business. Like I I run my whole business from in cloud code now, within cursive. Um, because I have everything plugged in, and it knows everything about me. I don't actually use the interfaces at all. And there's, there's all sorts of ramifications of that for B2B SAS, which I've talked about in previous videos, which I'll, I'll link up here. When you have that contextualized base, and when you have the integrations on top, uh, then the pathways of automation is, is just like so far, it's it's shrunk down so much. Um, as I've made a a bunch of commands that I've, I've taught to my community, and and used in these workshops, like explore, where I go slash explore, and it says command that walks them through multiple phases of helping the founder to figure out what they want. It's like, slash explore, I want to be able to automate the, obviously funds like the sales pipeline. I was like the preparation for calls, or I want to automate, um, the, the preparation of reports on certain days of the week, or I want to heavily augment, or make a augmented workflow, um, that's going to say, help me on thumbnail generation, or it's going to help me go through my weekly planning at the end of the week.
[6:44]So there's augmented and then there's automation, but with the right Claud code setup or iOS setup, with the context and the integrations, you are able to put the power in the hands of the founder, or, as I'll touch on in a bit, in a very interesting way, put it back in the hands of the agency owner. And there's a whole spectrum of different ways you can deliver this and make money on it, but, in the case where you're setting up for the founder of someone who's a bit more technically inclined and wants to learn the stuff, that getting the context setup, getting the integration setup, and then teaching them how to use the workflows of slash explore, help you figure out what you want to do. Okay, now I need to make a technical implementation plan, break it up into a couple different chunks, implement them one after the other, and then go through and test that. Once you can kind of teach the founder on top of that context and integrations, the workflows, that's really what I've been focusing on, on those masterminds I've been doing, is can you just get them a base, where they understand what this is, it understands the business, it understands them, and you teach them those workflows. And then it's just anything that they can think of that they're feeding in and that they're off to the races, and it's really, really an awesome, awesome thing to see. Like the, when they get that, and then they they just they just go, and they are going once they're going. But that is a fundamentally different way of looking at and approaching automation. It's that bottom up way of doing it. And that if you just, if you give the coding agent enough context, and you give it the right integrations and API keys, then it's just a case of asking it what it wants, and then you get all sorts of other, other issues down the line, or other problems to solve, such as, like ROI tracking, uh, figuring out what automations are firing, and when, what agents have been used, and when, how can you prescribe, uh, certain amounts of value? Like how long did that automated task take on average? Like starting to quantify the ROI and and really tracking things becomes a really interesting opportunity for agencies, as you, as you do these kinds of systems. And then there's this, the the whole spectrum of delivery of a system like this, and where you, as an agency can fit in, what offers you can make, how you can squeeze yourself into the market. And I've been explaining it to my accelerator in terms of like teaching people to fish. One thing you guys will know or or learn very quickly, if you were to go the route of, hey, this thing's so awesome. I can figure out how to use Kirk Claud code or Cursa, and I can do these things. Uh, I'm just going to teach other founders to do it. And there are going to be in the, down the end, that, that post is kind of funny, I'm sorry, but, uh, there's the spectrum of how you can deliver this. The first being like, I'm going to teach them, and because if they're a bit more technical, or or they're more curious, a lot of the early adopter kind of digital marketing agency owners, e-com owners, these people are digitally native, and they're probably been playing around with AI already. But, I will say that there is a training offer here. There is 100% a training offer. A lot of guys in my community doing flyouts. Like Tyler, um, some one of my community members who's just been absolutely crushing it, doing flyouts. Um, poor dude's been hopping on the workshops in the in the accelerator, like 3:00 a.m. in a hotel room, um, tuning in. He's just absolutely smashing it. But he's going out in person doing this in person installs, um, with a founder sitting down, going through that process, like I've been doing at my masterminds, with the context and the integrations. And he's actually getting them to build, like, while they're there, as part of the setup fee, is the context, integrations, and then also, solving their first big problem. So it's like, let's hit clear about one problem that I can help solve and get the like, it's hard to communicate what one of these systems is to a business owner. So if you can just say, look, I know it's going to sound complicated, but by the end of it, we're going to have solved this problem for you, a big one, and then, hopefully you can see the value and then you'll trust me to keep moving with this. You can go out in person and do trainings and teach, like set up an iOS for a business, train the founder how to do it, like I've been doing at these masterminds. Uh, but then you've essentially taught them how to fish. And if you're, if you're wanting to do God's work, and just share this stuff all out all over the world, then, then sure, that's good, but I can tell you firsthand from me teaching people to fish with this stuff, uh, there's, there's got to be like a, like a impossible challenge meme in there. It's like, not to go and also start selling this and teaching this as well. Because once people see this, they immediately go, like, oh, well, I'm just going to go and teach people in my, my network how to do this. And I mean, I'm I'm not like getting all elbows out on us. I think it's great. I'm not too bothered. But, I think for the sake of, if you're trying to make a scalable offer and find like a real good niche for your agency to set, go in and teaching, say, digital marketing agency owners how to set these up is not really going to say give you much time, um, because they will just going to start teaching it, as well. So, where do you fall on that spectrum? The one I was just talking about, the Tyler, is kind of, I'd say, on the, on the one side you've got train. So you can make a training package of, I'll fly out and set it up, I'll train you how to use it, and I'll offer ongoing support, and that might be a 5K setup, and then like a 1 or 2K per month with like a call a week, or something. And so you're there, maybe that's a three month package, and then they're done. And then you just sell that as an offer, which is actually training and support and maintenance. Then you could also offer, like, doing setups for their teams, and scaling it up to teams, which is a whole different thing. There is a huge amount of value in that. And then on the far side, you would have what, what is more of like a productized version of this. Um, and one of, uh, um, our community members Alice, she has created what's like a, a kind of Ecom iOS, which is for, uh, e-commerce, and taking basically the iOS system that I, I have my accelerator, wrapping it, and modifying it for her e-commerce business. And then as a, as a, a niche expert who supplied the system to a business and made a dashboard that can do a lot of the functions of the business, and save her budget, time, and money, by making some sort of dashboard and then niching it down, you can create a product out of it, sell it, maybe 10K setup, validate that it's working for your business or someone else's business, and then instead of giving them the keys and teaching them how to fish, you're just going to give them the fish. Most founders don't want to learn how to use cloud code. They don't want to learn all this stuff, uh, do all the setup. They just want to like tell you about their business, and then they want to get the cool thing that you've, you've set up and, and it's working for you. So that's like the productized service and there's an ongoing model for that, that basically you're building them a custom app that sort of wraps around one of these. And then in the middle, is, is kind of like what Tyler's doing. So training, product, in the middle, is more so like the agency services model. And people have been exploring that in different, uh, ways and and price points. One thing that I think is really interesting is a retainer based kind of design joy model. Um, and we actually tried this at Morning Side way, way back, and we were just way too early to it. Um, we tried, it was called Morning Side Automation, and it was like, why don't we take like a design joy model, and then charge our clients like 5K, 6K per month, and then they get like one or two automations. But the stuff just took so long to build. Um, it was, there's support, there's like, it's finding the right people for it, making the math work. Okay, so you've got the, the one developer per client, how many, how many builds can they do? How do you scope it? Stop scope creep? It was just a nightmare and we were just way too early for it, but I now think there's actually an option for a really powerful offer for smaller to medium-sized businesses of a retainer based model, rather than these big up-fronts that we've been charging for a long time. Tyler, in his case, is charging two and a half K a month for it. And for a business owner, like, not having some 10-20K upfront, and being like, hey, this guy's going to charge me two and a half grand a month, where there won't be like a 5K flyout and install cost and then paying for the travel. But after that, it's two and a half K a month. I'm going to get one big automation or two smaller ones. And I now have an AI guy in my corner, and I need, I, I knew I needed to do something on it. And I'm only having to pay two and a half grand a month. And I think that could honestly go up to three, four, five K, as you basically build more things on top, you would add retainer or usage based things on top. So it might start off at two and a half, but then it goes to three when you build up system number one. And then it goes to three, four and five and six, and you're just adding on these retainers, because you're having to maintain these systems as they grow. And they're getting a ton of value out of it, as well. But what makes this all possible is, like I said, that flipped upside down model of automation, where it's context, it's integrations. And so in Tyler's case, he's going out in person, doing these setups, um, and I'll drop Tyler's details in the in the description below. Absolutely legend. Um, I I cannot cannot give him enough love. He was in my in my community doing, um, a workshop for us. So Tyler made him so, so proud of, uh, all the work you're doing, and thank you for, uh, sharing with us, as well. So, if you're sending a bit of, uh, bit of love his way, if your business owner in America, uh, anywhere, and you're looking for a guy to come out and literally sit with you and do this, uh, he's an absolute lad, as well. Um, I cannot recommend him enough. But Tyler's model is kind of in the middle of the training and the product. In that he will go out, and instead of setting up the iOS for them to use, he will sit with them and set up an iOS for him to use. So he walks him through it. He gets the context set up, he's there out in person with them. He gets all the API keys and things set up in person, making sure he's got this workspace fully set up for him to be able to build on top of. He works on the first solution and gets him that like instant ROI on the first payment. And then he's built basically a system for him to go back home, and I and have a development environment that's fully contextualized, it's fully plugged into the systems. And then he's also creating like their own interface or way of chatting with their own cloud code workspace. So it's just basically a custom, a custom web app that I have a link to. It's like their own chat GPT. Very basic, but allows them to chat to it and get the same functionality of having access to this very knowledgeable workspace, full context, connection to all their tools. So they have that to chat to and they get the chat experience, but he's got it on his side, the development engine, that now, based off requests, can very quickly move through explore flows to be like, hey, this is the next system I want. I've got two things to build this month. One, two, and then because the development is so quick, it can make that retainer model actually makes sense and he doesn't need developers. He could do it himself, as a one man business. So much exciting stuff, guys, and there's such still such a big gap in businesses. I will link a really, really interesting, um, podcast I listened to by Jack Dorsey, part of Twitter and now, um, CEO Block. And his model is trying to flatten out all structures, and having sort of like a, turning a business into basically an intelligence, where there's all of this work streaming and these artifacts from different things being done. There's all of the calls that are happening. Basically everything evolves around some sort of very contextualized AI intelligence, which is basically what this AI operating system thing is. Um, it's a, it's a layer around the business, or kind of like a, a core to the business with all the people dotted around it. And when you look at all the work that AI agencies have done thus far, and realize that, hey, companies are still running this old hierarchical model of employment. There's probably five times more staff than they're going to need in three, four years time. They are not using any kind of workspace to centralize all the apps and give them integrations, where like each employee has their own iOS, kind of, like, workspace that's super contextualized and I was going to be very quickly. It's just like Claud co-workers a very interesting place that I'm looking into, as well, rolling those out as a service. I think there's a big opportunity there too, but we are just so far away. So, so far away. And I think we've been kind of like digging with a teaspoon now, and we can finally like get the excavator out and start really like fundamentally changing these businesses, and delivering on the promise of true transformation. Uh, but it's, the reason it hasn't come is because you need to break stuff. You need to like, really fundamentally rethink the business, and my final point, I suppose, is the opportunity in the flip side of that coin. And, is it, is there opportunity for your agency in going and making a retainer style offer, and maybe stack it up four or five clients, where they end up paying you 5-10K per month, um, and you really go deep with them? And trying to sort of like, band-aid or like break and remodel these legacy businesses, or legacy, yeah, legacy businesses in the old way of doing things. Or is there more opportunity in the other side of the coin, which is going to a business owner and saying, hey, look, I want to start your business, but fundamentally rethink and actually go and become a partner. And say, look, we're going to start up a a new version, or a new department, or a new version of this business, that can be something completely different, but it's going to be built with AI first principles. It's going to be built with this AI operating system at the core, and we're going to be very specific about who we hire, and how they fit in, how the context is being fed into the machine, the workspace that they work in, the AI agents and automations that we can build. And we can just rethink it from the ground up. And this is what the big dogs are looking at. Like, why would you go through all of the challenge and and human difficulties and and layoffs and redundancies, and this when there may be a much better opportunity in just starting fresh. So I think this is a really under, under-discussed and under-explored part of the AI automation landscape. And, as an agency, do you need to try to like break them and rebuild them, or could you just start from scratch? And, I mean, sounds like a lot more fun. You know? Like, you literally get to be an architect and just paint on a canvas with all the knowledge of this business owner, and repaint it from the ground up, and probably take a percentage of that new company. Uh, whether it's, yeah, I mean the equity or there's profit share, or whether there's like, some kind of model there. Again, spoke a bit, but what a freaking time to be alive to be in this space. And I just want to like say for you guys out there who are probably feeling like, I think it's like a paradox, and that the people who are the deepest in this tech, feel the most stressed by it. And we're all going through it, man. Like, I've been, I've been out in front of the stuff ages. I'm going through it. Everyone else you're watching is going through it. Um, just like, go outside and touch some grass, get some sun. And just realize that if you can read the the chess board now, and pick a play that is based on some sort of durable value creation source, such as transforming or or moving companies from this old model to this new one, whether it's like Claud co-work setups and getting really good at that. We've got now got so much diversity is that if you just pick one of these incredible tools or platforms that's coming out, or one of these big and gnarly, uh, challenges, and, and this big, like, sort of smorgasbord of AI transformation, there's so many different paths to it now. Uh, maybe you don't have to do everything. Just find your thing now, and start building your, building your house upon that thing. But make sure you've picked that well, because there's a lot of like, durable sources of value here, that aren't going to move that much, and your job is to find those and build on it. So guys, um, thanks for being on this ride with me. I'm, uh, I'm extremely excited and, uh, and optimistic about the future. And I I want to sort of transmit some of that to you guys in that we've been waiting for this for a long time. And now the development and auditing part is getting a lot easier. So, this is when the fun begins. And, uh, yeah, that's all with the video. If you guys want to see one of my vlogs where I'm doing like the behind the scenes of, uh, actually working with founders one-on-one, or my actual recap video from my Cape Town Mastermind. I'll put that up there. Sorry for that, guys. Thanks so much for watching. See you in the next one. Woo!
