The Ultimate Guide to Starting and Scaling Your AI Automation Agency
Are you looking to start your own AI automation agency but feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of business tools and software available? As someone who has spent the past five years as an online entrepreneur and the more recent 12 months as an AI entrepreneur, I understand the struggle of finding the right tool for the job. That's why I've condensed the hundreds of different tools I've tried and tested down to just 14 must-have softwares that have helped me start and scale my own AI businesses to over $100,000 per month in revenue.
In this guide, I'll be covering my recommended softwares for starting and setting up your AI automation agency, the best softwares for actually building and delivering your AI solutions, and three personal tools that I use every day to be a more productive agency owner. But before we dive in, I want to better understand what kind of content you like to see and what stage you're at in your own business journey. So, please fill out the survey in the description below for a chance to win a 20-minute consulting call.
Table of Contents
1. [Slack](#slack)
2. [Stripe](#stripe)
3. [Notion](#notion)
4. [ClickFunnels](#clickfunnels)
5. [True Conversion](#true-conversion)
6. [Closely](#closely)
7. [Loom](#loom)
8. [Voiceflow](#voiceflow)
9. [Make.com](#makecom)
10. [Relevance AI](#relevance-ai)
11. [Airtable](#airtable)
12. [Brain.fm](#brainfm)
13. [RescueTime](#rescuetime)
14. [Alami](#alami)
1. Slack
Slack is your internal communications hub for your business. It's absolutely crucial to have set up initially so that you can handle all the communications with your team and clients. You can add all of your team members to your Slack workspace and then create private channels for each client. This means you can add in just the team members that need to be attached to that particular client's project and then also add in all of the clients and their accounts into that channel as well. This way, you can keep all communications centralized for the particular client. Slack is also very good for integrating with other services like Airtable or Zapier so that you can set up a bunch of automations to handle a lot of the processes as you start to scale your business moving forward. Slack costs around $9 per person on the Premium plan, so it's not super expensive early on and it really scales with your business as you grow.
2. Stripe
Stripe is a payment processing software that allows you to collect payments from your clients. You can send them a Stripe invoice and then they can pay via Stripe with a credit card or other different methods. Stripe is great and very easy to set up, taking only a couple of minutes. However, it's not available in every location, so your country might be different. One thing you need to be aware of when using Stripe is the processing fees, which are usually around 30 cents per transaction and then maybe 3 to 5% on the overall transaction. This can add up, so be aware of it. Stripe is a good place to get started so that you can start accepting payments for your customers.
3. Notion
Notion is like Google Docs but with easier organization of different files. You get cleaner formatting options and really a ton of customizability in terms of how you want to store your documents and present them. I've been using Notion heavily for both business and personal use this year. For the personal side of things, I've been using a template for Notion called "My Second Brain," which is something that I found hugely valuable. It took a while for me to get fully integrated into it, but in terms of creating a second brain to manage all of your personal tasks, projects, and documents, it was something that I had really lacked as an entrepreneur leading up to this year. Notion is free, but there are also paid plans available.
4. ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is a website builder that allows you to set up a quick one-page website using templates that they provide. You basically get everything you need and nothing you don't. You have a chance to communicate who you are and what you sell in a couple of lines, and you can have a button to book a call. ClickFunnels is a great way to get that up and running quickly. It's a 14-day free trial and costs $127 per month.
5. True Conversion
True Conversion is a heat mapping software that allows you to track all of the user behavior and data from how people are engaging with your websites and then give that back to you on True Conversion with very actionable information to show how users are using your website. This is hugely important for you, and it's even something that I struggled with my own 0 to 10K case study. True Conversion is a great way of analyzing what's working on your funnel and what's not. The pricing for True Conversion is $69 for a time plan.
6. Closely
Closely is a platform that combines cold email outreach with cold LinkedIn outreach and sort of LinkedIn marketing and campaigns on tools like Drift. It combines cold email outreach and LinkedIn outreach into one tool where you can set up multi-channel prospecting. The pricing for Closely is $118 for you to get all of the features for life on this platform.
7. Loom
Loom is a super simple to use Chrome extension on your browser that allows you to create video resources for your team or clients. You can film a video while it's on Loom, and you've always got that resource there. Creating video resources using Loom that allows you to save time in the future is a very good way of software.
8. Voiceflow
Voiceflow is my go-to bot builder. It is an extremely powerful tool that really just keeps getting better and better with time. We can do very complex builds on Voiceflow, and it's really the perfect mix between easy to use but also able to build really complex functionality. Voiceflow has a 14-day free trial and costs $49 per month.
9. Make.com
Make.com is my go-to automation platform to really connect up different parts of the business, perform data manipulations, and more importantly for us, use the chatbot API and OpenAI functionality within automations very easily. Make.com is free initially and scales with your usage.
10. Relevance AI
Relevance AI is an AI application builder that really tries to keep it as low code and no code as possible. You can create these cool custom web page applications for your clients, which I think is a very high-value add for clients. Relevance AI is free initially and does scale up and allow you to pay more as you use more.
11. Airtable
Airtable is by far the easiest way to store and manage data for your clients. It's a super easy place to be able to push and pull data programmatically and then do all sorts of cool things with that data once you have it inside Airtable. Airtable is free initially.
12. Brain.fm
Brain.fm is a website that allows you to play music and audio that allows you to focus and keeps you locked in your focus. It's scientifically designed to keep you focusing for longer periods of time. Brain.fm costs around $7 per month.
13. RescueTime
RescueTime is a time tracking and screen recording software that allows you to track the hours of productive work and distracting work that you do each day. It's a super easy way to analyze and break down how you're using your laptop and computer during the workday. RescueTime costs around $12 per month.
14. Alami
Alami is an alarm clock app that has enabled me to wake up on time basically every single day. It makes you set a whole bunch of different tasks, and this is the only kind of music I listen to while working. Alami is free initially.
Conclusion
Starting and scaling your own AI automation agency can be overwhelming, but with the right tools and software, it can be a lot easier. I hope this guide has been helpful for you in finding the right tools for your business. Remember to fill out the survey in the description below for a chance to win a 20-minute consulting call. Good luck!
Highlights
- Slack is your internal communications hub for your business.
- Stripe is a payment processing software that allows you to collect payments from your clients.
- Notion is like Google Docs but with easier organization of different files.
- ClickFunnels is a website builder that allows you to set up a quick one-page website using templates that they provide.
- True Conversion is a heat mapping software that allows you to track all of the user behavior and data from how people are engaging with your websites.
- Closely is a platform that combines cold email outreach with cold LinkedIn outreach and sort of LinkedIn marketing and campaigns on tools like Drift.
- Loom is a super simple to use Chrome extension on your browser that allows you to create video resources for your team or clients.
- Voiceflow is my go-to bot builder.
- Make.com is my go-to automation platform to really connect up different parts of the business.
- Relevance AI is an AI application builder that really tries to keep it as low code and no code as possible.
- Airtable is by far the easiest way to store and manage data for your clients.
- Brain.fm is a website that allows you to play music and audio that allows you to focus and keeps you locked in your focus.
- RescueTime is a time tracking and screen recording software that allows you to track the hours of productive work and distracting work that you do each day.
- Alami is an alarm clock app that has enabled me to wake up on time basically every single day.
FAQ
Q: What is Slack?
A: Slack is your internal communications hub for your business.
Q: What is Stripe?
A: Stripe is a payment processing software that allows you to collect payments from your clients.
Q: What is Notion?
A: Notion is like Google Docs but with easier organization of different files.
Q: What is ClickFunnels?
A: ClickFunnels is a website builder that allows you to set up a quick one-page website using templates that they provide.
Q: What is True Conversion?
A: True Conversion is a heat mapping software that allows you to track all of the user behavior and data from how people are engaging with your websites.
Q: What is Closely?
A: Closely is a platform that combines cold email outreach with cold LinkedIn outreach and sort of LinkedIn marketing and campaigns on tools like Drift.
Q: What is Loom?
A: Loom is a super simple to use Chrome extension on your browser that allows you to create video resources for your team or clients.
Q: What is Voiceflow?
A: Voiceflow is my go-to bot builder.
Q: What is Make.com?
A: Make.com is my go-to automation platform to really connect up different parts of the business.
Q: What is Relevance AI?
A: Relevance AI is an AI application builder that really tries to keep it as low code and no code as possible.
Q: What is Airtable?
A: Airtable is by far the easiest way to store and manage data for your
