I recently sat down with Jeff MacPherson, AI expert & CEO of Cloud 37, on the Marketing Minds Podcast, and he dropped a statistic that stopped me in my tracks:

“95% of businesses are implementing AI wrong at the current state.”

Now that's a bold claim, but the more we dug in, the more it made sense. And honestly, if you've been trying to plug AI into your business & feeling like it's not quite delivering what everyone promised, this is going to be a valuable read for you.

As a Reminder, Our Goal with this Newsletter is to Give You the Highest Level of Value Possible. That's my Promise to you & I intend to Over-Deliver!

Here's a Sneak Peek at What's Inside This Email:

• The #1 Mistake Businesses Are Making with AI Right Now (& How to Avoid It)

• The “Most Important AI Agent” Every Service-Based Business Should Build (Almost Nobody is Doing This)

• The 4 Pillars of Building an AI Agent That Actually Works

• A Real Case Study of a Business Owner Who Saved $3,000/Day Using This Framework

• Why AI is Actually Exposing “Fake Experts” (& Why That's a GOOD Thing for You)

Alright, let's Dive In…

Watch the Full Video on YouTube:

The #1 Reason Most Businesses Are Failing with AI

Jeff put it perfectly on the podcast:

“AI, just like Facebook or Instagram, is just a tool to amplify good or bad marketing.”

Here's the truth most people don't want to hear – AI is not going to fix a broken business.

If your business was messy, unfocused, or trying to do too many things before AI came along, then plugging AI into that mess is just going to help you scale the mess faster.

The businesses winning with AI right now aren't the ones adding 8-10 new verticals & trying to automate everything. They're the ones who identified their ONE thing they're incredible at & used AI to double down & scale it.

This was one of my biggest takeaways from the entire conversation:

Don't ask “What can AI do for my business?” Ask “What am I amazing at without AI, and how can I scale it WITH AI?”

That subtle shift changes everything.

The Most Important AI Agent Every Service-Based Business Needs

This was probably my favorite insight from the entire episode, and honestly, almost nobody is talking about this.

Jeff shared that the #1 most valuable AI agent you can build in a service-based business isn't a sales agent, a content agent, or even a fulfillment agent…

It's an Onboarding Agent.

Here's why – there is ALWAYS a gap between when a sale happens & when fulfillment begins. Your salesperson neglects it, your fulfillment team doesn't really support it, and the client is left in this weird “no man's land” wondering what happens next.

But if you build an onboarding agent that collects the client's specific business information & then dynamically trains all your OTHER agents to do the work for them, the output becomes hyper-customized to their business.

That's how you go from being a generic AI tool on the market to being a hyper-focused expert in your field.

The onboarding agent is the multiplier. It's what allows you to give every single client a “custom” experience while still scaling to hundreds or thousands of clients at once.

If you take one thing away from this newsletter, let it be this – build the onboarding agent first.

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The 4 Pillars of Every Great AI Agent

One of the things I appreciated most about my conversation with Jeff is how he simplified something that most people over-complicate.

According to Jeff, every AI agent is built the exact same way. There are only 4 pillars to focus on:

1. The Output – What is the final result you want the agent to produce?

2. The Expert – Who has the knowledge to train what “good” looks like?

3. The Prompt – The instructions that turn expertise into a repeatable system

4. The Input – What data does the agent need to produce the output?

And here's the key insight – you build agents backwards from the output.

Jeff shared that when a client comes to him wanting to build an AI system, the first question he asks is: “Can you show me the final product?”

If they can't show him what a good final output looks like, he won't build it for them. Because if you don't know what “good” looks like, no AI on earth is going to figure it out for you.

This is why expertise still matters more than ever in the age of AI. Your job isn't to compete with AI – it's to know what great looks like so you can direct AI to produce it consistently.

Real Case Study: How One Business Owner Saved $3,000/Day

I love when guests come on the podcast & share real numbers, and Jeff shared a great one.

He's currently working with a client who teaches people how to write faceless TikTok scripts. Before working with Cloud 37, this guy was:

• Manually building custom GPT profiles for each audience

• Spending 6 hours a day doing this work

• Charging $500/hour for his time

• Teaching clients how to use custom GPTs (& troubleshooting when context windows filled up)

That's $3,000/day of his time being spent on repeatable, systematizable work.

Once they built out his onboarding agent, clients now answer a series of questions after they pay, which dynamically trains the agents in his studio to give them custom output automatically.

Result? He got that $3,000/day back to focus on scaling his business, adding new agents (like a video prompting agent for faceless content), and expanding to other platforms.

That's the power of doing AI RIGHT.

The Best Part About AI (In My Opinion)

Jeff said something during our conversation that I want you to sit with for a second:

“AI is exposing people for who they're not. It'll expose lazy people, and it will expose people who are not actually experts. That's my favorite piece of all of AI.”

And I couldn't agree more.

The narrative that “AI will replace experts” gets it backwards. AI is actually going to reward the true experts more than ever, because they're the ones who know what great output looks like & can build systems around their expertise.

The people who are going to struggle? The ones who were faking it. The ones who never really developed deep expertise. The ones who thought they could shortcut their way to success.

For those of you who have put in the work, who have built genuine expertise in your niche, who have real frameworks that get real results – this is your time to shine. AI is your force multiplier, not your replacement.

The One Thing You Should Do Before Implementing AI

I asked Jeff for his single biggest piece of advice for business owners looking to implement AI, and his answer was so counterintuitive I had to include it here:

“Slow down.”

In a world that's moving faster than ever, the businesses winning with AI are the ones taking a step back before they move forward.

Map out your business. Look at your SOPs. Identify what you're truly great at. Understand what your ideal output looks like.

THEN, and only then, bring AI into the equation.

As Jeff put it – “Remove AI first, and then implement AI afterwards.”

Watch the Full Interview on YouTube

There's honestly SO much more we covered in this episode, including:

• Why building community is your only real “moat” in the age of AI

• The difference between AI tools, chatbots, & true AI agents

• How Jeff stays up to date with AI in a market moving at breakneck speed

• The 3-tier ascension model for turning your service into a subscription

• His honest take on where AI is going & who's going to win in the long run

If you're serious about implementing AI the right way in your business (or if you're just curious about what the future looks like), this is one you don't want to miss!

Watch the Full Interview with Jeff McPherson on YouTube! (Click Here)

My Biggest Takeaway from This Episode

If I had to boil down my entire conversation with Jeff into one sentence, it would be this:

AI doesn't replace expertise, it amplifies it. So bottle up what you're already amazing at, build systems around it, and let AI help you scale it to more people than you ever could on your own.

That's the game. That's the opportunity. And that's exactly what we're focused on helping our clients achieve.

Watch The Full Video on YouTube:

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More Value Coming Next Friday!

Stay Tuned for More Great Value & Content Coming your Way!

Here’s a Sneak Peak at What’s Coming Next:

• More Free Trainings & Resources — In your Inbox!

• Real Case Studies & Examples of the Marketing Funnels that Scaled Coaching Businesses past 7 & 8 Figures

• The REAL on-the-ground insights into what’s going on in the Online Marketing & Coaching/Consulting/High-Ticket Industry (Based on our Insights working with Thousands of Clients)

• The Latest YouTube Ad & Marketing Strategies as we Discover Them – So that you’re Always on the Cutting Edge

• Guest Articles, Videos & Podcasts from the Top Marketing Minds of Today — Stay tuned for some exciting announcements around this 😉

• And a LOT More…

I’m serious when I say I want this to be The Most Valuable Newsletter You’re Subscribed to — Look out for us in your Inbox Every Friday!

I’ll see you in the next one!

To Your Success,

– Aleric Heck | Founder & CEO of AdOutreach

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