Dec 30, 2025 · 50m · mixergy
#2291 He keeps launching AI businesses
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Serial entrepreneur Joe Apfelbaum joins Andrew Warner to share actionable blueprints for launching high-margin AI businesses, detailing productized services, educational funnels, lean agency workflows, and SaaS development. Through candid case studies, Joe explains how automated workflows, avatar generation, and outbound scraping transformed his ventures into multi-million-dollar revenue streams.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Andrew holds 18.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Andrew as informed peer 3.8 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 2.3 Andrew pushing back 3.1
speaking balance: gold is Andrew, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 34:21 Dismissing tech insider assumptions about AI tooling
Joe bluntly rejects Andrew's suggestion that prompt generators are trivial because of tools like Claude Console, mockingly pointing out that regular consumers in retail stores have no idea Claude or ChatGPT consoles exist.
Hardest push from Andrew ▶ 19:38 Calling out revenue versus profit claimsAndrew directly confronts Joe on a mathematical contradiction, pointing out that Joe claimed he would make a million dollars in profit on one line while earlier stating his agency's total revenue was only around a million.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 39:41 Teaching the AI-assisted SRS product development workflowJoe walks step-by-step through drafting software requirements specifications using Grok conversations on dog walks, generating demo HTML in Claude, and compiling full MVPs without traditional development cycles.
Andrew holds their own ▶ 23:50 Connecting agency history to modern prompt engineeringAndrew references their previous 2012 interview and private dinner discussions to accurately articulate how Joe's strategy transitioned from Craigslist scraping to systematic prompt engineer training.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Andrew as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Andrew pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monetizing AI Services: The Done-for-You AI Headshot Business | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Joe details his done-for-you AI headshot workflow using Facebook lead forms, virtual assistants, and image generation tools. Andrew asks clarifying questions regarding the prompt generator and discovers image generation is built into Joe's tool. | |
| Monetizing AI Education: Courses and Masterminds | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Joe explains monetizing AI education through low-effort live masterminds and courses, emphasizing that non-technical users lack basic prompting skills. Andrew prompts him to explore how this applies beyond generic AI topics. | |
| Case Study: Building the '99 Hacks' Course with HeyGen and AI Tools | 4 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Joe details creating his 99 Hacks course using HeyGen avatars and Otter transcripts. Andrew inspects the live website during the interview to verify whether the AI clone and demo overlays are authentic. | |
| Fast-Turnaround Digital Assets: Selling AI Infographics to Franchise Niches | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Joe explains selling AI-generated infographics to restoration franchises like ServPro. Andrew probes whether this is a tested model or hypothetical and presses on tool usability challenges like Go High Level. | |
| Rebuilding Ajax Union as a Lean AI Agency Post-Crisis | 5 | 3 | 2 | 5 | Andrew calls Joe out directly on contradictory revenue and profit figures. Joe opens up about his agency collapse during COVID, personal divorce, and subsequent pivot to a lean AI agency model targeting restoration businesses. | |
| Growth Hacking AI Communities with Scraping and Outbound Outreach | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | Joe explains scraping Tony Robbins's paid community members using custom Chrome extensions and cold emailing them via Apollo. Andrew questions the ethics and wisdom of admitting this publicly, which Joe aggressively brushes off. | |
| Building Micro-SaaS, Custom GPTs, and MVPs Using AI Prompts | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | When Andrew suggests prompt generators are already built into platforms like Anthropic Console, Joe forcefully pushes back against the Silicon Valley bubble. Joe then explains how non-developers can write software specifications (SRS) with Grok and build MVPs with Claude and Gemini. | |
| Scaling EVAI as an Intelligent Multi-Platform Sales Assistant | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Andrew compares Joe's current flurry of AI experiments to his scattered businesses from their 2013 interview. Joe explains how his technical business partner keeps his product ideas focused on feeding EVAI. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Apfelbaum: Ajax Union generates about $1M a year in revenue
“I, well, we're the revenue for Ajax unions about a million dollars a year right now.”
Apfelbaum: EVAI is approaching $1M in annual revenue
“And every AI is approaching a million dollars a year.”
Apfelbaum: Internet users prefer done-for-you services over software tools
“The headshot software that I built is actually a service for people because people don't want to use software. People, especially people on the internet, what they want to do is they want you to just deliver headshots for them.”
Apfelbaum: 100 clients paid for his done-for-you AI headshot service
“And we had a hundred people raise their hand and pay and say that they are interested in this”
Apfelbaum: $200 AI headshot service costs just $5 in VA labor
“The VA costs a total of five dollars to do it, and then we deliver it to them, and we have a very nice profit margin”
Apfelbaum: Sells $500 AI Course and $3,000/Year Mastermind Learning Live
“Pay me 500 bucks, and a bunch of people paid 500 bucks, and people are still paying 500 bucks, and I said, as an ongoing thing, if you want to meet me every single month for three hours, because I'm learning AI myself, it's 3000 dollars a year, and a percentag…”
Apfelbaum: Monetizing AI Education Requires No Formal Certification or Prep
“There's zero preparation done. I'm literally learning AI while they're learning AI, and they are paying me to learn together with me, so it's not like I have to have some type of Capitalize certification.”
Apfelbaum: People Will Pay to Learn Basic Prompting on Suno and Sora
“People will pay you to teach them how to make AI music. People will pay you to put in a prompt into Suno and teach you how to make AI music. People will pay you to teach them how to go into Sora and make a prompt and make a video on Sora too. People will pay y…”
Apfelbaum: First course cost $275K to make, netted over $1M profit
“When I created my first course called the evergreen networking system, I spent 275,000 dollars to build a course. And that ended up netting me over a million dollars in profit.”
Apfelbaum: Presold 100 copies of '99 Hacks' course for $10K before building it
“And then a 145 people voted, and so I created a Stripe link for 99 dollars, and I send it to a hundred people. I didn't even have anything created yet, and then a hundred people paid for it. So I had 10,000 dollars in cash sitting in an account”
Apfelbaum: $3.80 ad CAC converts into $3,600-per-year Evai SaaS subscriptions
“We ran an ad asking people if they want the 99 hacks, And that ad cost me three dollars and 80 cents per person, and a large percentage of the people buy the hacks and then buy Evie AI Pro, which is 3600 dollars a year.”
Apfelbaum: Ajax Union lost 75% of recurring revenue overnight during COVID
“So what happened was when COVID hit, We lost 75% of reoccurring revenue overnight.”
Apfelbaum: AI lets agency handle 100 clients without hiring new staff
“When I started Ajax Union, I used to hire one new employee for every 10 small businesses I would take on. That was a very, very expensive thing. Very expensive thing. Now I could take on a hundred customers, and I don't have to hire anybody. I could take on a …”
Apfelbaum: WAVV dialer enables 480 automated calls per day for $149/month
“Now there is a great dialer called a wave dialer, which I use as well. I pay one 49 a month for the wave dialer. W A V V totally worth it. I make 480 calls in one day just by allowing the dialer to just run. 480 people will be touched and drop voicemails will …”
Apfelbaum: Tony Robbins sells an AI course with a GPT that "sucks"
“Tony Robbins just came out with an AI course, and then I join his AI course, and he's not teaching anything that's super valuable in there, and people pay a thousand dollars to learn how to create a custom GPT that, by the way, sucks, so I'm in his community, …”
Apfelbaum: Built over 100 custom Chrome extensions solo using AI
“By the way, I built over a hundred custom Chrome extensions myself, with AI. Myself, just myself, in the middle of the night.”
Apfelbaum: Front-End JavaScript Prompt Generators Eliminate AI API Costs
“And by the way, it's not even using AI credits cause it's all JS. It's all JavaScript. So you create a framework that you don't even need a backend for that you sell access to that they're either paying monthly, 10 bucks a month, or they're paying a lifetime a…”
Apfelbaum Built 200 Working evyAI Features Personally Using AI
“I built MVPs. I have about 200 additions to Evie AI that I already built that are working that I created myself using artificial intelligence, and when the refactor's done at the end of this year, in another two weeks my refactor will be done, the developer wi…”