Sep 10, 2025 · 55m · mixergy
#2279 How are there so many AI agencies?
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Mixergy host Andrew Warner interviews Innovating with AI founder Rob Howard to uncover how non-technical entrepreneurs are building profitable AI consultancies. Howard breaks down the low-code tool stacks, client acquisition funnels, and high-impact enterprise automations that allow modern consultants to deliver bespoke AI solutions and secure high-ticket retainers.
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 22% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Andrew as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 4.8 Guest disagreement 1.1 Andrew pushing back 2.7
speaking balance: gold is Andrew, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 42:20 Rob highlights the dual threat from Big Tech and Claude Code solo builders
Rob bluntly outlines how software founders are getting crushed from both ends by Big Tech native features and weekend vibe coders.
Hardest push from Andrew ▶ 40:53 Andrew questions if AI workflows are temporary hacks facing instant obsolescenceAndrew recounts an M&A due diligence meeting where he demonstrated that a Google beta feature completely erased the target company's core value proposition.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:09 Rob articulates the collapse of the 20-year developer wage moatRob provides a comprehensive historical perspective on how AI and low-code platforms dismantled the 10x earning advantage that traditional coders held since the 1990s.
Andrew holds their own ▶ 26:33 Andrew details the Bootstrap Giants client acquisition frameworkAndrew showcases his own agency incubation expertise by outlining a structured warm-to-cold B2B sales pipeline.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Andrew as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Andrew pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High-Ticket Document Automation for Medical Professionals | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Andrew opens by probing what specific problems high-paying medical clients are bringing to an AI agency. Rob explains the unexpected pattern of non-technical doctors paying $10k+ for document automation to compress 12 hours of reporting into 2 hours. | |
| Navigating Early-Stage AI Consulting and Entry Points | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Andrew draws a comparison to online marketing specializations and questions why AI agencies aren't strictly vertical yet. Rob clarifies that while niching down is the goal, midsize clients are still too early in their adoption cycle to know what they need, making basic entry-point roadmaps essential. | |
| Structuring Beginner AI Training and Interactive Demos | 3 | 6 | 1 | 3 | Andrew candidly admits his anxiety around how one structures an introductory AI corporate training without overwhelming the client. Rob educates him on structuring a repeatable one-hour 101 workshop paired with tailored, industry-specific 10-minute demos. | |
| The Shift from Traditional Coding to Low-Code AI Solutions | 4 | 7 | 2 | 4 | Andrew shares an anecdote where an experienced CTO hired an agency for $5k rather than building low-code automations internally. Rob delivers a deep breakdown of the shifting tech economy, explaining how low-code AI tools have democratized building and broken the historical 10x wage premium of traditional coders. | |
| Practical AI Automation Case Study: The Museum Operations Dashboard | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Rob describes a multi-tiered museum operations dashboard case study that automates social posting from internal knowledge bases. Andrew compares this tech democratization to the historical rise of WordPress and Squarespace. | |
| Tool Stack Hierarchy and the Economics of AI Consulting | 2 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Rob outlines the hierarchy of AI consulting tooling from Zapier up to custom vector databases and Supabase. He explains why corporate clients happily pay $5,000 to capture $25,000 in value due to leadership opportunity costs. | |
| Client Acquisition Playbook: Warm Outreach to Niche Targeting | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Andrew demonstrates his own domain knowledge by detailing Bootstrap Giants' proven client acquisition playbook and presses Rob on whether AI consultants should niche immediately. Rob affirms the warm outreach strategy and details when to pivot to niche outbound. | |
| Long-Term Retainers and Converting Training into Enterprise Deals | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Rob explains the strategy of planning for the fourth sale first and turning initial audits into long-term retainers. Andrew validates this by sharing how a student at StealthX leveraged a basic workshop into an $80k deal. | |
| High-Impact Use Cases: Voice-to-Document and Internal RAG Chatbots | 4 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Andrew and Rob exchange high-impact practical use cases, including contractor voice-to-proposal workflows and internal RAG chatbots. Andrew inquires about technical API integration details, which Rob grounds in pragmatic side-by-side workflows. | |
| Defending Against Commoditization and Big Tech Competition | 6 | 6 | 2 | 6 | Andrew brings strong pushback with a story of a target company made obsolete by a Google beta feature, asking whether custom AI agency builds face rapid commoditization. Rob acknowledges the SaaS commoditization risk but distinguishes bespoke consulting and vertical solutions as defensible. | |
| Scaling Audience and Student Acquisition Without Heavy Social Media | 4 | 4 | 1 | 4 | Andrew challenges Rob on how he built a 200,000-subscriber newsletter despite having an extremely sparse LinkedIn profile and minimal social media footprint. Rob explains his acquisition engine of buying existing newsletters and partnering with tech publications. | |
| Case Study: Upskilling a Non-Technical Consultant to Fortune 500 Gigs | 4 | 4 | 1 | 4 | Rob provides a case study of a non-technical student who secured Fortune 500 corporate training gigs. Andrew drills into the hard financials, pressing for the number of active clients and project pricing tiers. | |
| Graduate Marketplace and Concluding Thoughts on AI Agency Growth | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Andrew acknowledges that the agency training model makes sense and brings up Rob's referral for Jesse Pujji. Rob outlines the directory marketplace and both close cordially. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Rob Howard: Medical professionals bought $10k AI consulting sight-unseen
“What we discovered at very accidentally was a ton of doctors, physicians, psychologists, people in like the medical space and adjacent were signing up for this. 10,000 dollar plus plan with us, like sight unseen, no sales call, not talking to me on the phone, …”
Rob Howard: Private practice doctors are prime early adopters for AI consulting
“Somebody who has a limited amount of time, they're essentially a solopreneur or small business owner as a private practice doctor. They've got some money to invest in speed. And automation, and they value their time a lot. They were very early adopters, even t…”
Howard: Modern AI removes the 10x earning advantage of software coders
“Until 2023, Being really good at coding, whether that was JavaScript, Python, PHP, or anything else, meant you had essentially 10 X or more the earning potential and the ability to build quality solutions than everybody else in the world. And that has been the…”
Howard: AI integration dramatically boosts the value of Zapier and Make automations
“When AI comes into the mix though, now an automation gets so much more valuable, right? Because your automation can be Infinitely smarter than anything you could do previously with, you know, scripts and stuff like that. So that has dramatically increased the …”
Howard: Automation platform n8n lacks proper branding and pronounceability
“They obviously were not thinking about the naming being, the name being said over and over again when they named it. And I think that's because, you know, it comes out of open source coding project or something along those lines. And you know, it certainly did…”
Warner: AI agency StealthX closes $80,000 engagements from how-to trainings
“This is a company called StealthX.co. He's closing, I think, 80,000 dollar deals, engagements, after one of these types of how-to things.”
Rob Howard: AI writing critics miss that most business writing is utilitarian
“People often will complain and criticize about AI writing, but I think what those criticisms miss is that a lot of the writing that needs to get done for businesses to move forward is boring. And it doesn't really matter if it's like poetry or not. Like it jus…”
Howard: The primary value of RAG chatbots is internal team drafting
“Where we find that chatbots and RAG, which is essentially Taking documents and putting them into a vector database so AI can read them, right? AI that can read your documents in a custom way is RAG. When you think about a chatbot in RAG, the value there is giv…”
Rob Howard: AI automations do not require complex integrations to deliver ROI
“You don't even need it to be a super fancy automation because the amount of time that's being saved, even with the final copy step, and you want the human in the loop anyway, to do that review, you're still saving such a huge amount of time that it's worth it …”
Howard: Software founders face a squeeze from Big Tech and weekend coders
“Anybody who's spent 24 working hours with Claude Code can also build a prototype of your thing pretty much over a weekend as one person, right? So you've got competition from the big players. But you've also got competition from the tiny do-it-yourself players…”
Howard: Bespoke AI consultants are insulated from big tech commoditization
“The other thing is that consultants who are building bespoke projects for clients repeatedly are not exposed To those same challenges, because by virtue of hiring a consultant, the client is essentially saying the Google Gemini built-in tool is not appropriate…”
Rob Howard: Innovating with AI has 1,700 premium community members
“In our consulting program, we have a little bit over 1000 students who have joined us since July of last year of 2024, so a little over a year. We also have a previous program called the incubator, which is actually going to be re-released next year. We have a…”
Howard: Innovating with AI acquired newsletters to reach 200,000 subscribers
“We in the past have acquired newsletters and acquired small software companies that had, you know, email lists associated with them, which have been, you know, really great Opportunities for growth for us. And what we have now is about 200,000 email subscriber…”