Monetizing AI: Workflows, Agents & Business Models [Megathread]

[LordFall]

After the discussion on AI in the AI bubble thread, @Joshe suggested we start a thread discussing more specifically AI applications in a business context.

@something_else had good insight on a business model based around being a context-engineering agency that customizes frontier models for specific enterprise applications which indeed sounds like it would be quite profitable. 

I don't really have a technical background so my main use case will be to use agentic solutions to build a cutting edge CRM that automates outreach and prospect followup for my existing services. 

Feel free to discuss either of these applications or brainstorm/share other ways you can think of to use AI to make money! It's great to talk about the philosophical and political implications of the AI revolution but keeping things practical and actionable will give us all way more value and experience in the field.  

[Lyubov]

To be honest I read your post and it was really vague to me. I understood what you wrote but it’s very broad with a lot of buzzwords. 

I believe you will need to actually genuinely offer something yourself that the ai can’t do. Deep expertise in actual problem solving yourself. Because there would be no reason for them to pay you when they can use the ai themselves to do this. 

[LordFall]

50 minutes ago, Lyubov said:

To be honest I read your post and it was really vague to me. I understood what you wrote but it’s very broad with a lot of buzzwords. 

I believe you will need to actually genuinely offer something yourself that the ai can’t do. Deep expertise in actual problem solving yourself. Because there would be no reason for them to pay you when they can use the ai themselves to do this. 

That’s a common misconception about service businesses. Clients don’t pay because they lack access to the tool; they pay because they don't have the time, skill, or desire to build and manage the system themselves. Anyone can open an LLM, but very few business owners know how to wire it into a reliable workflow that solves an actual operational bottleneck.

For me I'm not banking on AI as the product quite yet, perhaps for my creative communities later in 2027. I'm a dating photographer and consultant so I mostly need help with the administration of my business not really the product at the moment. 

At the moment I have trouble with endless spreadsheets of prospects that have replied to my ads but I cannot effectively track them and reply to them with my current workflow, it's a bit overwhelming. Automating all of that would save me massive headaches and probably 2x my cashflow by itself. 

I also run multiple content brands where aggregating and analyzing cross-platform analytics is tedious. Feeding raw Google Sheets into Gemini has already streamlined reporting, but building a dedicated workflow around it will take that leverage further.

I also have in mind a conversational AI that can coach guys on conversation skills but that's a longer term product to develop. 

What about you, what kind of operations or projects do you think AI could help you with? 

Edited 56 minutes ago by LordFall

[Lyubov]

22 minutes ago, LordFall said:

That’s a common misconception about service businesses. Clients don’t pay because they lack access to the tool; they pay because they don't have the time, skill, or desire to build and manage the system themselves. Anyone can open an LLM, but very few business owners know how to wire it into a reliable workflow that solves an actual operational bottleneck.

Well yeah… but my point was you actually have to be able to solve their problem yourself. What problem have you specifically identified other people have which you’re able to fix? Especially with ai? It is just the tool here. You’re the one swinging the hammer. The hammer’s existence and you having one doesn’t mean you (royal you, not you specifically) have a solution to their problem. 

Quote

For me I'm not banking on AI as the product quite yet, perhaps for my creative communities later in 2027. I'm a dating photographer and consultant so I mostly need help with the administration of my business not really the product at the moment. 

At the moment I have trouble with endless spreadsheets of prospects that have replied to my ads but I cannot effectively track them and reply to them with my current workflow, it's a bit overwhelming. Automating all of that would save me massive headaches and probably 2x my cashflow by itself. 

I also run multiple content brands where aggregating and analyzing cross-platform analytics is tedious. Feeding raw Google Sheets into Gemini has already streamlined reporting, but building a dedicated workflow around it will take that leverage further.

I also have in mind a conversational AI that can coach guys on conversation skills but that's a longer term product to develop. 

What about you, what kind of operations or projects do you think AI could help you with? 

ai could help you reorganize your leads if the sheet has gotten so big that you aren’t sure what to do with it. It’s good for reorganizing and house cleaning. 

But messaging them? You have so many leads that messing around with ai for this will actually help you? I mean maybe an initial message to touch base just to see who replies and if they are still interested now but I’d imagine you would have to step in for the ai for eveyone who replies. Handing over possibly one of the most important parts of your business  process (sales) to an ai bot would not be a good idea. I would not expect quality from someone using an ai bot to try and talk to me and I would spot it within a couple messages. I also would be way too paranoid myself to leave curious clients to a bot that makes mistakes, I would not do that in my line of work ever. 

I use ai in my work but it’s more of just an extension or natural progression of stream lining tedious tasks and helping in general. There is absolutely nothing ai can do on its own for my job and nothing can be done autonomously. I am a tutor and university counselor for foreign students wishing to attend top 100 universities in the USA and UK. 

Edited 34 minutes ago by Lyubov

[LordFall]

23 minutes ago, Lyubov said:

I use ai in my work but it’s more of just an extension or natural progression of stream lining tedious tasks and helping in general. There is absolutely nothing ai can do on its own for my job and nothing can be done autonomously. I am a tutor and university counselor for foreign students wishing to attend top 100 universities in the USA and UK. 

That makes complete sense given your field. High-ticket admissions consulting for top 100 US/UK universities is a deeply bespoke, high-trust advisory service. You have a higher bar to reach to automate the core relationship.

Where someone in your position might find leverage isn't in replacing the counseling, but in distribution and administrative triage. How do clients find you right now? Do you post content or run ads or it's mostly word of mouth? 

26 minutes ago, Lyubov said:

But messaging them? You have so many leads that messing around with ai for this will actually help you? I mean maybe an initial message to touch base just to see who replies and if they are still interested now but I’d imagine you would have to step in for the ai for eveyone who replies. Handing over possibly one of the most important parts of your business  process (sales) to an ai bot would not be a good idea. I would not expect quality from someone using an ai bot to try and talk to me and I would spot it within a couple messages. I also would be way too paranoid myself to leave curious clients to a bot that makes mistakes, I would not do that in my line of work ever. 

My text conversations are all the same before I put the business on hiatus I had sales scripts and was training people to handle the DM appointment setting for me because it's really always the same 5 questions and conversation threads that happen. I think an LLM could easily do the same thing and I can just track the conversion rate to see if it works as intended. My personal one was only like 10% higher than when I got a sales guy to do it for me and I only trained him for a few days.

I sell dating photoshoots and in one city I would get about 3 leads a day with a $20/day adspend and I think I could've probably 3x that before hitting diminishing returns so that's a little under 300 leads a month for one big Canadian city. My goal was to spread to US cities and big European ones and hire local photographers to shoot my clients so if I managed to scale it to 20 cities it could get to 6000 leads a month. I think if I perfected the system I could run it in way more than 20 cities too. 

I think I will get back on it in Q1-2027 and really set up agents throughout the whole process and I think it will crush. To me I think in systems and get bored with repetitive labor so AI is a godsend. My role will be mostly in quality control and new developing new product lines so I'm very excited to see what the next few years will have in store.