r/AINativeAgencies

Translated from Norwegian to English with ChatGPT, purely for structure. 😅

Hey everyone,

I really need some help here and hoping some of you can point me in the right direction.

Quick background on me. I'm a sales guy at heart. I've been in sales for 20+ years, everything from cold calling to warm leads, and I've also worked in the agency space for 15+ years.

I've been part of starting, building and scaling a couple agencies before, biggest one to around $2M/year. But back then we were usually 3-4 key people from pretty much the start. So I was never doing literally everything myself.

About 8 months ago I decided to start my own agency.

And looking back now, I've spent a stupid amount of time on stuff that probably doesnt matter.

I've overthought the concept, changed positioning, pivoted between niches, changed things again etc.

I probably should have just stuck with what I've always been good at, which is working with SMBs in general.

I'm based in Norway, and I've chosen not to niche down into one specific industry. Instead I'm focusing on service-based SMBs and helping them with the customer journey from lead generation to booked meetings.

Then comes the systems...

I've spent way too much time trying different sales CRMs, workflows, tools etc.

Eventually with AI getting better I decided to build my own simple sales CRM/front end using Claude Code, connected to GHL. GHL handles the workflows, automations, sequences etc and all leads end up there.

For lead gen I mainly use Meta ads at the moment.

Over the years I've also learned web design, marketing, copy/content and the last couple years I've gone pretty deep into AI.

One thing thats important here is that I'm also trying to build this as an AI-native agency.

I'm completely open to AI doing as much of the actual work as possible. In fact thats kind of the whole idea.

But right now I'm starting to realise that I'm still using AI manually for almost everything.

I open Claude or ChatGPT, explain the task, review the output, change things, move it somewhere else, connect another tool, fix something, repeat.

So even though AI is doing parts of the work, I'm still the person operating every single step.

And honestly it feels like its taking almost as much of my time as if AI didnt exist.

Maybe thats the biggest mistake I'm making.

I keep building shit.

Systems. Workflows. AI agents. Automations. Slack setups. Claude Code stuff. Processes for processes.

I've tried creating all these "AI employees" and agents living in Slack, Claude etc thinking it would make running solo easier.

Instead it feels like its become one big fucking mess lol.

I honestly think I'm the bottleneck now.

One minute I'm doing internal marketing for my own agency.

Then I'm doing sales.

Then a client signs and suddenly I'm the account manager.

Then I'm onboarding them.

Then I'm building/setting up whatever they bought.

Then I'm doing reporting and client communication.

Then I realise I havent done any sales for 4 days.

And repeat.

Thats basically killing the one thing I'm actually best at: selling.

The stupid part is that back in the day when I was focused almost entirely on sales, I could probably close 8-10 clients in a normal month.

Right now?

I have 2 clients.

Not because I've spent 8 months getting rejected every day. The opposite. I've barely given sales the consistent attention it needs because I've been busy building everything around the business.

I know the obvious answer is "hire people" or simply "do more sales."

And yes, hiring is obviously part of the plan when I have more clients and cash flow.

But my problem is that right now I dont feel like I have control of the business once the sale is made.

If I suddenly closed 5 clients next month, I honestly think I'd just create an even bigger operational mess for myself.

Thats the part I want to fix first, but without building another complicated system.

Hiring employees or throwing work at freelancers isnt really financially smart for me right now either. There's also a language issue since most freelancers I find are English speaking while my clients are Norwegian.

So for those of you who have actually gone through the solo agency stage:

What am I doing wrong here?

How would you structure the week if sales needs to be the #1 priority, while you still have to deliver for existing clients?

What would you systemize and what would you STOP trying to systemize?

How much time would you actually spend on internal marketing vs outbound sales vs client delivery?

And for anyone trying to build an AI-native agency, how are you actually using AI to remove work rather than just creating another layer that you still have to operate manually?

At what point does AI actually become leverage instead of just another tool I have to babysit?

I dont need another 14-agent AI system with a fancy dashboard 😂

I need something boring that actually works, gives me control of delivery and gets me back to spending most of my time selling.

Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has been through this stage.

I'm seriously considering upgrading from Plus to the $100 Pro plan.

The uncomfortable part: I'm making $0 from AI right now.

So I don't want to call this an "investment" unless I can actually prove it.

I'm turning the first month into a public 30-day experiment.

Day 0: -$100

Day 30: I'll come back and post the receipts:

• things shipped
• workflows/agents built
• hours saved
• leads/opportunities created
• actual revenue

My target is simple: create at least $100 of real economic value from the subscription.

And if I make $0, I'll post $0.

I'm putting this here partly so I can't quietly rationalize the purchase and forget about the experiment.

My little desk

For people paying for Pro out of your own pocket:

What would you do during those 30 days to make it pay for itself?

And what would need to happen for you to keep paying for month 2?

Thank you!!!!!

I tore the apartment apart yesterday looking for a CD drive, and found one inside a laptop I hadn't opened in 15 years.

My university laptop. :) Booting it up was more nostalgic than I expected.

Then I counted the holes down the side of it: VGA, Ethernet, FireWire, ExpressCard, modem jack, S-Video, three USB-A, mic in, headphone out, Kensington lock, and the DVD tray itself.

My current laptop has two USB-C ports and an HDMI.

Who misses VGA?

But we did NOT end up needing fewer functions, right?

I still hang a monitor off it. I still move files. I still get on a network. I still charge the thing.

Every one of those functions survived.

What died was the eleven different ways of asking for them.

ONE universal interface ate all of them.

AI is doing exactly this to software.

It is not replacing your CRM.

It is not replacing Excel, and it is not coming for Photoshop.

It's replacing the eleven different ways you have to ask them for things.

Your workday right now looks like the side panel of a 2010 laptop. (a tab per system, a login per tab, a different UI grammar per login)

In a few years, reaching every company system through a single AI interface will feel as boring as plugging in USB-C.

You should be asking which of your systems can be reached by something other than a human clicking through a screen.

You should be asking what your job looks like when the interface is no longer the product.

And you should notice the obvious thing about this pattern: USB-C replaced eleven ports, so something is going to replace USB-C.

The question was never whether the old ports die.

It's when AI becomes the new USB-C, and what shows up after it.

So: which port did you actually miss when it went away? :)