7 min read
What it costs to start an AI agency
The fixed cost is $49 a month. The real number is the cash dip when your first client signs. Here is the month-one math at the cheap and expensive ends, and who should wait.
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The Lumina Sales blog
Updates, ideas, and practical notes from Lumina Sales on building and selling AI software.
Follow via RSSThe fixed cost is $49 a month. The real number is the cash dip when your first client signs. Here is the month-one math at the cheap and expensive ends, and who should wait.
Landscaping owners lose estimate calls while they are on a mower. Here is how to demo an AI receptionist to them, where the trade gets hard, and when in the year to sell.
A first white-label AI demo takes about ten minutes, most of it spent choosing a subdomain and uploading a logo. Here is the setup order, what to have ready beforehand, and the limits to know before you start.
Repair shops are short on technician hours, not on demand. That changes the pitch from more leads to protecting the hours they already sold. Here is the vertical playbook: the three calls to build the demo around, what an AI front desk cannot fix, and how to price it.
Nothing gets deleted. Your published demo unpublishes, every draft stays, and usage drops to zero until you resubscribe. Here is the full answer, including the part about client builds that nobody thinks to ask on the pricing call.
Electrical shops have more work than they can staff, which makes the pitch "stop leaking calls" instead of "get more leads." Here is which electrical businesses to target, what the build has to do differently, what you should refuse to automate, and how to price it.
AI agents can complete a purchase inside a chat window. They cannot book your client's 2pm. Here is what the shipped commerce protocols actually cover, why hotels are the first service vertical, and what to sell into the trades while the rest of it is still a waitlist.
A call that sounds perfect and books nothing is the failure you are hunting, and the only place it shows up is the action log. Here are the nine test calls to run before a client build goes live, what to check after each one, and the registration clock that can add two weeks whatever your testing says.
The staffing-shortage pitch is out of date and vets know it. Visits are down, clients are price sensitive, and schedules have gaps. Here is the demand-capture playbook for small animal practice, including the VCPR line your build cannot cross.
A Top Tier buildout costs your agency up to $1,965 in month one and $565 a month after that. Sell it at $1,500 and the client is cash-positive on the second invoice, or the third once you count acquisition cost. Here is the full arithmetic, the sixty days where you are exposed, and the two things that break it.
Payroll predicts an AI sale better than revenue does. Employer firms adopt AI at 26.1 percent against 15.3 percent for solo operators, and a small employer beats a larger nonemployer. Here is the four-point check I run before dialing, and the prospects I now skip.
One hundred live voice minutes is about forty demo conversations, or twenty if every call runs the full five minutes. Here is how the meter works, how to plan a month of demos against it, and why the single published demo limit matters more than the minutes.
