Dan Martell - October 03, 2025


These 5 AI Businesses Will Make You $1M (With Zero Employees)

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Josh Dan Motel Atlas Emma Zoom Ryan
Don't hire someone and tell them what to do Would you die for your family？

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

210.81

Word count

3,181

Sentence count

96

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

As someone who s made millions with AI products in his company, Martell Ventures, I m here to show you the 5 AI businesses I d build if I was starting from scratch with zero employees. And at the end, I ll actually pick one and walk you through the first step myself and break down the cost, effort, and income potential for each one of them. This isn t some get rich quick shit, these are real money-making opportunities you can start today.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 What AI business has the highest income potential today?
00:00:03.740 As someone who's made millions with AI products
00:00:06.260 in my company, Martell Ventures,
00:00:07.860 I'm gonna show you the five AI businesses I'd build
00:00:10.700 if I was starting from scratch with zero employees.
00:00:13.820 I'll even show you how you can start any of these businesses
00:00:16.520 with a simple four-step process.
00:00:18.900 And at the end, I'll actually pick one
00:00:21.380 and walk you through the first step myself.
00:00:24.120 I'll also break down the cost, effort,
00:00:26.180 and income potential for each one of them. 0.97
00:00:28.080 This isn't some get-rich-quick bullshit. 0.88
00:00:30.520 These are real money-making opportunities 0.98
00:00:32.280 you can start today.
00:00:33.600 So let's dive in.
00:00:34.500 Number five, one of my favorites,
00:00:36.780 the AI appointment setter.
00:00:38.920 Essentially, businesses are gonna pay you
00:00:40.780 to take the inbound calls, put AI in the middle,
00:00:43.820 and get them setting appointments so they can get sales. 0.86
00:00:46.760 It's such an easy thing to sell
00:00:48.820 because essentially you're taking somebody
00:00:50.980 that's full-time that costs money to answer that phone
00:00:54.000 for a fraction of the cost
00:00:55.580 to actually perform better than they can.
00:00:57.340 so the coolest part is the cost is low for you to get started because it costs anything the effort
00:01:03.500 is medium because you do need to learn some new skills like a little bit of sales and a little
00:01:07.500 bit of configuration but the potential is massive literally you could be making 500 to a thousand
00:01:13.260 dollars a day easily just by talking to businesses that want to make more money now i understand this
00:01:19.100 can sound a little bit crazy but i'm going to show you through an example okay so there's a company
00:01:24.060 called youratlas.com, which is essentially an AI appointment setter. You can go to the website
00:01:29.160 right now and try it out for yourself. When you come in, they actually prompt you to do a demo.
00:01:33.920 Hey, let's try it out, which I love. You just put in your information. I'm going to put Dan
00:01:37.440 Motel. I'm going to give it my email address and I give it my phone number. And then I just say,
00:01:41.260 talk to the AI. Now it's going to call me. Happened in real time. I accept and listen to this.
00:01:46.060 Am I speaking with Dan? Yeah. Hey Emma, this is Dan. Great. Thanks for confirming Dan. How's
00:01:50.300 your day going it's going amazing emma i'm a little busy can we make this really quick i just
00:01:55.000 checking out the website i wasn't sure what it is but i've got a small business and i need to
00:01:58.580 automate my sales calls or honestly any appointment calls people call me i totally get it dan to keep
00:02:04.020 this quick atlas is the world's first ai revenue engine that ensures you never lose a lead to slow
00:02:08.360 follow-ups and ad spend again this is like you're spending at least three thousand dollars monthly
00:02:12.040 on ads atlas to automate and drive more sales does automating your calls and appointments like
00:02:16.780 this sound like the kind of solution your business could benefit from? Yeah, that's actually why I'm
00:02:21.460 calling. That's fantastic to hear, Dan. Let's get you connected with our founder for a quick demo.
00:02:26.220 It'll show you exactly how Atlas can work for your business. Would you prefer selling a time
00:02:29.900 today or later this week? All appointments are in Atlantic time. I'm busy today. Let's do it
00:02:34.340 tomorrow at four o'clock. Do you have an opening? Okay, I'm just checking on that one sec. It looks
00:02:38.840 like tomorrow we don't have a slot free at 4 p.m., but we have availability on August 26th at 6.30
00:02:44.020 p.m or 7 30 p.m atlantic time would one of these slots work for you yeah that works let's do 6 30.
00:02:49.860 that was all ai isn't that freaking crazy like human level conversation i gave it objections i
00:02:55.940 told it times i confirmed the call and it's going to send me a text message i mean it's wild there's
00:03:00.020 no way businesses don't buy that so now i want to teach you the ai startup ladder because these are
00:03:04.500 the exact steps you're going to want to go through to actually start your ai company step one is
00:03:09.060 validate you have to pick a niche and outreach to them it's essentially a way to prove that the
00:03:14.100 people want to buy what you're selling so you might start with med spas or lawn care or maybe
00:03:19.860 agency founders that are looking to book sales calls step two is you want to pre-sell that's
00:03:24.660 where you sell and collect the cash before you ever build it's actually pretty simple you just
00:03:30.100 create a document with the offer of what you do and in there you have a stripe link so that after
00:03:35.140 you have the conversation about your ai startup they just buy by clicking the stripe link if you
00:03:39.780 don't know what that is it's very simple just google stripe step three is deliver as soon as
00:03:45.780 somebody buys from you put all things aside and go and deliver on that thing you sold if you want to
00:03:51.140 scale you want referrals don't wait act fast it may take some manual work at the beginning but
00:03:56.740 getting a customer a win in the first 48 hours is how you build your reputation step number four
00:04:01.860 now we build that's where we take what we sold and productize the service so that you have some
00:04:06.660 stability and when you sell you can automate the deployment so that you can build the business in a
00:04:11.620 way to scale it and to grow it before i share the second ai business just to make it clear if you
00:04:16.820 want to try out any of the tools i mentioned in this video for yourself the link is below in the
00:04:20.980 description but if you're building real ai innovation right now and want to partner with
00:04:25.700 me and my team at martel ventures just message me ventures on instagram and we'll see if it'd be a
00:04:30.420 fit number four ai content repurposing service essentially companies will pay you to take like
00:04:37.060 long form video content like podcasts or webinars or maybe some youtube videos are doing and then
00:04:42.980 repurpose them as short form clips on all the different platforms like tick tock instagram
00:04:47.540 youtube shorts so that you can get them more reach and eyeballs back to the long form content to get
00:04:53.060 them sales so the cool part is the cost is low because you don't need a lot of tools to get
00:04:58.020 started the effort is medium because there are some skills you need to learn but the coolest
00:05:02.740 part is the income potential is 750 to a thousand dollars a day it's kind of crazy because there's
00:05:08.180 a freelancer i know that use an ai tool to scale podcasts to shorts that was their service it now
00:05:13.380 earns thirty thousand dollars a month from only seven clients we're living in a world where the
00:05:18.340 amount of content and the desire to get a message out there has just scaled and we live where
00:05:23.460 where there's this thing called interest media,
00:05:25.620 not social media,
00:05:27.120 where the algorithms are trying to find niche content
00:05:30.440 to serve those people.
00:05:31.620 And somebody that can take all that information
00:05:34.040 a business is already producing.
00:05:35.380 I'm talking like Zoom calls, podcasts, long form,
00:05:38.640 and trim it down into short form
00:05:40.560 and manage the publishing schedule.
00:05:42.340 They're gonna be in so much demand.
00:05:43.860 So if you're in the content game in general,
00:05:45.840 this one's for you.
00:05:47.040 Now let's get into the biggest opportunities
00:05:49.320 of the next decade.
00:05:50.300 Number three is AI sales chatbot.
00:05:53.900 This is where you help somebody set up an AI chatbot
00:05:57.860 that takes all of their chats.
00:05:59.720 I'm talking social media chats, text messages, emails,
00:06:03.680 all the platforms and converts those conversations
00:06:06.900 into sales for the business.
00:06:09.000 It's wild.
00:06:09.760 I literally know hundreds of people
00:06:11.820 that make tens of thousands of dollars every month
00:06:14.560 doing this for businesses.
00:06:16.160 There's so much content being created
00:06:18.120 and it's generating followers
00:06:19.640 and even chats in the social platforms
00:06:22.100 that most business owners don't have the time
00:06:24.620 to actually respond to people.
00:06:26.060 So what you do is you create an AI chat bot
00:06:28.420 that takes that conversation,
00:06:30.020 turns it into a sales conversation
00:06:31.640 and takes those follows
00:06:33.200 and turn them into leads for the business.
00:06:35.240 So now that we break it down,
00:06:37.040 the cost is medium
00:06:38.340 because there's a little bit more tools
00:06:40.060 and some custom coding involved
00:06:41.460 to make it work for the specific business.
00:06:43.280 The effort is also medium
00:06:45.160 because there's some skills you need to learn for sure,
00:06:47.520 especially like how does a good sales chat go?
00:06:49.640 but the income potential is even higher
00:06:52.260 because of the volume.
00:06:53.660 You could potentially be making $1,000 to $1,500 a day
00:06:57.180 on the low end.
00:06:58.340 The income is so high because it's such a unique process.
00:07:01.700 So when then you come in, it feels like free money to them.
00:07:04.920 So they're willing to pay more
00:07:06.120 because they're not replacing you for something else.
00:07:08.260 They're essentially starting to do something
00:07:09.860 they weren't doing.
00:07:10.920 So for example, there's a product called GetRevio
00:07:13.200 that went from zero to $60,000 per month
00:07:16.420 in under seven months,
00:07:17.740 taking advantage of this chat economy that's two thousand dollars a day you can use their product
00:07:23.500 to serve your customers or build something custom but this world is not going to go away and it's
00:07:28.620 an opportunity anybody can take advantage of right now essentially to start just go back and run
00:07:33.420 through the ai startup ladder and it'll crush for you so far we've covered calls content and even
00:07:40.140 chat now let's talk about cleaning up the data and getting paid for it which brings us to number two
00:07:45.500 an ai data cleanup agency essentially what you do is you offer the service to clean up the
00:07:51.900 internal information within a business because right now most businesses they have like this
00:07:57.180 messy crazy collage of information they have everything from their emails to the relationship
00:08:02.700 software for their customers spreadsheets that essentially running departments imagine if
00:08:07.020 somebody could come in clean up all that information put an ai on top of it so that
00:08:11.660 the business owner can ask a question about their business and get the exact quality answer so the
00:08:16.940 cost is medium because you are going to pay for some other tools so for example not only do you
00:08:21.740 have to like pay for the tools to clean up the information then you're going to have to pay for
00:08:25.740 another tool to convert the information into a vectorized database so that the ai can actually
00:08:31.500 talk to it now the effort is also going to be medium because you're going to have to learn some
00:08:35.340 unique skills to that kind of cleanup and processing for searching but the income potential is really
00:08:41.180 high, like $1,500 to $3,000 a day, because now you're getting into the business consulting space
00:08:47.480 where you're helping a business owner understand their business, where they can make better
00:08:51.800 decisions. And those decisions could save them 50, 100, a million dollars a year. And the cool
00:08:57.420 part is you're also now starting to sell to like bigger companies that have more money to invest
00:09:02.700 in making their operations better. And you are the expert. You might think everybody knows AI
00:09:08.180 right now trust me they don't and if they do the number one bottleneck is having anybody on their
00:09:13.380 team that knows how to do this stuff and they're willing to pay top dollar for that for example my
00:09:17.540 friend matt built a company called precision.co that scaled from zero to seven hundred thousand
00:09:22.740 dollars in seven months using this process and again to be successful run through the four-step
00:09:28.580 process in the ai startup ladder so that you get paid up front before you build anything this one
00:09:34.020 i'm personally biased but i think it's the biggest opportunity the next decade to unlock people's
00:09:38.660 productivity and make a ton of money number one this one's so fun the ai inbox and calendar
00:09:44.980 manager essentially you're going to get paid to build an executive assistant using ai to help
00:09:51.940 these business owners manage emails and meetings the last thing that entrepreneurs and ceos want 0.67
00:09:57.460 to do is manage their own freaking inbox in their calendar it's like having somebody come in and
00:10:03.060 And automate 95% of that is gonna feel like 0.70
00:10:06.380 the most powerful thing that's happened to their life.
00:10:09.140 And you get to be the person to do that.
00:10:10.660 Cool part is the cost is actually low
00:10:13.200 because it doesn't take a lot to set this up.
00:10:15.160 The effort is medium because you are gonna have to sit down
00:10:17.580 and work with these CEOs to understand their workflows.
00:10:20.020 But the best part, you could be making
00:10:22.120 three to $5,000 a day helping these CEOs buy back their time.
00:10:26.860 For example, there's an AI company called Fixer
00:10:29.200 that went from 1 million in annual revenue
00:10:31.220 to over 10 million in just the last five months.
00:10:34.020 That's $27,000 per day.
00:10:36.460 This opportunity is massive.
00:10:38.380 Now, as I promised you at the beginning of this video,
00:10:40.640 let's do the first step of the AI startup ladder together.
00:10:43.820 The business I would pick to start this year,
00:10:46.540 drum roll please, the AI inbox and calendar manager.
00:10:50.020 It's a no brainer.
00:10:50.860 I wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time.
00:10:52.500 This one is the nearest and dearest to my heart.
00:10:54.400 It's also the thing that I recently paid
00:10:56.820 for somebody to work with my assistant
00:10:59.040 to buy back 92% of their time
00:11:01.740 managing those two areas of my life.
00:11:03.260 So here's how I would do it.
00:11:04.220 I'm gonna call somebody.
00:11:05.480 I actually know they have an assistant.
00:11:07.600 I don't know how good they are.
00:11:08.760 I don't know if they're happy with them.
00:11:10.080 And I'm gonna walk you through
00:11:11.160 how I'm gonna identify the pain,
00:11:12.800 figure out the cost that they're willing
00:11:14.360 to associate to that pain,
00:11:16.020 and then offer them a solution that costs less
00:11:18.200 than what they're paying for today.
00:11:19.700 I'm calling my buddy, Josh.
00:11:21.280 Let's see what he says.
00:11:23.960 Hey, Josh, how you doing?
00:11:24.840 I'm good, Ryan.
00:11:25.580 I'm doing incredible.
00:11:26.500 Quick question.
00:11:27.420 You have an EA, correct?
00:11:28.580 If you had to think about like the areas of working with them
00:11:31.320 that doesn't work the best,
00:11:32.580 like if you could wave a magic wand
00:11:34.300 and it would be like super awesome,
00:11:36.000 what are things that are not like perfect right now?
00:11:38.180 With my EA?
00:11:39.340 Yeah.
00:11:40.180 Honestly, dealing with a lot of my household stuff
00:11:41.800 with my rental properties and things like that,
00:11:43.700 being in different, like I got some places in Mexico,
00:11:46.940 like remote gap has probably been the biggest challenge
00:11:49.400 for me recently.
00:11:50.240 And then as a lot of that stuff that you're managing,
00:11:52.380 does that come through your inbox?
00:11:53.780 Like a lot of communication goes through inbox?
00:11:55.820 100%.
00:11:56.760 And if that was like absolutely dialed in and you could think about like what that future would look like, what do you think the gap in opportunity is?
00:12:04.940 Not necessarily just the time, but just like having the time, the mental load not there.
00:12:09.460 Like just what's that worth to you?
00:12:10.980 For me, saving five to 10 hours a week is worth at least 10 hours a week of that stuff that I wish I didn't have to deal with.
00:12:18.080 wow so if you're saying 10 hours a week at thousands of dollars at minimum 10 000 a week
00:12:24.800 it would be the upside and the potential of what you don't have today correct crazy all right well
00:12:29.920 what i've got i've been working on this new offer that's essentially an inboxing calendar manager
00:12:35.760 that takes exactly what you're saying is stress points and actually gets this automated for you
00:12:41.920 so that you don't have to think about it and the coolest part is i train it off of you and what you
00:12:46.960 know so that it acts just like you so that you don't have to be involved but it does the thing
00:12:52.400 the way you would want to do it does that make sense like it it's crazy yep all of it yeah because
00:12:59.520 it can learn everything from your inbox your calendar has all the data i'm assuming you have
00:13:04.160 things scheduled there so you can learn from your calendar it learns from your inbox and then the
00:13:08.080 best part is is that it doesn't do anything until you train it but once it's trained it actually
00:13:12.560 works just like you would without you being involved i know it sounds like magic here's
00:13:17.680 the deal i'm just what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna schedule a call with you and do a product demo to
00:13:22.560 actually show you how it works and then we can talk about moving forward then does that make
00:13:26.080 sense cool let's get a schedule he actually thinks that i'm selling this here's the big idea it's
00:13:31.040 about doing the reps it's about picking up the phone the first three calls are not going to feel
00:13:35.840 good just get the calls done learn the pitch learn the flow learn how to speak to the customer learn
00:13:41.440 to understand where their problems are all i did is very simple i nailed the problem and then i
00:13:46.880 talked about the potential i quantified it quickly and then i said i had a solution that would solve
00:13:52.640 the problem the way they explained to me they wish it was solved for them from that place i schedule
00:13:57.440 the next call it gives them time to think about it and i can come in with a demo just like the one i
00:14:02.320 showed you and they go wow ai today when it works well it feels like magic the customers won't even
00:14:09.840 believe it when you show it to them but when you get that first customer the second customer the
00:14:14.160 third customer and you build that proof point and you collect those testimonials it creates the
00:14:19.680 snowball that makes you the number one person in your niche and that's how you build a business
00:14:25.840 in this new ai economy now i know this is a little overwhelming and there's a lot of options
00:14:30.240 on what kind of business is to start but the key is to look at your situation ask yourself like
00:14:35.520 what business do you find the most fascinating what do you inherently enjoy and pick one and
00:14:40.960 go all in follow the ai startup ladder validate pick up the phone call call call i'm telling you
00:14:49.200 that is the skill ai can give you answers but it can't do the action for you you need to be the
00:14:54.960 one to find the customer validate sell and use that money to build out the business if you want
00:14:59.920 to learn the 15 ai tools you need to build a million dollar business click the video and i'll
00:15:04.560 I'll see you on the other side.