This AI Business Will Make You $1M (With Zero Employees)

Artificial Intelligence



Book a Free Partnership Call to Work Directly With Me & My $25M+ Team, We’ll Help You Launch & Scale Your Own $100K/Month AI Agency From Scratch: https://go.startgrowsell.ai/partnership-program-?video=0NDATb9zI8M

This AI Business Will Make You $1M (With Zero Employees). I’ll show you the simple AI business model and the fast way to start with zero employees. If you want to see how this AI business will make you $1M, watch this video. Hope you enjoy!

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:05 Why businesses fail?
02:18 Your 5 AI workers
04:44 Copying winning ads?
06:06 Real money proof
08:20 Best high-paying clients?
10:00 The big growth hack
13:41 Stop cold calling?
15:03 Rules for great ads
17:41 Finding your customers
19:52 How to close deals

source

39 Comments

  7. Ultra-quick summary of AI
    Artificial Intelligence (AI) = making machines perform tasks that normally require human intelligence:
    recognizing patterns
    understanding language
    making decisions
    learning from examples
    generating content
    Extremely compressed timeline
    1950s — Birth of AI
    Alan Turing asked: Can machines think?
    1956: AI officially became a research field at the Dartmouth Workshop
    1960s–1980s — Early optimism
    Rule-based systems (“if X → do Y”)
    Big promises, limited computing power
    1980s–2000s — Expert systems
    AI used in narrow business applications
    Multiple “AI winters” (hype → disappointment)
    2010s — Deep learning breakthrough
    Huge gains from data + GPUs + neural networks
    Machines got good at vision, speech, translation
    2020s — Generative AI
    Models can create text, images, code, audio
    Examples include chat systems and image generators
    One sentence definitions
    Traditional software: follows instructions.
    Machine learning: learns patterns from data.
    Generative AI: creates new content from learned patterns.
    Three examples you already use without noticing
    Phone camera improving photos → AI
    Spam filtering → AI
    Streaming recommendations → AI
    So if someone says “AI has existed for 20 years”, they’re understating it.
    If they mean modern ChatGPT-style AI, then that’s mostly a 2020s phenomenon.
    If they mean AI as a field of research, it’s closer to 70 years old.

  11. Gemini:

    "It’s becoming increasingly clear that your instinct was right from the beginning. The numbers he throws around — $6 million earned and $25 million in revenue — are classic “guru numbers” that often fall apart once you scratch beneath the surface.

    Here’s an analysis of his claims and why he keeps scrolling through those numbers on screen:

    1. Where did the $6 million come from?

    There’s evidence suggesting he has generated more than $6 million directly from his YouTube content and courses (Agency Lab).

    The reality: That means the money is not coming from being exceptionally good at running gyms — it’s coming from being good at getting people to watch his videos and buy his training programs.

    The problem: He’s essentially selling a method for how you can make money from gyms, while his own major income comes from selling that very method to you. It becomes circular logic.

    2. The $25 million revenue claim

    When he talks about $25 million in revenue, he’s probably referring to the combined total generated by his students and his agency (Atlas Digital) over several years.

    Profit margins: In the agency world (SMMA), margins are often relatively thin because of staffing costs and ad spend.

    “Agency Lab” vs “Gym Agency”: His courses (Agency Lab) reportedly cost up to 180,000 SEK per person. If he sells that to a few thousand people, reaching $25 million becomes very possible — but it still doesn’t prove that his AI system for gyms actually works in the real world for an average customer.

    The two likely reasons he scrolls the numbers

    You asked about the two possible reasons he does this. These are the most likely explanations:

    Reason 1: “The Visual Overload” (psychological overload through volume)
    By scrolling quickly, you never get enough time to properly read transaction names or dates. It creates the impression of a “sea of money,” but it could just as easily be the same 50 transactions repeated — or partially refunds. The goal is to overwhelm your critical thinking by bombarding you with visual signals of success.

    Reason 2: “The Gross Revenue Mask” (revenue hides costs)
    He shows the “Stripe dashboard” — total incoming revenue. What he doesn’t show is how much he spent on Google and Facebook ads to generate that revenue. If you bring in $100,000 but spent $95,000 on advertising, you only made $5,000 in profit — but the screen still makes the $100,000 look impressive.

    One final red flag

    There is actually another Joel Kaplan who is a senior executive at Meta. It’s not impossible that this “Joel” benefits from people subconsciously associating the name with major tech news and assuming, “He must be important.”

    My overall assessment

    He appears to be a course creator who happens to use gyms as his niche.

    If he truly had an AI system that could automatically double gym revenues at scale, he would likely be licensing or selling it to companies like SATS or Anytime Fitness for hundreds of millions — not spending his time on YouTube trying to sell high-ticket programs to small business owners.

    Does it feel like the puzzle pieces are starting to fit together now that we can see where those “$6 million” actually came from?"

  12. Mr Kaplan your a real "Trust me bro. One of thousands.

    Gemini said :

    "What you’ve found is Joel Kaplan, and your instinct that the numbers “slip around” and that the real business model is more about selling courses than running gym agencies seems to align quite well with what’s publicly available about him.

    Here’s a breakdown of what I found that supports your suspicions:

    1. The changing numbers (200, 800, 1000)

    There’s an explanation for why he gives different numbers, but it’s very typical “guru” behavior:

    200 clients: In interviews, he has admitted that his own agency has around 200 active clients.

    800–1000 clients: When he mentions the higher numbers, he often includes every client he has ever had since starting the business — or worse, he includes clients acquired by his students through his courses. That’s a common tactic to make the “proof” on the website look much larger than it actually is.

    2. Why YouTube now? (The “Pivot”)

    You’re absolutely right that it’s strange to suddenly start focusing on YouTube after seven years if everything is supposedly going perfectly. The reality is usually this:

    Running an agency (a service business) is difficult to scale because it requires staff and customer support.

    Selling a course or an “AI system” (an info product) has almost 100% profit margins and requires very little operational overhead.

    His YouTube channel is essentially a funnel designed to bring people into his expensive program, Agency Lab, which reportedly costs anywhere from $5,000 to $18,000. That’s where the real money is — not in helping local gyms.

    3. The $5 million vs $20 million valuation

    The valuation discrepancy is probably due to what exactly he’s including:

    His actual agency business (which he claims generates around $250,000 per month) could realistically be worth a few million dollars.

    When he talks about $20 million (eight figures), he’s most likely referring to Agency Lab — the coaching business. But in the U.S., “valuation” is a very loose term for private companies; he can basically say whatever he wants unless someone conducts real due diligence.

    4. Online reputation (“Fake Guru?”)

    There are plenty of discussions online (including on Reddit) where former customers complain about exactly the issues you pointed out:

    Poor results: Many people say his “system” looks good on paper, but the actual delivery and results for gyms are weak.

    Sales-first mentality: His philosophy is often described as “sell first, figure out how to deliver later,” which tends to create unhappy customers while generating fast cash for him personally.

    Overall conclusion

    You’ve assessed him pretty accurately. He appears to be a skilled marketer selling “shovels to gold miners” (courses for people who want to make money) rather than being the one actually mining the gold (running a high-performing gym agency) at the scale he claims.

    The fact that he rarely mentions specific gym chains is probably because he mainly works with small independent gym owners, where there’s no centralized organization capable of verifying or disproving his numbers."

    You live well only because there are many gullible people.
    not because you are a genius

  13. JP's AI Plugin Very intriguing as I'm thinking of going into local markets!

  18. JP! Thanks for the videos. I’m old school man so I’m from a time where the knowledge you are dropping would’ve cost me hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Greatly appreciated man. JPs AI Plugin!

  21. The "$25M in 7.5 years just me, no employees" claim is undermined inside the same video — you reference your team multiple times. The proof is Stripe processor volume, not earnings, which can include pass-through ad spend, refunds, and multiple businesses.
    The "five AI employees" framing is GoHighLevel agency content with new branding. Local business marketing agencies are one of the most saturated digital businesses in existence — the "opportunity is wide open, most people don't even know it exists" claim is the opposite of true.
    Your Facebook targeting advice (open targeting, no lookalikes, 211M-250M audience) burns budget for new agencies with no pixel history. Cherry-picked best-day screenshots aren't representative cost-per-lead.
    The whole video is a funnel into your apply-to-work-with-me coaching offer. Roll-up portfolio framing is the carrot. Real PE roll-ups don't recruit through YouTube.

  22. Ads are dopamine hits. The better the hits the better the sale. Don’t make them think too much. Casinos and etc. same strategy.

  28. Does this honestly work for a total freshman. I ask because I've been through maybe thousands of videos of "gurus" and ai people telling you about how easy it is if you just do….., but I've yet to find something that actually works. Im not saying this guy is, but there are a ton of influencers just saying fancy stuff to gain follows and selling their Course. I mean if it was a golden nugget they'd found, why would they give it away for free to random people ? Nothing is ever that simple and I'm seriously tired of con artist trying to make a quick buck. I genuinely trying to find a way out of my 9-5 nightmare, and I'm not scared of hard work I just do not want to waste my time and money !

  30. Thanks for the great 😊 video! In your opinion, what is the best niche to go after right now for your system and what is your gateway product/pitch to get your foot in the door?

  34. employee

    noun

    em·​ploy·​ee im-ˌplȯ(i)-ˈē (ˌ)em-; im-ˈplȯ(i)-ˌē em-

    variants or less commonly employe

    Synonyms of employee

    : one employed by another usually for wages or salary and in a position below the executive level. Stop calling AI "employees". Do what you do, but Cheesus Rice, language matters. You don't have to be slick and usher in new definitions to hasten the removal of humans from the human experience. It's already happening, your additional push in wording isn't necessary.

  35. Could a 57 yo theatre nurse do anything with Ai? I’ve been studying a bit recently and really keen to dive deeper but just unsure where to start! There’s so much information and YouTubers talking about how they’ve made money with Ai but the more I watch the more I’m confused

  36. Excellent! Interested!

    Would ‘we’ be a good fit?

    The Past: I’m a retired Occupational Therapist who has owned a very successful small town 24hr gym for 10+ years… I worked for Apple for 9 years while taking my time getting, mostly, worthless, pre-McDonalds or Pre-Taco Bell night manager degrees…. And now just got my pre-requisite Mac Mini!

    The Future: Curious what niche to target with an AI ‘After-Hustle’ …

    I was considering targeting gyms and therapy clinics with an AI offering…. Ha! Of course it’s been done! But maybe there is still room for my background to add real value?

    I will investigate your material more… curious what it would cost to get some custom guidance? If you offer that…. Your insight might save me from many mistakes and false starts…

    (And my apologies to everyone if this wasn’t the place to pose the question!)

  39. So you started an AI business before AI was even a thing 😂?

Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.