The easy part is building the agent

I do AI systems for my clients and I sell them for a ton of money. Sometimes it does not work, because when you tell the client what it costs they say they do not want it anymore.

The easiest part is creating the agents. The hard part is selling it. A lot of people on YouTube and other social media do not say that. They say make $50,000 selling AI agents. It is not as easy as you think.

6:56

“The hard part is to sell it.”

What we were actually building

My son Jeremy is freshly 15. He wants to start his own merch and sell it on TikTok. He is the creator and the model. He has no content creation strategy, it is just me figuring it out. He has no idea what any of it costs, which he says is not his problem, it is dad's problem.

I have worked with over 400 companies in the last 10 years and generated tons of revenue for them. I can market anything. I have a decent social media following, but my interest is not getting more views and more likes. What I do for my clients is help them make more money.

Teach the agent what he likes, then design without him

The first thing we did was have a conversation. Jeremy introduced himself to the agent, said he wanted to build his own t-shirt designs, and asked it to ask him questions. Funny or clean. Brands he likes. Who the audience is, which for him is strangers on TikTok. Front only, back only, or both.

The reason we do this is so it can help me create the designs at home without actually having him there. No going back and forth. I already have his preferences, so I send him a batch and he picks the ones he likes.

15:45

“It's going to help me create the designs at home.”

The name was the hardest part

We asked for 10 to 12 brand names with a point of view attached, then had it save every name to a file so I have it for future reference. Human error was good. Night shift was good. Both were taken three or four times over.

Mujin was the one. It means unmanned, nobody working there. A mujin store in Japan is a real thing, all over the country. You walk in at 3am and there is no cashier. An American brand with a Japanese name, and nobody else is using it.

We figured out the name of the brand. That is the most important part and the hardest part. Everything after that is designing a website, a marketing campaign, and shooting content.

Six designs, print two

Drop one is two designs, one garment color, four sizes. Washed black. But we make six lockups, not two, because the six go into a poll on TikTok and people argue in the comments about which one we should make. That is the thing you actually want.

Then you open pre-orders on the winner and watch how many of the voters actually show up. Other brands have done this before. It also means the audience interacts with you and starts feeling like they belong to something bigger.

33:28

“Can't run that with two designs.”

Do not let it hand you a store nobody has been in

The design is a faded, blurry photo of a drinks fridge in a convenience store at night. The agent was clear that stock photos get you a convenience store nobody has ever been in. So Jeremy goes to the 7-Eleven near his house, takes photos of what he thinks looks good, and texts them to me. We use those as the references.

That is how much more original the whole process gets. I am teaching him the new methods, but I am not doing those stupid AI videos and AI photos that brands are doing now.

34:25

“You go take photos of what you think's aesthetically good.”

Why I would rather do this than hire it out

It is easier to do this than argue with an employee for 30 minutes. Imagine having a video editor and chasing him. Where is the stuff. You told me Tuesday and today is Thursday.

These tools work 24/7. They never complain and they are never going to ask me for more money. They do make mistakes. On this one it rendered the mockup, found the errors itself, said it was going to fix it and ran it again.

43:39

“It's easier to do this than argue with an employee.”

Watch what the work costs you

Every time we generate an image or a mockup, we pay. Last week I was generating ads for a client and I forgot to tell the image generator to use the cheaper model for drafts. It cost me about $8. For image generation that is a lot. It should be a dollar or less.

Same idea with the model you are in. Switch models. If I am writing a caption, something quick, I use the cheap one. If I am brainstorming or designing, I need the best model. Those things matter.

19:02

“This is very important. Switch models.”

We stopped when we were looking at fonts, because if we go down that path we will be looking at fonts forever. We have the name, the lockup and the direction. Next is the website, the content, the TikTok shop and the traffic.