Make $$$ Selling AI to Boring Businesses

Get Your Complete Financial OS at https://startup-ideas-pod.link/brex_SIP

I sit down with James Dickerson, the Boring Marketer, who owns Diesel Dudes, a mobile diesel repair business in Charlotte, North Carolina, and spent years running agencies for local businesses. James shows how to sell AI-built funnels to Main Street trades businesses doing $2 million to $20 million a year, starting with a Boring Funnels search that found 100 Dallas plumbers worth pitching. He walks through the leaks he finds on their landing pages, the funnel offers he'd sell, and how he'd win clients with the Dream 100, lumpy mail, and local meetups. If you know how to use coding agents, this episode gives you a full playbook for a service business built around booked jobs.

Build funnels that sell: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/boring_funnels

Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
01:23 – Sponsor: Brex
02:08 – Why sell AI to Main Street
03:05 – James's Background
04:32 – Finding and Picking a Niche
07:26 – The $2M to $20M Opportunity
09:02 – Plumbing and HVAC Market Size
10:56 – Underserved Trades Niches
12:38 – Auditing Five Dallas Plumbers
13:50 – Personal Agents vs. Google
15:02 – Selling Booked Jobs and Phone Calls
17:41 – Funnel Offer Overview
19:43 – Funnel Example
23:19 – Matching Ads to Funnels
24:14 – Chet Holmes and the Dream 100
28:18 – Branding your Firm
30:04 – Meta Ads for your firm
31:37 – Stacking Old School and New School Marketing Strategy
34:31 – Find, Pitch, Deliver
36:02 – Showing Owners the ROI
37:37 – Pricing your Offer
41:45 – Reporting With AI
42:33 – Closing Thoughts

Key Points

• Main Street trades businesses doing $2 million to $20 million a year have budgets and few useful pitches in their inbox.
• James sells booked jobs and phone calls, since owners care about revenue and ROI over AI.
• The biggest leaks sit on the landing page: missing ad promises, hidden Google ratings, and buried booking buttons.
• Funnels with tripwires, instant prices, quizzes, and owner videos turn paid traffic into booked jobs.
• The Dream 100, lumpy mail, and local meetups build trust with owners over months.
• One free build in exchange for a case study gets you to paid work.

Numbered Section Summaries

1. Why James Sells to Main Street 

James started out owning agencies for local businesses and startups, running performance ads, social, and SEO. He owns Diesel Dudes, a mobile diesel repair business in Charlotte that dispatches mechanics to broken-down semi trucks, and he grew it with ads, funnels, and local SEO. He packages that experience into how he'd start an agency again today.

2. The Market and the Niches 

Roughly 112,000 plumbing and HVAC companies average about $2.5 million a year, only 14% of owners say AI is fully part of how they run, and they pay around $129 per lead. James steers toward urgent, high-ticket work like commercial hood cleaning, dental implants, tree services, irrigation, sport courts, artificial turf, chimney sweeping, gutter guards, septic, crawl space, and backup generators. I'd add snow removal in the Northeast, since the trades around where you live are your unfair advantage.

3. Funnels as the Offer 

Agencies still charge $20,000 for a good funnel, and anyone who knows a coding agent can build one fast at high quality. For an HVAC company, James tests a free check, a $79 tune-up tripwire, an instant price, a repair-or-replace quiz, an owner video sales letter, and an advertorial, each tied to its own ad campaign. A tripwire liquidates ad spend: at $1 a click, 20 visitors cost $20, one $20 sale covers it, and the rest leave an email address.

4. Pricing, Proof, and Mindset 

A plumber with 100 leads a month at $129 spends about $13,000, and one $1,714 job pays for 13 of those leads. James suggests an intro install plus monthly testing and reporting, possibly performance pricing later, and a first free build in exchange for a case study. I believe you have to commit to being the best person to help plumbers in Dallas for six to 18 months, and James recommends one market and one geography for six months.

The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com

LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/

FIND ME ON SOCIAL

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg
Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/

FIND JAMES ON SOCIAL
X/Twitter: https://x.com/boringmarketer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadickerson/