Chris Koerner talks with James, Brendan and Carter, college-age founders (21 to 23) of Certified AI Partners, which acts as a company's outsourced AI department. James got the idea from a prior episode with Corey Gannon on AI assessments. After pivoting from small local businesses to mid-market firms, they landed a $30M construction company on a $15,000/month retainer.
Their method: text every contact asking for advice, then run a $1,000 paid assessment with employee surveys and interviews, and build working demos. They anchored pricing with $10K, $15K and $25K tiers. A storm-well proposal dropped from about an hour to five minutes. They now have two more similar deals pending and a pitch to a $12B company. Advice: assume you know more AI than most, learn Claude Code, MCPs and APIs.