[00:02] my first million by 21. And it wasn't through any of the AI businesses you're Because here's the thing, most of the AI businesses being pitched right now are [music] years. The market will get saturated with copycats or AI itself is
[00:15] businesses after a new update is released. But there's one business model that literally can't be replaced by AI because it's the only one where the most important asset isn't digital. I call it the middleman model. And the thing is
[00:27] this model isn't even new. The only difference now is that AI lets one person run an operation that used to take an entire team. So I'm going to why it's the best model to start in 2026, and the steps to build it. Let's
[00:40] get into it. So 5 years ago, I was 22 years old studying finance at a university. Now the only reason why I went to college was because it was the quote-unquote safe path that my family expected me [music] to follow, which was
[00:52] get a degree, get the corporate job, climb the ladder for 30 years. And I also had little to no financial help from my family. So while everyone else from their parents' allowance, I was budgeting from whatever I could possibly
[01:07] save. And that pressure is actually what forced me to try and make money really fast. So what did I do? I went into crypto when crypto was super hot during the early Bitcoin [music] pump and dump. So I threw the only $2,000 that I had
[01:20] covering costs. So I was like, I'm going to just let this ride and not take any money out. And what happened? I got greedy and ended up walking away with [music] that broke me for a few months. I was
[01:35] convinced that I lost my one and only shot. But then something pulled me back. And no, it wasn't a YouTube tutorial. It was actually the people I had around me. So I joined a fraternity and met one of my good friends. His name is Steven. We
[01:48] were, you know, both broke college students trying to figure things out. joined some entrepreneurship clubs where we would meet other like-minded people that were crushing it with their own
[02:00] businesses. And one day Steven told me about this business model that he was going to do it off the whim and I was like, all right, cool. It was so simple that I couldn't believe it. All they did was find a seller, find buyers who
[02:14] wanted what the seller had and set up a store to [music] connect the two now on exchange that would take a cut every single time that someone bought. They demand. That's the whole model. But to be honest, I was very hesitant at first
[02:27] again after what had happened with the whole crypto scenario. So I didn't actually end up telling anyone that I was doing other than Steven. So before I jumped in, I started studying other
[02:39] types of business models and trying to understand why other businesses work the something clicked. So I looked at what I was about to build and I realized this isn't some new idea. The biggest businesses on Earth run on this exact
[02:53] before. And after seeing this pattern, I knew this wasn't really a risk for me. So I got really excited. I found a product and I started running ads. And what was great was I got my first sale, but after that, two weeks straight of $0
[03:07] from that point on. My first product was actually a wireless phone charger. Unfortunately, it was a complete failure which ended up kind of taking me back to that whole crypto failure era that I had. And so at that point, I was kind of
[03:21] just thinking like man, maybe I'm just not cut out for this business type of stuff. And I saw how everyone was crushing it with this model, but I could not make it work. And funny enough, I was about to quit, but Steven, he
[03:33] actually kept me going. He just told me that the first product almost never works. And in my case, he was right because the first real win that I had was through selling hypebeast style phone accessories. And so when I made
[03:45] that pivot, sales just kept coming in and I hit my first $500 day in just two figure product, but it proved that the mechanics worked and that win gave me enough confidence to keep going. So, I
[03:59] started more stores and yeah, things did start working, but it wasn't as smooth still in college doing everything myself, like genuinely doing everything, everything from fulfilling every single order, answering customer service
[04:13] emails, the whole nine yards. And I was making money, but I was totally exhausted and almost burnt out. So, I started hiring VAs to help handle the day-to-day stuff, which did in fact help me, but I was still spending way too
[04:26] much time managing people and processes. Now, that's when I started leaning into things started to change. I started cutting the time that I was spending in half and even more than that. And then AI tools started showing up and
[04:39] to shift because suddenly I could do in an hour what used to take me a entire day. So, keep making money and actually have time to live my life and live like a 20-year-old. And that only happened because I stopped trying to do every
[04:54] the VAs, then it was the software, then the AI. Now, every time that I delegated more time meant that I could actually focus on growing instead of just keeping
[05:06] up. That's when I really started to see what this model could actually become. models started blowing up on YouTube. Everyone, you know, had their own thing, which was AI agencies, AI automation, AI this, AI that. And I tried to keep an
[05:20] them, the more that I kept coming back to the same conclusion. None of them had what this model had. You see, every AI agency, every app created with AI, every AI automation have a fatal flaw. Well, three flaws, actually. The first flaw is
[05:35] when they start one [music] of these trendy AI businesses. Every single one of these businesses is competing directly with every other AI tool that's running an AI agency that builds chatbots for other businesses. You could
[05:50] be making some really solid money right now. Every 6 months, a new model is released and it's just a matter of time before it gets smart enough that your bucks. So, in the next few years, most of these businesses will get replaced by
[06:03] But, here's something that AI can't do. It can't manufacture a product and ship it to someone's front door, right? The middleman model owns the physical value. You control something physical that no version of Claude can take from you.
[06:16] But, the middleman model doesn't compete with AI. It actually uses AI as free labor. Every time a better tool drops, your operation gets cheaper to run. Now, the other flaw of every AI business trending in 2026 is that they're based
[06:29] on pure speculation, right? Take Sora, for example. OpenAI dropped billions and billions of dollars building this AI video generator. Everyone was super impressed, but no one actually really wanted it. And at some point, Sora was
[06:42] single day, so OpenAI announced its discontinuation just a few years after it was released. Now, don't get me wrong, the technology was impressive, had. They speculated that there'd be a lot of demand and in the end, there just
[06:57] middleman model runs on demand that's been proven since the beginning of commerce. People have problems and people spend money on products that solve those problems. And you can actually see the demand on social media,
[07:10] on Facebook groups. So, you know if there's demand for your product before reason why this is the best model to start in 2026 is that no one can clone its value. With AI tools, everyone can clone software in a weekend and
[07:24] businesses. But, the middleman model's value is created by real-world creators, and especially with the customers. So, no one can copy 12 months of supply relationships that gets you much better pricing and custom packaging
[07:39] and leverage. No one can copy the customer list that took months upon months to build. And no is going to change that. So, let me show first thing that you need is a store, and I'll leave a link below where you
[07:51] can get your setup for only a dollar following a few simple sign-up steps. so your store is live. Now, let's talk about the part that actually decides anything long-term. Now, most people they go straight to AliExpress when they
[08:05] start sourcing products. And look, I get it. It's easy. You know how it works. the thing. When you do that, you are not or not. You're being the customer of one. So, let me show you exactly what I
[08:18] mean. Let's say that you order a $22 pizza on a delivery app. You probably between that transaction, but there's actually multiple layers between the factory [music] and your door. So, the factory made the flour, the sauce, the
[08:32] cheese, and then they sold it to a distributor. The distributor sold to the restaurant. The restaurant listed it on an app for $18. And the app added delivery fees, service charges, markups, and then you paid $22 for something that
[08:45] cost maybe $4 to actually produce. Now, mind you, everyone's got to make money, but that's exactly what's happening when you buy from AliExpress. So, you're basically paying $8 for something a manufacturer sold for $3. Again, you are
[08:57] of one. But, instead, you want to go directly to the source. So, platforms like 1688 give you access to Chinese domestic wholesale pricing, which is the same products that you can find on AliExpress, but way, way cheaper. And
[09:11] the challenge here is that everything's in Chinese, and most manufacturers only people don't do this is because they either don't know that 1688 exists, or it's also just genuinely a pain to navigate. So, the platform that I use
[09:26] for this is Team Drop, and it basically solves that problem. I'll leave a link for you guys to access it below. It's entirely free. And as you can see right here, let's just say that we pull up this listing right here. We want to sell
[09:39] this product. We can see on AliExpress it's $10.23. It's a dog vest. You can see the same exact unit is $6 less. Probably one of going to be the shipping times. Now, if you use AliExpress, the shipping's going
[09:54] right here we have so many different shipping options. So, if we see we scroll down here, there are a ton of different options. Now, Yun Express is one of the best, fastest, most reliable shipping lines coming out of China. We
[10:08] can get it to the customer in 5 to 8 days, and you're charging, you know, a markup. Now, you can either bake that into the cost of your product or charge guarantee you they're going to be way more happy to get that product earlier
[10:22] instead of waiting 3-plus weeks, even if it costs them a little bit more money. Now, on the right-hand side, you can see this WhatsApp icon. This is going to give you access to your own dedicated agent that's going to be able to answer
[10:34] any questions that you have pertaining to your store. So, if you have like a lost product, if there's an issue with the delivery, you simply just message this agent, and they're going to be able to help you with whatever you need help
[10:46] with. So, yeah, super useful platform. There's no reason why you wouldn't use it's free. Again, I'll leave a link for you guys to access it below. All right, so that's your supplier relationship sorted, but there's still one more
[10:59] relationship that you need to build, and this one is just as important. Now, the thing with promoting your store is that you have to do it on another platform, right? Either TikTok, Instagram, Meta, Google Ads. And yeah, they work, they
[11:12] put you in front of potential customers, but they are not yours. You are renting their platform, and they can either kick you out or they can increase your costs whenever they want and make your whole entire business take a huge hit. And you
[11:25] can't do anything about it because they are the ones that are making the calls. a way to own your customers, you're basically building on rented land, and the only thing that actually fixes this is an [music] email list. And you can
[11:38] account tomorrow, you'll still wake up the next morning, and you can still reach every single person who's ever bought from you. No ads, no algorithm, people, believe it or not, they put this off. They think that it's something that
[11:53] making real money. But every single sale that you make without grabbing that paid to get and just handed it straight back to Instagram. So, let me show you going to do it really quickly. The tool that I use for this is called Omnisend.
[12:09] We're already signed up for Shopify, we already have our domain. So, all we have to do right here is press start now, and then we sign up with Shopify right here. We just log in using the existing credentials that we used. We simply copy
[12:23] the URL at the top right here, we paste it in, and then we log in. The reason why I like Omnisend is because they do email, SMS, and also push notifications all in one place. So, you simply just put in all of your information, and then
[12:36] you press get started. And what's cool is that it connects directly to Shopify, once you're in, you can see that your store is connected just like this, so thing that we want to do is set up a welcome pop-up. So, pretty simple, we
[12:51] just go to forms right here, and then we press preview and launch. You can see that's going to collect email and SMS subscribers from day one via the form. So, it's basically when someone enters your website, we're going to give them a
[13:05] 15-20% off discount to then get their email, which we can then use later, So, you can see this is what it looks different templates. You can, you know, change the text on here, you can add
[13:19] this however you may like. So, there's a ton of customization options right here. But, if you're happy with what you have right here just like this, all you have to do is press enable form and we're pretty much good to go. So, what we're
[13:33] doing here is we're offering 10% off their first order in exchange for their email. And once we press enable form, this is now just going to be running in the background. It's going to be capturing emails for us from anyone that
[13:45] lands on our store, even if they don't buy and they insert their email to get off. And then we can just go over the pricing really quickly, but you'll see Most of you guys that are starting should start with the free if you don't
[14:00] should be good enough. But if you guys do have more, then you can upgrade to like the latest standard or the pro. $11 a month, $41 a month, it's not much when you factor in the amount of money that you get back. And if we go to the actual
[14:15] mean, yeah, it's for every dollar that you spend on average you're getting $79 back with email using Omnisend email and SMS. So, pretty much no-brainer. I would start on the free regardless because
[14:28] you're going to just have this running in the background collecting emails for want to set up is going to be the abandoned cart automation. This one is honestly just free money because when someone adds a product, your product to
[14:43] they don't buy or they put their phone down for whatever reason, an email is So, Omnisend's going to send them a follow-up and that's going to incentivize them to come back because it's a simple reminder. You know, a lot
[14:57] interested in the product, they could have get distracted. They're maybe put their phone down and they forgot. This is that email that is going to remind them. Now, once this is set up, we're pretty much good to go and this is
[15:10] simple. I'll show you how to do this. We simply just press preview and start workflows. From here, we can choose what percentage we want to give the customer on the third email. So, here we can be generous and say, "All right, we'll give
[15:24] 15%." We'll start the workflows and that is literally it. Show my workflows and it'll show us that the abandoned cart is now live. They're going to be sent that discount on the third follow-up, again incentivizing people to come back and
[15:39] complete their purchase. Now, the next thing that I want to go over is if, you know, you want to send out a promo because there's like a holiday, Black you're launching a new product. do that under campaigns right here. So, there
[15:52] you can choose between, but we can create an email campaign just like this. going to be coming from, obviously your like a Black Friday offer, whatever offer it is. You can, you know, create
[16:08] shorten, pretty cool. This is what it's going to look like in their inbox, and then we can go to choose templates. And then here you can sort between the various templates that you can use. So, right here, Black Friday, just like
[16:22] select whichever one you like. If I don't really like this one, I can go right here, press change template, Black Friday, try and find one that I think it's this one right here, use the template, and then I can make any
[16:34] adjustments to this that I would like, the text, the fonts. You know, obviously you would add your own images here. And it just make it so easy, intuitive to use. You can modify all this text with AI, which is cool. Say, "Change the text
[16:51] AI, which is cool. Say, "Change the text to be more bold and stand out." And then my suggestions, "Grab your 70% off deal now, unlock 70% off only." So, pretty straightforward. I don't think I need to go too much in depth, but it's easy to
[17:05] use, easy to play around with, easy to edit. Now, if we're happy with our email edit. Now, if we're happy with our email campaign, then we simply just go over to save and choose recipients. Now, you can either send this to all of your
[17:18] subscribers or you can choose various segments and send this to a specific list. So, people that have purchased a specific product, people that haven't carts. You have a ton of different options. Because I have a fresh store,
[17:33] segments right here, but you likely will. And you just press review campaign just like this and send. And just like that, we have a campaign right here ready to go. We have our automations with our abandoned checkout along with
[17:46] our abandoned cart workflows good to go. It's a pretty easy to set up. I'll leave a link for you guys to access Omnisend for free in the description. So, now model works in practice. The concept is pretty simple. The hard part is the
[18:00] decision. So, choosing the right market, the right product, knowing when to push calls that separate people who build something real from people who keep starting over. And I told you, my first product was a complete failure. And
[18:12] that's exactly why I built my mentorship because I know what it costs to figure this out on your own because I went through it. Me and my team have been running this model for over 7 years now. And we work directly with a small group
[18:24] and help them build it the right way from day one. So, we'll tell you if your navigate the sourcing side and make sure that you're not making the same expensive mistakes that we made early on. Now, this sounds like something that
[18:37] you guys to apply. I'll see you in the next one. Thank you for watching. Peace.