#852 I Wasted $40K on an AI Agency. Here's What I Built Instead
Tropical MBA: Entrepreneurship & Founder Lifestyle
Dan Andrews; Ian Schoen
4.9 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Aaron Anderson runs a link building agency — 8 years in, fully remote, team of 10. A year ago, his business was in negative growth. He decided to go all-in on AI and hired an agency to rebuild his systems. He paid them nearly $40,000. They delivered nothing he could use.
While waiting on that agency, he started tinkering with Claude Code. Then he started building. Then he realized he was building better than they were.
Today Aaron walks us through what he's actually built, what it's made and saved him, and his answer to the biggest question in our inbox right now: what do I actually do with this thing?
Tactics include: automating the work you'd otherwise hire a VA for, rebuilding legacy tools without a developer, and the mindset shift from "what can I do with AI?" to "what can't I do?"
Tropical MBA is a podcast for entrepreneurs building location-independent businesses. Subscribe for weekly episodes on business, money, and the entrepreneurial lifestyle.
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CHAPTERS
(00:00:00) AI Feels Like a Superpower
(00:04:33) How Aaron Built a Lean Agency Business
(00:09:26) Why Revenue Started Falling
(00:10:04) “Maybe I Should Train an AI Instead”
(00:10:33) The Moment Aaron Got Claude-Pilled
(00:16:03) What an AI-Native Business Looks Like
(00:21:52) Why the Old SEO Agency Model Is Breaking
(00:23:28) Aaron’s Advice for Founders
CONNECT:
Dan@tropicalmba.com
Ian@tropicalmba.com
Past guests on TMBA include Cal Newport, David Heinemeier Hannson, Seth Godin, Ricardo Semler, Noah Kagan, Rob Walling, Jay Clouse, Einar Vollset, Sam Dogan, Gino Wickam, James Clear, Jodie Cook, Mark Webster, Steph Smith, Taylor Pearson, Justin Tan, Matt Gartland, Ayman Al-Abdullah, Lucy Bella.
PLAYLIST:
The $10K Projects You Never Do (AI Just Changed That)
How to Build a 6-Figure Digital Business with Claude Code
We Got Claude-Pilled
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | For me as a non-technical person, it's almost like gaining a superpower now that I can just build a solution for any problem now. |
| 0:10.0 | You took this clod pill and now you're just working more and you're super excited and you're being annoying about it. |
| 0:15.9 | This is my business. I need to solve my own problems. |
| 0:19.0 | I need to stop hoping someone else is going to solve my problems. |
| 0:21.6 | We're going to be able to grow better businesses because we took the time to do this stuff. |
| 0:39.0 | Happy Thursday morning, everybody. Welcome back to the pod. |
| 0:40.5 | Let's do this thing. |
| 0:41.2 | A couple weeks ago, we did a Claude Pilled episode, and I got so many emails from that. |
| 0:47.2 | It's just awesome hearing from all of you. |
| 0:49.3 | The biggest question I received is, what are you actually doing with this thing? |
| 0:53.2 | And I feel like there's definitely |
| 0:54.4 | a bunch of us who are spending all day long learning about this stuff. There's a couple hundred |
| 0:59.6 | of us going down to Mexico. We're going to be talking a lot about AI down there. And everybody's |
| 1:03.2 | got their own journey. If you're not into this stuff yet, you're definitely not behind. |
| 1:08.6 | Because the other part of us are asking the question, well, what do I do with this |
| 1:13.4 | thing? And can't somebody do it for me? And today's episode revolves around that concept and |
| 1:18.9 | shares the journey of one founder, their story getting into more advanced uses of AI at the |
| 1:26.1 | founder non-technical level and perhaps through his story, |
| 1:29.3 | you can get a sense for how you might approach it or change your approach. |
| 1:33.0 | So my guest today is Aaron Anderson. |
| 1:36.5 | I actually met him down in Mexico at our DC-Mexico event a few years ago. |
| 1:40.1 | He runs a business called link pitch.io. |
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