EP 535 AI Automation Side Hustles for Busy Parents: Make $1,500+ in 90 Minutes

0:00 Picture this, it's 8:47 PM Your kids are finally asleep. You have exactly 90 minutes before you collapse into the bed yourself. I've mentioned this before, but what if I've told you that those 90 minutes could be worth about 1500 bucks? Not once, not twice, but every single time that you sit down at your laptop, you see, while most parents are out there scrolling Netflix or doom scrolling social media, there's a quiet revolution that's happening. Parents are building automation empires. During nap time during bedtime, they're simply selling AI workflows to small businesses that pay them from 1500 to $5,000 a pop. And that's not even the crazy part. These aren't complex AI agents or flashy chatbots.

0:40 They're boring. They're unsexy. They're still absolutely printing money. Stay with me because what you're about to learn will change how you think about those precious evening hours that you have forever. What is up? What is up? What the hell is up? My dark horse, friends and family. Welcome back to another episode of the Dark Horse Entrepreneur AI Escape Plan, where we break free from the grind and share some AI powered tips and side hustle strategies and support parents chasing freedom like the modern day trailblazers that they are. And if you know someone did that dreams of ditching the grind, but still makes time for some bedtime stories and soccer practices and cheer practices. Fancy pancakes in the morning.

1:20 You might wanna go ahead and forward this episode to them. Okay, so lemme break down what we're gonna talk about today First, why boring AI automations are the secret weapons that you parents have been sleeping on while everyone else is out there chasing those AI shiny objects. Second, I'm gonna give you the exact five simple systems that one automation expert used to scale to $72,000. Per month. Let that sink in for a moment and I'm, I'm also gonna share with you why I think they're perfect for you and your parents' schedules. And then third, we're gonna talk about how to package these systems for small businesses in your area who are already drowning in manual tasks and are gonna be willing to pay premium prices for the relief that they bring.

2:02 Okay, so here's what no one is telling you. And I wanted to, which is probably why you're here. It's 'cause I'm willing to tell you. About the art, AI automation, gold rush parents. Are winning. Yeah. Right. It's not just all those 25-year-old tech bros out there that are willing to work 80 hour weeks. No. And not even those venture backed startups that are burning through millions of dollars in cash with their complex AI agents. No, no, no. It's my loving parents out there, the ones that only have 30, 60, 90 minutes between bedtime. Collapse because they are the ones that everyone thinks are too busy to build anything meaningful. Meanwhile, they're quietly building automation empires while everyone else keeps going out there and chasing all the AI shiny objects.

2:46 So. Bear with me here. I want you to picture this. It's 8:15 PM your kids, they're finally asleep and you have, like I mentioned earlier, maybe 30, 60 maximum, 90 minutes before. You need to go up there, put your your own head on the pillow. But instead of reaching for the remote, I want you to imagine cracking open your laptop and you navigate to a platform called make.com or N eight N, whichever one you prefer. This automation platform, you've probably heard about it. Your heart's beating a little faster because you're not quite sure what it is you're doing, but you do know you are sick and tired of feeling stuck. You start with, uh, something simple, an email categorization system, nothing fancy. Just something that sorts through the incoming emails automatically instead of letting them pile up in an, into an inbox like digital quicksand.

3:29 Now picture yourself falling along with the tutorial, connecting Gmail. With this platform, it takes you maybe 20 minutes to figure this out, including the login process. You're thinking, oh my God, maybe I'm not cut out for this. But then somewhere along the way, something clicks and you see that first email get automatically sorted into the right folder. Wow. It's pretty exciting. It's working. You built something. That actually works. Yeah. Now imagine it's next week and you're at your kids' soccer game and you're talking to another parent. Let's say they run a small business and they're complaining about how they are drowning in emails. Maybe they're spending two hours every morning, maybe even just an hour every morning, just sorting through all the digital chaos in their email inbox.

4:12 You just happen to mention what it is you build and you see their eyes light up. Wait, you can do that. Can you maybe build something like that for my business? Yeah. See, and that's how it happens. So now I want you to picture yourself saying, yeah, sure I can do that. Even though your palms are probably quite sweaty and you can feel your pulse like quickening, but instead. You go home that night and you spend maybe another 30, 60, or 90 minutes adapting to the system that you already created for their business. Again, we're not talking about anything complex here, just the same EL sorting workflow, customize for their needs. Now, imagine walking into their office the following week with your laptop in hand, and you show them. The entire system running smoothly.

4:53 Emails flowing in, getting categorized automatically. Sponsorship requests go over here into one folder. Customer inquiries go into a different folder in invoices. Go into another one in receipts, go into another one. All perfectly sorted. They watch for about 30 seconds. And what do they do? Yeah, they pull out their checkbook, bam, 1500 bucks. Write their own spot. Now, that's one option. Of course, you could charge them monthly for it and do monthly upgrades and picture that moment right there, the weight of that check in your hand. Now, mind you, a check doesn't weigh a whole lot, but imagine the heft that it would feel $1,500 in your hand. For that short period of time of work, the realization that you just got paid more for 90 minutes of work than most people make in an entire week.

5:35 Go ahead, let that sink in. Now, imagine this, that business owner mentions your system to someone in their networking group. All of a sudden, three more business owners might want the same thing, same system, same price. Yeah. You're looking at $6,000 in revenue from one simple automation that you built. During bedtime hours. Here's the thing, that's not fantasy. That is actually something that happened to an automation expert. I learned these systems from, he scaled this approach to $72,000. Per month, not a year. A month. Now mind you, he's been doing this a little bit longer and got a little more, you know, vested and got a little more skin in the game, but they're still the same boring workflows, the same simple approach. The only difference between his story and yours is he started and he kept going.

6:19 All right, so let's get to the mean of this. Shall we gonna walk you through the exact five systems that are making some parents out there, some pretty serious money. These come straight from the automation expert who scaled to that $72,000 per month selling these workflows that I mentioned earlier. And here's the beautiful part. Every single one of these can be built during your evening hours while your kids are occupied doing other things or asleep. The first system is what I'm gonna call the search. Intent scraper. This one sells for like 1500 bucks to $3,000. And, and again, I'm gonna mention some prices in here, but you could go to these business owners and give them a much lower price and charge them a monthly recurring fee. Think about that. That way you work once and get paid many times over.

7:01 Okay? And here's what it does. It automatically finds companies that are hiring for specific positions. Goes out, scrapes their information, hunts down to decision makers at most companies, and then adds them to an automatic cold email sequence. Now I know what you're thinking. This sounds complicated, but stay with me. You could build this entire system in about 90 minutes with an eight and or make.com. A service called Appify, A-P-I-F-Y. And here's, and here's how it works. You feed it, uh, a LinkedIn job posting URL. Let's say a company is looking for a sales development representative. The system goes out and finds every company posting that type of job, grabs their website, their contact information, even researches the SEO for the hiring manager. Then it crafts personalized outreach emails using ai.

7:45 Sends them automatically. Okay. That sounds cool, Tracy. But who would buy something like this? Well, recruiting agencies, sales consultants, anyone doing B2B outreach. Why would they pay premium prices for something like this? Because this system saves them 10 plus hours of manual research every single. Do the math. That's 10 hours they could spend with their families or 10 hours they could spend growing their business instead of manually grinding away through all those LinkedIn profiles and websites out there. Yeah. Okay. Now the second system, this is the podcast repurposing engine. Review your ears just perked up because I know some of my podcasting friends do listen to this podcast itself. This one commands, I don't know, two to $4,000 because it solves a massive problem for my content creators out there.

8:30 You give it any podcast, URL, and it automatically transcribes the entire episode. Tracks the 10 most interesting points, and then generates social media content for Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Yeah. Picture this, a business coach records a one hour long podcast episode. Normally, they need to hire someone to create the social media posts for that content or spend hours doing it themselves. Right. Going on a podcast is a great way to create content, but with this system, they could then paste the podcast URL and boom, get 30 social media posts ready to rock and roll. Different formats, different platforms. All for the different platforms, right? Instagram gets its visual posts. LinkedIn gets its professional angle, and Facebook get, it gets its community focused content.

9:15 You could build this in about two hours during a weekend nap time or while you're watching the kids. The system will use AI to identify the most engaging moments from that podcast, create the custom graphics for each post, and even schedule them to go out over the course of the next month. Content creators out there, or frequent podcast guests will pay thousands of dollars for this because it turns one piece of content into a month's worth of social media advertising. Yeah, right. Okay. And if you don't think people will pay for this, go ahead and go to a place like Pod Match and see how many people are on there looking to be guests or are frequent guests on podcasts across the planet. Okay, now. The, the third system here is what I call the invoice follow up automator.

9:59 Now, this might be the most boring system on this list, but it's also one of the most profitable. It sells for 1500 to 2,500 bucks and every B2B business that is out there needs this system. And here's what it does. It automatically follows up on any overdue invoices with personalized emails at seven. 14, 21 and 28 day intervals, you connected to their payment processor, Stripe, QuickBooks, whatever it is they're using, and it watches for invoices that have not been paid. When an invoice hits that seven day overdue, it sends a play follow up. 14 days, it sends a slightly more urgent message, 21 days. Now the message starts to get serious at 28 days.

10:39 It's time for a phone call, right? You could build this in about 60 minutes, and here's why. Business owners will write you a check for this right off the bat. Most businesses have. Thousands of dollars tied up in unpaid receivables and unpaid invoices. This system begins to recover that money automatically, right? I've seen businesses collect $5,000 in overdue payments within the first week of implementing a system like this. When you can show someone how to recover $5,000, paying you 1500 bucks is a complete. Brainer, right? And again, if you turn this into a recurring revenue, say, Hey, I'll just charge you two 50 a month for it. Then it becomes a real no brainer. They're gonna get 5,000 for 250.

11:20 Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Okay, the fourth system is the content research generator. This one can sell for about 2,500 bucks to 5,000 bucks a month because it replaces expensive content writers with smart automation, you give it a keyword, let's say something like Scotland cabins, and it begins to research competitor content. Builds comprehensive outlines and it writes. Each section generates custom images and then creates publication ready articles. Here's the process. The system searches the internet for high ranking articles about the keyword that you give it. It analyzes the structure, extracts the best ideas, and creates an even better outline. Then it writes each section individually generates relevant images for each one of those sections, and then formats everything into a professional article that's completely ready for publication.

12:09 Yeah, marketing agencies love this because they can charge clients 800 to 1500 bucks per article. Their cost is now just the AI usage, maybe, I don't know, 10 bucks. You could build this system in a couple hours and let it run completely automated. The agency just feeds in the keywords and gets back publication ready Content. And the fifth and final system is the email categorization system. This one is the simplest one to build and explain, which makes it perfect for getting your foot in the door with new clients. It sells for 1200 to 2000 bucks. Free business owner out there, as I mentioned before, he is probably drowning in email. This system watches their inbox automatically categorizes every email that.

12:51 As it comes in, marks them appropriately, appropriately, and moves them to the right folders. Sponsorship requests go to one folder, customer inquires to another, invoices to another, receipts to another, all getting sorted automatically. You can build this in about 45 minutes using open AI and make.com. The business owner just has to tell you what. Categories. They want urgent and follow up needed and invoices and spam, et cetera, whatever it might be for a podcaster. They certainly are gonna want, you know, a podcast pitches sent and podcast pitches received, and sponsorships approved and sponsorships come, and all those kind of things. And AI reads. Each email and then sorts it accordingly. Why would they pay $2,000 for something so damn simple, Tracy?

13:33 Well, I'm glad you asked because like all the others, all the other processes I've outlined here, it saves them one to two hours every single day. That's five to 10 hours a week that they would get back. For a business owner billing, 200 bucks an hour, that system pays for itself in the first week. Go ahead and let that sink in. You are giving them their time back and there is an amazing price that comes with that. Now, here's the beautiful part about all of all five of these systems. They're not complex AI agents that have connections that would break down constantly. They are simple. Linear workflows that just work. You build them once and they run forever, and every single one can be constructed in those precious evening hours when your house is finally quiet.

14:16 Okay, now I know you're thinking, you know what? Tracy, that all sounds great, but I, I'm really not technical. I don't know, n eight n or make.com or makeup.com, whatever you call it. Here's the thing, neither do most of the parents building these systems. That's exactly why I created the AI Escape Plan newsletter. It's specifically designed for parents like you or her ready to break free from their nine to five. Each issue delivers practical AI powered strategies to start, grow, and streamline your side hustle. All of them constructed to protect your family time and boost your income. No fluff, no height, just your roadmap to more money, more freedom, and more of what truly matters to you. The next issue is gonna break down how to build your first automation in 90 minutes or less.

14:57 Step-by-step, screenshot by screenshot, parent tested, Tracy approved. You might wanna go ahead and check it out. Let's zoom back out for a moment and answer the question, why does this even matter? Why am I still listening this far into the episode? Well, you know, we're, we're living in this huge shift of how work is getting done, and it's probably the biggest shift that's happened since the Industrial Revolution. AI isn't just changing technology, it's kind of changing who gets to win, okay? For the first time in history. The constraint isn't access to tools or access to capital. It's not even access to technical skill or having technical skill. The constraint is time and focus. And guess what?

15:37 Parents have been managing time and managing focus constraints their entire parenting career, right from day one. Heck, probably from the moment you found out you were gonna be your parent. You've been training for this moment. Without even thinking about it. Every time you've accomplished something meaningful in a 20 minute window while dinner was cooking, you've been preparing for this right now. Every time that you've solved the complex problem while a toddler was tugging on your shirt or holding onto your shins, you've been building the exact skills that make this automation system. Possible. The future belongs to people who think clearly under pressure, who worked effectively in short bursts, and who can solve real problems for real people. Sound like anyone? You know, you perhaps.

16:18 Yeah. Okay, so given that, here's your whisker wisdom for this episode. Here's your sticky lesson for this week. Boring beats brilliant when it comes to building wealth. While everyone else is gonna be out there chasing the latest AI shiny object AI agents and complex chat bots, you are gonna focus on simple linear workflows that solve obvious problems for obvious money. Okay, so here's your specific action for this week. Go ahead and pick one small business that you know, perhaps personally could be your dentist, your kids' daycare, or just the local coffee shop. Then spend 15 minutes observing what manual tasks they do repeatedly. Is it email sorting? Is it e invoice follow-ups?

16:59 Is it social media posting? Okay, that right there is gonna become your first automation opportunity. Don't build it yet, just identify it. Write it down because once you see the problem, clearly the solutions become obvious. Remember, you're not trying to impress anyone com with complexity. You are trying to solve problems that keep business owners awake at 2:00 AM in the morning. So listen, your 90 minutes tonight matter more than you think while other parents are out there binge watching their favorite programs. Probably programs they'll forget. By morning, you'll be building the system that changes everything for you and your family. You have just been walked through five proven automations that are already generating real money for real people out there. These aren't theoretical and they're certainly not complex.

17:42 They are simple workflows that solve obvious problems. For obvious money, the automation expert who showed me these systems started exactly where you are, right this minute. Heck, they might have started even further back. They were sitting at their kitchen table after bedtime, wondering if there was something out there some way, a better way, and he chose to spend his evening hours building instead of just consuming. Six months later, he was running a $72,000 per month. Business. Your escape plan is waiting. It's not complicated, certainly not sexy, but it is very real. It's very profitable, and it fits around your family time. The question isn't whether you have the time. The question is what are you gonna do with the time you have?

18:22 And with that, I'm gonna leave you as I always do think successfully. Take action.