hey guys Le Motley here and today we're going through how and where to hire your first developer as an AI agency owner now this is an extremely important and crucial Step In the Journey of any AI agency owner because if you're not able to get this right and and start to bring in external talent and expertise into your agency then you are never going to be able to free up your time to focus on more important things like actually growing the business so it's so important that you get this right and this is the the hurdle that many people never get over and stops people from going on to become successful with this business model long term so I wanted to make this video really breaking down everything that I have learned of the past 14 months and this is going to be probably one of the most important videos you watch this year if you're serious about this business model so let's get into it how and where to hire your first developer as an AI agency firstly my expertise in this topic comes from hiring and firing over 15 Developers for my own agency in the past 15 month which is a bit of a a weird Flex I know um but it shows the kind of turnover that you can see if you're very picky about the kind of talent that you let in and I've learned a lot from from go through 15 developers so key takeaways from this video for you is firstly going to be determining what developer you need for your agency to succeed this year secondly understanding what makes AAA developers different from regular developers um thirdly knowing the easiest way to find AAA Developers for your business and finally knowing how much to pay your developers so you don't get ripped off so very important things um we're going to get through all of these by the end of the video and here's um DJ C with the major key if you are new to the channel and don't know who I am my name is Liam Motley I'm the creator of the triaa or AI automation agency model I'm the founder of my owner agency Morningside AI I've generated over 7even figures with my AI businesses over the past 15 months around the largest community of AAA owners in the world and I've hired all of my friends and live an awesome life all thanks to AI just a little bit of transparency about why I make these videos as well I know there's a lot of Skeptics out there now so um this is done on screen I have software products that I make for AAA owners and my community and if you become a successful AAA owner then you'll become a user of my software and eventually if I do things right um I can sell my software so without you winning and and succeeding with your own agency you will never use my software and I will never make the reach my end goal so we're kind of aligned on this so let's do it so the first thing we need to ask ourselves is why are we hiring what's the point of this in the first place um and this comes down to a few key things so finding and hiring the right developer is a crucial step in your journey as a AAA owner um failure to do this and and hire correctly and bring expertise into the business so that you can work on more important things is the killer of many aspiring AAA owners um they all try to get going they're doing it themselves and they never get find the right person or understand how to hire in the right way so they never advance past that where you can actually start to free things up and scale the business more um and the key thing here is that delivering high quality services is hard in the AI space I'm not going to Sugar cat it you need to have a capable team and capable expertise within your within your organization to deliver quality services CU there's so many people trying to start this right now but the number of high quality service providers who can give a great experience for their customers and create value is limited and that's limited to the people who have been able to successfully hire and delegate it off to capable teams as well and full transparency this is what completely changed my agency from us struggling initially it was bringing in the right Talent we had some really poor Talent initially and when we hired the right people it just completely opened things up for for us I can suddenly work on building my personal brand further so that we could get more leads and it really just set ourselves up for success as we have had over the past 12 months um on the right here are some examples of people winning within my program and if you're doing these $20,000 projects you have to have some kind of talent to deliver this stuff for you so that you can focus on more important things so if you want to get to these levels you need to get this first higher correct which brings me to the AAA model itself and the opportunity that this entire thing sits on and your role in my role as as AAA owners um and the first thing you need to understand is that there are a lot of developers rushing to this prom most AI land with all the money so that they can cash in on their on their share as we are trying to cash in on our share they're trying to cash in on their share um by running an upskilling to this to this Promised Land right but of these people that are rushing into the space as developers very few of them actually have the skills and knowledge to create value in the business with the skills and and use this technology to actually solve a real problem and create value which is where your job as an AI agency owner comes in and that's to identify opportunities for Value Creation with AI and deploy the team and the resources required to deliver it kind of like a general the Army um you survey the situation and then you deploy the resources and troops to solve that particular problem so you are the brain and they are the sword and this is where you create value as the AI automation agency owner so the first thing you need to understand when you are hiring developers is there's a there's a whole lot of different types of developers um it's not just one and so you need to understand where you're you're targeting your hiring efforts so that you can get what you need to to grow your business so there's frontend developers back end full stack devops there's a lot of different types as you can see in this diagram here um so we need to know know what we're looking for in particular so that we can actually grow our business um so I've got this little diagram here of these engineero spheres or the Spheres of engineering um different areas uh basically and we've got no code developers which have their own little thing going and they have had for the past while using things like zapia and make air table bubble Etc and then we have the more traditional AI ml developers who are traditional software Engineers that know how to use Python they've used things like pie torch or tensorflow and more recently they'd be using things like Lang chain to build llm based apps um with with python but what we're looking for really is this The Sweet Spot of AAA developers or AI automation agency developers um that combine both of these worlds um both the no code low Cod stuff and the traditional AIML expertise and that's where we get this middle area here so using platforms like voice flow which is our go-to chatbot Builder relevance AI which is great for building AI tools um and particularly connecting them to your gbts and and AI agents and then platforms like my own agentive which allows you to build chat GT like experiences for your clients and then some expertise in how to use language models prompt engineering and things like this so there's a sweet spot where these two words overlap and that's ideally what we want to be hiring not only are there different spheres of engineering though there's also levels to the game and there's levels of software Engineers going from entry level to senior so you've got a bunch of different factors when you're thinking of hiring which you need to understand before you go and start offering money for these positions so with these things in mind what are we actually looking for in our first hire so going back to the question of why are we hiring in the first place we're either hiring for a lack of technical expertise that that we are Miss missing and you need help to be able to plan and deliver the solutions CU without this expertise there's no there's no knowledge Gap within your agency between you and and the person that you're you're trying to help right you need some kind of expertise and you're you're making money by bridging that knowledge gap for them and delivering solutions that they wouldn't be able to do themselves so you may need some technical expertise in the business or it may just be a lack of time where you need to delegate project delivery to allow you to focus on growing the business um Easy by making content like I do on YouTube taking sales calls Etc so it's either one of these two problems and BAS on your situation whether it's a lack of technical expertise or just a lack of time um that determines whether you're trying to hire a senior developer or a junior developer so seniors are able to lead a team they're able to lead and manage Communications with your clients U they're able to architect and plan Solutions they're able to innovate and Lead product Improvement they're able to solve problems when they occur and finally they're also able to just be used to uh build and deliver the projects that you say you're going to do and Senior developers like this are contrasted against Junior developers which are basically just good for building and delivering projects or updating clients on what's Happening so they can't really lead Communications you wouldn't want them hopping on calls one-onone with the client and sorting them out there that's where the seni you guys come in and they have to be able to manage a team lead the project Etc and you can really hand things off to them so to illustrate when you did one or the other uh we've got some scenarios here so scenario one is a technical AAA founder say you've got some background in software engineering yourself uh that means you're comfortable and planning the solutions and leading the development so you you act as a senior developer but you hire one or two Juniors below you that you can kind of delegate to and rotate them as they're available um so you can delegate the actual delivery of it and manage the client communication yourself in this case you are serving as the CTO or the lead developer of the organization and this is quite common for the people who are Tech professionals who join my program my accelerator um and they come in and they say hey I want to I have the capabilities and the expertise to be able to lead the team myself and that allows you to run a little bit leaner because as you'll see in a little bit the pricing of developers of course juniors are going to be cheaper so if you do have the skills and you want to start an agency like this you can serve as the the lead developer of the CTO and just hire some Juniors underneath you and a good example of this is Mark a member from my community and I've actually got a podcast here with him on my channel if you haven't watched that already I'll leave that link down below but Mark is a is a software engineer by trade he came into the program and he's now done over $50,000 with his with his AR business but he's serving as the lead developer and he has a team of Juniors underneath them so that's one way of doing it um but secondly if you're a non-technical AAA founder and and some of you I know you're coming into this opportunity and you don't have a software background which is completely fine but it's a little bit different to how you would approach it as someone with that background in this case you'd have a non-technical Founder who understands the problems that the clients are facing but lacks the depth of knowledge required to actually plan how you're going to deliver that so in this case you would hire one senior AAA developer and then the owner can work alongside the dev and the client to make sure that the expectations are aligned and then they can delegate the delivery and communication to that senior developer because as we said these seniors can actually lead and manage the communication with the clients and also deliver the products themselves so in this case you hop on sales gos with the client you bring them in you connect them with your developer you make sure that everything's all good and you allow them to manage the delivery of those services and this gives you more time to bring more business into the business and a great example of this in action is my co-founder Josh at Morningside he came in completely clueless when it came to software and building AI Solutions it was just completely foreign to him but in the space of about 2 months of being on sales course with me he was able to learn okay these are the questions you asked this the kind of solutions that we offer okay okay and then I was able to fully hand off sales to him and then he's able to get on these hop on a course with our developers connect them up and do the process that I've just gone through here so it is possible and Josh to this stage still does not know how to code but he leads all of our sales and all of the operations at morning side so it is definitely possible and don't let your self-limiting belief stop you from achieving something like myself and Josh have your next question might be okay how much does this cost for a senior developer or a junior developer I know what I need now but how much am I how much am I on the line for here so um there's three tears of AI talent that we've seen and and we've hired at morning hi and let me just tell you right now that you don't want to be dealing with low low tier Talent there so just take that off the menu completely if they less than $30 they're likely low tier talent and not something that you want to get involved with I mean at your own risk you can you can ignore me if you want but this is from my experience that you don't want to be touching anything uh you get what you pay for um if you're good on the viting side and these tiers of talent translate nicely into these price brackets for senior and Junior developers so the senior developers they're likely going to be $70 to $100 per hour ideally they've got some kind of traditional development background because they are going to be leading the team and you are trying to bring in if you're going to be buying and bringing in expertise you don't just want to bring in a sliver of how he can build chat bots on voice flow you kind of want to get the whole picture because um You probably don't as the agency owner have much uh expertise you want them to complement you cover off the areas that you're not familiar with um and understand what production applications look like not just gimmicky little chat Bots and stuff like you probably can do uh yourself there's a big difference between tinkering around them with a prototype and a production grade solution so these guys that you bring in as a senior need to cover off their the for you within the business so a traditional developer turned AI solution specialist where they understand voice flow agentive all these different platforms relevance make Etc ideally you can get that hybrid you're not always going to be able to find it but the hybrid senior developer who could do both sides of that is really what you're looking for and ideally 5 years of experience in a development role and then you have the Juniors and we split these up into two categories really uh guys who can do the only AAA related services so whether that's voice flow relevant Etc only the low code no Cod stuff they're only worth about3 $40 an hour from from our testing uh but if they have the traditional background and they're able to combine it with the AAA solutions that we typically sell and they understand everything that I talk about here on the channel then they're worth more like $50 to $70 per hour and the reason for this is that if a developer can also leverage these no code low code tools at the right time you can deliver services with far less time invested so for example if you wanted to build a web chat widget chat bot and put it on a customer's website um and you tried to do that all custom it would take a ton of time and cost you a lot more than if you had a guy who knew how to use uh these AAA platforms that we talk about so often here on the channel and was able to just okay I can put this on voice FL I can build this out in a couple of hours you're actually getting more value out of them because they're able to deliver the same thing for less and less time so you paying $50 to $70 per hour if they're able to at the right time use low code and no code tools combined with their traditional background you're getting more bang for your buck H them being more expensive and these guys here the Juniors who have traditional and AAA experience and knowledge they're essentially a a baby version of the senior right they're just missing the managerial capabilities um and the the ability to actually plan these Solutions so these guys are highly valuable and can be trained up as you'll see just here you can turn your Junior developers into senior over time um so they have the talent that you're looking to develop and this requires zooming out a lot more on your agency and not seeing them as a static part of your business but seeing Talent as a major part of how you're going to grow over time um and picking the right things and planting seeds and and watching them grow over time is really important so when it comes to your senior developers you need the strong techn skills of course the 5 years of experience deep understanding of traditional code um and also ideally some of the newer stuff that we talk about on this channel uh interpersonal skills being able to talk to your clients being able to deal with the team um being able to communicate with you about what the hell is going on in the business which is so key um and the ability to Mentor on Coach your Juniors which is really important and for juniors you just want to pick rock stars that are just starting off they natural aptitude towards the the stuff that you're building potential and the ability to learn as well so Juniors they're not by definition they're not garbage or or not useful they are just people who are earlier in the journey and you can with the right training and with the right senior developer can really bring them up into a super high valuable part of the organization and just quickly I want to introduce a few uh considerations when you are hiring and that's the type of agency that you're running will determine the type of developer that you need to hire um so whether you're doing a niche or general agency which i' I've got a video coming on so if you haven't already subscribed to the channel and don't understand the difference between niched and general agencies make sure you subscribe down below um because there's a big difference in picking that picking the right type is so key to your success in the space so uh basically are you building from scratch every time or are you using templated Solutions so if you're General agency you're likely going to be doing custom every time and if you're a a niche agency you're likely going to be replacing or or copy and pasting across multiple clients a considerable amount of the build and that determines the level or skill level of developers that you need as you'll see in a second reusability is a key concept that you need to understand and secondly are you just selling low code or no code Solutions or are you also throwing in some custom coded aspect to it as well so do they need that traditional background these are things you need to keep in mind useability as I said um planning a builing from scratch is difficult and prone to more errors the fact that you can copy and paste across clients if you're running an Eed agency allows you to minimize the amount of brain power required to think like actually planning and architecting a solution is difficult to do every single time something new comes in the door smart developers can handle these errors that's why you hire the senior because they can solve um but if they're just modifying from a template and you're a n agency um then lower tier Developers will do and will suffice in most cases because they're not having to rethink or reinvent the wheel every time they do a new project therefore you don't need as expensive or as intelligent or or skilled developers now the key question you know what kind of developer you need you know what level you're looking for you know what's missing in your business um where the hell do you find them which is a question that I get a lot and I just want to remind you quickly of these engineero spheres where we've got no code developers these traditional guys on the right and then the triaa developers which are kind of this hybrid in between where they've been watching my content introduced to the the concept of this AI order agency model as a whole and they understand okay chat Bots and automations okay tools Etc this is the kind of stuff that we're delivering on and these are the tools that we and platforms that we use to deliver them so you need to find people who fall into this AAA developer category so that you don't have to bring them up to speed on all of this information but this is the model that I'm running these are the tools that we use these are the kind of things we sell you need to find them ideally where they already understand that and they've already built with the tools that we need to build with and the best place to find these AAA developers is in my free school Community not a just Shameless plug here but we do have nearly 15,000 people who have watched my videos understand this and a huge portion of the community members in here are developers and do have a development background I've heard of people hiring ex Postman head of engineering and now they have an incredible partner within their agency there is incredible talent that floats through and and watches my videos and floats through my community looking for people and looking for opportunities there's so many people coming out at Big Tech at the moment who are looking to get into this AI space and the AI agency model is such a a good thing for people to get into because if you're a developer you can come in and give give value and maybe partner on the agency if you're a sales guy you're a you're you're an entrepreneur you can come in and lead the agency and and identify problems to solve with AI it's it's so exciting for so many people which is why we have so many people coming through and link to join in the description but you want to come in here and make a post and say I am this here's my background I am hiring for this this is what I'm looking for either hey I'm looking for a partner or I'm just looking for an hourly basis at the moment I have some clients you do need to sell yourself and and pit yourself within the community so we have a bunch of hiring going on in the Community ready you can see every one of these posts are getting 5 to 10 different responses on it um so I urge you guys if you're looking to hire join the free community it's down below first link in the description make a post pit yourself say this is what my agency is this is what we're doing uh and be really and and you do need to sell yourself in order to attract the best talent so get in there drop a post and also if you're a developer watching this get in there and start replying um engage in the community and there's so much value to be created by connecting the right people together and that's what I want for most of you is that if you can't get this right if you can't find someone to hire um you can't pair up a a sales guy an Ops guy and a a developer then you're likely never going to succeed long term with this business cuz it's so crucial something that I've found and I've seen time and time again with people in my free and PID communities so once you've got into my school and posted hey I'm looking for a junior developer who knows this this this familiar with these tools we looking to sell these Etc um then you need to know how to sign them what deal to actually close these guys on close these guys on but what contract are you bringing them into your business on how are you going to be interacting with them what's the compensation structure um which is a really big question I get as well so uh the contract agression that I recommend and that we've used at morning side is is starting off with a fixed contract then we don't do it anymore but when we very first started our agency we will doing it on a fixed contract where we'd go to have conversations with a bunch of developers and and AI specialists at the time who really weren't much specialists at all but would go to them and say hey we have a client here who needs XYZ Services can you give us a proposal on how much time this would take and how much it would cost you would get proposals back from our different developers mark it up to or 3x go to our client and say hey this is the price of the build very easy way get started you're not necessarily putting cash up front because the client's then going to pay that invoice or pay half the invoice and you can pass to the developer so as long as you got a margin there you can basically never lose money as long as a project goes through without issue and then after that if they've shown that they're good and they know what they're doing you can move them onto an hourly contract and give them a starting wage so hey look we agree on $3 $40 per hour um we're going to do a 30-day free trial so you can basically cut them off at any point um I mean you can put in the contract that you can end it at any point um so this trial period will allow you to test them further and what you want to do is put time doctor um it's a it's a Time tracking thing that monitors the screen and then you can see how many hours they're logging and pay them based on those hours now if all things go well and after that 30-day contract um everything checks out and they've delivered good services for your on behalf of your agency um then you can start looking at a full-time contract um and you can lock in a salary so you're getting $3 $4,000 a month um and expected hours associated with that contract um full-time contracts are of course a big jump and spending $44,000 a month every single month to have someone on might seem daunting um but it is really key um in a number of ways one them working full-time for you is going to make sure that all of their focus is on your projects and you can put in the contract you are not allowed to work on other things and you will find if you're working on upw work or or even people within my community if they're juggling multiple projects at once they're going to be giving you a fraction of their energy and and time that it is required to really deliver what you need to deliver and meet that standard that your clients are expecting so full-time contract you get their soulle focus and also if you do it right you can make your agency far more profitable by using salaried employees rather than all based on so full-time contract is ideally where you want to get to once you have a consistent flow of leads as well that are going to make sure that you will always have the money to pay them um that's what we run out at morning side for basically all of our developers unless we're triling them um and finally you can offer a partnership this is something that might be a bit more lucrative if you are making those School post and and putting yourself out there and saying hey look I have a bunch of leads or I have connections to xby Industry I'm looking for a technical partner to do this you may need to go to the partnership route and offer some kind of Revenue share on all of the projects you do so okay you're going to get 30% of all the revenue for the project and this will attract far bit Talent um because they're going to be more incentivized they're actually tied to the earnings rather than just being paid paid a wage or paid a salary right so that's contract progression and that's about it so key takeaways for this video as I promised in the intro you have determined what developer you need for your agency to succeed it's a AAA developer whether it's a junior or senior depending on your situation you now understand what makes AAA developers different and that is the platforms that we use to deliver our specific Solutions and that kind of cross over between the two worlds of no code and traditional AI development um thirdly you know how much to pay your developers and those different price ranges whether you need junior or senior Etc and finally you know the easiest way to find a AAA developer for your agency because you just need that one person to get things off the ground really guys it's so important to get that first hire and it's it's one of the biggest steps for you in succeeding with this long term so go on my school Community if you're not already make a post Network show up to my calls that's another great way to do it I host a live Q&A every week on Friday within my free community so you can hop on there have a chat with me and if there's an opportunity for partnership you can put your your email or your contact details in the chat and so many people have been connected by that way cuz there's 100 people watching chances are there's someone who can help you or is interested in partnering with you so a great way to find good talent is to hop on those calls and participate in the discussion so that's all for the video please hit down below and leave a like if you've enjoyed And subscribe to the channel for more content like this teaching you how to start and scale your own AI agency um links in the description are going to be firstly my school secondly my agency morning side AI if you want to work with me in my team and finally my AI agency accelerator you can learn more about how we guarantee five clients for you when you start an agency with us so that's all down there thanks so much for watching if you want to check out a recent video for me that'll be up here um I highly recommend you watch that but aside from that guys thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one