How To Start A Business Using Only AI
Today I'm going to prove to you that you can start a business using only AI. It used to be a lot harder to start a business than it is today. You had to learn the skills of like 20 people to get started or secure huge amounts of funding. Kind of makes me think of the gatekeepers in Willy Wonka who didn't want him to start his own business and made it super difficult. But lucky for us, we are living in a technology revolution where we can literally start a whole business using only AI.
And the craziest part is you don't even need to know anything about business to get started. I saw a quote from the CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandons. AI will not replace jobs, it will replace humans who don't know how to use AI.
Which is why it's so important to learn how to use it. Anyone can start a business with AI and they can do it in a weekend. Let me show you how.
How to use AI to start an online business
Idea Generation
Let's talk about idea generation. You don't have an idea yet for your business? Well, AI can make one for you. You just have to head over to Idea Generator AI or ChatGPT and just brain dump everything that comes to mind and it's going to come up with some cool ideas for you. I would recommend for your first business that you go with something that you can do as a solopreneur and do not need a big team for. I'm going to put a Shopify article on some low cost business ideas down below.
This is the question I asked ChatGPT. I'm starting a business and you are my business coach. I want you to keep asking me questions until you give me 10 personalized business ideas that can be run remotely with no money upfront and make sure they have a large market. By the way, if you want to know about prompt engineering, I would check out Bridget's guide on how to prompt Like a Pro.
Out of the 10 ideas, the one that caught my eye was a digital marketing agency. When you get your suggestions, make sure the business idea you choose is something you're passionate about. Luckily with AI you don't need a ton of knowledge, but the more knowledge and passion you have in an area, the better.
Here are some nuggets of wisdom for finding a business idea from a recent interview with Noah Kagan. Look at your credit card bill. What do you spend money on? Maybe make a business selling those things. What things bother you to use? Maybe it's an app or a household product. Maybe you can create something to solve those problems.
Look at the things you're avoiding. For example, I have avoided organizing a certain part of my kitchen, which makes me think how nice it would be to have someone to organize my house. This could be a business. Think about the problems that you have and then see if potentially other people are excited to give you money to solve those same problems for them as well. Which leads me to my next point, Market research.
Market Research
So now you have an idea, but how do you know if there is a market for it? Instead of doing tons of market research yourself, just head over to Frederick AI. It will handle your market research, your competitor analysis. Come up with a mission statement, create a business plan, research industry news, find financial resources for you, and more.
This app is incredible for any business idea and I would highly, highly recommend using it. You can easily put together a plan and pitch deck and get down the backbone of your business. It's really important to craft a killer mission statement with Frederick, so that people know what your business stands for. Mission statements are how people remember your brand and what you do. You can put it on the front page of your website or on your About Us page, but keep it short and easy to understand.
Okay, so you have a quality business idea and you know there's a market for it. Here is how you can create the perfect name. Go to namingmagic.com, tell it your business idea, some keywords and click "Name My startup". It will present you with three names at a time and you can keep generating new ones. You can also go back to ChatGPT and ask for 20 name ideas until you find one that you absolutely love.
But before you get attached to any name, you will want to go online and make sure Your domain is 100% available. You will also need to make sure your name is not taken by someone else. So if you're in Canada, for example, you can verify on the official Canadian government website that your name is taken or not. You do not want to waste time on a name that you cannot have. Only give your heart to a name that can commit to you also.
For your URL try to get.com because it's the most recognizable and easiest to remember. You can also use another domain extension if.com is not available, but make sure to go to the website who does have.com and see if it's running a business in your industry. If it is, you're going to want to try and find another name because this could be very confusing for potential customers and you could run into legal issues.
There are plenty of names out there to choose from. Please do not get stuck here. This is where so many businesses go to die trying to find the perfect name. It is not worth it. Don't spend more than a couple hours on this maybe one day to one sleep on it at most. So for me, I'm going with karismamarketing.com because it's available and I really like the sound of it. Plus, I've always wanted to name a business after myself.
Logo Generation
So how will you make your brand visually stand out from the ocean full of brands out there. You can create a logo. There are several options for AI logo makes, some are free and some are not free. I'm going to use Looka AI and with Looka AI, you enter your business name, your industry, your colors and what attributes you want, and it will give you a logo in seconds. If you don't like the logo it made, you just click "load more" until you find something that you really love.
You want to choose colors and fonts that represent your unique style? Choose something that makes you really excited to look at because your logos should be used on your website, your email and all of your business assets to keep it very consistent.
For example, when you look at Shopify, you can see that their color is green and it shows up every where. Shopify also has a free logo maker called Hatchful that can create free logos for you and they're also really, really good.
There are several other companies you can try if you're not finding what you want. There's Design AI you can also utilize Midjourney with the right prompt tools to make your beautiful logo. Once you choose a style you like, edit it to perfection and download it.
It's a good idea to create logos in different colors and formats, one with color, one in black and white, and one with a transparent background. This way you can use it through different mediums and retain that branding consistency.
Lastly, Dall-E 3 is also a great option for creating unique drawings and logos, but make sure to remove the background and download it as a png.
Product Creation
The question we're all asking is how can you now create this product or service with AI? There are tons of AI tools you can use for this process depending on what you need. You can create a whole ebook, an online course, templates, tools, music, art and more. You can also create physical products, more on that in a little bit.
There's a website that I found that was super helpful called Deepgram. Here you can search for AI apps that actually help build your business. So if there's a specific product you want to make with AI, try looking it up on there or on Google.
Although digital marketing agencies mostly focus on services, I want to show you how you can create a digital product to sell on your Shopify store.
I'm going to start by creating a social media marketing guide for companies to use. And yes, we are going to make it using only AI. I decided to make the guide with AI Book Generator. It's super simple. You give it a title and description, generate some chapters, edit them a little bit, and boom, you can start creating your book. It's kind of like having a ghostwriter.
I did design my own cover because I wanted the front to be a little bit more visually appealing. But for covers again, you can just use Dall-E 3 or Midjourney.
Another incredible thing you can do is create a no code SaaS app with a platform called Bubble.io. You can then charge people a monthly subscription and make money in your sleep.
As a reminder, SaaS stands for software as a service. Shopify or Zoom are really good examples of software as a service. It's typically something you make once, but people can use forever.
If you want to sell your digital products on your Shopify store, here are two Shopify apps that will help you do just that. It's FileMonk and SkyPilot. Both of these apps will send a digital download link to the customer once they purchase. And what's really cool is they also protect your creations with Watermarks and IP alerts.
So what if you want to create physical products with AI, it's impossible. You say, no, it's not. There are several things that we can do. If you want to make a custom product. You can create 3D renders with Vizcom for free. You can use it as a reference to go into production with.
So a 3D render is a model or mockup of a product. It isn't just 2D, but it shows up as a 3D immersive experience. So you can usually look at the product from different angles to get a full view of the design. And this can be incredibly helpful in the product development process because most development companies will require you to have a design so they know exactly what to create.
If you want to white label a product using Print on Demand, we can use an app called Wonder AI. White labeling is basically adding your own branding or design to a generic product made by a manufacturer. You can do it with all kinds of products. T shirts, bags, bottles. You name it, you can probably do it. This app will connect with your Printify account and it will create a ton of AI designs for for you to use and eventually to go into production with.
You just have to connect it to your OpenAI account and your Printify account and give it a prompt so you can download Printify and set up an account on the Shopify app Store or you can go right to their website. Wonder AI can also upload your product to your Shopify store with descriptions, keywords, prices and hashtags.
Once it's done, you can create a social media workflow and even get it to post on your socials for you automatically. The app will take a bit of time to set up, but once it is, it will be doing all of the heavy lifting for you.
The amazing thing about Print on Demand or presale is that you don't need to put upfront money. You can just advertise it and then if you sell the MOQ or the minimum order quantity, you can use that money given to you by the customers to fulfill the order.
Upload Products
Now that you have your product, you will want to upload it to your Shopify store using Shopify magic. First you need to go to the Shopify dashboard on desktop or mobile and click on the product section and fill in all that product information. You want to make sure to to enter essential details such as the product title, description, price, the product weight for shipping, and the profit margin.
A digital product will have little or no overhead costs, but a physical one would include some costs, so make sure to put it in there. For physical products you can add an SKU, which stands for stock keeping unit, and a barcode, but don't worry about it for now if you don't have them.
This is where Shopify Magic really comes in handy. It's an AI feature that can help you write product descriptions. It's going to save you a lot of time, so just click on the small icon in the corner, add in what the product is along with some features and keywords that you want in your product description, then select a tone and hit "Generate". It's going to write up a perfect product description for you to use, but if you're not satisfied with the outcome honestly, just click on "Generate" again and it's going to make a new description. So once you're satisfied, just hit "Keep".
Once you're done your description Shopify will show you how your item will display on the web for SEO, make sure to optimize this for what people are searching for. We want the title and first line of the meta description to really pop with keywords that actually grab someone's attention. This is the first thing potential customers see in the search results.
Next, you will want to upload high quality images and videos to showcase your beautiful product effectively. For digital products or services, you can use one of the image generators mentioned before, like Dall-E 3 or Midjourney.
If you're selling a physical product, you can input your photos into Shopify Magic and it will create AI generated backgrounds to spice up your photos just a little bit. Just select an image then hit Replace Background. You can automatically remove the background for something simple, but if you want to generate a custom background like a kitchen countertop, a professional studio, or even a desert with big cactuses, you can do that too. Just select then custom and then describe the subject and the background that you want.
Just play around with it until you get a realistic result that you are in love with. Hopefully you're in love with or at least satisfied with. But by default, Shopify Magic will create four different options for you. If you want more, just hit "Generate more like this" and it's going to give you four more options. Once you find it, select the image you like and it will be added automatically to your product image catalog.
Instagram Store
Once your product is added to your Shopify store, we want to list it in more places so that you can attract as many customers as you can.
Let's start with listing it on your Instagram store. This is especially useful if you have a following or you're planning on building one because people can purchase your product right off the app.
Here's what you have to do. Go to the Shopify Dashboard and then go to the Shopify App Store. On the left side bar, search Instagram. There are several third party apps that pop up, but we want to use the official Facebook and Instagram app. Click on the app and connect your Facebook page to Shopify. Go to the Shopify Settings, go to Apps and Sales channels, open up Facebook and then connect it. You will need to unhide your shop by going to Settings and then Business Assets. Click Manage and then go to Commerce Manager. Then click on Catalog Items and select your product. Now click Shop and make sure that the show and Shop toggle is on. Now you can go back to your shop and click Publish Updates.
YouTube Channel
You can also display your store and products on your YouTube channel and you can partner with creators who help push your product.
So if you do want to connect your products to YouTube Shop, you just need to be in the YouTube Partner Program and be running your store on one of the YouTube's approved platforms. But good news, Shopify is one of them. There are a few other requirements, you must have at least 1,000 followers, be approved for monetization and be in a country where the program is offered.
TikTok Shop
To finish off the section on product uploads, TikTok Shop is the perfect place to get your product out there. You can get creators to sell your product with an affiliate on here as well and this means no upfront costs for you. You just pay them when they make you sales, not a bad trade.
Marketing
So you have the product of the century, but how do you get anyone to buy it? Let's hop on over to Google Gemini and get a marketing plan of action. I asked what are 10 ways I can market my business? Here is what it came up with.
Let's start with Social Media marketing. I'm gonna head over to Ocoya. Ocoya will create content, write captions, schedule posts, and study analytics for us. Ocoya isn't free. However, if you want a social media automation tool, it will cost you, but it's definitely worth it because it will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
- For copywriting you can use Jasper AI.
- For thumbnails and AI art, you can use Lexica Art.
- For SEO optimization, use Surfer SEO.
- For productivity and management you can use Notion AI.
- For accuracy and plagiarism checking, use Originality. This can be very important when working with AI.
- For email marketing, use Rasa.io.
And another really great tool is Zapier. It will basically connect all your platforms together and I would highly recommend using it for your business. For example, you can get Zapier to upload information into a Google Sheet every time a potential client emails you back. They are connected with over 7,000 apps and they streamline your workflow so that everything doesn't feel so chaotic. Especially if you're currently using several different platforms or AI apps for your business, which most of us are.
Legalization
At this point you have a running business, but in the future you may need to start working with contracts for clients, contractors and employees. So here are some amazing AI tools that will help you create contracts. I do however recommend getting professional legal advice on this topic, but here are some tools you can use.
First is AI Contract Generator, that name is super straightforward. It basically generates contracts for you. Next is Contractable. It will create a whole contract specifically for what you do, and you can add in the names of all the parties along with anything that's missing afterward. But guys, make sure you read over these very thoroughly. As a digital marketing company, I would absolutely need one of these for potential contractors.
And guys, you can play around with this until you find contracts that work well for your business. You now have a running business and we just proved that anybody can be an entrepreneur and they can do it within 48 hours.
So if you haven't been following along, you can get your Shopify store set up right now using this link. You'll be happy to know that There are over 80 apps that you can integrate right into your store. There are tools to help with your customer service, fulfillment, subscriptions and everything else.
