709: AI Agents: The Only Skill That Matters in 2026 (Masterclass)

Nathan Chan (0:01)

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I don't see myself as an AI expert. I don't use it nowhere near as much as I should. I always feel guilty.

Ari Meisel (1:09)

I have two agents that have been running nonstop for over 160 days. It could replace any human VA that I might bring in. So it really replaced a lot of the jack of all trades very quickly. We'd had several project management interviews lined up for people and just cancel all of them. The next one was customer service. And I'd say the next one after that was legal, believe it or not.

Nathan Chan (1:27)

Isn't that scary to you, though?

Ari Meisel (1:29)

It's so exciting to me. Like, no, fear does not play into it.

SPEAKER_3 (1:32)

Ari Meisel spent 15 years teaching founders to do less. He's worked with over 300 assistants. Now, 32 AI agents run his work across six organizations, and he barely touches them.

Ari Meisel (1:43)

Anytime you see like, this is the 25 word prompt that's going to 10 extra business, like, it is touch, utter bullshit, and it's just social media fodder. I replaced all of their customer service with an AI agent that I built. We dropped in Flux, which was 16 grand a month. I have this whole document on human writing guidelines. I'm not sounding like AI. For the first time ever in the history of the company, people are responding with like five star reviews and how the customer service are great. Every dollar I'm putting in, I'm getting like 15 out of right now.

Nathan Chan (2:10)

So who did you stop hiring and what role did you end up having to bring a human back to perform? So.

SPEAKER_4 (2:20)

Here are the stories. Learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship.

Welcome to The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan.

Nathan Chan (2:34)

Hey, I have a quick ask. If you're loving these episodes, leaving a quick review is honestly the best way to support us. It helps the show grow and means we can keep bringing you the founder stories and insights you tune in for. Please share it with a friend. Thank you so much. Now let's get into it. Ari, welcome back, man. Long time.

Ari Meisel (2:52)

Hey, man, thank you. It's great to see you and it is good to be back.

Nathan Chan (2:55)

So you got into like saving time because you had Crohn's and you were able to go through a recovery process, but you scaled your business to, you know, seven figures doing what? An hour of work a day and then...

Ari Meisel (3:10)

No, even.

Nathan Chan (3:11)

Yeah, not even. There you go. So now AI is here.

Where do we start, dude? Where do we start?

Ari Meisel (3:18)

It's... So, you know, I've been doing the productivity stuff for probably about 15 years now. I think this is just the wildest time of... I've never experienced anything like this. It is so exciting to be able to build the things that we can build now and say yes to the things that I can say yes to now that, you know, there's always, there's so much that productivity people teach about, you know, being able to say no, it's so much more... It's true, but like, it's actually so much harder to say no to things now because we really can take on so much more with AI. And yeah, it's wild. I'm using AI agents.

I think I've got about 32 right now running for me across six different organizations. So it's amazing.

Nathan Chan (4:05)