Why I Shut Down My $24K/Month AI Agency (And Had My Best Month Ever)
The untold story of building, scaling, and killing a profitable business in 90 days
It's been a while since you've heard from me.
Not because I've been "busy" (I hate that word), but because I've been productive - building in the trenches, figuring stuff out, and honestly... making some expensive mistakes.
While everyone else was posting about AI on LinkedIn, I was actually building an AI business. And then I killed it at its peak.
Here's the whole story, including the numbers most people won't share.
The $24K Mistake That Taught Me Everything
Q1 2025 was supposed to be my "AI breakthrough" quarter.
I started an AI agency with two other marketers (can't name them yet, but they're brilliant). Our pitch was simple: We'd be your AI-powered CMO, handling growth and fixing operational marketing inefficiencies.
The results were immediate:
Reached out to existing customers and warm leads
Positioned ourselves as the "AI marketing transformation" experts
Hit $24K MRR in just 3 weeks
Everyone was jumping on the AI train, and we had a first-class ticket.
But here's what nobody tells you about rapid success - when you're riding the hype wave, your existing network will validate almost anything. We got traction fast because people trusted us, not because we'd cracked some code.
By week 4, I realized we'd built a monster.
Every client wanted a "personalized AI solution." Every project became a custom build. Every contract required us to reinvent the wheel.
And here's the kicker - we kept saying yes because we could deliver. Years of experience meant we knew how to build custom solutions. But that experience became our enemy.
We weren't scaling - we were multiplying our problems.
The brutal truth:
AI was supposed to save us time, but we were working 80-hour weeks
Every solution was so custom that we couldn't systematize anything
We were creating more bottlenecks, not eliminating them
The business owned us, not the other way around
The irony hit me during a 2 AM client call: We'd built an AI agency with zero automation. We'd positioned AI as the service instead of using it as the tool.
In April, I made the hardest decision of my career: I shut it down.
$24K MRR. Growing fast. Clients begging us to stay.
And I walked away.
Why Killing Success Led to My Best Month Ever
Here's the plot twist: May became the highest revenue month of my entire career.
Not from the AI agency. From going back to what I actually knew how to scale.
What happened:
Onboarded several new DTC clients using proven systems
Focused on results, I could deliver consistently
Stopped building AI solutions and started using AI strategically
The difference was night and day. Instead of selling "AI transformation," I was using AI to amplify what already worked.
Campaign optimization: 4 hours → 30 minutes with AI assistance.
Creative briefing: 2-hour process → 15-minute workflow.
Report generation: Manual work → automated insights.
Same tools. Completely different application.
The lesson: AI may be a business model - but it's even better accelerator.
What Every Scaling Brand Needs to Know
I'm sharing this because every DTC founder right now is making the same choice: chase the AI opportunity or use AI to amplify what works.
Here's the expensive lesson that could save you months of pain:
Stop asking: "How can AI transform my business?"
Start asking: "How can AI make my best strategies 2x more effective?"
The trap that catches experienced marketers? We assume complexity equals opportunity. When AI creates new possibilities, we think that's where the money is.
Wrong.
The real opportunity is using AI to make simple things simpler.
The winners I'm seeing aren't building AI businesses. They're building better businesses with AI. They use AI to amplify proven strategies, not replace them.
Here's what I've learned after 2 years of actively using AI and 6 months of building (and killing) an AI agency:
The winners aren't the ones with the most sophisticated setups. They're the ones who stay curious, test relentlessly, and build systems that scale.
Most importantly? They treat AI like the powerful tool it is, not the shiny object it appears to be.
Talk soon,
Kris
P.S. - What's your biggest AI question right now? Are you trying to build around it or use it to amplify what works? Hit reply and tell me where you're stuck. I read every response.
P.P.S. - Know a founder wrestling with AI strategy? Forward this. Sometimes the best lessons come from expensive mistakes.