I just jumped on the Agency Growth Podcast with Joe Knotts and we had a blast. We talked about everything from turning down football scholarships as a kid to building an AI team member that now handles 80% of the heavy lifting at Carroll Media. If you’ve been grinding in your agency, feeling like you’re the only one who can do it right, and wondering when you’ll ever get your time back—this episode (and this post) is for you.
Here’s the raw truth I dropped on the show: we’re living through the biggest efficiency boom since the Industrial Revolution. Tractors replaced back-breaking farm labor. AI is about to replace the back-breaking admin, creative, and phone labor that’s keeping most agency owners stuck in the trenches.
From Lawn Care to AI-Powered Agency
Senior year of high school I turned down eight football scholarships and started mowing grass. That business hit $3 million before I sold it. Then I moved into power washing and window cleaning (still own those companies today). In 2016 I launched Carroll Media running Facebook ads for insurance agents. Today we serve thousands of small businesses—especially my blue-collar brothers and sisters—across the country.
But here’s what changed everything: November 2022 I hopped on DALL-E and watched it spit out creative. Faces were melting, fingers were weird, but I knew right then—technology’s undefeated. If AI could do creative, it could run an entire agency.
Fast-forward to April 2023. My wife and I had our first daughter (Willow). While I was on paternity leave, I started building what became Ali—your first AI team member. We launched her in the app stores in April 2024. She’s not some third-party reseller bot. Everything is built in-house, proprietary, and trained on real calls.
What Ali Actually Does (And Why It’s a Game-Changer)
During the podcast Joe asked me to put her on speaker. Live. No edited demo. You heard her answer the phone, qualify Joe in seconds, handle interruptions, and stay perfectly on script. That’s not magic—that’s consistency software can deliver every single time.
Here’s what she’s doing for our agency and our clients right now:
– Identifies up to one-third of anonymous website visitors who never fill out a form. We turn that invisible traffic into real names, emails, and phones—automatically.
– Handles copywriting and creative so our team can focus on strategy instead of grinding pixels.
– Answers phones 24/7 for $197 a month (up to 600 calls). She books appointments, qualifies leads, and never has a “bad day” because Tina got in an argument with her husband.
The best part? Every month we take the 10,000+ calls she answers (redacted, of course), feed the good and bad ones back into the model, and she gets sharper. Your AI actually improves while you sleep.
The Mindset Shift Nobody Talks About
Joe and I spent a lot of time on the “nobody can do it like me” trap. I’ve been there. Most agency owners in their first 5–7 years have more time than money, so they do everything themselves. Perfectionism becomes the bottleneck.
I tell every client the same thing Dan Martell taught me: 80% done by someone (or something) else is 100% freaking awesome.
AI doesn’t get tired. AI doesn’t deviate from SOPs. AI answers the phone at 2 p.m. while you’re in a client meeting or coaching your kid’s baseball team. That’s how you buy back your time.
I wrote about this exact mentality in my new book, The Hunter Head Game. The old world rewarded obedience. The new world demands killer instinct. If you want to scale past the six-figure grind, you have to stop playing small and start building systems that run without you.
My Biggest Takeaways from the Episode (Steal These)
1. Start early. I took my lumps when I had nothing to lose. That built the resilience I still use today.
2. Show up with a smile and a positive attitude—you already beat 90% of people.
3. Use AI to create branded leads instead of generic “lawn care near me” tire-kickers (same principle works for any service business).
4. Double your prices. If you’re not losing at least one in four jobs for being “too expensive,” you’re leaving money on the table.
5. Run your own race. A $150k–$250k agency that lets you make every ball game and dance recital is a massive win. Don’t let Instagram Lambos convince you otherwise.
Ready to Stop Being the Bottleneck in Your Own Business?
If you’re nodding along right now, I built something just for you.
I turned the best parts of this podcast conversation into a free blueprint.
Inside you’ll get:
– The exact mindset shift from “more hours = more money” to “AI = freedom”
– Step-by-step on capturing hidden website leads (up to 1/3 of traffic)
– How to deploy 24/7 AI voice agents without building anything yourself
– The 80/100 rule that doubled our profit margins
– Real pricing tests and objection crushers that actually work
Download The AI-Powered Agency: How to Buy Back Your Time now. No spam, no upsells—just straight value from one entrepreneur to another.
While you’re at it, go test Ali yourself at (502) 401-1234. Or visit carroll.media/voice and try the live demos (insurance, roofing, even my old power washing company).
And if you want the full hunter mindset, grab The Hunter Head Game for yourself. Every copy comes with its own AI bot trained on the book so you can ask it questions anytime.
Let’s stop trading time for money and start building agencies that actually give us our lives back.
Now go execute.
– Coach Carroll
P.S. If this episode fired you up, head over to the Agency Growth Podcast, leave Joe a review, and tell him Coach Carroll sent you.
Let’s keep spreading the message that entrepreneurs solve every problem in the world.
