Catalytic Leadership

3 AI Tools One Agency Owner Used to Scale Without Ad Spend with Jeff Vanasdal

• Dr. William Attaway • Season 3 • Episode 96

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Scaling your agency doesn’t always require a bigger team or ad budget—it might just take smarter tools and systems. In this episode, I sit down with tech founder and agency owner Jeff Vanasdal, who built three AI-powered tools—BotMockups, ListBuilder.ai, and HelpDocs.ai—to eliminate bottlenecks, close more deals, and drive recurring revenue growth with zero ad spend.

Jeff didn’t start by building for others—he created these tools to fix his own fulfillment overwhelm. Then he scaled them. You’ll hear the story of how one hyper-personalized chatbot demo landed his first major client, launched his agency, and led to a fully systemized operation where his team now runs day-to-day without him.

We dig into building tools that sell, simplifying client acquisition, and the mindset shift from operator to CEO. If you're still in the weeds, Jeff’s story is your blueprint for scaling lean, leading with clarity, and creating margin to grow beyond yourself.

Connect with Jeff Vanasdal
Explore the AI tools Jeff built to help agency owners automate client acquisition and scale without ads. Follow him on Facebook or Instagram to learn more about BotMockups, ListBuilder.ai, and HelpDocs.ai.

Books Mentioned

  • Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell
  • Software Is Your Future (referred to as “Software as a Science” in the episode) by Dan Martell

🔗 Connect with Jeff Vanasdal
Want to see how Jeff is helping agency owners automate lead generation and scale with AI tools? Follow him on Facebook or Instagram for behind-the-scenes insight into BotMockups, ListBuilder.ai, and HelpDocs.ai.

🌟 Check out our podcast sponsor, Competitive Edge Business Consulting, and book your free discovery call with them today at www.CompEdgeConsulting.com 🌟

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

Dr. William Attaway:

It is an honor today to have Jeff Vanosel on the podcast. Jeff is a serial entrepreneur, a tech founder and the creative mind behind multiple AI-powered platforms, including BotMockups, listbuilderai and HelpDocsai. With a strong background in marketing and a passion for building tools that solve real-world problems, jeff helps e-commerce brands and agencies use AI to drive growth, boost engagement and scale smarter. His latest venture, bot Mockups, allows marketing agencies to create interactive chatbot demos in minutes, helping them close more deals without tech headaches. Helpdocsai offers AI-driven customer support that turns FAQ content into instant conversational help, and ListBuilderai helps online brands to grow email and SMS lists with little to no ad spend. Jeff brings a unique perspective to leadership, blending innovation, resilience and a deep commitment to helping others win. Jeff, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Hey, thanks, man, I appreciate it. That intro was pretty cool hearing all that because day-to-day I'm just in the grind and pretty awesome for those tools I just created essentially for myself. Now it's offering those to other marketing agencies.

Intro / Outro:

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway:

Well, let's dive into that. I would love for you to share a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How'd you get started?

Jeff Vanasdal:

Well, uh, that's a good question, because I remember when I didn't know what a sales funnel was, but I was already building them and, um, I guess we can go back. This is probably, I guess, five years ago. I started uh shooting uh pictures at snowball races and I would have to set up the, the booth for makita tools and rocks or energy. And they set up a booth, they like display the, the latest tools, and they always give away a big prize every year for um like uh sign up to win like a snowmobile or a side-by-side or ATV, and then some little prizes like tools, sets, all that. And one thing I realized a lot of people I mean they were giving away swag left and right for no rhyme or reason, just oh, hey, here's a sticker, here's a koozie, and I thought it would be pretty cool to gamify the system and actually try to get more people down to the booth, because oftentimes the booth was, you know, outside of the stands a little bit uh. So what I did was I built this app where it was right, when QR codes scanners became native on your, your iPhone or Android too, and I built this app where it would go to a landing page.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Someone fell out. Form Sounds pretty standard right now, but that was to win the big prize. Well, I gamified it, where the next step was to spin a wheel and I can control the probability of that wheel and the slices. So say, I only brought like 10 hoodies to the event and 200 koozies, 300 stickers. I could control the probability of what it lands on and also say, uh, it landed on the hoodie 10 times.

Jeff Vanasdal:

I only have 10 hoodies. Well, it would boot that slice out of the system, which would be nice. Uh, from me like, hey, guys, I want a hoodie. And like, hey, oh, sorry, man, we're out, here's a sticker. It's like I hate that. Uh so, and then I had the rockstar energy models that were on other races. I gave them all business cards with the qr code on them and sent them up in the stands and handed them out, and then people were entered to win. So it increased the amount of emails and SMS we got and put traffic into the booth. So that was my first, I guess, problem and it was essentially a sales funnel and I had no clue what that even was.

Dr. William Attaway:

And now you're diving all the way in on AI.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Oh yeah, yeah. Every day is full of AI. So what drove?

Dr. William Attaway:

you that direction.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Well, I've been building chatbots for almost a decade now. This was before AI, so I was using an app called Minichat and I really enjoyed that. And one thing I was using Min mini chat for is to grow the email and sms list. I just I love that. That strategy, because you have a pure metric to go off of is like how many emails can I get? Uh, and that's how I was growing the email smbestos for uh different companies across the board.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Um, one in particular was for a med spa. It was just a $500 gift card giveaway, zero ad spend, like you mentioned earlier. Uh, and we ended up getting an additional 20, $20,000 worth of business for in one week. Wow, zero ad spend. So that was one of the things. And then, when ai rolled out, I was like, wow, there's so much uh you could do here, and then now it's full ai chatbots across the board. And, like this morning, I was just building a new app with no code software to build. This isn't using, like you know, chat, gpt or uh, claude, but you use that to essentially build an app or a website rather than hard coding everything.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's remarkable. Yeah, so tell me about bot mock-ups. This is this is your newest piece.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Yeah, but uh. That's been in my head for about oh ever since I started building the, the chat, and how I really broke into that world or my marketing agency full-time. This was 2020, right when COVID hit, and previously I was somehow laying at the job with a major manufacturer called Can-Am they're like Yamaha or Honda and I was in charge of the social media which they had at the time around 4 million followers between Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It was like a dream job because I had to drive ATVs and sideways sides all over the world and all the commercials and then shoot photography and then run the social media which I've been writing ATV since I was eight. So it was a dream job. Yeah, right, Whatever happened. And then COVID hit and then they thought the industry was going to go under, so they let a bunch of people go and I'll bring it back and around here in a second.

Jeff Vanasdal:

But I had to figure something out. While I was sitting on the back porch at the time and I was just scrolling through Instagram, I saw a story with Kevin Harrington from one of the OGs. He was having an event with a guy I knew at the time a great guy Nick Long is his name. I was like, hmm, I could do something with this. So what I did was I clicked on the ad. The ad went to a landing page that was built in ClickFunnels and it just had a form to fill out to come to the event. Well, I took all the same questions that were on the form and turned it into a chatbot. But I took it one step further. I made a brand new instagram account with the event name and then demo behind it, so it looked exactly like their current instagram account. And then I just sent it over to him and say, hey, hey, man, this is what I built. And, uh, he calls me. He's like dude, how do we start working with you? I live in indiana I still do and, uh, he lives in california.

Jeff Vanasdal:

And it was like on tuesday at like six o'clock at night I don't know why, but it came out of my mouth. I was like I'll tell you what. I'll be out there tomorrow. Uh, so I I really didn't have much money at the time, but I had enough money to book a one-way ticket and that's what I did. I flew out to California the next morning, I think like 5am, landed in California, Newport Beach, and then, uh, figured out they needed a lot more help than just the chatbot stuff. So I introduced them to High Level. I signed up High Level was actually my first client for High Level and then I stayed at their office and when people came in like their clients, I would talk to them and Nick and the guys there at the office were like this guy just flew in like on a whim and I ended up getting some clients out of that and then that's what catapulted my agency full time. Wow, what a story.

Dr. William Attaway:

It's probably the craziest thing I've ever done in my life and it worked, and so now you're helping other agencies with the stuff that you have created first for yours. But now the bot mockups, the help docs, I mean, these are all things that you created for you to use. First right List builder ad like this was the stuff you used first.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Yeah, and the idea to come full circle with that bot mockups thing. One thing I realized is if I did not spend like two or three hours building that customized, essentially mockup or demo for Kevin for that event, right, they wouldn't have said, oh man, this is awesome. I was like, hmm, I can't spend three, four hours or two, two to like five hours on just a one-off demo. Has to be a better way. And then when ai came out I was like all right, I'm going all in on this. And that's what stirred up the idea of BotMockups is to be able to create hyper-personalized demos in a matter of minutes versus a matter of a few hours, and then be able to send it off to the prospect so they can actually see what it looks like and it functions in real time.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's so good. What are some of the things that you have seen as agency owners and business owners have used these products? What are some of the wins that you've seen them experience?

Jeff Vanasdal:

Oh man. So I'll just bring up one for ListBuilder. This guy got a hold of me through the mini chat experts group and he has a a risk called the recycle firefighter. They make wallets and other products about um around recycle fire hose.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Oh we ran a giveaway for him and he films email and SMS list up to like 40,000 emails in one month and just like 5X's business. Whoa, wow there. And then, as far as bot mockups go, a lot of agencies are using their VAs to build just mockups all day to push them out to the prospects so they can actually sell. The other reason why I made Bob mock-ups too, so it helps sell AI and essentially I put an article out or a blog post out about this. Just two days ago I was really procrastinating selling AI because I felt like I didn't have the right tools. Only if I had this tool that would help show clients and help them understand what I'm actually talking about and selling, then it'd be easier to sell my AI chatbot services. And that's after 10 months of development. I know how to bot mockups and I have the tools to do that Brilliant.

Dr. William Attaway:

Jeff, if you were able to go back and talk to yourself five years ago, before you started any of this, and you were able to tell yourself one thing based on what you know now, what would you love to go back and tell yourself?

Jeff Vanasdal:

I never thought about that. I would just say keep sticking with it. I mean, that's always been my motto is like you never know if you don't try. Yeah, so that's kind of what my philosophy has always been is man, just give it a try? And and right now I'm trying not to focus on too many things at once that's my biggest lesson with my mockups is like hyper focus on one thing, rather than I got this and this and this and I've always been like, oh, I'm going to create a brand for this. Oftentimes I have a brand, a logo, a website all built before I even have like a strategy or a product to even sell. I just think it's cool. But cool doesn't always pay the bills when you don't know where you're going.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's true. Good lesson there for so many people listening, I think, because I think we've all fallen into that trap at time or time. So you know people look at you from the outside, jeff, and you know I've known you for the outside, jeff, and you know I've known you for a couple years now and watching your journey. I think if somebody's just looking at your highlight reel they might be thinking, oh man, this guy, he's never really struggled, he's just had this meteoric rise like up into the right. He's never had to deal with the challenges that I deal with. Like, if somebody's listening and that's what they're thinking, what would you say?

Jeff Vanasdal:

to them I would say you're crazy, because it's been a hell of a ride from man to like. Well, going back to, okay, my last real job, I'll tell you this was at Target target, like ringing people up, and I have dreams about bringing people up. That was my last job. I was like 16.

Jeff Vanasdal:

So where I'm going with this too, I I've had some cool jobs, but also they haven't really paid the bills all that much, um, but, and also too, I've been man like hustling, like crazy, and I remember going to the grocery store and just running around as fast as I can and thinking about business. I had to get back home to keep building. I was selling more than I could keep up with. That led to marriage issues, two failed marriages and just all kinds of stuff like marriage issues to failed marriages like uh, and just all kinds of stuff. Man Just but uh, it is definitely been a journey. And speaking of the, the, the grocery store, I remember having to put my ramen noodles, uh, at the checkout once because I had to have the money. So, yeah, it's definitely not, it's definitely not been easy, but you learn every single time like man, the guy I am now compared to where I was at years ago and try to get 1% better every day. Sure, everyone's heard that one.

Dr. William Attaway:

Absolutely Well.

Dr. William Attaway:

I think there's no wasted experience either, and I think that everything you say, like you say it, has made you who you are today, and I think that continual learning posture that you have put yourself in where you realize I can learn from any experience I'm going through and I can learn from other people and I don't have to keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again have helped you to become a better version of yourself than you were five or ten years ago Absolutely yeah. So, talking about that learning posture, you know your business and your team and your clients need you to lead at a higher level today than they did five years ago, and that same thing is going to be true five and ten years from now. So how do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your team and your business and your clients are going to need you to have in the years to come and your business and your clients are going to need you to have in the years to come.

Jeff Vanasdal:

I try to set aside at least an hour every day to study A few masterminds right now, and I think that's where a lot of people forget, like they go to school or like growing up and then college, and that seems like that's when a lot of people just drop off and they stop learning, which is seems yeah, uh, I don't know why you'd ever do that, but that's, I don't know about you, but I think that's kind of like the commonality right now. It is so, yeah, studying every day and then, um, that's always helping me. I remember back to like I had to just hurry back home to do all the work. Well, I one of the books I read was buy back your time by dan martell yeah, it's a great book yeah, change everything.

Jeff Vanasdal:

um, I'm in dance master right now and just some of the stuff he says is man, it's really changed the way I have hired and there's grown the, the, my business in a whole, because you can only do so much for yourself. That's so true.

Dr. William Attaway:

So so, thinking about your business as it exists today, what do you want most in your business? What is one thing that like? If you got this one thing, you'd feel like, hey, this is great, we're on the right track.

Jeff Vanasdal:

I'm like I'm kind of living it right now. I have my team that can basically handle the day-to-day projects and client communications. That was a big thing. That held me back too was just having a system to communicate with clients, give them updates, actually not being the bottleneck in the system where we started using Slack and putting all our clients in slack and it's all my team and their team in slack and my team communicate with them, rather than being so siloed in in emails and then it's good, I'm not getting stuck in the emails and being the middleman trying to do all that. Now they communicate directly with the client, uh, and which allows me to do cool things like, uh, my girlfriend, I went up to a concert the other day, like in the middle of the day, stayed up there after the concert came back home and and work was still getting done without me having to manage everything. So I'm super thankful for it. It's pretty awesome.

Dr. William Attaway:

Well and that is something that we talk about a lot is the importance of removing yourself from what I call the center of the spotter web, where everything connects to you. If everything is connecting to you, then you are the lid, you are the limit to what that team or that organization can grow to. But removing yourself from that so that you can go take an afternoon you can't go, be gone midday and work is still getting done that's the goal. So many entrepreneurs start a business because they want time freedom or financial freedom or location freedom or all three, but then what they do is they end up creating a job that traps them at the center of the spider web. It doesn't have to be that way, and I love that. You are intentionally designing your business around your life. I think that's very healthy.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Yeah, I love it, man. I'm so blessed to be able to be at that point right now. That stuff just gets done. I have an amazing team behind me and it's allowed me to position myself into the more visionary role. And I do some other delegation stuff still, but it's just allowed my mind to be more free and to expand the business and actually focus on sales as well. Well, and it's just allowed my mind to be more free and to expand the business and actually focus on sales as well.

Dr. William Attaway:

Well, and it's margin, and creativity lives in margin. So when people say they're not creative, it's because they don't have the margin to be creative. That's where creativity grows.

Intro / Outro:

Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway:

You have to have that margin. I love that you're doing that.

Jeff Vanasdal:

I think where my head went on there is like you ever get an email and you're like man, I don't really want to reply to that right now. It's like because you don't have the headspace to even read through the email and I'll save that for later. Well, if you have a team behind you to clear that head of yours and just coming down to one simple email, it feels great. It's a wonderful place.

Dr. William Attaway:

As a continual learner who is spending intentional time every day learning and growing and studying, is there a book that's made a really big difference in your journey that you'd recommend to the leaders who are listening?

Jeff Vanasdal:

really big difference in your journey that you'd recommend to the leaders who are listening. I would say check out the Buy Back your Time, because it really focuses on growing your team and then allowing you to do other stuff like sales and setting yourself into the role you want. And then right now, I'm reading Dan Martell's new book called Software as a Science, and I've been really the books I read or digest within videos and stuff. I just want to be focused on one subject Rather than reading through a whole book or studying all these subjects all at once. What's the problem right now that you're trying to solve? And then what are the sources, resources you can use to solve that problem?

Jeff Vanasdal:

And software as a science is what I'm focused on right now, because I'm focused on growing bot mock-ups as a software. I've already seen um, I think we're up 56% this week. That's awesome and, as you know, reading's one thing, but implementing it too, like slow down, and even the videos I watch, I rewatch it, like what do you say? Rewatch it again, take notes. And then the habit I've been doing here lately is, uh, when I'm learning something, like try to teach someone else, and in different media formats, like I've been writing blog posts about what I read, and then also connected to something personal with emotion, uh, so the users can connect to it a little bit more and and it brings in a bit of your personality and your past experience too. I love that.

Dr. William Attaway:

Jeff, you know, in any business there are the big wins that we celebrate and there are the challenges, the obstacles that are in the way. If I had the ability to snap my fingers and solve one problem in your business right now, what would you want that one problem to be?

Jeff Vanasdal:

Uh, I would say, even though I have more time, but uh, I guess adding another developer, I guess adding to my team a bit more Um, and then of team a bit more, and then of course getting more clients.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's always nice to have too. Absolutely, I love that. You know. I asked that question because I think it's it's again easy for people on the outside to look and say, oh man, jeff didn't really have any problems, he didn't really have anything he'd want to solve, and I think it's helpful for people to hear no, actually there's more to come. Like, I see more ahead than what is behind, and I think that's where you are. I think your days ahead are going to be far more fruitful than what has been. Would you agree?

Jeff Vanasdal:

Oh, yeah, yeah, and I feel like I'm um just learning every day to grow, like just by Marcus, for example. Right now I'm really focused on on metrics. So like what, how many? How many free trials have we got? How many? What's the average churn and have the tracking those metrics, uh, and just maturing as far as if it's sooner too, uh, and also just not being all over the place trying to do everything and starting something and then stopping something. Just see it the way through, put people in positions that can actually run it and then you can go on to the next thing, versus doing everything.

Dr. William Attaway:

You know, jeff, this has been so incredible, this conversation, because I think you've been so honest and transparent about where you've been, about where you are and about what's ahead, and I know our listeners are going to want to continue to learn from you and learn more about you and what you're doing, and about bot mockups and all the other things we've talked about. What's the best way for them to do that?

Jeff Vanasdal:

Yeah, follow me on Facebook. I'm most active on Facebook and it's just my name, jeff, and all. Still, my dad has the same name as me, so I think on Facebook it's Jeff and also you'll see my picture, and then on Instagram as well. So I'm trying to put up more content, actually teaching stuff that I'm learning from some guys like Dan Rattel and you and some of my other friends like Alex and Shunsky, and just putting out content to help others, because that's how I got started too. People ask me how did you go to college for this? I just watch YouTube videos. It's not. It doesn't do anything.

Dr. William Attaway:

Well, it's all about the learning posture. You know it really is. If you're committed to be a learner, then you can learn anywhere from anybody. Oh yeah, you don't have to sit in a classroom, you can watch a YouTube video, yep.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Just have to sit in the classroom. You could watch a YouTube video. Yep, just keep. I think the key is just implementation. Don't get stuck in the loophole of just learning, learning, learning Exactly.

Dr. William Attaway:

Information alone does not lead truly to transformation. You have to have transformation. Nope, you have to have execution. Absolutely, jeff, we'll have all those links in the show notes and again, thank you for being on the show.

Jeff Vanasdal:

Hey, thanks. Man Appreciate it Always good chatting with you.

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