How to choose who to learn AI agency building from (a checklist)

None of these need inside access. A browser, a WHOIS lookup and ten minutes on YouTube cover all of it.

Screenshots can be faked and testimonials can be picked. A list published by the software company can't be edited by the coach. HighLevel publishes its SaaSpreneur award winners on levelup.gohighlevel.com/awards, and the tiers are counted in client sub-accounts: Gold is a minimum of 100, Platinum 500 and Diamond 1,000. HighLevel says every award is "earned, not entered" and that eligibility is reviewed by its team on performance data. What each tier means is on GoHighLevel awards explained.

How to check: ask the coach for their agency's name, open the awards page, click through the tier tabs and search for it. Older years live on awards.gohighlevel.com. If the coach teaches a different tool, look for that vendor's partner directory or certified expert list. A coach who says they're a top partner but doesn't appear on any list the vendor publishes is telling you something.

AI automation agencies got popular after ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022. Plenty of good people started after that, so a later start isn't a dealbreaker. But someone who has done the work for years has seen what breaks after month three, like carrier rules on texting, clients cancelling, and tools changing their pricing.

How to check: open their YouTube channel, go to Videos, sort by Oldest and look at the date and topic of the first uploads. For their agency site, run a WHOIS or RDAP lookup on the domain and read the registration date. If both appeared the same month as their first video about making money with AI, they started with the hype.

There's a big difference between someone who teaches agency building and someone who runs an agency and also teaches. The second person knows what clients complain about, what breaks at 9pm on a Friday, and which features nobody uses.

How to check: they should be able to name the agency, and their videos should show a real agency account with real sub-accounts (with client details blurred), not only slides and a demo account. Ask in their community what client support looks like for them today. If the answer is always about students and never about clients, you have your answer.

You're paying to learn how to build things that work for a local business. So the teaching should be builds you can follow: the workflow, the AI agent prompt, the phone number setup, the testing.

How to check: pick one of their free tutorials, open a free trial of the software and follow along. If you end up with something that works, that's a good sign for the paid stuff. If the video skips the hard parts or says "I'll show you that inside the program" at every step, the free content is an ad.

Software like HighLevel changes almost every week, so a course recorded two years ago goes out of date. What keeps you moving is getting a specific question answered by someone who has hit the same problem.

How to check: read exactly what the offer includes. Live calls, how often, and who runs them (the coach or a team of past students)? Is there a community where questions get answered? Is there a refund policy, and what does it require? If the sales page is mostly a list of module names, assume it's recorded content only.

Most coaches in this space, me included, earn affiliate commissions from the software they recommend. That's fine, as long as they say so. In the US, the FTC's Endorsement Guides (16 CFR 255, revised July 26, 2023) say a connection between an endorser and a seller that the audience wouldn't expect, including payment, has to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.

How to check: look next to the software links on their site, in video descriptions and on the sales page. If a coach tells you one tool is "the only one that works" and you can't find a word about commissions anywhere, factor that into how much you trust the recommendation.

Stripe dashboards, rented supercars, "money while you sleep" and "replace your 9 to 5 in 30 days" are selling a feeling. An agency is client work: sales calls, builds, support and follow-ups.

The FTC is clear about this kind of thing. The Endorsement Guides (16 CFR 255.2) say that if an ad uses someone's results, the advertiser has to substantiate that those results are what people can generally expect, or clearly disclose what people generally get. The FTC's Business Opportunity Rule (16 CFR 437.1) defines an earnings claim as any oral, written or visual representation of actual or potential income, so a screenshot counts. And the FTC's regulatory agenda from August 14, 2026 still lists a proposed Earnings Claims rule (16 CFR 462). This isn't legal advice, just a sign of how seriously regulators take it.

How to check: scroll the coach's ads in Meta's Ad Library and look at their thumbnails and sales page. Count how often they talk about money compared with how often they show a build.

Nobody can promise you'll sign clients. That comes down to your niche, your offer and how much outreach you actually do. Be careful with "done for you clients", "get your first client or your money back" (read the fine print), and bonus stacks where every template is "valued at" some big number that nobody has ever paid for it.

How to check: open the sales page, note the countdown timer, then come back the next day in a private window. If the timer reset or the "last 3 spots" are still the last 3 spots, the urgency is fake. Ask what each bonus sells for on its own. If it isn't sold on its own, it doesn't have a price. Mine is a plain list with no dollar value (see My bonus).

A row of news logos usually means one of two things: a journalist wrote about them, or they paid a newswire to post a press release that big sites syndicate automatically. The second one is cheap, and it puts their own words on a big site's domain.

How to check: search the outlet's own site for the coach's name. On the article, look for a provider line naming a wire service (Business Wire, PR Newswire, GlobeNewswire, ACCESS Newswire, EIN Presswire), a URL path like /press-release/ or /pr/, and labels like Sponsored, Partner content or Contributor. A staff byline with quotes from people other than the coach is editorial. Podcasts and interviews are a middle ground: real, but the guest usually controls the story.

Here's me, with links you can check. I'm Hamza Baig and I run Hexona Systems, my AI automation agency, on HighLevel, white labelled. Everything below is on a page I don't control, unless I say otherwise.

Platform proof: Hexona Systems is on HighLevel's public SaaSpreneur lists as Platinum in 2024 and Diamond in 2025 and 2026, and Diamond means a minimum of 1,000 sub-accounts. HighLevel also listed me as a speaker at LevelUp 2026 in Dallas ("Hamza Baig, Founder, Hexona Systems"), and my session wasn't marked as sponsored on their speakers page.

Since before the hype: my YouTube channel started on September 25, 2022, and my first uploads that week were GoHighLevel automations for local restaurants and contractors, two months before ChatGPT launched. hexonasystems.com was registered on June 19, 2022. I found HighLevel through a TikTok in 2021.

Builds on camera and live access: my channel has over 340 videos, mostly builds inside HighLevel. My free Skool group, Hamza's Automation Incubator, had 48.8k members on November 2, 2026, with video courses, workflow templates and access to me. Honestly, with that many people I can't answer every post myself, so judge it by trying it.

Outside interviews: CanadianSME Small Business Podcast (December 2024), Conversion Zoo (August 2024), Made in the Mist from the Niagara Falls Rankin Innovation Hub (January 2025), and RepStack's Remote First Podcast (October 2026).

Where I'm not neutral: I'm a HighLevel affiliate and I earn a commission if you sign up through my link, which also gets you a 30-day trial (see 30-day free trial). I co-founded an education business, Automation Institute, so I also get paid when people learn from me. The Skool sign-up form offers a free intro call, and you should treat that like any coach's call, including mine. And some of my YouTube titles lean on big numbers. That's the YouTube game, and it's exactly why this checklist says to ignore numbers you can't verify, mine included.

More about me, with every source, is on my About page.