He Became an Entrepreneur in One Night at 19

My buddy Leo Pohlmann is 19 years old and as of last night he is officially an entrepreneur. He was thinking about going to school to prepare for entrepreneurship. Learn about psychology, soft skills, all the things they tell you that you need before you can start a business. I told him why not just actually be an entrepreneur instead. That’s the best way to learn. You don’t need permission. You don’t need a degree. You just need to start.

The first step is collecting money

One of the most important things about being an entrepreneur is you have to be able to collect money. If you can’t collect money you cannot be an entrepreneur.

So Leo set up his PayPal, created his payment systems, and sent me his first invoice for 500 Euros.

I paid it. Now officially he has a client. That’s how simple it can be.

What Leo actually does

Leo is helping businesses grow by repurposing content using AI tools. He takes podcasts and long form videos and turns them into short form content for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok.

He already had experience doing this. Three years ago he worked at an influencer management company and he built a channel where he repurposed soccer content and learned how to clip out the interesting parts.

It’s not about editing videos

People might call Leo a video editor but that’s not really what he does. What he’s actually doing is making other businesses more money. Take our buddy Sal Sciorta who is a plumber in Eastern Pennsylvania. He does residential and commercial plumbing.

When Leo takes Sal’s videos and runs them through AI tools and turns them into ads and content that drives phone calls and new customers Sal makes more money.

And the more money Leo makes for his clients the more he can charge. That’s way better than just charging a flat fee of 1000 Euros a month.

How AI changes everything

Five years ago it would have taken three to five hours per podcast to edit and repurpose. If a client had 200 podcasts on their YouTube channel you couldn’t realistically do all of them. But now with AI tools like Descript you can run them all through very quickly.

You still have to provide some decision making. You can’t just 100 percent automate it. But the speed and scale is completely different. I talk about this on my weekly show The Marketing Mechanic on YouTube where I explain how we use AI agents to do the work.

The Dollar a Day strategy and proving results

We use a strategy called Dollar a Day where we take the best performing content and run small targeted ads to the client’s key audience. We track everything using tools like CallRail to record phone calls and measure traffic. If someone in Eastern Pennsylvania needs a plumber and they go to Google Maps or ask ChatGPT or Claude who to call it will point them to Sal because we’ve put all that content on YouTube and social media.

We can prove exactly how much business we drove. If we made a client an extra 500,000 dollars last year we can show that and charge accordingly.

Standing out from millions of freelancers

If you go to Fiverr or Upwork you’ll see millions of people who call themselves video editors and social media specialists. The way Leo stands out is by following our 4-stage Content Factory process.

He doesn’t just edit a video and hand it back. He repurposes it using AI into shorts and articles, analyzes how it connects with the client’s business and audience, and ties it all back to results. That’s the difference.

Learning from people a few steps ahead

Leo is going to meet other people in our network who were in his shoes on day one and are now doing very well. People like Marko Sipilä, Ethan Van De Hey, Ethan Murphy, Dan Leibrandt, and Keigan Carthy.

They put in the work and they’re a couple years ahead of him. He’ll learn from them and eventually when other people are just getting started Leo is going to help them too. That’s the thing that matters the most to me.

The abundance mindset

I used to believe in a scarcity mindset. If I made a dollar I had to take it from someone else. If I succeeded someone else had to fail. But now I realize that’s completely wrong.

The people I thought were competitors are people I can collaborate with. We can make content together and market together and everyone benefits. There’s more than enough for everybody.

Freedom not ferraris

Leo says he wants freedom. Freedom to travel and see different places. Freedom of his time. Not having bosses that are jerks. Not Lamborghinis or getting rich but just being able to do what he wants. He has his laptop and as long as he can do the work he can be anywhere.

Him and his buddy Leonard when they go to interesting places they might just make a quick video about something they learned. Leo has a microphone kit so he can interview people along the way.

The one promise

I asked Leo to make one promise. If he ever feels down or wants to quit because someone criticized his work or he made a mistake I want him to come talk to me first. Most of the time when people feel like giving up it’s because they misinterpreted something.

Especially when working remotely it’s easy to misread an email or a message. We’re not trying to make anyone feel bad. We actually want to see him improve. The ones who succeed are the ones who don’t fold at the first sign of criticism.

Stop waiting and just start

You’re never going to find the perfect time when everything is lined up and you’re ready to start your business. If you wait for that moment it’s never going to come.

I know people who had big dreams at 19 and I look at them at 40 and nothing happened. Every successful entrepreneur I know says the same thing. I wasn’t ready but I just started. I failed and I messed up but I kept going. And eventually I succeeded.

I even signed a copy of my bestselling book on TikTok ads that I co-wrote with Perry Marshall and gave it to Leo on April 17th 2026.

He’s going to edit this video as one of his first projects. So stop preparing and just do it.