Today I'm going to show you an AI tool
that just dropped and it's basically
flipping the entire AI world upside
down. This thing can think through
problems like the expensive models, but
it's open source and costs almost
nothing to run. People are already using
it to build entire businesses and most
folks have no clue it even exists yet.
This is one of those rare moments where
being early actually matters. Hey there.
So, if you haven't already noticed, I'm
Nick Ponty's AI avatar. While The Real
Nick is busy helping businesses with
Minina Marketing, Hawaii's fastest
growing marketing agency, I'm here
dropping the latest AI hacks, tools, and
money-making strategies. The Real Nick
reads every single comment on these
videos. So, make sure you comment below.
And listen, if you're serious about
landing some AI subscription-based
customers, grab my four-part AI
fasttrack training that I am currently
offering for free. The links in the
description. All right, now let's get
into it. So, Deepseek R1 just came out,
and here's why everyone's freaking out
about it. This is a reasoning model.
That means it doesn't just spit out
answers like most AI tools. It actually
thinks through problems step by step.
Kind of like how you'd work through a
math problem showing your work. The
crazy part is it performs just as well
as the super expensive models from
OpenAI, but it's completely free and
open source. Let me break down what
makes this different. Most AI models you
use are like really smart parrots.
They're great at repeating patterns and
making content that sounds good. But R1
is more like having an analyst on your
team. It can look at your business
numbers, think through different
scenarios, and actually reason about
what might work best. And because it's
open source with an MIT license, you can
literally download it, modify it, and
build products with it without paying
anyone a dime. The model uses something
called a mixture of experts
architecture. Don't worry about the tech
jargon. What matters is it's massive,
like 671 billion parameters, but only
uses about 37 billion at a time. So,
it's smart, but efficient. It was
trained using reinforcement learning,
which means it learned by doing tasks
over and over, getting feedback, and
improving. That's why it developed these
cool behaviors, like checking its own
work and thinking through multiple steps
before giving you an answer. Here's
where most people mess up. They treat
DeepSeek R1 like it's just another chat
GPT. They use it to write blog posts and
social media captions. And yeah, it can
do that stuff fine, but that's like
buying a Ferrari and only driving it to
the grocery store. The real power is in
the reasoning. R1 can analyze complex
business problems, work with huge
amounts of data, and think through
multi-step strategies. I used to work
full-time as a mechanic, and thanks to
understanding how to use tools like this
properly, I've been able to transition
to making money full-time online. The
difference wasn't just knowing the tools
existed. It was knowing how to use them
in ways other people weren't thinking
about yet. Most people will use R1 for
the obvious stuff. Writing content,
doing keyword research, making email
copy, that's fine, but everyone can do
that. Your competition can do that.
There's no edge there. The margins get
squeezed because anyone can plug it into
a chat interface and sell the same
service you're selling. Let me show you
where the actual money is hiding. And
I'm not talking about theory here. These
are real ways people are already making
money with this, plus some opportunities
that most folks haven't figured out yet.
First up, profit engine funnels. Most
people build pretty websites and call it
a day. But R1 can actually model your
entire funnel like a finance analyst
would. You can feed it your customer
acquisition cost, average order value,
upsell rates, churn data, all that
stuff. Then ask it to simulate what
happens if you change your pricing or
add an upsell or tweak your retention
flow. Here's a real example. Say you're
spending two grand a month on ads and
getting 10,000 visits. You can ask R1 to
design a testing sequence that maximizes
what you learn in the next 60 days based
on your actual traffic and budget. It
won't just guess. It'll reason through
the statistics and tell you what tests
actually make sense to run first. If
you're finding this valuable, make sure
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And if you're serious about taking your
business to the next level, grab my
four-part AI FastTrack training that I
am currently offering for free. It also
includes an exclusive link to try out
the AI software I use in my business for
30 days free. The links in the
description. Here's another angle most
people are sleeping on. R1 has this huge
context window. That's a fancy way of
saying you can dump a ton of information
into it at once. We're talking entire
spreadsheets, competitor websites,
customer reviews, social media comments,
all in one prompt. Most marketers never
think to package market intelligence as
its own product, but you could build a
recurring service where you feed R1 all
this competitor and market data every
month, and it creates reports about
positioning gaps, potential moves
competitors might make, and
opportunities your clients aren't
seeing. I've seen people charging 2 to 5
grand a month for market intel reports
that are basically just R1 doing the
heavy lifting behind the scenes. The
client doesn't know it's AI. They just
know they're getting insights their
competitors don't have. And because R1
shows its reasoning process, you can
actually audit how it came to its
conclusions and make sure they make
sense. Most personalization in marketing
is honestly pretty basic. It's like,
"Hey, first name, here's an offer." But
R1 can help you build actual decision
trees that route people based on their
behavior, not just their demographics.
Think about it like this. Instead of
everyone getting the same email
sequence, R1 can design logic that says,
"If someone opened three emails but
didn't click, send them this. If they
clicked but didn't buy, route them here.
If they bought but haven't bought again
in 30 days, trigger this flow. It's not
just about the copy. It's about the
strategy behind when and what to send.
You can sell this as a high ticket
service. Call it AI designed life cycle
journeys or something. The setup fee
alone could be a few thousand because
you're not just writing emails. You're
building an entire intelligent system
that adapts to how people actually
behave. This is where it gets really
interesting because R1 is open source.
You're not stuck paying per user like
you would with most AI tools. You can
actually embed it in your own products
or run it locally. Some people are
building niche specific co-pilots like
imagine a tool called dentist marketing
co-pilot or roofing lead gen co-pilot.
It's just R1 under the hood, but all the
prompts are pre-engineered for that
specific industry. You package it up,
charge a monthly subscription, and
because your cost to run R1 is so low,
the margins are insane. Or you could
fine-tune R1 on your own processes and
playbooks. Train it on how you do
things, your case studies, your
strategies. Then new team members or
virtual assistants can ask it questions
like they're talking to your most
experienced strategist. That's literally
turning your knowledge into a scalable
asset. Here's something funny. There are
already courses popping up teaching
people how to use DeepSeek R1 for
marketing and business. Most people will
just watch those courses, but you could
be the one selling the frameworks and
templates. Think about it. You could
create prompt libraries specifically for
different niches. Like, here are the
exact R1 prompts for YouTube growth or
for local lead generation or for SAS
marketing. Package them up, add some
case studies, charge 50 to 200 bucks.
It's a digital product with no marginal
cost. or build a paid community where
members get new R1 playbooks every
month, test plans, funnel templates,
angle libraries. Because the tool itself
is free, people aren't paying for access
to the AI. They're paying for knowing
what to do with it. And that's something
you can own. Let me hit you with some
angles that most people aren't even
thinking about yet. First, policyaware
campaign design. You can use R1 to check
your ad campaigns against platform
policies before you launch them. Feed it
Facebook's ad policies or Google's
rules, then have it review your
campaigns. This can literally save you
from getting your ad accounts banned.
Second, offer arbitrage. This is sneaky
but legal. You can have R1 scan
different industries for offer
structures that are working really well.
Then adapt them to industries where
nobody's using them yet. Like maybe
there's a pricing model crushing it in
SAS that would work great for local
services, but local service businesses
have never seen it before. Look, all
this sounds great, but what do you
actually do next? Here's my advice.
Don't try to do everything. Pick one
thing and build a case study around it.
Find one client or use your own
business. Take their real numbers, feed
them into R1, implement whatever
strategy it recommends, track the
results, document everything. That
becomes your proof that this actually
works. Then you can sell that as a
service to other people in the same
industry. Or create a small info product
around R1 for a specific niche. It
doesn't have to be some massive course.
It could just be a simple guide with
prompts, workflow diagrams, and one
example of a funnel that R1 designed.
sell it for 50 or 100 bucks. See if
people actually want it. The key is to
start capturing what you're doing. Save
your prompts. Document your data
structures. Build a system around it
because eventually that becomes a
playbook you can sell or a product you
can launch or training you can offer.
Here's the thing about timing. Right
now, most people don't even know
Deepseek R1 exists. The ones who do know
about it are mostly tech people, not
marketers or business owners. That gap
is your opportunity. In 6 months,
everyone will know about it. There will
be a thousand YouTube videos and
courses. The methods I just talked about
will be common knowledge, but right now
you can be one of the first people in
your niche using this stuff. You can
build case studies and testimonials
while everyone else is still trying to
figure out what it even is. I'm not
saying you need to become a programmer
or a data scientist. You don't. But if
you can understand how to ask the right
questions and interpret what R1 tells
you, you've got a massive advantage over
people who are still using AI like it's
just a faster way to write blog posts.
Deepseek R1 is honestly one of those
rare tools that changes what's possible
for normal people trying to make money
online. It's not about having a giant
team or a huge budget. It's about
understanding that this tool can think
through problems in ways that used to
require hiring consultants that are
really expensive. The businesses that
win over the next year are going to be
the ones who figure out how to use
reasoning AI for strategy, not just
content. They're going to build offers
around insights and intelligence, not
just deliverables. And because R1 is
open source and cheap to run, the
barrier to entry is basically zero. So
here's what I want you to do. Go try it.
Pick one problem in your business. Feed
it some real data. See what it comes up
with. I think you'll be surprised at how
useful it actually is when you use it
for reasoning instead of just writing.
And hey, if you want to go deeper on
building an actual AI powered business,
make sure you grab my four-part AI
fasttrack training. It's completely
free. I'll show you exactly how to land
high-paying AI subscription clients and
give you access to a free 30-day trial
of the best AI software I use to run my
entire operation. Links in the
description below. Also, drop a comment
and let me know what you think about
DeepSeek R1. Have you tried it yet? What
are you planning to build with it? The
real Nick reads every single comment, so
make sure you leave one. And if you
found this valuable, smash that like
button and subscribe because I've got
more videos coming on tools like this
that can actually help you make money
online. All right, that's it for today.
I'll see you in the next one.