<- all tokdocs
2026.09.12@thetimchao

Selling $35,000 AI Projects to Oil, Gas, and Electrical Contractors: Checking the Pricing Math

Business
Watch on TikTok

View on TikTok ->

The video's core move is anchoring a $35,000 AI build against a $250,000 to $1,000,000 annual CRM bill, and that anchor only works for companies with roughly a hundred or more software seats. The original post carried no caption and no title, so everything here comes from the 53 seconds of audio and a single on-screen caption that reads "Increasing my ai prices." The speaker talks to the camera in a house with a cable-rail staircase behind him. There is no screen share, no chart, no pricing table, and no product demo at any point in the 27 sampled frames. The entire argument is spoken.

What the video actually says

The claims, in order: he sells AI to oil and gas companies for $35,000. He believes he could charge more because he is replacing parts of Salesforce and HubSpot deployments that cost those clients a quarter million to a million dollars a year. He had just finished a call with a woman who has worked in the electrical contracting industry for over 30 years. On that call they discussed deals in the $75,000 to $150,000-plus range, justified by projected savings and the degree of customization. He argues these buyers will pay premium prices because they are afraid of agentic technology and run what he calls "dinosaur businesses." He closes by telling viewers that anyone still selling "a little website to go high level" will miss "the entire AI gold rush."

Two naming notes. Salesforce and HubSpot are separate companies, and he runs them together as a single phrase. "Go high level" is HighLevel, often written GoHighLevel, a white-label agency platform that lists Starter at $97 per month, Unlimited at $297 per month, and Agency Pro at $497 per month.

The $250K to $1M CRM bill implies a few hundred seats

This is the figure worth checking, because the whole pricing argument rests on it. Salesforce lists Sales Cloud Core at $195 per user per month billed annually, Advanced at $395, and Max at $550. Core works out to $2,340 per user per year, so a $250,000 annual bill is about 107 seats and a $1,000,000 bill is about 427 seats. On Max, a million dollars buys about 152 seats. HubSpot lists Sales Hub Enterprise at $150 per seat per month with a one-time $3,500 onboarding fee, which is $1,800 per seat per year. That puts $250,000 at roughly 139 seats and $1,000,000 at roughly 556 seats.

So the spend he describes is real and reachable, and it describes a company with a sales and operations organization in the hundreds. A regional electrical contractor with a dispatcher, an estimator, and a dozen field techs does not generate that bill. The video leaves this gap unaddressed, and the comparison between a $35,000 one-time project and a $250,000-plus annual seat-license bill compares two different things: a build versus a recurring platform subscription for an entire workforce.

"Dinosaur businesses" is partly supported, and the size data cuts the other way

The apprehension he describes shows up in a primary source. ServiceTitan, which sells software to the trades and filed its fiscal 2026 Form 10-K with the SEC, writes that "these processes have existed for generations, and trades businesses may be apprehensive to invest in technology solutions that risk significantly disrupting their established norms." The same filing reports approximately 10,800 Active Customers as of January 31, 2026 and revenue of $961.0 million for fiscal 2026 against $771.9 million for fiscal 2025, a 24% increase. The trades are buying software at scale, which complicates the picture of an untouched market.

The AI adoption data pushes back harder on his framing. The U.S. Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey found overall AI use among firms hovering between 17% and 20% from December 14, 2025 through May 3, 2026, with 37% use among firms with 250 or more employees, 32% among firms with 100 to 249 employees, and under 20% among firms with fewer than 20 employees. A Census working paper covering the November 2025 to January 2026 reference period puts firm-level use in a business function at 18%, rising to 32% on an employment-weighted basis, and finds that 57% of users have AI in three or fewer business functions, most commonly sales and marketing at 52%.

Read together, those two sources create a tension the video does not resolve. The companies big enough to carry a $250,000 to $1,000,000 annual CRM bill are in the firm-size bands where AI adoption is already highest. The small, genuinely untouched operators are the ones least able to write a six-figure check.

The $35,000 figure appears somewhere else

A site at timchaoai.com promotes a consulting program called AI Frontrunners, operated by Tim Chao under Remote Sales Training TC INC in St. Petersburg, Florida. The program teaches people to sell AI implementations without coding, and it advertises deal sizes of "$3,000–$35,000." The video's headline number sits exactly at the top of that advertised range.

I could not confirm that the TikTok account @thetimchao belongs to the same Tim Chao. The account bio reads "Ai womens rights activist Dont dm me unless ur my ex" and carries no link. The name matches, the subject matter matches, and the price point matches, which makes the connection plausible and still unverified. Separately, a July 2026 announcement states that a Tim Chao was appointed Chief Sales Officer of Cybersphere effective July 16, 2026, describing him as running an AI consulting practice. That is a company announcement rather than an independent report, so treat it accordingly.

The reason this matters for reading the video: a 53-second clip that reframes a price ceiling upward is a standard opening for a program that sells the method behind that price. The video gives no client name, no scope of work, no contract, and no before-and-after numbers. Every figure in it is self-reported.

What a buyer should ask before paying $75,000

The video's savings argument has a testable form, and nothing in the clip tests it. A contractor hearing this pitch can ask four concrete questions. Which named Salesforce or HubSpot modules get retired, and what is the current signed annual contract value for those modules. What is the renewal date, since a seat-license commitment does not shrink mid-term just because a replacement exists. Who maintains the custom system when the model provider changes an API or raises prices. What happens to the data and the integrations if the vendor relationship ends.

Those questions are cheap to ask and they separate a build that removes a line item from a build that adds one alongside the subscription the company keeps paying.

Key Takeaways

  • The video is a 53-second spoken pitch with one static caption, "Increasing my ai prices." It has no demo, no screen share, no client names, and no documents on screen.
  • The claimed $250,000 to $1,000,000 annual Salesforce or HubSpot spend maps to roughly 107 to 427 Salesforce Sales Cloud Core seats, or roughly 139 to 556 HubSpot Sales Hub Enterprise seats, at published list prices.
  • A one-time $35,000 build and a recurring six-figure seat-license bill are different categories of cost, and the video compares them directly without accounting for contract terms or ongoing maintenance.
  • ServiceTitan's fiscal 2026 10-K supports the claim that trades businesses hesitate to disrupt established workflows, and its ~10,800 Active Customers and $961.0 million in revenue show the sector already buys software at scale.
  • Census data shows AI use rising with firm size, from under 20% at firms with fewer than 20 employees to 37% at firms with 250 or more. The buyers with the biggest CRM bills are the least likely to be AI novices.
  • The $35,000 price matches the top of the "$3,000–$35,000" deal range advertised by the AI Frontrunners coaching program at timchaoai.com. Whether the TikTok account belongs to that program's operator is unverified.
  • Every dollar figure in the video is self-reported with no documentation, including the $35,000 price, the $75,000 to $150,000 range, and the client's savings.

Resources

Published September 12, 2026. Writeup generated from a favorited TikTok.