How to Build Your Own 24/7 AI Operator with OpenClaw

What if you could build an always-on AI chief operating officer that handles your SEO, manages your inbox, and runs customer support — all for $200 a month?

That’s exactly what Jacques Hopkins has done with his 13-year-old online course business, Piano in 21 Days.

He built an AI operator named Rocky using free, open-source software called OpenClaw — and says it’s replaced a $3,500/month SEO agency, cut his customer support time, and made March his highest-profit month since COVID.

Longtime listeners will recognize Jacques from his previous appearances on the show (this is actually his 10th appearance).

He also runs The Online Course Guy, and this episode he’s back to break down how he set up his AI operator, what it’s actually doing for his business, and why he thinks this is the most fun he’s ever had in his work.

Tune in to Episode 738 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

how to build and train a personal AI operator using free open-source software
the use cases that deliver the most value
a low-overhead business idea that’s wide open right now

(Get the free AI Operator Starter Kit at theonlinecourseguy.com/rocky!)

Table of Contents show

Round 1: How to Build Your Own 24/7 AI Operator

Jacques describes four levels of AI use.

Level 1: most people are here, chatting with tools like ChatGPT or Gemini, asking questions and getting answers.
Level 2: automations, using tools like Zapier or Make to trigger actions based on events.
Level 3: AI agents, where AI can actually do work on a computer.
Level 4: where Jacques is now, is a personal AI operator: an AI agent that’s uniquely yours, continuously learns from your context, and keeps growing the longer you use it.

That’s Rocky. He lives on a Mac mini on Jacques’ desk and has been running for about three months.

Hardware and Setup

The most important rule: never run this on your primary computer. Jacques compares it to hiring a new employee — you wouldn’t hand them your personal laptop.

OpenClaw needs its own dedicated machine.

A Mac mini is the recommended hardware. It’s small, relatively inexpensive, and OpenClaw was designed to run best on macOS.

That said, it can also run on Windows and Linux, and an old Mac laptop works fine to get started.

You can technically run it on a cloud virtual private server, but running it locally is considered more secure.

The setup process is technical, but Jacques’ tip is to use a Level 1 AI chat tool like Claude to guide you through it whenever you get stuck. He still uses a “Claude advisor” alongside Rocky today for that reason.

Jacques has a step-by-step setup video that walks through the hardware, software, and how to communicate with your operator through Telegram.

Training Your Operator

When you first set up OpenClaw, you go through an onboarding wizard where you give it what Jacques calls an “operator brief” — a brain dump of everything you’d want it to know.

That includes your full business history, personal context (he gave it his kids’ names and birthdays), goals, and what you want it to help with.

The brief isn’t a one-time thing. Rocky has since consumed every podcast episode Jacques has done, every YouTube video, and every online course he’s ever made.

But that happened gradually, not on day one.

His biggest tip: don’t try to do everything at once. Build one system, get it fully dialed in, and only then move to the next. Going too fast is how things break down.

What Rocky Does Every Day

Here’s a sample of what Rocky handles for Jacques’ business:

Triages and drafts email replies in Jacques’ voice, drawing on 13 years of email history
Sends a morning brief each day with overnight activity and top priorities
Monitors and manages Meta Ads, providing a daily brief on what’s working
Manages real-time business dashboards aggregating data across tools like Kajabi, ActiveCampaign, and GoHighLevel
Handles SEO — audits, fixes broken links, writes articles, and monitors rankings
Drafts customer support replies with full context (prospect vs. customer, funnel stage, conversation history)
Assists with health and wellness tracking and workout planning

SEO: Replacing the $3,500/Month Agency

For years, Jacques paid $3,500 a month to an SEO agency. After COVID, he let that lapse for four years.

When Rocky came along, he tried a technique called “reverse prompting”: instead of telling it what to do, he asked, “How can you best help me with SEO?”

Rocky connected to Google Search Console via API, ran a full audit, identified pages with zero traffic, found duplicate content that should be merged, and fixed broken links.

Then it started actively writing new articles in Jacques’ voice and monitoring rankings. Jacques also fed it a two-hour SEO masterclass video from his former agency, so Rocky is following proven methods rather than guessing.

Rocky has read-only access to most systems. SEO is one of the few areas where Jacques gave write access to his WordPress site, which Rocky uses through backend API — not a browser login.

Customer Support: From 10 Minutes to Under 1 Minute

Before Rocky, Jacques’ customer support person spent about 10 minutes per email. She’d need to look up the customer’s history, check ActiveCampaign or GoHighLevel for their status, piece together context, then draft a reply.

Now Rocky does all that automatically. He drafts a reply and drops it in the email as a draft — with context notes right there for the human to review. She reads, tweaks if needed, and hits send.

Total time: under one minute per email.

Rocky has read-only email access with the ability to create drafts. He has no ability to hit send. The human stays in the loop.

The AI Council

One of the more unusual things Rocky built is what Jacques calls an AI council.

Inspired by a technique he saw from other OpenClaw users, Rocky assembled seven different AI models — each assigned a role like the strategist, the engineer, or the devil’s advocate.

When Jacques faces a major decision, he submits the question to the council. The seven models analyze it from different angles, debate it among themselves, and return a recommendation.

Jacques used this recently to think through whether to rebrand away from “The Online Course Guy” toward his own name.

The council’s recommendation: transition slowly to a personal brand with the focus on “helping digital product creators scale with AI.”

He’s already started with his YouTube channel, now just his name.

Cost and Mistakes to Avoid

OpenClaw itself is free and open source. To power it, you need a paid AI model. Jacques started with the $20/month ChatGPT plan but quickly upgraded to the $200/month plan.

He frames it this way: he’d pay $20,000 a month for an employee this capable. Rocky is that employee for $200.

The mistakes he’d warn others about:

Trying to build too many systems at once. Go one thing at a time.
Using cheaper AI models to save money. The quality drops significantly, and the operator becomes far less useful.
Expecting the host agency — or in this case, the OpenClaw setup — to send you results on autopilot. You still have to direct it and stay engaged.

Also worth noting: as of April 4th, Anthropic banned Claude models from being used with OpenClaw.

Jacques now runs Rocky on GPT 5.4 via the $200/month ChatGPT plan, and uses Claude separately as an advisor and reviewer.

Round 2: Donate Your Business Idea

Jacques’ donated idea: become an AI consultant for business owners.

Most are still stuck at Level 1, and if you’re even a couple steps ahead, you can help them identify where AI can improve their processes — or even set up their own operator.

Start by talking to people you already know.

Jacques has been doing that and gets random texts from doctors and business owners asking for help.

One neighbor he helped went out and bought a Mac mini; he’s now selling AI-generated coloring books on Amazon.

Round 3: Triple Threat

Marketing Tactic: The Self-Liquidating Offer

For his marketing tactic, Jacques shared the self-liquidating offer he’s running for Piano in 21 Days: paid Meta ads driving to the 5-Day Piano Challenge at $27, with an average cart value of $45 after an order bump.

He’s breaking even on ad spend and making his profit when buyers upgrade to the full $500–$800 course.

Current ROAS is about 2X on the backend.

Favorite Tool: Wispr Flow

His favorite new tool is Wispr Flow, an AI-powered voice-to-text tool that fixes mistakes and removes filler words on the fly.

He says he barely types anymore.

Favorite Book: Project Hail Mary

And his favorite book from the last year is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir — which he’s read three times and recently read aloud to his daughter.

It’s also where Rocky got his name.

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