How can a coach, author or expert build their own AI product?

There are four real ways to do this, and they suit different people. Most of the confusion comes from the fact that all of them get described with the same few words: an AI version of you, an AI coach, an AI product. This guide sets them side by side, including the cases where the cheapest option is the right one.

The short answer

If you want people to be able to ask an AI what you would say, trained on your books, courses and sessions, use a platform built for exactly that. Coachvox, BuddyPro and Rocky.ai each do a version of it without code, and each says you can be live within days. If you want to build a handful of small AI tools yourself and sell access to them, a no-code AI app builder such as Pickaxe is made for that. If you want a product of your own, with its own accounts, payments and data that you own outright, that is a build: by a studio like ours, start to finish, or by developers you hire and manage yourself.

1. AI coaching clone platforms: Coachvox, BuddyPro, Rocky.ai

This is what most people mean by an AI coaching clone, and these are usually called AI coach platforms. You give the platform what you have already made (books, courses, session transcripts, frameworks) and it turns that into an AI that answers the way you would. Each of the three describes itself a little differently.

• Coachvox calls it “an AI version of you”. In its own words, it “trains an AI on your content, your methods and your voice”, and the AI “talks to your audience, captures leads and supports your clients between sessions”. It is aimed at coaches, consultants and expert founders, you can charge for access, and its team will set the AI up for you if you would rather not do it yourself.
• BuddyPro calls it an “AI twin”: a white-label app under your own brand, trained on your expertise and sold to your clients as a subscription of its own, with Stripe payments built in. It says the AI remembers every conversation and tracks each client's progress. BuddyPro's founder, David Riha, separately offers a done-for-you version by application.
• Rocky.ai describes itself as “a no-code AI coaching app builder”. Alongside coaching chats it builds roleplays, assessments and interactive courses into a white-label app under your brand, and it serves organizations and individuals as well as coaches and authors.

Who it suits: a coach, author or expert whose main goal is to make their thinking available between sessions, to warm prospects up before a discovery call, or to sell access to an AI version of their method. If that is what you want, one of these will almost certainly be faster and cheaper than having anything built for you.

What to weigh: you are subscribing to somebody else's software. Your content stays yours, and each of the three says so plainly, but what the AI can do is set by the platform. For most people starting out, that is a fair trade.

2. No-code AI app builders: Pickaxe

Pickaxe describes itself as “a no-code platform for building, deploying, and monetizing custom AI tools”. Rather than one AI version of you, you build separate AI tools (Pickaxe calls them agents): you describe what each one should do, give it your knowledge, and package them into a branded portal with billing and access control built in. Its own examples include a coaching assistant trained on your framework and between-sessions support for coaches and consultants.

Who it suits: someone who wants to try several small ideas, such as an intake assistant, an action-plan generator or a paid advisor for their niche, and is happy to set them up and adjust them personally. It is a quick way to find out what your audience will actually use before you spend money on anything bigger.

3. A studio that builds it start to finish

This is what we do. The Unfair AI is a two-founder AI product studio, Denise Griffitts and Jennifer Jensen, and you work with the two of us from the first call to launch day. A build is the right choice when the AI is one part of something larger: a product with its own accounts, subscriptions and admin, a process your clients move through, or a platform you license to other businesses under their own branding.

Our prices are published. A Pilot Build, one thing working in front of real users, is $15,000 to $22,000 over 4–6 weeks. A complete Product Build, with accounts, subscription billing and an admin panel you can run the business from, is $32,000 to $48,000 over 8–12 weeks. A Platform Build that other businesses can license from you is $65,000 to $110,000 over 14–20 weeks. If what you want is a website with an AI concierge trained on your own books, episodes, talks and articles, that is our Authority Site, $16,000 to $26,000.

At the end, you own it: the code in your own GitHub account, the data in your own database, and the hosting, payment and email accounts in your name. Almost every build starts with a two-week AI Readiness Sprint ($6,500 to $9,500), which ends with a written roadmap and a straight go or no-go. It is deliberately standalone, so you can take the roadmap to somebody else.

Who it suits: an established expert with an audience, a clear idea of what the product has to do, and a reason to own it rather than subscribe to it. It is a significant investment, and a product has running costs after launch too: our care plans for a product start at $495 a month. If a platform already does what you need, use the platform.

4. Building it yourself with developers

If you have a technical co-founder, or want to hire developers and manage the project yourself, you can build exactly what you want and keep every decision in your own hands. It suits people who have run a software project before, or who want to learn how.

The risk is rarely the code. It is the decisions made before the code. Whether your product will serve several separate customers, for example, cannot be added later: it is decided in week one. And the problems we have found in applications other people built, such as one customer seeing another's data, keys left in the browser, or payments that are never verified, look fine until somebody checks. The eight checks in our guide to what to check before you launch apply whoever does the building.

How to choose

• You want people to be able to ask an AI what you would say: an AI coaching clone platform.
• You want to try several small AI tools and sell access to them: a no-code AI app builder.
• You want a product of your own, with accounts, payments and data you own, or a platform to license to others: a build, by a studio or by your own developers.
• You are not sure yet: run the free AI Readiness Check below before you spend anything.

Where The Unfair AI fits

We are an AI product studio. We build custom AI for coaches, authors, experts and broadcasters who already have an audience, start to finish, and we run eight AI products of our own. None of the eight is a do-it-yourself AI clone builder, so if that is what you are after, the platforms above are the right place to look. The eight, in plain words:

• The Production (live): Podcast guest booking and production software: applications, scheduling, prep, reminders, show notes and sponsor copy in one place.
• The Rehearsal Studio (live): Interview and sales conversation practice software: rehearse out loud with an AI that answers back, on camera, then read the scored feedback.
• The Forge (in beta): Client and project management software for a small consulting or coaching team: projects, tasks, contacts, meetings and revenue in one system.
• The Signal (in beta): Reputation and AI-visibility monitoring: news and mentions, plus what AI assistants say about you when somebody asks them.
• The Broadcast (coming soon): An AI website builder for shows and small businesses: pages, show notes and episode promotion written from your own content, kept current as episodes arrive.
• The Outpost (coming soon): Sales prospecting and outreach software: builds prospect lists from the public web, drafts the first message, and sorts the replies.
• The Mirror (coming soon): Leadership communication coaching software: reads the emails, meetings and recordings you choose to share, and coaches you on how you come across.
• The Greenroom (coming soon): A membership community platform for a show's audience: member directory, searchable episode archive, introductions and interview practice.