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Run a painting company from Telegram voice notes with a self-hosted AI agent that built your booking bot and texts you every new Facebook lead
Gage Colpron, founder of Revive Painting in Kelowna, British Columbia, on The Pursuit of Purpose podcast
He runs an open-source Hermes agent he named Angelo on a separate Mac Mini that doesn't hold his own files, and talks to it in one Telegram chat, mostly by voice through Wispr Flow. With it he built a booking bot that his assistant in the Philippines uses on inbound calls: once she submits the intake, it puts the estimate in his calendar, notifies him, texts the client the morning of, drafts an email, creates a quote in PaintScout and adds the job in CompanyCam. The bot runs locally on the Mac Mini, and she opens it at a web address he set up. A scheduled job checks his email every five minutes for Facebook leads and sends him the name and number so he can call right away, another runs a daily health check on the booking bot, and he asks it things like a past job's color schedule, which it finds in Gmail or PaintScout for him to confirm. His project manager and assistant have their own copies on separate Mac user accounts, with limits such as no changes to the live version of his in-house app.
His figure: PaintScout about $1,000 a year. The agent runs on a Mac Mini he bought for it and signs in with his ChatGPT subscription. Catalog: ChatGPT Free $0; Go $8/mo; Plus $20/mo; Pro $100/mo
Advanced · or we set it up for $197
ChatGPT, Hermes Agent (open-source, self-hosted on a Mac Mini), Telegram, Wispr Flow, PaintScout, CompanyCam, Zapier (a few zaps to PaintScout)
The problem
"I hate paperwork as most contractors do," he says, and he spends most of his day in the truck between estimates and job sites.
What happened
No time or money figures. He says he talks to it "like I'm talking to my assistant," and that his project manager and assistant call him less because they ask their own agents. He moved the agent from Claude through the API to signing in with his ChatGPT subscription, so building costs the same as the monthly plan, and he says the setup is "all the effort" and the frustrating part. He is building his own quote builder to replace PaintScout and invited listeners to contact him; the host also runs an automation consulting company for home service businesses.
Quoted in the source: Gage Colpron, founder, Revive Painting. Source: The Pursuit of Purpose (YouTube), ep. 216: Built an AI "Chief of Staff" for My Painting Business with Gage Colpron (2026-10-12) · Added 2026-11-01.
How to set it up yourself
- What Revive Painting does: Gage Colpron talks to a self-hosted AI agent in Telegram all day; with it he built a booking intake his assistant uses on calls (calendar, client texts, PaintScout quote, CompanyCam), a five-minute Facebook-lead alert to his phone and a daily health check on the bot.
- Start with the lead alert, the easiest piece: send Facebook lead notifications to one email label, then have a scheduled automation (an agent task or a Zapier zap) text you each lead's name and number within minutes.
- For the booking intake, paste the prompt below into ChatGPT or Claude and build it one step at a time; when you hit an error, send a screenshot and ask what to do, as he did.
- Put any agent that can reach your email or files on a separate computer or user account without your personal files, give staff copies limited permissions, and keep two-factor sign-in on your email and bank.
- Test the whole booking flow with a fake job before your office uses it on real calls, and check that the calendar time, client text and quote match what was entered.
Copy-paste prompt
I own {COMPANY}, a {TRADE} company in {CITY}. I'm not a developer. Help me build a simple booking intake form that my {OFFICE PERSON} fills in during inbound calls. Fields: {FIELDS, e.g. name, phone, address, job type, best times}. When it's submitted it should add an estimate appointment to {CALENDAR}, notify me by {TEXT OR EMAIL} and text the client a reminder the morning of the appointment. Recommend the simplest tools for this, explain each step in plain English, and ask before connecting anything to my email, payments or bank.We set up one AI automation in your tools, live within 48 hours of getting access, for $197. No call needed. Founding price for our first 10 customers (regular $297).
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Tools used
ChatGPT
General AI assistant for writing, research, brainstorming and analysis.
From Free $0; Go $8/mo; Plus $20/mo; Pro $100/mo (checked 2026-11-03)
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Checked prices: ChatGPT: from Free $0; Go $8/mo; Plus $20/mo; Pro $100/mo (verified 2026-11-03)
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