Mario Lucas PAPHOS, CY

Most AI sales agents break on real customers. I build the ones that don't.

I'm co-founder and CTO of CourseAdvisor. Our agents work 20,000 leads a month by phone and text and bring in $100k a month in sales that would have gone nowhere. I share how it's built, including the bits that broke. Start with the free test kit.

  • 10 awkward callers that break most voice agents
  • The AI judge checklist and the exact prompt to run it
  • A launch checklist to run before every new version ships
Already on the list? Read the build notes
Mario
Lucas
Paphos
Cyprus

Co-founder and CTO, CourseAdvisor

Mario Lucas smiling, in a navy blazer
Builds
AI agents that sell by phone and text
Writes
Build notes, including the bits that broke
Asks
Which caller breaks your agent?

mariolucas.com

CourseAdvisor

The company I co-founded and where most of my week goes. Built for colleges and training providers who get more enquiries than their sales team can ever call back.

CourseAdvisor
Co-founder
& CTO

Voice and SMS agents that pick up every enquiry, follow up the ones that go quiet, and take the conversation as far as the sale.

For
Colleges and training providers
Channels
SMS, outbound calls, inbound calls
Status
Live, global
courseadvisor.ai
Back of card

What broke

On a test call the agent read its own internal notes out loud to the caller, then went quiet for a long stretch while it thought.

What we changed

We paused calling, rebuilt the prompt and ran adversarial test calls before a single real lead heard it again.

Read the full note
Mario in his home office in Paphos

  1. Enquiry lands

    A student downloads a course guide or leaves an enrolment half done. The agent picks it up straight away.

  2. Text back in seconds

    It texts back, answers questions about the course and offers three ways forward: enrol online, a call now, or a chat with a consultant.

  3. Call when they go quiet

    If the enrolment team can't reach a student, the voice agent calls over the following week, then sends one last text.

  4. Booked, handed over or sold

    Depending on how the provider sells, the agent books a consultant, transfers the student live, or takes them through to enrolment itself.

The numbers

What the CourseAdvisor agents do each month, from live client work.

Leads worked each month
20k
Enquiries our agents text or call every month.
Revenue saved each month
$100k
Sales from leads that would have gone nowhere without the agent.
Time to first reply
10 sec
From a new enquiry landing to the first text going out.

Build notes

What I learn building agents for real clients. Mostly voice, and mostly the bits that went wrong first.

Most AI agent content

  • Demos recorded on one perfect call
  • Prompts nobody ran on a real lead
  • Wins only, with the failures cut out
  • Tool lists written for the affiliate link

What you get here

  • Agents working 20,000 real leads a month
  • The calls that broke, and what fixed them
  • Tests you can run on your own agent today
  • Numbers I can back up, or no number

Tools I've built

When nothing out there works the way I want, I build it. Five I use every week and one that's next.

  • HookCut

    In use, still growing

    Turns a raw talking-head video into a finished edit. I film on my phone and drop it in a folder. It cuts, captions, adds zooms and fixes eye contact, then pulls out shorts and pings me on WhatsApp when it's done.

    Instead ofan editor on retainer

  • Scripter

    In use

    Edits video by editing the transcript. Delete a sentence and the clip goes with it. It finds filler words, retakes and long pauses, adds captions and zooms, and sends finished clips to my post scheduler.

    Instead ofDescript

  • FlowLite

    In use

    Dictation for my phone and my laptop with no word limits and no credits. Built on the open source Handy app, with one shared history across both.

    Instead ofWispr Flow

  • Readr

    In use

    My own fork of an open source PDF reader. The Ask AI button runs on a model I pay for by usage, with a spend cap I set.

    Built onFolio, open source

  • PZ Accounts

    Live

    Bookkeeping set up for a Cyprus company. It pulls receipts and invoices out of my inboxes, records VAT both ways and runs on my own server.

    Built onSlowBooks, open source

  • AdPilot

    Spec written

    Facebook and Instagram ads where the AI writes the ads and I approve every launch. Hard budget cap, dry run by default and a kill switch.

    Instead ofZeely

Want to see what each one replaces and what that costs to buy? I send the full breakdown a few days after the test kit. Get the test kit.

How I work

Four rules I keep coming back to, mostly because I learned each one the hard way.

Speed wins the lead

Most lost sales come down to a missed call or a reply that landed a day late. That gap is what I build for.

Sell it before you build it

I spent years in B2B software sales before I wrote automations. Find the problem, hear the customer say it in their own words, then build. The build is the easy bit.

Real numbers or nothing

Every result on this site comes from live client work. If I can't back a number up, it doesn't go on the page.

Show the broken bits

The CourseAdvisor card has a back side. Flip it. That's where the useful stuff lives. A demo that never failed hasn't met a real customer yet.

Hi, I'm Mario

Mario by the sea in Paphos, hand on chin, thinking
Paphos, Cyprus
Mario grinning on the beach in Paphos
Best office in Paphos

I grew up in London, sold software for a living, and now build AI agents from Paphos in Cyprus.

Sales taught me the Sandler way of finding the real problem before pitching anything. Building taught me that most of that problem is slow follow up. So now I build the thing that follows up.

I'm co-founder and CTO at CourseAdvisor. This site is where I keep the honest version of how it's all going.

Based
Paphos, Cyprus
Background
B2B SaaS sales, then automation builds
Role
Co-founder and CTO, CourseAdvisor
Writes about
Voice agents, speed to lead, testing AI before it talks to customers

Why I do this

Mario, Serena and their son on a Ferris wheel at sunset, the boy's face blurred
Serena, me and our boy
Mario, Serena and their son in Arsenal shirts, the boy's face blurred
Ready for the game together
Mario and Serena at lunch under a parasol in Paphos
Lunch with Serena

We're bootstrapping all of this. No investors and no safety net. Just me, my wife Serena and our little boy in Paphos, plus Mila, our dog, who'd like a lot more of my time.

When my son was born I was building the business almost every day. Serena carried most of the nights. Friends barely heard from me. The gym went and ten kilos came on. Most days it felt like I was letting everyone down.

What kept me going was a baby who smiled no matter how tired I was, and Serena, who believed in what I was building while she carried the weight.

Working from home means I still get the morning walks and the school run. And I want all of this to count for something. For them most of all.

Mila, a golden dog, sitting and smiling on a dirt path
Mila, who wants more walks

Also running

One agency and a few experiments outside CourseAdvisor. Small, cheap to run, and good for testing ideas.

  • M.S. Project Zeus A marketing agency in Paphos for websites, social and content. I run the technical side. Agency msprojectzeus.com
  • GreaseTrapQuotes Grease trap cleaning quotes for restaurants across Sydney. Experiment greasetrapquotes.com
  • ClearCyprus Guides and a tax calculator for people moving to Cyprus or setting up a company here. Experiment clearcyprus.com
  • DentalAgnt UK dental practice data from Companies House, refreshed weekly. Experiment dentalagnt.com
  • Find a Housing Provider A directory of UK supported housing providers with named contacts. Experiment findahousingprovider.co.uk

Get the test kit

Cover of the Voice Agent Test Kit PDF

Free, straight to your inbox. Everything I run before a voice agent talks to a real lead.

  • 10 awkward callers with what a pass and a fail sound like
  • The AI judge checklist and the exact prompt to run it
  • A launch checklist to run before every new version ships