How One Person Replaced an Entire Team With AI

I think people now have a a more intelligent eye and they can see like what vibe coded apps and sites look like. >> So you don't feel there's a big switching cost to moving between the different tools. You found you could pick up the interface pretty easily. >> Yeah, I'm really, like I said, I'm interested in like this new space. I I'm trying to reach out to more um UX designers and people. >> So where do you think AI is going, Frank? Where's it taken us? >> The four big leverages are labor, capital, media, and code. And a lot of those have started to become more available to people basically in the past like 20 years, right? Specifically media like YouTube, >> AI, is it hype or help?

Good day and welcome to the show. I'm your host Pete Cooper and our topic is AI hype or help. Today's guest is Frank Gonzalez with his company Clean Cut Systems. He's been working in AI helping companies make changes to the way they operate with automations and other tools and he's been successful. He comes to us from Phoenix, Arizona. So, without any further ado, let's get into it. >> Good day, Frank. Welcome to the show. How are you today? >> Doing pretty good. How are you, Pete? >> Yeah, I'm doing good. You're coming in from Phoenix, Arizona, right? >> Yes, sir. >> Yeah. Cross country. Nice. >> So your business uh Clean Cut Solutions um sorry Clean Cut Systems.

Tell us a little bit about that and what you do. [snorts] >> Yeah, so primarily it's a product design and engineering firm. So put simply, I make custom software for businesses for internal use cases or external use cases like if you want to make an app for the actual market or if you want to make an app or software for your own internal team. >> Yep. Yep. Uh you got an example where someone might have done something like that or you did something like that? >> Yeah.

Um probably the first one which kind of even brought me into the space was the most interesting to me was a recruiting firm and he was a guy that I was doing some previous work for like automation work where that's where I kind of started. I started with make automation stuff like that. And um after a while he asked me about this specific problem where he wanted to get people to be able to have a list of candidates, right? He's a recruiting firm, so he finds candidates for certain positions.

And so he wanted it to be in this nice like productized very simple packaged way because he had people taking one-on-one calls and doing all these like very premium service levels, but he wanted someone for or something to offer for people that are just like, "Let me get in, get out, get my candidates. " And so there was a way to do that with make. You could kind of patch together a couple of things. You could have a LinkedIn scraper, have like an email go out and a couple other things, but it ended up being just an email thread at the end of the day. And I thought, well, there's a way you could basically attach an interface to this.

And with the interface, you can have a lot more control of like the look and feel to it. So you can have obviously, you know, like the login screen, the homepage, you can have upselles and side products and stuff like that. And he was really into it. And so we built out this entire software where the same bones are there. You have a LinkedIn scraper, you have a list being generated, you have an AI scoring those candidates and then delivering it to the person through an email or through the interface platform.

>> But you just had a lot more creativity that he had and I had and we kind of bounced ideas back and forth and we created this whole platform that had like a lot of his brand style, a lot of his like more premium quality that he cared about as well, which I think is like a great um kind of screening tool for me now. Making sure that I have uh clients that really actually appreciate that stuff and they're not just looking for like the quickest, easiest solution, but they actually care about like the platform, the interface and the experience for the customer.

So the problem that they had was just the overhead of having to do all this recruitment work back and forward with lots of people and that's I guess time consuming not very rewarding work as well I would imagine and >> so you're able to sort of take the heavy lifting away from him. Yeah >> I can see that. I can I mean I I've come across that problem myself. Um just I've actually got on my board here that some outreach work and finding people uh recruitment is you know recruiting people finding people that can help us with various things. It's a it's a problem I haven't really solved. Maybe your software would be something I should look at. >> Yeah. Yeah.

And I think like one of the things that he really focused on was his like decision- making, right? Like how did his um basically people that would go and find candidates his like researchers how would they go and say this is a quality list and so with AI and cloud API we're able to kind of put that into a bit of a formula and that's what kind of got productized so that little element of scoring candidates researching and scraping you can do all day but how do you score them that was something that we kind of really tapped into his brain and put into a series of prompts and that kind of made everything possible. Okay.

I mean this, as you say, this SC scraping, if anyone doesn't know where that is, there's there's tools that can go and find people uh through going through websites, looking through LinkedIn and other places where you can pull in candidates, right? Or pull in people uh that fit a certain profile, but as you say, how do you go from that big list that you can get down to people that you want to really interview? Um, and you've sort of taken that funneling process, which is a lot of work, and cut it down. Do you have any idea sort of how much time was saved through using your tool?

>> Um, he had someone go through it and he said that he really enjoyed it and it saved him about 10 hours a week or so. Um, he has since like learned vibe coding himself, so he's made some changes to the platform that I'm not fully aware of. Um, but in that first initial test, the guy said around 10 10 hours a week. >> Yeah. Right. Cool. >> He's vibe coding it from for himself. So, how does that affect you? Certainly is affecting me [gasps] being in tech and software development for many years. My some of my customers are doing stuff themselves. >> Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because, you know, people have come to me and they ask me like, "Does that scare you?

Does that mean like you're out of a job in a couple years? " And stuff. But I honestly think it's the opposite. I think that there are going to be some people that kind of like website builders, you know, became a thing and certain people are like, well, I'll just go build it myself and stuff, but there are these like they call it like the last 10 to 20% that you run into whether it's like setting up the database side or, you know, managing an API update or stuff like that that is a lot more technical, a lot less fun than the beginning stages of, you know, I have this crazy idea, let me go on to lovable or something and make it happen.

Yeah, >> it's a lot more like debugging and stuff like that >> that I think will show people that it's it's there's stuff under the hood, right? You don't just get to hop into a new car and drive every single day. Sometimes you got to do the oil changes and that's where people like me are going to be contacted, I'm sure. >> Yeah, I would agree with that. I have this model in my head of the old days of software development pro like building an app was like this. There was requirements, there was development, and then there was, you know, rolling it out. >> Mhm.

I don't see any changes um in the I mean we see massive changes in development because of vibe coding but developing the requirements um still needs to be done but the great part about vibe coding is that someone who knows the requirements intuitively or sees the problem can actually really explore that can't they can really take the user interface to the direction they want to go um and get it to a certain level but then that backend piece as you talked about you know scale scaling it up, rolling it out, all the other bits and pieces, the cloud compute, the account setups, the cyber security, all those sorts of things still there, right? Still very much there. >> Yeah.

And I actually think both sides have quite a lot of depth. I think we we talked about this briefly last time, but you know, I have um even before the automation, I had like design experience. I chose I I looked at the field of UX design and I realized that there's like a design side and there's an engineering side and I just like naturally felt more towards the graphic design side and that has a lot of depth in and of itself too. So you can, you know, I think people now have a a more intelligent eye and they can see like what vibecoded apps and sites look like.

And with that being a thing, now even the premium of design is also going up I believe when in terms of you know where does the button go? How does it you know ask you to convert this user from free to paid and stuff like that. So I think there's a lot of depth with both sides like the engineering and backend and technical side but also like just the pure product design side that uh people are going to probably run into an area or ceiling if you've never done any of this before and then you'll contact some professionals. >> Yeah, I mean I've I wouldn't call myself a designer and I wouldn't call myself a back-end developer but I've certainly vibe coded and created an app.

I think I did one in a morning for the very first time. It was an Apple app and I was pretty happy with it.

But but it's not a product it but it allowed me to explore the idea and then I thought well okay I've got it now am I going to roll it out am I going to do something with it the answer to that was no I think having had it and built it tested it and used it that I was able to explore very cheaply um what the app would be like if I finished it and then found out that in this case it wasn't wasn't worth going ahead and that creates I [clears throat] mean you got enormous amount of efficiencies coming through what is what I'm hearing you know that people can experiment with things cheaply in their own time.

They don't need to bring on an expensive engineering team which they would have had to have done 20 years ago just to build something taking a huge risk to find out that you know it doesn't really solve the problem properly or there was no market for it. >> Yeah. Interesting. So you mentioned in there about using make. Um tell us a little bit about that because we sort of quickly skipped over it and I'm not sure the audience gets it. Tell us about that because that was a sort of start to um how you did [snorts] this case this particular product. >> Yeah, so make on a basic level is like a drag and drop uh builder for connecting different softwares.

So if you have a CRM, you can connect it to your project manager. If you have an email, you can connect it to a researching tool. A lot of cool interesting things can happen there. Um and it runs off of like JSON code.

So, it's basically sending signals from one uh software like let's say a lead comes into your funnel and then that individual email or phone number can go into your CRM then they can be placed into your project manager then they can be placed to your newsletter or a plethora of other actions but very basic stuff right >> and so I learned that initially because I you know had the background that I did and so I didn't have any like technical experience and I wanted to learn like the bones of it and that was what was available at the time and then as I started to kind of explore offers of you know what can I offer to the market, what can I sell, what's actually what people want.

Uh I came across this YouTube video where this guy was also attaching for free an interface to that and it was a very small basic thing where he's like well you know what if I could just vibe code something or you know do something really quick and they can have the same fundamental automation same fundamental set of actions but they have a little bit of a nicer like form to do that in rather than like they just it just appears in your softwares. They can actually have somewhere to look at it and see it and interact with it. A product, right?

Digital product >> and and he was offering it for free as this little upsell thing and I was or not upsell but like an addition bonus thing and I thought what if that just becomes the product, right? And then you know after just looking at it plainly it became that this is product design and engineering and so I focused on that. >> Nice. And how long ago are we talking now? >> That was probably a little over a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago.

Um, I started the entire thing like automation generally speaking in January of 2025, but it was like halfway through that year where I watched that video and I noticed, oh, okay, I can make some interfaces and whatnot and then I really dove into fully doing custom software products, stuff like that. >> Right. Interesting. I mean, I did a search on um Google Trends or Adwords, I think. I always get those muddled up and automation searching for AI powered automations or automations went up 900%. Uh from year on year. Um so you caught the market right in terms of at least that's what I'm seeing is a lot of businesses out there were looking for automations.

It seems to be that they've caught on businesses have caught on to this idea that they can automate processes with uh particularly with I guess now with AI but they have been able to do this for a long time with uh you know make isn't necessarily tied to AI is it? It's it's more of a API tool or it links different programs together. >> Mhm. >> Um but I think what's happening now is that it's really become ma literally mainstream that everybody's thinking, okay, how can I automate this? AI can automate it. Let's try that. And and we've had really good experiences with that, too.

We had a one of our clients saving $5, 000 every month um with an automation that we built with a proper dashboard and all the rest of it. >> That's awesome. >> Yeah. >> So, how do you get business? >> Um I do a lot of Upwork actually. There was uh a very popular YouTube channel by this guy named Nick Sarv that initially brought me into automation in general and that was his uh kind of main channel. And I thought I'd heard of Upwork before. I'd used it to even like purchase some video edits and stuff like that, but I hadn't really done a lot of like the selling side. But I hopped on and almost right away it started working for me.

So, I just kept funneling more money and sending more pitches and it worked out. And couple referrals later, stuff like that, I had like my own little client base and then I found some um cool projects that way. >> Doesn't Upwork require some uh history and all those sorts of things. And how did you get that sort of established? Were you just lucky or did you craft it in some way? >> No. Well, I I always saw that as a positive because, you know, if you're doing paid ads or SEO or anything like that, you're always starting from absolute cold, but with uh Upwork, they kind of keep a history and a reputation of you. So, I was very interested in trying to get that up as much as possible.

In the beginning, you just kind of had to take some lower level jobs in order to do that because you're starting from zero and you're kind of have no stars next to your name, right? Just like any other business, you can get those early ones on the board. >> And then uh luckily I had some good people that had some interesting projects and they gave me some reviews and I appreciated that and slowly but surely they growed and now I have the numbers that I have today thankfully. >> Nice. And did did it make a difference where you found your customers? Was it very local to where you live or was it across the world? Something in between. >> Um the majority was the United States.

There were a few people I think in um the UK that I ended up working with and then there's people not that I work with as clients but as just kind of peers in the space that are in Australia. So there's people all over the place. I guess the most the English speaking world I would say and for clients it's about 90% United States. >> Nice. Really nice. Well, isn't it great? I mean would you call yourself a soloreneur? >> Yeah, I guess technically. Yeah. I'm the only one here. >> That's right.

It's this new new term that's been coined and I think uh we've already found that the first soloreneurs which have hit the billion dollar mark was well maybe they haven't but they hyped it up that they had. >> Yeah. I'm so I'm super excited by that cuz do you know like Naval Robocant? >> I do not. No. >> No.

Naval he's like this like thinker he's in the VC space but he's very famous on Twitter for just releasing some some kind of gems of perspective and he talks a lot about leverage and um the four big leverages are labor capital media and code and you know a lot of those have started to become more um available to people basically in the past like 20 years right specifically media like YouTube now everyone can have like a distribution channel and now within the past you whatever 90 900% increase that we saw last the past year or two we have code and so I think like that's that's such a fundamental huge unlock that's still being explored and you know exciting that the solo person like myself I

don't have like tons of capital I don't have tons of labor but I have media and code and if I have 50% of the available leverage levers then that's it's phenomenal we can we're going to see how this is going to go in the next 10 years for people like myself >> yeah I agree I think it is really exciting I'm seeing this whole emergence of the soloreneur. I think it's been a trend for 30 years um and which is kind of the length of my career that you could go out on your own and it seems to be every new piece of technology makes it just that little bit easier, right?

I mean, if I go right back to when the internet sort of came on and it seems like archaic that there wasn't an internet, but there really wasn't. And >> and then you could create a website and you could have a business doing something online and then of course e-commerce came and then you could receive payments through that and so it became instead of having to have a whole business structure where people were moving papers around and somebody had to go to the bank for the checks and somebody had to do this and do that. It could all be sort of integrated into one one business to the point now where I think it's better than ever I think to go into the soloreneur thing.

I mean, I think really you're just a great example of that and I meet many people doing this podcast that have done the same sort of thing relatively recently, you know, come into it with just I guess it's just the as we say in Australia having a go, right? >> Just having a go. And that's very exciting. And you know what I think the counter to that is that there used to be a time when you would join I come I'm in Bethlehem PA and there was steel works. People would start their career in the steel works and they would end their career in the steel works and they would have a lifetime there um working their way up through the ranks getting better and better paying conditions.

Didn't have to worry about finding another job. >> That's the big corporates aren't able to do that for people anymore. There's always change. There's always projects that come and go. There's always new skills that come and go and they just say, "Well, we don't need those people anymore. " And I know great people who have been at the top of their field and just literally with a slice of a pen, they're let go with 2, 000 other people. You know, >> it's extremely volatile and >> you can't pivot yourself from one job to another or one skill set from another, but you can do what you're doing, the be a soloreneur.

And um you can follow the market and create a I guess a future for yourself that really can be indefinite. Yeah. And it's it's happening super quick too cuz I was on the phone yesterday with a friend of mine who's in DC and he wants to be in like the consulting space and kind of the the big five and you know that whole career track of of being in the big consulting firms. And um you know we live different lives where I'm doing my own business. And we're talking about what we do. And he's like, "Well, what if you know maybe one day I want to start my business, but I'll need a lot of capital. " And then he's like I I told him, "Give me a number. Like what do you think you would need?

" And he's telling me $100, 000. And I was like, "Okay, well that's that's a lot of cushion. Like you don't really need that in this day and age. You need a Stripe account, an LLC, and just a marketing channel. And honestly, if you have not even uh any cash, you can go on Instagram. My first client ever for graphic design was some random gentleman that I found that had a supplement company where I said, "Hey, I like this, but here's a potential redesign. What do you think? " And to this day, we're still doing business together. And so, it's just beautiful if you have, you know, the gung-hoess having to go about it.

And you really don't need, you know, VC backed or, you know, big private equity or anything like that. Um, you can that's that's a whole another game. You can do that and it'll make things faster, but you could also lose money faster. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I mean that's the startup world, isn't it? You know, the startup world is and I've been in in that for a while. I've seen it from both sides too. I've seen it from the corporate side. I've done stuff myself. U raising capital is is really really challenging. Um, and the whole startup is based on the tenants that you're going to grow really fast. Um you're going to receive capital, you're going to share in the growth.

Um um and it's going to be something big, right? It's you're going to it's not going to be >> it's not going to be a small business. But a so being a soloreneur doesn't need to have that aspiration to really have a good life and make good money and survive and have a family and do all the things you want to do in your life. Um, and I'm very interested in comparing those two. And I think what I'm seeing is is this element of of having those relationships with people, right? As a startup, you don't necess you have relationship obviously with your own company, but you don't have necessarily a personal relationship with your customers.

It's the this is the company, it's the product, but you have to have those relationships, right? You have to build those relationships with people. Yeah. Yeah. And some people call this like a lifestyle business or like a certain level of business. And there is a cap to be 100% fair about it. Yeah. >> But you get those trade-offs, right? Like you don't have a board that you have to, you know, speak to. You don't have quarterly reports you have to show. You don't have ROI that you have to be so nervous about. And you do get that more personal element which I think in like early stages is more important because you do get the customer feedback.

You understand, you know, what's proper customer management. How many calendar meetings is too many meetings on the calendar? How many how much time do I need to spend on the building part? How much marketing time do I need to spend? So for early stage entrepreneurs, you know, I think it's it's a totally legitimate path where you can learn so much without the pressure of needing to deliver by a certain date and having, you know, sharks essentially kind of on your back and like where is my return? Unless >> yeah, >> you want to play that game. But >> yeah, nice.

And I think you know what's we've been talking around the subject of AI a little bit but always comes back surprisingly comes back to these human relationships. I mean um [gasps] I think there's a fear out there that AI is going to take over and be I was watching Elon Musk interview. It was 3 weeks ago and I watched on the weekend >> and he thinks that the, you know, these robots are going to be doing all the work for us and there's going to be a utopia where we get a minimum wage and, you know, they're doing all the work for us. I don't see that for a long long time because humans are humans. I mean, we even just this interaction on this podcast is human interaction.

That's interesting >> for other people to observe. That's when we watch movies, we're watching human interaction, right? >> We need that human interaction. We're fundamentally social creatures. >> And that need is not going to go away. We can't interact with a robot and expect the same kind of life as we do interact with with a real human.

And I think you where we are with that your soloreneur thing is you although you don't have a team of people to interact with and a company to work in you do have your clients and your customers and if you've got a reasonable volume of those you know you've got a great uh source of of human relationships um which I think will subtend which goes beyond the technology.

There's an old there's an old saying that uh that they use around town that um for good or for bad or something like goes for good or for bad we will use our friends will give our friends work right even if they're not the best in town they're our friend so we give them the work you know um and that can go a long way you know having that human relationship >> and I think that's where I think >> you've done a nice job of of of building those relationships. Is there any advice you could give solopreneurs about about that about how to build relationships?

>> Yeah, I think that it is one of the most fundamental skills of business that kind of like is the foundation for a lot and I think it also has to do with like product design and software. So, you know, I'll explain like a concept I've been playing with in my head because I started off on one side of the pendulum doing like graphic design, more creative work, and then I went into make and I just learned like all this technical engineering and I think it's kind of swinging back now and I've heard of this kind of put somewhere, but like I'm trying to make more products that are for the market that are focused on connection, if that makes sense.

And you know, it's it's not so much like a business tool, but maybe a consumer product for I I've seen these interesting ones where they're focused on, you know, reminding you to pray daily and things like that or sending a love note to a loved one that's digital but has certain like personal custom characteristics to it. >> And I just find these super interesting because I think whenever there's like this new space, you have the risktakers and the artists go into that space.

And with technology being, you know, more available, I think you have people that are not, you know, from traditional engineering backgrounds going in and just asking, well, what if I took this concept of, you know, Valentine's Day and put it into a prompt and you have something like those apps. >> And so I'm I'm trying to allow myself to kind of put more of my own creativity and specifically like human connection into these products. And I think we're going to see a lot of more more like full experiences, right? I think that the whole world there's been this idea that we're going to move away from screens. We're going to move into like VR.

We're going to move into holograms, stuff like that. And I still think we're going to have people that design those experiences, but they're going to be more focused on how do those actually like accelerate human connection. How do those actually, you know, maybe they show up at a concert, you have a let's say a hologram for something, >> and now it's not so much about separating us from technology, but it's about integrating everything and maybe having some kind of, you know, additional quality to it.

So, I I I am like >> I I I love to kind of watch the debate from a distance of, you know, are we going to all be automatons and very technical and we're just going to have our slop delivered every day and eat that at our desks and >> that obviously is very sad, but I think that the human spirit is never going to, you know, like you said, go too far away from connection or crave that and we're going to stop craving that and we're always going to try to use these tools to actually accelerate the connection. I'm excited to see what comes out of it. >> Right. But I mean, uh, meta has been, I'm going to say the word trying to bring us into this metaverse, as he calls it.

Um, [clears throat] >> I wouldn't say I've always felt that, um, it's not going to work, but I I see some limitations. Let's say I think the idea of putting goggles on shuts you out. If you're in a room with somebody else, you put those goggles on, you now shut out of the real world. It opens up a whole new world. Um, but that kind of needs to be contained. Now, I'm not a big big gamer, but I've certainly tried the goggles and I've, you know, done all the hand actions and it was certainly fun. Um, and there's a place for it. But to me, it's just still over here. It's it's not it's it's something, as I think you said it well, it's another experience over here.

It doesn't really change fundamentally how humans interact um you know whether it be face to face or zoom or telephone or whatever. >> Mhm. >> Um I think he's got some challenges on the metaverse to be honest. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I don't think the metaverse is the solution that we're all looking for. I think it's um kind of like the idea of like a run club, right? Like run clubs became popular and then there was apps built around facilitating run clubs. >> I think that's kind of more so what I'm trying to think trying to explain.

It's like there is >> there's ways for these products to facilitate in-person meetings and then add to it just enough not to the point of kind of replacing yourself with a digital avatar by any means or anything like that. >> So I've not used the run club >> for the audience and for me. What is what is a run club? >> Yeah.

So run clubs probably if you did a keyword search those became pretty popular in the past like 2 or 3 years but um it's just kind of been this resurgence of people getting together to to run and um you know there's been a lot of thought going into it and maybe even research going into it of why and it's just because we miss you know third spaces we miss places to go and hang out and interact with people and even at the gym now you know 90% of people are full on headphones in in your own world whereas a run club you're kind of more encouraged to have a chat while you're jogging or while you're fast walking and there's a hangout before and a hangout after and so a lot of apps and products came

up to facilitate these things and I think that that's kind of an example of technology helping connection rather than stop >> nice well I was never in a run club I used to run by myself as a teenager like did some half marathons and things and then but much later in my life I got into biking >> and back in Australia I had a mountain biking group that I would get together with and the Best part of that ride was the half halfway stop at the coffee shop. >> Yeah. >> Where we sat down, parked the bike, sat down, had a chat, had a coffee, maybe something to eat, you know, watch the world go by for for 15, 20 minutes between our ride. Talk about the ride.

I mean, the ride was something we both experienced together and we wanted to share that and we wanted to do it face to face. >> Yeah. You got the endorphins going. You've been through something kind of difficult together, you feel like, you know, brothers in arms or sisters in arms and Yeah. Very cool idea. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That definitely really works. Yeah. Human connections just uh it cannot be easily replaced, you know? I think that's so important. >> So, where's your business going? What's next for you, Frank? [clears throat] >> Yeah, I'm really, like I said, I'm interested in like this new space.

I'm trying to reach out to more um UX designers and people in the space that are doing what I'd consider like experimental things and it's on the fringes of uh bringing things that are just kind of unexpected. I think there is a lot of use for just very technical tools like you know a calendar, a scheduleuler, a lead follow-up thing and that's probably going to be the bread and butter as far as like money is concerned as far as like what the market really desires.

But I do think there's also going to be some very interesting firms that go towards the edges and try to build something that is more, you know, multimedia or focused on even, you know, experiential marketing kind of those upleveling those those potential areas where you could have technology, like I said, serve that community, serve the human connection or just serve this like almost artistic level of of the market. >> Really interesting. Yeah. And so are you a Claude user? Um, what's the tools that you like to use for for your code? >> I use cursor dayto-day. It's my daily driver. As far as the the model underneath it, I've been pretty much in the Claude family.

I will hear anybody out, but I don't want to spend too much time debating. I just want to get the things done. I think it ultimately is like, you know, Chevy or Ford or Coke and Pepsi. And, you know, you're going to have preferences, but >> for the most part, we're not building, you know, rocket ships that are going to space. So you don't need that ultimate level unless you're I mean video games might be the one thing that people are building now that really do need that level of high high model.

Um for the most part the stuff that I'm building for businesses you can get done off of like a Opus level model or soul level model >> and so actually actually recently I downloaded codeex and I gave it a try and >> for the most part felt felt similar. I think the the interface has some uh different qualities like the actual product itself has different qualities that I can see people preferring but like the actual muscle of the model underneath I'm I'm kind of agnostic. >> So you don't feel there's a big switching cost to moving between the different tools. You you found you could pick up the interface pretty easily.

You know, I was actually happily surprised that yesterday when I downloaded codecs, it could receive all my chats from claude and so it could kind of import everything and my chats were were there, my projects were there, even anything in cursor was there. >> So that's something I think that the companies are realizing people are are are facing and I think the actual switching cost is like more so moving your knowledge bases, more so moving your chat history um but not like relearning the tool. I think they all fundamentally are a prompt box with connectors with directions of what to do.

>> I think the cost is more so like the information that you've already put into a interface or model or something like that. >> Right. So that's interesting that you didn't see the switching cost being too high. Uh that's often not been the case with software.

Often you get very familiar with a tool and switching across to a new one >> is it takes a big investment in time and energy and people don't they stick with the ones that they know um I think that they are in a way so easy to use um and so intuitive in a lot of ways that switching is easier so it brings up the question you know how do these guys keep how does Claude keep you when their model starts to fall behind from switching over to Codeex or, you know, chatbt or one of the others. You know, I'm I'm not seeing how they're going to keep their market um and keep them people, I guess, locked in to their tools.

Yeah, I think that like this uh a lot of people have have these like negative connotations on on rappers like chat TV rappers as products, but >> I think that's that's kind of um it kind of points to the idea of, you know, personal use cases for these models. >> And I think that, you know, these bigger companies, they're they're kind of the the base, the foundation, and so they want as much use as possible.

And the products like cloud design for instance or cloud co-work for instance are trying to do something for a particular group like design is for designers and co-work is for you know operations teams and that that's one way they can tackle it but I do think that there's just going to be this long tale of individual people or smaller firms creating rappers that are going to serve you know a very specific like you know a a writer a writing helping tool something that literally in your document is helping you write and Google Docs can try to do that as well but I just think that there's going to a lot of space for people to do these like hyperfocused niche use cases that is based on the

fundamental models that I don't think that these cloud teams or open teams are going to have enough time or care to to make happen. >> No, I agree with that. And if anyone doesn't know what a rapper is, I'm thinking of another example in the accounting or in the legal field where you can subscribe to quite an expensive package. Um, which just is I guess it might be more than a rapper, but it's certainly heavily using I don't even know let's chat say ch whatever model they use. Um, but making it tailored to their needs. So I I mean how do they build them? I mean I think there's some code. I think there's some prompts.

I think there's some buttons and things like that which which more make it much easier and quicker to really drive the LLM. Um >> I mean and we can do those things ourselves, right? We can we can just build prompts but we don't want to invest all that time um building the prompts [snorts] for our own internal needs. We just go and pay the the the guys that built the rapper. >> Yeah. I think it's totally valid. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, where do you think AI is going, Frank? Where's it taken us? >> Generally speaking, or software, robots, what are we talking? >> Well, let's start with your your work. Where do you think it's going for you?

>> I think it's going to be a couple years of kind of everyone trying to find their footing. I think that a lot of people that started to vibe code something and hope to be at the top of the iOS app store are going to realize, okay, it's there's actually a lot of marketing that's involved and I'm bad at marketing, so I should just stop this and do some other side hustle. So, I think like a lot of indie people are going to come in and wash out. There's going to be great successes, but there's going to be a lot of people that just realize, okay, it's another option and it's may not be the most valid one for me.

I think that there's going to be a lot of firms that are going to be focused on that gap of people that have started something but can't finish it or they realize that there's a lot of easier there's it's a less costly thing to do. They still need a professional to go and design the interfaces and the backends and I think that's going to be a great opportunity for even for like ex software engineers or anyone that may have unfortunately gotten laid off. I think that there's a huge market if they can realize that they can be the person that saves the vibe coders or things like that.

I think that's going to be a good thing for a couple of years and then I think uh yeah the models are going to get better and um you know maybe there will be a day where I can just say make me an app and it spins up absolutely everything and debugs it all but you know the quality of of decision-m is always going to be there. The quality of needing to, you know, see the the consensus and then go the completely totally opposite way is going to always need to be there and that's never going to come from a model. At least I don't think it's designed to be that way.

I think models are designed to be aggregators, designed to be consensus machines almost and so you're always going to have to be or always going to have to find a little bit of a a nut or an innovator and he's going to have this next thing and it's going to prompt in this totally unfamiliar way or he's going to you know it used to be the entrepreneur was the person that disagreed with the entire crowd. Maybe the entrepreneur is going to be the person disagrees with the entire models and and that'll be the person. >> Well nicely said Frank I think uh I got a little example for everyone maybe you like this too. I uh I do blogs, right?

I'll I'll do my video and then we'll put it into something written blog and then it needs to be an image created. So I'll say make an image blah blah blah with my common prompt based on this. And the number of times it comes back with pretty much the same image with some guy sitting in front of a laptop computer that I got. I said, "No, you have to put an animal in there somewhere. " So it puts the guy in front of a computer with an animal in the background. It's like, >> yeah, >> no, I want something a little different. >> And I think I' I sense this um moving towards a just this um inevitable move towards what's common, moving toward the average. And it kind of gets really boring. >> Yeah.

Yeah. I did not realize that so many people use like M dashes and stuff apparently because that's what these models are trained off of that the way that they, you know, write now is a a showcase of the average. And I was like, "Okay, well that's I didn't realize that's what I've been reading this whole time. That's what the average journalism piece is or anything like that. " And it just becomes kind of bland after a while. And it's just >> that's a good insight. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So lateral thinking I think is going to be super valuable.

Being able to, you know, they did this question and I think it was philosophy class in college where they asked a group of students like think of a brick and think of as many uses of a brick as you can. And some people could come up with like 10 uses and some people were saying you could make it a doors stopper. You could put your car on top of it. You could put a drink on it as a coaster. And like the people that had more lateral thinking were constantly the more entrepreneurial, creative, artistic types and less like the engineering side. And so you're always going to the need for people that are just wackos.

>> It would be kind of sad if all you could think of, well, you put it in the wall. Can you think of any other use for it? >> Yeah. Exactly. >> No. >> Yeah. So, um yeah, I think we I think you're right. And and history has shown you know these really exciting breakthroughs have come from um scientific discoveries which were way beyond what was expected.

I think if we look back at some of the massive breakthroughs they come from the smallest of things you know I mean there's this thing about Einstein and his theory of relativity the only way they could prove they knew there was a problem was because the orbit of Mercury was out by the smallest degree every every year or something was barely measurable. He could have almost buried it in the noise but they knew that that wasn't the case and they just kept going. Eventually they would prove you know his theory of relativity and bending of spaceime because of the orbit of Mercury was just slightly out the smallest of things. Now people will say who cares.

Well actually you would care a lot if we didn't work that out because GPS wouldn't work and you wouldn't be able to navigate because you'd be kilometers off. You'd never have anything you you couldn't use GPS for anything without having those calculations in there. Um, so where I was going with that is that science is going to, you know, not everything in the world is now put into the internet for the models to learn on. There's still a real world out there that is not in the internet. And so finding those new scientific breakthroughs is still going to create um create new opportunities, you know, new sciences, therefore new engineering, therefore new products. >> Mhm. >> Yeah.

I think it's very very interesting the amount of like unknowable things that end up becoming very uh valuable to us. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well said, >> Frank. Well, this has been fun. Um, do you have any other comments or questions for us? >> No, I think uh it's going to be exciting. I love to talk to other people in the space to see how they're approaching both business projects and personal projects. So, you know, and actually I might be even more interested in like the personal projects because that's when those interesting, you know, 4 a. M. Ideas or coffee shop ideas come out. So, yeah.

I guess question would be what's what's one, you know, random idea that you think is not consensus that might have some value in the future or something? >> Oh my goodness. Uh what's a random idea that I think might have some consensus in the future? Boy, oh boy. Boy, I'm going to go back to something we talked about and that's the soloreneur. I think that is going to revolutionize the way we uh we live. I think everybody could be a soloreneur. Everybody could do it who could access a computer can do this and that's going to create a whole new economy. >> Right? So there's going to be people that train the solarreneurs. There's going to be rappers that help the soloreneurs.

There's going to be the soloreneurs mentor. You know, there's going to be this whole thing that comes up um based on that. I think that and and what happens when they close that whole department down and 2, 000 people are out of well, they go and become solopreneurs and there's an industry that just goes and helps these people get out of here. We go now. Into something that get out of that that 2, 000 people that they lost their jobs. Okay, come over and do some training in being a soloreneur. We'll help you with that. We'll help you. We'll onboard you into being a soloreneur and finding a new life for yourself. I think this is a industry is going to go big. >> Yeah. Yeah.

I think you're spot on. I think like school, the platform school and are very good examples of people that you know are even like very niche things like non-b businessiness related things. I've seen groups on cro crocheting and like rock climbing and they're making, you know, very livable wages off of a hobby and they're, you know, have this infrastructure around them because of these platforms where they can host a course or host a group essentially and they're a oneman show and they just have to show up and have calls and they make money. >> Turn your hobby into into something that's interesting.

I mean, just that idea of crocheting, I think I learned it at school, you know, you have to do the knots bit like knitting. Um, you know, that was good thing about the school that I went to is you had to do everything. You had to do a bit of woodwork. You had to do some home science. It was cool like that. >> Um, >> but you know what? There's enough people in the world that would want to know about crocheting that you could start a business and we've got the internet, we've got AI, we can market, we can find anyone across the world and you could form up a group. >> I don't think that one's for me, Frank, but >> a good example. >> Yeah, you change your mind, you know. >> Yeah. Who knows?

Maybe I should try it again. >> There's a biking one, I'm sure. There's a biking one, I'm sure, for you. Yeah. >> Oh, thank you. >> Well, this has been fun. So, I got one more question for you, Frank. AI, is it hype or help? >> Absolutely helpful. And I think that it is totally natural that people are going to say hype. It's totally natural for people to resist it. Even the arts specifically, there's so much antagonism toward AI produced music or video or creativity. And >> I I think it's just the natural, you know, human reaction to anything new or scary. It feels like it's going to displace us or displace jobs. >> And it's a totally okay fear.

But I think that if you go in and accept it and maybe experiment with it, you can realize that it's it's only a hammer. You know, I I always tell people like Home Depot and Lowe's, they're hardware stores, and I could technically go down the road. Right now, I have enough lumber and tools to build an entire house if I wanted to, >> but I don't know how to design a room. I don't know how to do all this stuff. So, you don't have to fear that Home Depot exists.

You don't have to fear that AI exists that's doing these things because you still have that you know spirit or creativity whatever you want to call it that's going to say I'd like a bay window or I'd like this form or I'd like this song or section or video or anything and so whether it's creative whether it's software whether it's super technical I think that there's always going to be an element of the human mind and decision-m that's going to be valuable and it's going to lead these things I don't think that the the fear of us being led or like in a terminator fashion is going to be at least for our lifetime a big threat. >> All right, well said. Well said, Frank.

Well, thanks very much for coming on the show and um we should think about having you back again. All right. >> Yeah, absolutely, man. I love it. >> All right. Thanks. Take care. Byebye. Bye. >> Well, that was great talking to Frank and I enjoyed that a lot. Um another entrepreneur out there making changes on his own and we talked about being a soloreneur or a solo entrepreneur. Um he's been doing it for a short period of time. Um and really the importance of just building relationships with other people. So as much as we talk about AI, we also understand that people to people and that relationship is extremely important.

We talked about also how solo entrepreneurialship is really growing and I believe it's a theme and so does Frank. It's something that's going to become a whole new industry. People that want to move into businesses for themselves. It's never been a better time. Whether you're into vibe coding or using AI for the many many different ways that we can you can set yourself up in a business and become um have a viable business to live off. Now they call that term lifestyle type business as opposed to maybe a startup or a big business uh which is you're trying to scale very fast. Uh a soloreneur business. I would say it's could be more than a lifestyle.

I think the it downplays the importance of solo entrepreneurialship by calling it lifestyle. It makes it sounds like it's part-time whenever you feel like it, but it doesn't have to be like that. You can certainly grow a very meaningful business out of being a solo entrepreneur. We talked also about some of the projects he worked on, how he worked uh in writing code for things, but he started off in using a system called make, which is it was kind of an automation tool and really how he built that sort of up. He actually came from design side, which was really helpful for him because he could then work on the requirements side and get AI to really help him build out solutions.

So, that was a a lot of fun. Look, if you've got anything out of this, please give us a like. Uh, please subscribe to the channel. And if you want to know more about Frank and his business, uh, hit the links in the description. If you want to know more about Skillian, please do the same. I hope that helps and thanks for watching.