Learn AI Automations Before You’re Replaced by Them

Are there any low hanging fruit ways that people could make money with these tools?

I'm not a technical person. You're not allowed to say that anymore. You can literally go on YouTube, chatgpt and learn whatever. We live in a beautiful time. Platforms like any8, make.com or gumloop. It's a perfect place where a non coder can experience what it feels like to build something that's actually useful. I have no doubt you'll be able to build cool stuff. I see a lot of people, Chris, like get frustrated. Oh, it's not working. Oh, it's not this. It's like give it a few tries. Read up, ask Chat, GBT Pessimists are often right. Optimists make money. I challenge everyone watching Build at least one after this episode. At least one automation use the heck out of all the free trials and most importantly, have fun learning. When you're having fun, you're not working.

What are you seeing today that's like a process, a gum loop integration or anything that you could classify as an agent that really makes your life better or it could make anyone's life better.

Yeah. So I'll be a pessimist and optimist. The pessimist in me will say that we really haven't seen true agentic workflows yet. Everything so much so far has been things being glued together, right. When you look at NAA or like Zapier or Make.com, it's really like a bunch of these tools being glued together, giving them access to these models as tools, which is impressive. Don't get me wrong. I will say the one thing that shocked me in the last couple of days is Claude code. I know cloud code is on the pricier side, but really like, you know, and for the people watching, I, you know, for one month maybe cancel every other subscription and just get one month of cloud code. Because it's one of those experiences where I've been using it the last couple of days and it will go on for like 20, 30 minutes, building features, debugging itself.

Right.

Writing documentation. And it felt like everything we've seen and experienced so far was in my opinion, pretty mediocre. And Claude code has sort of like I tweeted upon it recently, it sort of opened my eyes where we really haven't experienced agentic.

Right.

Because a lot of people have this notion that if it's agentic, it has to be fast, which is not the case.

Right.

If something is agentic, I actually want it to take its time and get her sign Right. Versus I have this automation, I have that automation, I'm patching these things together, ensure they're firing. But the reason why there are mistakes and like you said, there's that 10% where it just can't jump over is because there's no feedback loop for it to reiterate itself. You have to jump in and either tell it, do it again, or change some things up. But with cloud code, it's actually the first time I've seen. Oh, it'll keep going till it gets it right and it will research and it will do all these things that in short, we haven't reached agentic yet, but we're starting to get there. Practical advice, what does it mean for the end user? What it means is it's actually important for people to fill in that 10% gap. And here's the reason why. I think there is value in being the person who knows the, who knows how to get the best out of tools. You know, the better driver, like we all can drive, right? Some people are better than others, right? We all can build tools and automations. Maybe some can do better than others, right? So I would say that yes, we're not there yet, but I would take this time to further build knowledge, further build strategies, further get used to the tools. Not because the tools won't change in the next three to four years, but the knowledge that you acquire now will have some benefit as things get better.

Do you think that Claude code is impressive and just as helpful to a non technical person or a non coder as it is for you?

There's two sides to this. I think it's impressive to anyone when you see the level of output, but I think the level of admiration will be different.

Right?

There is this love hate relationship I have with people who vibe code and vibe coding in general. And the reason being is I see a lot of people get frustrated after maybe three hours of vibe coding an app and it doesn't work out and something breaks and, and they flip out on the tool and they get pissed and it's like welcome to software development.

They don't have the perspective that you do.

You know what I mean? It takes time, right? So this is why even when like, you know, the models were crapping the bed and weren't that good and are just starting to get decently good. The simple fact that it would build a simple UI or it would do simple tasks was amazing to me because again, the value of, of software and how much time it takes for someone to architect software, we're Entering a time where you know, code is starting to become cheap, cheap in a sense where it's for most businesses it won't be your moat. But I say this to say that a lot of people don't have that understanding of how hard it is to architect a good software. And what I mean by good software is software, if not architected correctly for the most part is like milk. It will go bad really quickly. And this is why like companies will always have software engineers. Because even though the software is built well now, maybe packages go out or there's a new way of doing things or the there are new features you have to build. So software is not like wine, it does not age well, it ages terribly, right? So if someone has that appreciation and that understanding and they start to vibe code, I think you'll have a better experience versus oh I prompted seven times and it doesn't work. I think there is value in learning how these tools work. And same thing in software development, the learning is usually in the pain where something breaks and you have to figure it out, right? And before AI developer will go to stack overflow or go try to find this one obscure blog written by some guy seven years ago, like that pain of trying to come up with a solution or understand why something isn't working, although very very painful, is very very valuable. So I say that to say as these beautiful vibe coding tools come out, do not rob yourself of the painful learning that you can benefit from exploring every single tool that exists. So yes, cloud code is definitely more of a power tool for developers. I still suggest you should check it out because what's the worst that could happen?

Okay, tell me about N8N and why you think it is special.

The idea of being able to chain certain tasks together, certain actions together and build workflows is pretty impressive without having to write code like platforms like ne8make.com like you know, whichever one floats your boat I think are a great place for someone who is an idea guy or gal should be experimenting, right? Or gumloop. Like there's a lot, there's a lot of great tools out there, right? I think it's a perfect place where a non coder can start to experience what it feels like to build something that's actually useful. So if I was a non developer and I've thought about this for a long time, a lot of the stuff that I would do is I would play with a lot of the tools like I mentioned, but I would also start to automate even the small things in my life.

Right.

It doesn't have to be perfect. I think you rob yourself of having to like, not everything has to be assessed. Maybe there's some things you build for yourself, right? And in doing this, you prepare yourself to be that person who builds something, something that's pretty awesome, right? So I challenge everyone watching build at least one after this episode, at least one automation that does something that you do on a regular basis.

Right?

Let's say you get a lot of spam emails, right? Maybe something that reads those and you use GBT to respond in a hilarious troll way. I don't know what it is.

Whatever it is just something to learn.

Yeah, just something to learn. I think there is value in learning and oftentimes, especially with like Twitter, every one is perfect. Everything is perfect. People don't make mistakes. At least that's how it looks like when you're looking at other people's stuff. But I really challenge you to just build, have fun, enjoy the process, break things, learn, enjoy the pain. That's what it's like being a developer, right? So I think there are certain things that even as the models get perfect, they're not, they're, they're not going to read your brain unless you put the chip in. And I don't think do that. But I say that all to say embrace it. Right? Embrace it and just have fun. And if, and if it's fun that you're having, having it doesn't become stressful. Because I see a lot of people, Chris, like get frustrated. Oh, it's not working. Oh, it's not this. It's like tools don't get built in a day. At least something valuable, right. If you're building a language I understand but you know, most people don't even know the different types of databases and are frustrated when after one prompt the front ends connection or the back ends connection to the database doesn't work.

Yeah.

Give it a few tries, try again, try tomorrow, maybe read up, Ask Chat gbt. One thing that I do is for every place I get stuck at, just because I want to learn from it, I will literally either screenshot whatever error I've experienced or where I've got stuck in last chat gbt. What happened and how do I learn from this? I think just investing in these little small actions prepares you for tomorrow's world. Because I'm one of those people that doesn't think like I'm not a AI is going to replace everyone type of person. I am a person who says AI is going to change things and the People who change with the times and update themselves with the times will be the ones who reap the rewards. There's a saying, pessimists are often right. Optimists make money.

Yeah. Yep. I love that. I love that Sting. What is the coolest automation you've built? And are you willing to show us how it works?

Yeah. So my favorite one, it was an AI pizza ordering agent.

Oh, that's cool.

Basically, it went to my favorite spot, which is Domino's.com Domino's C. I live in Canada. Domino's, the best pizza place in the world. So what it essentially did was I, the user had a chatbot interface. So I also built a web app for this. So it wasn't just an automation. And I'll kind of explain how you can build both. There was a chatbot interface and this chatbot interface I'll use. Circle had an AI agent I built. I use agents loosely, but you get what I'm trying to say.

Yeah.

And this agent interfaced with Domino's API. Now, I will say the reason why I didn't publish this or I don't maintain it is because the API that it used to interact with Domino's was like not an official API. It was like some guy who built it six years ago. And like, there's no really secure way to handle payments. So it's a little sus, which is why I only built it for myself. But basically the way it worked is user would come on the site, the AI agent would notice that they're on the site, would say, oh, would you like to order pizza? And then it would give you four options because that's how I configured it. And then it would go back and forth. So we would have this conversation with you where it asks you a question, you give it an answer, that answer becomes, gets stored in a db, and then it keeps going back and forth. And then once everything that was needed to make the order was set, once the AI agent had everything it needed, would then call the Domino's API, make a payment and all that stuff. Here's where things get interesting and maybe we'll have this as homework for people is I think NAA web hooks. Yeah. So N8, and I'm pretty sure Gumloop, that's what's hot in the streets now, I believe. But with any eight, they have what you call web hooks. And basically what's awesome about this is you can connect whatever automation you've built. Like, let's say I have an automation that every time I get an email I'm a YouTuber. I get people email me if I need someone who make my thumbnail. So maybe I have an automation that, you know, read all my emails and if someone mentions thumbnails, ask how much, right? Something simple, right? I don't want to go back and forth, I just want to know how much. Right? If they're emailing me, they're probably sending me their portfolio, what they have, ask for how much and then you can get fancy where you can get it to send you like a message to WhatsApp, Telegram and all this stuff, right? But what's interesting with webhooks is I can connect this automation with a web app and that's when it becomes interesting. So let's say you have an automation where a user just needs to give you their email and then what you will do is you will scrape the Internet for a specific shoe and if it goes below a certain price then it sends them a notification. You can build that automation in any aid, right? But how do you package that, how do you sell that? Or how do you build an interface that makes it very, very simple for someone to use that automation, right? Web hooks is where it comes in handy. So again I'll have it highlighted here. You can literally just search and, and 8 and 8n and then web hooks. The first doc will take you there again. Will you get this right the first time? Is this painful? Will you have to vibe code a few things if you don't know how to code 100% but if you do this, most people don't know how to do this. I have no doubt you'll be able to build cool stuff, right? So I'm very much interested in how do I turn these cool automations or really agents into something that a user can use.

Right?

So this is why you can maybe call this Vibe coding plus Vibe Automating.

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So vibe coding plus vibe automating. You take something you built in? Naa. I will admit as a developer I like building these myself, right? But I still learn how to use the tools because again, I want to be up to date with the times. But if you're someone who doesn't know how to code, you take some of these automations and then you take a vive code tool. I'm biased. I'll say Tempo or any other Vibe code tool of your choice. I would really learn in building something combining these two, right? I think you start to build applications that are more useful than your standard landing page, but you also start to see how these different components work or how a website works, right? Like you don't have to be developer to know that. Okay, every like functional app has a front end and a backend, right? The front end is the user facing side. The backend handles all API calls. You know, if a website has username, password and all that stuff, that's authentication. If I'm doing something on a website, I log out and I come back in and information's there. That means the website has a database, right? These things are not, shouldn't be guarded as oh, only technical people should know this. I think it's very easy excuse. I think you can know base level how these things work. And I guarantee anyone who knows even like. And this is why product managers, designers, they cook with these type of tools because they have technical knowledge. They're not technical people, but they have technical knowledge. So when you combine that knowledge with these AI tools, whether it be automation, vibe coding, cloud code, whatever it is, almost always those are the people who end up having the most fun and building the coolest things.

The non technical people, the product managers. Well people with kind of a base level technical knowledge, but not coders.

I say non technical people in technical organizations or environments.

Yeah. Okay. When it comes to building your average automation like this, what tools do you like to use for what types of tasks? And you know what, let's let's expand that out. What LLMs, what tools are your go to tools for certain tasks.

Yeah. So I will draw a line. I have let's say a spectrum, right. Let's say from user facing cool vibey to genius Code difficult. Right. Let's say this is a spectrum, right?

Yep.

If I'm building anything where code is being generated or I feel as if the task is very like requires some sort of calculation or whatever, anything difficult. I'm always going with Claude. Almost always.

Right.

And then on the opposite spectrum, let's say I want to build like a nice image generator.

Right.

For people to generate cartoons. Or I want to build build a poem generator or I want to build an agent that talks in slang.

Right.

Almost always open AI and if you use open AI enough like I don't want to open my personal chat GBT because it show my history and stuff but my chat GPT starts to talk like me like it will say bruh but B u R u h because I talk like that.

Right.

So like the model is sort of designed to be in a very psychopathic and weird way like almost personable, right?

Yeah.

So yeah, it almost becomes my go to for like I don't even want to be to that guy. Be that guy. If I'm building anything B2C and I want it to have a personality, I'll always go for something like OpenAI and for anything again agentic writing code complex.

Stuff, binary like binary outputs.

I'm going for something Claude and then Gemini, honestly is like an all star where Gemini can sort of be both.

Right.

And there is a use case to Gemini where like Gemini is also the most cost effective. Where. And maybe we can have another graph here just to paint this picture. One of the things that especially if you plan on building something that's going to be used a lot or scaled is something you want to think about early on. If we were to compare price quad is up here. Gemini is, you know, very cheap. And then open AI depending on the model is very right there. Right. So there are a lot of things I would take into consideration in the initial building stage. I'm not really worried about cost and neither are you. So I wouldn't really think too much about that. I think you should only worry about cost. When you know you've made more than a million dollars, then it makes sense.

Yeah.

But until then it's just a matter of what type of app are you like building. Anytime I'm building anything user facing building a basic chat bot, I'm always going for OpenAI. But if I'm building any coding assistance, anything that I feel like requires more agent, especially with Cloud. For 4.0, I'm going with cloud, right? And then Gemini is like an all star, where, like, I. You can pretty much use it anywhere. They have an image generator. They also have 2.5 Pro, which is a great COD coding assistant. It's not as good as Cloud4.0, but it's pretty up there. So this is how, like, I sort of played myself. Now, for someone who is a beginner at, you know, let's. You're building some sort of automation, you want to pick an agent, just go with OpenAI. Just. Yeah, just go with open AI. Almost always open AI should be enough for you. And I would go OpenAI and Gemini. Claude is on the more expensive side. I don't want people to lose money, so I would almost go always go with OpenAI. And if you really, like, cost is a big thing, then Gemini. So that's kind of how I look at these models. This is the spectrum I think of in my mind.

Where do Perplexity and Grok come into play for you, if at all?

I'll be honest. Like, these models, like, these three just do it. Well, for me, like, I have not used Grok in terms of the, like, the API now I've used Grok, like, to, like, answer tweets, to describe tweets. And like, that feature is great, but it's never been, like, compelling enough where, like, I wanted to use it. Like, I wanted to use the model Perplexity. If I'm going To be honest, OpenAI's like, deep research and search is just such a great product that I used to use Perplexity, but not anymore. So, like, I'm satisfied with these tools, right? There isn't something those tools do or those models do that is not here now. If one of them launches a new model and it's exceptional and it's well, and it does something better than these guys, guess what? I'll move over, right? Part of the game is being able to know, okay, what's out, what's poppin, which one's doing great and then being able to move over.

Right?

Just because this is my set today doesn't mean literally tomorrow won't change. Because I will tell you, before Cloud 4.0, I was literally using just OpenAI Gemini. Cloud 3.7 was not good, in my opinion, and it just felt like a waste of money. So I literally stopped using Claude and it was just Gemini open AI 4.0 drop. And I'm completely on the cloud train now. Right. So part of the game is being flexible and malleable to like all the new tools coming out.

Are there any like low hanging fruit ways that people could make money with these tools? Whether that's building a wrapper or starting like an agency or a services business? AI implementation. AI automation Implementation business. What's top of mind for you nowadays?

Yeah, like actually I had an interesting conversation at the office today and someone was like, we were talking about like some of the new apps that have come out and myself and a fellow engineer were like, yo, like some of these things are so easy to build. Again, talking from an engineering mind. And we were shocked that one of the companies we were looking at raised so much money, like I think upwards to like $10 million for something that honestly would have probably taken us maybe two to three days to build.

Right.

And someone who's there said, you know, oftentimes because we're all in this tech bubble, we feel like some of the stuff that's normal to us isn't impressive to somebody else is invaluable to somebody else. And sometimes it just takes popping out of that bubble. So I say that to say the best opportunities, at least that I think right now are those where you look outside of this tech bubble.

Right?

Because in this tech bubble, look who you're competing with, right. There are so many bright minds and so many engineers and non technical people and technical people. This tech bubble we're in is not the best place to start, especially if you're a beginner, right? So if you are not a teenager and you're an adult, you've had some experience or you work a job, you've been part of some industry, I would literally start there. What are some things in your industry at your job, at your office or your company, what are some workflows? What are some tasks? What are some things that you dread? You would be surprised how receptive people would be if you solved problems that you genuinely understood.

Right.

Let's say, for example, Chris, I'll throw out a free idea. I really wanted to build an AI bookkeeping app. Tax season is hell. Keeping up with receipts is annoying. I download all these apps, QuickBooks, Zero, whatever. They mess everything up. Everything is, you know, not organized. Well, my rent transactions are categorized as business. Like it's a mess, right? So there's a lot of manual and tedious work and there was a part of it. Man, I wish this app existed and maybe I should build it, but I didn't build it. The reason why I didn't build it. So I'm not a, I'm not a bookkeeper, I'm not an accountant. So I would build something surface level and sure it would work for me. But imagine an actual bookkeeper, an act. Imagine actual accountant, someone who's in the trenches, who knows the pain points, who knows the long tasks. I think if you are that person, and I'm not saying you have to be professional, I'm saying you just have to have a job, literally. And I'll talk to the folks who don't have a jobs to the youngins. For those people, that is the best place you should look. It's terrible, especially as a beginner to be like what's the next, like can I maybe build a model or try to do like something egregious and insane that's in this tech bubble that there are thousands of people who are in this space daily building it. But if you're someone who's non technical, who is having fun using these apps, who's learned how to build, you know, something cool with these tools. Start from industry in, right? Number one, the best problems to solve are your own. Number two, the best problems are to solve are the ones that you're in that industry, you're in that business, you're in that. Like that to me is the gold mine because you know the customer, you have the customer, you work there, you are there, you know the problems and you even know how to communicate.

Right?

Because building it is part one. Being able to market it is a whole nother behemoth on its own. And you can do that well if you're in that industry, right? So I would start there, my place, my job, my people, whatever that situation is that you're familiar with, solving those problems. Solving. For example, I have a, a friend who works with, works at a pharmacy and he's having fun building things for pharmacies. And it's not because he's a super technical genius, but it's because he's worked in pharmacies. He knows how annoying billing is, he knows how to. How annoying like the software is that where they register medication and all that stuff. He also knows all the compliance that's required.

Right.

And these are all boring problems for someone who's not in that space to solve, but for someone who's in the tech space to solve. If you're stuck in that tech bubble, what does solving pharmacies problems sound like? It sounds boring, but that's where the money is. If you can solve the problems for specific industry especially. You're part of, you're golden.

I love it. I mean, even if you're, you're, everyone's in an industry, but you're having a hard time thinking of problems in your industry. Ask ChatGPT, like, hey, I'm a pharmacist. I want to build an app for other pharmacists. What are some common pain points? I would use deep research for this. I would say I want you to go deep, like go to Reddit, go to message boards, go to social media, find all the gripes, all the, the negative tweets, all the complaints about the pharmaceutical industry and list them all out. For me, it lists out 20, okay? Take the seven that you think are most relevant, paste those down and say, okay, Now I want 20 more that are a lot more like these seven. So you can just keep refining it. Pretty soon you'll have 30 to 50 problems and all of them will ring true to you as someone in the industry. And then you can say, okay, I'm going to use, I'm going to take the top three and build wrappers from these three and distribute them to my friends and co workers just to test and play around with and see what feedback I get and then iterate from there, right?

Yep, 100%. And I think like you mentioned, like going back to actually using AI to do the research, right?

So video is cool, but you know what's better? Long form audio via podcast and my newsletter, tkopod.com go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week, very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast, three episodes a week, stuff like this. You're gonna love it. All free, no sleazy sales pitch.

Tkopod.com I've actually done something similar where I go to church every Sunday. I serve at a church, I teach at a church. And you know, there are certain things I've realized that I'm like, oh, like I live in Canada as well. So for example, payments for a lot of charities, like the softwares are either terrible, the percentage they charge is very, very high. And like you can't just use like stripe, you have to build a website and stuff like that. So I was like, huh, I'm gonna build a payment solution for my church. And I did that. If I wanted to turn it to a business, I could. I don't have time, but if I wanted to, I could. But you see, and I almost guarantee if I wanted to build that business, it would do so well. Because it's a problem. I experienced that. I know the industry experience, I built the solution and I'll price it much fairer than the competition. It's just a perfect formula. So I think starting where you are and speaking to your people, and when I see your people, I'm not talking about race, creed or anything like that, but I'm talking about, right, your industry, in your business and your line of work. I am telling you the things that if you think in a tech bubble mindset, you always think, ah, this is simple, this is boring. But at the end of the day, first principles, people solve. People pay to get their problems solved. As long as you're entertaining people or solving their problems, you should be getting paid, right? So that's how I think of things. Don't be too tech inflated. I think sticking it to your industry and the problems in your space and solving that is a great way to start.

I like the back to your bookkeeping, your AI app for bookkeeping. It reminds me of Calais. And for those listening, Calais is an app that basically said, MyFitnessPal has hundreds of millions of users, it's a nine figure company or it has a hundred million dollars plus of revenue. We're just gonna do that. Except AI first, right? And that one sentence, that one liner, that model is like that. But AI first, right? Instagram was like, oh, Facebook, that's cool. How about mobile first? Facebook pictures forward, Mobile first. We're not even going to have a desktop site at all. We don't even worry about that. And all these others, other apps in like the late 2000s, early 2010s, their whole model was just, oh, we're going to take that website and do mobile first. An actual desktop version of this may never happen. And that's fine. So now it's just like, oh, we're just going to do that. Except AI first. AI first and foremost. AI foundational. So that could be QuickBooks. Except AI first, that could be anything. Except AI first and QuickBooks, MyFitnessPal and all of those, they're gonna integrate AI, but it will, they will never be AI first. They'll never be built with AI first and foremost, right?

And one thing I would add to that too is like a lot of the, like the new apps like Kali and stuff that you mentioned, they have one big differentiator and this is like, I plan on making a video on this and this is going to be a moat for a lot of people. And that's user experience, how your app looks and feels. I'm Notorious for two things. If you know me personally, my like ide like the where my where I write my code, I change the theme every like two, three days. Browsers I change every five or six. And the reason being is I love the place that I'm working or the apps that I'm using or the sites that I'm using. Whatever I'm using, I want it to look and feel. Feel nice. I say that to say that most people, Most people. Most people. Most people. Most people. If you focused on crafting a beautiful and elegant user experience that most of the time is almost enough to do well, you have like for example there are ticketing softwares like where you can like use like you know you can like let's say you're running an engineering team and you need to track like tickets and who's building what and you assign tasks and stuff. There's stuff like Jira for example. Jira has been around for like as maybe as long as I have. And it's an ugly app. Yeah, yeah, it's ugly and but then you have something like linear which basically is Jira. But look at that. Which one?

Jira, except pretty. That's their, their business partner pretty fast, right?

Like they're very thoughtful with every single thing that they do. And I think in a world where everyone is saying, oh AI is coming for the devs, AI is coming for this, the people who care about these little things, right? How the app is crafted, how the user experiences, the features, what makes things pop, what makes someone want to just use their app even when they don't need to. I think those people win big.

Yeah.

UX becomes a moat. I call it the sauce. I think UX becomes a moat where if you're someone and homework for anyone who wants to do this is I would collect sites and apps that you wish you built not because they made money, we'll worry about the money stuff later. Yeah, made money. But because it made you feel a special type of way. For me like I use linear and every time I use it I'm like man, I wish I this like yeah, I wish I could put my face on this and say I built this and that's how I know software is good. So I think being able to craft and develop a taste for how user experiences should be, how apps should be, how sites should be, even as a non technical person can be very fruitful. I actually think Chris, there's going to be a time where even though the models are going to get better that and this has happened for years. But I think it's going to happen even more that a lot of non technical people are going to hire, are going to partner up with technical people.

Right.

I think we're still going to enter, we're still going to be in a world where you, like devs are needed and will help supercharge things. But I think it comes to a point where the non technical person will start to be valuable too if they take these things into consideration.

Right?

But if just you go to some app and you're like, build me. No plan, no idea, no understanding.

Right?

And again, this is not an excuse. The excuse isn't, oh, I'm not a technical person. You're not allowed to say that anymore. You can literally go on YouTube and learn whatever. You can literally go chat GBT and learn whatever. Right? So say that to say we live in a beautiful time.

Well, like they say, if you build it, they will come. And I think you would say if you build it beautifully, they will come. Right? Like beautiful apps, they do it. I mean, look at it this way. Let's say you're looking for a co working space in Canada. You go tour two of them. You go into one and it's like a little dirty. It's kind of gross. And there's no artwork on the walls and it's just bare bones. You could tell that they cheaped out. They didn't put much thought into it. They just wanted to get the max value per square foot as possible. And they did some things to kind of look nice. But you could just tell this is nice. And in a vacuum, if this were my only option, I'd probably use this because I need a co working space. And then you go to the next space next door and it's gorgeous. And it's. There's indoor plants and there's furniture from Restoration Hardware. You're like, that's a $12,000 couch. I feel good in here. This is good energy. Like you're going to not just choose that one, but you'll probably pay twice as much to use that one. So everything I'm outlining is obvious. Like everyone would rather choose that one. But we don't treat our software like that. We just throw out something, our mvp and then if it works, then we leave it like that forever. Because if it's not broke, don't fix it. But like, look at Airbnb. They were designed first from day one and it's a hundred billion dollar company. Like that was their whole strategy design, right? We're gonna have A beautiful design.

And I think, I think it matters, I think it matters more than ever. And like unless you are building something very innovative and game changing, maybe you can get away with having ugly ui. But we're entering a time where the expectations high. Like if I see a site and it looks like it was made in 2005, unless it's a government site or whatever, like, or like some like you know, farm, like whatever, like a hospital site or whatever, there is no excuse, right? Because they, they have like compliance and all that stuff and, or banking, whatever, that's fine. But any business, any SaaS, any startup, like design is super important. So make sure that you know, you develop that taste in that craft and it comes from, you know, looking at sites that you like. For example, I can go on the Gum loop site and maybe five, you know, I like the little diagram they have here. And another thing you can do is actually go to popular like frameworks. Like for example there's magic ui like this is like a component library. Like you can see these different designs. Yeah, sure, they're meant for developers. But again just being able to develop that taste of like oh, this is a nice animation, right? And then you have obviously the creme de la creme Apple site. Like what's beautiful about Apple? Why like what's their style? Oh you see they have a specific font, you see that there's spacing and the letters and the bento grid. Like I actually spend a considerable amount of time just doing this, admiring these beautiful design, elegant user experiences. There's another one. This is a crypto startup, but nonetheless they're again like a lot of people hate. I bet if you went to the site and you just used it, you'd feel a certain type of way, right? So I think these things become a moat and you don't have to be a technical person to develop is taste. And if you're betting on the fact that the models are going to get so good that you'll be able to build stuff for you, I think being able to develop the part of you that can help guide the model to build stuff like this is important, right? And that through time that comes through building stuff and breaking it, that comes through like you know, testing out all these tools. And I don't hear anyone speaking this, but I highly suggest make some friends that are developers because I know everyone's talking about oh, developers are going to get replaced. But I'm telling you, you have your couple of developer friends that you keep around, you buy them pizza every one In a while it. Once in a while, I am telling you, it will yield results not only from knowledge but also from like, you know, maybe you partner up together and build stuff together or maybe they know of tools that you don't know or maybe they even answer or help things. Like the amount of like people that I know who are like. Cousin of mine was Vibe coding and the tool he was using, I'm just couldn't get the API stuff down and he like spent two, three days. So guess what I did, Chris? I opt in, I fixed it for him. It was a 30 second fix for me. It's easy, right? I think. And then he continued to build his app. Right. So make some developer friends. I think it'd be very helpful.

That's a good idea. When it comes to beautiful design, do you know of any AI tools out there where you can say, hey, copy and paste this website or copy and paste this app.

Unfortunately, many of them will not give you a one to one copy. You will have to. This is a workflow, I would say if I were to do that. So step one is screenshot, right? Step two is obviously feed screenshot to AI which I build again, whatever vive code tool you want to use it. Honestly, at this point in terms of design, it doesn't really matter. You start to see that certain models have certain design tastes or lean certain ways. That's kind of up to you to decide, right? All of them. But you're going to get a result and the result is maybe 40% of what it actually looks like. The way you get the 40% to 100 is by going through every section of the site that doesn't look pixel perfect and telling it. So say for example, I take a screenshot here, right? Let's say I take a screenshot here and let me just pull the screenshot here and I drop this in the model. I tell it, make it look like this. I almost can guarantee you it will not. It will get the layout down, it will get product resources, pricing, customer blog, content, contact. Now get the buttons down, we'll get the text down, but it won't get, it'll mess up someplace. So what my job is now is to go section by section and start to tell it to fix it. So for example, something that you might not have noticed here, look how rounded this button is. This is not a square button, right? It has a little bit of roundedness to it. So what you're going to do is you're going to, you can screenshot this again and then Upload it. Or you could just tell it the buttons aren't the same. Please round it more. So that's one part you can fix and then you can maybe see that. Notice how there's a gradient. Like it gets darker here, right? It's not just white, like it's white, then turns to gray, then starts to.

Get darker and darker. Right.

You start. You have to pinpoint each section where it does not look perfect and then make it perfect by telling it. Now. Here's advice that might sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. If you're building something and I used to say this, and I'll explain why I used to say this, but I'm going to say the opposite. If you're building something, I think the landing page should be the last thing you should focus on. I think design should have its own time. If you're thinking about design and features at the same time, especially as a non technical person, I wouldn't do it. I think design deserves its own time. I used to tell people, build a landing page first. And I think for very, very beginner people, I will say that. And the reason why I say that is the dopamine.

Right?

Momentum.

Yeah, it's momentum, right. It's like you get the landing page done and it just feels great. It's exciting. Like you, you have this dopamine rush. It helps you, you know, to keep going. But if you're on the discipline side, you've done this before, this isn't your first rodeo. I would start to build, you know, the stuff that you're actually trying to build. And then you could put the landing page on top and focus on design.

Right.

But if you're a complete beginner, you know, start with your landing page, get the dopamine hit, get excited. But I would not start with design first unless I have no idea what I'm building. And I just want to have a nice landing page.

Yeah, beautiful. Two questions. Number one, can you explain in two sentences what MCP is and why people should care about it?

The simple phrase I've been hearing is the USB C for LLMs. Okay, meaning like my, the new iPhones have USB C, my MacBook has USB C, that person's Android has USB C. Right? We all can same use the same charger, we all can share the same SSD drive, right? It makes it easy for all these different devices to use that external functionality in the same way. What MCP allows you is it allows for LLMs to easily access external services. Right? So for example, linear Right. Linear is a ticketing tool, right? Let's say I have an LLM here. It could be Claude, it could be whatever. And I have Linear. I have Linear over here. Now if I want my LLM to have access to Linear without mcp, let's just say MCP doesn't exist. I would have to go to Linear's API documentation, right? I would have to learn how their documentation works and then I would have to basically write some code and I have to, I'm assuming I have some backend, I'd have to write some code to connect to Linear's API. Not difficult. But what happens when you have 20 different things you want to connect with many different APIs documentation? Not everything is the same. It gets very annoying. MCP is a standard where third party services like Linear will follow a specific rule set on how to build their MCP server. And the LLMs, aka the MCP client, knows exactly how to connect to these servers.

Right?

It's like the USB port. So the LLMs have the USB port linear and all these third party tools are building their product with a USB C in it. So it's easy to connect and plug in.

Right?

And for most people this might not sound like a big deal because again, there are still LLMs that connect to APIs. But from a production standpoint, from building out these robust, like if we ever wanted a Jarvis, right, like an Ironman where you tell the assistant, oh, fetch my email, contact this person, make sure to close this ticket and all that stuff to build it without something like mcp, it's a very robust job. Now, MCP is imperfect. There's still a lot of caveats and stuff like the Anthropic team and stuff are figuring out. But it's to say that it's a standard for LLMs and it means that we're going to be living in a world where the LLMs will essentially have access to anything that has an MCP server, which at this point is almost every third party SaaS service out there.

Okay, okay, last question. Is it worth someone trying to learn how to use MCPS? And N8N or 80, 20 of it is learn how to use Lindy and Gumloop and Zapier and you're good to go. Or do you think it's worth taking that extra time?

Okay, so my advice is different for different people. If you don't have a lot of time on your hands and you maybe have one or two hours a day, I would just be an avid user of these LLMs, right? Use chat GBT before you Google it, maybe Chat GBT at first, right? Get into that habit of using those tools. But if you are someone, like, maybe you don't have four kids and you don't have this big family that you have to take care of, I understand not everyone has the time, so I want to be understanding that. But if you have all the time, you work 9 to 5, and after 5, you're free. Use everything, learn everything. Maybe you like something, maybe you won't, right? Just listening to what I think you should learn is pointless because literally, as soon as this episode airs tomorrow, one of the tools might launch a crazy update. And maybe everything I've said changes. The one thing that I want people to take from this is we're entering a time. We're entering a new. I don't want to sound cliche and say Industrial Revolution, but we're entering a time where things are changing and being part of the change means learning everything. Some of it will fail, most of it will fail, some succeed. But the knowledge, the experience, they can never take that away from you. So, yeah, use all the tools. Learn all the tools. You know, use the heck out of all the free trials, a lot of these tools have free trials. Take advantage of all of that. And most importantly, have fun learning, right? I think when you're having fun, you're not working. When you're having fun, it's not work. And when it's not work, you can do it continuously, right? So that's the biggest advice I would give to people. Have fun building, using these tools.

Man, that was beautiful. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate that. It was amazing. Where can we find you?

Yeah, so I'm on X at Rasmiki. I can maybe pop it up here. You can find me here. I troll every now and then. I also have a YouTube channel where I talk about dev, non dev stuff, obviously. Chris, I really appreciate you bringing me on here. It was a pleasure and hope people learn something.

Of course. Thank you. All right, what'd you think? Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner Office.