Time to add VALUE and talk about AI.

Good morning, LinkedIn friends. Value First Nation, welcome to another episode of Value First AI Daily, your collaborative intelligence report. It is Thursday, March 5th, 2026. Here with George and Nico. How are we doing, fellas?

Doing good. Doing very well this morning.

Yeah, I can't complain. Things keep, uh, things keep changing and updating and upgrading and And it's just, um, it's fun indeed.

Uh, I'm good. Um, uh, learning about managing the, the cloud.md file today as it's— as I've been warned, it is getting too large. Um, and, uh, working with— always come back and tell you, uh, getting a little too Working with Claude to figure out how exactly to pare it back. Um, but, uh, yeah, getting to build. Um, and one of the things I'm working on right now, uh, is something that's gonna replace StreamYard for, for myself. As nice as they chose to, um, they said I qualified or to pay a much higher price.

Isn't that nice of them?

Each month, right?

Um, congratulations, you're a winner.

Yeah, uh, based on the activity of my account, uh, they think I belong in a different tier, um, which does not align with the pricing page. So one of those moments that we're seeing right now where, um, you know, I was already thinking about, you know, what it would look like to build it out myself. There's already some plans in place. I already got OBS, you know, on the computer. And then now I'm getting charged more money. And so feels like now's, now's the time. And it's already built. And, uh, now I just gotta test it, uh, and and take myself back to, you know, 2017 Twitch streaming mode where I was using OBS regularly. But super interesting to start to put that together and, you know, having that as an option when I first get that email that's going to, you know, raise prices like 10x. I, uh, it's just an interesting thought. What comes to mind, um, as I, as I mentioned that?

I mean, for me, what comes to mind is, uh, a lot of what I'm doing right now. So it's, it's a bit— so, you know, in case anybody was wondering like what Proven Labs is and what this is all about. Um, what Chris is describing is kind of the, the essence of Proven Labs. What we do is we basically— a really good example right now, um, is we find people who have, let's say, oh, I don't know, they're helping out people and they're, they're partners in the ecosystem and they help people with their portals and whatnot. And oftentimes to be a partner in the ecosystem, you also have to membership to that software club. So, um, we're able to help them circumvent that by using the APIs through their own new proprietary application that still does everything that they need to do but lets them not have to have a $5,000 a month membership to a platform just so that they can help other people who have that platform, right? So it's— there are things now that, um, I mean, like, there are so many business models now that just don't make any sense, and like, they're going to fall apart within the next 6 months, um, in this exact same way where it's like, hey, we're incorporating— you know, there are— there have been several services, we're incorporating AI and we're incorporating this, that, and the other, so, you know, rates are going to go up a little bit, but here's the list of things you're going to get. Nope, nope. As soon as you do that, I am just going to look for an alternative or just try to make it myself. Because like, that's, that's the day and age. You guys remember like back, you know, way back in the day when you were kids and you had like your cassette player and you could take it apart and you could mess around with it, you put it back together, you go to rate Radio Shack, and you could get extra parts. You could come back. Yeah, got you, George. Wow. Come back home and you put it back together, and you know, got yourself a whole new cassette player with new drums and everything, new pads. And, uh, yeah, and then all of a sudden, you know, the '90s happened, and then the 2000s happened, and then 2010, and then 2020, and we haven't been able to fix anything yourself for I don't even know how long, right? Um, now it's kind of flipped sides and it's now on a software end where now I have the right to repair my own software as opposed to the right to repair my own hardware device. So now I have the right to code, and if you don't want to offer me software at a fair competitive price I will just go code my own.

Yeah, I'll just, I'll just say this. It feels bass-ackwards to me. Like, two things, right? One, what Nico said and like, and what you're on a journey to do is, well, now I'll just go build the thing that I'll use for free. So thanks. Appreciate the push. But the other thing that's bass-ackwards about it is the fact that, like, um, some marketer in some closet somewhere— I know, we'll tell them that they graduated. Nope, nope, we'll tell them that they qualified. That'll ease the pain of $500,000 more in the next 5 years that they'll spend. No. What the flip? No, hashtag not human.

That'll make them feel special about paying more money.

Oh God, said somebody never. Well, obviously somebody did say because it's being done.

But, and that's the thing, right? Like, it would be— it's never been easier to actually add value in a way that makes me consider this, this shift, right? Like, like, that's where the, the lipstick part of it, right, it could, could be backed up with, this is what that program looks like for businesses like yours, and it, and it includes— like, none of that was even in there. Right. So it was clear it was, oh, you're a high volume customer, so you need to be in this tier. And then I go look at the pricing page and I'm not breaking— like, I get it. I guarantee I'm an above average user. You think? At the tier that I'm at. Right. But I still check all the boxes in that tier. Right?

Yeah, you're, you're the, you were the negative point, right? So you, you reached the apex where, hey, if Chris keeps doing this, he's actually like— you're not— it's not as if you're gonna offset all of them, but it's like you, you've reached that inflection where an agent on the back end is telling them like, hey, hey, if this guy keeps burning at the rate that he does, you guys are never making money off of him. He is eternally making money of you, right?

Yeah, you're—

it's like a game of like, not even one, not even one subscriber can even get close to even on the system. We have to bring them all down.

Yeah, you're literally their Danger Will Robinson. Danger, danger, Will— like, you're that dude for them. Like, yeah, hit the brakes, here comes Chris Carlin.

Nope, he's coming in like He's gonna put out a YouTube video and show everybody else how to do it.

And so I likely in their system, I'm labeled as a customer when I could be labeled as an adopter or an advocate or a champion evangelist. And they could be like, oh man, maybe we could use some marketing coming from this person. Right?

Like there's so like, They could have turned it around and said, hey, look at where this guy started when he was on this sub-level. Look at where he's at now. We should talk to him and maybe build something around this so that he can show the rest of the community that's at his sub-level they can increase. You know, if to George's point, it's not so much the marketer that was in the closet coming up with it It was also their boss that didn't have the foresight to see, hey, this is a very short-sighted idea. If we jack the prices up on them now, they're just going to be offended by it. They might turn around and leave. Or we, I don't know, be a brand. We foster adoption, we foster education, we foster reliability, we foster people being able to believe in our product and believe in what we say and what we do. And then over time, they become very strong advocates of ours and they just constantly want to be a part of our ecosystem and a part of our brand. Right? Like, that's— I know it's the most bonkers idea possible, right? To have people who are like lifetime loyal, dedicated fans to your brand. I really— I get it. Good luck getting me to buy any other knives than J. Hinkle. Good luck getting me to buy any other type of razor than Gillette. Good luck. I— any other type of like hair product trimmer other than Conair. I can tell you like every brand or the stuff for everything that I use, own, wear. I can tell you the brand name because I only shop by the brand name. I don't care, like your price might be awesome, but I remember my brand. I remember the way my brand makes me feel. I remember, like, that's what I care about. Now, every shopper is not like me, I get it. And there's like— there are so many of us now that that's the way that the market treats people, is like a herd, and it doesn't try to talk to them on a personal level whatsoever, right? That all made sense leading up to now because it's been like a crazy scatter. But at this point in time, We have the ability to surface all of that data that we were too busy to look at, and we can actually look at the qualitative aspects of it. I'm hearing from people who have AI platforms that are coming to us talking about building better AI platform versions because they don't like how their AI platform is performing. And it's because when I go take a look under the hood, it's the best way I can put it is like it's amateur hour. Like somebody had the idea, they didn't actually think through the idea. They just had the idea, built the thing around that idea, and then put it out on market. But because they did it so like surface level, the quality of what you're getting back is also surface level. And then it blows my mind that like however many thousands of people were signed up to it, paying monthly for it. So yeah, I mean, there's, there's something, there's definitely something to be said about being able to deliver to the market in a way in which people aren't oversaturated by your message. They're not oversaturated by a cheap marketing message or a cheap marketing ploy, right? Wouldn't it be amazing if there were just, I don't know, education about Like, one of the things I love to do is go look at— people talk about Signal stuff all the time. I love to go look at Signals to go find out what people are talking about so that I can go reply. I don't, I don't use it so I can go send you a LinkedIn message. I can like shoot you an email or something. I use it so I can find you, so I can go to that post and I can personally reply to your comment on that post and talk to you about your problem. Why? Because that's what sales is supposed to do anyway, right? They're supposed to go out and garner relationships and go one-on-one with people and all that kind of thing. I'm not even a salesperson, right? But just made sense in my mind that if I'm going to talk to you about solving your problem and part of that solution is going to involve us having to build a relationship so that we can build a partnership so that you have trust in me so that we can do business together, I should probably start that out by talking to you directly. Just like, that's, that's my two cents on it, right?

What a concept.

Wow.

You mean, you mean, Nico, you should talk to humans? Oh my God, are you kidding me? That's a— oh my goodness. Like, and you mean to tell me that Like maybe, just maybe, there's a way to market and sell out of love. Like caring for humans can be a business differentiator. Oh my gosh.

Oh man. Like every article that Sage writes right now, like, has like a theme about caring in it. As the chief customer officer, I love it. But like, here's the opposite of that, right? I just pulled up this, this email from business@streamyard.com.

Oh boy.

Dear customer. I didn't even see that part. Like, is that like the lowest lift ever just to put my first name there?

Right.

Like, like, you know where that comes from, right? Like, so now, like, All of this feeds into the fact that there's margin analysis being done somewhere. I'm using it too much. I, not Chris, my account, your account, right, is too high of usage. And we've identified that your usage qualifies for our business subscription, a plan designed to best support teams looking to use the StreamYard platform for commercial, professional, and collaborative purposes. And when we— I'm tying this real time into what people usually ask us to do related to HubSpot and platforms about, man, how do we make it easier to expand, uh, our accounts? And if we could just see the data and then we could trigger things that send bullshit emails like this and, and automatically 'Cause, uh, if you'd like to keep using the business plan going forward— because they've already upgraded me, by the way, so for the rest of this month, really, I get these features for free, and then on April 3rd, I'm automatically renewing under the new business plan. Okay, right. Okay, I wish to continue with the business plan going forward, please make sure to cancel your subscription before your renewal date, not even stay a customer somehow, like just go ahead and cancel.

See, they're playing the numbers game because they're like, if we 10x this and had 37% less customers, then we'd still be making 20% more XYZ. And we understand that 37% of our customers have 572 bazillion videos in the storage and can't think about how they would ever move off of the platform. So gotcha. Like, come on. And by the way, StreamYard, we don't hate you, we love you, we— I don't know what we— but like, like, you're giving the story to tell about like maybe what to think about, right? Because I can't even say not do or do, because hey, it might be the smartest business decision in, uh, a thousand centuries, but it don't feel good, right?

Like, and this is why Value First is focused on like, the system has dehumanized the process to make this okay. And then at the end, thank you for being part of the StreamYard community with a blue heart.

Oh God, I mean, look, I'm not going to be as nice as these guys. If you are the type of business that uses tiers and you automatically upgrade somebody on their tier, I don't care if it's in writing, somebody, if it's in writing somewhere, if it's asterisk somewhere, I don't care. If that's a part of your business policy, that as soon as somebody gets within, within 10 to 15% of the next tier and you bump them up, or they hit your limit and you bump them up automatically, you're an asshole. You're an asshole. You're an unethical, greedy asshole, right? Because that's— I was talking to my wife about this the other day. I don't know if it's still there. I haven't bothered to look. Uh, but there used to be this class that a lot of people used to sign up for called business ethics, and you would take that class because it would teach you how not to do this kind of stuff in business. How not to, I don't know, attempt to be a grifter, right? By like, hey, thought you should know, just slipped in an extra $20 to your bill this month because you didn't realize you were close to the edge and we were going to send you an extra notice. But, uh, you know how it is, you know, like that's, that's not the way to do business. The way to do business with Chris, who's been a longtime member of your platform, who is a dedicated member of your platform, who is a huge user of your platform, which is like red flags all the way up the pole of, hey, let's not miff this guy because if we do, he's probably gonna walk and he's a heavy user. So we kind of want to keep him around because he'll be with us for a long time. You know what a better option would be? Let's give him a month for free or something like that if he didn't realize, or whatever the case may be, and give him the time that he needs over that, that month to like figure it out. Like maybe you want to tone it down a little bit, stay within the realm, or like maybe you get a hold of us and something like that, or contact us and see if we can put something together for you, whatever the case may be, right? But certainly not, hey, throw them in the pile of algorithm that doesn't care about anybody.

And can we tie this back to the show for a hot minute, by the way? Because we're saying all of this because in the age of AI, um, Chris is not gonna be the only one that says screw you, I'll go build my own thing. Yep. So like, talk about maybe a worst time scenario to like chop your customers off at the legs.

Like, come on, people are really getting onto it now. Like, we were talking about it and we were kind of complaining about it a few weeks ago that we wished like more people were getting into it. I just taught the, well, me, Connor, and Ryan Gunn, we just had our first AI for marketing, AI for marketing, sales, and service bootcamp yesterday for HubSpot. Over 600 people at one point. It was like 500-something, 500-some-odd people sustained for the entire time, and then like 175 people or something like that stayed for 15-20 minutes afterwards. Wow. Last time it was like a third of those numbers. People are hungry for this stuff. I mean, it was maybe 20 minutes into the course and the Q&A just started lighting up. Hey, you guys gonna talk about cloud code? Are you guys gonna— one dude asked if we were gonna go over RAG. And if we were going to get into that and like if we were going to talk about agents and how RAG works with agents, I was like, man, that's awesome that you even brought it up. But yeah, no, like unfortunately we're not going to get like that deep, but it's like, that's the level. It was great. And we, so we did a poll last year and we said, you know, 1 to 5, where's your, your AI expertise and like in your org and everything like that. It was a lot of like, it was mainly 3s. You know, if you averaged it out. This time I'd say it was about 4, 4.5 maybe. It's a lot of 5s in there, right? And that is difficult because it's not exactly a level 5 class. It's really— it is like a level 3, 3.5 class. Um, but we, we definitely try our best. Either way, the heat is on so far as I can tell, and I've been talking to colleagues all week, the best I can surmise is that in the next, like, we are, we were at the point, not like 6 months ago, I should say we were at the point 9 months ago where you use the model to help you get a sliver of code. And hopefully that sliver was good. 6 months ago, you were using the model to write like a page of code. 3 months ago, you were using the model to write your entire front end. Now you're using the model to write front to back. Like, I don't— I forget what the timing is. Front. So like, when did 4.6— like, so what, 2 weeks ago? Probably within the next month to month and a half, we'll have something that flawlessly does front to back. There won't be this like, stop to ask you any questions. There won't be this, should we use Next.js or this or that or the other? There won't be this blah, blah, blah. It'll just be flawless front to back. It'll say, give me your tokens for Supabase. It probably won't even do that. They'll probably have a whole new connector system where it's just log into your Supabase, log into this stuff, just make sure you're logged into your services. Boom, I'll pull your whole thing together. Here's your app, done. Here's up, up on Vercel or wherever you need to host it. Here's the link, go, go get a sandwich, right? Give me the idea, go get— like, that's the ad. That's the ad that's coming in like 2 months. I just saw a video yesterday on the first no-human business, non-human company, the first one. They're already rolling out and I'm sure it's shit. I'm sure that it's not that great at all. Like, but in 3 months it will be. In 3 months it'll be as good as like an SMB mid-market. And then 3 months from there, it'll be as good as a large to enterprise, if not already enterprise business. Like, this is the type of evolution that's happening. This is the type of stuff that's coming. And if you guys aren't watching us every day, if you're not getting involved with Value First, if you're not getting involved with, you know, AI Adventurers and HubSpot, if you're not getting involved with AI Bootcamp and you're not saturating yourself with understanding the stuff people talk about, like, well, you know, how do you keep up with it? And, you know, there's so much and I feel overwhelmed and all this kind of thing. I can honestly tell you, like, just an hour a day. It's that old adage, just an hour a day of like either watching YouTube videos about it or, you know, listening to a podcast about it or something. But an hour a day, especially if you do like 20 minutes of a Claude video, like take your pick on it. Most of them are like less than 20 minutes or like 10 minutes, maybe 5 or 10. Take your pick on a Claude video or a GPT video and just repeat what you see. You're going to be able to do it. Like, that's what's crazy. Right? It's not like, oh, I saw this cake recipe, or I saw this cake video, I'm gonna— remember that stuff? Like, oh, I'm gonna try to make this cake that somebody made, right? And it turns out to be like horrific garbage. That's not the case here. That's— it's just not. You will go to remake the thing and it will just remake the thing exactly the way you're looking at it.

Yeah, it's a two-part puzzle. It's educate and then execute.

Yeah, by the way, that's nothing new, right? The new part is that we can do that at the same time now. Yeah, right? Yeah, you can have the video up, be working with Claude, be working with your AI tool of choice instead of, um, okay, do that in HubSpot. All right, pause, let me go do that in HubSpot. All right, I gotta— fuck, I'm gonna get distracted. All right, okay, back to the video. Okay. Play. All right. Pause. Right.

It's like, I don't even do that. I, yeah. Chris, hang on a second.

No, I'm saying like, that was the old way. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Now it's like, you hear the thing, it gets to keep running. Like the level of focus, need to focus on the execution because you have an execution partner. Is less, so you can start the process and now you're learning in both modes and it's an active learning that I've never been able to get to. It's been very hard for me to get to the active learning unless something comes up and I, I must solve that problem or like the new client project or whatever. Right. And now it's just, for me, it's definitely having that execution partner. Plus, you just feel like you're, you're winning just because you get to do these things at the same time. Like you're in taking information, like when I'm on a call with you guys or with Ryan, and we're just talking business and strategy and about clients or about personal stuff. And in the background, transcripts are being processed and notes are being made and plans are being made and executed. And like the turnaround of like what we're building while not losing the human-to-human conversations that we're having. We used to have to choose between those, right? And that's the kind of stuff that made projects take longer, get longer time to value. Um, that's what dehumanized the system because, hey, we gotta focus on productivity, time to value, getting this stuff out the door. Everything's based on hours. So, okay, if we gotta build, that means we gotta build and we can't be talking to you. So now we're designing the process so we have to talk to you less. To make sure we get the stuff done in the budget that you have. Like, all these choices, like, going by the wayside, including, uh, like what you mentioned, um, Nico. Like, you remember when software choices, like, 2 years ago, like, oh, we want to use that, uh, that's it, does it integrate with HubSpot? Is there, is there an app like already built, right? Like all of that stuff, like whether you can build something from scratch yourself or, hey Claude, this is what my stack looks like, I want to do a version of that for us. So just like do, like do what you need to do to make it fit into the stack. Yep, right. Um, we're already at time, a little bit over. So we're gonna wrap up, and, uh, exciting times, folks. We'll see everybody tomorrow. Thanks, fellas.

Peace.