How a Professional Magician Saved Months of Development Using Claude Code

Welcome back to jam packed Business Made Easy with AI and I'm Flora, your host. Today's episode is one of my favorites because it perfectly captures what happens when entrepreneurial curiosity meets AI. I'm joined by David, a professional magician who started performing at 10 years old, was one of the first magicians to use pay per click advertising in the late 90s, and is now part owner of a CRM built specifically for entertainers. But here's where it gets interesting. Instead of hiring developers and waiting months for updates, David used Claude code to edit his own WordPress plugin, saving thousands of dollars. Yes, literally thousands of dollars and weeks of development time. We talk about marketing before Google Ads were cool, building automation that were like a 247 assistant, adapting magic shows for Zoom during COVID and how AI is making technical independence possible for entrepreneurs. If you've ever thought I'm not technical enough for this, this episode is going to change your mind. Let's get into it. Here we are. Hey, David, where are you calling from today?

I'm calling from Minnesota.

Oh, great. How you doing?

We're doing well. Yeah, very cold, Very cold. But we're doing well other than the cold.

Okay, okay. Great, great, great, great. Yeah, a lot of the countries dealing with some cold by the time I post this one. I wonder if you'll still be dealing with cold. A lot can happen.

Hopefully not. Yeah, well, it's Minnesota so we can actually have winter all the way up till May pretty much.

So yeah. You know when I, when I moved to Denver from Panama, but via Austin several years ago and I moved in February and I was like, cool. We got the cold out of the way. They were like, no, the snowiest months are March through May and I'm still, I'm like, that is so hard for me to even comprehend to this day.

You'll get used to it eventually, I suppose. Okay.

Yeah. I was about to say, are you pretty used to it now? Are you from there?

I'm from here. So I've been living in the snow my entire life and the cold.

Yeah, you're used to it. You're tough.

Oh yeah.

You've also been with with Jam AI for a while. So tell us a little bit about kind of what brought you here and a little bit about who you are.

Definitely. Sure. So I'm a professional magician. I've been self employed magician, entrepreneur since I was 10 years old. So I've never had a real job my entire life. I've been making a living my entire life doing magic for people and so I've been a self employed business person my entire life essentially since I was 10 years old. And so I'm always looking to kind of up my, my game, up my skill levels. I also coach other magicians and consult other magicians on autumn marketing automation. I also own, I am part, part owner of a magician CRM CRM for magicians and performers. So I've been you know, around the blog actually started doing Internet marketing back in 1999. I started, I sold my first course on Internet marketing for magicians back in 1999 back I did pay per click advertising even before Google AdWords came out. I was the first magician to ever do pay per click advertising using Overture before even Google Ads came out. But anyway, with all that being said back In I think 2022, I think it was, I was, I discovered a new, new to me a new community called Score. And it's, it's a, it's a platform of I think mostly retired business folks who now volunteer to help other business people that are kind of, you know, growing their business, either starting their business or growing their business. And one of the first webinars that was offered that I once I got involved with the school organization that I saw was this AI webinar by this person by the name of jam. And I never, you know, never heard of her. I didn't know anything about, I didn't even know that much about AI at the time actually. So I was all into marketing automation. I was designing marketing funnels for magicians and specific things like that. But not using AI. You know, AI is kind of a new thing, especially in 2022 I think. And so you know, I watched her presentation. I actually watched, I remember watching it a couple times on the replay to kind of take it all in. I remember implementing a few things that I learned and I just started following the JAM and then the whole jam, AI, you know, platform, whatever. And then you know, she rolled out the school, you know, page or whatever you call it, the school platform. Roll that out. That was grade I actually have my own membership area for magicians who coach with me and, and I do it through WordPress, I do it through a WordPress plugin. But looking at school I almost want to migrate everyone over to school because that's such, such great features. But so then I you know, really started attending the, the trainings and, and what was really a game changer for me, which is recent actually and was I wasn't even planning on this. So I attended the, the cloud code session by Kevin Yeah, yeah. And I had, you know, I wasn't really sure what to what. And I attended it with having no idea what I would use it for. And you know, it intrigued me installing stuff and it was like command line. And I used to have a web server that I do command line stuff. So, you know, I'm a little bit familiar with command line stuff. So it intrigued me. And I was trying to follow along with everything and got everything set up. We're following along live on the webinar with, with Jim and Kevin. And then it wasn't until after the webinar though concluded and I got everything set up and I said, okay, I got, I got clogged code on my computer set up. What the hell do I do with it? Yeah, I remembered, I'm like, oh, wait a second, I have a WordPress plugin that we integrate. We, we integrated with our CRM last year and I paid a developer thousands of dollars developer in Pakistan thousands of dollars to work on this. And it took us three months, three months of back and forth and of course, you know, the time change because you know, when I'm, it's midnight here, it's morning there. And so it literally took us three months. And he did great work, don't get me wrong. But it was exhausting emotionally for me because I'm like the middleman between two developers, basically between the CRM developer who is my business partner, but he's an actual programmer, coder guy. And then now I'm the middleman between this WordPress programmer and it's exhausting and literally it's exhausting emotionally because you're talking to two techie people and you know, they're kind of arguing through you sometimes. Genius and I, and we added these incredible features last year to the plugin to our WordPress plugin and it cost thousands of dollars. And like I said, three months of development time and lots of exhaustion. Honestly, I would leave this project kind of exhausted and almost sometimes depressed because it's like, oh my gosh, what am I got myself into? I'm so knee deep in this now. And I'm between two developers. Now. Fast forward to the night of the webinar. Literally right after I got done on the webinar with, with Kevin and Jim, I, I asked Claude, I said, and it came to me, I said, what can I use this for? So I went to NormalCloud and said, hey, NormalCloud can cloud code help me work, you know, adjust my, and make modifications my WordPress plugin. Because ever since Last summer we've had feedback, we've had feature requests, and I just, it's so exhausting. I didn't want to hire a new developer yet, and I do it in batches. I would hire. When I'm mentally, emotionally ready to hire the developer and work out new features, I'll do that. But I wasn't ready yet. But then, so I got off the webinar, I'm like, wait a second, what if I could edit my own WordPress plugin without needing to hire a developer anymore? So I asked Claude, I said, claude, is this a good case study for or use a good use case for cloud code? And said, this is a perfect use case for cloud. So literally, like about an hour after the webinar concluded, I'm editing my own WordPress plugin, making my own updates. I added incredible functionality to it. So in about, about one week's time, I did, I'd say about the equivalent of three months of development time with the actual human developer. And I spent about $22 versus thousands of dollars. So that's a huge win for me just by attending that one. So I'm really looking forward to the next training that Kevin's putting on, which I think is very soon. On Cloud Code Part two. Yeah, but, and I've learned a lot just from that. So it's been, it's been a game changer. It's been very awesome to, to be involved with this community. And I love how everyone's positive and very helpful with each other and, and I love the other, the speakers that, that you, that you and Jen bring in. Like Tony, he's great. Tony teaching in the different classes that he teaches. So, so yeah, I've been in my mission now to kind of go through the school and make sure I watch all the replays and I check off the ones that I watch and yeah, so it's been great.

Well, you're, you're doing some pretty unique things. You're bringing this world of technology into this world of, of magic. So I, I want to step back. You said you've been entertaining since you were 12. Tell us a little bit about 12 year old David Farr.

Well, since I was 10 actually. 10? Yeah. My very first magic show was at the, the barn when my mom had her horse. You know, what do you call it when you put a horse at, at a barn when they, where they live? Yeah, stable. The stable, I think. So the, the, the, the barn owner hired me for $20. I put on a magic show for all the people that had their horses at the stable. And I remember being extremely nervous. And I remember the next day, though, I had the $20, I went to the gas station and I bought a boatload of candy. And I thought I was so imp. I felt so empowered that I could, you know, perform magic. And then now I have all this candy. And then it, you know, slowly translated to eventually, you know, buying my. My first car and, you know, working my way through college and now paying for the mortgage and everything else. So, uh, I've been very fortunate, very lucky. I've never had a real quote unquote job, you know, although I do treat this like a real job. So say that, you know, kind of tongue in cheek. But, yeah, it's been a very interesting experience. At 10 years old, I was able to, you know, start doing magic and start performing for people. And When I was 10, I started doing magic shows for little kids, birthday parties. Now, when you're 10, I'm only a couple years older than the little kids I'm performing for, so I didn't have the authority, you know, they eat me alive, actually. It was. It was challenging. When I was 15, I started performing in bars. My mom would actually drop me off at the bar. She would stay outside in the parking lot, read a book in her car for a couple hours, and then I would come out, you know, from the bar with my tips. I get paid in tips and whatnot. And so I've always made a living just doing, you know, magic one way or another. Now I mostly do corporate events, so dinner parties and appreciation events and trade shows and conferences and things like that where they want to spice things up with some fun entertainment. During COVID I started doing magic shows over Zoom, believe it or not. So during COVID I didn't want to, but all my friends, all my magician friends started doing magic shows on Zoom. I thought it sounded cheesy and dumb. I said to myself, why would I want to watch magic on Zoom and be just like, you know, watching Magic on YouTube. But then I realized that if I, you know, kind of trying to kind of change things into it live. Like, if you're holding, like, a card from someone like this and you just instantly kind of change it, right To a watch right in front of the very eyes. Even though it's on Zoom, it's still really cool, right? And so I do the whole Zoom show. And so during COVID I actually put on numerous shows, Zoom shows for different corporations and companies who are doing their holiday parties and whatnot over Zoom. And So I had a pivot then and luckily I'm not doing the zoom shows anymore too much, not too often anymore. But yeah, it's been a very interesting ride. Magic's done everything in my life, everything I've accomplished is because of magic. Met my wife because of magic. Everything that I have here is because of magic. So it's been, it's been a very magical thing, no, no pun intended there. To be able to, you know, live a life like this and be able to, you know, do what I love and get paid to do what I love. I love performing magic and, and freaking people out and having a great time. But I also love helping magicians and my consulting clients with marketing automation. And you know, AI has actually been really helpful with that as well. And another great technique by the way, with AI is when I'm switching, when helping my cons, my consultation clients with marketing automation and in the CRM stuff is web forms and styling them with css. And now, I mean I can easily go, I used to have to hire a CSS person. I used to have hire JavaScript people on Upwork to do different things, different customizations on web forms. And now I can mostly do all that stuff myself. So I feel very empowered to be able to do a lot of this stuff myself without having to hire, you know, other people all the time and having to wait, you know, to hire other people. I'm able to, you know, not only do things, you know, cheaper because I'm not having to hire people as much, but I'm also doing things faster too. I mean the, that WordPress plugin development, what I did in a week, literally it would have taken about three months last year, you know, doing it through the traditional route of hiring a developer. So very exciting.

And then, so how. Well, okay, before I get too ahead of myself, when you were telling me about this integration and this and what you, what you did with, you know, after the class with, with Kevin, the Claude code with Kevin, this idea of empowerment came to mind. Right. And then you actually brought this up when, you know, when you were, when you felt empowered to do your first magic show at 10 years old. Right. So I, I just, I thought that was really cool kind of that, that, that bringing back. And I also wrote down the power of supportive parents. Right. Like if your mom hadn't brought 15 year old David to the bars, you know, and, and, and use that time to read her book, you know, who knows where your path would have gone. So I think that's just such a reminder of like how important it is a role as, as parents that we can, you know, follow our kids lead in so many ways. But I do want to come back to, you know, you're doing so much. You, you have a membership program. You, you mentioned the CRM, this marketing automation bit about how you got into that world and then, you know, obviously combined the two.

Sure. Yeah, that's actually a great story as well because it comes back to my mom. So when I graduated high school, my mom actually I saw, I saw an advertisement in the magic magazine. We have different trade magazines, magic magazines. And there was an advertisement for a marketing course. This is way back in 1998. And I said, mom, you know, maybe I should look into this because you know, I was really good at doing magic. But you know, learning business and marketing is just a different thing, honestly. And so I took up this course and it was, it was a gentleman out of Atlanta, Georgia, he was a magician, taught marketing techniques. He wasn't even a famous magician really, but I learned a ton, a ton from that. And it actually opened up. The techniques he was teaching were not Internet marketing related, but this was right at 1999, 1998, 1999, right when the Internet really started to kind of come more mainstream, ish, if you can remember back then. And so all the techniques he was teaching, this marketing guru was teaching, I was actually at that time trying to convert it to Internet market. And so whatever he was teaching, I was like, okay, that's a great technique. Can we convert that to Internet marketing somehow?

Yeah.

And so in 1998, what was that?

Trying to get ahead of the curve even then.

Yeah, exactly. Now, believe it or not, a lot of people, a lot of magicians back then told me I was crazy actually because I wanted to book shows using the Internet and using emails. And they said there's no way people ever, you know, book you without talking to you on the phone. There's no way people will book you just by looking at your website. Now back then, a lot of magicians even have websites yet.

Of course.

Yeah, back in 98. And a lot of websites, not a lot. A lot of people didn't have a lot of email. A lot of people didn't have emails yet, email addresses yet. So a lot of magicians do say I was very ahead of my time because I was trying to do this stuff way back then. Now it's pretty normal to go and fill out a form and opt in for something to get something. But back then it was, it was kind of a, a very New and I've been. A lot of, you know, businesses were using this technique a lot. So, so yeah, it all started way back then when I got this, this, this marketing course on how to do marketing for magicians and entertainers. And I started through that, that gentleman, that marketing guru. He actually did, we did, did a joint venture. I sold my course through him, and so, so he promoted my course too, because he didn't do Internet marketing, traditional offline marketing really. And so we did a joint venture and then I kind of came up with my. I, I started becoming my own name in the magic world. Not because I'm a great magician, but because, well, my, my clients think I'm a great magician, but my, my, my, you know, not my magician clients. My, my normal people clients hire my magic shows. But, but what the magicians really appreciate, though, was how I can take marketing automation and, and, you know, simplify it for them. And so a lot of guys actually don't even want to learn any of this stuff. They literally just have me do it all for them. We sit on a zoom call. I'll set it all up. I'll set all of it up for them. And they just get to kind of, you know, reap the reward of, of having it, you know, work for them On a, you know, 247 basis. Kind of like having a nonstop assistant working for you. Yeah, that you don't have to pay. You don't have to ever give them water breaks or food breaks or anything like that. So it's been very exciting. And, and now AI is opening up a lot of new things and, and now that I'm owner of the CRM, so I wasn't always the owner of the CRM. That's. That's a whole different story. That will. I'll have to do a whole separate podcast on probably. But the CRM that I'm now a part owner of used to be a competitive CRM to mine. And so now I've actually partnered with this gentleman. And like I said, it's a long story, but because of this, now I actually have, I have creative control over the CRM itself. So the previous solution that I had was a generic CRM. I won't mention the name, but it was not set specifically for entertainers or magicians. I took my layer of tools and templates and put on top, top of the CRM, but now I partner with an actual CRM that's made specifically for magicians, and I have creative control over it. So we're doing a lot of A lot of API integration stuff. And so I've actually been using a lot of things I've been learning from JAM on like Manus. I had managed just the other. Actually, I think might have been the same night because I ran out on cloud code. I did was getting so crazy. I was. I was having so much fun with it and I was making such great achievements that I ran out of my usage for that night. It cut me off, basically. And so when I got cut off, I said, okay, I'm cut off for now. I can either pay more or I can just wait for like three, two and a half more hours. So I said, okay, I'll wait for two and a half more hours.

But you were so excited.

I was super excited. I really was. I felt empowered. I've never been able to Update my own WordPress plugin. I've had this WordPress plugin since 2008. I've never been able to update it myself. I've always had to hire people and go through people and it's always a hassle because you're trying to explain your vision to them and then they interpret that vision and then they do their work like a day or two later or maybe a week later. Then you come back and you test it and you have to re. You know, so it's just. This is amazing, but when I got cut off from Claw, then I went to Manus and then I went to Manus and I had Manus build me a custom Chrome extension that integrates with our. With our CRM. And so it's been, it's been really cool to kind of attend these different trainings that jam's put on because not everything applies to me directly, but it will usually spark an idea in my head. And I've been not even actually during the webinar, like, like I said in the Cloud one with Kevin Claude code, it came after the webinar. But it's been awesome to hear the other business owners too, that I think there's like Armando that speaks up quite a bit in the different webinars and I just like to hear different perspectives. And it helps me quite a bit too because I also consult other business owners, you know, mostly magicians. So it helps to have a good, you know, context for all this stuff. But yeah, I just really been into business and marketing ever since I discovered it like in the late 90s. And like I said, I was the first magician to ever use Google Google Ads and I even used Pay per Click before Google Ads. So a lot of people don't know that Google Ads was not the first pay per click search engine was actually Overture, which partnered with the Yahoo. So the first back in 1999. If you wanted to be on the top of the search engine, you can be on the top of Yahoo, not the top of Google. And so you actually paid Overture. I paid Overture a penny per click. This is amazing. Especially if you do pay per click. Now you know it's never that cheap anymore. I was paying any.