The AI Profit Leaders [South by Southwest (SXSW) - Episode 1]
17 Apr 2026 · 8 min
In a live, on‑site podcast recorded at the Bungalow on Rainey Street during South by Southwest 2026, hosts Lindsey Badillo and Chris Weiser open the AI Profit Machine House event. They announce that over 2,000 people have RSVP’d for a venue that holds 450, set the tone of excitement, and introduce the day’s agenda: showcasing how AI can be turned into profit for anyone—employees, coaches, consultants, or tech founders. The hosts discuss public resistance to AI, then pivot to concrete examples of how non‑technical creators can use generative AI (Claude, OpenAI, etc.) to go from idea to launch in minutes. Chris recounts a live demo where, within two hours, he fed Claude a brand kit and a product concept (a calculator) and produced a fully functional website (50k.profitmachine.ai) that began booking calls. They preview the afternoon panel featuring founders from Pillar.io, Josh Lee, Ryan Kohler, Rachel Woods, and Andrew Brockenbush, emphasizing community partnership. Throughout, they promote the upcoming AI Profit Con (August 21‑22, 2026, Hyatt Regency, 1,000 attendees) with early‑bird platinum tickets, master‑mind sessions, and a black‑tie gala, positioning the conference as a pathway for anyone whose job is threatened by AI to monetize the technology. The segment ends with a coordinated shout‑out to the conference URL and a hand‑off to the next guest.
Chapters
Welcome to AI Profit Machine House, South by Southwest 2026.
Good to see you guys. So happy to be here.
It's going to be a hell of a day.
Yeah, I'm really excited. So Chris Weiser, Lindsey Badillo here today. We're kind of doing some live stuff out here on the patio at Bungalow. We're on Rainey Street. I live in Austin, Texas. It's pretty damn cool stuff.
This is fabulous.
Yeah, it's kind of like your first time being a— I guess You know, we hung out and did some South by stuff last year, but it's kind of a different animal when you're running your own stuff, running your own house. We got thousands of people registered for this event today.
We passed 2,000 people this morning.
That's RSVPs. So we're going to have a line today that's pretty big. Keep in mind the capacity of Bungalow is like 450.
Yeah.
So it's going to be— it's going to be a little bit tight in here as we go. We got Noah Hunt and just walked away. We had Chingy in the house earlier. Super pumped about that. So we got sound checks done. We got our artist here, DJ CRG. Christian was here a little bit earlier.
Sean's here with acoustic set.
Yeah. So in fact, he's, setting up right behind us.
What's up, Sean?
So, you know, so our goal for today, AI is such a big factor in today's world, right? And our goal at AI Profit Machine is to really drive AI to the next level, teach people how to make money using AI. And I think one of the things that we really focus on here is how can everyone, I don't care where you are, whether you're an employee, whether you're a, a worker, whether you are an entrepreneur, whether you're a coach, consultant, IT company owner, that's like our world that we live in. How can you make money? How can you capture AI to use it as opposed to being terrified of it or even behind the scenes? Right. What's your thoughts on that?
Yeah. So it's really interesting. I actually just got another hate comment on Instagram of like, AI, do better. And it's, it's so crazy because you have all this resistance, you know, that you get from the general public of like, AI's gonna ruin the world and all these things. And I mean, honestly, you can either get rich with it or you can like not, and we can complain about it. So I think that my goal today is really to bring how you can use AI in your business, how as an entrepreneur, as an employee, how do you leverage this so that you're creating wealth for yourself and you create a future for yourself because it's 100% changing how we do business.
Well, and I, and you know, along the lines of that, one of the things that's really critical here, you mentioned, how can you do this for yourself? Right? Every single person that's in there. And I want, I'm literally talking to you right now. If you're watching this, I want you to understand that every single person that's out there has the ability, like you have insane tools at your disposal. Now you can sit there on a computer, literally on a phone and run your world. Like run agents, you can run all this stuff and build things. We've never had that power before. So now, like, and you and I have talked about this a good amount, I am constantly feeling like I am not productive enough. I'm like, oh, I have to go to sleep, shit.
You're like those guys, like the bros on TikTok. It's like, you must take a nap for 3 hours, then back to my robot.
I'm taking like 12-minute naps. And it's, it's, she's laughing, but it's kind of not that funny. Cause that's pretty real what actually is like, I am, and I'm not even a coder. Like I'm not, I'm not a coder bro or any of that stuff.
Well, I'll tell you from my perspective, it's actually, it just reduces for someone who's not technical. I'm not technical. Like I'm not the one that's building all this stuff out, but it takes an idea that I may have for a landing page, for a new product, an offer, and it reduces the amount of time from idea to execution. And so what would have taken thousands of dollars to, to hire someone to help you do something, to code it or to build a website or to launch an offer on a landing page. And you could do it in a matter of minutes now. Yeah, it's insane. So if you're an online entrepreneur, if you're a course creator, a coach, anyone who's monetizing anything, you have to learn this.
Well, and even if you like— and I'll— I'm going to continue to speak to the people that are like, I don't know what to do with AI, or I don't I've never, like, I'm just concerned about being a worker bee or maybe concerned about your having your business or your livelihood replaced. If you have an idea, you can create it using AI pieces now. Like, this is something that we couldn't do ever. And even for me, not being a coder guy, I've had, and I've said this a lot, I've been an idea guy forever. You kind of saw me do this whole thing earlier. I've been an idea guy forever. I've had hundreds and hundreds of ideas, but I've never been somebody that could actually say, okay, I'm going to code this into existence. Now you can. So if you hear the term vibe coding, you can actually take this whole thing and turn it into reality with your words now. And we're getting to the point where you can go into any one of your AI tools, Claude or OpenAI, that's your ChatGPT, like any of these tools. And you could say, hey, make me this, and it makes you something with your voice.
Yeah. In a matter of seconds.
In a matter of minutes. Like, yeah. And to give you guys an idea, I sat down, we had a webinar last week. Was it Wednesday? A week and like a week and a half ago. It's Thursday at South by Southwest right now. So it was last week, Wednesday. We had a webinar. I started like Lindsey is actually like, hey, I got to do this webinar. We got to do it together. But I'm having a rough day. I'm slammed. I got too much going on. Like, okay, I got you. I'll take it over. I took over the deck I made, and it was like 12:19 PM. I went into Claude and I said, I want to do this. And we built the whole thing and it said, okay, here, I think you should do this idea for a calculator. Claude gave me the idea. I don't know if you know this. Claude gave me the idea for the calculator. And then I said, okay, let's build it. Let's build it. Let's build it. Here's my brand kit. Here's my logos. Here's my colors. Here's all my stuff. And between all of that and Claude, we built it out in like a 2-hour time span and it was live on the web. Like if you go to 50k.profitmachine.ai, you'll see it. Like that is a live thing that I built in an hour using Claude.
Yeah.
And I just picked it up and put it on the internet and it closed deals and booked calls. Like it's just, we're in a time now where that gap from idea to reality is so small and much, much less than it's ever been. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm really excited. We have panels today, so we've got panel this afternoon with other AI enthusiasts, entrepreneurs that are here. Pillar.io is one of our partners, so we're really excited to bring their product to our community.
Faisal's gonna be on our panel later. He's the founder, CEO. Super pumped about that. We got Josh Lee, we got Ryan Kohler here, got Rachel Woods here, Andrew Brockenbush here, and also we got the great Lindsey Badillo here. So that's cool. I'll, I'll sit to the side and just look pretty. That's what, that's what I do. That's what I do. Someone's gotta do it.
Yeah.
So, all right, well, we're going to get into it. We're kind of like live streaming all day here at South By doing all kinds of different stuff. So I'm going to get into some interviews. You're going to get into some interviews. Let's, let's get it right.
Let's do it. While you're here, just a quick reminder, we have AI Profit Con here and the ATX. That's August 21st and 22nd. This year it will be 1,000 people at the Hyatt Regency. Right now we have early, early bird tickets. Meaning that you can get a platinum ticket for a fraction of the price right now. Lock in your ticket. It comes with full masterminding for your AI plan with Chris and I, black tie gala, front row seating, everything that you need to really— whether you are an employee or you're an AI entrepreneur or you've already lost your job or been displaced from AI, we are creating a path for you to monetize and to make money from AI. And that's going to be this August, August 21st and 22nd.
Should we say it together?
1, 2, 3.
AIprofitcon.com.
All right, I'm going to pass the mic. We're going to bring up our next guest and we're going to have—
let's get it. Let's keep going. All right, let's do it. So AI Profit Machine House at South By.
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