0:00

You probably already know that Airbnb

0:02

can help you earn some extra cash

0:04

when you're not using your home. Maybe

0:06

you're traveling for work, you're taking an

0:08

extended vacation, or you're just snowboarding someplace

0:10

warmer. But here's where it gets interesting.

0:12

You don't have to do all the

0:15

work yourself. You can tap into Airbnb's

0:17

co-host network. This is a team of

0:19

local pros who handle the nitty gritty,

0:21

so you can focus on what matters

0:23

most. Think of it like outsourcing for

0:25

your side hustle. These professional co-hosts

0:27

help with everything from creating a

0:29

killer listing that stands out to

0:32

guest communication and even on the

0:34

ground support. You provide the space, they

0:36

handle the details, and you get paid. Personally,

0:38

I'm a fan of income streams that don't

0:40

require constant oversight. When I'm traveling for work,

0:43

I'm at a conference or a mastermind, or

0:45

if I'm on vacation, I'm trying to be

0:47

present with my family. Here's a way to

0:49

add an extra income stream without having to

0:52

my phone the whole time. When you're

0:54

ready to get started, see how

0:56

much your space could be worth

0:58

and get connected with an awesome

1:00

co-host at airbnb.com/host. $100,000

1:03

with AI-coded apps. They create something

1:05

once, monetize it over and over

1:07

again. That's a business model that

1:10

I really like, and historically software

1:12

and apps. Definitely check that box.

1:14

But it used to be, you

1:16

had to be pretty... technical or

1:18

pay someone technical if you wanted

1:20

to build really any kind of

1:22

software. Today, not as much. I

1:24

guess has been using AI tools

1:26

to help build a series of

1:29

small-ish web apps, usually to solve

1:31

a very specific problem for a

1:33

very specific customer. But he's making thousands

1:35

of bucks a month doing it and

1:37

having a lot of fun along the

1:39

way from the even blog.com. Pete McPherson.

1:42

Welcome. Welcome back to the Side Hustle

1:44

Show. Yes. Thank you so much for

1:46

having me, Nick. It's a pleasure to

1:48

be here. talk about techie things. Hopefully

1:51

we can get some good takeaways for

1:53

people, some good actionable items, even if

1:55

we do go a tiny bit into

1:57

what sounds technical. So yeah, let's give

1:59

it a shot. The promise of having

2:01

AI do the work for you is

2:03

an interesting one because software companies are

2:05

some of the most profitable businesses in

2:08

the world. It's like, we could sell

2:10

this same code to thousands and billions

2:12

of different customers. And it has often

2:15

seemed out of reach for individual creators.

2:17

So what's changed in the past few

2:19

years? And what do you see as

2:22

the opportunity for side hustlers here? The

2:24

biggest thing that changed. was obviously using

2:26

chat TVT or Claude or any of

2:28

these newer LLLM's AI models to do

2:31

the parts I didn't know how to

2:33

do. I knew how to do a

2:35

few parts. I've been interested in this,

2:38

I've been coding, a bit fairly techie

2:40

forever, and then maybe about a year

2:42

and a half ago, two years ago,

2:45

I was finally able to cross the

2:47

threshold and have AI do the heavy

2:49

lifting. And the last part of your

2:52

question there. more specifically in the past

2:54

like three months and six months,

2:56

we've crossed another bridge. We're

2:58

now at a place where you could

3:01

basically just type in stuff you want.

3:03

And believe it or not, like

3:05

maybe seven times out of ten, eight

3:07

times out of ten, these AI tools

3:09

are getting better, they're getting more

3:12

aware of its outputs, and so

3:14

the opportunity right now is, well, you've

3:16

said it already, this is, we know

3:18

this, creating software products,

3:21

products, creating stuff you can

3:23

use, you can sell to your existing

3:25

audience, even, I would argue, entering

3:27

in new markets with SAS, software as

3:30

a service, has never been easier and

3:32

faster for everybody, for all of us,

3:34

non-developers, even if you never touched a

3:37

line of code. Yeah, so you've built a

3:39

few of these. One is an affiliate

3:41

link tracking tool called AFTractor. You

3:43

built a one called Topical Map,

3:45

which helps come up with. You know,

3:47

what am I going to talk about

3:50

on my content creation business? Fab.a.i. is

3:52

the fully autonomous blog bawt, blog builder.

3:54

What does it stand for? You're

3:57

actually the only person besides myself

3:59

who's there. forgotten that correct. So

4:01

way to go. Yeah, I saw that company

4:03

a couple months ago. Okay. I've been, well,

4:06

I've been watching, you know, as each one

4:08

of these has been built and presented

4:10

and kind of like you do a

4:12

good job of sharing the journey along

4:14

the way, which I think is

4:16

interesting. So maybe we start there

4:18

with this idea generation. If I'm

4:20

listening and saying like, well, this sounds

4:22

cool, I'd like to start playing around

4:25

with this and I probably would.

4:27

recommend that's where people start is

4:29

like you're not gonna build anything

4:31

super beautiful right out of the gate but

4:33

you got to start tinkering with something but

4:36

you got to have an idea before you

4:38

could start tinkering like how where did these

4:40

ideas come from or how do you recommend

4:42

people kind of go through this what should

4:44

I even start to build sure I would

4:47

say it's a twist on an age-old strategy

4:49

called scratch your own itch I think people

4:51

who have listened to here so I probably

4:53

heard those words before am I right sure

4:55

yeah so I think approaching how you work

4:58

on your computer and a scratch your own

5:00

itch. There's a scratch your own itch,

5:02

off your computer, and there's a

5:04

scratch your own itch when you're

5:06

using scheduling software, when you're sending

5:09

emails, when you are creating a

5:11

YouTube video, when you're editing a

5:13

YouTube video, when you're editing a

5:15

YouTube video, when you're interacting

5:18

with the web in general, cultivating this

5:20

mindset of scratch your own itch. And

5:22

Nick, I think you absolutely nailed it.

5:25

One teeny tiny thing like you said

5:27

you're not going to build the next

5:29

huge amazing 10 bajilian ARR

5:31

software company probably but you

5:34

can build a little chrome

5:36

extension for example I play

5:38

a game I won't mention what

5:40

it is it's totally stupid but

5:42

I play a game that doesn't

5:44

have any tracking whatsoever and some

5:46

basic like multiplication and division things

5:48

that I've been doing on my phone

5:51

on a calculator I was like wait

5:53

I could I totally just built a chrome extension.

5:55

I never built a chrome extension before. I

5:57

have no idea how that works, but I

5:59

went into my... code editor, we could talk

6:01

about tools later, of course, and prompted AI,

6:03

I told it a little bit, what I

6:05

want, and so on and so forth, and

6:07

then boom, it's done, it's there, I'm not

6:09

gonna make any money off of it, but it

6:12

was a tiny challenge, pain point,

6:14

frustration I had, and again, I've cultivated

6:16

this mindset of noticing when this happens,

6:18

I had this small little problem and

6:21

I built a teeny, tiny, tiny little

6:23

tool, it's like. I don't know how

6:25

many lines of code is because I

6:27

actually haven't looked that much at the

6:30

code, but it's really small and it

6:32

works. And I use it every day

6:34

when I'm playing my silly little game.

6:36

Interesting. Okay, so some just as you

6:38

go through your day to day and I'm

6:41

just going to rattle off a couple,

6:43

you know, pain points just from like

6:45

this week. One is when you're pasting

6:48

anything from Google Doc into WordPress,

6:50

it brings in all of this junk

6:52

HDML and you really... inflates the

6:54

size of the page unnecessarily. And like,

6:56

formatting maybe looks a little bit janky

6:58

with some of the font selections by

7:01

default. Same thing with Microsoft Word or

7:03

importing images from Google Docs, you know,

7:05

getting those into your website as a

7:07

blog article, personal pain point, may not

7:09

resonate with anybody else. But it's like,

7:11

you know, so I built this little,

7:13

I can't figure out the image piece

7:15

of it, but just like a little

7:18

macro in word where like we'll strip

7:20

all this stuff out. So maybe there's

7:22

something there. I don't know if that

7:24

would be a WordPress plug-in, if

7:26

that would be a Chrome extension,

7:29

but something like that. So that's

7:31

one idea. Personal Paypoint, number two

7:33

is you know how pretty much every airline

7:35

now will let you rebook if they

7:38

don't have any change fees anymore, and

7:40

so you can rebook if the price

7:42

goes down, and it's like, but I'm

7:44

not, it's kind of a pain to go

7:46

and check and see, you know, set up

7:48

some Google flight. alerts, there's got to be

7:50

a way to either automate this or at

7:52

least get a notification like, hey, your flight

7:54

went down, you might as well go and

7:56

get your $50 in credit and sometimes, you

7:58

know, sometimes I get like the sale note.

8:00

notifications between various apps or whatnot.

8:02

This is the exact same thing, except

8:05

with the ability to tackle those too,

8:07

just really quick. Yeah, let's do it. We'll

8:09

start with the second one. There is

8:11

a tool, which I can't remember the

8:13

name of. It is basically sappier, which I'm

8:15

sure most people are probably familiar

8:17

with. You can set up automations

8:20

and endpoints between various apps or

8:22

whatnot. This is the exact same thing,

8:24

except with the ability to just insert

8:27

AI in between each of your automation

8:29

steps. so to speak. And it would

8:31

be perfect for solving the second problem

8:33

you mentioned there. You could use plain

8:36

language to kind of say, hey, I

8:38

usually go to Google Flights or I

8:40

usually check American Airlines or I usually

8:43

do this. Here's some of the URLs.

8:45

Here's my login information. Like I need

8:47

you to extract this and then automatically

8:49

email me when this happens. And it

8:51

takes a little while to set up, but you

8:54

don't even have to touch code for this. This

8:56

is a tool. It is paid, but I could share

8:58

that with you later. But that'd be

9:00

the perfect thing. Okay, that's an interesting

9:03

one. In terms of like building your

9:05

own thing, what was your first one

9:07

again? I just forgot. The first one,

9:09

it was just like the tedious formatting,

9:11

the junk HDML that gets, you know,

9:14

automatically inserted when you paste stuff in.

9:16

Yes, absolutely. This gets into maybe a

9:18

strategy I really wanted to talk about

9:20

later. So I'm going to segue. This

9:22

will be valuable, I think. For anybody

9:25

who's looking to pick up coding,

9:27

even if it's a developer, I would

9:29

say pick one specific focus,

9:31

text stack, focus, and then

9:33

just stay with it. For example,

9:36

Nick, maybe you're on a Mac,

9:38

OS device, or Windows, you could

9:40

learn how to build Mac apps.

9:42

On the contrary, it's actually pretty

9:44

similar to build iPhone apps. You

9:47

could learn to build web apps.

9:49

That's a lot different. It's a

9:51

lot different. You're going to

9:53

have to probably choose a new

9:55

code language. And again, you don't

9:57

have to learn. development, but it's

10:00

still going to be so much easier for

10:02

anybody listening to this to just build

10:04

five different chrome extensions. Maybe that's your

10:06

thing. Maybe it's WordPress plugins is what

10:08

you really want to dive into. Okay.

10:10

Well, somebody, oh, this is, no, this

10:13

is actually really golden because there

10:15

is an opportunity, you know, in

10:17

the chrome extension space, in the

10:19

Shopify extension space, we had, I

10:21

heard of somebody doing like 10

10:23

grand a month with like a.

10:25

a Wix extension or something, like

10:27

these kind of micro niche marketplaces

10:29

that do something really, really specific.

10:31

And because there's a built-in ecosystem

10:33

around that, like it can be, I don't

10:35

know, and it goes into them, you

10:37

know, marketing on these different platforms and,

10:40

you know, is it a freemium model?

10:42

Like, what's your strategy there? But no,

10:44

I love this call to focus on

10:46

one tiny little thing first versus trying

10:48

to build something completely standalone and

10:50

go out and try and sell

10:52

it. There's a reason I bring

10:54

this up. By the way, mine's

10:56

web apps. That's what I do.

10:58

I have JavaScript. I use Svelt

11:00

Kit, which you don't even have

11:02

to know what that is. It doesn't

11:05

matter. But the point is, it

11:07

builds web apps. Apps, you access in

11:09

your browser. You type in the

11:11

URL to topical map, AI, or

11:13

whatever, and it just pulls, I

11:16

just do web apps. That's all I

11:18

do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except for my

11:20

little silly game, you could solve your

11:22

pain. You mentioned the formatting, removing

11:25

the formatting and getting things ready for

11:27

WordPress. You could build a Mac app

11:29

for that. I know people that have, that's all

11:31

they do, they just build Macops. And if

11:33

I were doing that, I would probably just

11:36

do it where you copy a Google doc, you

11:38

can build in a shortcut on your computer,

11:40

and it just automatically formats it,

11:42

removes everything, blah blah, and then

11:45

copies it to your clipboard again after

11:47

you hit the hot key, and then just

11:49

copy and paste it in the WordPress. If

11:51

you want to be the WordPress person,

11:53

you build a WordPress plug-in. Like you

11:55

mentioned. Or, if you're Pete, I would do it

11:57

via Web app, because that's what I know now.

12:00

having built a dozen of these different web

12:02

apps, it would be super small. It would

12:04

literally just be like maybe a text area

12:06

where you just paste in everything. You

12:09

click one button and maybe it automatically

12:11

removes the formatting and then, again, automatically

12:13

copies it to your clipboard, but then you

12:15

can do it on WordPress. That's what I

12:17

would do. Okay. I hope that's helpful

12:20

for people. I really wanted to hint at.

12:22

There's a ton of different ways you can

12:24

approach these sorts of things, but maybe it'd

12:26

be helpful if you think about. some of

12:29

the things you're interested in, like

12:31

WordPress, like Chrome extensions, like web

12:33

apps, like iPhone apps, that sort

12:35

of stuff, before you really go off

12:38

the deep end here. All right, well

12:40

that's good. So this is idea generation

12:42

method number one, scratch your own itch,

12:44

anything else on this, you know, coming up

12:46

with ideas phase? I have two that

12:48

I like, and these are legal, I

12:50

think they're ethical enough, but it's somewhat

12:53

stealing. I have two examples. Number

12:55

one would be to find one tiny feature.

12:57

In some tool, maybe you're already

12:59

using that has like a bunch

13:01

of different features. One tiny, steal one

13:04

feature from one of your tools. And

13:06

I'll give you a good example of

13:08

this. So back when I did more

13:10

SEO blogging, I used HRAFs. A-H-R-E-FS. There's

13:13

an SEO tool. And they have a

13:15

ton of different features. You can do

13:17

keyword research. You can do this and

13:19

that and that and this and that.

13:22

All I really wanted. I canceled

13:24

my subscription, but all I really

13:26

missed was the site explorer tool.

13:28

So that's an idea for a business

13:30

right there. You don't have the $99

13:32

to pay a month for HRAFs or

13:35

however much it costs now. You can

13:37

pay $9 for my app. It's just

13:39

the site explorer. I wouldn't market it

13:41

as that because that would be straight

13:43

up stealing HRAF stuff, but you could

13:45

just build one tiny feature of some

13:48

other app. Maybe it's an expensive

13:50

app that you pay for. That's idea

13:53

number one. Okay, this

13:55

unbundling of things that

13:57

maybe you're a user of or.

13:59

you know, are popular, but people don't

14:02

need all of the things under the hood.

14:04

And they may just try to carve out

14:06

a segment for people who really are only

14:08

interested in this one feature. This is why

14:10

Nick makes the big bucks, because that was

14:13

a far better explanation than I gave. Unbundling.

14:15

That's perfect. I love it. Last one is,

14:17

oh, here's the example that I came to

14:19

my head. Callonly is a tool to use

14:21

you send a scheduling link and somebody

14:23

clicks it and they can see your calendar

14:26

and they pick out of time and

14:28

so on so on so on so

14:30

on so forth. There for a while there

14:32

weren't many alternatives to Cal and Lee

14:34

that are now, but AppSumo, Noah Kagan's

14:37

company, created Tidy Cal.

14:39

This was like a year or

14:41

two ago. They didn't use AI,

14:43

this is completely different. But it

14:46

basically was taking an expensive

14:48

tool that really doesn't need

14:50

to be all that expensive

14:52

and then just building a

14:54

cheap version. Theirs was like

14:56

$30 lifetime or something. I

14:58

could think of this all the

15:00

time. There's a ton of tools.

15:03

I was going to throw this

15:05

company out of the bus. I

15:07

won't. I won't mention this company,

15:09

but it's a podcasting tool, I

15:12

have my own podcast, Nick has

15:14

podcast, that produces podcast transcripts, and

15:16

you can do some other marketing

15:19

things, like generate some titles, and

15:21

should rate some show notes, using

15:23

AI, and stuff like this. I did

15:25

not want to pay, however much a day.

15:27

It's technically live, you can't go buy it,

15:29

so I'm not going to point people to

15:31

it. But I just built my own, where

15:34

I just upload my audio, it gets

15:36

the transcript, using the same back-in

15:38

tools, probably as this other company.

15:40

And then I can click a

15:42

button, and it'll generate some title ideas,

15:44

and then some time stamps, and some

15:46

different stuff like that. So there are

15:49

very few of those tools that are

15:51

really cheap, really affordable, and that was

15:53

the sort of thing. Pretty sure I

15:55

could build my own version of this

15:57

for like not a whole lot of money

15:59

not a whole lot of time and energy

16:01

and I did and it worked. That

16:03

was good. Interesting. So you could look

16:06

even at your own software, tech, and

16:08

what are the ones that you think

16:10

the price point kind of grates on

16:12

you a little bit? There's got to

16:15

be got to be a better way

16:17

to say how can I build a

16:19

cheaper version or even a simpler version

16:21

that doesn't do all of the, it

16:24

doesn't have all the bells and whistles,

16:26

but you know maybe there's something there.

16:28

Number one was scratch your own itch,

16:31

figure out your own personal pain points,

16:33

and try and build something around that.

16:35

Number two was unbundling of different software

16:37

tools. I just want to pull out

16:40

this one feature. That's the most important

16:42

thing to me, or that's the one

16:44

that I think maybe is most valuable,

16:46

or for whatever reason. And number three

16:49

is to rebuild a cheaper version, or

16:51

compete on. This is kind of the

16:53

App Sumo playbook. You see companies on

16:55

there doing this all the time. Like,

16:58

hey, hey, we're an alternative to fill

17:00

in the blank software. One huge thing

17:02

I want to mention. This is like

17:04

the thing that makes me the happiest

17:07

in all of this, building my own

17:09

apps, learning how to code via AI.

17:11

The thing I like the most about

17:14

this is you have control. We don't

17:16

have to put up with how this

17:18

other software did this. We could build

17:20

our own. More with Pete in just

17:23

a moment, including validating your idea and

17:25

marketing it to find your first paying

17:27

customers right after this. Look, payday is

17:29

awesome, but when you're the one running

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18:31

I mentioned scratching your own niche. Well,

18:33

there's more to it than that. Not

18:35

only is that a good way to

18:37

find ideas that, sure, you could market

18:40

to other people, but first and foremost,

18:42

you solve your own problems. And if

18:44

you know how to leverage AI, if

18:46

you know how to code for this

18:49

stuff, you can make it how you

18:51

want, which is, it sounds pretty obvious.

18:53

But I think that's underrated. I think

18:55

people don't think about that enough. I

18:58

built my own podcasting tool, trained on

19:00

my own podcasting data, the prompts I

19:02

send to AI, I wrote, like there

19:04

was so much control and it gives

19:07

me exactly what I want, exactly how

19:09

I want it, and my exact formatting

19:11

that I want it, like every time.

19:14

I think that's really underrated. Yeah, now

19:16

if you're following these methods, especially the

19:18

second and third one, there's some level

19:20

of market. validation. Hey, we know these

19:23

companies have been around for a long

19:25

time. People are used to paying for

19:27

this functionality. Does anything else go into

19:29

your, you know, market validation or competitive

19:32

analysis phase before you, you know, start

19:34

prompting the code generators? Yes and no.

19:36

No, in one sense, because a lot

19:38

of my own projects, I get just

19:41

me personally, they are based on that

19:43

scratch your own itch. So part of

19:45

me doesn't care. so much. Okay, I'm

19:48

going to build this for myself, and

19:50

if anybody buys it, that's gravy. Okay.

19:52

I use my podcasting. I call it

19:54

a pod promo. Don't go sign up

19:57

for it, but I just call it

19:59

a pod promo. I'm probably never going

20:01

to sell it, just because I don't

20:03

really want to focus on that. I

20:06

still use it every week. But yes,

20:08

on the other hand, I do think...

20:10

if you are going to approach this

20:12

first and foremost as a money-making venture,

20:15

which I think most people should, yeah,

20:17

I do think you should validate these

20:19

ideas. And this might be skipping ahead

20:21

a little bit, but my strategy for

20:24

this is really obvious. It's really annoying

20:26

to listen to on a podcast, but

20:28

that is, have an existing audience, build

20:31

an audience, that follows you. from platform

20:33

to platform, from project to project, to,

20:35

from this idea to that idea, that

20:37

sort of thing. This is, in my

20:40

opinion, the one, the only marketing strategy

20:42

that is pretty full-proof, right? Not based

20:44

on anything happening with Twitter or X

20:46

or Blue Sky or Facebook or TikTok

20:49

or Instagram or email open rates or

20:51

Apple or you get my, you get

20:53

my picture, right? So for me personally,

20:55

that's the validation. I do have an

20:58

existing email list that I've been cultivating

21:00

for years and I generally send it

21:02

to them within a couple of weeks

21:05

of having the idea. Like, oh, I

21:07

built this MVP. But it's not huge.

21:09

It's not like, you know, hundreds of

21:11

thousands of followers. No, no, no. I

21:14

think I have like 5,500 people on

21:16

my email list. Yeah, which is not

21:18

nothing, but it's, you know, I guess,

21:20

you know, a micro influencer status. I've

21:23

heard some people. People pay attention to

21:25

your work. Yeah. It's been that way

21:27

since 2019. That's true. Yes. When you

21:29

come up with these ideas, did you

21:32

do like a pre-sale thing? Well, how

21:34

serious is anybody about this? Would they

21:36

actually, you know, enter their PayPal? Would

21:38

they actually swipe their PayPal? Would they

21:41

actually swipe their credit card for this

21:43

before I go through the trouble of

21:45

building it? Or no. I'm going into...

21:48

online courses or membership sites or any

21:50

of these more traditional digital product ideas.

21:52

I do think validating the idea, getting

21:54

people to, a pre-sale, getting people to

21:57

pay you before you build it, totally

21:59

valid because I think these are much

22:01

bigger projects. I think for these software

22:03

products, especially since we're staying small to

22:06

begin with, and that's what I do,

22:08

I try and stay really small, really

22:10

tight, one tiny feature, one tiny solution

22:12

to a problem, I've built them first

22:15

and usually that can take anywhere from

22:17

two or three hours. to maybe 20,

22:19

30 hours over a couple of weeks

22:22

is like my longest one. But generally

22:24

I can whip something up now in

22:26

a couple of hours. It's not going

22:28

to look very pretty, but I'll put

22:31

it in front of my audience for

22:33

a very small offer. And sometimes not

22:35

even my entire email list. I have

22:37

a group of about 100 to 200

22:40

people that used to be paying members

22:42

of my membership community, people I know

22:44

that I could. literally text on the

22:46

phone, like people that are close to

22:49

me, and I'll generally offer to them

22:51

first for a very small lifetime deal,

22:53

topical map AI, I think I sold

22:55

for like $39 lifetime, period. Is anyone

22:58

going to pay for this at all?

23:00

That's what I was going for. Right.

23:02

And if there is some positive feedback

23:05

and reaction in purchasers, then I can,

23:07

you know, invest the time to polishing

23:09

it up, making it look pretty, all

23:11

this other stuff. Totally. I sold one

23:14

product called Easy Course, which was terrible,

23:16

by the way, in retrospect. And part

23:18

of the reason I know it was

23:20

terrible is because it got exactly two

23:23

sales, and it was really cheap price

23:25

point. It got exactly two sales, and

23:27

those two people both had major issues,

23:29

and they couldn't figure it out, and

23:32

I was like, this was not it.

23:34

It was really clear. This was gonna

23:36

be like a learning management system. It

23:38

was basically like never ever paid for

23:41

online course software again and it works

23:43

like I think if it teachable that

23:45

kind of okay really dumbed simplified version

23:48

yes but yes that's exactly that and

23:50

I was going to teach people how

23:52

to build that themselves. They had my

23:54

template. They could just duplicate the template

23:57

and they changed the content and they

23:59

have an online course that people could

24:01

buy or that they could sign up

24:03

for. It did not go over well

24:06

at all. No one was interested in

24:08

the two people that bought didn't have

24:10

a good time. So that was a

24:12

big fail. And there have been one

24:15

or two other projects where it's, again,

24:17

dirt cheap price point, but it'll be

24:19

like 25 sales, 50 sales, 100 sales,

24:22

200 sales. And that is when I

24:24

like, like, like, like, like, like, now

24:26

I can double down, now I can

24:28

double down, this product, do a little

24:31

bit more marketing maybe, and that sort

24:33

of stuff. Okay, now I like that.

24:35

I want to dive deeper into different

24:37

marketing strategies, but tell me about this

24:40

two to 20 hour creation phase of,

24:42

you know, from idea to having something

24:44

that is viable or something, somebody might

24:46

even have the opportunity to pay for

24:49

what goes into that time. The very

24:51

first app I built that went public

24:53

and that people could actually sign up

24:55

for, took about six weeks. and like

24:58

40 hours a week. It took a

25:00

really long time. This was two years

25:02

ago at this point. And I wasn't

25:05

really using AI a whole lot. I

25:07

was going through a YouTube course that

25:09

I found and like doing what this

25:11

person did. It's a change it for

25:14

my app and doing what this next

25:16

lesson and change it for my app.

25:18

And I got lost so many times,

25:20

couldn't figure out or whatnot. The next

25:23

app, which was maybe six months later,

25:25

it's about a year and a half

25:27

ago, is. a little bit more AI

25:29

friendly. Like I kind of had that

25:32

experience under my belt and I swear

25:34

to it. It took like less than

25:36

a week, maybe 15 hours total. This

25:39

was me sitting down at my computer

25:41

and like whipping up some code and

25:43

then going back and forth with chat

25:45

GPT and back and forth and back

25:48

and forth and then we get an

25:50

app. What would be like a starting

25:52

prompt and this is in chat GPT

25:54

versus some other software specific tool? The

25:57

past three to six months. have shown

25:59

us an explosion in AI code editors.

26:01

They call these IDEs. I don't even

26:03

know what that stands for, to be

26:06

honest with you. But VS code has

26:08

been around for decades, and it's a

26:10

software on your computer, Windows or Mac,

26:12

Ted, and you open it up, and

26:15

this is where you actually write your

26:17

code. But now it has AI in

26:19

there, and there are two or three

26:22

other tools I can throw out later

26:24

if you'd like me to. I use

26:26

one called cursor. I would literally fired

26:28

up. And let's say you wanted to

26:31

make a WordPress plugin for your Google

26:33

Doc formatting issue. You could literally just

26:35

fire it up. No folders open, no

26:37

files open, just like a blank screen

26:40

you're basically staring at. And you could

26:42

tell it. Please create me a WordPress

26:44

plugin where I can copy and paste

26:46

in text from a Google Doc and

26:49

so on and so on and so

26:51

on. You just tell it that. And

26:53

it's going to whip something up. It'll

26:56

do it on its own now. You'll

26:58

sit there and watch it. It'll create

27:00

this file. It'll implement it. It'll create

27:02

another file. It'll analyze this other file.

27:05

It'll create this. It'll analyze that. And

27:07

I would say like 90 seconds later,

27:09

you're probably going to have something pretty

27:11

close to functional. There's always going to

27:14

be troubleshooting and errors for sure. But

27:16

at this day and age, you can

27:18

try one of these tools. You can

27:20

prompt it like you were talking to

27:23

another developer. If you had no idea

27:25

how to code, you would just say,

27:27

I want an app that does this

27:29

and ties into my Google calendar and

27:32

then emails me this and then does

27:34

this, and it's going to do it.

27:36

It sounds overly simple, but that's where

27:39

we're at these days. That's pretty crazy.

27:41

Okay. And then you go into like

27:43

the testing phase after that or like,

27:45

it really can't be that easy as

27:48

like just telling it I would, you

27:50

know. in plain English, this is what

27:52

I want to build. Like, there's got

27:54

to be, I need login information, I

27:57

need API access, I need, there's got

27:59

to be other things, or is there

28:01

not? Yes and no. You might actually

28:03

be surprised how much is not needed

28:06

these days. But that said, it can

28:08

be, it can save you a lot

28:10

of headache down the road if you

28:12

kind of prompt an AI for the

28:15

big picture first. So I have like

28:17

I have my notes open here. I

28:19

have like a seven step kind of

28:22

process to this entire thing. We've already

28:24

gone over a couple of these. Number

28:26

one, have an idea in some way.

28:28

I think the second big step is

28:31

asking AI, chat, TV, Claude, Google, that

28:33

matter, asking for the big picture, say

28:35

I want to create a WordPress plug-in

28:37

that does this and does this and

28:40

does this and does this and does

28:42

this. What are the big steps to

28:44

implementation and what tools should I use?

28:46

And AI is going to give you

28:49

a lot of things you can kind

28:51

of choose from. And it'll be like,

28:53

oh, Firebase, that's free. It's made by

28:56

Google. I can use Firebase for my

28:58

back-end, my database. I'm not a back-in

29:00

developer. I'm not a back-in developer. at

29:02

all, but I know I need to

29:05

store information somewhere in a spreadsheet or

29:07

database or something. So I used Firebase

29:09

and I found it from AI that

29:11

was like, oh, you could use Firebase

29:14

for this because it's free. It has

29:16

a database. It has authentication where people

29:18

can log in to your app and

29:20

creates a cookie and this sort of

29:23

stuff. Again, I don't even know how

29:25

all of these things work. But start

29:27

with the big picture. Start by kind

29:29

of choosing some tools, even if you

29:32

don't know what tools you need yet.

29:34

No one does. Ask AI. Ask the

29:36

big picture. Okay. And then the next

29:39

two steps we kind of mentioned already.

29:41

The next one would be to actually

29:43

go into one of your code editors

29:45

or whatever and then start. Prompt it

29:48

to build something. Create this page, create

29:50

this app, create this plug it, whatever.

29:52

And then there's only really two more

29:54

steps here. Number one, try it, fire

29:57

it up, figure out how to do

29:59

that. It's generally not that hard. because

30:01

of how advanced AI is these days.

30:03

And if you can't figure something out,

30:06

why you just ask. it again. Like,

30:08

how do I open this in my

30:10

browser? That was one of the first

30:13

things I Google. Like, oh, I have

30:15

code on my computer. How do I

30:17

test this? How do I see it

30:19

in my browser? And AI is like,

30:22

oh, yeah, click this link. It's local

30:24

host, colon, 573. I don't know what

30:26

it was. Yeah, okay, okay. And then

30:28

test it out and then fix errors.

30:31

And that's it. It's that over and

30:33

over and over and over and over

30:35

again. Test it. Why? And then hopefully

30:37

it's going to give you some ideas.

30:40

It's going to change things for you

30:42

at this point. It didn't used to

30:44

be that way a year ago. But

30:46

implement something, test it, ask AI to

30:49

fix it. That sounds overly simple, but

30:51

that's like my entire workflow these days.

30:53

Get AI to build something, test it

30:56

out. Yeah, that's interesting because my first

30:58

thought was, and then you got to

31:00

go to up work to find somebody,

31:02

but it's like, okay, how come this

31:05

didn't work. Oh yeah. I mean what

31:07

are the implications of like, you know,

31:09

at least $300,000 a year software developers,

31:11

salaries, and I don't know. It's cool,

31:14

like from a side hustle, you know,

31:16

builder-creator perspective, but it's terrifying from a

31:18

job security if that's your role in

31:20

the world. Sure. I don't know. And

31:23

nobody knows for the for the most

31:25

part. But I think maybe a more

31:27

relevant question. For me personally not to

31:30

hijack your question there Nick. Yeah, but

31:32

if this is such a golden opportunity

31:34

now and everybody can do it can't

31:36

everybody do it can't Nick Go home

31:39

and spit out like five apps tonight

31:41

over the course of like an hour

31:43

just because of these AI technology advances

31:45

Yes, absolutely and I think we have

31:48

a very limited window. Yeah, you know,

31:50

I'm not telling anything so you know,

31:52

I'm telling the truth here. There's a

31:54

very limited window to do this, to

31:57

use AI to build apps for money

31:59

before. this is just not a thing

32:01

anymore. Before now you just tell Siri

32:03

on, I'm talking about now, a year

32:06

from now, you might just tell Siri,

32:08

hey, could you build me an app

32:10

and go ahead and install it to

32:13

my WordPress site at do and blog.com

32:15

and go ahead and test it three

32:17

or four times to make sure it's

32:19

functional? Oh, and by the way, can

32:22

you whip up a sales email to

32:24

my list and go ahead and schedule

32:26

that for tomorrow? Like, that's where we're

32:28

going. we as humans can

32:31

build these software products and hopefully capitalize

32:33

on it at least a little bit

32:35

before that happens and yeah the developer

32:38

jobs I don't know but it's looking

32:40

grim. Okay that's interesting I mean that's

32:42

like you know this whole neighborhood is

32:44

a lot of Microsoft a lot of

32:47

Amazon a lot of a lot of

32:49

tech jobs in Seattle suburbs where I'm

32:51

at so it's it's interesting for sure.

32:54

Okay so we've we've kind of describe

32:56

what we want in AI, now it's

32:58

kind of this back and forth, the

33:00

troubleshooting process and testing process, you know,

33:03

like any project, this QA phase, and

33:05

this was my biggest pain point, working

33:07

with any software development project, you know,

33:10

it would, I'd send up over my

33:12

spec and they would, you know, and

33:14

even if it was just updates to

33:17

an existing project, there's like for the

33:19

shoe business I used to have, and

33:21

it would be like, hey, we did

33:23

all the things that you asked for.

33:26

And you just said, and like the

33:28

very first thing would be like, broken,

33:30

be like, did you test this at

33:33

all? It's like the most frustrating thing.

33:35

They're so eager to like ship it,

33:37

get it off their desk. It's like,

33:40

where was the QA phase in any

33:42

of this? I don't know. Okay, but

33:44

that's that's the next thing. And then

33:46

we go into the marketing part. I

33:49

don't know. It was your list. What

33:51

was toward the end of this seven

33:53

steps. for anybody who touches code or

33:56

apps or anything. Things will go wrong

33:58

and you don't need to know the

34:00

answer. So about two years ago. I

34:03

hired this guy, he came in here,

34:05

and he took a look. I didn't

34:07

know what I was doing. I was

34:09

like, can I just hire you for

34:12

a 30-minute Zoom call to look at

34:14

some of my code here and figure

34:16

this out? And this person was a

34:19

complete professional. He's one of these like

34:21

$300,000 a year, like tech pros. He

34:23

was super kind. And we got on

34:25

the call. I hired this guy. He

34:28

came in here. And he took a

34:30

look at the problem. And he's like,

34:32

yeah, I have no idea. And my

34:35

first thought was like, okay, awesome, sweet,

34:37

thanks. What am I paying you for?

34:39

Yeah. Yeah. But two and a half

34:42

seconds later, he said, all right, let's

34:44

figure it out. And he said it

34:46

in this jolly tone, like, oh, I

34:48

have no idea what the problem is.

34:51

I have no idea how to fix

34:53

this. Oh, let's figure it out. And

34:55

so he literally, I sat there and

34:58

watched his screen as he opened his

35:00

screen as he opened Google and like

35:02

copied and like went to some result.

35:05

and read something in like two and

35:07

a half minutes is like oh let's

35:09

just copy and paste this and put

35:11

it in your code and see if

35:14

it works and it did and I

35:16

was like oh okay this is what

35:18

that job looks like yeah problem solving

35:21

and it's the same thing and that's

35:23

entrepreneurship in a nutshell you may remember

35:25

Brian Harris had this video years and

35:28

years ago just figured out just figure

35:30

it out right you know you're always

35:32

gonna hit that next ceiling and that

35:34

next problem that next hurdle obstacle what

35:37

are we gonna do Let's figure it

35:39

out, like that's your job. So no,

35:41

I'll highlight that point for sure. Totally.

35:44

And I still get stuck in this

35:46

every now and then. I will reach

35:48

something that is not working, and I'm

35:50

frustrated, and I'm frustrated, and I'm frustrated.

35:53

And maybe I do one or two

35:55

Google searches, but I'm frustrated. And eventually,

35:57

my mind comes back around to, oh

36:00

my gosh, I just need to ask

36:02

somebody. And by somebody, I mean AI

36:04

these days. So again, just to reiterate

36:07

here, I like to have an idea.

36:09

Check. I like to prompt AI for

36:11

the big picture implementation. That's my exact

36:13

words. What's the big picture implementation to

36:16

building this? Or what are some different

36:18

tools I should use for this? Okay.

36:20

And if we have time, Nick, I

36:23

want to talk about back end as

36:25

a service, which is brilliant. It's the

36:27

brilliant. We'll talk about that later if

36:30

we have time. But big picture. And

36:32

then ask AI. Okay, what's the first

36:34

step. If you're using ChatGPT you might

36:36

ask it, what's the very first step?

36:39

What do I need to code first?

36:41

What do I do with this? Where

36:43

do I put this on my computer?

36:46

Do I create a folder? What do

36:48

I do with this? Or, if you're

36:50

using a code editor, like cursor, like

36:52

VS code, like windsurf, replet, all these

36:55

other ones, then you can pretty much

36:57

just start. You could say, create me

36:59

a plug-in that does X, X, Y,

37:02

Y, and Z. Fire it. If you

37:04

don't know how to test it, ask

37:06

AI, how do I see if this

37:09

is working or not? Try it, try

37:11

to use it. That for me, that

37:13

was uploading a podcast episode and trying

37:15

to get a transcription, didn't work for

37:18

a long time. And then ask AI

37:20

to fix it. Ask AI to troubleshoot.

37:22

Find what's happening here. And if AI

37:25

doesn't work, you can go to Google.

37:27

That takes a little bit longer these

37:29

days. And then do it again. And

37:32

then do it. And then do it

37:34

again. And that's it. That's the whole

37:36

process. That's the whole process. More with

37:38

Pete in just a moment, including the

37:41

marketing and monetization of these AI-coded apps

37:43

and how he sold one of his

37:45

creations for $45,000 right after this. Let's

37:48

talk about the marketing and monetization piece

37:50

and then circle back to this back

37:52

end as a service. So obviously it

37:55

is helpful if you have your own

37:57

existing legion of followers, your 5,500 email

37:59

subscribers, great. If you don't have that,

38:01

hey, start building in public, you know,

38:04

start. doing the social media like start

38:06

building that up obviously a good practice.

38:08

What happens once you've out that audience.

38:11

It doesn't get you necessarily super far,

38:13

doesn't necessarily get your recurring revenue if

38:15

you're doing it as a one-time, beta,

38:17

lifetime deal, super discounted. What else have

38:20

you seen work on the marketing side?

38:22

There are two big categories, one of

38:24

which I hate and I've had no

38:27

success with, but I'm going to tell

38:29

it to you anyways, and the other

38:31

which I've had a lot of success

38:34

with and I love it and it's

38:36

what I want to do going forward.

38:38

So the first category would be... All

38:40

the traditional advice that you could literally

38:43

Google right now, and I'll just list

38:45

off some. Product on. Launch your product

38:47

on product on product on. You could

38:50

do that. It's actually not hard. Yeah,

38:52

this is huge in like the indie

38:54

maker community. It is, but it's super

38:57

hard because every single day of the

38:59

week, dozens and dozens and dozens and

39:01

dozens of companies are doing this. Some

39:03

of which already have an existing audience

39:06

of a million people that are going

39:08

to go and up vote their thing

39:10

or whatever. Right, yeah. There's a lot

39:13

of these types of ideas. Oh, launch

39:15

to this. Oh, go on. It used

39:17

to be like Hacker News, Hacker News,

39:20

Hacker News, what was that, what's that?

39:22

Doesn't matter. Oh, go to this forum

39:24

and post it here and then, oh,

39:26

post it here and launch it here.

39:29

I tried that for a couple of

39:31

different projects now. Three projects, I've tried

39:33

to go that route, and it has

39:36

not worked at all for me personally.

39:38

Some people swear by it. You can

39:40

Google these sort of things how to

39:42

launch an app how to market your

39:45

app or Whatever and those things are

39:47

gonna pop up Yeah, I'm gonna the

39:49

second category the second category partnerships. I've

39:52

done various partnerships over over the decades

39:54

of entrepreneurship and I think this idea

39:56

of building your own apps is by

39:59

far the easiest It's the easiest pitch

40:01

in the world, and I'll tell you

40:03

how I got into this so I

40:05

try to sell one of my apps

40:08

almost a year ago, like nine months

40:10

ago. And I was just trying to

40:12

offload it very cheap. I told somebody

40:15

like $15. That's it. Period. It was

40:17

already making a little bit of money.

40:19

15 grand. It's yours. And I found

40:22

a buyer. I met with this person

40:24

on Zoom and they were like, I'm

40:26

happy to pay $15,000 or we can

40:28

come in as 50-50 partners. We will

40:31

now be partners in this business. We'll

40:33

split all the profits or whatever. I

40:35

know this guy over here who has

40:38

an audience of like a bajilian people

40:40

and he wants to market the app.

40:42

And I was like. doing the math

40:44

in my head. Like, even if this

40:47

barely pans out, this is like a

40:49

win-win for me. Or this is a

40:51

zero lose for me. There's no downside.

40:54

And so I told the guy, yeah,

40:56

sure. I brought him on at 50-50

40:58

partners. He did promote it, it did

41:01

promote it, it did promote it, it

41:03

made great money, and my mind was

41:05

just blown. I was like, I've already

41:07

done the work. I've already built this

41:10

app, I've already built this, a couple

41:12

of YouTube videos. They created the social

41:14

channels and I was like, oh my

41:17

gosh, this is amazing. And I am

41:19

building a new project as of last

41:21

week with a new partner who's been

41:24

on your show a mutual friend of

41:26

ours. I won't name them because the

41:28

apps not live yet. And it was

41:30

the same sort of pitch. And in

41:33

fact, I reached out before I even

41:35

built it. I knew this person already

41:37

by the way. So this wasn't like

41:40

a completely cold email. I reached out

41:42

to this person and I said, hey,

41:44

I can build apps now because I'm

41:47

fancy. and I use AI. I have

41:49

this idea right here, which would be

41:51

perfect for your audience. So here's the

41:53

deal. We'll split this 5050. I'll do

41:56

all the work. I'll build the app.

41:58

I'll handle customer support. I'll create the

42:00

documentation. It's the things I was going

42:03

to do anyways. All you got to

42:05

do is promote the app however you

42:07

want. I mentioned it to your email

42:09

list. It's in the email marketing space.

42:12

So it's email related. And she was

42:14

like, yeah, okay. There's the easiest pitch

42:16

in the world. So partnerships, finding people

42:19

who have the audience that you need.

42:21

If you don't have your 5,000 people...

42:23

already who are following Nick from project

42:26

to project. I think going and finding

42:28

these people, which is easier said than

42:30

done. I realize this, especially if you

42:32

don't have a very strong network yet,

42:35

I get that. But I still think

42:37

there's such a good pitch. And your

42:39

preference is to do it as almost

42:42

like a, like you said, a 50-50

42:44

equity split partnership rather than, you know,

42:46

trying to go out and find a

42:49

hundred different affiliate partners. I'll give you

42:51

30% to try and promote this thing.

42:53

Oh gosh, yeah. Affiliates. Affiliates are the

42:55

worst. Yeah, no, I like this. It's

42:58

just incentives, right? People have that much

43:00

more incentive to grow, to mention it,

43:02

to promote it, to market it, to

43:05

do all that stuff, when they are

43:07

literally invested. It's not just like a

43:09

one-off commission. It's not even a recurring

43:12

commission. Part of my pitch, by the

43:14

way, is we're going to run this

43:16

for a year, and we're going to

43:18

sell it. That's part of the, and

43:21

you get half of that, you get

43:23

50% of that. So yeah, I think

43:25

it's a lot easier than affiliates for

43:28

sure. Okay, on the pricing side, do

43:30

you find like this one-off, like, this

43:32

one-off, like, you know, lifetime access for

43:34

this one price, or do you do

43:37

a more traditional SAS model, or do

43:39

you do a more traditional SAS model,

43:41

or do the partners, you know, if

43:44

you plan on selling your app? I

43:46

think there is a space especially in

43:48

the MAC app world. I have a

43:51

subscription based business for sure 100% because

43:53

I don't think many people are interested

43:55

in buying it otherwise. That's just the

43:57

truth. That said, this is part of

44:00

the glory of entrepreneurship. You know however

44:02

you want. I think there is a

44:04

space especially in the MAC app world.

44:07

I have this tool on my computer

44:09

right now called CLOP. It's just like

44:11

a. Whenever an image hits my downloads

44:14

folder, it just automatically compresses it. and

44:16

like resizes it for me, and then

44:18

just drag it, that's great. Anyways, no

44:20

affiliation with these people, and it was

44:23

like $30, lifetime, just one time. One

44:25

time, okay, yeah. Right. I don't think

44:27

they're ever planning on selling any of

44:30

their apps. This is like a developer

44:32

duo. They have like, I don't know,

44:34

five, ten, 20 different Mac apps. They're

44:36

never gonna sell. This is like their

44:39

passion thing. They don't even need customer

44:41

support for the most part. It's kind

44:43

of a different thing. A different vibe.

44:46

I don't know how else to say

44:48

it, Nick. But I do think if

44:50

you are going to sell, yeah, I

44:53

think it needs to be traditional subscription,

44:55

monthly payments, that sort of thing. Okay,

44:57

so that's what I'm hearing is the,

44:59

you know, the AppSumo model of like

45:02

the low lifetime access. I think great

45:04

for validation, great for proving, proof of

45:06

concept, but you know, not so good.

45:09

Well now I got to support this

45:11

thing for the lifetime that I promised.

45:13

You know, it's going to be much

45:16

harder to sell. Like, well, it made

45:18

$10,000 to sales. Well, yeah, but what

45:20

does it done for me lately? You

45:22

know, how do you got to keep

45:25

going back to that well versus the

45:27

recurring model here? Obviously, much more attractive

45:29

to a buyer coming in. Now, did

45:32

you have a non-partner exit, any marketplaces

45:34

that you like to put this stuff

45:36

up for sale? Is there a rule

45:39

of thumb on multiples? What's going on?

45:41

This is the company I use to

45:43

sell my most recent app. And I

45:45

was, again, I'm not affiliated with these

45:48

people in any way, but I was

45:50

blown away. Is it like a brokerage?

45:52

They are brokerage, correct, yes. Okay. I

45:55

was blown away by how easy it

45:57

was. They met on a Zoom call,

45:59

they walked me through everything. In fact,

46:01

we had like two or three calls

46:04

just to like stay in close contact

46:06

as like buyers were contacted and they

46:08

actually... Email the listing out to the

46:11

list and it was great. It was

46:13

absolutely fantastic. And there's a couple of

46:15

these brokerages, I guess. Empire Flippers is

46:18

another one. I actually have a listing

46:20

that's about to go live there. acquire.com

46:22

and there's one or two other ones.

46:24

Flippa, they do software products as well.

46:27

There's a couple of these. I recommend

46:29

going that route. Yes, you will pay

46:31

the 8% 10% maybe even 15% I

46:34

think. Okay. In closing fees, the brokerage

46:36

fee, totally worth it. They make sure

46:38

all the legal stuff. is happening dot

46:41

in the I's crossing the T's, that

46:43

sort of thing. Yeah, use the brokerage.

46:45

Which one did you sell? Like if

46:47

you're comfortable sharing the price point or

46:50

the multiples or the math behind that?

46:52

Oh, I don't mind. I'm super happy

46:54

with this. So Fab, F-A-B-B, dot A-I,

46:57

fully autonomous blog bot, as you nailed

46:59

early in the episode, I did not

47:01

work on this app for nine months

47:04

straight. I had touched it on my

47:06

to work on my to work on

47:08

it. And I... I got to that

47:10

day on my to-do list and I'm

47:13

like, today is Fab.a-i-i day, I gotta

47:15

work on this thing. I opened it

47:17

up on my computer and I had

47:20

this sinking feeling in my gut, like,

47:22

I don't want to do this. You

47:24

know what? Maybe I could just sell

47:26

it. And no joke, Nick, like 24

47:29

hours later, I was on a Zoom

47:31

call with the acquired.com people. I had

47:33

to get, like, like, financials and I

47:36

used Stripe. for billing and payments, so

47:38

I just kind of connected my stripe

47:40

account. And I kind of wrote like

47:43

a little blurb. I wrote how I

47:45

grew the app, which wasn't very much

47:47

at all. Didn't have recurring revenue at

47:49

that time? Very little. Less than $1,000

47:52

a month at that point. And so

47:54

yeah, I used their built-in valuation tool.

47:56

You know, they could be like a

47:59

huge range. Oh, your app could be

48:01

worth $10,000. Or like $130,000. I literally

48:03

just slid the little slider, the evaluation

48:06

price point slide. on my screen all

48:08

the way down. I slid it all

48:10

the way down. I was like, I

48:12

just want to get rid of this.

48:15

And it was like $45,000 or something.

48:17

And I was like, done, fine. That's

48:19

great. 45,000 dollars? I'll take. Again, like,

48:22

I launched the app and I had

48:24

like 100 subscribers paying subscribers, but then

48:26

I didn't work on it for like

48:29

nine months and people dropped off and

48:31

it was, it was crazy, right? 30x,

48:33

30x, monthly net revenue, monthly, you can

48:35

literally Google this, like sass, multiple sales

48:38

or whatever, yeah, 30 to 35 is

48:40

generally like a pretty normal range, I

48:42

think, 30x, 35x, mine was a little

48:45

bit more than that, just because I

48:47

think it was fairly cheap, and I'm

48:49

not selling it for like one and

48:51

a half million dollars, right? It was

48:54

45,000 dollars, and that's it, listed it,

48:56

I think a week and a week

48:58

and a half later. It was live.

49:01

I had an onslaught of like the

49:03

initial people showing interest and then maybe

49:05

like three or four people a couple

49:08

of days later that were having a

49:10

conversation and then one person who was

49:12

like literally sent over the, oh, I

49:14

forgot what it's called, the purchase agreement,

49:17

like intent or whatever to buy it,

49:19

cash, closing, and I was like, soul.

49:21

That was easy. This was great. A

49:24

couple important things to note here. One

49:26

is like, when's the time to pull

49:28

the plug on your side hustle, when

49:31

It's, you know, when you have postponed

49:33

working on it for nine months and

49:35

when you do finally get to it,

49:37

you, like, within 10 minutes, you're like,

49:40

this is awful, why am I doing

49:42

this? Like, when you come to dread

49:44

the work, that's a good sign that,

49:47

I don't need this in my life,

49:49

but it's an asset, right? Instead of

49:51

just shutting it down and sun setting

49:53

it into the, you know, abyss of

49:56

the internet, hey, this might be worth

49:58

something to somebody else. like this, okay,

50:00

I can build near-term cash flow if

50:03

I... sell it either as a one-time

50:05

thing or as a subscription, but I'm

50:07

also building equity in every incremental, you

50:10

know, $500 that I'm adding to the

50:12

bottom line every month, every thousand dollars

50:14

that I'm adding in recurring revenue, that's

50:16

worth 30 to 35X as an exit

50:19

valuation. It's like really, really interesting this,

50:21

you know, cash flow plus equity component

50:23

there. You know one of the benefit

50:26

to this? This whole building apps thing.

50:28

The expenses are essentially zero. Essentially zero.

50:30

A few of my apps do use

50:33

AI themselves. Fab, AI was using AI

50:35

to create blog posts. So yeah, there

50:37

were API costs from Open AI, from

50:39

Anthropic, who makes the Claude AI models.

50:42

But other than that, like actually hosting

50:44

the app and having it live on

50:46

the internet, this in most cases free

50:49

for all my other projects. Yeah, if

50:51

you already have hosting or something, yeah.

50:53

Or no, no, no, not even have

50:56

hosting. I mean, you can host it

50:58

for free. You can go to Versel

51:00

right now and you can deploy, host

51:02

your app with SSL certificates and everything

51:05

for $0. Every single month, like this

51:07

is there. And the back end I

51:09

use is $0 from Google. It's made

51:12

by Google. And stripe. You pay striped

51:14

fees when somebody buys your app, but

51:16

again, it's free to sign up. My

51:18

expenses for these things are nothing. So

51:21

even if they only make, like you

51:23

said, 100 bucks a month, 200, 500

51:25

bucks a month. Yeah, it's incremental. Yeah,

51:28

it's incremental. Yeah, the expenses are nothing.

51:30

Yeah, the margins are out of control.

51:32

Yeah. Okay. So finding this. We'll call

51:35

them like the audience partner or the

51:37

marketing partner. This is one of this

51:39

side us old trends have been going

51:41

on for a long times. Well, how

51:44

are we going to market this thing?

51:46

We need that influencer component, like somebody

51:48

who already talks to the people that

51:51

we want to talk to. That would

51:53

be a good fit for the tool.

51:55

So that's one component. and you tease

51:58

this back end as a service thing,

52:00

so I'll tee that up for you.

52:02

Sure. I had the most trouble when

52:04

I first started out figuring out the

52:07

back end, a database hosted on a

52:09

server somewhere. What even is a server?

52:11

A server is just a computer that

52:14

has a database where I store my

52:16

user data, their email address, their name,

52:18

anything related to my app, like... the

52:21

transcription for a boycott, or whatever it

52:23

is. That was so hard for me

52:25

when I first did this. It took

52:27

forever. I just could not wrap my

52:30

head around this. A lot of my

52:32

app, like talk to a database and

52:34

back and forth, like my mind was

52:37

just blown. So back in to this,

52:39

as a service, is relatively new, and

52:41

it's basically software products itself that you

52:43

can go use for no money, by

52:46

the way. does most of that heavy

52:48

lifting for you and you kind of

52:50

plug it into your app with a

52:53

few lines of code that you can

52:55

just kind of copy and paste in

52:57

and but once you do you can

53:00

run a back-end database authentication like for

53:02

my apps people can use the sign

53:04

in with Google button like they click

53:06

the button and then the Google thing

53:09

pops up and they sign in with

53:11

Google. Oh okay. I didn't code any

53:13

of that. Yeah yeah I don't want

53:16

to create a new password or anything.

53:18

Okay yeah. So this is like the

53:20

off-the-shelf tools or templates like you kind

53:23

of plug it. I don't have to

53:25

start completely from scratch. Some of this

53:27

functionality already exists and apparently it's open

53:29

source and this or it's available for

53:32

people to borrow. Again this is why

53:34

Nick makes the big bucks because off-the-shelf

53:36

is the perfect way to think about

53:39

this. It is. No one cares about

53:41

messing with databases. I do not get

53:43

that. My brain doesn't get that. This

53:45

is off-the-the-shelf solutions solutions for... Database is

53:48

authentication. And other stuff like that, but

53:50

those are the two big things. So

53:52

I'll just point out, I use Google's

53:55

Firebase. It's literally the name of the

53:57

app. You can Google it. And it's

53:59

completely free. It's silly easy to set

54:02

up. In fact, you can really free.

54:04

It's silly easy to set up. In

54:06

fact, you can really just ask AI

54:08

to do it these days. And it'll

54:11

tell you like, oh, first you need

54:13

to go create a Google account and

54:15

then do this, so on and so

54:18

on and so on and so forth

54:20

things. And if you ever have to

54:22

manage it yourself, it's as simple as

54:25

going to their website, Firebase or Superbase,

54:27

and kind of like point and click,

54:29

searching for things. It's the off-the-shelf thing,

54:31

because you don't want to touch SQL.

54:34

You don't want to be doing queries

54:36

for databases, because that's just, oh, that's

54:38

way beyond the scope of anything I

54:41

know how to do. So yes, back

54:43

end is a service. You're going to

54:45

have to pick one. That's what I'm

54:48

saying. get signed up, they're completely free

54:50

to start with and go from there.

54:52

All right, this sounds like a project

54:54

for, after putting the kids to bed,

54:57

let me dig around on the internet,

54:59

which has always been, and found my

55:01

coding knowledge is super, super limited, like

55:04

I can read some HTML and, you

55:06

know, insert hyperlinks and stuff like that,

55:08

but otherwise it's super, super, super basic

55:10

enough to. to figure out, you know,

55:13

every time I hit refresh on, after

55:15

I had updating code and it doesn't

55:17

break, like, yes, okay, I'm a programming

55:20

genius. This is, this is really cool.

55:22

I mean, we're going back to like

55:24

hypercard, to do hypercard. It's this like

55:27

middle school era programming, you know, shout

55:29

out to like the two people in

55:31

the audience who will get that reference

55:33

if they're old enough to, but it

55:36

was this, you know, going back to

55:38

this practice of figuring it out, a

55:40

very simple instruction or prompt at, and

55:43

at the beginning of the class, beginning

55:45

of the quarter, super frustrating. Like, dude,

55:47

you didn't. tell us how to do

55:50

anything. How are we supposed to do

55:52

the thing? And it's just kind of

55:54

like, it was super frustrating. It's like,

55:56

give me the instructions. I will thought

55:59

that was like the kind of student,

56:01

like I will knock this out of

56:03

the park for you. But it was

56:06

so open ended, and it took a

56:08

few weeks into the class to be

56:10

like, there's a method to your madness

56:13

here. It ended up being one of

56:15

the most fun and rewarding classes here.

56:17

And I can kind of see this

56:19

being similar, like, like, You know put

56:22

something out into the world. I think

56:24

it's really it's really unique But anything

56:26

surprised you over the last couple years

56:29

in building these things and trying to

56:31

market and sell them The most surprising

56:33

thing is that I actually did it

56:35

I didn't go to school for this

56:38

I've never went to a coding boot

56:40

camp So on and so forth, right?

56:42

I'm not a trained developer, but at

56:45

some point like I literally coded something

56:47

and built it and got paying customers

56:49

and then sold the company And not

56:52

for a million billion billion dollars. Yeah,

56:54

isn't that crazy? But yes, it is

56:56

crazy. And I've just blown away by

56:58

not just me, but the fact that

57:01

we can all do stuff like this

57:03

now. Again, we have AI to think

57:05

for the large part. But for anybody

57:08

listening to this, we can all build

57:10

apps now, software. It's just wild. Yeah.

57:12

And every single week that goes by,

57:15

it gets easier, which is continuing to

57:17

be surprising. So if you got a

57:19

checklist of future projects that you want

57:21

to build, what's next? Where are you

57:24

going with this? Yeah, you want the

57:26

ideas? I will literally just throw them

57:28

to the ether and then somebody can

57:31

steal them. Number one, an app that

57:33

will text me when half time is

57:35

over for my college football games. I

57:37

want to be able to input Nick's

57:40

team, the Washington Huskies, GoDocks, but also

57:42

the George Bulldogs. I want to input

57:44

my team. and I'm going to get

57:47

a text message when half time is

57:49

over and the game is starting back

57:51

so I can walk back in the

57:54

other room and get in front of

57:56

my TV. There's an app right there

57:58

that I would pay. 10 dollars

58:00

a year for. Love it. I mean,

58:03

it's like, like Red Zone, right? So

58:05

it's similar. Oh, I don't know. I

58:07

don't know what Red Zone is. Maybe

58:09

you could share this with me.

58:11

Well, this is like NFL Red

58:13

Zone, like, will, you know, sending

58:16

you an alert when your team

58:18

is inside the 20, like, didn't

58:20

something like that exist? I don't

58:22

know. That's a great question. Anyway,

58:25

I want to be able to

58:27

log in. to something that looks like

58:29

a chat window, or heck, I

58:31

might even do voices, since the AIs have

58:34

voices down, um, audio. And I

58:36

literally just want to interact with

58:38

it as my mastermind group. In

58:40

fact, I want to go more

58:42

specific. I want to be able

58:44

to define the exact people

58:46

that are in my mastermind group,

58:48

give them names, give them character

58:51

traits, and life experiences.

58:53

and pros and cons and strengths

58:55

and weaknesses, each person, except

58:57

for their AI, and I want to chat with

58:59

them. So almost like an AI therapist,

59:02

but an AI mastermind group, that's another

59:04

idea. Yeah, and this is something I've

59:06

been exploring, like you can easily prompt

59:09

it to be like, respond as if

59:11

you were Tony Robbins, respond as if

59:13

you were Pat Flynn or Warren Buffett

59:16

or Aristotle, or you know, and it's.

59:18

I mean this is kind of taking

59:20

it to the next level. I'm picturing

59:23

there like talking heads, you know, hey

59:25

Jen generated on a screen here.

59:27

Totally. I'll give you another one

59:29

that somebody else to do, that

59:31

I don't want to do. And

59:33

that is affiliate tracking software,

59:35

but dirt cheap. So there are a

59:38

lot of tools out there like

59:40

rewardful. And what's the other one?

59:42

Link Mink. There's another one. These

59:44

are affiliate referral softwares where you

59:46

sign up, you pay $49 a

59:48

month, and they give you this

59:50

code, like a line of JavaScript or

59:53

something that you install into

59:55

your site. Maybe it's WordPress,

59:57

maybe it's a software product

59:59

like. convert get or something like

1:00:01

that. I don't know. And then they

1:00:03

handle your affiliate marketing, right? They give

1:00:05

you affiliate links, they give you a

1:00:07

page where your affiliates can sign up,

1:00:10

so on, and so forth. All of

1:00:12

these are way overpriced and the market

1:00:14

is itching for people like me who

1:00:16

are indie developers to pay $9 a

1:00:18

month and just have a dirt simple

1:00:20

affiliate tracking thing. I don't know why

1:00:22

these are so expensive. versus Callanley. Somebody

1:00:24

should build this right now and sell

1:00:26

it to me and I'll pay for

1:00:28

it. There you go. And it can't

1:00:30

be that hard. I haven't done yet,

1:00:32

but it can't be that hard. All

1:00:34

right. He's a great. Well, you can

1:00:36

email Pete. I do you even blog

1:00:38

once you got this developed. Do you

1:00:40

even blog? Do you even blog.com is

1:00:42

where you can check them out. Thanks

1:00:44

so much for schooling me on this

1:00:46

stuff and see what. comes of it.

1:00:48

I think it's really exciting what you

1:00:50

what you built and looking forward to

1:00:53

seeing the future projects in the pipeline,

1:00:55

what comes down the road. But let's

1:00:57

wrap this thing up with your number

1:00:59

one tip for Side Hustle Nation. Quit

1:01:01

quicker. I think maybe I've heard this

1:01:03

on your podcast before, so this is

1:01:05

going to be a little bit of

1:01:07

a cop out. But my one tip

1:01:09

is to drop your projects faster and

1:01:11

move on to the next thing. I

1:01:13

do think there is a possibility that

1:01:15

you will, quote, unquote, lack a certain

1:01:17

focus here. I do think there's a

1:01:19

possibility that you might miss out on

1:01:21

some opportunity if you had tripled down

1:01:23

on a project instead of quitting, but

1:01:25

on the long run, I actually think

1:01:27

it's better advice to quit faster and

1:01:29

move on to the next thing. That's

1:01:31

my side hustle and entrepreneurship mantra right

1:01:34

now. Well I gave my criteria for

1:01:36

when it was time to throw in...

1:01:38

the towel when you come to dread

1:01:40

the work, what's your quick criteria? That's

1:01:42

a huge one right there. I mean,

1:01:44

that's it. That looks like a lot

1:01:46

of different things for me personally, but

1:01:48

I do feel that now. I don't

1:01:50

want to work on this project anymore.

1:01:52

That's the number one sign. Figure out

1:01:54

a way to probably not shut it

1:01:56

down completely. I'm with you. All of

1:01:58

these things can be assets. I mean,

1:02:00

I didn't touch my app for nine

1:02:02

months and then I sold it. Either

1:02:04

just give yourself grace. for not working

1:02:06

on it and just put it down.

1:02:08

If it's not costing you any money,

1:02:10

list it for sale, figure out something

1:02:12

else to do with it when that

1:02:14

work becomes tedious. I'm with you. All

1:02:17

right. Well, this is fair. And this

1:02:19

is the reason why we ask this

1:02:21

question, because half the time or, you

1:02:23

know, oftentimes, well, the answer is persistent.

1:02:25

If you just stick with it through

1:02:27

the hard times, eventually you get to

1:02:29

the, you know, pot of gold at

1:02:31

the other side. Like, well. How long

1:02:33

do you really keep digging before you

1:02:35

just throw the, it just never comes?

1:02:37

So there's no shame in quitting. Same

1:02:39

thing, like if you're, you know, going

1:02:41

to leave your job, you know, to

1:02:43

start a business, I would love to

1:02:45

see us start the business before quitting

1:02:47

your job, like you have lower the

1:02:49

height of that cliff that you're jumping

1:02:51

to something rather than from something, you

1:02:53

know, a whole lot of psychology around

1:02:55

that. But. You don't need to hang

1:02:57

on to something that's making your life

1:03:00

worse. So quit quicker is the number

1:03:02

one tip from Pete in this one.

1:03:04

It's been awesome. I love the calls

1:03:06

to action of like, well, if you

1:03:08

don't know how to do it. Ask

1:03:10

the AI to troubleshoot it. I love

1:03:12

the call to start small. I love

1:03:14

the call to find a marketing partner

1:03:16

and share the upside with them. Really,

1:03:18

really interesting episode. Again, one that's inspired

1:03:20

me, hopefully, to go try and build

1:03:22

something on my own. But big thanks

1:03:24

to Pete for sharing his insight. Big

1:03:26

thanks to our sponsors for helping make

1:03:28

this content free for everyone. You can

1:03:30

hit upside hustle nation.com/deals for all the

1:03:32

latest offers offers from our sponsors in

1:03:34

one place. Thank you for me. Thank

1:03:36

you so much for tuning in. If

1:03:38

you find a value in the show,

1:03:40

the greatest compliment is to share it

1:03:43

with a friend. So fire off that

1:03:45

text. message to who's

1:03:47

who's always coming up

1:03:49

with different business

1:03:51

ideas. ideas. Hey, you ever

1:03:53

thought doing a

1:03:55

software project? This episode

1:03:57

is for you. for

1:03:59

you. Until next time,

1:04:01

let's go out

1:04:03

there and make something

1:04:05

happen. And I'll

1:04:07

catch you in the

1:04:09

next edition of edition

1:04:11

Show. Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.