We Built Our Own Software With Claude Code. Here’s Why.

This is gonna be something that I wanna be able to hand off to somebody. Yeah. 'Cause the 37 easy steps to invoicing needs to go away. I mean, that is just- Yeah ... it's all- Do you have like a 30-minute Loom video to accompany that? It's just that easy. And then you're done. Step two, make a profit. That's just one client.

Now let's move on to the next one

Welcome to the Marketing Team of One podcast, where we have conversations about the issues one-person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Here we are, Mike. Good to be here. Is it really? Doesn't sound like it, my voice, does it?

No, I- I'm not convinced- No ... that it is good to be here. No. It is. I mean, it's good to be alive. It's very good, yep. I'm blessed. Life is good. Yeah. Yep. I, um, if people are wondering, I had a recent bike crash and broke both hands, but I'm just gonna let this one heal naturally. Yeah. Uh, who cares? You know, I don't- Everything's pointed in the right direction, so.

It seems, yeah, everything seems to be okay- Yeah ... with this one. Literally and figuratively. This one was not, though. Yeah. So that's why this has to be, but that's all I'm gonna say about it. We're just gonna move on from this podcast and, uh, just in case people were curious. Move on in this podcast or from this podcast?

'Cause that means, like, we could just not do this anymore, right? From? Time to- Move on from this podcast? Let's not move on from this podcast. Oh, okay, okay. The worldwide fan base would be very upset if we did that, Mike. Awesome ... especially when they want to hear about you and your AI/coding/operational genius coming to the fore, stepping in, building something from scratch, we're gonna say.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean- Oh, it- ... it's from scratch ... it didn't exist before. That's right. And this is probably following in the line or in the footsteps of a lot of things that people have heard in pop culture, in business culture about AI can do it all. It can build you agents. Mm. It can... You can build apps.

You can build anything, and all you need to do is just plain language speak into your computer, and then two seconds later, boom, you've got the next award-winning application that will solve all your business problems. Is that pretty much what the bag of goods we were sold? Is that the dream? Is that the dream?

Yeah, I think you hear that a lot. Yeah. Um, I don't know. I think this kind of picks up... Like, we did, we did an episode before where we talked with Ashley, and she talked about how AI can do a whole bunch of cool things- Yeah ... and, like, I can use AI to build a website and everything. Um, I think this kind of feels in the same spirit but maybe a little bit more, um, in a different area, so to speak.

Like- Not building a website. Well, it lives on a website, but- It is... Yeah, but it's an, it's an application. The... So really, I mean, backstory is- Yep ... we had, we had software that we've relied on for 12 and a half years. Yes. Is kind of a critical part of our business, and, um, the owners of this software decided to change our monthly price from $110 to 2,000- Ouch

a month. Like only almost 20x- Yeah ... times in price increase. Which h- thought it was a typo at first, and then you start looking at it, and, o- oh- ... no, they're kind of serious about this. Um- Ouch ... and it wasn't really 20,000 or 2,000 a month, but- There were options to get discounts, you know, but still they were radically higher than what we were paying before.

And they were temporary discounts, and they would ... eventually we would be paying- Yeah ... 20 times more than what we were paying. Exactly. And so, um, they're dead to me. Me too. Dead. Any ... I, I ... This is more just for company, any companies out there, like, why would you do that to your customers? Why would you? You're like, like, the

it's crazy, like, we've- It's abusive ... we've paid them a, a decent amount of money for 12 and a half years. Yeah. Like, why would you, like, pull the rug out from under people? Probably 'cause they felt like they had 'em locked in, but I do not ... I refuse to believe we're locked in to it. And we're a scrappy team.

All of us believe in we can do it all. We can tackle- Yeah ... big problems. Yep. So they're dead to me. They're not getting another cent of my money. Anyone who's gonna do that, they're dead to me. So. Yep. So we talked, and we looked at other options, but to be honest, I didn't wanna have to bend our ways to another different thing that has its own idiosyncrasies.

Like, I felt pretty good about how we had things sorted out. Yeah. Um, yes, this is a key part of our, you know, our work, how we organize our work, how we get paid for our work is, is very pivotal for all of that stuff. It did time tracking, and it did invoicing, job tracking. That was really what- Yeah ... we were using it for- Yeah

primarily. I mean, we both looked briefly at what, what are some options to replace it, but I did not ... That didn't sit well with me. It just felt like- No ... we could choose another software product that every software product you get, um, you, you look at now, they're always ... They're ... The cycles now are that we have to jam this thing with all the things that people might want.

We ... At J- we work in these cycles to keep improving it, and then, and then we justify raising prices because we've added a bunch of features that people care ... might not care about or might not need, you know? So- I've looked at Adobe as kind of being a part of that problem as well. I've been, I've been an Adobe user since the nine- early '90s.

I mean, and it's ridiculous to see all of the bloat that they've added to s- most of their popular software suites. I don't know. It just doesn't- Yeah ... it's impossible to, like, learn Photoshop nowadays. Yeah. It's just ... There's so many different things in it, but- Totally ... still is- Totally ... one of the industry standards anyway.

Way back when, we used to try and build our own little things 'cause we had some ... a little bit of web savvy here where we could build our own little things to get the right information that we want. Um, but that was a challenge because, like, you have to maintain it yourself, and, and some- you never know when something might be a big, big problem that you have to, that- You know, you have to put aside everything else and try and get this thing fixed for your own internal use.

I mean, this is not something that makes us money directly. No. This is an operations thing. It's not... So any, uh, spending a bunch of time on this type of thing takes us away from... The opportunity or cost of it is pretty great. Yeah. But, um, but the big promise of AI out there is, um, changes the math a little bit.

Mm-hmm. And so, um, looked through, kind of gave a, a brief o- gave myself a brief overview of what's going on, and it's like I think I can re- I think I can build something ourselves here- I think- ... to replace ... so we basically had about... So then after that decision was made, we basically had a timeframe of about four weeks to get- Yeah

things built, troubleshot, and into practice on this thing. And we had our list of needs, wants, wish list type of thing that we both went through as far as needs that you had, the team had, I had. And made that list, made a punch list, and, um, then started Just building an app, right? We're just gonna build an app.

You can just use AI. Exactly. I got- It's just that easy. Yeah, I, um, I read an interesting little article, I, I can't remember if you found it or I found it, but of, of a company that was in the same spot as us, same software- Yeah ... same thing. And, um, they were probably a little bit more savvy on the web building side of things, sound like they were developers already.

Um, there were articles about how they d- built a replacement in two days. So that kind of, that kind of poisoned the well a little bit for me. I'm like, "Oh yeah, th- this is easy. We're gonna um- Yeah ... we're gonna build this in two days. It'll be, and then we'll be done. It'll be set." Sure. I think that right there is the promise of, of using AI to code things- Mm-hmm

um, explained perfectly. Um, in all, it- the reality behind something like that is that there are so many decisions that go in, that are outside of AI- Yeah ... that need to be put together into something, and it has to be clearly described and everything to go into coding to make that happen. And there's a big...

There's probably a lot of things, like w- in our thing with Ashley, a lot of it is like, I didn't even know what to, what to prompt it. Like there- Mm ... you know, like- Mm-hmm ... you, you have to know what to prompt it, you have to be well-versed in all that stuff to be able to do something like that. And so when you see these, like, people on LinkedIn saying, "Hey, I rebuilt my whole this with AI.

I did all this stuff," I always just look, I'm, I look a little sideways at it and skeptical about it. 'Cause, like, um, yes, yes, to be honest, we probably could have built something that was, in two days, that was okay. Minimum viable product- Yeah ... kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, but I don't know if anybody would've been ultimately happy with it.

Well, and we're still- Yeah ... working out some of the tiny little details- Yeah ... around it. Four weeks later. I mean, we're still... Yeah, four weeks later we're still working on refining it and perfecting it. But I mean, to be honest, like, it's pretty amazing what you did build. So yes, and one side of that, just like going back to Ashley and building the website with AI- A lot of the friction was around not anything that AI did.

Yeah. It was around getting the right direction figured out first. Yeah. The right strategy, the right... I, what, what are, what is the wish list? Like, very clearly, and then how does that wish list function in some sort of a process line, right? Yeah. So that you can understand very clearly if this does this, then that- Yeah

kind of a thing. Oh, and it should also do that, that, and that. Yep. Where when you go into these things, you're always just making assumptions that, "No, it'll just do that," and you're like- Mm-hmm ... no, you have to be very... It's a computer. You have to tell it exact- exactly how to do what the thing is that you're looking for it to do, and every panel that you're designing or every task that it's assigned, you have to do the same kind of very rigorous process analysis and come up with exactly, "If I click this, then it does this, and then this also needs to happen, as well as this needs to happen over here," kind of a thing.

Yeah. So it's pretty complicated structure and engineering all that stuff together, right? There was a lot. I th- I would say there's a lot of actually what the be- the side benefit of this thing and not trying to rush it in two days- Hmm ... um, but actually taking a little bit more time, was that it actually highlighted some things that were like, in the way we do things, that was like, "Oh, yeah, that's different than that one."

Like, l- or, "That one's different than that." It, like, it allowed us to kind of standardize some of the things to make it easier for us, but also make it easier for the a- the application that we're building- Mm-hmm ... work smoother, too. Mm-hmm. So I spent a lot of time in the first two days. I don't know if I, I don't know how much I actually- opened up AI or, um, used Cloud Code at all in the first two days.

So much of it was, "Here's what we need to build. Here's w- how it should work," and, like- Mm ... writing out- Mm-hmm ... writing out documents that say, "Hey," giving all of the requirements for this thing, and working out a lot of those details on the front end. I've done enough with other, you know, AI-coded things to know that, that if you just give it a, a two-line prompt, like a lot of those, like, things like Lovable or Replit or something like that- Oh, yeah

that you have these very simplified, like, "Hey, give us a prompt, and we'll build you something." Maybe I'm just super picky or something like that, but every time I've tried one of those things, it was like, "Ugh, gross. That's not even- Yeah ... close," right? You have to get it ... I needed to go through and describe all the different things and all the different pieces and all the, and everything.

And that just takes time, and it takes a lot of thinking, too, to get the right- Yeah, 'cause there's so much- ... the right result ... that you kinda take for granted. Like, "Oh, yeah. It'll just do that, too." Yeah. And it's like, no, you need to tell it that little detail as well. And that's where it was interesting to have those conversations with you at the very beginning 'cause you're right.

It was, like, just capturing process. Now, we, we had a process that we'd been using for years- Yep ... which was super helpful to have that. But you don't realize, and we always laugh 'cause you're always like, "Well, I usually do all the invoicing- Yep ... for Page Design, and I've been doing it for 20 years, so I have a lot of experience doing it, and it's kind of one of my things.

And there's a lot of idiosyncrasies built into that. Sometimes on a client-to-client basis- Mm-hmm ... that is really hard for people to understand. So years ago, I thought it was funny. You said, "Eric, just make an SOP for invoicing so you can hand those off to people." And I'm like, "Yeah. Exactly. That's what I wanna do."

So I did. Yeah. And I wrote out, and it ended up, and we always make fun of it now. It's my 37 easy steps to invoicing at Page Design because there's just so many different angles, and this client needs this. And if we don't do that, the contract doesn't allow us to... You know, like there's just- Yeah ... a lot of crazy little details that we try to standardize as much as we possibly can.

And I know you're always fighting for that, and I'm, I'm with you in the journey. Yep. Believe me. I'm doing my best. And I know that this process has been good because I know, realize, too, where there's areas where I'm really trying to think of it in terms of on the invoicing side, this is gonna be something that I wanna be able to hand off to somebody.

Yeah. 'Cause the 37 easy steps to invoicing needs to go away. I mean, that is just- Yeah. Do you have- ... it's all there ... like a 30-minute Loom video to accompany that? It's just that easy. And then you're done. Step two, make profit. That's just one client. Now let's move on to the next one. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that was insightful.

But- I appreciated going through that SOP process years ago. Yep. 'Cause at that time I'm like, "No, we're doing it this way." And I think over, when I did finally get to the end of it and showed you, and you were just like, "Really? 37, okay. Perfect." It made me like, "Yeah, this is ridiculous." Yeah. Like, we gotta figure this out.

So I think in this journey I've been really trying to follow much more of your lead in being, you know, allowing for there's gonna be change. Mm-hmm. We need to make this better. We need to make this refined, and pushing our clients too on understanding, like, the invoice is gonna look a little different.

It's gonna be just this more simplified version of it and, and they've been- Yeah ... so far, uh, have seen pretty good- Yeah ... response from everybody. Yeah. But yeah, it's a journey on both sides. I, I just keep coming back to the, this like promise of AI and how you can just use AI to- Yeah ... build everything, and the one thing that keeps coming top of mind with this is that I think there's a lot of people where they see something where they want to

They see, or maybe they have software they already use- Mm-hmm ... and they're like, "I think we could build something in AI or replace that." And I, I just wanna throw like, like some reality and caution to, to all that stuff because it's like it, there's... Yes, you can. Yeah. It is, y- you totally can, but like what, the, there's a lot of opportunity cost in that.

There, like and, um, I think the other interesting thing is that unless you're doing this type of thing all the time- Right ... for your thing, there's a lot of like gearing up, getting ready, like lear- there's learning curve stuff that you might get into. Like, if you haven't been a software engineer in your life-

like, or done things in software engineering, like it's, it's kinda crazy. Like, what do I do about a database? Like, wait, what's this versioning stuff that I need to do? Oh, yeah. What does it mean to like- Yeah ... um, you know, like push and pull code? Like, what, what... Like, there's a whole bunch of like things that if you're building a software product, it's- If, there's a learning curve there if you've never done it before.

You totally can do it- Yeah ... but just be aware of the learning curve. I think I wa- I, as you're talking through this, one of the things I keep thinking about is agents versus custom code app, and there's a line there where agents, you can build agents to do complicated tasks. Mm-hmm. But I would say for now, and probably for the level of the general viewer/listener to this podcast, agents maybe can handle, let's think of it in terms of maybe three to four tasks in a line.

Does that... I, I'm trying to come up with kind of a quantitative number where you're like, "Nope, now we need to build a, a custom app for this." Is there, is there a frontier- Oh ... moment there, or is there, like, a line in the sand? Like, here's where super agents kind of don't make a lot of sense, and here's where a custom app does, and that's where you need to kind of get into that realm.

I, um, I should probably throw my bias out there. I don't, I don't wanna trust an a- an agent to go work autonomously- Okay ... on things. Like, so I, I know there probably is. There's a reason why I haven't really gone that way. One- Right ... um, there's un- unchecked, um- Mm ... just token usage, right? I feel like you could, like, end up, if you don't have caps in place through your thing- That's true.

That's true ... it, it could just burn through a lot of tokens, and you don't have a lot of visibility into what's going on. Yeah. Um, the other thing that I thought was really important with this is that, yes, I'm u- I used Claude Code to build everything, and, um, is that I wanted software that could run without needing those tokens to be burned every time something's being run, right?

Yeah, yeah. So, so using the, using the AI to code something that is actually code that's ... And can run- Yeah ... regardless of all this stuff. Yeah. So, um, so it can work it- so it's not using any of its advanced intelligence to pull stuff from, um, one service and put it into a database somewhere else. That's stuff that should be wrote and can be scheduled once it's coded properly, and it can run far cheaper than any other AI token credit.

And basically kind of infinitely in a sense- Yeah ... right? 'Cause it's gonna be a hard-coded HTML JavaScript- Yep ... website that doesn't need tons of updating, and it doesn't need tons of- Yeah ... extra maintenance on the outside of it. My frame of mind here is that this is, because we went into this the way we went into this, um, I wanted us to have our own software product that we use internally.

Yeah. We're not gonna use this anywhere else, right? But this, I don't wanna go, I don't wanna have to do this again for a long- Yeah, exactly ... long, long time, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, what- I don't, yes, I use Claude Code, but, like, two years from now, like, is Am- Anthropic gonna be around? Yeah, probably. But, uh, you know, like, I didn't wanna feel like I was beholden to a specific- That's true

vendor. That's a good, yeah. And so by u- utilizing the coder, the code to write code- Yeah ... it's, um, th- in theory, if all the AI bots went away, like, if there was something where all the AI companies went away, we would still have a functional product. And if we needed to hire a software engineer to go in there, it would s- they would be able to make the changes.

It's all documented by the robots who wrote it- Yeah ... and everything like that. So that was my approach to doing this. I d- I didn't want to have, I didn't wanna be, feel beholden to agents to do everything all the time. I'm glad you clarified that because I think that that's something that's very tempting for people to just start to pull, employ agents.

And we've heard all the horror stories of- Mm-hmm ... bigger companies where they're like, "Yeah, just use tokens, no problem." And then half a million dollars every- Yeah ... month later, they're like, "Don't do that anymore." So then the, you know, then you're kind of beholden to a platform or a system that- Yep ... costs more and is a pain in the butt.

And you've had enough experience to know if we can just build out a simple platform, have it work We know th- that's one of the advantages to being on that platform for 12 and a half years, is that we know the limitations of it. We know what our wish list was for improvements. Yep. They weren't major. We could incorporate some of those things in there, and we know that this is a system that will probably work now for a longer term.

Yep. And really, other than hosting costs and database costs, cheaper. So yeah, so we've got, uh, we- our cost before was $110 per month. Yeah. And now w- with, um, the database platform that we're using, Supabase is the name of it- Yeah ... but, um, with Supabase and, um, Netlify for the front end thing, I mean, we're, we're paying less than 60 a month, um- Yeah

for this, for the same thing. Oh, almost half price. But it's ... Yeah, but it's more custom-built for our needs and, um, got, allowed us to get around some of the things like you said before, the wish list things that we never really had before. Streamline things around, so. Yeah. Yeah. And it's nice now because there's a rich, you know, integrations, APIs.

There's a rich world of those that live out there that you can utilize to have certain things that are much more complex. Like, we use ClickUp as our project management. Now we're using that for time tracking. We're using it for a lot more things. Mm-hmm. And then that feeds into this- Yeah ... app that you've built that lives on a website.

To me, it looks like a website. Mm-hmm. But it integrates with both that and QuickBooks, and then now we can do everything that we need to with QuickBooks, and we can do all of the project management stuff in ClickUp, and then this kind of bolts everything together. Yeah. And that's a pretty good model, I think, for people to understand how to build something more complex than just a pile of agents going out and doing things willy-nilly.

Yeah. The other key thing that we needed to do is we had to build this new home for things, but we also had a legacy of 12 and a half years worth of data- Yeah ... and everything that we didn't wanna lose when we turned off that service. Right. And so building, being able to use the, the information of 12 and a half years worth of data was very helpful in shaping the new thing be- so, um, but being able to then kind of build this thing as the glue between two very different systems.

Like the way you said, ClickUp and QuickBooks are completely different things. Wildly different. And so, and so building a middleman is what I was referring to it originally. Yeah. And I mean, we still went into it, and, uh, our, the ideas were gonna be that it was much s- kind of smaller in scale than what it is now, right?

Right. Like, I think, I think what was the init- orig- original idea was like, oh, we just need something that's gonna collect everything from over in ClickUp and then put it into QuickBooks. Right. But when you unpack everything in ClickUp, and then you start realizing that- The structure in there isn't what you need in, um, QuickBooks, and QuickBooks alone can't provide that, that there needed to be more bending and shaping.

And I think once that bending and shaping happened, then it was like it- I felt that I was continuously like, "Oh, it would make sense to add this to that because that's there and this is..." Mm. Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. So I think it's all those things that went from a two-day project to a, you know A month.

But, I mean, it wasn't month steady either- Yeah ... you know? Like- I mean, there were interruptions obviously Yeah. You've got a life to live and, um- Yeah ... kids to raise- Yeah ... things like that. As far as, like, the versions, this is probably what, version five now that you've iterated on, in a sense? Does that sound about right, or four maybe?

If I was gonna number all this stuff, I w- I don't even think we're at version one yet. Oh, nice. Okay. Because I just, I don't think we've fully realized all the little bugs and all the stuff, the things that are- Yeah ... but I do have ideas. Now, it's kind of opened my eyes to other things that we could kind of, that would make sense to add into the, to there that are, that are on a wish list for future versions.

Well, that's what's fun about doing it, is that it, as you get into it, it is liberating, and I've designed little things myself, uh, using Claude Code that it's kind of like it, it... And I think this speaks a little bit to AI in general, as being an AI optimist, uh, myself, self-proclaimed. It- the struggle now for AI for me is my limited imagination in a sense.

Interesting. I find myself really trying to push myself to feel out friction points and immediately start to think of how AI can fix those things. Mm-hmm. Because it, it, it's much more capable now, and I believe that there's, my ability and confidence in using it and understanding safety nets and no-go zones and how to limit the damage if something doesn't work right- Mm-hmm

uh, is much more realistic, and I think that those are things that people need to understand if you're gonna start building things with it, is to build a sandbox, right? I, I mean, and that, and you did that. Yeah. You built a sandbox that... The, the dangerous part about not having a sandbox is integrating with our bookkeeping system and our project management system.

And if there was no sandbox, and you just started willy-nilly making stuff go live and all this stuff- Yeah ... it would really start to screw things up and maybe create some permanent damage around some of those elements, which... So that's an important thing to remember, is when you're building out and starting, is establish a sandbox.

Yeah. So- Or, or grab something that you know will, that could kind of exist on its own, and if it went away, it wouldn't be- Catastrophic ... catastrophic. Yeah. Right. So yeah, I think that's... I knew enough to- Yeah ... from, uh, you know, previous, you know, website projects I've done over the years that, that, th- that some of the I felt like I, I knew enough to be not completely dangerous, but you know what I mean, like- Yeah, yeah

um. You knew the boundaries. Yeah. You knew where you could play and not- Yeah. And I ... And to, to, um, Claude Code's credit, um, I'm assuming, um, OpenAI's Codex thing is the same, um, they're really good about warning you about when you might be doing things that would be less secure for your information. Mm. So, like, there's a couple instances where, um, you need to have these tokens and

or, um, keys to connect to these different software products. Right. Right? Um, if you put them in the wrong place in the code, it'll say, "Yeah, I'm not gonna put that." Um- Mm ... not, not, not in the wrong place. You put it in a place that's kind of standard for working on your computer, but, "Oh, I need to ignore that," or, "I'm not gonna push that to your code- Yeah

because that'll be, um, readable by other stuff." And so it does a good job there. And then even, like Netlify, which we use for the hosting, it had warnings. It wouldn't build things because it found, found the presence of some keys that might get out into the public. So- Interesting. Okay. So- That's good ... so the software, um, builders are putting more safety guardrails for the new stuff that you put out there.

It's been a delight. I totally appreciate all the hard work you've put into this. It's really gonna be transformational when it's perfect. And it's funny because at this point you're making very specific almost design-level changes to it. Mm-hmm. Um, functionally everything seems to be working really great, and it is pretty amazing to see.

And it's awesome because after, like, 12 years, I'm like, "Wow, this is, like, custom-built- Yeah ... platform." Like, it's got all the stuff that we wanted, and it's ... it works the way ... It's simple enough. It's intuitive enough. It does the things that we had wished for for so many years- Totally ... with, like, 15 more clicks to get to that.

And so, you know, the vision of it is, I would say, 90, 95% of the way there. Yeah. It's really great- Yeah ... to, to have that. So thank you for pushing through all the pain on that. It's birthing a new child basically. I mean, but it's fun. I ... Honestly, it is, it is fun. Yeah. And, like, I ... I'm, I'm glad we did it. And it's great to give a middle finger to, you know, a software company that was abusive.

We're not s- even saying the name of it, and I'm, I'm wondering if we should. I don't know. I'll just say the private equity firm that bought them up has the record of doing this- Mm ... to a lot of, um, somewhat beloved, um, software products that you don't really hear much about anymore. Yeah. I don't- I wonder why

understand their business model. I really don't. But, um- They're like Pac-Man. They just- Yep ... eat up all these little ... and then nothing. Yeah. Basically leave nothing there. But I ... If I see that company has bought another software product that we use, I'm build- I'm building the, a replacement right away. Yeah.

I'm not, I'm not waiting for them to- You know. Yeah Bring the check and have it, have it come to you, not go and do that K- be- abuse us loyal customers- Yeah, yeah ... like they have done in the past So from my perspective, I feel like we're way better off now. Yes, there's some minor tweaks and things- Mm-hmm

that you're still gonna keep working on, but the great thing is that we can keep working on this and iterate on this and just keep making it better- Definitely ... over time. So in my sense, I feel like we're better off. I don't know about your take on this thing. I do thi- I think we are better off. I, I put a little, some asterisks- Mm

next to that because I think that there's some, maybe some law of unintended consequences that kind of- Mm ... comes in later. But I think for the purposes of, like, sharing this with everybody is, like, knowing these ahead of time might help them make the decision whether this would be worth it- Yeah

long-term or not, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I had the luxury of some time to be able to do this. Okay. Right? Like, there was nothing more important than replacing this on my list. It was- There were a lot of things I needed to work on, but this was definitely, like, I had the space to do this. Let's... Can I just estimate, uh, 30 hours, maybe 40 hours or more?

Probably about- Okay ... about in there, yeah. Like, just because of the way my, you know, schedule throughout the week is, I, I would probably get, yeah, three hours here, four hours here. There's a few days where I was able to dedicate, like, a whole day, um, to, to it. But yeah, that sounds about right, 30 to 40 hours.

Okay. That's great. Now, um, are we better off in the future because of that? I think there is still that dependency. Mm. Yes, I've done everything I can to, you know, commit code and have it, have everything be documented so if I, you know, won the lottery, was no longer here, that somebody could point AI to something and understand what's going on.

But- Right ... like, if there, if something goes wrong or, uh... It's not gonna be a pickup and easily updated, right? Right. Right. And it, and we, we bear the, we bear the weight of that, whereas, like before, if you go- if you're paying for a software product, there's a team of people who are worrying- True ... about that for you, right?

True. Yeah. Um, and same with, like, patching things for security and stuff like that. There's, there's probably gonna be, because of the rise of, um, AI's capabilities on, you know, being able to hack into people's things- Security in general, yeah ... there's just gonna be a flood of security updates that are gonna be coming to every software product that you own everywhere, right?

Yeah. So now that w- this is a piece of critical software for us, we need to be, uh, on top of that and be able to just make sure that there's nothing going on that's wrong. Right. So that's another thing where it's like it's great. It serves a lot of our purposes. We're saving money on software costs that we, that we had before.

So we're definitely better off in all of those things, but I am aware of, like, what it means to actually own something, and it can't just sit out there and- Yeah ... undisturbed for perpetuity. But again, you've limited the risk, the exposure to other platforms as much as possibly you could. Yep. Uh, which, you know, as opposed to, like, let's go back to an episode about WordPress.

Yep. You know, we're not building it on WordPress so that all those changes that come through. Most of the things that you've built it on and utilize service-wise are not gonna change dramatically, I don't think. Yeah. And we don't, we're not a, you know, gigantic enterprise users that have- Yeah ... thousands of users and all that stuff.

So we're not testing it, you know, on the, the, the limits that- Mm-hmm ... maybe something like, you know, Oracle is gonna provide better solutions for, obviously. Yep. All right. So if anybody out there listening, watching is curious how to do this, Mike, give us the 37 easy steps to building your own app. Ugh. If it was only 37, that would be amazing.

Um, I think that if you are looking at some software, and you're like, "Oh, I'm paying a lot for that a month, and maybe I can code my own to replace that." Mm. Or you've got some problem that you think you could point something to AI and build it, I think those are two very... If you've just made those decisions, or you're thinking about those decisions, here's what comes after that, right?

Like- Okay. Yeah ... like, you've gotta figure out, like, know that, okay, is what I'm replacing is, is the process behind there, is the way we work with it, is that really clearly defined? Is that- Good ... if it's not, you're gonna, you're gonna need it eventually, and that'll come through tons of iterations with the AI, or, or you do it on the front end and describe as much as possible, and then you get ba- a quicker result with the AI.

But that time still needs to be- Yeah ... needs to be put in there. That's a lot. And people, there's a lot of hidden gems in there- Yeah ... let's just say. Yeah. Yeah. Know that you're gonna have to put on a software engineer hat, like- Mm ... like in one way or another. It- how comfortable are you with that? Like, how comfortable are you with a lot of the software engineer terms and tools and everything like that?

The AI can obscure a lot of that away. Um, I'd love to pull that software engineer part of my brain out and see how this, if I did this process again, what would happen. Yeah. Um, but I think you still, there's a lot of like concepts and everything that you d- you're either gonna have to become familiar with or, um, im- explicitly trust-

the AI to handle all of those details. Yeah. Um, so it's not, it... Keep in mind, this is a software product that you're building. It's not- Yeah ... it's not just a, you know, little widget thing, in a lot of cases. Right, and if it is a widget thing, then that's maybe where an a- agent is gonna make more sense, or- Yeah

some sort of other AI automation- Totally ... thing. Okay. Totally. Know that if you commit to this and you move everything over, that this is your baby. Like, you've- Mm ... you've birthed a baby, and you- Aw ... have to feed it, you have to clothe it, you have to change its diapers. Um, and so, um, maybe you have a very easy baby that sleeps all the way through the night, and, you know, there, y- you've enjoy spending time with it all the time.

Yeah. That's the best case scenario with all of this stuff- Sure ... you know? But know that it is still a baby. It's still a, it, it's still in your house. You still need to take care of it. Right. It's gotta, gotta pay for all the diapers and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, those are the, those would be big, um, kind of the big tent poles of what I would say if you're considering building software for yourself.

Yeah. Well, the w- the world is kind of your oyster, and, and, and that's the thing that's... We can't get too specific, because there's s- infinite amount of problems that- Yeah ... you could help and build with all this stuff. So I like how you've just described kind of some just tent pole- points in the process that people really maybe take for granted- Yeah

and maybe wouldn't do. Uh, but yeah, I think that front end part, those two days you said you spent just outlining the process, the needs list, you know, here's exactly what we want, is probably a good indicator of how much time you need to dedicate to something that you might think you- Yeah ... kind of take for granted, you know?

Yeah. It's funny. And I think maybe before you even, maybe in the very, very beginning- Hm ... like look at it and go, "Do I have the time to dedicate- Hm ... to this?" Mm-hmm. Like, uh, and the math, this goes, all goes into the math. Like, there's the, the math of, um, what the services cost to replace- Yeah ... the thing you're paying, you're trying to replace, right?

Like for us, the math was made very, very simple, right? Yeah. Like, but like if you've got a service that's like $12 a month that works by and large the way you want, if you're looking to replace that, well, I mean, you're... I'll just tell you, like if you're gonna be running something that's a database that has to be somewhere out there in the world- Mm-hmm

and you have other people on your team collaborating with it, you're probably not gonna find a good software equivalent for that $12 a month. Yeah. You're probably gonna be paying more. It just is so, so there's, the, the cost is easy for us. 110 versus like 60, okay, that's easy. But then there's the opportunity cost too.

Do we have, do you have the time to go through all of these things? Right. And is this the best use of your time? Like maybe there's more high leverage things you could be working on, and know that b- going into it because, um, it's, it's not like the AI, I don't think it's like the AI companies sell it, um, as build the thing in your dreams in a, in a weekend- Yeah

or in a... I think you can do a lot of cool things in a weekend. There's a lot of back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's take that. All right. Well, thanks Mike. Thanks for building it. Yeah. Uh, uh, page design will just run so much more smoother with this now in place. Let's hope- Let's hope ... and pray for us, right?

Yep. We are better off. Yes, we are. All right. Thanks man. Thanks sir. Appreciate it.

Thanks for tuning in. For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the Marketing Team of One podcast on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify podcast networks. You can also chat with us on the r/marketingteamofone subreddit or visit marketingteamofone.com to learn more.