The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - You Don’t Need to Be a Genius! Just Do This. w/ Sam | Ep. #160
Episode Date: April 23, 2025I’m back with Sam Thompson for part two of our two-part conversation (if you missed the first one, go check out Ep. #157). In this episode, Sam walks me through the custom task management app he bui...lt for himself using Lovable, and how it completely changed how he handles his time. We go deep on what makes good productivity tools and how to think like a “vibe coder”.We also talk about how he sold his AI cooking app, how he's helping someone scale it, and why more businesses should start fast, test faster, and sell what people are already asking for. Toward the end, we riff on why people always pay for shortcuts, from dunk training posters to rucking programs (PDF), and how momentum is the most underrated asset for entrepreneurs.You can find Sam on Twitter at @ImSamThompson and check out what he's building at unlimitedcontent.com.Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 The Power of Momentum in Entrepreneurship02:58 Selling Ideas and Business Models05:51 The Reality of Make Money Online Offers08:48 Understanding Customer Needs and Offers12:14 Creating Value Through Digital Products15:12 The Role of AI in Business and Marketing17:56 Building Custom Solutions for Productivity20:46 Navigating the Future of AI Influencers24:05 The Importance of Task Management and Productivity
Transcript
Discussion (0)
It literally took me two hours.
I was just sitting in my backyard, like, messing around.
I sold it.
What?
Yeah, yeah, dude.
You don't have to be a genius.
No.
You just have to know where to look.
I didn't, like, wake up three weeks ago saying,
dude, you know what would be an interesting offer?
That guy just told me that that's what he wanted.
Cool.
I can do that.
You go tell any person in the world this business idea.
That's stupid.
No one's going to pay $200 for a PDF on how to walk around with weights.
You know what?
Actually, a lot of people will.
And they are.
Momentum is probably the most underrated asset front.
entrepreneur. If you feel it, just chase momentum. How has your AI cooking app been going?
Dude. Dude. I sold it. What? What are you doing? Dude. We had to find out that you were going to get a
million users on day one. So I know, I know, I know, I know. I know. I just couldn't give it the time
to really commit to it. And so there was a guy in my Grow Faster community, link in my Twitter bio.
and that we were talking about this app on the call.
And he's running a different consumer app.
And I was like, look, I know how to grow this.
I just, like, if I'm going to go spend time on something, it's got to be something else.
And because it was just sitting there for like the last three weeks.
I just hadn't moved the needle on it.
And so I was like, look, I paid a thousand bucks for it.
I'll sell it to you for a thousand bucks.
And I keep 20% of revenue off the top.
and I'll teach you how to run the ads and scale it because he wants to go do it for his app.
And so I was like, your ad spend, my strategy, then you can steal this exact playbook to run it for
your app, which is like more for, it's like day trader journaling type app.
And so I was like, look, this is a win-win.
You deal with all of the headache of getting it live in the app store and all of that stuff.
I just want to help run the ads.
And so I took a positive free roll on it.
They're getting it live right now.
they've been active.
Dude, the whole,
the entire business is being coordinated and ran through the Twitter DMs.
And it's one of my favorite things ever.
It's just all,
like,
I think he sent one email.
It's so it's not going to be an AI cooking app anymore?
No,
it is.
He's chis.
He's going to run it exactly how,
how I had it.
Okay.
But he's also doing the day training.
Yeah.
Okay.
And so he was like,
all right,
well,
I might as well just like,
and that apps,
he's doing it more legit.
Because we use Flutterflow,
the no code iOS builder.
He's doing a more legit one.
So it's not going to be ready for two months.
And so I was like, well, you might as well get reps on something here.
And so I'll still have updates as they get it live.
But I was like, dude, it's just going to sit there.
Like I literally, I have other ads to run.
Okay.
That's amazing.
And I'm excited to hear how it goes.
I want you to tell me if you think this is a viable app idea.
We've talked about variations of this, but it's evolved.
A mobile app that is basically like an AI business partner.
Yep.
You upload your LinkedIn.
let's say it's $10 a month, your LinkedIn.
And then it puts you through like a personality assistant.
You're an introvert, an extrovert.
Do you like, you have sales experience?
You have writing experience.
It figures out who you are.
And then it's like, okay, here's five businesses that you should start based on everything
you've told me.
Choose your own adventure.
You pick one.
Cool.
Now it becomes like an accountability partner and it's in a calendar, a scheduling partner.
That's cool.
Where you wake up on day one and it's like, turn your notifications on because I'm going to tell
you to get to work.
On day one, it's like, all right, you need to buy you.
a URL. It needs to be three syllables or less. Only a dot com. Or if it's like an app, maybe it's like
dot a.ai.com works. It's customized based on your idea. And then it's like, you can make it
simple, make it like 10 bucks a month. Or you could make it like an accountability app where like you
have to pay extra money if you don't do the tasks. Like it has your card on file and there's like
you have skin in the game. And it's like your zero equity, $10 a month, business partner,
accountability partner, coach, therapist, everything. What do you think?
I love the theory behind it.
If it's monthly, your turn is going to be insane.
I think it's one of those.
I've been thinking about all sorts of businesses like these,
but what I've realized is like that sort of business is like,
it's a make money online offer in a different wrapper.
And so what we always have to kind of acknowledge with make money online offers is that
there's like only going to be a small percentage of people that are actually going to do anything.
They'll get flamed out on day three.
Three.
Right.
And that's why you talk like it's funny because everyone talks about like these scammie course guys and all this stuff.
And it's like before I got really into this game, I agreed.
I thought they were scummy.
And there definitely were some that that do, right?
Like that's real.
But what I started to recognize was there's a lot of people that signed up for these courses thinking it was a magic pill.
And then they actually get into it and they realize that it's harder than they thought and they don't know what's good.
And all of a sudden they don't want to take their own accountability for it.
So that guy that sold me that thing lied.
And it's like, no, like, no, he didn't.
You just only got through 6% of the program.
And those guys are incentivized to charge a lot of money up front because they know that.
And so, like, if they're going to make their money, it's making money on the people being super excited about that opportunity.
Catch him in the moment.
Right?
You catch him in the moment.
Oh, dude, I've always wanted to run an ecom brand.
Right?
Like, oh, I can make a bunch of money doing this.
Like they're in that state so they make the big purchase.
Then they get into the part that's less fun, which is the actual work.
And then all of a sudden, that dude lied and whatever.
I feel like there's, there's, that app follows a similar undertone where like,
I bet you your acquisition channels would be explosive, right?
Everyone that's interested in business wants an AI powered co-founder.
Of course, for 10 bucks a month.
But like, what percentage of those people are actually going to use it?
to a degree where it's like valuable to them long term yeah and then your financial mechanism is
like if it's monthly it's like oh dude this guy this AI co-founder didn't make me a million dollars
like on his own like i had to be involved dude i had to do work like churn it's got to be like a
lifetime purchase 100% yeah which then goes into like the same model like 500 dollar lifetime purchase
and then they get into it, the work is real, they don't want to do it.
And all of a sudden the app, the AI co-founder is BS, dude, that thing didn't even help me.
And it's like, dude, you were going to be an HR rep at IBM for your whole life anyways, bro.
You know, like, what are we doing?
I think one important variable is the quality of the content.
I've had two master classes.
We did one for the TreeBiz boot camp, which is like $300.
Yeah.
And then one for the RV park stuff, which is like $6,000.
And the RV one is still a work in progress, but a minority of people ever do the thing.
Start the tree business or buy an RV park, right?
But zero people have asked me for a refund ever.
For sure.
Right.
And they're thrilled.
Like amazing testimonials.
No one's complained.
And I've had a couple people that bought the boot camp, the tree biz boot camp, come by the RV one too.
Because they're like, oh, it's Chris is going to be good.
Right.
So I think a lot of the scam aspect also comes into like.
You pay the five grand or 500.
And you're like, dude, this guy's a joke.
This guy's a joke.
And then the other half of it is like, I didn't do the thing.
I have buyers remorse.
You know what I'm saying?
I did similar at different price points when I did launch OS in like early 2023.
Had that one tweet go crazy, had a hundred people buy it for 300 bucks.
Three people actually like turned in to like launched a business through it.
a few refund requests mostly from overseas which is what it is but everyone else like dude
this was awesome like this is sweet like guys that still want to get on calls and and do all of that
and the other piece that I realized is those three people would have been successful
whether or not they bought launch a lot they were going to do it no matter you caught them at the
right time yeah and it's like they were going to do it anyways and so I think like again going back to
your idea. It's like, yeah, you're just serving an interesting market because the people that
are going to do it anyways are probably already using chat GPT in that way. It's just like better
branded and like made for that specific use case. And then you're going to have a bunch of people
that think that some AI co-founder is the magic pill that will solve them having to do real work.
And it's like, no, sorry, dude. It's not how it goes. It's an interesting. I feel that way even like
with the community now, like with people signing up, which like I've only ever done it as one time
offers versus recurring. And so I'm very interested to watch churn in the community.
Yeah. Like the people that that buy in, dude, they're going to be there. They're hanging out.
Yeah. Like that's awesome. But I feel like a lot of people are going to get in there and realize,
dude, it's funny. It's like people on Twitter, it's like I put a tweet out three years ago.
And like two weeks ago, somebody hit me up was like, dude, I've been working on this idea that you tweeted about
three years ago.
And I was like, dude, I don't even remember that tweet.
Like, there's so much.
And it's like, they've been working on it for so long.
And it's like, oh, dang, dude.
Like, we just got to move faster.
And it's not that they just found it and it's three years old.
They've been working on it for three years.
Right.
And it's like, dude, like, you got a, it's the whole, it's the whole thesis for
that community is like literally called grow faster for a reason.
It's like, guys, we got like, we got to go faster.
Like, we're not going to sit here and build a product for 12, like 12 weeks, 12 months.
12 months. It's like, no, no, get it out in 12 hours, test the market and like let's make
movement. Like, that's the most underrated, like momentum is probably the most underrated
asset for entrepreneurs. If you feel it, that's like, you get that dopamine, like you just
get into the rhythm of it and it's like, dude, just chase momentum. Everyone's out here trying to
run uphill. It's crazy. People don't understand that sitting in front of Netflix is addicting and
momentum is addicting.
Right?
So like pick your addiction.
Straight up.
I just like addictions that make me money, you know?
Yes, preferably.
It's funny because I spoke to a homeschool class this morning just as a favor about
entrepreneurship.
And they asked me like, one of their questions was like, all right, throw away all your advice.
We just want your one main piece of advice.
Yeah.
And it was like, go get a sale.
That's it.
Straight up.
Nothing else matters.
Like you can't have a business without selling.
a product or service and you you have to do that first for sure like i tweeted it a while ago but
it's like leads are lifeblood like you have all these people it happened on one of the calls we do
daily calls and so one of the calls came in and this guy was trying to build some he's also he's an awesome
guy but he's trying to build like a like a google maps like improvement optimization agency which
you and i know well right and he's like so what's my offer right like should i do a hour
consultation, should I do like a software, should I do whatever? And I was like, bro, I don't know the
answer. You just should get on the phone with like somebody that wants to like, whatever your offer is,
improve your Google Map rankings. Get on the phone with them and see what they will pay for.
They'll tell you what they'll pay for. Like, you don't have to sit here and like be some genius.
Like I tell the story with unlimited content. Basically all of our Facebook ads are getting people on the phone
that want better results from SEO.
And this guy pops on and our normal offer is content, right?
30 articles, 30 days.
But he has 3,000 blogs on his website.
He doesn't need content.
What he does need is backlinks.
And so like on the fly, I was like, well, we'll do backlinks only for you.
500 bucks a month.
We'll manage all that.
You set your budget.
We'll do all the outreach.
We'll do all this stuff.
500 bucks a month.
Let's go.
And he goes, yeah, I'm in.
And it's like, dude, I didn't like wake up three weeks ago saying, dude, you know what would be an interesting offer is Backlinks own?
That guy just told me that that's what he wanted.
Yeah.
So like, cool.
Like I can do that.
Sweet.
And so it's like, and now we sell it.
And it's because the market is literally asking for it.
And I think like that's the piece people need to focus on it.
It's like have more conversations with people that have problems.
They'll tell you what they'll pay for.
Dude, I just had lunch with a friend who he starts trade schools.
And part of what he does is the secret sauce of recruiting people into the trade schools.
Let's say you want to be licensed in HVAC.
And he'll go into a trade school that's already operating and they're crushing it.
And their sales calls are two to three minutes long.
And they're like, here's what it costs.
Here's how long it lasts.
Yeah, you're nay.
And he goes in there and he's, he implements his secret sauce.
And I'm like, well, what is that?
And he's like, it's a 90 minute sales call.
I'm like, what's so special about it?
He's like, I only ask them questions.
And I learn exactly what they want and exactly what they need.
And then I build the pitch around everything that just told me.
And they're 80% more likely to buy.
Another thing I like to do, if you want to know what an offer is, let's say you have a Google
Business Profile Optimization Agency.
Go find five to 10 people in that niche that's doing exactly what you're doing or
want to be doing and charging what you want to be charging.
Then you go to the web archive, type in all their URLs, and see how long they've been in
business.
Okay. Then you want to look at how their website has iterated over the years and see what they're at today and see where they started. And really, that's kind of superfluous because you just need to see where they're at today. And assuming that you see on the homepage that they're iterating, maybe they put testimonials, maybe they were, you know, a percentage of ad spend. It wouldn't be the case in this, but let's say it was, you know, a pay-per-click agency. Whatever it is, you're going to see that they iterated their way to their final offer. And their final offer is their most offer.
Optimize, most likely to close.
You just copy that.
That's it.
Just copy it.
Straight up.
Yeah, literally just copy and play face.
Dude, that's literally the whole game.
Like, everyone else is out here doing the market research for you.
It's similar.
It's similar with, like, the Facebook ads library.
Like, you don't need to, like, be able to just come up with the best ad creative
ever.
Like, I just always go to, like, oh, wait, these are our biggest competitors.
What are they running?
Can I just swap out what they're doing?
right it's like you just cut your learning curve in half you know it's like yeah all all like you don't
have to be a genius you just have to know where to look speaking of the facebook ad library i
okay so you know what rucking is yeah like just putting on heavy weights for those listening
and walking around i talked about this a week or two ago on the podcast so i won't go too into it but
i've been rucking lately ruck this morning last saturday i love it it's amazing big ruck guy
Big ruck guy.
And it's great because I can chill in zone too.
I can burn fat.
I'm building muscle.
And I can record shorts while I do it.
Hell yeah.
Because I'm not in a breath, right?
I took 37 shorts on a two hour walk on Saturday.
Insane.
Anyway,
rucking,
like,
I didn't know it was blowing up because I was running ultra marathons five years ago
where they had a rucking category.
But it was like so niche.
It's still niche.
Like I talked to three guys at church this stuff Sunday.
My age,
knew what it was. So still super
early, right? Yep.
Anyway, backing up a couple weeks ago,
you and I talked about
having a digital course, using AI
to create a digital course, creating
Facebook ads to launch at that digital
course, iterating a bunch of different offers
and price points,
yada, yada, yada. So here's a perfect
example of that. I want you to go
to pathfinderrack
training.com.
Pathfinder
rock training.
So when I ran my first marathon, I googled Marathon Training Program.
And there's this guy named Hal Higden that has a bunch of marathon training programs.
I found one for beginners.
It was free.
It was just a blog article.
They didn't even need my email.
And I followed that to a T and I ran my first marathon.
This company, they're getting tens of thousands of hits a month.
And look at what they're selling.
They're selling training programs.
And I bet you they're AI generated.
And they cost $150 to $250.
I'm like how to ruck, like how to put on weights and walk around.
How to put on a weight and walk, dude.
I'm over here like Google Ruck vest on Amazon, buy it, put it on and start walking.
Like, you know, you go tell any person in the world this business idea.
Like, that's stupid.
No one's going to pay $200 for a PDF on how to walk around with weights.
You know what?
Actually, a lot of people will.
And they are.
Bro, that was the feedback I got on in the DMs after our thing.
They were like, no one's going to do that.
I was like, dude, I promise you.
I promise you they are.
Like there was that, I forget his name, but there was a dude that did like half a million dollars in sales on a mini course on how to do a handstand.
Yeah.
And it's like people just want their handheld to do that.
I did it when I was in high school.
So video is cool, but you know what's better?
Longform audio via podcast and my newsletter.
TKOPod.com.
Go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter.
It's one email a week, very tactical.
And then go to my audio podcast, three episodes a week, stuff like this.
You're going to love it.
All free.
No sleazy sales bitch.
TKO pod.com.
I was playing basketball and I wanted to be able to dunk.
And so I would Google in how to do it.
And there was a program called Dunk Now.
And then back then they shipped you like a poster.
Oh, wow.
That had these like daily workouts.
And it was like, dude, I think I spent like 150 bucks on it.
For a poster.
But I wasn't buying the poster.
I was buying dunking.
Right?
And it's like, yeah, that's what I want, I want the shortcut to that.
And people will always pay for that.
And you know what?
I bet you that exact poster would still sell today.
A thousand percent.
A thousand percent for 150 bucks because people aren't buying the paper.
They're buying the result.
And it's like, you just have to find, I have a, dude, I have a long Twitter thread on it.
But like, like people are in point A to, it's point A to point B.
people always want to buy the shortcut forever and always like we'll never change I also
will buy the shortcut on a bunch of things and so it's like you just have to figure out a big
enough market of point A to point B right and so like rucking is a good one it's starting to pick
up people that want to do hands hands hands hands. We talked about on the last one but like cookbooks
are like literally exactly that like point A to point B you want to be a better chef
sick. You don't have to go try to make paella 18 times to like perfect the recipe. Just follow this
instructions. That has now expanded to like every single product category on the internet and AI makes
it take two minutes to create something valuable. May the best marketer win. I'm still waiting for an
AI generated influencer to sell an app or a cookbook. Did you see that Netflix documentary about that
that health influencer on Instagram that was scammed everyone.
I don't know.
I don't think so.
She was out of Australia.
Her whole claim to fame was she used whole foods to naturally cure her cancer.
And she looked incredibly healthy.
She had like brain cancer.
Then she had spleen cancer.
And she was just putting this all out there.
Oh, Lauren said something about this.
Yeah.
And like 99.9% of people believed her.
And like actual doctors were like, it doesn't, you should be bald right now.
Like what?
Huh?
You just had chemo?
What? Huh? And like, but it sold so well. She launched an app. One of the first like health
apps in the app store, because this was like early 2010. Apple promoted it because it did so well.
Tens of millions of dollars from an app. And then she released a physical cookbook that like you
couldn't find in stores. It was always sold out. And then it came out that it was all a scam.
She was lying about everything. That's insane. Do you think that these AI generated influencers
are going to like keep proliferating? Or do you think that?
Meta's going to put the axe on it.
Dude, it's an interesting.
I can't decide.
I go back and forth.
Yeah, it's tough.
I think they'll draw the line at like impersonation, right?
Like I think it's a hard line to define.
That's for sure.
Yeah, what is too far?
And then like are their systems going to be sophisticated enough to even keep up?
Is the is the secondary question, right?
Like say they want to do.
something about it. Are they even technically capable of making like a meaningful stop to that?
Yeah, it's interesting as it gets more and more indistinguishable from like real. Because right now you can
tell. Yeah, we did. I showed you a bunch of those Hey Gen videos and it's like you can get pretty
close to it. But like you still tell. The odds are that they'll try to stop it if they think that
it's doing negative impact to the platform. But they're incentivized to just keep users on platform.
And so if AI generated content has the most stickiness and the best results,
like, uh, did you see my tweet this morning, my thread?
No.
Bro.
You should keep that real quick.
So I, as you know and as you can identify with at times, struggle with prioritization
and task management across all of the different things that we do.
I've tried every single task.
management project management tool under the sun and I hate them all.
None of them do exactly what I want them to do.
They get close, right?
Like I love a can band board.
I love a due date, right?
Like all of that stuff.
But none of them are like custom built for me the way that I want it.
I decided I was just going to build my own custom task management software using lovable.
Clearly.
And I literally just ran in two hours built out, like actually a perfect task management system for myself.
I've been using it all day.
And it's A1.
Let's do a little visual for the, for the YouTubers.
I got to see this.
Before you show me, I'm just going to show you where I'm at.
I can't, I can't do it.
I can't do any of the task.
I can't do a sauna, Trello, pipe drive.
I feel you.
Google Docs, Google Sheets, Apple Notes, Apple Remotes.
Apple Reminders app and my unread emails and opened Chrome tabs.
That's my task management system.
That's awesome.
Yeah, yeah.
Your ADHD loves you for that.
I'm 38 years old.
I can't,
I'm a boomer in the internet.
I can't switch at this point.
No,
I'm with it.
Mine was really easy when it was just one thing.
Like when it was like primarily just quicker,
it was easy.
because and that's like you get the team involved and like everyone's on there.
I wanted one that was just my own.
There's no any of that.
It's literally just like here's my running list.
Let me show you this, John, dude.
I give the full, the full like walkthrough of it on Twitter of like some of the screenshots
of like how I actually prompted this thing.
But it's super simple, dude.
And so I can't believe this is possible.
Dude, it's so crazy.
Actually insane.
And so there's nuance.
Like it follows a very similar Canban board model, right?
Like everyone's kind of seen like.
Explain to all the idiots out there because I know what Canban is.
I mean, obviously.
But other people don't.
So tell them.
Right.
Duh.
Yeah.
Basically it's like the ability to move into like the columns of like progress.
Right.
And so like the Q versus today.
Just like directly left or right.
Very similar to like a C of like D.
whole status. And so like I like that the most from a visualization. I think it was called
a can band. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. Well, we just let all the idiots now.
So no one's, no one's going to be. Yeah. But yeah. So basically I was like, how do I make this like
the most simple and effective thing humanly possible title, which is like send Chris
wedding invite? Right. Quick notes. Like I don't take super like I'm just a
doer. I just need like, I just need a reference, right? Yeah. And so it's like, where do I need to go,
right? Because you're not going to read all those details anyway. No, like, I know, I know what's good.
This is like just to help keep me on track. Estimated time. Priority level. High priority, dude,
we need to be able to do this. Which tag, which for me is companies, right? Like, what are we doing?
And then the due date. Create the task. So then it shows up. And I did, I did some little
tricky stuff, dude.
All right.
So it has an estimated time.
That's one.
To complete?
This, yeah, estimated time to complete is like, all right, cool, which matters when I start
to build out my day because it updates with how much, like, focus time I need for the day
to get my list done.
Right.
And so this little sidebar is based on the priority.
So, like, red is high priority.
Orange is mid.
Yellow is low.
the time, the due date, if it's beyond three days away, it's green.
And if it's today, it's blue.
And if it's past due, it's red.
And so, like, on a quick glance, I can be like, oh, I have three high priority things that I have to do in the next three days.
Boom, easy.
And then the tag just so I know where I'm going with whatever the company is.
Then the long tail of this is this little timer, dude.
So I start the task and it automatically just starts counting how much time I'm actually spending
on it.
Full Pomodoro in here.
Dude, it's insane.
And so then I'm knocking it out and what will end up happening at a later version of this
because it's collecting all this data on me, right?
Like what I'm spending my time on.
Then it's like, I did this.
Cool.
I'd be able to go and see exactly which companies.
Oh, that's so good.
I'm spending the time on.
And then I'm going to add in like when I hit the checkmark,
I'm going to add in a prompt that goes like,
could I have delegated this?
Did this take longer than it should have?
Right.
Like now I can start to like build an actual OS on my time spend for like,
for me like the deep work,
the creative work that like only I can kind of do.
And so it's like over, you know,
as you can see,
I've loaded up 11 tasks with 10 hours at work to do this week.
I'd be like, oh, I spent 72% of that time on Unlimited.
And then you get, you get, dude, I'm like, I'm going to plug in Google Calendar so that I can have all my meetings.
So I get full time there.
And the piece that I really want to do is plug in like stripe to be like, what is my actual revenue per hour?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
on each company that I'm working on.
Yeah.
I mean, like I said in my Twitter thread, like kind of a nod to Rob Deirdrick.
Like he does that like super intense.
And I was like, all right.
Like I'll just do a quick version of that.
But yeah, dude, it's super smooth.
And waiting is like if I'm waiting on somebody else.
So it's like, hey, I need testimonials from Emma for the VS script for whatever.
Yeah.
Right.
Like then I have that all sitting there and waiting.
But now I can just go in, look at this queue, like tonight.
I'll do it. I'll look at my calendar for tomorrow. I'll be like, all right, I have a 30 minute block here, a 60 minute block here, two hours here. All right, that's four hours of work or whatever it is. Let me just go build up. All right, bet. That's two hours. That's three hours. Sick. Like, now I can, I get it all done. And I'm just going to brain dump continuously on the left. It'd be interesting if you had a feature where you could like beat your time estimate on all these tasks and you could like stack.
time, right? That's going to be so like I want to do standard deviation. So like set time,
how far like on average does it normally go shorter or longer? Right. Like what's the standard
deviation of the time spend? I've noticed it. I've done four tasks today off of the system.
Three of them came in about 30% less time than I had estimated. One of them took about 30%
percent. Oh, man. Yeah, which is interesting because like the one that took a long time was the long one, was the hour task. But I also kind of like it got the task got a little bit bigger as I got into it. And I just didn't adjust it. So like it was a go high level automation flow, which then like turned into three flows that I did that all serve the same purpose. But it was all under one task. And so like I'm just noted there's like little nuances like that like for me.
I'm not going to sit there and be like, oh, these are actually three tasks.
Let me go out of the next tasks.
Like I don't care like that.
Like I'm just trying to track and keep moving on stuff.
And so the point of it being like you can go build your own custom software for something like that.
It literally took me two hours.
I was just sitting in my backyard like messing around, you know.
Do you think it helps you be more productive knowing that the timer is running?
Because I've never worked with a timer, but I've heard good things.
This is my first time also.
For me, to be honest, like, I'm not really worried about the timer from a productivity
perspective.
I find myself waking up in the morning or not even waking up in the morning, but like getting
off of a phone call and then having an hour before my next phone call, like four or five
times a week, I'll just end up on Twitter for an hour.
Yeah, you just blow it instead of, yeah, like I just blow the hour.
It's like the most normal thing ever.
Right.
And then I sit there and I'm like, what am I?
What should I be spending my time on?
And there's like multiple companies, multiple products, multiple, like there's just a bunch of stuff that's like I want to do, need to do, or fires that get put out need to get put out.
And so I was like, I think I just need like the most rudimentary tracking system that has zero external inputs.
It's just me.
There's no ZAP integration, like nothing.
I define the list of things.
I then manage that list in that time.
I had a call an hour before we popped on.
I could have blew that time on Twitter,
which I probably would have.
But then I saw it.
I was like,
oh,
I have a 60 minute task.
That's like a medium priority that's due next week.
I might as well just knock that out.
And now that's like off my plate.
And so it's like that piece of it to me is just like,
I just want the trigger to be like,
let's go.
Like keep moving,
keep working.
It changes the dynamic of those open time slots because it quantifies that
hour gap you have.
You're like,
dude,
I could at least knock out two of these 15 minute tasks.
Right.
Straight up.
So like how can I try this for myself?
I have no idea.
So when I was building it, so when I was building it, I was doing everything I could to resist the temptation.
I know.
I know.
Of making this a product to sell.
I know.
Like I was like, dude, no, no, no.
I'm not launching a productivity SaaS right now.
I can't make a lot of sourdough without wanting to start a billion more business.
It's a, it's an illness.
Yes.
Yes.
Mental.
varietal.
Well, I'm going to try to build something like this.
I think I can.
I think I can.
So you could, you could, the only thing that I don't know how to do or I haven't tried is I hardcoded the company tags.
So it's not like, I didn't like go in there and like set my tags on the user account level.
It was like, I set the tags globally.
And so like, do you have a lovable account?
Yeah.
I wonder if I can like just share this with you and you can literally tell it to just like change.
Is that like a thing?
Can you like just share?
I know you can in Repplet.
Anyway, I'm going to try to build something like this because I'm inspired by this.
And I want to learn lovable better anyway.
Just go read my Twitter thread.
Like it literally, I walk through it pretty well.
You know me.
I don't know how to code.
I'm just out here telling it.
Nah, actually I don't like where that is.
Put it on the left.
It's like,
I'm cool.
But yeah, dude, it's honestly, it took me two hours.
What did it teach you from a broad perspective about, you know, vibe coding?
It honestly re-semented things that I know, which like, when you think about any technology,
there's really like three components.
There's the data.
Like, what exists in the back end?
There's the front end, which is the display of that data.
And then there's the middle.
which is like the manipulation of that data.
And so like when you're vibe coding,
you have to like remember what those three things are
and being like, oh, right.
Like I set up this database to interact with this sort of front end.
And so like when I was prompting it on the data types
that I wanted on like a per task level, right,
which was like name, description, due date, priority, etc.
Knowing where that was going to land on the user experience side
like to bridge that gap, right?
And so it's like, I think a lot of people, when they're going through that,
it's really easy to start with the user experience because you know how you want it to look
and function, but like keeping the data part of it in mind of like, oh, right, like for me to be
able to have this number, this data, like the estimated time, like for me to have the estimated
time aggregate, that means that the data needs to be structured numerically so that it can
actually create a sum.
And so there's like intricacies like that that people need to pay attention to.
But the nice part is like lovable is pretty intuitive and it'll do a lot of that for you.
You don't have to like, I see all these guys and even like lovable documents like in their like educational resources.
They're like hit us with for what they call it.
But it's like it's high quality prompts.
Like here's the perfect prompt layout.
And it's like you're like giving it code to prompt.
Yeah.
I don't like doing.
I'm like, no, no.
I want this button to be yellow when it's this.
Yeah.
And just like let it do its thing.
And anytime lovable says there's an error, I just click F, which is fix.
I go, it'll figure it out.
I don't know.
Fix it.
Please.
And don't be scared to restore previous versions.
Like if it did something wrong, if it messed it up, restore it back.
Because like, what you don't want it to do is like do something wrong.
and then be trying to fix what it did wrong
when you could just have it like rebuild it
with a little bit of a smarter prompt.
And so it's like if it doesn't hit it the first time
instead of trying to like countlessly edit a single feature,
just restart and try to redefine that feature a little bit better.
All right.
We're going to have Sam on again.
He's a regular.
Share with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office.
