Hey. Welcome back to the panel. Today, it's just me and Jordan rolling without Justin. Justin is down in Mexico on a on a founder retreat. Is that
Jordan:where they went?
Brian:Down down in the sun. Well, I
Jordan:think so. Nice. Into the into the war zone?
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I'm here in Connecticut where we have, like, 30 inches of snow on the ground. And, Justin, how are doing, buddy?
Jordan:I'm Jordan.
Brian:Justin. Jordan. I'm already confusing the the cohost. Alright. This is gonna get Look.
Jordan:The the Bootstrap web takeover of the panel is complete.
Brian:That's it. Here we go.
Jordan:I'm good. It's great to see you. I hope Justin has a great time. Founder retreats, man, I am due for one of those. I I don't even want a founder retreat.
Jordan:I want the whole team. It's been a while. Last time we all got together was a couple years ago. And then we pivoted, and then it was like, well, no, we're not going to spend tens of thousands of dollars to hang out until we get to a better place. And so I I think we're almost there, but I I, like, wanna hang so bad.
Jordan:Yes. I'm I'm excited for it.
Brian:Nice, man. Yeah. I'm back in the office today. It's Wednesday. And we did, like, a last minute ski trip with the girls yesterday because they're, you know, they're off school this week because of the snow.
Brian:So we were like, let's just hit the road and do and and get some snowboarding in. So I'm actually super tired today. I'm gonna try to stay awake because I, like, I hammered out a YouTube video on Monday, then went snow then, like, drove two hours, went snowboarding, came back this morning, and did more shoveling of snow this this morning with with the additional snow that piled on. Just it's just crazy just around here.
Jordan:I feel you. I don't know. You know, mid forties. That feels like the game. It feels it's a bit exhausting, but you're kinda lucky to do all of it at the same time?
Brian:Oh, that I mean, we were saying that. It's like, you know, Amy works in the schools, so so she's off this week. And, and I I work when and where I want to, essentially. So yeah. You know?
Brian:And and it's great to be able to go on like a Tuesday, there's like nobody else on the mountain.
Jordan:Sounds nice. Yeah. This last weekend, my wife was away with friends. The the thing I did most last weekend was drive. I just drove everywhere.
Jordan:I have three kids, and they have friends and birthday parties. Yes. Settle in the mirror. But it's also it's a it's like a joy, you know, just like being in that environment. No.
Jordan:It's been great. Got my
Brian:oldest birthday party this Sunday. She's turning 11. Okay.
Jordan:Congrats.
Brian:So Fair time.
Jordan:Yeah. Mine are, yeah. They had a birthday party excuse me, a birthday, a few weeks ago, and then we have mothball birthday parties coming up and then spring break. And it's all exhausting, and it's great. But let's let's let's get into it.
Jordan:We have a topic here. Hey. Let's get into it. I wanna cover a topic first that isn't about either of us, kind of a phenomenon that I'm surprised by. And the way I would define it is a friction to adopting AI tools in companies that I'm surprised by.
Jordan:So perfectly understandable for a traditional business to have some friction around adopting these tools. Maybe they're not even aware of them. Maybe it sounds scary. No one knows how to run it, whatever else. What I don't expect is small software companies with a lot of friction, either at the company level or the individual level.
Jordan:I thought that what was happening in our company was happening everywhere, where everyone just immediately is jumping on this. And as I talk to other founders in our communities and our peers, I'm I'm kinda shocked by how much friction there is to adopting and specifically surprised by the founder's approach to people on their team not adopting. Quite like the the, I don't know, openness acceptance of people not adopting versus pushing them or or the hesitancy to making it a requirement. I thought I was kind of right in the middle on it, and it sounds like maybe I'm a bit more extreme on, like, demanding and requiring adoption. And I'm I'm surprised.
Brian:Love to hear May may maybe without naming companies and names, but, like, I I would love to hear, like, examples of what you're seeing. Because I I'm sort of seeing some of the same, but I'm seeing examples of the polar opposite from other small and medium and established SaaS companies. I'm in a few different communities where I'm I'm seeing a lot of lot of actual adoption from from SaaS players Mhmm. That we know. I am seeing it all over the map.
Brian:I I guess, like, if you look at on on, like, Twitter and stuff, you you tend to see more of the people who are psyched about it and using it because they're the they're the louder ones.
Jordan:Yeah. And showing.
Brian:Part partly like hyping it up and stuff like that. But but I'm also in some private communities where it's definitely clear that it is being adopted in in in very different ways and different schedules and different levels, I would say. But I'm curious to know, like, are you talking about, like, SaaS companies where the founder or founding team are technical? Or or you're talking about, like, like, leadership team and their relationship with their team and their adoption of it?
Jordan:All of it. I mean, let me just kinda be more transparent. This is not black and white. Our organization also had issues. But if I'm being, like, even more transparent, we let go of an engineer this week, not entirely because she didn't adopt, but it's definitely a big part of it.
Jordan:And and when I said that in a in a community of founders, what I got was, you know, effectively, how could you do that? This person's been with you for years and you just kinda, like, let them go because they didn't adopt these tools. And I guess I was a bit surprised by that because maybe what I'm experiencing is, like, this shock at what this means. This this is really, really transformative through the business on how much you need to hire, how fast you can go, the features you can build, the price you can charge, the markets you can go after, how to manage the company, how much money you need to run the company, all these things. It's it's you know, it affects so many of them that I guess when I saw it, it's so very obvious to me.
Jordan:Like, oh, we we have to change our behavior and our thinking. If we don't, it it would make sense to me not not to change. And so when I talk to some founders and they're like, well, our development team, like, isn't that into it. Or my cofounder's pretty resistant because of x, y, and z, and I don't feel right forcing them because this is, like, their craft. And I'm like, hold hold on a second.
Jordan:That that that's not that doesn't make sense.
Brian:Look. I mean, in February 2020 like, it's like a part of me can be a little sympathetic to the idea of, a SaaS company that's been established for a few years has has a solid revenue and customer base, and they don't necessarily want to change everything and rock the boat. Was like, we're small, we're lean anyway, we're profitable. What problem is this actually solving for us? I sort of get that mindset, but you still need to move forward in your business no matter what stage you're in.
Brian:You consider yourself any form of a startup, then you're constantly finding ways to- To do more. Get ahead faster. Like move the ball forward faster, more efficiently. And I I, you know, I I think it's obviously definitely a a process for people, individuals to become comfortable and and adopt it. But there has to be a willingness and an interest at all levels to do that.
Brian:If you're unwilling or you're just like uninterested in seeing what's actually possible and how far these models have come, then it's like, what are you doing here? It's you know, that that is that's the attitude that I really that's the attitude that I really don't understand at this point in February 2026 is like, you cannot you just cannot make the argument that AI is not Yeah.
Jordan:You're you're just shutting your eyes and ears and pretending
Brian:You are just shutting yeah. You you you have fingers in your ears. You're shutting it out, and that is, to me, like software malpractice.
Jordan:I called it capitalism malpractice. I said it was an affront to capitalism not to not to use this new leverage.
Brian:It's like you you can maybe make the argument that, like, we don't want to do it for whatever weird reason, but you can't make the argument that it's like, like, oh, it's not for us. Like, it's not good enough or or this is not the the correct way. Like, it's the new normal,
Jordan:you know? Right. There are several reasons to be careful about it. If you have a ten year old code base, if your product is extremely sensitive like a checkout or payments product, and even if you just don't wanna push anything like that to production yet, that's not the same thing as being dismissive and ignoring it. That's that's wanting to make a more cautious approach, and that's fine.
Jordan:I guess where I'm at is it's unfair to look at your team and your employees and say, you have to do this by this date or you're out. Like that okay. I don't think that's necessary. But to point out into the future and to say, we are a software company. We are there's a portion of our team that are software engineers, and we are going to catch up to where the state of the art is.
Jordan:And let's take our time. Let's talk about what resources we need. Let's talk about how we share and learn over time together so that it's not this, like, crazy deadline, otherwise, you're getting fired thing, but it is not optional. In January, when we had all hands, after what I saw happen in December and speaking with Rock over the break about what he was doing, I I basically just understood. We're going to get there.
Jordan:It is not optional. It's not optional at the team and company level, and it is not optional at the individual level. How we get there, we can work on, but it is not optional.
Brian:Yep.
Jordan:That was my, like, message to everyone, and I was like, I'm included. It's not just engineering. We have to insist on taking this type of leverage and letting it spread throughout the company?
Brian:Yeah. I guess like two things that come to mind right now. One is like an observation of like So a couple friends of mine are founders of well established SaaS companies, been around for like ten plus years. And some of the attitudes from some of them that I hear are like acknowledging that like, oh, AI is here. Like there's a nervousness in the air from them.
Brian:And that always interested me because I'm like, you guys are fine. Like you're not going to lose your customers overnight because of this. But there is a nervousness, but I see that as an acknowledgement of like, because they're looking at this like, we've been on this ride that's been great, and now we gotta deal with this whole change of of everything with AI. But, like, that's them actually dealing with it and facing it and saying, like, this might be a thing that we need to adapt and change our our workflow. You know?
Brian:The the I think that the challenge for the individual players on Teams is roles are going to change, and mostly mostly that means, like, blending of responsibilities. Like, if you Yeah. If you were just a front end developer, like, your role was to take a finished Figma mock up and turn that into HTML and then hand your HTML to the back end team, like, that whole workflow does not exist anymore. It's it's all blended. It all happens together in in a in a cohesive AI driven workflow.
Brian:Like, the the whole workflow of how the product gets made is different now, which means the people's involvement in that needs to Yes. Change. So Right?
Jordan:You you nailed it right on the bullseye. The person that we let go this week, that was her role. And so that's why I say it's not necessarily her unwillingness to adopt. It's also partly the the nature of the process changing so much. What I hoped to see is that person basically understand what was happening around them and and then raise their hand and say, alright.
Jordan:If this is where it's going, what do we need to do so that I have a role here in this new world? And I would have been very, very happy to to to work with them on that. Yeah. When I say that our engineering process is folding in on itself, that's what I think of. If you think about a, you know, a sheet of paper with a line drawn on it of the process all the way from design to the collaboration between design and product to the finished Figma file, hand it over to the front end, hand it over to the back end, hand it over to testing.
Jordan:And then if you just think about it, that piece of paper just literally just being folded where the middle doesn't look the same way, that's really what what happened to us.
Brian:Yeah.
Jordan:We experimented with with effectively going directly from Figma into the back end and everything worked great. And that's like, that's a, you know, that's a problem. I think it's also a bit easier for me to say that because I'm not an engineer, so I'm viewing it with, you know, one step back from being the person that's like, well, I've been doing this for ten years a certain way, and now you're telling me everything I've done over the last ten years no longer exists in the same way. And therefore, oh, I should have no problem at all. Just, you know, changing and viewing it differently.
Jordan:Like, it's much easier for me to say because I'm not in that role.
Brian:You know, I I think we talked a little bit about this last week. Here's this tweet from from Matt Pocock. I he's a I don't know. He's like a builder AI influencer, I I guess. I I've been really following his stuff lately.
Brian:Real really good thinking on this. This tweet says, something that I think goes underemphasized in how much AI coding demands a lead dev mentality. And I think that this applies to every role, but especially So in he says, if you if you spent your pre AI career trying to level up your teammates through, you know, better API design, feedback loops, architecture, so really thinking from a leadership, like, design standpoint.
Jordan:Yep. What does my team need?
Brian:It's then then working with AI will feel natural to you because it's a natural extension of, like, improving and streamlining and leveling up everything around us. That's that's what AI is. But he's but he goes on. He says, if you've only focused on your own output, then this whole period is gonna feel super bad. That And it's it's real.
Brian:Know? Like, if if if you showed up to work and your and your goal is to just take your next issue and deliver the thing next in line, and and I'm and I'm done, clean my hands, I'm gonna go home. Like Yeah. It's You need to think differently about what what what you're doing here. You know?
Jordan:It's it's a bit brutal, but that feels 100% right. And if I look internally, I'm not surprised at Rock is ecstatic. Rock cannot cannot believe what what he can do because he's o he for many years now, he's had this mentality of what do I need to provide my team so they can get things done faster? And now he's like, well, now I just have a team. They always do things, and they never stop stop working.
Jordan:And they're all senior engineers. And and, like, how is that even possible that that I can do this? So he's, like, in this euphoria. He's he's almost overworking, and I'm, like, forcing him to take vacations because he will go on like benders. He can't help it.
Brian:It is it is act like actually addicting. Like I have always thought that I was like a workaholic, but like with Claude Code, like holy shit. It's like I I this morning I went out to to, you know, snow blow some some snow off my driveway. I was like, I should really get Claude Code working on something before I go out there, you know?
Jordan:Yes. And I think Claude just came out with like a, you know, a mobile connection.
Brian:The remote. Yeah. I posted
Jordan:that and and the engineers are like, okay. Oh, okay. Now now we've achieved where, you know, what we want to, which is actually I'm gonna go take a walk and be able to do things.
Brian:What's interesting about what I'm seeing with other SaaS founders who are more technical, like the technical founders. So by your nature, if you are a technical SaaS founder, you are one of these leader type engineers because you're so self motivated to use your founder builder skills as a means to an end, as a means to build your SaaS, to build your business, right? Those are the people that I am seeing are ecstatic and super eager and 100% adopting and transitioning to AI. Part of this is because they, by their nature, like their company are very small and they're the head of it, so it's easier for them to do. So like, for example, like I've been doing I started doing a series of interviews through builder methods called called Builder Stories, where I interview other builders who are and and showing on screen, like, how are you actually using AI?
Brian:How are you building with it? How are you adopting it? Right? So I I did a couple of these. One with Brennan Dunn, longtime SaaS founder and self builder.
Brian:He, you know, 100% AI adopted. Way. I'm
Jordan:very happy to hear that.
Brian:Oh, 100% love Right I did a whole interview with him. Like, right message is 100% Brennan Dunn alone with Claude Code shipping everything. Arvik Kal, same deal. You know, he's got his SaaS PodScan, literally explaining and showing on screen how 99 of his code is Arvid engineering and and building these agentic loops to to ship features in his SaaS. Colleen Schnetler, another one, you know, talking about not only how she builds her SaaS products, but marketing loops and, like, you know, she's, like, automating LinkedIn outreach and and ad campaign using AI.
Brian:Like, built using your engineer skills to find new points of leverage. Like, this is what real builders are looking at this moment and saying, like, let's go.
Jordan:That is the that's the part where if you see that happening, I don't know how how to react other than so much excitement and motivation because it hasn't been possible in the past and and the the normal constraints that we've all been under have changed. And that's like it's like a I don't know. It's like a power up. Like what you thought was possible is just much more now. We're very happy.
Jordan:Right message customers, by the way. We love it. Oh, nice. We love it.
Brian:And we
Jordan:see a lot of progress. We see the product improving.
Brian:What's been so interesting to me to talk to all these different builders is how how they're adopting it differently from one another. You know? Like what Brennan is doing aside from using Cloud Code to build stuff, he's he's also using it to improve his documentation. So he's using, like, different tools. I think one called FernDesk where it's, like, as he, like, ships a feature, AI writes the documentation for it.
Brian:It's it's impressive.
Jordan:I I noticed we started getting these, like, weekly emails, like the Right Message Digest, and the amount of insight in that email is significant. And and obviously, you can't do that for everyone manually, so there's a tool running on the back end, but it provides us what would normally be a here are your stats for the week. And instead, it's like, here are your stats, here are all the insights based on those stats and the quiz results and the visitors. Yeah. Very cool.
Jordan:I'm happy to hear that.
Brian:Yeah, man.
Jordan:Let's let's go on to this next topic that you have. How would you describe this YouTube conundrum?
Brian:Yeah. So I don't know if it's, YouTube yeah. A lot of it is baked into YouTube, but it's just in general, where my mindset is at now, and you've heard this on the podcast for for the past year from me, is, like, I'm basically like, I'm sort of out of opinions about SaaS in general, and I'm and I'm much more in in the weeds on what it means to be a creator and run a creator business and the creator business model. And so there's a lot of challenges with that. I do think it has played to my strengths and that's why I feel, you know, like I'm hitting on more success with Builder Methods than I have in the stuff that I've done before.
Brian:So a lot of things are working well in Builder Methods. The the funnel is, like, fantastic. It's growing every month. Customers come in every day. Strangers are finding it every single day.
Brian:It I'm loving it. I love the process. Well, I should say I I love parts of the process of creating of of one of the things that that has been sort of a challenge for me, there's multiple challenges, but one of them is the mindset of what is this actual business. Because it it has taken a long time. I'm still working through this to, like, break my mindset out of being such a product focused person.
Brian:So, like, everything I ever do has always been like, what is the product? And and that's the thing that I'm selling. So whether it's Clarity Flow or before that, Audience Ops or but then, like, as I started getting into builder methods, you know, I I created things like AgentOS, which is like a a a free open source thing, but that is a product. And then DesignOS after that. Builder Methods Pro is a product.
Jordan:Yeah. So your creation is actually your marketing in that context. If it all leads into selling a product, the creator element is what builds the audience and the marketing.
Brian:Well, like part of the challenge is that like, I have to start to embrace that like, not everything I do has to be a product that I created. Really what I'm selling here with Builder Methods is the content and the community and the transformation that people experience when they start to come into this ecosystem. And so I have to be less about like, hey, use my product. Use Agent OS and not everything else because that that doesn't matter anymore.
Jordan:Oh, interesting. It almost like biases your
Brian:It's it's it's too biased in my opinion. You know? Like, I've I've I've even come to the point where like, I don't actually use AgentOS for a lot of my work anymore. Part of it is like creating tools in general. Like this industry happens so, it moves so fast that like tools become obsolete in a matter of months or techniques change or the models get better and just start to, you know, fold in a lot of features that I scaffolded out, you know, half a year ago.
Brian:So like really my role has to be, I create content and teach and bring people together and highlight what's working in AI and who's doing really interesting things and bring that to an audience and relate it to an audience and be like, look, here's here here are my takeaways that I think you should be adopt here's how to make adoption easier for you and for your team and for your organization. And so my a lot of what I do now is like research and observing and learning and and and developing not necessarily products or new things of my own, but like what I'm developing are teachable workflows. Right? Like, how can I take this concept that is becoming established in our industry and package it in a way that I can communicate it clearly in a YouTube video or in a mini course for Builder Methods Pro members or something like that? Yeah.
Jordan:I mean, it's incredibly valuable attention that you are building. Yeah. Here's my question. If you stepped away one layer from selling the product as the as the business model, the end results, right, where the actual value changes hands. What what can you teach?
Jordan:What's the subject matter? Like, what are you working on? If you wanna show workflow, what is it in service of? Do you need to build something abstract? You need to build your own product and show that?
Jordan:Or are you showing how to do things? Like, do you need some some, canvas? Like, do you need a muse?
Brian:I do try to zero in on some on some big high level workflow themes. A big one for me has been what's known now as spec driven development. And and honestly, like, I'm not saying I coined the term, but I was one of the early I was one of the first people talking about that early last year. Spec driven what people know is like plan mode now or or creating PRDs. Like it's all the same thing.
Brian:You're you're emphasizing the planning phase and then having the the agents build that. But like, when I created Agent OS, like, plan mode and and that kind of stuff was was not well established. And so that that's been a big emphasis for the last several months. Now now we're moving into like some other things like like Ralph loops and verification where yeah. And and and like my last couple of videos, I got I've been deep into setting up OpenClaw.
Brian:I I try to relate it to professionals as individuals, but also teams, and and how they can how they can adopt it. Like, it it's really about, like, everyone is feeling this this anxiety over what we were just talking about. Like, either we feel like we need to adopt AI and we are behind the the eight ball on that and we need to catch up. So so that's an impetus an impetus that brings them into my orbit. Or or they or they they're already in motion with AI and they just kinda wanna be around other builders and connect with other builders and and level up even more and stay on the cutting edge.
Jordan:It's gotta be a fraction. Your monetization must be a fraction of the potential. Right. So that
Brian:100%, dude. This is my biggest challenge. So, like, whatever you see me do publicly from the YouTube channel to selling memberships and Builder Methods Pro, the newsletter that I do, that is the what ends up being published. What I am actually spending my time on and and all of my energy trying to solve is how can I make this business model work? Yeah.
Brian:Like like because there there are so many things that I feel are are wildly inefficient right now with what I'm doing. Number one is just I I just have so many opportunities. Like, I should be tripling, quadrupling my revenue this month. And and I'm and I'm, like, unable to capitalize on a lot of it just due to to lack of bandwidth. That's one side of it.
Brian:Maybe the related side And so that is wrapped up in sponsorship opportunities. Constantly, people who want to sponsor my Yep.
Jordan:Makes sense.
Brian:And then consulting opportunities and like private team workshops. I've done a few of these private team workshops. I have a few more coming up. But like, I want to talk about that piece of it in a minute. But the main bottleneck is still me.
Brian:And I expect, like, is a creator business. So, obviously, I'm going to There's always going to be some level of like, it requires me to be on camera and that kind of stuff. But what I'm working on all the time is how do I streamline going from an idea for a YouTube video to scripting it out, bullet pointing, recording it, handing it off to my editor, having that get get it to like 95%. I go in and do the final finishing touches, or maybe I can get it to a point where I don't have to do that at all. Like, that seems so easy to rattle off in one sentence, but it's six month effort a six month effort of of just hammering through that process over and over and over again and trying a thousand different things.
Brian:And and I'd say it's even 50% of the way there. Like, there's so much more pain to to get through.
Jordan:Iron out.
Brian:Like, because I part of it is, like, I want to release double or triple the number of YouTube videos that I do because clearly that is the funnel that's working. I wanna double down on that.
Jordan:Yeah. Do you have to do you have to ease off the quality of the finished product in order to do that?
Brian:Yeah. Maybe. And and but even that is like difficult to figure out. Like, how do I actually do that? And I and there's different video types.
Brian:So there's, the deep dives where I spend a whole week, like, producing it. There's, like, the new feature drop. Like, like, Cloud Code just released this this remote control feature. Right? Right.
Jordan:You could do video on that.
Brian:Like, I should be able to hit record today, have a video out about it tomorrow. And like, I I don't have that muscle right now. There there are other YouTubers in my space who are doing that right now, and I I need to figure out how to make that work. But then that's like a disruption to like, but I'm delivering this Cloud Code course to my members.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Brian:But I have sponsors to do sales processes over here. But I've got, you know, tooling and and Open Claw stuff and like like, yeah, Open Claw might might seem like a like a fun toy to play with, but I just did a YouTube video that got 300,000 views when I talked about Like, I mean, like like, I I have to have time to play with this stuff and to research it and to but not only, like, figure out how how it works, but also figure out, like, what do I have to say about this? What how am I going to make this interesting and useful to people?
Jordan:That part of it feels like the most valuable thing that you add. Your synthesis of something that comes out and then filters through your experience and your version of understanding and creativity and then what comes out of it, that's the part that can't be automated, can't be rushed, can't be whatever. So. But Right.
Brian:So that's what I've been working on is like, do I Like literally, like how do I use OpenClaw agents? One of the My first use case for I got this Mac Mini running OpenClaw, right? My first use case for it is to have my agents help me with researching the market and giving me a list of of potential ideas that I can develop into either YouTube videos or Shorts or Tweets or newsletters or blogs. And and I'm I've been working through this process where it's like, they're not just like automatically a bot is going out and writing a finished tweet and I'm gonna it it like, I'm I'm not into that because it it still needs to be from me. So it's more like the my bots are generating prompts for me.
Brian:So a couple times a week, I can go through and, like, answer their prompts and and say,
Jordan:like Here are the most likely things to succeed from an attention YouTube audience point of view.
Brian:Yes. They are analyzing that, but they're also analyzing everything that I'm doing. So I've also set up OpenCLOS so that it's capturing everything I do. Okay. From this this podcast transcript is gonna get into OpenCLOS by later today.
Brian:You know, my working Claude code, the sessions and the GitHub activity is being logged into OpenCloud and into this brain system. You know, whatever whatever I publish, whatever I create internally, it's all my agents have access to that. They can read all that and they can pull ideas like, oh, like you worked on this thing, maybe you wanna expand on that in a in a newsletter, you know. And so so I'm working through these like creative processes where like they can they can do a lot of this, like, initial legwork, and then I sort of just, like, show up to say, alright, I've got a couple of thoughts on this idea. Let me voice note some of that.
Brian:Now now draft it into a polished thing. And, you know, I'm just, like, constantly thinking of, like, ways that I can I can spend my time doing the creative thinking building stuff and less of the of of of, like, the the busy work? You know?
Jordan:I I think the the sponsorships are the most straightforward monetization of the attention. Right? And if you can find a way
Brian:to do it Yeah.
Jordan:With integrity the way you like to do it, if someone wants to sponsor you and you actually say, great. I'm gonna learn your product and I'll do a video about it and it will be authentic. Whatever that looks like, that feels like the most straightforward. Think I the one to do
Brian:It definitely is. And I have no hangups about, like, I I definitely want to do sponsorships. It's Yeah.
Jordan:As long you're being authentic, who cares?
Brian:Like, the only hang and it's like literally on my to do list for this week, but it's like, I need to, like, kinda figure out what my baseline rates are and what's worth it for me to even do them. And then but there's also, the sales process part of it, and there's different entities. Sometimes they're startups. Sometimes they're agencies. I gotta figure that whole dynamic out.
Brian:And then there's the recording and like Yeah.
Jordan:Approval and
Brian:You know, creating it and Yep. Yeah. And I have a lot of inquiries, so I can be a little selective about who I work with. And I'm gonna have pretty high standards in terms of like, I'm just not gonna put up a lot of bullshit because I don't have a lot of bandwidth for that. So, yeah, there's that.
Jordan:The biggest potential is just outcomes. Like, we would like to pay you to get an outcome.
Brian:Okay. So this is something I Right.
Jordan:Otherwise known as consulting.
Brian:Yes. Okay. So this is something that is becoming an interest for me. I'm trying to figure out what, if anything, to do with it, right? So one thing that is already established in Builder Methods, I've done a few of these now where a company will come in and say, they want me to present a private workshop to their team of engineers or their team of product people.
Brian:We could talk about spectrum and development. We can talk about Cloud Code. I and and what that has generally looked like is like, usually like two or three calls. The first call is like, just you you download to me, like, how do you guys currently work? What what's your workflow look like?
Brian:What are your top questions? I'm gonna go back. In two weeks later, I'm gonna give you a private workshop that touches on those things, and we can do it like at with an open q and a session with your team. And and I've done a couple of those. I'm, you know, I'm like increasing the pricing for this.
Brian:It's I get these inquiries a lot and I'm I don't want to do a lot of these. They are time consuming for me, but I have done them and I'm open to doing them selectively going forward for different sizes of businesses. Right? But then the other thing that has started to kick up lately are just general businesses of all kinds saying, we need to adopt AI internally. We see you on YouTube.
Brian:We need you to We want to adopt AI. Like we already have these workflows. We already have these processes. And they're not even software companies. They're like real estate companies or like medical device companies or, you know, whatever they're doing.
Brian:Maybe they are consult A lot of them, like they are consultancies working with other companies and they need an expert like me to train the consultants. Right? Though, like, I have stopped doing consulting. Like I stopped building apps for clients and stuff, you know, months ago. And like I said, like, I I need to be focusing all my time on creating, researching, learning, and communicating to the audience.
Brian:Like, that's that's my full time job.
Jordan:But but you're like a boat that leaves like a wake of opportunity behind you. It's like, what part of that opportunity do you actually want to go after?
Brian:So, don't like to like turn these people away. And lately I've been just talking to them over emails saying like, all right, well, like what does this have it like a structure like this with like a price tag that looks like this? Is that palatable? And most of them are like, yes, can we get on a call? And I'm like, oh shit.
Brian:Like, I can't just go sell that because I don't have the bandwidth to deliver that kind of consulting. And it's not just easy. Requires not just the hours of showing up on the call, but like multiply that by ten x hours of just researching and tailoring for the it it that would wipe out the aches of of work to to do it well. Right?
Jordan:Right. Can you have it be that you are out front, you get the attention, you get the trust, but you're not the one delivering?
Brian:And I've seen this model with some other companies like in my space where it's like they have somebody on their team who just heads up the consulting arm of that business. Yep. And that is an interesting model to me. And if I can find someone to to just sort of partner with on that piece of it, and and that would involve like those those direct consulting engagements. Some of them are like month long things.
Brian:Some of them are just ongoing check ins with companies like recurring. And maybe get this person involved in like the private workshop stuff as well. Like that is because there's a lot of opportunity there, and I'm starting to prove that the funnel is working for that. And if we can develop it into something like that's that's an interesting
Jordan:thing to me. I weren't running a software company, I think I would have a really hard time resisting that business model because I think the demand whatever the demand is like what it is right now for that type of service, everything's easier.
Brian:Alright, dude. What else what else you got on your end?
Jordan:So I wanna talk about a conversation I had yesterday with an investor at Andreessen Horowitz. The investor there is super cool. She's great on Twitter. And we kinda just check-in every few months. So we've built up, you know, a rapport that goes beyond the first meeting that's like, you know, this posturing thing.
Jordan:So we can be honest with each other. It was a funny conversation to have with an investor where the founder and the investor both agree that they don't really know what the right thing to do is in terms of financing a company. That it is just not a straightforward thing that you should raise money if you can. And, you know, from from my side of things, like, you know, we've spoken along the way over the last two years since starting Rosie, and she's kinda seen it just continue to grow. So from her point of view, this is this is how you do it.
Jordan:You get to know founders. You meet them along the way. You see these dots that you connect in the relationship and in the business progress. And then you're there with a relationship. If the time comes for the company maybe hits an inflection point and they're saying, hey, we we figured this thing out.
Jordan:Now we just need more money to keep going. And then the investor is there, the relationship's there, and they are in the pole position to lead the round. Right? Like, straightforward. The the best investors make that fun, and it's it's a good relationship and a friendship along the way as opposed to, like, this very transactional thing.
Jordan:But as we are starting to hit our and I don't think we've hit, like, a real inflection point yet, but the numbers are starting to become more substantial. I'm being very honest with her and saying, I just don't know if it makes sense to raise around if if we can, just because we can. And her response is what surprised me, which is I agree. And what she's seeing is companies also in San Francisco that maybe they go to YC and they raise, you know, I don't know what it is these days, $250 or whatever YC gives you these days. Or maybe they raise like a pre seed round and then they start to grow and the the founding team is also in the same position where they're like, I don't know if we should just go raise around it.
Jordan:Not only do we not know what's gonna happen in our market, we don't know what's gonna happen with with valuations. We know that if we take money from you at a high valuation like these rounds tend to be at, the expectations change and the bar for success changes. It felt like this ironic, you know, experience to be on a call with a 16 z, which I feel fortunate just to be in that conversation. And what I'm telling this person is, I don't know if we should actually raise money. So it's cool that we're talking, but I I don't know what's right.
Brian:Yeah, man. It's like I'm I'm very tuned out of that side of the mark. I I feel like I'm tuned out of, like, SaaS in general, even though I still run Clarity Flow and stuff. And but, like, I'm sort of, like, out of opinions when it comes to
Jordan:Fair enough.
Brian:To SaaS because I have no because I just have no idea what's gonna happen. But the only logical thing to me is that, like, there is so much uncertainty if you are a startup with a SaaS. I'm not saying that, like I'm not one of these people saying, like, SaaS is gonna be dead in the next couple of years, but, like Yeah. Agree. But I also think that it's a little shortsighted to say, like, all of that talk is completely overblown.
Brian:I don't think it's completely overblown. I think I think Saa SaaS just alright. Here here is an opinion, I guess. Okay. Here we go.
Brian:It's like, I just think that, like, it's it's really going to transform in a big way in most categories. And some of that is gonna be good, and some of that is gonna be bad for for a lot of different people. It's it is hard to predict. Like, because you it does seem like so many products as we know them today are just eventually and eventually is the keyword here, but eventually going to be just eaten up by AI in different forms.
Jordan:I don't think that means people vibe coding their own solutions. I think that means these bigger companies with existing customer bases and audiences will just be able to creep into your territory, whereas three years ago, it wouldn't make sense for them to do it.
Brian:I I think that's been the underreported thing, at least in our circles. When when I say reported, I guess, like, underchattered thing is like because because we all these all these SaaS founders and entrepreneurs like to talk about, oh, nobody's gonna vibe code real software in a business. Like, okay. Fine. But what they will do is get really good at building a really good Claude skill and plug that into Claude co work, and now you just wiped out the need to have a CRM.
Brian:You know? Like, you don't you don't actually have to create an app as we know it today. You don't have to actually use Laravel or Ruby on Rails and and deploy it and run databases.
Jordan:Or even know they exist. Yeah.
Brian:You don't even know what like, a lot of the jobs to be done that we know of as software can literally be done with a combination of like Claude and Gemini. Or OpenNIC or Codex. Especially you see this in the Claude ecosystem, They are literally building tools for work. They have a product called Claude CoWork, you know, and they have a thing called skills. And these are skills that you that you program into it to do jobs in your like, these are just literally what they're building.
Jordan:Yeah. It's I I think you're right to point out the nomenclature matters. Yeah. They're they're not it's not a a mistake. Oh, it just happens to be called this.
Jordan:Like, no.
Brian:The the old the old thinking of, like, in every spreadsheet, there's a SaaS company. Like, that's not really true anymore. Now now it's more like in every spreadsheet, there's, a Cloud skill or an OpenClaw skill or a skill
Jordan:that you can plug into. The fact that there are marketplaces for them and they'll become ubiquitous. I I think that part's really scary. Yeah. And I think that under under the surface, the the conversation with, right, this investor and all these other founders that are kind of wondering, I think that fear is humming underneath the surface.
Jordan:If I think about Rosie, I'm very, very happy that we're not selling to tech companies. Okay? Yeah. I think about this amazing product that we started using called Langdoc. It was to provide context throughout the entire company so that instead of everyone working in their own chat GPT or own Claude instances, it all put it together and it connects to Slack and Linear and Stripe.
Jordan:So everyone has like a a rosy marketing skill. It was awesome. And we were like, this is what we need after that January all hands are like, this is the initiative. Let's all kinda get on board. We just canceled.
Jordan:It's been like six weeks because Claude opened up ability to connect with Slack and Stripe and Linear and whatever else. And we just don't need to pay a $100 a month per person for a land document. It's just it's just doesn't exist. So I look over at Rosie like, oh, good thing that these SMBs don't need it. But in the back of my mind, two years from now, I don't know if things look the way they look.
Jordan:So right now, like, oh, we're going to build this communications layer for your customers with the phone and text and chat and email, and that's still just resting on a set of assumptions that things look pretty similar.
Brian:Yeah. See, this is the thing that I see all the time. And I'm not going to say I can I'm never great at like actually predicting the future, But I think a lot of the attitude that you see out there about AI, especially in our tech circles Okay. It's like self preservation thinking or or I don't know what it is, but it's like it it it to me, it is a failure to to see where this is headed in the future.
Jordan:Yes. Like, next few steps.
Brian:Because yes. Dude, like, all you need to do is look twelve months ago. In the like, twelve months ago.
Jordan:Yeah.
Brian:What I do on this computer was completely different from from what I do today. Like Yeah. Like, I could I twelve months ago okay. Just in the last thirty days, I created a markdown notes edit, like like a an alternative to Obsidian, like a like a notes app that I can voice note in and and collaborate with markdown files with my agents. I also created a tasks dashboard for my OpenClaw agents.
Brian:I also created another app for pulling in feeds from all of my transcripts and stuff like that. And like five other apps in a matter of days. And like, yes, I'm more tech enabled and full stack builder, and I have these skills that I could leverage and all that kind of stuff. But I never could have imagined that I could build at this speed or capacity six or twelve months ago.
Jordan:It didn't make sense according to the rules of gravity then.
Brian:Yes. It did not make sense. And, like, just the just the capability of, like, Opus 4.6 and Codex 5.3, like, dude, before the '26, we're gonna be at the next versions of these models. And they're so good now. Like, what like, it's going to get so much better, like exponentially better.
Brian:And, and, and all of the friction that we see, like the, the need to open up a terminal window or the need to, you know, spin up a VPS to, to run OpenClaw. Like those are technical stuff that are going to melt away in the next twelve, twenty four months, and it's just gonna become easier and easier for more people to adopt.
Jordan:Yeah. The ability to see into the future has never been more valuable. It's it's never been cloudier in terms of predicting. But if you can connect things into the future and start to position yourself now, then that that's a super valuable
Brian:Like, I do think it's wrong to say, like, this is what the future is exactly going to look like and and exactly when it's gonna show up. Like, nobody really knows that. But it's also wrong to say like, the future is gonna look like it does today. Because like, what we see like, this is not a this is not a trend that's gonna stop. This is a trend that's only going to accelerate.
Brian:And we we definitely if there's one thing you know for sure, this stuff is changing super fast. And, like, everyone is now acknowledging that something happened in December 2025. Like, the industry came around. The the holdouts all came around to say, actually, it's pretty good now. Yes.
Brian:You know? And, like, I I think we're gonna have more and more of those, like, inflection points, probably a few more this year. Yeah. You know?
Jordan:Pretty wild. So I wanna end speaking of the future, I wanna end by identifying one of the things that is a bit future looking that I am most excited about. So there is like a little bit of a movement starting, called ZHC. So zero human companies.
Brian:Okay. See, this is where I can't even get my head around it. I I've heard a little bit about this. I'm like, what does this even mean? You know?
Jordan:In in general, you know, I don't have many things that I'm really good at, but one of them is identifying the most important thing in a situation. Okay? And I can't really explain sometimes. I just kinda know, oh, all my gut says this. And as soon as I saw Zero Human Companies, everything in my mind said, okay.
Jordan:Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. This is the most important thing in the room.
Jordan:So Zero Human Companies are what they sound like. Companies that run autonomously but fully. Yeah. And there are a few people on on Twitter that are doing it. One is Austin Allred who runs what's it called again?
Jordan:Gamma? I forget. It was like a online school. I'm I'm I'm blanking.
Brian:Okay. Oh, Yeah.
Jordan:Oh, Gauntlet. Gauntlet, which basically teaches people how to use AI and then works with recruiters and companies to get them jobs like starting at 200 k. That's the pitch. You don't pay for the school. You work really hard.
Jordan:We guarantee a job at least 200 k. So very interesting business model. Great. But but he's also tinkering, and he created an agent called Kelly, and this thing runs on its own and makes money on its own. Okay?
Jordan:The other person is is Nat Ellison, I think the last name is.
Brian:I think I saw this.
Jordan:He's kind of a very prolific creator. He's down in Austin, always doing cool stuff online. And he created a ZHC called Felix. And then Tom Osman also created one, I think, called Juno. And the so one of the interesting things is that this is tied to a crypto token.
Jordan:So so they're they're like these. Yep.
Brian:Here we go.
Jordan:Yep. So it's like it's like a token backed or token run agent that goes out and figures out how to make money. And I think this is going to look very, very, very
Brian:different That is super interesting.
Jordan:Or twelve months in today than it does now. There will be agents out there that are wealthy and powerful and run big companies. And as soon as I saw that, I was like, I I gotta get involved. I I I need to understand where this is going.
Brian:I might've seen some of those. I saw I think I saw, like, Christian Jenko talking about this. Just the just the basic idea. If you if you strip it down to basics. Like like, I was thinking, like, I should just experiment with this.
Brian:Throw a thousand bucks a month, $2,000 a month at an agent. Or or like give it access to an account that that is like capped at at some dollar amount. And say like, your task is to figure out how to make this profitable.
Jordan:Yeah. You should
Brian:That's it. You should look
Jordan:at what Matt's doing with Felix, and that's kind of what he did. And yesterday was its first $10,000 Do
Brian:do you know, like, what what kind of things they're spinning up?
Jordan:I think it's like go to Upwork and bid and get things done for people. Like like that. Yeah. Okay?
Brian:It's like just like obvious ways to to make money on
Jordan:the Internet. But but right. It's starting to go into other places now where it's like, well, let's just think about business ideas. And one was like, okay. I'll go and create a subscription service to real estate data.
Jordan:So I'll go to public listings, and I'll go to government websites, and I'll collect information. I'll sell to investors who are keeping an eye on foreclosure announcements or something.
Brian:So do we start a fund that that's just like AI only companies?
Jordan:Look. I don't know what to tell you, but but this is like, there will be billionaire agents. You just kinda squint out into the future, and you think about, you know, Ready Player One Oasis type of an environment, which the Internet kind of is these days. And some of those avatars just won't be human. They'll just be agents.
Brian:I mean, unbelievable, dude. It's like, can't believe we're even talking about this.
Jordan:It feels fake, but it is absolutely not fake.
Brian:Even just from a research and analysis standpoint, like, what would happen if you said, here's $2,000. Let's see what the agent does with it. Like, you know, like, just to watch it and, like, document what it's doing and, like, from a content standpoint. You know?
Jordan:For me, it feels like getting into this over the next six months can really, really transform your life much more than we think. Like, now I mean, look, $10 in a day. That got my attention. Right? That's not like a, oh, a few bucks here and there.
Jordan:But I I I think there's, like, a moment before it gets saturated that people like us who see this, effectively, no one else sees this. Numerically, no one sees this. We're at the very, very tiny sliver.
Brian:And, like, again, like, I think people can have these, like, mindsets of, oh, that sounds so risky or experimental or that'll never work or you can never create a quote, unquote real company like that. But think about all the different ways you can leverage something. Like that could just be a free funding source for your main startup. That could be market
Jordan:I thought of it as retirement for my parents. I thought it was retirement.
Brian:It it could be as big as that. It could be as small as like, here's here's an extra couple k a month to to fund something in my life or in my business. Or it could be even just like, let's let's spin up. Let's spawn a bunch of agents to go do market research, market validation for startup ideas and see how well the agent does, and maybe that winner turns into a real company that I go run with. There's so many different ways you can run with this.
Jordan:So I'm kind of trying to call it right now, that's going to metastasize. And we're gonna go from, oh, look how much leverage this five person team can get to what that's so inefficient compared to releasing agents out into the wild to learn and adapt and either run the businesses themselves or come back with the right information or you know, because we we're still just playing with toys. But we we're on the cusp of it turning serious where the autonomy goes well beyond what we think. Because right now, we're still marionettes. Oh, what would you call it?
Jordan:Marionette master? Right? We we have the puppet. We're like, oh my god. Look what we can do.
Jordan:I can manage all these agents, but we are not necessary to manage the agents very, very, very quickly, very, very soon. And it's like, how do you attach that back into the real world and your bank account? Like, that's how do you how do you harness both?
Brian:There's a lot of this stuff like like that that, like, it sounds like off the wall. It could it be super interesting, but then at the end of the day, there's still I think this gets back to what we were saying at the beginning of the episode. Yes, there's a lot of this crazy hype y stuff or off the wall ideas that that could grow into something, but it's a little bit more future focused. But at the end of the day, there is still real work that can and probably should be getting done with AI in our business today. And like, because again, like circling back to what I'm talking about with my creator business, a lot of the challenges, yeah, there's a lot of things like I do have a video editor on my team and I'm thinking about like, who can I hire to fill these roles?
Brian:But more often than not, I'm thinking, like, I should not be hiring a person. I should be figuring out how to put this into an automated agent that fills that role and think about people as as more of the higher level thing. Such an interesting time, man.
Jordan:Alright, man. It's great to see you. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Yep. We hopefully, we get Justin back next week, if not the week after.
Brian:Think Yeah.
Jordan:Thanks, everyone. Alright. Later, folks.