Niche Sites, Vibe Coding, Real Talk - Jason Paul Hendricks - DS583 Affiliate Marketing & Side Hustles On The Doug.Show podcast

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Niche Sites, Vibe Coding, Real talk - Jason Paul Hendricks - DS583

5d ago 51:29

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I talked to Jason Hendricks while we were in Portland for Fincon 2025. We talk about the old days of niche sites. Then, I have harsh words about vibe coding. And More!

Connect with Jason – https://www.jphendricks.com/

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Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and today I’m joined by my good friend Jason Paul Hendricks. How are you today? Doing good. And we’re at FinCon recording in a. The convention center here in Portland, we’re sitting like in a big corridor. It’s huge. The ceiling must be 30 feet high, and it’s quiet in here.

So a lot of times I’m like recording live and there’s a noise from the crowd. There’s just people walking by, so it’s pretty chill and quiet. We knew we were gonna hang out and I’m like, we gotta record together. And Jason, you sent me a bunch of, uh, ideas that you had, which is great. That’s my homework and I didn’t have to do it.

So we’re gonna go through a lot of stuff, but like for people that don’t know who you are, give a little intro and you’ve been on the show a couple times, but, um, we will link up. But who are you?

Jason: Sure. it’s great to be back. Thanks for having me. Jason Hendricks, uh, I do a variety of things. , From a, from a.

You know, earnings standpoint, I do, uh, , business development consulting, broadly for FinTech companies. I’ve always had one foot in the marketing space. And, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s the area that, originally got me connected to you in a long time. Listener and, uh, watcher of the channel.

And, uh, so on that side of the thing of the, of the, of my brain, I’ve, uh. Built a couple of SaaS products and, uh, I live in Asia, so I currently live in Bangkok. Uh, long time, lived in Hong Kong before that. Again, this, this related to the finance industry work that I’ve done, but there’s a whole lot of SEO and marketing conferences in Asia as well.

And so a big part of the community that I interact with is over there on the Asia side, even though the US is my home.

Doug: And you were, I mean, you were into side hustle stuff. For several years. ’cause I, I mean, I’ve been doing my stuff since 2014 ish when I started publishing online. When did you get started, like working online?

Um, in, in this sort of like, niche site area? Mm-hmm. Or SaaS products related.

Jason: Yeah. So, so right throughout my career, uh, I sort of do, it did the marketing thing for the companies I work with. I usually work with small companies, but, uh. I think in earnest, I started building out sites in 1516, we’ll say. Okay, 20 15, 20 16.

And so there’s a bunch of sites that I continue to, to work on or help maintain. So there’s a couple of folks that, uh, uh, have subject matter expertise in certain areas of, uh, travel traveler food, uh, and I help them with the upkeep of the site. But, um. None of these were ever heavily, uh, focused on traffic and ad revenue or affiliate.

They were, they were more brand for, for sort of brand maintenance and, um, you know, for other business activities. And this was sort of the brochure of the business. Mm-hmm. Uh, and even my consulting business, I’ve got websites related to that, but I’m not looking to organic, uh, or SEO to, to bring in customers.

I, I, I do that through other meat.

Doug: Got it. Okay, cool. And you, I was gonna say, um, not to name Drop, but Matt Esei is around here and you followed him for a little while also. Yes. And and the cool thing is I was like, Matt, you should maybe come. It’s like awesome in Portland. Like he loves Portland. He’s a big beer guy.

And the thing is like Matt came to these events for years, so he. Um, is like one of the original people and he knows some of the, I mean, there’s a handful of people that have been to all of the Fincons, or they’ve been fixtures for many years. Yep. And he knows them from like eight or 10 years ago, stuff like that.

So anyway, he’s around here. We’ll gonna be able to hang out. Funny you guys haven’t crossed paths yet, but we’ll be able to Well, I know

Jason: him, but he doesn’t know me as well. But although I, I did, uh, when you first moved down to Colorado, I don’t know if you remember, I sent an intro email and you guys knew of.

B each other before, I think. But I, I had said, I was like, Hey Matt, this guy Doug is, is moving down. You gotta,

Doug: and I think, yeah. ’cause we, we knew, I remember listening the first time that I remember like, oh yeah, this guy, Matt. It was, um, on Nick Loppers podcast Side Hustle Nation. And the funny thing, it’s ’cause I, I’m a podcast listener, um, all, many different, uh, topic areas.

But I was listening to that and I remember, ’cause I was living in Bozeman and I was walking, um, my dog on a specific trail and I could just picture, ’cause Matt was talking about, um, brew Cabin and he was like, and I’m a home brewer. So we had, we had all these different interests. The funny thing is like Matt and I actually finally met.

Um, at, it was like a, a brew day at the coworking space where we know, um, like Mr. Money mustache, that’s a name drop. Right, right, right. Our other friend Pete aid me. Um, and yeah, yeah, so it was, it was there and we were just brewing beer hanging out and then Nice. Like, we didn’t even talk about business, but I was like.

Hey, we basically do the same thing, like let’s talk about it. And then we started hanging out after that and now he lives like a, a mile and a half away or something. Nice. So, okay, well it’s cool that we’re gonna be able to cover a lot of things. Uh, do you, and we recorded it FinCon a couple years ago.

Yeah. You Orleans. And do you remember what we talked about? What were you working on then?

Jason: I don’t remember. So I was working on another SaaS product at the time, Chrome extension. I still have that. Um, a, a little something has changed in the SERPs, you know, the Google SERPs. So, so I don’t focus on that Chrome extension quite as much.

Um, we also, uh, debated a little bit about, about, uh, you know, opinions on fire and whatnot. ’cause we’re at FinCon. Oh, right, right. No need to, uh, to re-litigate. Of course. Who won? Yeah. It’s like

Doug: we

Jason: both lost. I remember.

Doug: Yeah. I think, did we talk? I don’t even remember that. Okay. Obviously very memorable

Jason: ever.

So briefly.

Doug: Alright, so one of the topics that you mentioned is just essentially like online business. And we passed, um, Ricky Kessler from in Income School. We was sitting right over there and I haven’t had a chance to chat with him too much, but I think his talk is, uh, related to blogging in general. And yeah, we were kind of talking like, is Blo like.

For years, people were like, oh, is blogging dead? And I, I mean, I kind of think, yeah, like a website can serve a different purpose, but it’s not like, it was like the, the people creating that content. Like most of the talks here, people are interested. It’s video. Like currently everyone’s just like video pick whatever platform, but it’s video.

People aren’t writing like in the same way. So yeah. What’s your take? What do you think? Uh, blogging and SEO and the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think,

Jason: I think. The term blogging, uh, when it was used more commonly was about, you know, uh, consistently in, in a recurring fashion, creating content. And if you did that and, you know, the, the algorithm gods sort of, uh, smiled on you, then you would get traffic, uh, from Google, usually.

Right. Uh, people say vlogging, now they don’t, they don’t hesitate to use that term. Mm-hmm. But of course you have to publish on YouTube if you’re gonna do that. And will the algorithm Gods shine on you if you do that? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I think to the degree to which a website is still a thing you own, it’s still your property, you know, your stake in the ground.

Um, I, I think it’s silly to suggest that websites are dead. Right. So is the word blogging sort of antiquated? Probably. You know, I, I think if you just, you know, build, you know, write content and they will come. I don’t think that’s a thing anymore. Right. Um, and so, but, but is it important if you’re running your, you know, doing this as a business, is it important to have a place that is your home base where you can bring leads?

This is where you’re gonna collect an email from a visitor and, and through email interactions, you’re going to grow a relationship with them when you podcast, right? Mm-hmm. You have the distribution platforms for podcasting. Uh, but there again. It’s nice if you can bring them back to a place and, and, you know, interact with them there.

If you, if you’re selling a course or mm-hmm. You know, uh, selling a ebook or something, then, uh, another antiquated term, but still, but still a thing. Right, right. A digital product. Then, uh, you know, for that reason, I think, uh, you know, websites are still important.

Doug: Do you still have, ’cause you built a handful of niche sites like.

So what do you have around, you kind of mentioned earlier, some things are around how many sites do you have left or like, are you earning money in a traditional way with them or what’s going on?

Jason: Yeah. No, my, the websites that generate income for me are there to advertise and promote my skills and expertise.

I give visitors an opportunity to make an appointment with me. Uh, the, the, the sort of consulting. Business I do, it’s, it’s much more one-on-one. Mm-hmm. So it, and it’s, to that degree, it’s kind of high ticket relative to what, uh, some people may be in the traditional affiliate space would consider. Uh, it also doesn’t scale like consulting the way I’m doing it isn’t, isn’t something you can replicate.

I, I would like to in time, uh, when I feel confident to do so, you know, create digital products that, that can, you know, serve many people without. Me having to get involved. But, uh, at the moment, my focus with those sites are to, you know, get visitors, uh, tell them what I do, who I do it for, and, and get them to engage with me.

And from there I’ll sign a consulting agreement with them and, uh, okay. And take it from there.

Doug: Similar, you know, uh, essentially you mentioned, uh, like an online course model where, you know, you create the asset

Jason: Yep.

Doug: And then you’re able to, whatever it may be, it could be text-based or could be probably video, but it could be something else.

It could be whatever you want it to be. Um, I, I have heard some people say, and I have not researched it, so I’m curious if you have any, um, if you’ve heard anything on the streets out there, you know where people are talking about. Online courses on the streets. Yep. Of Portland Street. Yeah. It’s um, it’s crazy out here in Portland some, ’cause I was, uh, you know, I was walking around this morning and Yeah, someone’s like passed out on the stairs and like other, there’s, it’s just a little, it’s wild or it’s like that dive doesn’t happen in your

Jason: hometown, but,

Doug: um, yeah, I was, I was watching this documentary, um, Portlandia.

Did you see that? Did you see that one? Documentary. I think that it was, as far as I could tell, it was a documentary. So I was gonna ask a question, drew, but it was all that for a joke about course,

Jason: course courses on the street. Yep, yep. I gotcha.

Doug: Alright. The great thing is like since um, I.

Don’t edit these, so I’m leaving all that in that whole mess in there. That’s good. So, okay, so online courses, I heard someone mention that like, maybe online courses have peaked and they’re kind of dropping down. Mm-hmm. But I, I wonder if it’s just the industry because I’ve seen, you know, other people say, oh yeah, I’m doing awesome.

What, what do you think?

Jason: Okay. So I, I strongly believe there’s going forward, increasingly there will be something I like to call a human premium. With all the AI content, uh, and, and even AI video getting better and better. It’s gonna, it’s gonna be used in different ways. It’s gonna be used in advertisements, so on and so forth, and people are gonna just accept it, right?

And they’re still gonna buy the product. I mean, I think, I think there’s gonna be a period of time where you see o you know, obviously AI video used in an ad. Some people will say, well, I’m never gonna buy from that company. If they’re gonna do that. But over time, I think people are just gonna get anesthetized.

However, I think when it comes to learning, especially, uh, things that are, you know, as a higher value, uh, or more important interaction, um, more important part of one’s life, money or, you know, whatever you could say, you know, money or health, these sort sorts of things, I think it’s become ever more important to.

Identify and connect with real humans that you trust, that, you know, have provable, uh, expertise in, in an area. And I think, um, I think for, for that reason, I think that real human beings producing quality content. You know, where, where it’s important to do so if you’re, if you’re an affiliate niche site and you’re, you’re just writing about, uh, rice cookers, okay.

That’s, those days are gone. Right? Right. Uh, it’s not, uh, it’s not an important enough purchase mm-hmm. To justify that. Okay. But, but I think, I think in a lot of areas, uh, I think, yeah. Online, so-called online courses is gonna continue to be an a, a thing. Um, but you know, you just have to be authentic and you have to be real.

You have to bring real expertise and provide real quality. I mean, which is the things that, that Google always talked about. But I think, uh, yeah, so I, I don’t think courses are dead or whatever. Yeah,

Doug: I see a lot of them. I watch a lot of, uh, guitar, YouTube, and the soundcheck, which we’ll play after the interview here.

The, uh. Uh, yeah, we talk about guitars and stuff, so I watch a lot of guitar stuff on YouTube and a lot of those, I mean, I think the guys that are doing the best, they’re, they have courses. Hmm. And like, you know, they’re priced kind of all over the place. Some are fairly cheap, some are like 30 bucks a month.

Some are like $75 for like one course where you’ll learn a specific thing. And just like probably any. Online course where people are creating the stuff on their own. There’s different quality. So like I think some I’ve, I bought a course, I love the creator, but, and the material was fine, but there were no exercises.

So it’s just like spitting out information at me and then I. What am I supposed to be able to do after I know this? How do I know when I’ve like accomplished it? Mm. How do I know that I’ve mastered and, and I know the things that we went through. Again, I understand it when we’re talking through it, but that, does that mean I could play it afterwards?

So, and ob obviously like that sort of thing. You could learn almost anything on YouTube and probably the same thing that’s within the courses. So it’s like, again, there’s varying levels of quality. ’cause most of the course was good, but I’m like, did I? I mean, I feel like I didn’t learn anything at the end of it.

’cause I didn’t know what he, anyway, I, I’m not sure. But there’s better ways to do courses in

Jason: general.

Doug: Yep. So,

Jason: yep. But, but I assume that like, ’cause I think you said it, it starts with you sort of knowing and trusting at first. Yep. Totally. Yep. Had a relationship with him, albeit a virtual one from his content.

Then you got the confidence level and then you. Yep. Bought the course

Doug: and his videos are entertaining. So I was just like, oh, you know what? I wanna support him. So, because as I’m going through, you know, iterations of the Doug show and like how, um. I’m currently not earning money on Mile High five, but I used to earn just a little bit to cover the cost.

Jason: Mm.

Doug: And now I’m, I’m looking at it and I’m like, oh, I understand. Like if I like this guy’s videos and I want him to keep doing it, mm, I need to buy something. Otherwise there’s no reason for him to do it. ’cause like at the end of the day, I mean, that guy, you know, he’s younger, he is not in the FI space. He needs to work and earns some fucking money.

But if I’m looking at like what I’m doing and I see. Friends of mine that retired years ago and they like kind of just stopped logging ’cause they reached their goal and they’re like, well, I’m not getting anything out of this and I’m not earning money from it anymore. So that’s where I’m like, okay, I need to make sure I understand why I’m doing it and for who and like, are we both getting value from this?

And occasionally, I don’t know, we’ll do a telethon. I I, I have an idea to do a telephone. Interesting. Just like, uh, Jerry Lewis back in the day, and I’m like, support. I’ll send you this $800 fucking tote bag. The kids in the audience aren’t gonna know the reference, but I get it. I’ll send you a t-shirt with Georgie or I’ll send you this $85 sticker with Georgie’s face on it.

Jason: I’m telling you, you should do. Some people have, uh, Instagram accounts for their dogs. You should just do a whole separate YouTube channel for I

Doug: I could, yeah. Yeah. Georgie camp. The GE camp I thought about because I have like another webcam and I thought about just like setting it where she sits and then I’m just like, there’s a picture.

Picture. Little picture. Yeah. And then she like looks up or licks herself or some kind of inter, I’ll just put, I have to put a blur thing right over her. Alright. So anything else on sites before we move on to some of the other stuff?

Jason: Um, websites are not dead.

Doug: Okay. Yeah, it’s um. Well, in all sorts of other areas outside of affiliate and

Jason: content, you know, ad revenue and stuff.

There’s, there’s all sorts of reasons why they’re not dead.

Doug: Okay. So there have been a lot of, uh, talks, I think at least I don’t go to as many talks, but there’s AI talk, there’s talk, talk about, I saw one this morning. Okay. Yep. And there’s, um, as soon as I heard. People talk about vibe coding. I stopped listening ’cause I was like, I think I’m just gonna be a little annoyed with it.

’cause I kind of saw some of the, I saw symptoms of issues that might arise from it very quickly. So, um, actually can you define vibe coding? Um, just in a general sense, so I don’t mangle

Jason: it. Sure. Well, this is my take. Uh, it’s, you know, if you use one of the AI tools. Okay. And you simply ask for an output, and you could do that for, give me a script for a YouTube, uh, video.

Here’s the topic. It will give you a bunch of output. You can do the same with code. Mm-hmm. Give me the whatever JavaScript code necessary for this purpose. Right. For this application. I’m going to use it here. It should do the following. Uh, the person who’s doing that might be a coder or mm-hmm. Some, somebody who knows programming or maybe not.

Mm-hmm. But, you know, they’re just sort of feeling their way through the process. Uh, we don’t, we don’t call it something special when we ask the AI to give us written content, because we all use language every day. So everyone presumably can speak English, you know? At least in this country. And, uh, and, you know, we’re just amazed by the output.

The, the, the coder or the programmer who does the same thing with these same tools, uh, also gets output. Uh, the reason I think the, the concept of vibe coding came up is because non-programmers started asking AI to produce this software, produce an application. I wanted to do this, that, or the other thing, but that.

Mm-hmm. As you just alluded to, can lead to problems.

Doug: And I think the big, I have many, uh, biases around this, so I’ll call ’em out so it’s a little bit easier. I have a software background, so I think I’m better than other people. Right. I mean, that’s just, that’s the fastest way to say it.

Jason: And with regard to software design, you probably are better than most other people, statistically speaking.

So then, go ahead.

Doug: Yeah. And, and, and then the, the project management, which I mean like when you peel that back, the project management stuff does help you in the software development life cycle. It helps you understand all that shit and like testing and regression testing. And basically when someone, uh, a vibe coder, for example, maybe they find a bug and then they’re gonna go fix it, and then they fix the bug that they were trying to fix, but they accidentally broke something before you have to test things.

To make sure that you didn’t break something that was working before. Yeah, and testing is most of like the software process. It’s just like fucking testing it over and over again. Very well said. And I think it’s, it’s really cool that maybe a someone without a coding background, a designer perhaps. Um, yeah, maybe they just have like a more art artistic background.

Yeah. And they don’t know the, the coding process and they get something going. It’s really awesome to be able to get it going without having to consult with like a technical person. Right. And it’s much cheaper to prototype to get it kind of in the right spot. The issue is like if someone tries to sell that prototype version to, uh, I know as a finished product.

Yep. And they’re trying to fail fast. They’re trying to iterate all these. Like one sentence, things that we learned from Silicon Valley Great show. So if like, if you’re trying to do that, then you’ll end up in a spot where like, okay. And I basically like if I see a product that that was done in that way and I buy it and I’m like, oh cool, I’m getting a lifetime.

I’m getting a lifetime access to this thing. And I’m thinking that the person is gonna stand behind it and they’re gonna iterate on it. And you know, version five’s gonna be amazing, but. Uh, they kind of lose steam on it. And then I paid a hundred bucks for something that never gets past the prototype.

And then I’m like, oh, this whole thing was a waste. So, and we, I saw it before when coders were doing it. Yeah. In fucking, um, what’s Noah Kagan’s cheap? Ab Sumo. Ab Sumo. So it’s like, oh yeah. Lifetime. You get the lifetime access. It’s not sustainable. The company goes outta business and then you have software that doesn’t work.

So like, that’s stupid. Right. Well, you, you.

Jason: We started very general and you’ve gotten very specific, but yeah, so fuck all. No, I’m just kidding. So, okay, so, so, so a little bit to unpack there. So first of all, I think, I think it’s clear that, uh, in companies, large and small, the actual programmers, the, the development departments are using these tools.

There’s no question. Just, just like. Marketers or writers or whoever, what we’ve been doing with what you’ve done in the past with, uh, ai, uh, tools for, for content, for whatever prose, fiction, nonfiction, whatever. Uh, you can use these things as efficiency tools. The right way to do it is to get outlines, idea starters, right?

And of course you need a human to come back. And humanize it, not, not for purposes of avoiding AI detection, but to actually make it good, right? Mm-hmm. To, to move it from passable to good. And, uh, and when folks, for instance, that maybe for, for which English is not a first language, uh, couple years ago started, got their hands on these tools and would just whatever, auto crap out these articles and push ’em live without any kind of interaction.

It was obvious. It was, it was shit. Right. Um, in the same way, a non programmer, a non coder, and so, so the, the coders, the, the programs, the developers are using these tools to speed up their process. Okay. For, for the non-developers, the so-called vibe coders, to bring it back to the, the fun part of what you said it, when, when they do it, they don’t have the coding background to actually look at the code.

It would be as if they had. Produced this English language article, but they didn’t speak English. So they have no way of discerning whether this is good or excellent, right? Mm-hmm. And, and they have no way of looking at the code. And, and so this is, this is a problem now, I think, as you said, the, the selling lifetime deals and, and pushing these sort of half-baked products out there, that’s been happening for a long time.

Right? Uh, I, I dunno if it was you or somebody like I, I also. Associate that with like ClickBank. Mm-hmm. And like these kinds of offers, like maybe there’s some useful thing there, but like you just put a wrapper or package around it, sell it for a ridiculous amount of money and then whatever you’re done.

And, uh, having said that. The lifetime deal thing, right. So I, I say this because one of the companies that I’m is, they’re, they’ve got a marketing related sa, it’s a link link related SaaS tool. Um, they’re, they’re sort of second in their space. They’re, they’re, you know, uh, doing well. They’ve got, uh, good growth in their MRR and all of that stuff.

You know, they, they got their start with lifetime deals. They didn’t do it through AppSumo. They did like direct lifetime deals, but for them, it was like a way to get early funding. To, to, to do more development and also to get, uh, early feedback from customers. They have, you know, made a very hard decision to move to actual subscriptions.

They say hard because they could easily keep selling lifetime deals. They keep putting investment into their code and developing the product, but they have to like wean themselves from lifetime deals because it’s so easy for them to do that if they wanted to. They made the right choice and they moved away.

So I, I would say that lifetime deals aren’t always bad, but, but yeah, if you’re, if you’re the scammy type and you’re just crapping out a product, uh, whether you use AI to do it or not. Mm-hmm. Uh, and then you have no intention of supporting the product or your customers, that’s always a bad thing.

Doug: Yeah.

And I, I do agree, like lifetime deals aren’t always bad. They can be done in a bad way. Absolutely. They’re

Jason: abused by

Doug: a lot, but, but it’s not always, and I guess this is the perfect time to let you know I have a new product out and you can actually get a lifetime deal, but only on this episode.

Jason: Well, I thought it was, yeah, that’s the, that’s the $0 Subscribe to the Doug Show

Doug: deal, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lifetime.

Jason: Well, you’ll have access to all the episodes for a lifetime. It’s not a commitment on Doug’s part that he’s gonna keep producing it for his life, some life.

Doug: Okay. So cool. Alright, anything else with the vibe coding area? No, but,

Jason: oh, okay. Well, I will say one extra thing. This is a little bit of a pitch.

So, uh, I, my, my tech partner for, for my s product, he’s got a tool of his own, which came out of some of our. Sort of efforts of playing around with Vibe. So I’ve, I’ve tried some of these tools. Um, I mean, some of ’em are just, so you’re programmer guy, you know, an IDE. It’s just, it’s a, it’s a enhanced sort of coating window that developers use.

Um, so there’s a bunch of those like cursor and windsurf and stuff that are AI enabled, right? But then there’s like lovable, you heard of Lovable, I think I have. And uh, repli is another one. So these, these ones are really going after this sort of non-program or. Uh, uh, vibe coder type, and they, they let you sort of see the, the tool working in the window.

They also make it so you can publish your project, but it really is not that at all. Like you can’t deploy the product. It’s, it’s still just an MVP, like you said. Mm-hmm. And, uh, but what, what we identified when we tried to play around with these things and then quickly went back to our human programmers, uh, was.

This, this code auditing problem. And so he came up with a tool that makes it easy for folks that have done this sort of programming to run their, uh, their GitHub repo through this auditing tool. And it’ll tell you if you’ve got security vulnerabilities. ’cause the thing people forget is that these AI tools, they scraped the internet for everything.

Right? Right. They, they scraped the text, but they scraped all the code. And as a result, they scraped security vulnerabilities as well. And so those things will creep into the code that the AI writes. So anyway, there are, there are ways to sort of make it more secure, but you still need human beings. That’s the punchline.

Gotcha.

Doug: So that’s, that’s a thing that you, that is a product. Yeah. That’s a, well,

Jason: that’s a, that’s, let me check AI if I can name drop it, but yeah, that’s my, my. Tech partners product. Right. Okay. Gotcha. So people can just go check it out. But you know, if you don’t have a GitHub repo and already have code, you’re not gonna be able to do much with it.

Okay. That’s what it’s for.

Doug: What do you think, well it sounds like maybe tools like that might be where Vibe coding is going so that people can like effectively use the AI tools to code, have products, and then have, um, other AI check it. To make sure it’s, uh, high quality. Is that, that’s where you see it going.

Jason: So there’s, so the a Yeah. I mean, so the AI involved in this product is, uh, suggestions for how to fix it. The, actually, the auditing part is, is not AI related. It’s uses other methods, but, but yeah, I think, I think the point is the, the tools like this have been used by programmers all this time. Mm-hmm.

This, this tool makes it easy for non-programmers to just plug their. They repo in and, and use it. I, I think where it’s going is human programmers are still gonna have jobs. That’s where I think it’s going. Okay. Just like write copywriters and authors and the human premium that I, I mentioned earlier, I, I still think, you know, humans need to be in the loop for all this stuff.

Doug: One, uh, you know, social media is horrible as, as we know, but I saw that. Creators they’re taking real content, so they’re taking like our conversation. Mm-hmm. They’re like stripping the, uh, transcript. Yep. And then they’re putting AI, and it’s essentially like a little avatar, like it looks like a human.

’cause AI is very good. And then it’s like a reaction video and they put something else in the background. And the thing is like. If you go on shorts or reels, or, I’m sure TikTok, which I’m not on, I’m sure I know. I see all the time just copy written stuff. Uh, people take it even like, they take it from TikTok and then they put it on Instagram and they’re like, let me know if you have any issues with this.

And they like credit it by putting the, you know, the handle on there. But yeah, there’s all the, all this theft going on. Yep. And yeah. Any thoughts on that?

Jason: Well. So, I mean, some of these platforms really encourage it, right? Maybe even YouTube does now, right? If you want to clip it and repurpose it and whatnot.

Mm-hmm. So, and it’ll strip out your, if there’s copyright music in there, I guess it’ll strip it. I mean, so the platforms encourage it. I think it’s, uh, unfortunately, I think it’s a symptom of, uh, our nature as. Human consumers like, I think, I think your exact, your, your specific example is, uh, a form of criticism, right.

The sort of reaction mm-hmm. That, that reaction video thing, whether it’s in shorts or not. Mm-hmm. That’s, that’s a whole genre of, of content. Right. And I don’t think that’s gonna, that’s two people talking over the fence in their backyard, I mean, about the neighbors. That’s, that’s not gonna go away. But, uh, well actually, but the fact that there’s theft,

Doug: yeah.

Jason: Even before the AI started doing it to us. Right?

Doug: Yeah. Yeah. Well no, I’m talking So that’s one thing, the reaction video, ’cause you could claim that as fair use. That’s right, that’s true. So that, that is probably Okay. Um. If someone is actually adding something to the conversation, some value, but I’m saying people are literally taking like stuff that you and I say and then the direct transcript just giving

Jason: an avatar to you.

Yep.

Doug: So it’s a different voice and then it gets views and it looks different. Human premium. Yeah. Man,

Jason: I think in time that’s, but it looks like a human,

Doug: and it’s our words. So because that’s the thing, like it ended up being like, oh man, I, I agree a hundred percent. That’s why I do these shows, but. At the same time, I’m like, I don’t even, I don’t know how you defend against that other than just like,

Jason: don’t, don’t the platforms at least attempt to market as AI produced?

Doug: I don’t know. I I would hope so, but at the end of the day, if it keeps you on the platform and they show more ads, I don’t know if they give a fuck. I would suspect not.

Jason: I think you’re right. I don’t know. I, I, all I can say is I have faith and hope that originality. Yeah. And uh, human connection will persevere.

Doug: Yeah. It’s interesting. It’s very interesting. I think, um, yeah, the human premium, especially like coming to, we’re at a live event, it’s really awesome. There’s no replacing, just hanging out. So you’ve been to how many Fincons now?

Jason: This is my second.

Doug: It is your second. Okay. I was in New

Jason: Orleans. I skipped Atlanta.

I apologize. I know

Doug: it’s your hometown. That’s okay. That’s all right. It was pretty fun. Like one cool thing there was, um, there were way more parties and I was, I was like, this is what I heard. They were like before. Um, but we don’t have, there’s not as many parties this year. The other thing in Atlanta, it was also a Hyatt Regency, but they had like breakfast in the morning, like nice breakfast in the morning if you stayed at the hotel, and they don’t have it here.

So it’s a little bit of a bummer for. Some of the amenity things. Mm-hmm. It’s, um, it’s really cool to hang out. So is there anything that you were looking to get out of coming to FinCon this year?

Jason: Well, I’m, so we’re talking all this AI stuff and, and so that, that does play a role in some of my startup and business activities.

I mean, it’s hard to avoid it. Uh, even my consulting clients ask how they can use it. So one of the things I was, you know, looking forward to is seeing how it’s seeping into. The broader content, uh, sorry, con Yeah. Content creator. Mm-hmm. Um, ecosystem. Uh, like we mentioned, I went to a, a panel this morning, a, a talk.

It was pretty good. There was, it was, it was very automation focused. It was about how to, how to create efficiencies. And I, I think, and, and the only point where it brushed up against content creation was, you know, giving outlines and ideas and stuff and, and, and she never. Even alluded to the idea of using it to produce the actual content.

And I think, I think there’s a, people are coming to the conclusion that, that, you know, it’s good for some things we still need to do, do the work. Mm-hmm. Uh, and I’m, I was glad to see that. I’m also here to check out the, the FinTech companies. ’cause you know, although my focus is more B2B fintechs. Um, I’ve already met a couple of founders or CEOs of some of these B2C FinTech companies that are here, and that’s been, that’s been super interesting.

Doug: Very cool. Yeah, it’s, it’s a cool event if people are able to check it out. Um, I know like the Doug show audience, uh, actually it’s a broad range. So a handful of the folks would be literally interested in this type of thing, even if you’re adjacent to anything money or financially related. Like it works.

And then there’s a lot of overlap, like as you walk around, like it’s like people that are super into YouTube or whatever platform. So it’s very fun. Alright, cool. Anything else you got on your mind that you’re working on or?

Jason: Uh, yes. Well, my, uh. Enthusiastic support for websites. Uh, I, I do have a, a reason why that’s on my mind these days.

Uh, so my other SaaS project that I’m working on is called AI App Onsite. Uh, it’s currently a WordPress plugin, but it will be CMS Agnostic soon. Uh, and it has an AI component, obviously you can tell from the name. Uh, it’s on the tin. So the idea here is, uh, just think AI power smart forms. And apps, um, if there was something that you built a GPT for on, on OpenAI, folks are not aware, right?

OpenAI has this thing where you can build these little GPTs, it, it’ll be a, a canned prompt. Uh, maybe you upload some extra content to make it smarter and it becomes this sort of app. But it lives on open ai. And what folks a lot of folks here are even talking about is, you know, build this GPT and you’re, you know, you can send your audience over to it and it helps them in some way.

Uh, my premise, uh, here is that you, you shouldn’t have to send people away from your website, like bring them to your website. And this tool allows you to effectively build the equivalent of A GBT on your website with no code. You don’t have to do any crazy, uh, you know, coding to make it happen. Uh, the other common use case would be, you know, if you have a contact form, uh, or a, a support form on your website.

Right now, these are sort of dumb forms. Uh, most people don’t even use them unless they wanna complain to you about something, you know. But, uh, if you can instead offer a smart form that, that asks them for their email, but ask them a couple more questions and they’re going to get a real time answer, a real time analysis or report, whatever the business you happen to be in.

This makes it easy to build this sort of, uh, AI powered real time, uh, uh, app on your site. And you still get the, the content sent to you. You can send it into your CMS, uh, you know, all of that sort of thing. But, uh, your client, uh, your prospect, your site visitor, gets a real time response instead of just clicking the button and hoping someone gets back to them someday.

Doug: You

Jason: know?

Doug: Okay. And it sounds like it could. Be for almost any industry. It’s just like someone, someone would need to know what they wanted to do.

Jason: Right. So you bring your own API key as well. So you may recall from, from when you were covering the AI stuff. Mm-hmm. You know, there’s a lot you can do. Just go into a chat GBT window.

Uh, but you can also get an API key and you can put that in other tools. There’s other tools where you can use that. Uh, so you get your own API Key. Uh. Which means I’m not charging credits. Right. This is another thing, the free version of this, it’s, it’s completely free right now. Um, and you could do a lot with a free tier.

You bring your own key, uh, and yeah, you, you can, uh, you also have full control over the prompt as well, so if you know how to write a prompt and talk to chat GPT, you can build one of these as well. Gotcha. Pretty cool. How long have you been working on that? Uh, since inception, about a year and a half. Okay.

Which is way longer than it should have been. ’cause I, I, you vibe coded it, didn’t you? No. Admit it. I, come on. You did. I, I didn’t. I didn’t. I I, I can tell you of my, my vibe coding story, it’s just, but it ended in disaster, so I, it is not as fun a story. No, I didn’t, this is, uh, this is definitely human coders.

In fact, I’m on my second development team. The first ones didn’t work out okay. So

Doug: that’s probably why it took. Took a while, right? Oh, you’re being kind.

Jason: Yeah.

Doug: Alright, that’s pretty cool. So we’ll link up to that so people could check it out. And like what size business? Um, or like, who should check out that tool? Like,

Jason: well, anybody who has a website and, and so we’re going after sort of, there’s two ICPs, right? So anybody with a website who gets visitors but needs to convert more of them.

So one of the ideas is like we get. Far less traffic to our websites, any kinda websites than we used to. Thank you, Google. Right? So you need to do more with the visitors. You still get. And so the idea here is, is by offering this real time value, you can convert more visitors. So anybody who’s got a site with a form could potentially get value from this.

Uh, the other folks that I would suggest take a look is agencies, because if you, if you’re a marketing agency or a web development agency, you’ve got existing clients. Uh, you may have a retainer with ’em, you’re doing regular monthly maintenance, but, uh, offering them to build, uh, an AI app on the site represents a new project.

Uh, you can get an affiliate kickback for me if you buy the, the paid tier, but, but you know, more importantly, you can, you can ask your client for a, which I think is perfectly reasonable if it takes. Five to 10 hours of work to develop the prompt and ideate with your client to build their app, then that’s billable time.

So, uh, yeah, so marketing or web development agencies that want to increase the value of their existing clients can, can take a look at this too.

Doug: Are any people using it now?

Jason: Uh, handful of folks are in our, you know, our, our sort of early adopter, uh, pool lifetime deal. No, I’m sorry. I’m just kidding. Even better boss.

They, they got it for free, so. Okay. Gotcha. By the way, I’d love to come back and talk about it ’cause I’m probably going to do a lifetime deal. Okay. I, I haven’t decided yet, but, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, we’ll, we’ll see how it goes. Yeah. Because I can give you the inside scoop on AppSumo these days too. So like I would do it through AppSumo if I did it.

Oh yeah. Okay. So it’s just gonna be a whole interesting experiment. Gotcha. Alright.

Doug: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds interesting. ’cause like there’s one, I don’t know if this will come out as a fully formed thought.

I like to know a Kagan a lot, and I, I don’t know him personally or anything like that. He seems like a good guy. Overall, I was not. I would watch his content and then I would feel bad, so I, I stopped watch. I was like, don’t show me this channel ever again. And I, I do that. I highly recommend it. If there’s something, even if it’s, I’m like, oh, I’m learning something, or whatever, I was like, you know what, this guy kind of gets me down.

So I, I turned it off and I don’t want it anymore. Um, but I listened to his interview and I, I really, I listened to all his stuff, um, back in the day and found him influential. Um, but, but anyway, I think I heard an interview with, uh, Tim Ferris and Noah mention like, yeah, someone is like, um, kind of not committing.

He’s like, come on, open your calendar right now, kind of pressuring them. Into scheduling a meeting or a follow up call. He’s like, let’s do it right now. Like, we’re not gonna wait. And I was like, I don’t like that kind of high pressure. I agree. On the flip side, there’s a wonderful interview, I think on the Knowledge project, um, podcast, good Channel with Shane Parrish, I think that’s his name.

Yep. Daniel Kahneman. And Daniel Kahneman said, um, he got a phone call during the interview and. Someone was trying to get him to commit to something and he was like, Nope, I don’t say yes to anything on the phone. Uh, right away I think about it and I was just imagining Noah Kagan talking to Daniel Kahneman and Daniel Kahneman would be like, no, I’m not playing your game.

You can’t high pressure me. And I would rather be like a Daniel Kahneman than Noah Kagan. And I was like, it’s very clear to me like Noah’s trying to pressure people into stuff. And I’m like, I don’t. I, I, and I’ve. Listen to the deals that they do with App Sumo, and I heard they’re like super hard negotiators.

Yes. And it’s like they,

Jason: that’s what I’ve heard.

Doug: Yep. So I’m like, uh, I don’t really give a shit anymore. So I blocked his channel and I’m, I think he’s doing awesome. Those right. It has like a million subscribers or something.

Jason: You know, they, they released their own SaaS, tidy Cal.

Doug: Okay.

Jason: And that, that calendar, right.

It’s a, it’s a competitor to Calendly. Okay. But, but it’s so interesting you mentioned, I didn’t know about what, what, what you’ve mentioned just now, but it’s, it, it fits that a guy with that sort of attitude or approach wants a calendar program that makes it easy. Send a link, you know, get on my calendar, let’s do this kind of thing.

Doug: And I’m like, it’s my time. Fuck that. No. So I’m with you. I’m

Jason: with you.

Doug: Interesting. So that I need to. F fully form that thought, but I, I, that was pretty fully formed. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, because I think if you listen to those two things back to back, it’s like, oh yeah, I, I don’t wanna pressure people into do, I’m not buying a fucking used car, so, okay.

I took a weird, weird direction. So we’ll link to, uh, AI app on site. Yep. So people could check it out. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, anywhere else people should find you?

Jason: Uh, j Paul Hendricks on most of the social platforms, but I don’t, I. You know, publish much, but you can, if you wanna connect with me, you can.

LinkedIn is a good place. Okay,

Doug: cool. We’ll put it in the link, uh, in the, or we will put the link in the description so people can get to it if they want to. And you’ll just send me all that stuff later. So Jason, always fun to catch up. Excellent. Thanks for joining me here. And yeah, we’ll get an update from you and, uh, whenever, whenever the time’s right.

Look forward to it. Thank you Duck.

And you know what we should do a sound check is, and that’s usually what I do for my other show. So you mentioned that you do wanna talk about guitars. So one thing I could tell you, one guitar that I, I think it’s my ro most recent, um, one that I got.

Acquisition. Yeah. Acquisition. Yep. So I really love the idea of the pre-war acoustic. So we’re talking, uh. Well, maybe it’s not obvious. So basically like before 1940 ish or so? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I don’t know, they’re super cool. I really like the Gibson acoustics and those tend to be quite expensive. If they’re in great condition, they may be, uh, probably seven to $10,000, something like that.

And then one that’s beat up. It might still be like two to three. However, there was a, a lower end brand. It’s still made by Gibson, but it’s called Kalamazoo and Interesting. And I, I found one of those. And essentially it’s like the same wood, some of the bracings different, some of the appointments are a little bit different, but these were budget guitars.

Mm-hmm. And you know, very cheap. So basically I found one that looked to be underpriced. And it was in great shape. Uh, I, I don’t think there were any cracks. Wow. And, you know, I’m not an expert, but generally I was just like, man, this is in great shape. Didn’t need a, a neck reset and that sort of thing. Um, but, but anyway, it did need a little work and I finally dropped it off at a really good luthier and, uh, in the Denver area.

Oh, look at you. And it does. I was a little afraid. That it might need a refre. So there were a couple loose braces. That’s not a big deal. The bridge was a little beat up. Mm. Um, tuner, uh, screw holes were a little off, so they, you know, that’s pretty easy to fix. Mm-hmm. But it does need a refre, so that’s gonna be expensive, but it’s gonna play much, much better.

You plan on keeping that? I think so, yeah. Because you flipped guitars previous. Yep. I flipped and I think I would, I’m gonna keep it for a long time. I could see if I’m just like, um, I don’t connect with it. But I think with the new frets, ’cause old frets of that timeframe, they’re more near, have you played some old low fret?

I can’t say that I have. So the frets are a little bit smaller and like less wide and they’re not as tall. And after years, like they get worn down. They get worn down. Yeah, that’s right. So after. You know, they, anyway, so I did drop it off at the shop. It’s gonna take a couple months. They were pretty backed up.

It’s a very good luthier and stuff. Um, and it’s actually, I got a good deal on the guitar, but this, this work kind of erases it and I probably could get like a cheaper fret job, but I mean, this guy like specializes in like, um, vintage acoustic restoration. I think he worked at like Gruss or Carter’s Nice.

Somewhere in Nashville. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have to say, yeah, good. I love the. New intros for the Doug show. Oh, thanks. You gotta keep doing that. And I like that you’re mixing it up. There’s, it’s always something new and Yeah. And I, I please keep doing that. Okay. Right. Because it, it makes me, uh, I always listen to your episodes, but it makes me wanna say, okay, what’s he gonna play this time?

Okay. It keeps it fresh. Yeah. When a couple times, like I have, I’ve sat down and I’m like, all right, I’m gonna do one. And like, I’m just not feeling it and I’m like, you know what? I’m not gonna force something. So I’m like, I I, at this point, like I, I’ve, I have been putting it off enough where I’m like, I need to fucking do it.

So actually when I get home from this conference, ’cause I wanna do music for Mile High five and I keep punting it off and I need to, I need to just do it. Well, if you get two or three good ones in, you record all of them and then you can get them whenever, right? Yep. And, and that’s, that’s my hope. I want to have a few, and then I could just give it to my producer, Chris, and I’m like.

You could use any of these. Mm, it’s totally fine. Mix it up depending on like, the mood of the episode. ’cause I think some will be acoustic, some will be electric, some will be just, um, yeah, I don’t know. I Nice. But thank you for saying that. So have you been playing a little bit more or, I have not because I relocated.

So I’ve been very much in, uh, mobile mode. Okay. Uh, I, I did play with, uh, the band. The guys that I used to play with in Hong Kong, I played, uh, I’ll say two months ago. So that was my last show. So I guess I could say I played as, recently as two months ago, we did a, we did a show in Hong Kong, but uh, it wasn’t our best.

We hadn’t been, we hadn’t been, uh, uh, rehearsing enough and so, okay. But it was fun. Yeah. Yeah. So, very good. Alright.

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