JOHN CLENDENNING
0:53
Everybody. And welcome to the AI Marketing Experts Show. Our topic this week is, is going to be an interesting one. Um, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of things flying around in AI and I think that making sure that we understand in our minds as, as either agency owners or if you’re in a marketing department and you’re trying to figure out AI and how to incorporate AI, there’s, there’s just so many options. There’s and, and they’re, they’re being added by the day. So for your workflows, however, right. A lot of times it comes down to should I, should I buy into this product or should I build my own? Right. And there’s a lot of tools nowadays that can help with the build your own or have someone else build it for you kind of a thing.
JOHN CLENDENNING
1:43
So that’s really our topic today is build versus buy. All right, what’s the options? What, what should we think about what, what are, what are the traps that, that we might fall into? Let’s talk about the very first thing. You know, how do we actually cut our software costs? Let’s just go ahead and start with John. John knows probably the most about this, I think out of all of us. What do you think, John?
JOHN CLENDENNING
2:05
Yeah, I think it’s a question. It’s a question that comes up for my carpet cleaning and home cleaning business clients as well. It’s like, hey, house call pros, service monster Jobber Marquette. They all got this stuff coming in. I’ve got this other software I’ve got. And we have that conversation. I got one coming up this afternoon with one of our big clients who’s asking what can you build for me? What can we do? What can I build? Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi have their how to build your, your, your clone of yourself. Six week training going on right now.
JOHN CLENDENNING
2:35
It is the hot topic on planet Earth. Go back to end of January, this thing called openclaw came out and everybody was, oh my God, agents. That’s the thing. Four months later. So in AI language four years later. Now at this point, if in, in the end of May, beginning of June, where it’s, it is, everybody everywhere is trying to put it into all of the stuff and it’s, it’s a hard, it depends on this. We were talking ahead of time, but it’s sort of like, you know, if you’re in the world of software, it’s. Somebody’s always in the background updating it.
JOHN CLENDENNING
3:11
Somebody is always keeping the lights on, somebody is always making the changes. And this pipe dream is that AI will just do that itself. Like these agents will just self self update. And we’ve got friends that are in the marketing world that kind of went down that rabbit hole and are, and everybody with the open claw are realizing it’s kind of, you kind of still need to be the smartest person in the room and direct it and correct mistakes and all of that kind of stuff. Do you want to be that person? Do you want to run your business, meet new farmers, new ag people? Do you want to meet new, you know, referral partners and real estate agents and all of that kind of stuff? Like, you know, insurance adjusters for roofers? Do you want to be out doing that and actually growing the business? Or do you want to be spending hours behind the computer going why did my inbox zero not run this morning for my agent? What happened? What did I do wrong? What’s a, what’s a wiki versus a rag we talked about versus, you know, whatever, a graphy graphic, you know, semantic indexing. What, what, what did you even just say, John? And somebody needs to know what I just said to be able to make sure that when you tell it to do something, it has a memory and a history to do it. Whether that’s in one little tool to update Your accounting, like QuickBooks has got AI in it now, or do you want to take it outside with these connectors like the, the fancy world is worded now as MCPS, but you know, APIs. Boom.
JOHN CLENDENNING
4:30
Here’s everything, here’s all your data. Go figure it out. We’re just going to data dump on you, mcps. Here’s all the connecting points, we’re going to dump all that to you. Go figure out which ones you want. Machine, right? And then CLI is sort of like, oh, which one do you want individually? This is the world of sort of that world. Do you know what I just said that’s part of should you build it or buy it? If you don’t even know what I just said, do you want a whole new degree in something because it’s not a college course for the next three years. It’s like you better know what I just said in three weeks if you’re going to be building it yourself.
JOHN CLENDENNING
5:00
So if you do, it’s exciting. And Chris and I like all the he way ahead of the charge. But I came up the rear and like holy crap, holy crap. And every day there’s something new. You’re going, I can add that, this tool and do this and I can move this over here. Oh, there’s a new thing came out. I can add it over there. And it, all of it is just, it’s, it’s evolving so fast.
JOHN CLENDENNING
5:17
Who keeps up with that or keeps up with your business? That’s the decision I think you really need to make. And if it’s somebody else, then let somebody else keep up with it. Right? Let the software provider or whatever add it in, make it easier or change software to something that does seem to have the agentic built in. But you’re still going to have to have, you know, whether it’s a 22 year old, just out of college rep, just like you got with Google, just like you got with your, you know, salesforce.com well, you’re gonna have to have that for somebody to help you keep the AI working in the background too. It doesn’t just run itself.
BRAD KILGORE
5:54
I think that’s exactly right. And excuse me, I was talking earlier about, I was watching a lot of basketball lately because it’s the playoffs and it seems like there’s so many commercials even within when you’re watching the game, it’s in the background, you know, Google this and you know it’s talking about all the updates with Google AI. Get Google AI overview. My point is, is the commercials, the advertisers are saying this is AI now just build it, right? So to me it’s like okay, being a Web developer for 20 years there’s always been that option that the layman, the business owner could build a website on their own. But like John was just saying, is that a smart move for you and, or your company because just because you can, should you my recommendation in most cases would be probably not because, you know, trying to even just trying to understand all the things that John just said and manage everything and have a degree essentially on how to put this all together is not what most people need or want. So, yes, it’s getting easier. Yes, it’s getting more intuitive. Yes, it will do a lot of the things for you.
BRAD KILGORE
7:12
But even for us, building tools or systems that are beneficial for businesses still need management. They still need support, they still need somebody behind the scenes to be able to keep. Keep the lights on, keep it flowing, keep it working, because it will break. You know, it’s just like with websites. You know, again, I’ve had people over the years, oh, you know, I built this amazing website, but it broke. Now what do I do? I don’t have a backup. I didn’t know I needed that. You know, what do I do? So you really, in most cases don’t want to be in that boat unless you really want to take on a big, A big commitment.
BRAD KILGORE
7:50
Because that’s exactly what it is. So software, AI tools, all these different things, yes, they’re fancy, they look cool. The thought of doing it all yourself and bringing it all in house, I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying make sure you have a backup plan and you have somebody on your team somewhere that can help you put it all together correctly. And maybe it makes sense to just work with somebody like one of us who live and breathe this stuff. And that way you have somebody that will support you and help you.
LAURA SUTHERLY
8:27
I think that’s very valuable insight that you’ve been providing because I think that as we all have had experience, you are correct. I mean, there of course are, we’ll say, quicker ways to build the website, but that is a question that we also receive. I say that’s primarily the way we get a lot of clients is that they’ve tried to build it themselves. They realized that there were steps that were skipped or missed or they just did not know they needed to do, or that tool that they were trying to use got them 20%. You know, they felt like they were 20% there, but it was that extra 80 that made the difference. And so, again, if you know what, what it’s built on, what will put you out there, what will get things done faster for you, it makes a huge difference. And I know with this group we talk about foundation, it all comes down to the foundation. So there might be some amazing things that we’re able to do faster with AI.
LAURA SUTHERLY
9:19
But if we don’t have that foundational knowledge, it is just a tool. So we do need to know how to keep it fine tuned, running right with the latest information versus it. I guess one way to think about it is pulling out an old laptop. If it’s not on the latest software and stuff it might be slow. I mean I can mention dial up to some of us that we might remember that and looking at some, you know, there’s just of course advancements but we do need to know what the latest is. And if you’re working with someone who’s in it in the weeds all the time, they’ll tell you which companies just popped up and chances are might just disappear. We’ve all done that. And that’s one thing that I think one reason why we started talking as a group is we would see something, it was fantastic.
LAURA SUTHERLY
10:10
But then we watched it fade away because it had momentum, grabbed a lot of attention and then was gone. So that’s another thing too to be aware of is will that company that you built your whatever, whether it be vibe coding, whether it be your new website, whether it be whatever widget that you want to build is that company that’s hosted or you built it on, will it still be around? So these are things just to consider. I’m with Brad. If you that’s where you want to spend your time is in front of the computer, go for it. You know that’s the reason why we’re doing this is to give that those gold nuggets to those business owners. But also think maybe it’s something that when work with a partnership, if you want to be involved, ask them about admin access and see if you can have a level of access that you can keep it updated if you like. Because I know that this is what we’re going to talk about here as a team is it’s one thing to build it, it’s another thing. Like John and the group is saying it’s another thing to keep it up to date and the information, especially if you’re building a clone.
LAURA SUTHERLY
11:15
Will, where’s your knowledge? When was the last time you added to it?
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:20
I got a question for you Chris. When’s the last time you used Perplexity browser with a shortcut to write a blog post that we showed everybody back in October, November?
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:30
No, I haven’t used that, but I’ve
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:32
used I forgot about it. Help me figure out things.
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:35
Yeah, exactly.
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:37
That was amazing. It’s gone. They deprecated it. You can’t even use it anymore. I found that.
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:44
Exactly.
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:45
Yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
11:46
After all that time spending on it. Right. And that’s, and that’s really kind of the trap that we’re talking about. Right. And we, we had a friend of ours, Danny Barrera, come on. Right. And he built this, this awesome software that AI driven content and all that kind of stuff. And it was obsolete when Claude released something, you know, and it’s like $300,000.
JOHN CLENDENNING
12:10
It was all 300.
JOHN CLENDENNING
12:11
Sorry. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, right. And so I mean, and that’s kind of the trap that we all live in sometimes. And, and I know that I’ve lived there too with my own software that we run for our a, we run our agency on some custom software that we have built. You know, we, we started it in 2014. I guess that’s 12 years ago at this point, right? Am I doing the math on that? 14 years. 12 years, whatever. Not good math.
JOHN CLENDENNING
12:39
And, and we spent, we have spent a significant amount of money on that. Like if we tracked actually what we’ve spent over the past, you know, 12 years on, that is easily going to be upwards of 100 to $200,000. Right. So is it obsolete? No, because we keep building it to our workflows, right. And, and we keep adjusting it to how the Internet is adjusting. Our problem that we ran into at the beginning of this year is though, our programmer wasn’t using cloud code and, and by the time that he would finish a module that, or a fix, Google had already shifted or, or, you know, so we, we took it over with Claude code. We’re able to move fast, but the problem is we’re breaking a lot of stuff though, right? So we’re, we’re falling into that time trap of having, having to spend so much time fixing things that cloud code is, is actually going out and actively breaking and killing our workflows. So that’s kind of the trap that you fall into.
JOHN CLENDENNING
13:47
And, and, and that we’re gonna see. So I, I, I say no custom. That’s me. No custom. Right? Stay, stay with stuff that’s off the shelf because you’re going to spend a heck of a lot less money and time. And really time is, is more valuable to me than, than money is. Right. And I say that with a big asterisk that I am currently building all sorts of cool stuff for my agency and my clients as well.
JOHN CLENDENNING
14:12
So, you know, it’s, it’s, I’m, it’s, Yeah, I, I don’t know, but I think that if I were to go back to 2014, I would have said, let’s just use this software over here. Right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
14:24
So do as Chris says. Not as Chris does. Exactly.
JOHN CLENDENNING
14:28
Yeah, pretty much.
JOHN CLENDENNING
14:28
What do you think again?
CHRIS HUNTER
14:31
Well, so I, you guys know, I think you guys know I’m, I’m building things for my agency and I, I’m building in quad code and, and cowork and I love doing all of that stuff. But you know, a lot of times you’ll see on YouTube someone will say like, oh, I built this in, in 20 minutes. It’s so easy. 20 minutes. You can, I have yet to build anything.
JOHN CLENDENNING
14:55
Yeah.
CHRIS HUNTER
14:56
Valuable in 20 minutes. And there are even things that I thought, oh, this is probably going to take me, you know, an hour or two. And then I ended up being sucked into it for like a good, the good portion of two days. And so just because you, you think that something is buildable. Maybe it is, but it like when you think about it, you might want to think about it like okay, what if this takes me three times as long as I think it’s going to? Is it still how I want to be spending my time? So I think about that and then the other thought that I have is that if there is someone out there that they’re like, oh, but I really want to get in there and like check it out. Like go to Cowork and schedule something. Like just like schedule a task. Do, do like connect a couple things, schedule those out.
CHRIS HUNTER
15:52
Start there. Yeah, that like that’s something, you know, that, that, that is something you could probably do in 20 minutes. Like you know, no problem there. But then you’re not talking about a full custom build about something or you know, spending time on that.
JOHN CLENDENNING
16:09
Yeah, light lifts takes things off your plate that take a little bit longer like that, that are repetitive. You know, you could have something go in and check your inbox. Google’s or Gmail is now coming out with it and just with if you uploaded your brand voice, your master prompt, whatever. If you don’t, it doesn’t know if you do and have it just draft emails. That’s a beautiful one. You know, I mean just have it waiting for you log in and go, I’ve got them pre written. If you don’t even want to do that, install the Claude browser app, go over to Google and say hey, I read this thread and come up with a message that kind of says something about this. Because here’s where I was going to take it.
JOHN CLENDENNING
16:46
I just don’t want to write the words. It writes it. You change a few words and press send you just saved yourself, if you’re like me, 20 minutes of painstakingly trying to figure out what the right words are and copy and moving it around for a message to a vendor you don’t even care about. Right. It’s like as of now, I just wrote it for you. Got your sentiment across. Good enough. You press send to your accountant, whatever, carry on with your day.
JOHN CLENDENNING
17:08
Right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
17:08
Those are probably the best use cases to jump into and get really good at and get your team to jump into as well. Because the other side of it is, I think AI fatigue. We’ve talked about it, AI depression and AI fatigue is a real thing because you do run into. Oh, this is amazing. This is amazing. I got this. I got. Oh, what, what, what, what? Like two weeks in and all of a sudden like you, everything broke and to go back and fix it is.
JOHN CLENDENNING
17:36
Where did that break? I didn’t build it. You did. Like the AI. You’re talking to the AI. You built it. You tell me where it is. Well, if you could tell me what registry that’s in. I don’t know what a registry is.
JOHN CLENDENNING
17:47
Right.
LAURA SUTHERLY
17:50
I like the point that you two have made. I’m sorry. The fact that consider how much time you will save if you take the time to use AI to do the task. Because that’s something I don’t think people consider they may lose. Even if it’s 45 minutes and that task would have taken them less than three. Okay, is the 45 minute investment, is it something they’ll be able to use moving forward or is it something that just took them 45 minutes and they could have actually only replied to that email or whatever in three? So even before you start down some rabbit holes, that’s kind of what we’ve been telling our team is think, will this be something I can use moving forward? That to your point, won’t break often, but it’s going to make us more efficient or is it something that we should say, no, I’m just going to do it traditional and get that task done.
JOHN CLENDENNING
18:43
Yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
18:44
I got to throw one thing on, Chris, because the other side of this whole thing is, yeah, you know, should I do it or should I hire. Hire it out or buy it? Right. That’s our conversation. The other side of that is who pays for the tokens? Right. Because token math has become like, look. So Microsoft just came up with announcement there. They burnt their entire annual budget. Microsoft.
JOHN CLENDENNING
19:07
Of token usage in the first five months of 2026 and have told their entire staff to back off because they, you know, so they didn’t, they weren’t cutting people, they were, they’re saying go do more, do more. And the average employee was spending about $2,000 extra per month or more times 70,000 employees or whatever the number is on an AI token expense they didn’t have the year before.
LAURA SUTHERLY
19:36
Wow.
JOHN CLENDENNING
19:37
Yeah, yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
19:38
So real issue to think about as well inside a tool they pay for the tokens.
BRAD KILGORE
19:43
Yeah. I think another key point is we’re not saying don’t use AI, you know, for a lot of general things that you can do. We’re talking, I think a lot of levels more of building a full on system that will be agentic with have a lot of different features and a lot of things that, that are useful. But I think the important part here we, a couple of us were in a, in a convention a couple of months ago and it was brought up, hey, this tool has the last name of Claw. We’ll leave it nameless is so amazing. But by the way, it could hack into everything that you own. So be extra, extra careful. Right.
BRAD KILGORE
20:25
Security wise. Oh, don’t put it on your real computer. So security is such a huge factor here on a lot of things. If you’re getting into custom builds and Agentix systems and all these other things, if you don’t really know what you’re doing and you’re kind of just hoping that the AI or will know how to protect you, you’re probably in for a surprise because there’s a lot of things out there that really are not going to be foolproof and safe proof. And I know that Chris and John have dug way deeper into these things that I have. But you know, to the point of having dedicated computers, buying Mac Minis, doing all these other things to protect your data because if you really have a full system that’s going to help run your business, you’re going to have some sensitive information and there’s some sensitive data. And that’s where you really I think need to be cautious because yeah, I think that as it progresses it won’t be a thing as much. You know, it’s like probably when the, you know, thinking back when the Internet was newer, we were all around like, okay, oh we need an antivirus.
BRAD KILGORE
21:30
Oh we need this, we need to do the Windows updates. Oh, okay. You know, but I think that we’re going to see more and more of that level of you have to protect your data and your customers data when you delve into something like this.
JOHN CLENDENNING
21:45
Yeah, it’s one thing that’s on my radar. So I’ve been in. I bought my first bitcoin. I’ll tie this together. Trust me guys. Trust me guys. I bought my First Bitcoin in 2013, right. So yay me.
JOHN CLENDENNING
21:56
John seemed like a smarty pants at the time, right. I lost more of them on hack networks and stuff like that than I was able to keep. But still a good thing. And that’s why you guys still see me around today because I’ve been able to kept them all. You wouldn’t have known where I was. I’m on a beach somewhere anyways. But crypto is dying and so I’m in investment clubs. I mean in the investment clubs have transitioned over to traditional finance a lot and stuff like that.
JOHN CLENDENNING
22:21
There is still a little bit of a. Right. But the whole world of crypto like is is taken a new industry sucked it all down to bitcoin because venture capital is involved in it. Stablecoin, the whole clarity act thing, don’t worry about it. And real world assets, right. Which came out of this, this other thing. The reason why the entire rest of the meme, coin and altcoins and smart contracts and all of this stuff has not only kind of gone to nothing again which again it cycles. But this time the question is has the, has, has the crowd moved on to something new.
JOHN CLENDENNING
23:03
The one big risk and issue is AI can bust cryptography. And it’s so close right now to breaking like security that banks are worried that Claude is worried with Mythos. They didn’t release it because it could hack Javascripts, it could do like all this, this crazy stuff. So it could crypto. You know, cryptocurrency was the fact that it was peer to peer you to me. And it was the cryptography the way it was protected that nobody could see it. They could see a wallet and that was it. They couldn’t hack into it, they couldn’t get it if it was built well and all of that kind of stuff.
JOHN CLENDENNING
23:42
But nine times out of ten is built by a 15 year old in his basement. Unfortunately, problem number one, problem number two, AI is now smarter than that 15 year old in his basement. It can get behind every piece of code and the tens of thousands of cryptocurrencies. There’s probably less than 1% that are actually secure. And that’s, that’s the industry stats right now. Our banks are already worried about our bank accounts and our water systems and our electrical systems because that’s 1970s cryptography. 19, right. We kind of know, we hear that in the news and AI Is, yeah, it, as it advances, it’s, it’s also a security issue.
JOHN CLENDENNING
24:19
So are you going to do it yourself? Do you know how to harden the security? Who’s keeping up with that? As it gets smarter, your security has to get smarter. And it isn’t 10 years from now, it gets smarter, it’s 10 days from now.
CHRIS HUNTER
24:33
Have all of you guys connected stripe to your Claude cowork space? Have any, have any of you guys done that?
JOHN CLENDENNING
24:43
Not yet.
JOHN CLENDENNING
24:44
Not a chance. Not a chance.
CHRIS HUNTER
24:47
I, I just did it like, I think it was late last week going like, maybe over the weekend or something going like, oh, I don’t know. And every day I think about, like, should I, should I, should I disconnect it? Like, I, I don’t know, you guys are making me think I should disconnect it. But that’s a. It’s, it’s like, it’s, it can be so helpful to, you know, be able to use, you know, Claude to, To, you know, to check things, to run, to do so many things. But yeah, it is still a security at least a question, if not a,
JOHN CLENDENNING
25:32
you know, a. I think for those kinds of things. We’re going to get to a world. I was watching a guy talking about that, a little bit of computer programmer, and it was sort of like, we’re going to get to a world where it’s things like your investment accounts, your trading views, your bank accounts, your stripes, you know, your QuickBooks. Because right now you just go online, AI, QuickBooks, whatever. And would you open up your laptop in a cafe in the middle of Greece and log into your bank account? Right. Hopefully not a vpn. Yeah, but still, probably still shouldn’t.
JOHN CLENDENNING
26:00
Right? So. But is there a world where you can wrap it, go in for the thing, the report you need and disconnect and like literally almost like log into a tunnel. Log into a. And that is the bank, that is the stripe has to set that up and you, you will pour it into it, port out of it, shut it down, clear the cache. No more record of it again. You got the, you ran the report, you did the session you needed and then you didn’t leave it open. I think we’re gonna get to that world too, as people start figuring this out. Like everything, connect everything everywhere all at once.
JOHN CLENDENNING
26:31
Yeah. And somebody could decide to hack your email and, you know, send the world a whole bunch of stuff again.
JOHN CLENDENNING
26:37
So. Yeah, well, and if you think about it, right, in that scenario, you know, connecting your, your financials or whatever sensitive data that you have. Right. Think about it in 1998. And we’re like, we’re like, okay, should I. Should I log into my bank account via my computer? I don’t know. Then, you know, so it’s almost the same exact conversation as. As we had in 1998.
JOHN CLENDENNING
27:04
Right. Is. Is like, I’m not sure if I trust that to be able to log into my bank. Well, that’s kind of where it is with AI at the, this point too. So kind of bringing it all back together, right? So raise, raise your hand, right, for if you are. For building your own thing, right. Your own workflows in AI, building those out versus other hand that we’ll. We’ll.
JOHN CLENDENNING
27:31
We’ll say is. Is buying something off the shelf. All right, so raise your hands right now for building your own.
LAURA SUTHERLY
27:39
It depends on. Yeah, exactly.
JOHN CLENDENNING
27:40
I’ll go with both.
LAURA SUTHERLY
27:41
Yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
27:42
Okay. All right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
27:44
We’re a crowd that we would. We want to build because it’s exciting and we want to build for our customers so they could, they don’t have to go down that rabbit hole because what is, what is the fastest path to cash for a roofer, carpet cleaner, you know, whatever it is to go out and do more of that is to build connections to that. Right. What is the support system of an agency owner nowadays? It is, can we jump into your software and do it for you? There’s always been those people that will jump into job nimbus and just set it up for you. And that’s a consultant and that so you could hire somebody, but the consultant better be the one that says, yes, I’ll build it, I’ll build it in your system, I’ll build it my own, I’ll do whatever. But they understand how. What it’s all about. So I, so I think in our world, agency owners, any agency owners watching, by all means, you need to know what that means to build or to.
JOHN CLENDENNING
28:40
If there’s a primary software in your industry, you go in and learn it, right, so that you’re not behind and you can help your clients do the thing that they should be focusing most of their time on anyways, because we do all get caught up in writing better SOPs and you know, whatever, and changing the blue button on our website to a lighter blue and all that kind of stuff when the jobs and the competitor just drove by and stole your customer.
JOHN CLENDENNING
29:06
Yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
29:07
Yeah.
CHRIS HUNTER
29:08
You know, I will say too, as an agency owner and a marketer, that I am actively running both. I have things that I have, you know, I buy like off the shelf basically because it does the job that I need it to do at the price that I am willing to pay for it. And then there are other things that I build, you know, for, I guess for the same reasons, you know, it, it’s the, the I’m willing to pay that price in both time and you know, all of that and you know, resources, all of it. So I have both actively going. And so I think it really does depend.
JOHN CLENDENNING
29:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LAURA SUTHERLY
29:58
I guess one of my favorite books is the who, not how Now. You know, I think that I’m always intrigued and I want to learn. So that way we have, I can have these deep discussions with my clients. But I also, I think another thing that our listeners and viewers can appreciate is pre built computers versus you know, off the shelf laptops or desktops and stuff. We have both in here. And it is interesting again, it’s just the fact that now we know what we need when we custom built. But it’s also nice to be able, like I don’t want to think about it. This is where I want to check the boxes, know that it’s going to do what I need it to do and be done.
LAURA SUTHERLY
30:34
So I too look at the price and figure out is it going to take me more time to build that computer system or to do something in AI or to do something in our office or for our clients. How can we do it with still a strong foundation, efficiently and effectively, 100%. What do you think, Brad? I’m sure muted at the moment.
BRAD KILGORE
30:54
Efficiently and effectively. That’s exactly right. You know, I mean, I think we covered a lot of different things here. Should you or should you not,
JOHN CLENDENNING
31:06
I
BRAD KILGORE
31:06
would say experiment, certainly try things out. But before you roll it all the way into your business, make sure if you’re doing it yourself, you got everything covered.
JOHN CLENDENNING
31:15
Yeah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
31:16
Well, and here’s my recommendation. Like when it comes to AI and the stuff that I’m building for me and my clients, the skills are more important I think because you can roll those into different. Because what happens if all of a sudden Claude isn’t working anymore? Right.
LAURA SUTHERLY
31:36
And Chris, define what you’re saying. Skills. So they don’t think it’s like construction skills for any of our newer listener.
JOHN CLENDENNING
31:44
Sure. So, so skills are basically a set of instructions that you create. Right. And, and it’s just a list of steps and things that, that you can do with a specific skill. So for instance, in, in one of my agents, I’ve, I’ve got a, a writing skill. Right. A blog writing skill. Okay.
JOHN CLENDENNING
32:04
That specifically is set for just writing blogs, I’ve got an AI skill that, that audits that blog post to make sure that it actually, so it goes from one skill to the other skill. And you can have agents that have, you know, access to a hundred different skills if you want them to. Okay. And so the, the idea behind these skills are, are literally that they’re a set of instructions that you could take to all sorts of different, it’s becoming the standard, right. That you can take them to different, different agents and, and plug them right in. Right. Those are the most valuable things. So those are basically your SOPs.
JOHN CLENDENNING
32:45
So if you are building something custom inside of, let’s say Claude cowork for you and your employees, you’re going to build them inside of a plugin that h. Holds a whole bunch of skills within that. And what I found out this morning, right, because I’m building these things, that’s what Jen and I were talking about before this is that I have to ensure that I’m on, on Claude team if I want it to be able to update for anyone who has that plugin or they have to be on Claude team, right, for them to be able to update automatically. Otherwise you can uninstall the plugin and reinstall the plugin. That’s kind of a pain, but it is what it is, right? The, the point, what I’m trying to make here is that it, it’s portable. Okay? These skills are portable. So if Claude stops working and let’s say that Google Gemin, same kind of idea, I can upload those skills into that agent and have it start working pretty, pretty close to automatically. Right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
33:45
It’s almost like having a WordPress website to, that’s portable from one hosting company to another hosting company. Because this is standard. Yeah, okay, good point. So anyways, that’s, I, I’m, that’s where I’m going to leave it there. If you’re going to build anything inside of AI, make sure that you are backing up those skills. Right? And that any, anything that you’re building is going to be portable from one platform to another platform. And think ahead a little bit. Don’t be stuck with building custom software that’s going to be obsolete in six months.
JOHN CLENDENNING
34:23
Okay. You can build agents that can adapt, that can be portable and, and just so be thinking about that and don’t get, get stuck in the trap of maintenance. Right? And, and having to maintain those things because that, that is kind of where custom software really lives, is maintaining that software.
JOHN CLENDENNING
34:45
Yep, good point.
CHRIS HUNTER
34:47
It’s a Good place to wrap it up.
JOHN CLENDENNING
34:50
All right, let’s wrap it up, then. All right, well, everybody, thanks for joining us here today. Make sure that you like and subscribe to us. I’m going to actually to John to talk about our. Our. Our community that we are building. Why don’t you talk a little bit about that, John?
JOHN CLENDENNING
35:10
Yeah, so in the show notes, join the community. It’s. We’ve got the free community up right now. We. We have some people asking us about sort of a little bit more contact and access to us. So we’re looking into that paid side of it, just small membership where we can, you know, we can go a little bit deeper. You can get some other stuff like that. But right now, jump into the.
JOHN CLENDENNING
35:28
The free community notes are in the below. You can sign up and we’ve got extended show notes from each one of these calls. Christine, lovely member of our team, helps us with all of that kind of stuff, puts it up into the community, can ask questions, you can get prompts and things like that that we talk about and all of that kind of stuff. So, yeah, definitely follow along there. Make sure you, like, subscribe, tell your friends about us, all that on YouTube and Spotify and wherever you’re kind of taking this stuff in. And yeah, just keep, keep thinking the way we’re thinking. Follow along because this is an evolving field and we’re kind of trying to drop some nuggets into your head to think a little bit deeper. If everybody kind of runs off in one direction or avoids in the other, and the answer’s somewhere in between.
JOHN CLENDENNING
36:13
Just like we had both hands up, the answer is somewhere in between. And you kind of got to be thinking through this stuff on a regular basis.
JOHN CLENDENNING
36:20
100%. All right, well, thanks, y’, all for joining in, and we’ll see you guys next week.
