Transcription
Over the past few weeks, I cancelled eight software subscriptions, one after another, on purpose. Actually, I cancelled them because of what's on this phone. Listen, your business runs probably on five jobs: marketing, sales, money, customer support, and the operations grind that eats your evenings or weekends or both. And most founders choose to do all five themselves. And often times, they do them badly, chained to a laptop. A few hire too early and then bleed cash for a year, waiting for those hires to pay off. And then there's a third option, and it only became real about a year ago, and that's that you build one app for each job yourself in a weekend for about the price of a coffee a month to run. I actually run the core of my business on these five apps that I built this way, and I can open every single one of them from this, basically standing in line for coffee. And not only that, but I've helped over half a million people build with AI on this channel, as well as through my communities. And this might actually be the most useful thing that I have handed you yet. The blueprint for all five apps, what each one does, why it belongs in your pocket, not on your desktop, and how to build it without writing a single line of code yourself. And I encourage you to stay to app five because it's the one that runs the other four.
Now, I know the second that you hear "build your own app," a voice in your head probably says, "I'm not technical. That is an engineering job. I'm just going to buy a tool for that." But I want you to hold on to that thought because I believe it is the exact thought that is costing you money. Because depending on which report you read, the average small business now pays for around 40 different software subscriptions and actually uses less than half of them. 40, but half of them collecting dust. And despite what many believe, the overtooling is not because founders are disorganized. You're overtooled because until a year ago, the only alternative to renting generic software was hiring a developer to build the custom kind. So clearly, everyone rents. That's what we've been doing for tens of years. But 20, 30, 40 tools that each do 60% of what you actually need is probably not the solution anymore. And that's why I believe that this math just got fixed because Claude Code turned "build custom software" into "describe the software you want in plain English," and that's it. The cost of a tool built exactly for your business dropped from a developer salary to a weekend of your time and a little bit of diligence to learn how to do it. But what I see a lot is that almost nobody has updated their thinking to match this new paradigm.
So, here's the company that we're about to build. Five apps for five departments. That's the company, and it'll fit in your pocket. Okay? That's why I'm going to call it the pocket company. So, let's stuff it. So, app number one, that is your content engine. That's your marketing department, part of it at least. Because here's the truth: If you have a business, you also have a media company. You just never staffed it. The content engine is going to do that, right? It's going to stuff it. You can give it one raw input: a long video, a voice memo, a half-formed idea, and then it hands you back a batch of finished pieces in your voice. Short-form hooks, a LinkedIn post, a newsletter section, a week of posts for whichever platform you choose to operate on. I mean, basically, you give it one input and out comes exactly that. From one idea, 20 to 30 ready-to-post pieces. You will never have to stare at an empty content calendar again. And if you think, "Yeah, but why do I need to carry it in my pocket?" Well, it's because the best idea you will have, not only this week, but in general, will probably not show up at your desk. It'll show up on a walk or while you're driving. So then you open the app, you talk to it for 30 seconds, and by the time you're home, the drafts are already waiting for your review. And if you're thinking about how to build it, I think there should be three key parts: an input box, a brain (that's your brand voice and your best past posts loaded in), and this way it will sound like you and not like a generic AI robot. And thirdly, an output queue. So basically, you describe those three things to Claude Code, and it will build you the app. You can explain all the other complexities or features that you want it to have. But that's the pattern that I think you can use, and it'll apply to all five of the apps that I'm going to talk about.
Now, app number two, that's your pipeline, your sales department. Okay? Because over the years, I realized that most deals are not actually lost. They're forgotten. Because a prospect says, "Send me the details," and then you mean to, but then three other fires start. And by the time you are done with those and you remember, the moment's gone cold. And that's not a discipline issue. It's because your systems are not built to support that. And that's why your pipeline app can become your system. Because every lead, every prospect, every client will live in one place. So you will know the status, the value, the next step, the last contact. It runs front of sales. So it drafts the outreach, and then it runs the close. It builds the proposal. The whole sales function can live in one single app. And the part that I love is that when you finish a call, Claude can access the transcript from whichever notetaker you use. I use Fathom. And then the pipeline updates the deal, sets the next step, and drafts the follow-up email before you even leave the building. If you don't work from home like me, and I'll be honest about why this app actually exists: It's because once I actually lost a deal for this particular reason. I should have closed it. It was a good prospect, real interest. I just didn't follow up in time. And probably somebody else did. And that one missed message is the reason why I decided to build this. And if you think about the same structure: input, brain, output, we're going to use the same pattern, right? The input is your deal updates. The brain knows your offers and your tone and your sales approach. And the output is basically the next move already written and implemented.
Now, building your own tools with Claude Code is amazing. It's great. It's fantastic. But there is a problem. Once you build it, the app actually ends up living on your computer. You cannot use it when you're traveling. Your team cannot log into it. Your VAs cannot log in. And to actually run these as a business, you're going to need hosting. And for us, we use Hostinger. $7 a month, and so easy that literally you can set it up yourself. I do as well, and I'm not a developer. Setup literally takes about 15 minutes following their step-by-step guide. And once the server is running, every single app that I built and that you would build will live on it. No per-app fees, no per-user fees. Every tool that I just showed you can be running on the same server. Your data stays on your server, not in someone else's training data. And thank you, by the way, Hostinger, for partnering with us on today's video. The link is below. Use the code AI founders for 10% off. And that's literally cheaper than any one of the subscriptions that I just canceled. So, from this point on, every app that I'm going to show you, assume that it's already on your phone because now it can be.
Now, app three, that is the money cockpit. That's your finance department, or at least in my case, that's what it is. Because you need to stop being surprised by your own money. The money cockpit is going to end that surprise. Okay? You can snap a photo of a receipt, and it's going to read it, categorize it, and book it. You can know at any point in time your cash on hand, your runway, who owes you, what to set aside for tax, all of it in one single screen. You can upload documents, you can generate documents, literally everything in one single place. This is the one that I use the most. Probably a receipt happens at lunch. I take a picture of it, and it's booked before the bank statement arrives. I don't have to put anything in a shoebox. I don't have to spend Sunday night in panic trying to find all the receipts. I just take a picture, upload everything, and that's it. So, if you think about our structure: input, brain, output. The input is the photo or the bank statement that you upload. The brain reads it and knows your categories and what to do depending on the country you're in and your accounting system that you use. And then the output is a number that you can actually trust. Now, I'm not saying that you should replace your tax advisor, your bookkeeper, or your accountant with this app. In my case, I use it so that at every point in time, I know where we stand from a cash flow perspective, from an accounts receivable perspective, accounts payable, and so forth. So, I've not replaced the accounting firm with this app, but it gives me real-time data so that we can make decisions based on the latest, and not based on monthly, or worse, quarterly, or even yearly data that I know some companies end up using for their decision-making.
Now, app number four, that is the support bot. That's your customer success department in one single app. Because I know every founder sooner or later becomes the help desk. I've spoken to them, many of them. And what often happens is that the founder or the help desk then becomes the bottleneck because it's you, and you don't scale. So the support bot, this kind of app can be you 2.0. Because you feed it your own material, your documents, your FAQs, the answers that you've already typed 100 times, and then it answers your customers or your community instantly, either via chat, via email, via messages, day or night. And it only comes to you for questions that it cannot genuinely handle. Basically, the way it works is it gets a real question from a prospect or an existing customer, and then it provides an accurate answer in your words, from your knowledge. And when something gets escalated to you, you basically only answer once from your phone, and then the bot learns for the next time so you don't have to be bothered again.
And app number five, that is the one that hopefully you've stayed for, and that is the chief of staff, your operations department. That is the last hire that most founders fantasize about, and that's a chief of staff. The person who just does things, handles everything. And here's the irony: It's the one that you can build first. I would know. I actually spent almost 11 years in chief of staff type roles before I ended up doing this full-time. I know exactly what the job is, which is exactly why I could describe it to Claude Code. The chief of staff is an agent that you talk to. I actually use voice mode, but you can also text and you can talk to it like a person. You can say, "Prep me for 2 p.m.," or "What did I commit to this week?" Or, "Drop the newsletter for these three links." And it runs the task. It reports back, and every morning it sends you a brief, which is the state of your business before you've had coffee. It's basically like your COO in a message thread. That's the whole interface if you choose to. I like to have a dashboard, so I chose something different, but you can choose whatever makes it easiest for you to interact with. But you basically have your business living in the app that you already check 200 times a day. I don't know how many times you pick up your phone. You can actually check in your settings. And the best part about it is that it can reach the other four if you design it correctly. It can check for your pipeline for cold deals. It checks your money cockpit for a late invoice. It pulls from your support bot. App is not just a tool. It's one that can manage the other four.
So that's your pocket company, your five apps for your five departments, fully stuffed in your hand or in your pocket. And trust me, a year ago, when your business needed something, you had to wait for a developer, for budget, for some software company to finally ship the feature that you'd been emailing them about. But now, that wait is over because you can now build the exact tool that your business needs the week it needs it. That's a different kind of founder. So don't let this video be nodded along to and closed. Just pick one. I would suggest that you start with the money cockpit because it's the fastest win. You can build it this week, and then you can see the impact. And if you want to be surrounded by thousands of other people who are on the exact same path as you, you're always more than welcome to join us in the community. We have a completely free one where we run free challenges and Q&A calls, and there's a lot of value there already. But if you want to be handheld and you want a system to follow for 90 days, then you're also welcome to join our founders community, that is a paid one. And both of them, you get a lot of attention, a lot of support, and a lot of peers to cheer you on as you make your progress and you celebrate your wins. We're actually working on a Claude Code course which will be available in the AI founders community. So if you want to learn how to build all of these, then make sure you come and join us there. Thank you so so much for watching. Like this video if you did. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't done so. Share it with anyone in your circle of friends or family or co-workers who you think needs to stop doing everything in their business themselves and learn how to leverage AI for that. And until next time, I suggest you go ahead and watch this video here, and I'll see you there. Bye.