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Hey, what is up? Welcome to this episode of The Wancherpreneur to Entrepreneur Podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, Brian Lofermento, and I will admit that the title of this
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solace on the episode kind of reveals that this is my first somewhat alarmist episode
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in this show's history. More than 1400 episodes, and I promise you, now's the right time.
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We have to talk about this stuff. Let's dive in.
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So, it's pretty clear that everybody these days is talking about AI, and I think that whether
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we're talking within the business and entrepreneurial world, whether we're talking in the educational
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world, heck, just turn on the news these days, and you are going to see that AI is now the dominating
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conversation in politics and geopolitics and security and literally every sphere of our life.
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And so, I obviously, I love AI. I'm going to say that at the very top of today's episode,
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is that I think that AI has so many incredible powers, and it serves humanity in so many
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powerful ways, and it's going to help to build a brighter future when it comes to education,
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when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to a lot of things. And of course, just like any
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new technology, things can be used for good and for bad. I'm not even going to say
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or because every single thing can be used for good and for bad. And so, it's up to us how we want
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to shape that. And there will always be bad actors in every single field with every single tool,
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with every single piece of technology. So, I'm not going to focus on any of that today. But what I
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am going to focus on is I, for any of you who follow me on social media, you know that I do not
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really post on social media. I'm very much a lurker. And so, I do like seeing other people's
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perspectives. And it's why I love scrolling through Reddit. I love scrolling through Twitter.
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I love scrolling through TikTok. That is for sure one of my guilty pleasures. But Twitter in
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particular, I'm totally going to call out because that is the place truth be told. And I think
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the algorithm is just super dialed in for me there, where I do get the most helpful insights and
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conversations that I get to follow along with and lurk through regarding business and entrepreneurship
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and technology. It's pretty clear to me that Twitter has identified that I love tech and I love
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business. Whereas other social media platforms, I think they've more narrowed me in as a soccer,
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antennas, and basketball fans. So, we're specifically talking about some of these conversations that I
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saw on Twitter recently. And what's been really fun about Twitter is that it seems to me like people
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on Twitter, at least the ones that the algorithm is showing to me, they're really pushing the envelope
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in new ways with AI tools and with new technologies and with new ideas and strategies. Or maybe it's
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just an environment where people share that stuff more because it's in super bite size tweets. You
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can't make any of those long LinkedIn. Here's the seven things that I learned that most people
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have never found until they sell their first company. I don't really care for those types of
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conversations. I want short and punchy, which is also why today's episode is going to be pretty
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short and punchy. But along those lines, one type of conversation keeps coming up on my Twitter
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timeline. And that is a bunch of people who are very into vibe coding, which if you're not familiar
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with vibe coding, essentially five years ago, if you and I wanted to create an app or a software
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or advanced web stuff, then you and I would need to code it. We'd need to program it. Or obviously,
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I'm not a programmer. We'd have to hire somebody to do that. But with the advent of incredible tools,
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such as lovable and cursor and a replet and Google AI studio and a bunch of other tools out there,
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we are now in the era of vibe coding, which means that you and I can code based on vibes. We don't
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need to code based on actual, you know, open brackets and open chevrons and all of that. We can
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prompt it just like we prompt chat GPT or Gemini. We can prompt it and build a full software app.
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Does that mean it gets us to the finish line? Doesn't mean it's perfect. Doesn't mean it's totally
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secure. Doesn't mean all those things. No, I'm not even talking about any of that today. But what
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it does mean is that you and I on a consumer level, whether we ever launch it publicly or not,
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we can create literally any app that we could dream of. And that's the beauty of vibe coding.
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vibe coding is a ton of fun. I love vibe coding. I vibe code a ton of things in my personal life,
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as well as in my professional life. vibe coding has unlocked so many new doors for me.
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And so the reason why I bring all this up in today's conversation is because I've seen so much
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chatter online from these people pushing the envelope with regards to vibe coding where they say,
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holy cow, we are now entering the world where everybody is going to have their own apps. And I've
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seen others chiming in saying, well, the problem with this vision of the future is that everybody's
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going to have a bunch of their own personalized catered customized apps, but nobody's going to
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have any users because now we can all build things for our own unique needs. And that's stuck with
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me. And I started to see over the past week that comment, that remark, that observation pop up
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more and more is that there have never been more apps in the world, more softwares in the world
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than there are today. We are definitely far along in that timeline. We have more apps and
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softwares than ever before in history. But we also have more apps and softwares in history that
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have literally zero users. Never have we had so many apps and softwares that have literally zero
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users. And I find that that's such an interesting. It might seem very simplistic, but it's an
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interesting observation because it really reminds you of the fact that we've reached this super
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interesting time period where nothing really matters anymore. None of it really matters.
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Any of us can create something incredible. And so the barometer used to be, if you created,
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why did Google get the attraction that it had? Because it was just, it was such a powerful
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search engine. Nobody had ever created a search engine that powerful before. I remember what life
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looked like pre-Google. We were all using Yahoo. We're all using Ask Jeaves. We're all using,
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I feel like Web crawler was that a thing. I can't really remember all the names. I was super
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young, obviously. But I remember that world pre-Google where we were just kind of looking for what
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the best tool would be. And it wasn't really a universal tool that everyone said, oh, that's the
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best. Until Google came around. And then it became a verb. It became part of our nomenclature.
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It became part of something that we all say kids and seniors alike. They all know what it means
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to Google something. And so historically, it was if you had the best thing, the best algorithm,
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the best results, the best tool, the best software, the best user experience, the best something
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that you would win. And the users would follow. Well, in today's day and age, we're starting to see
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that I could create something amazing. I could create the world's best, most functional SEO tool.
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But guess what? It's going to have no users. Because unless I build a business around it,
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unless I build systems around it, unless I build a foundation around it, unless I build a team
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around it, unless I build marketing and distribution and sales and conversions around it,
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then that tool no longer matters. It's no longer good enough for any of us to build something
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amazing. And we know this to be true. Because we know that all the things that we see are obviously
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not the best things ever. They just so happen to be the thing that has come across our desk and
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come on to our radar because of its distribution, because of its hype, because of its marketing,
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because of its social media virality. We see things not because they're the best, but because of
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all these external factors. And so the more than I thought about that, it made me ask myself
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philosophically the question of, well, in a world of AI, where anyone can build anything,
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and it can be pretty freaking good, by the way, if you've never used a lovable, oh my gosh,
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I promise you, go to lovable and just build something. For me, the first thing that I ever built,
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because honestly, I felt like the biggest limiting factor for me was I didn't know what I wanted
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to build. So I hopped on lovable and I just built my own coffee shop radar. And so that coffee shop
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radar, basically it used Yelp's API. And you could search any and all coffee shops in the world
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thanks to Yelp's API. And you can build your own coffee shop rating system. Because for me,
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I never really use Yelp because I feel like everyone wants to use Yelp based on the quality of
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the food or drinks and, you know, the ambiance and all that. I'll be honest, a lot of other things
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matter to me when it comes to me grading coffee shops for my own personal use. I care more about,
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hey, what's the parking situation? Am I going to get a seat every single time that I go there? Because
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I work from coffee shops every day. I need to reliably have a seat. I can't go to a coffee shop,
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see that it's full, and then have to restructure my dance. Hey, oh my gosh, now I gotta go to somewhere
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else. Where the heck am I going to go today? It needs to have good Wi-Fi. It needs to, it can't have
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blazing loud music so that I can't do conference calls or record loom videos if I need to.
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There's so many, it can't be too cold living in Florida. You never want a 50 degree difference
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from the outside to the inside because how the heck do you dress accordingly for that? So that's
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something that I hopped on lovable and I built it. Yeah, I thought I don't really have any other
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good ideas. So that's exactly what I built. And that then quickly reshaped my view of vibe
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coding in what's possible to build. Because then by doing something and realizing that holy cow,
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it really is anything I can imagine I can build, then it made my brain start working in other
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ways. And I started building cooler things, more useful things, more powerful things. And all of
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that has made me realize that the quality of what we built, I've built some cool things that I
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know would be valuable to other people. But guess what? It literally doesn't matter because I've
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never published it. And I'm not going to publish it because that's a whole different beast. And so
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what I've realized is that quality has no bearing on anything anymore. It's all distribution.
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All it is is how many users are we serving? What is actually getting traction? And when I think about
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that, the philosophical question that I keep coming back to is, is this different? Is AI ushering us
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into this era where quality no longer matters? And it's all just about distribution and marketing.
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And then instantly where my head went is all the way back to 2012. So in 2012, I just graduated
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college. I started a marketing and SEO agency with a business partner of mine who's a former
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friend from high school. And when we started that agency because we were in our early 20s, we were
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22, 23 years old. And when we started that, we wanted to be super innovative because innovative
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seemed to be a word that was rewarded and applauded and celebrated and encouraged in the business
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world. And so part of what we did one of our lines of service was we developed and deployed WordPress
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websites. And so WordPress is such a powerful platform from an SEO perspective. If you have a
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website built on WordPress, you have a world of possibilities that your fingertips thanks to
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plugins, thanks to the built-in functionality. There's a lot of good things there. And so we were
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just beasting out WordPress websites. We were doing it internally for ourselves, for our first
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few clients. And we thought we were going to take over the entire local market. Well, we quickly
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realized through the Chamber of Commerce and through BNI and other local networking groups that
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there was this one lady in our hometown in central Massachusetts that owned the market.
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And when we looked at her work, I can very comfortably and confidently say this. When we looked
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at her work, we thought to ourselves, gosh, her stuff is so archaic. And she was much older than us.
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I will say that. We looked at her stuff through that lens of holy cow, her stuff is so old. It's
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not optimized for SEO. And anyway, there's no multimedia. None of her clients' websites had any
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video. And this is, you know, this is 2012. This is when video is on the big come up. This is where
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you can differentiate yourself and your local marketplace by having videos on your website.
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And so we thought we were super innovative and we knew it. We had a better product. There's no
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doubt anyone who we could get to sit down with us who had previously worked with her would say,
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yeah, no, you guys are doing big things. But guess what? She won. She had way larger market share
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than we did. And again, was her product the best? No. But she won on all the other things. The
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most important things, market penetration, traction, reputation, distribution, client roster.
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And so the same was true all the way back in 2012 is that we did not get rewarded simply for
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having a better or more innovative product. And so fast forward all the way to today. 2026,
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here we are 14 years later. And I'm being reminded of it again is that innovation is not the
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barometer. We all hear that word innovative innovation revolutionary. We hear these things as if
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they are the keys to success. And so today's solace on the episode in this really out loud reflection
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for me is just me reflecting on the fact that none of none of that stuff matters anymore to be honest.
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And I actually think that's a good thing for most of us is that we don't need to have the most
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innovative or revolutionary product. And how frequently do you hear me in conversations with
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guests that I'm so appreciative for them sharing all their wisdom? How frequently do you hear me
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coming back to that reflection of the Albert Einstein quote? If you want to impress somebody,
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make it complicated. If you want to help somebody make it simple. And I think that in a world where
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everybody is playing with innovation, everybody is pushing the envelope in very cool ways.
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The only businesses, the only entrepreneurs who are going to be winning are the ones who achieve
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distribution. That's it. Nothing beyond that matters anymore. Because if you want to have the
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fanciest looking website, you now can. If your budget is $20, you now can do that. I'm so excited
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to announce that. If if nobody's ever announced it to you before, if you have $20, you can have
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the coolest freaking website that's ever been made. If you've $20, you could build the coolest
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freaking marketing app or design app or the other day furniture shopping. For example, I thought
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to myself, gosh, I wish I could just give a floor plan to an AI tool and it would recreate it and
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then I could to scale and then I could drop in different pieces of furniture. I just vibe coded it.
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It took maybe 40 minutes for me to vibe code that app. It was unbelievable. And it's really cool.
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And so in today's world, anyone can build anything. And so for you and I, what does this mean?
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What does this reflection mean? What is my hope that you take away from this episode mean?
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What is all that? To me, it just means ignore all that. Ignore all the noise. You don't have to be
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innovative. Truth be told, it's such a weird thing to say in today's world. You do not have to
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be innovative. Innovation is starting to reach the point or it takes care of itself. All you and I
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have to do is focus on serving people is focus on getting customers and clients is focus on
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having conversations converting those conversations to service, getting people to understand, oh,
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in a world where there's a lot of noise and I can't keep up with everything, this person is going
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to help me with this specific thing. That is the thing that matters these days. None of the other
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stuff truly matters. Doesn't mean that we're all going to get left behind. Well, I argue very
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much that we all have a responsibility to ourselves, to our businesses, to our clients, to our future
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businesses, to our future selves, to be on that train. I'm a big proponent of AI. I play with AI
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all the time, both during my work day and after my work day. And so I'm not saying ignore all of that,
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but what I'm saying is if you believe that that is your ticket to innovation, which is your ticket
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to success, which is your ticket to freedom, which is your ticket to clients, it's not anymore,
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because everyone has that in their pockets at their fingertips. Be the one who focuses on serving
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others. Be the one who's focused on getting customers and clients. Be the one who says, hey,
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in a noisy world, I'm just going to cut through with raw simplicity and show people and share with
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people how I can tangibly help them, because that is increasingly becoming the only thing that
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matters. And when you pair it with some cool technology and some systems and some healthy foundations,
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good things happen. But we always have to have clarity on what it is that matters. You and I could
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play in an endless sandbox of AI possibilities, but that doesn't mean it's going to get us anywhere.
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So that's it for me in today's episode. I hope it hits you where you need it in today's
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or for today, because I'll tell you what, this is a reminder that I need constantly in business,
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because I love playing with different tech tools. So for all of us, it's about service.
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It's about tangibly helping other people. That's what counts in 2026. That's what always counted
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in 2012. That's what counted 100 years ago. And I promise you in a world where it's just full
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of humanity. It's what's always going to count is helping people and serving people. That's it for
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me. Make sure you pound that subscribe button. Holy cow, I'm super excited. I know I'm always
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excited, but this week's episodes get me super jazzed up. We've got some incredible entrepreneurs
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coming your way this week. So pound that subscribe button and we'll see you right back here every day
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on the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.