Why Starting Small Is the Key to Mastering App Building with AI

Chris Davis 0:11
And we’re back. Welcome to another episode of the All Systems Go podcast. I want to follow up, everyone. It’s so good to have a forum where you can get feedback and converse more and collaborate on a lot of these topics because there are questions, clarifying questions, challenging questions because people are truly seeking answers.

Chris Davis 0:40
How do I do this, Chris? I heard you say this. How is it actually done? And I have to say this.

Chris Davis 0:47
Let me admit this, everyone. Sometimes I get so excited. I listen back to the some of some of the episodes and I’m like, oh, you said the first episode. You didn’t mean episode one.

Chris Davis 0:59
You met the first episode since the break. Oh, you were talking so fast. You said multi context protocol instead of model context protocol. Chris, you slow down.

Chris Davis 1:11
There’s so much that you’re trying to get in and get people to understand that haste is making waste. So let’s slow down a bit. Take your time. It’s your podcast.

Chris Davis 1:22
There’s no rush. If there’s another episode that is needed to break the idea down that much more, record another episode, my friend. Right? Don’t try to get it all in one.

Chris Davis 1:37
Don’t try to be perfect and allow yourself iteration. And the thing about it is this many of these things that I caught when I was listening, we had the temptation, me and my team had the temptation to say, hey, let’s patch up the audio files, let’s make it perfect. But then I would rather be authentic. Everyone, I am not against.

Chris Davis 2:01
Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. I’m not against you patching up and cutting out the ums and ahs and mispronunciations and using the wrong words at time at times. But for this, for me, there is an organic piece. Because one, I don’t have it all figured out.

Chris Davis 2:19
Everyone, you all are listening to a snapshot of my understanding and intelligence at the time of recording. Right after I hit stop on recording, I learned something new. The next day, I build something new. The.

Chris Davis 2:35
The. The next week, the team that I’m leading is doing something even more amazing than I thought that, that I even knew was possible. So listen everyone, I guess what I’m saying is even more reason for you to join the community is to get the live and on collaboration and coordination so that you’re not stuck with outdated practices. Because things are changing not daily, hourly.

Chris Davis 3:07
But right now, as I’m recording this, there’s probably some new feature claude released or OpenAI and some agent that you can now deploy and do things. And speaking of agents, let me clear this up too, because a lot of people were like, but Chris, I’ve been using agents in ZAP year and it ain’t in. So my, my automations haven’t been deterministic. I get it.

Chris Davis 3:31
I. Do you understand how many use cases there are? Everybody. I just can’t hit them all.

Chris Davis 3:37
But I do understand that there is a world where you’re still using a visual builder and deploying agents at a very high capacity. I get it. All I’m saying is revisit that process because it may be outdated already. Golly, that’s crazy to even say that because I remember going on YouTube and seeing the people with all the N8N workflows saying, look at what this can do.

Chris Davis 4:02
Never publish a blog again. This thing writes a hundred episodes or pieces of content for you, blah, blah, blah. So what I want to do today is I just needed to issue that statement real quick. But what I wanted to do today is pick up from where we left off with personal software because I really want you to own this understanding.

Chris Davis 4:28
And we Talked about Automation 2.0 is achieved by way of software. Right? This is the, the software itself is doing automation.

Chris Davis 4:37
And the outcome of your software is in an automated result. Right? So it’s, it’s, it’s two layer. Two layers.

Chris Davis 4:45
But we remember it is the continuous execution of your process without any human interaction is what we’re defining automation as. And we’re saying use software to do that. And use software. If there’s a particular process, build software for that exact process.

Chris Davis 5:09
And the software can do everything that’s required and produce the output more reliably and more consistent. Right? We used to have to hire people to use software to do that. Now we’re, we’re using AI to build agents within the software to do this stuff as well as the code.

Chris Davis 5:32
Right? So, so with that being said, I was listening to one of my friends, they were sharing a live they shall remain nameless on Facebook and they were talking about how pointless and non profitable it is to build what they call throwaway software. And I heard this term throwaway software before and was offended because I’m like, how could you, you know, these small applications that do such amazing things, how could you just call it throwaway software? It’s not that they’re great.

Chris Davis 6:04
And I realized it was right. They were true. They, they were accurate in saying throw away. Meaning there have been many times where somebody has given me a spreadsheet or asked me about a specific process, and I’ve software quickly to solve that problem in that time and never use it again.

Chris Davis 6:22
That would fit the definition of throwaway. Here’s what I think people are missing, though. Look at the time that it saved me, and look at the quality of output I was able to achieve quickly. And if you want to say, if you want to call it throwaway software, call it throwaway software.

Chris Davis 6:39
But what I call it is next level execution, next level efficiency. What I call it is making my life that much easier. And I want to give you all an example. I was on a panel to be a judge for a pitch contest, and I was given a spreadsheet to, you know, score the judges, create the scorecard.

Chris Davis 7:03
And the spreadsheet had it was, you guys know how spreadsheets are. You got to click and, you know, manually do everything. And I said, this is ridiculous. I’m going to export this spreadsheet as an X.

Chris Davis 7:14
What is it? Xlsx Excel file sheet, right? Upload it to Claude and say, hey, create a dashboard for me that has all of the rules and everything. Like, I told it to create what I needed to see in order to judge effectively.

Chris Davis 7:31
So now when I sat down and judged, I click on the person, it has the video right there. I click on the video, it has all the rules for scoring the rubric. So I’m just filling it in. And it made the process so much easier.

Chris Davis 7:43
And the quality of my judging was a lot easier because I removed this technical quicksand called a spreadsheet, and was able to get it done a lot faster. So in that case, right after I was done and I delivered that back to the company, I quote, unquote, threw that software away. But here’s the truth. I really didn’t because I learned.

Chris Davis 8:07
One, I learned how to create a quick scoring dashboard that I may use later. Two, it served its purpose. It served its purpose and it cost me nothing. It cost me maybe the 10 to 15 to 30 minutes to build it, but I would have wasted that trying to fill out the spreadsheet in an appropriate way.

Chris Davis 8:28
And that’s where I realized, while everybody is talking about going big and building the next SaaS and solve a problem for an enterprise and then create a SaaS and solve it for all enterprises, scale, that’s your way to millions. I’m not against it, but a lot of times they are speaking as if it’s mutually exclusive to what I’m teaching. And what I’m teaching is the exact opposite. Think small, start Small.

Chris Davis 8:58
Yeah, I know. When is the last time somebody in business told you to go smaller? But what I’m telling you is the key to success with speeding up your ability to produce effective software with AI is through the process of thinking smaller. Okay?

Chris Davis 9:22
When you think smaller, first off, personal software in itself is the practice of thinking smaller. Because I’m now thinking about my business and my individual process instead of everybody’s processes, right? But, but what it, what it does is inherently, it removes so many use cases, so many edge cases, so many considerations, so many things that you don’t know is behind you saying, hey, I want an app to do A. And behind a is like 50 decisions that you have to make.

Chris Davis 10:01
So imagine if you had an app that does ABC 50 times three, but it’s not really times three. It’s exponentially growing. So it’s more like 50 to the second power, right? All of those use cases you have to code for.

Chris Davis 10:17
And then when you start thinking about other people and how they use it, it’s unbearable. And it can get overwhelming extremely fast. And what will happen is you’ll get a quick initial success, you’ll get that quick spike, that quick dopamine hit, and then when it comes time to actually use it, you’re, you’re, you’ll come up with so many little bitty nicks and knacks that you’ll, you, you’ll, you’ll want to throw away all of AI software, build you just, you know, whatever. This is too hard, right?

Chris Davis 10:48
So I, I always tell people to start to think small because again, we’re, we’re in relationship with robots. And what I find extremely fascinating is the better I am as a leader to humans, the better I am as a leader to robots. Doesn’t that sound crazy? But if you think about relationships that you’re in, you have to learn how to communicate with that individual in a way that they can accept what you’re saying, respond and perform how you desire.

Chris Davis 11:20
Leadership, right? One of the biggest challenges of leadership, right, is how do I encourage my people, how do I challenge them? How do I get them to buy into my vision? And how do I get them to produce an output that is excellent and consistent?

Chris Davis 11:35
How do I give them the knowledge, the agency, the, the freedom to make mistakes while always learning from said mistakes to get to the end goal, right? Well, the same thing is, is, is for robots, I’m saying AI because you have to learn how to talk to it. You have to learn how it interprets, how you talk. You have to learn that it’s funny because when you start talking to AI, you realize just how much context you leave out.

Chris Davis 12:08
You can say something like, just make it bigger. And you’re realizing, like, oh, what does bigger mean? It has no context of what you’re referring to as smaller. It doesn’t know.

Chris Davis 12:23
It just knows the definition of bigger. So it’s like, oh, I’ll just make the font bigger. And you’re like, no, I mean, I met. Make this bigger.

Chris Davis 12:31
How could you not know that? Because you speak very broadly and without context. So when it’s a small application, these things have less impacts, but they’re still the same level of. It still requires the same level of awareness.

Chris Davis 12:52
But what it does is it’s kind of like the training wheels and you’re learning, oh, okay, this is how. And hold on, let me pause. You don’t even know what your style of building apps is. So you’re learning you and you’re learning the robot.

Chris Davis 13:13
This is a learning environment. And if you want to make this learning environment complex, you’re going to slow down your progress. You go into a classroom, they’re not throwing the whole book at you. And the teachers that do, you’re like, oh, they’re so terrible.

Chris Davis 13:27
But the teachers that break it down step by step, piece by piece, and say, hey, don’t worry about chapter two for right now and actually just do this part of chapter one. You have to be gracious with yourself and with AI because this relationship is extremely important. Once you get it, though, once you get it, you’re off to the races. But you cannot borrow it from someone else.

Chris Davis 13:56
If you’re in a relationship with somebody, you can’t go talk to somebody else who’s been in a relationship and say, hey, how do I. What’s the best way to be in a relationship with this person? They can give you pointers. Hey, you know what?

Chris Davis 14:09
You might want to watch what you say late at night because they tend to be a little cranky late and be ready in the morning because they have a lot of energy. Yes, they can give you pointers, but listen, you are responsible. You are responsible for your specific, subjective relationship with them. So, yes, you can get pointers.

Chris Davis 14:29
There’s pointers I’m going to share with you, but you are responsible for establishing a relationship with the AI platforms, whether it be Codex, Claude. Yeah, Codex, Claude, Gronk, Gemini, it doesn’t matter. Every one of them. You have to figure out your flow, your.

Chris Davis 14:55
Your how you synchronize, how you create the output that you desire for Me, I just, I find that the way that I think and talk Claude works better. I’ve talked to people, they’re like codex all the way. I, I’m like, great, no harm, no foul, whatever your flow is. But if you’ve got this big old project and you’re trying to solve the world’s, the business’s top issues, I just find that to be more intimidating and harder than thinking small and starting small.

Chris Davis 15:29
Right. And, and when you do it effectively, you start to see that the power of it again, for me is serving me first. Right? Put the mask on yourself before you go help someone else on an airplane.

Chris Davis 15:48
They tell you that. And in serving my needs, I get better and build an infrastructure that can now serve other people’s needs better. Because here’s the problem. Most people are too focused outwardly first.

Chris Davis 16:05
And then when something works and they start having success, the first thing that fails is their internal operational systems. Well, because I’ve been in tech for so long, I’ve been in operations, I’ve been it. I’ve been a systems builder. Now I’m a systems leader to things getting built.

Chris Davis 16:24
I understand that you’re, you’re only as good as your last efficient operation. That’s it. The holes in your process, things that create pipelines and make people the decision maker and slow things down, those are the real threats we can get out here, Market, have webinars, run ads and get people in. But once they get in, what’s that experience?

Chris Davis 16:50
So I like to start inside first. My approach is inside out. And that’s why I thought this episode was appropriate, because I want you all to align with my thinking. Because as we go along, I’m not going to repeat this.

Chris Davis 17:07
This is going to be inherent in everything that I say. It’s going to go without saying, right? Everything that I’ve done up into this point. And I’m not saying that I won’t have a SaaS eventually, but everything that I’ve done to this point has been specific apps for specific processes in my business.

Chris Davis 17:25
So I can learn how to prompt, I can learn how AI works, I can learn the software development cycle. And that makes me a much better leader when someone hires me to lead their team to produce the same output. Right now, somebody could say, hey, I learned the same thing when I built my first sas. Good for you.

Chris Davis 17:44
That’s not my path. That’s not what I’m teaching. Right. Neither, Neither is greater.

Chris Davis 17:50
It’s just how. How do you prefer to get to the finish line? I’ll tell you what? The level of excitement in my community and the, in the types of apps people are building.

Chris Davis 18:00
Omg, it just, it fills me because you have somebody that’s saying, hey, I’ve been trying to get Kajabi and go high level and all of these platforms to do it, and I just build a dashboard that lets me see it all. And then when I click this button, it goes off and does a thing. It’s absolutely amazing when you serve yourself first. And again, I’ve been talking about the relationship with robots.

Chris Davis 18:24
Understanding how to prompt and when to create a skill and how to get the best output. That’s one part. But the second part is, listen, you really need to learn the software development cycle. I was exposed to it secondhand because I’ve worked in leadership in startups, so by nature you see it, but I’ve never been responsible for it.

Chris Davis 18:48
Creating software for myself has allowed me to learn that software development cycle. How to plan in sprints, how to build incrementally instead of trying to one shot an app and then wonder why nothing’s working. And by the way, one shot means you send it a prompt and it builds the entire app in one prompt. I don’t recommend it.

Chris Davis 19:10
And anybody that talks about one shot and I’m like, next, right? Because it is a delicate process, especially if you’ve never built software before. Yes, you can do it without writing code, but you still need to understand best practices in creating software. All of that is just made easier when you’re building small software for specific processes.

Chris Davis 19:34
You look up and you’ll find that, oh my goodness, things that I were, that I was hiring people for, things that I thought would never be possible, things that were preventing us from really operating on the cutting edge consistently, they’re no longer an issue. And that experience is what I want to give to you. And then once you see that now you’re more encouraged and may I say by accident, you may develop your first SaaS software by first developing for yourself. I’ve got at least three applications right now that people have inquired if I’m interested in selling and I’m just not there yet.

Chris Davis 20:13
I’m not. I’m having fun and I’m really shoring up my business, my back end, all of my operations. And it is absolutely amazing, everyone. So that’s what I want to, that’s the additional context I want to provide to you in my, my thought process and why I’m not just a, I’m not just professing that you should start building personal software, but I’m doubling down that you should start small first.

Chris Davis 20:43
You really should. Okay. And here’s a framework that I’ll give you all in closing to just guide your thinking beyond and, how can I say it? It’s.

Chris Davis 20:58
Profitable processes should be operated by personal software. Okay. Profitable processes should be operated by personal software. Anything.

Chris Davis 21:13
When I say profitable, I mean anything that generates leads or customers, that should be operated by personal software. It is going to be your most reliable employee and it is going to have the least limitations. If you need to see a certain graph, if you need to understand trends, if there is certain actions that you need to take. Every time you have software that can do it, I’m telling you, I’m thinking of doing some walkthroughs of my apps so I can show you all exactly what I mean when I say, hey.

Chris Davis 21:58
Well, I can give you an. Imagine you want to publish. You. You recorded a podcast like this, and maybe you have video or something like that.

Chris Davis 22:05
You want to take it, transcribe it, create a blog post, publish it to Buzzsprout or whatever your. Your podcast platform is, make sure that same episode is on your website, publish it to your community, and then send an email newsletter about it. There’s software that can do all of that with the click of a button. But you have to build it, right?

Chris Davis 22:29
You have to build it. And let me change that from you have to build it. You get to build it exactly how you and your team work. And I’m saying that because that’s what we’re doing right now.

Chris Davis 22:46
Right now. We’ve reimagined my whole podcast process. You go back and listen to my podcast manager, Cassie, on episode 201, I believe it is, or 199, I think. Yeah, 199.

Chris Davis 23:02
It’s different. We’ve taken everything that she’s done. Now it’s software. I didn’t replace her.

Chris Davis 23:07
She’s the manager of it. But software is operating that profitable process. So if you. If you’re thinking, where do I start, Chris, what should I do?

Chris Davis 23:19
What is generating profits? What is profits? Leads or sales? Determine that process and build software around it.

Chris Davis 23:28
And you will see for yourself, you will see for yourself the power of it. But my statement with all of this is really, truly start internal before going external. Three months spent just building software for yourself. You will be shocked at how it positions you to successfully build your first SaaS platform.

Chris Davis 23:52
All right, so hopefully I’ve made thinking small and starting small more appealing than it was prior to this episode, and hopefully that the scales are starting to be removed from your eyes. You’re starting to see clearer. The binoculars you’re turning them and what seemed fuzzy and so far away is now looking more clear and closer. And you’re getting the clarity you need to really navigate this AI era.

Chris Davis 24:20
And if you ever need help, we’ve got a community, everybody. It’s in the description. You can click the link. It’s of no charge.

Chris Davis 24:27
There’s no credit card. There’s no catch. There really isn’t. It’s me just again allowing you do you want to be on the sidewalk?

Chris Davis 24:34
Do you want to be driving on the street or do you want to be driving on the highway? We’ve got resources and assets to allow you to do any of them. So hopefully you are ready to do what? Start small.

Chris Davis 24:50
Start small before you go big. And until next time I see you all online, automate responsibly, my friends.