Build It or Buy It? Making the Right Software Decision

Chris Davis 0:09
And we’re back. Welcome to another episode of the All Systems Go podcast. And listen, I’m going to jump right in today with a rant, everybody. I’m going to try to keep this short because the topic is very important today on how to determine whether you should build your next software solution or buy it, which is a honest question that I need you all to navigate responsibly.

Chris Davis 0:38
But before we get into this, I’ve got something to get off my chest. I listen the, the, the Internet is a great and dangerous place. And for a long while I’ve been witnessing people talking about how you can’t trust AI and you know, you should never build software and stay in your lane. People and everybody shouldn’t be going all deep with AI and all of this.

Chris Davis 1:11
Right? But more so my frustration stems from the very monolithic and let me just say ignorant approach to software. And before I, let me, let me preface my rant by saying SaaS. Building, building a SaaS with AI and building software with AI are not synonymous.

Chris Davis 1:33
People’s ignorance causes them to lean on extremes. Right? There’s space right in the middle. That’s not full SaaS, but it’s also not heading to sand, ignoring the power of AI authored code.

Chris Davis 1:52
And, and, and people are having a hard time navigating the in between. And I’m seeing it in so many professionals. I’m seeing it with software developers. I’m never writing with AI again.

Chris Davis 2:06
You can’t trust it. It makes so many mistakes. It doesn’t do this. What about security?

Chris Davis 2:11
What about blah blah, blah. Then, then I go over and I look at my, my builder crowd, the people who have been known for building automations in your CRM softwares or your make.coms and zapiers, and they’re saying the same thing, oh, AI can’t replace everybody. And you want to make sure your processes are really being executed the right way.

Chris Davis 2:37
You just can’t give it to AI. Then I have my process documenting people saying the same thing. And I’m trying to figure out where, where is the confusion? It reminds me of.

Chris Davis 2:52
It reminds me of every evolution that mankind has seen. There has always been people fighting it until they had to surrender. And by the time they surrender, the wave had already taken over and they missed their opportunity. Think of the blockbusters.

Chris Davis 3:08
Think of BlackBerry. Right? Can you guys remember, I know I’m dating myself, but can you remember the days where people were looking at iPhone on screen keyboards saying, that’s crazy. Why would you put a keyboard on the screen of your device?

Chris Davis 3:26
And you have Microsoft doing the hybrid. What was it called? I think it was the HTC Hero, the T Mobile, Sly Kick, the Palm Pre that mixed the two that said, hey, we’re still going to give you a physical keyboard, but also you can touch the screen. I don’t think the Sidekick, you could touch the screen, but it had to flip out.

Chris Davis 3:47
Keyboard, right. And where do we end up? Everybody, where did we end up? We ended up with keyboards on the screen and nobody’s complaining about it, right?

Chris Davis 3:59
So every time there’s an evolution, there’s always those who oppose it and then there’s always those who are for it. And then right in the middle there’s, there’s the intelligent folks that know when to oppose it and when to accept it. And that’s just not what I’m seeing. I’m seeing people blindly and extremely either say AI can do any and everything and then people on the other end saying, I don’t trust it even to, to give me a response for my email.

Chris Davis 4:31
It can’t even check the grammar correctly on my email. I’m not using it. And in the common factor that I found. Who are the people complaining?

Chris Davis 4:40
The loudest. Doers. Doers. And let me say this, doers, your fear is based on ignorance and your fear is going to make you obsolete.

Chris Davis 4:54
Not AI itself, but your fear of it. You got to get over yourself, you really do. If I see another doer talk about why they don’t use AI and for coding and why you shouldn’t build software with AI. I’m, I, I’m going to virtually in my mind, not physically virtually in my mind, give you, give you a little slap, slap on the cheeks to wake you up.

Chris Davis 5:25
And I’m not saying this to be like I’m better than you. I’m saying is because you’re missing a huge opportunity. You are missing a huge opportunity taking a monolithic, stale, outdated, just ignorant approach to building software with AI. And here’s why it goes into the topic today of should I build it or should I buy it?

Chris Davis 5:49
Because I want to just show you some, give you some small examples of applications that I built with AI that nobody can, can tell me is not a great application, is not secure, and is not the perfect use case for AI to build it instead of a human being. And one of them, these are very simple, very simple, everybody. One of, one of them is a calendar syncing app. And if you have multiple clients and they sign you up for Gmail or Google Workplace on their, on their accounts.

Chris Davis 6:27
You then have the trouble of you’ve got a calendar and client, a Google account, a client, a calendar and client B, Google account, and then you have your Google account. And when they go to schedule, you want to be able to send them to your, the calendar in their company’s calendar account to see your availability. At the same time, you don’t want to go and start adding calendars, adding all of the calendars between the calendars, because it just becomes a mess to sync, really. You want every client to be able to look at their instance of your calendar and see what the availability is, Right?

Chris Davis 7:07
So I just built a small script that syncs it asks me, hey, based on this calendar for client A, which time blocks on other calendars do you want to block off for that calendar? And I can just select some toggles and then my calendar is up to date for that client, right? Then client B may see the same thing or see other availability, but it keeps me into all I have to do is maintain my calendar and then it syncs out. There’s software that does this everybody.

Chris Davis 7:37
And guess what? It costs money. It costs money. So I figured, why not build it myself?

Chris Davis 7:42
I got another networker app where many of you will use like the blinks and hello, I think it is, uh, or dot dot com, I think, you know those. Those, they give you a QR code that you scan, or they give you a wrist and you do the NFC thing. And at the end of the day, what are we saying? It’s a QR code that goes to a landing page or a QR code that goes to a contact file.

Chris Davis 8:12
Well, you realize you can build that, right? You don’t, you don’t need to sign up with another software company that has limited integrations, limited CAPA capabilities. I built a networking for myself. 1.

Chris Davis 8:25
It can generate a QR code right on the spot. If there’s a landing page I want to send somebody to, or if there’s an offer or whatever, I can create it right in the app and it creates its QR code. I hold up my phone, the person scans it right there, right? Of course, I have a QR code attached to my contact file and all of those things.

Chris Davis 8:44
But furthermore, furthermore, I can also put canned emails in there. So if I’m on the spot networking and I want to send somebody free access to my community, the email’s already written. All I type in is their name and their email hit send it goes through Google and sends it out to them. These are all functionalities that are buried in so.

Chris Davis 9:03
So what would you have to do to replace it? You’d have to have blink, then you’d have to have your sales CRM have the canned responses in an app on your phone and then if you wanted to create a link on the fly, I don’t know what you do. Well that’s an app for me and it took and I was actually at a networking conference building the app in the crowd while, while somebody was giving a presentation. So I didn’t even have to leave and go home.

Chris Davis 9:29
I wasn’t, I was a little split focused but it wasn’t to the point where I wasn’t following what the person was saying. Right Just on the side it just going, doing its thing. You can’t tell me these are not great uses. You can’t tell me and I have no security, security risk because what happened, what I did was I chatted with ChatGPT or Claude or whomever I chatted with just to kind of understand hey, what are ways that people hack these softwares and what are things that I should be mindful of.

Chris Davis 10:02
It gave me a list. What did I do with that list? You go and you talk to developers, people who really write code and you say hey, is this list real? What else am I missing?

Chris Davis 10:11
They let you know how to secure your app API rate limiting, making sure you have a secure signed key. If you’re using cloudflare and you want ext layer, you use zero trust so that only certain emails can access it. I mean there’s all types of way to ways to secure an app that is built with AI so that it is actually more secure than some of the automations you all are building with N8N, make.com and Zapier.

Chris Davis 10:40
But again, it requires intelligence. You’re letting your ignorance run wild and you’re not allowing yourself to evolve with what we with this tool. It’s not magic, it’s a tool with this tool that we have at our disposal and it’s painful to see you guys willingly be left off. It’s like watching somebody at the bus stop decide not to get on the bus and then, and then complain why they feel left behind.

Chris Davis 11:09
And then the next group of people that want to get on the bus, they’re the ones telling them well I don’t ride buses, you know, they’re unsafe and I’d rather just walk to my destination. And you know, back in the day we just walk. We got better Shoes, we jumped on bikes. Why get on a bus?

Chris Davis 11:26
It’s like, if that’s the case, why are you even at the bus stop? You see it going. It’s transporting people to the future. You see people, yes, there are accidents that happen at time, but that’s what everything.

Chris Davis 11:39
Right. And I’m just trying to figure out where this extreme. I know where the extreme thought comes from. It’s through ignorance.

Chris Davis 11:47
When we don’t know, we think in extreme, we think and act in extremes when we, when, when understanding is absent. So when somebody is either pro AI and tries to do everything with AI or no AI and is opposed to most things with AI, that’s where you get these extremities. And then you have the doers who jump in and they’re like, yeah, you’re right, anti AI folks. Why, why do they act like this?

Chris Davis 12:11
Because they’re scared. Doers are scared. They’re terrified of being replaced. Because the reality is the value is not in you doing okay.

Chris Davis 12:22
I said it for you. I named your fear. You’re parading as if you’re some expert software developer, some super duper service provider and you’re just scared. You’re scared that what you are, what you have been paid to do, what you’ve built your business around doing is now not as valuable as it once was.

Chris Davis 12:46
And guess what? You, you going anti AI is not going to say, it’s not going to solve it. The truth of the matter is the value has never been in the doing, ever. The value has been in the getting it done, not the doing.

Chris Davis 13:03
So if you are somebody that knows how to get things done, you are greater than the doer. And what I’m saying is don’t be extreme. Don’t be the one that says, oh, I don’t do anything anymore. I’m saying find a healthy balance.

Chris Davis 13:18
There are some things in your life as a professional service provider that you do not need to do. And there are some things you do need to do. When, when I, I now my app building I do for myself. It’s personal software for myself.

Chris Davis 13:31
I have a team that builds software for my clients, right? So I’m not hired to build software. I can definitely teach you how to build your, your local environment to, to, to write software for yourself. I can teach that, I teach teams how to do that.

Chris Davis 13:48
But I don’t do it. I don’t do the building. Guess who does the building? Software.

Chris Davis 13:53
Software engineers that, that understand code and understand AI so they, they know the limitations. They know how to tell AI hey, do it this way. Don’t use inline css, use global variables. Hey, use this framework.

Chris Davis 14:11
Leverage this existing module, do not create a new one. There are guardrails that you can put around AI when you’re writing code to get a solid output. And guess what? If these doers weren’t as scared to be replaced, they would realize they have a super doer at their disposal that they can use so that they don’t have to do the remedial things.

Chris Davis 14:41
If you think about a doctor, a doctor is not a nurse for a reason. The nurse is there to collect all the information to do all of the facilitation for you to see the doctor. But nurses aren’t replacing doctors, right? They’re just preparing.

Chris Davis 14:58
So when the doctor shows up, the time is the most valuable spent. What I’m proposing to you is that should be your process using AI to handle the small tasks that you don’t want to have to do all the time. So that when you do show up, your time is at a minimum. Minimum in terms of quantity, but a maximum in terms of quality.

Chris Davis 15:22
If you show up and you’re just making sure, hey, this works, this works. Okay, great. Good job. Good job team.

Chris Davis 15:28
Whether it’s a team of agents or a team of people who, who deployed agents, that’s really the goal. So when we’re in. The reason why this is important is because I was on LinkedIn somewhere, I see this stuff all over the place and I saw somebody said oh, it’s ridiculous to use AI to replace, to build software instead of to replace subscriptions. And I said wait a minute, what’s ridiculous?

Chris Davis 15:56
That or what you just said? Because what you just said sounds ridiculous. I can’t count the amount of software SaaS subscriptions I’ve been able to eliminate, I’ve been able to avoid and the monies I’ve been able to free up from, from such. From such efforts all by software.

Chris Davis 16:18
There’s things that I would buy something as simple as an ad to your calendar but button to put on your own landing page. A lot of the landing page builders like the click funnels, lead pages and whatever else is out there, you can have the add to calendar once you register for a webinar. But I was shocked. That’s not a standard functionality, that’s easy.

Chris Davis 16:40
And if you go online, there’s platforms that charge you anywhere from 10 to $25 a month to do this. This basic add event to calendar, well that’s a 15, 20 minute script written by AI that’s now added to either my browser Chrome plugin, or I can generate the button on the fly and just put it on a landing page. Well, that’s done. It’s done one time and I’m using it forever.

Chris Davis 17:08
There’s no maintenance. People talk about, oh, then you gotta maintain your code. There’s no maintenance. It works.

Chris Davis 17:14
Why? Because it’s specific to my process. And for those of you, this is your first episode. Go back, listen to what personal software is.

Chris Davis 17:22
This is why I’m saying the approach to getting started with AI authored coding is through personal software where you take a process that only you execute and build software around it. It’s going to be secure, it’s going to be effective, it’s going to improve your efficiency, it’s going to give you time back immediately. It’s the best way. And it’s going to teach you how to use these models.

Chris Davis 17:46
Right. Too often are people not learning how to use these models and then blindly saying, oh, AI is no good. Oh, I don’t do it. You can’t use it for this and for that.

Chris Davis 17:58
And you guys are dying. You’re choosing to be dinosaurs. That’s what’s crazy. It’s one thing for evolution to happen and you didn’t realize that you were behind.

Chris Davis 18:05
It’s another thing to choose to be behind. And it’s statements in posts like I’ve been seeing lately. It’s like, oh, just stay in your lane. If you’re not a software developer, don’t build software.

Chris Davis 18:17
That’s crazy. That can. Can you imagine somebody telling you that in the beginning days of your career? They’re essentially saying, don’t learn a new skill.

Chris Davis 18:30
How asinine is that, right? Instead we really need, we’re really in the era of should I build it or buy it? Every time I look at a software solution, that’s the question that I ask myself. And it’s because I’ve built the skill to quickly produce software for myself.

Chris Davis 18:48
I. Not for many. I am not on here Talking about building SaaS, building product building software that will have multiple users outside of myself or my own company or the my clients companies. Not talking about that.

Chris Davis 19:01
I know people who have built SaaS solutions and they’ve used a hybrid approach. They’ve used AI to get started and they use the developer to finish it and keep a developer on hand along with AI. I get it, I know how these things are done. I’m just saying I don’t go that route.

Chris Davis 19:20
I’m not there. I don’t have that desire yet. Not Saying I won’t. But right now I don’t have that desire.

Chris Davis 19:26
So whenever I’m looking at software, I’m always thinking, should I build it or should I buy this? Right? And the where does this come from? It comes from the reality that most software solutions give you use maybe 20 to 30% max of those solutions.

Chris Davis 19:46
If we’re honest, you bought a CRM software and all you needed to do was send emails to people after a speaking engagement. But this thing does all of these other fancy things, right? So to answer the question, to build it or buy it, you have to really be clear with what do you need the software to do for you? A lot of times we’re not clear.

Chris Davis 20:07
So we’re just kind of shopping on like the features page of these software solutions and as long as they have enough bullet points of things that would be nice and things that we think we need, we buy it and then we get overwhelmed with all the features and then you underutilize it and feel like, oh my goodness, I need to be using it more. Instead of getting very clear with what your processes demand and then holding up the software solutions online to that or asking yourself, maybe this is a simple software build, right? Maybe this is something that I can build now. If you don’t have the skill to build, you can never ask this question.

Chris Davis 20:46
You’re just gonna always be buying software. For me, when I was a doer, I was saving companies thousands, tens of thousands of dollars a year just by assessing their tech stack and saying, hey, based on your processes, here’s the software that you need and you don’t. I still have that skill, but now I have an additional skill that says, hey, based on what you’re trying to do, no, as a company, you don’t need another enterprise. Jotform account.

Chris Davis 21:11
Nothing against Jotform Enterprise Typeform account. Nothing against Typeform Enterprise Fill out account. None against fill out. You just don’t need it.

Chris Davis 21:19
Because based on how you’re using forms, you’ve, you’ve really got. Your need is two to three surveys. If you know the questions and you like the Typeform experience, we can emulate that with AI code, we can build that and then you’re not limited on the back end how it integrates with your stack specifically because you’re the only user. I’ve done this many times for myself, by the way.

Chris Davis 21:47
I don’t even use form software anymore. I just build it in my apps. I got a podcast app now, the intake form. If you all ever want to be A guest on the, on the podcast, you’ll see a new intake form or AI, all AI authored and it integrates with my stack in a way that I could never get Jotform, fill out, Airtable, any of those tools to do.

Chris Davis 22:09
Right? So, so that’s the, that’s the real question. And when I’m asking the question, I’m asking on behalf of these companies that have to get enterprise or multiple seating. Being able to create your own form can save you tens of thousands of dollars a year using the developers and talent that you currently have in your business.

Chris Davis 22:35
If they just learn this skill, that to me, why would I not save that money? Why would I not? Do you know how much money people are spending on landing pages and analytics and all of these types of softwares where when you say, hey, well, wait a minute, all of the data is in the database. If I have AI write a script that syncs the database to a database I own in Supabase, Neon, base roll, whatever your backend database is, I then can use the same AI skills and have it display the dash the data in a dashboard to me better than any platform online could ever do.

Chris Davis 23:24
But you’ll never get there because you’re so stuck on, oh, AI can’t do that and you shouldn’t be writing code. With AI, you just don’t understand all of the capabilities. When you start thinking small and start thinking selfish, think about you. What do you need?

Chris Davis 23:43
Just think about that and solve that, right? I built a habit tracker. I was online and I wanted to, you know, add some, some healthy habits. So I go and I search and I find a couple apps that worked really well.

Chris Davis 23:58
And just like with, with, with everything, again, they do, you know, a few things well. But the two things that I really wanted it to do, it just didn’t do. But it had all these other features and I’m like, I really don’t need those other features. So I looked at it, took screenshots, fed it into AI and said, hey, look, I need to build.

Chris Davis 24:15
This is the look and feel I’m looking for. But this is the functionality that I need within a day. Built a habit tracker specifically to how I want to track my habits. Okay?

Chris Davis 24:26
No, no upgrade, no upgrade needed, just that app it. What’s the maintenance? Nothing. Whenever I want to add a new feature, I sit in front of my desk, type it in, it adds it, I test it, it works and that’s it.

Chris Davis 24:41
Right? So, so the importance is one, you have to have the skill, you have to have the skill of software building to even have to even join the chat of should I build it or should I buy it? Some of you don’t even know how to build, so it’s off the table. Even worse, some of you don’t know how to get stuff built for you, so it’s off the table.

Chris Davis 25:08
You’re stuck as a buyer. And here’s what’s even more frustrating, is that if you’re doing process mapping, automation, building any type of technological work for your clients, you’re the ones that are, you are the professionals that are more familiar with their processes than them than the client themselves. And you’re holding yourself back because you can be seeing opportunities and saying, wait a minute, I can build a solution that will execute this process for you much easier and remove the fingerprint. And you can’t do it because you are not evolving.

Chris Davis 25:49
You haven’t chosen to say, you know what, let me figure out my way of using AI. Let me try starting small and doing these small things instead of all of these big solutions that do have all types of risks for security that, that, that AI can write code that’s terrible and convoluted. But, but you’re not even, you’re not even getting started. You, you’re not even entertaining the, the possibility.

Chris Davis 26:16
So you can never ask the question, should I build it or should I buy it? The only time I’ll buy something is when I realize that one, it’s not worth building, right? I, I had this question recently in my community about a lms. I wouldn’t build an LMS right now for me, because there’s so much that goes into the back end, tracking, storing of your progress, things of that nature, right?

Chris Davis 26:46
And it’s facing, it’s forward facing, so multiple users would have to use it. But it gets interesting when I say, well, what if multiple users don’t use it and it’s just for me, what if it’s just a progress tracking for me, very simplified skin skeleton. That, that could be possible, right? That could be.

Chris Davis 27:06
I’m not interested in that. But however, here’s what I did. I have no issue with my current lms. So I went to AI and I built a importer that takes my, takes a notion, outline, markdown file outline and imports it into chapters, lessons, topics and all of that for me.

Chris Davis 27:25
Well, what did I do? I just removed the building, which is the hardest part to me of building a course. Now it’s a click of a button once the outline is done and it’s built for me, right? But I know how to.

Chris Davis 27:37
I know how to author quick scripts, software. I know how to do this stuff. You don’t. But yet you’re sitting on the sideline, criticizing, talking about how you would never trust or you’re a software developer, not realizing you’re probably the best.

Chris Davis 27:59
You are the best AI builder that exists because you know the parameters, you know the guardrails to put on AI, you know the checks and balances to run, and yet you would rather do it manual to. To. To save some level of meaning and. And needed.

Chris Davis 28:22
I need to be. I want to feel needed. You should be writing by hand, everything. Come on, you guys.

Chris Davis 28:29
We’re in a new day. We’re in a new era. So should you build it or buy it? I don’t have a.

Chris Davis 28:34
I don’t have a binary answer for you. My answer to your question to that question is, do you even know how to build it? Is building it even a possibility for you? And if not, why?

Chris Davis 28:49
Why is it not a possibility when you have unlimited resources? I will propose to you. I do have a course, by the way. I don’t really promote it much yet, and the day will come, but people go through this course.

Chris Davis 29:03
They learn. And one of the things that I realize is that people think that you sit down and you learn the stuff in one sitting, and that that way of thinking actually prevents you from. From learning this skill. Instead, I tell them, just 10 minutes a day, just 10 minutes a day.

Chris Davis 29:20
Learn what the definition of aging is today. Okay? Now learn how to prompt and just create a basic artifacting clause. That’s it, right?

Chris Davis 29:28
Just do baby steps and have a community to support you and ask questions. And then at some point. It took me months, you guys. It took me months before it clicked.

Chris Davis 29:37
But I was always tinkering. I was always doing something. My. My proposal to you all is, how are you getting in the game of building to even be able to answer the question for yourself, should I buy it or should I build it?

Chris Davis 29:54
I’m always, every time before I take my credit card out and put it down, it’s really a privacy card, and put it down and say, I want this software. I run a checks and balance. Hey, what am I really needing this to do? Is it possible for me to do it for myself?

Chris Davis 30:08
If not, I’ll buy it. If so, let me code it. And if in the process I realize, you know what, this is a little too much, I’ll go buy it. I will.

Chris Davis 30:17
I’m not opposed to buying software, everyone. That’s crazy to be like Never buy software again. There’s certain softwares that you should not replace. That’s the honest truth.

Chris Davis 30:28
All right. But I just want you to be able to have the conversation intelligently with yourself and on behalf of your clients. Don’t hold your. It’s one thing to hold yourself back, but don’t hold your clients back because you’re stuck in an outdated approach that’s based on fear of you being replaced.

Chris Davis 30:45
They deserve better and you deserve better. So hopefully, hopefully this wasn’t too harsh. I don’t feel like it was too harsh, but I really want you all to get in the game that the. The evolution is taking place rapidly and you have.

Chris Davis 31:01
The skill that you’re going to have to master going forward is the skill of. Of talking to robots. To get an output, you’re going to need to define what that balance is. There are certain things I do not rely on AI for, and there are certain things that I’ll never do again because I can do it.

Chris Davis 31:17
You have to figure out what that balance is for you at least join the chat, get in the game, so you can, at minimum, ask the question intelligently, should I build this or should I buy this? That’s my hopes for today. Hopefully. This podcast was illuminating for you, convicting for some of you, and liberating for a lot of you.

Chris Davis 31:39
Thank you for listening. Always, always thank you for your continued commitment in support of the podcast. So until next time I see you online, Automate responsibly, my friends.