598: I Turned My Course, Blog, And Podcast Into An AI Bot – Here’s The Tech Behind It

Summary

Episode 598: I Turned My Course, Blog, And Podcast Into An AI Bot – Here’s The Tech Behind It

Host: Steve Chou
Guest: Tony
Release Date: July 14, 2025
Podcast: The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
Description: Start an E-commerce Business, Become Your Own Boss, and Spend More Time With Your Loved Ones

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Introduction

In Episode 598 of The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, host Steve Chou delves into an innovative project he's been developing: Steve Bot, a custom AI assistant designed to emulate his expertise by leveraging his extensive course materials, blog posts, and podcast content. Joined by Tony, who expresses initial skepticism, the duo explores the technical intricacies, challenges, and potential benefits of integrating AI into educational content.

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What is Steve Bot?

Steve Bot is an AI-driven assistant created to provide users with instant answers derived from Steve's comprehensive library of over 800 e-commerce and online business videos, blog posts, and podcast episodes.

• Steve Chou [00:00]: "I built Steve Bot, a custom AI assistant powered by a rag database that mimics my brain."

The primary motivation behind Steve Bot was to address the recurring issue of students asking questions already covered in the extensive video library, thereby improving user experience and reducing redundant inquiries.

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Technical Challenges and Solutions

1. Transcription of Videos

One of the initial hurdles was converting the vast number of videos into searchable text format.

• Steve Chou [01:09]: "I kept getting questions that were already covered in the videos in the class. But since there's like 450 videos, I get it."

To efficiently transcribe the videos, Steve utilized Whisper, an open-source transcription model by OpenAI, running it locally to save costs. This approach enabled him to process transcripts without incurring high expenses associated with commercial transcription services.

• Steve Chou [04:29]: "the first task actually was automating, generating transcripts from all the videos."
• Steve Chou [05:22]: "I don't play games and I didn't really have a use for a video [card] until now."

2. Breaking Down Transcripts

AI models have context window limitations, necessitating the division of transcripts into manageable 500-word chunks to ensure relevant and accurate responses.

• Steve Chou [11:12]: "you have to break up each of these transcripts into blocks."
• Tony [11:22]: "So individual transcripts have to be broken up."

This segmentation allows the AI to process and retrieve information effectively, ensuring that responses are concise and sourced from the correct segments of the content.

3. Integration and Automation

Steve employed Make.com, a workflow automation tool, to streamline the process of feeding transcripts into the AI model. This setup involves:

• Steve Chou [07:25]: "You can use make.com... It's a workflow type of tool."
• Steve Chou [12:16]: "I have to introduce Steve Bot if it's ready."

Despite initial trials slowing progress, Steve anticipates automating these processes further to facilitate seamless updates as new content is added.

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Benefits for Course Members

Steve Bot offers significant value to course participants by providing:

• Instant Information Access: Users can ask questions and receive immediate answers linked directly to relevant video lessons, reducing the need to sift through hundreds of videos.

  • Tony [03:08]: "I actually think this is going to be good because personally, for me, like, I need it just to keep up with everything that we're doing."

• Enhanced Learning Experience: By minimizing information overload and focusing on actionable content, the bot makes the learning journey more efficient.

  • Steve Chou [02:07]: "you shouldn't watch everything. Just watch what you're actively implementing anyway."

Customer Service Reduction: Automating responses to frequently asked questions decreases the burden on support teams, allowing them to focus on more complex inquiries.

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Future Plans and Monetization

Steve envisions expanding Steve Bot beyond the current course, considering it as a potential tripwire to attract new members or as a standalone product offering:

• Community Engagement: Integrating Steve Bot into a broader community platform to provide accessible assistance and drive engagement.

  • Steve Chou [18:45]: "I want to build a much bigger community that obviously goes beyond the course."

• Monetization Strategies: Charging a nominal fee (e.g., $5/month) for access to the bot while keeping core course materials free for existing members. Additionally, exploring the development of specialized bots, such as a Tony Bot, to enhance personalization.

  • Steve Chou [19:31]: "I'm probably only going to update Steve Bot like once. It doesn't take very long."
  • Tony [29:50]: "I think it'll cost one point per question."

Shopify Plugin Potential: Steve is contemplating offering the AI bot as a Shopify plugin, which could serve as a cost-effective recommendation engine for e-commerce stores.

• Steve Chou [33:00]: "I think the Shopify App Store will probably have problems in the next couple of years as more and more people don't need code."

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Potential Use Cases and Considerations

1. Enhanced Customer Interaction:
Steve Bot can be integrated into websites to replace traditional search bars, offering more dynamic and accurate responses based on the vast content library.

• Steve Chou [27:17]: "The goal also was to consider just charging for the, for the bot."

2. Product Recommendations:
For e-commerce platforms like Steve's Bumblebee store, the bot can suggest products based on user queries, improving sales through personalized recommendations.

• Steve Chou [25:53]: "I wish I had examples ready to go, but find out all the possible use cases for a particular style of handkerchief."

3. Handling Unsupported Queries:
When Steve Bot encounters questions outside its knowledge base, it logs these inquiries for Steve to address in future content, ensuring continuous improvement.

• Steve Chou [37:25]: "For the class I'm logging all the questions and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a search for anyone who got an 'I don't know'..."

4. User Experience Enhancements:
Suggestions include integrating direct email forms within the bot for unsupported queries to streamline user support.

• Tony [38:00]: "It'd be cool if you could integrate like a little 'click here to email.'"

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Challenges and Ethical Considerations

1. AI Hallucinations:
A primary concern is ensuring that Steve Bot does not provide inaccurate or fabricated information, which could mislead users and damage trust.

• Steve Chou [21:47]: "Otherwise, it will say, I don't know the answer to that question instead of just making something up."

2. Data Privacy and Accuracy:
When implementing bots for product recommendations, ensuring the AI does not expose sensitive information or make unauthorized changes (e.g., erroneous shipping policies) is crucial.

• Steve Chou [26:30]: "You have to worry more about it hallucinating."

3. User Interaction Management:
Tracking user behavior and managing the number of queries to prevent abuse or excessive reliance on the bot is essential for maintaining system integrity.

• Tony [39:40]: "And when someone logs on and they're like, this is your 32nd question this week..."

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Conclusion

Steve Chou's foray into integrating AI with his extensive educational content through Steve Bot represents a significant advancement in how information is accessed and utilized. By addressing the challenges of transcribing vast content libraries and ensuring accurate, contextually relevant responses, Steve Bot promises to enhance the learning experience for course members and potentially serve as a valuable tool for broader e-commerce applications. As Steve continues to refine and automate the bot's capabilities, the possibilities for monetization and expanded community engagement look promising.

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Notable Quotes:

• Steve Chou [00:00]: "I built Steve Bot, a custom AI assistant powered by a rag database that mimics my brain."

• Tony [00:55]: "do we need another Steve?"

• Steve Chou [03:38]: "So it's, it's like a much better version of search."

• Steve Chou [17:02]: "It's not like AI knows all of your stuff and you're loading up everything."

• Tony [18:23]: "I want to build a much bigger community that obviously goes beyond the course."

• Steve Chou [35:15]: "Most programming languages all kind of blend together after a while, if you've been doing it long enough."

• Tony [38:28]: "Yeah, that little feature would be like a great ad because I can't stand when it's like email support..."

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Resources Mentioned:

• Make.com: Workflow automation tool used for integrating Dropbox with OpenAI's Whisper model.
• Whisper by OpenAI: Open-source transcription model utilized for generating transcripts from videos.
• Riverside FM: Offers a free transcription service, albeit with manual upload requirements.

For more insights and resources on starting your own e-commerce store, visit mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for the free 6-day mini-course.

Transcript

[Steve Chou]

Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. In this episode, I share how I built Steve Bot, a custom AI assistant powered by a rag database that mimics my brain. We break down the tech stack, the biggest mistakes made, and how this changes the classes that I teach forever. But before we begin, I want to let you know that the session recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are available [e-mail] if you missed the event, you can now get instant access to every keynote workshop and Panel. Go to sellersummit.com now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today we're going to talk about a couple projects that I've been working on. And I was a little hesitant to talk about this because I hope it doesn't bore you guys. Tony says it'll be interesting. We'll see.

[Tony]

I, I, it is a selfish reason I want to know about Steve Bot. My first concern is do we need another Steve?

[Steve Chou]

Like, wait, we didn't even tell people what I'm working on.

[Tony]

So it's called Steve Bot. Steve.

[Steve Chou]

Steve Bot.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

And I have to say that I've learned more in the last two days than I have in probably like the last year because this is completely new to me how all this stuff works and everything. But I did create Steve Bot. I did this for the course because I kept getting questions that were already covered in the videos in the, in the class. But since there's like 450 videos. I get it. Right. You probably didn't watch the one that yielded the answer.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And this is a common problem that, that I've been having actually in the last few years with the class. Probably the last two or three years.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

When the volume of videos, even though I'm pruning them, I'm also constantly adding new ones every single week.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And the level of information is, is overwhelming for a lot of people because so I always say up front, you, you shouldn't watch everything. Yeah, just watch what you're actively implementing anyway.

[Tony]

You know, I've so just to speak on that for a minute. I think that's the case for both courses because I know that we have been on lives and doing, you know, office hours and things like that, and someone will ask a question and I know we've done a lesson on it. Right. Because I know that I did gave the lesson or we did it together, whatever. But you know, I can't remember which lesson it's in Because a lot of times too, I think for the courses we get so granular in the information. So, like, the lesson is really specific on one thing. It's like, well then is it in that one or is it in this one? Because they're both talking about, let's just say, lead magnet and, and welcome flows. Right, so which one? So I actually think this is going to be good because personally, for me, like, I need it just to keep up with everything that we're doing.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So that was the goal. And then I had to run down this whole rabbit hole of implementation, learning how to train AI models and all that stuff. It is so fascinating. But at the same time, once you get down to like the nitty gritty, it's actually very basic what it does. So, okay, so the overall goal was so that instead of asking, hey, you know, what lesson is this in? Or whatever, you just ask Steve Bot. And then it gives you the answer to that question and then it gives you a link to the video that covered it. Okay, Right. And so if the answer didn't answer thoroughly, you go and you watch the video. Right.

[Tony]

That sounds fantastic.

[Steve Chou]

So it's, it's like a much better version of search. In practice, doing that is a little bit more difficult because you can't literally, you can't just shove all of your stuff into AI. It kind of doesn't work that way. So the limitations are. So there's, like I said, there's like 450ish videos. And the first tall task actually was automating, generating transcripts from all the videos. So the first thing I did is I downloaded all the videos into a directory, just the ones that are active. Because believe it or not, there's like close to 800 videos, I think.

[Tony]

I mean, I believe it. The course is what, 13, 14 years old?

[Steve Chou]

It is 14. 14 years old.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. So I had all these videos in there that were taken down. Right. Because they're obsolete or whatever.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

But they're still. So I had to find the ones that were active, which meant writing some WordPress routines to just grab the active posts that wasn't that hard and then downloading them to a directory. Then you need to grab transcripts of all of them. Right. And this is why I went a little cheap. So the transcripts, you can feed them into OpenAI and get them done. But OpenAI actually open sourced a model for free and it's called Whisper. And you can run all that locally on your machine if you have a good video card.

[Tony]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

So actually it's still running right now. I was hoping to launch Steve V today. I don't think it's going to. It's. It's only at video, like 300 right now. And it's at the rate of like three minutes per video.

[Tony]

I mean, when you think about it, that's really fast.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, it's fast. And if I didn't skimp on my video card, it probably would have been done overnight. But I don't play games and I didn't really have a use for a video. A good video card until.

[Tony]

Yeah. You needed Kevin for this. Where's Kevin?

[Steve Chou]

I did. I'm sure Kevin has a really nice video card.

[Tony]

So just. I want to ask a question about this. It's slightly unrelated, but. So I don't know if you know this, but if you have videos on Facebook that were live, so. So anything, anytime you go live on Facebook. Right. Facebook has said that they're taking those down now, like after 30 days.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

So what we have done is downloaded all those videos that, that we want to keep. Right. Cause some of them are good. Right. And I like, for us, we don't do a ton on Facebook Live, so it wouldn't be like as important to what you and I do. But like, for Happy Housewife, I did a lot of live recipes, I've done a lot of live tips. You know, there's a lot of content, I think, about someone like Laurie from Passionate Penny Pincher, who has tons of live content on Facebook. So step one was download it. All right. But now we want to be able to possibly like rerecord Those right. On YouTube and stuff like that. So my issue is the transcript side. Right. Because they're not already on YouTube right there. Now they're in my drive. So what's that?

[Steve Chou]

The easy part is it.

[Tony]

So what's the best method to get the transcripts? Because, like, I tried ChatGPT. That was an absolute bust.

[Steve Chou]

Why? Oh yeah, you can't. You can't just feed it in ChatGPT.

[Tony]

Yeah. And it's like it'll do it in 30 second increments. And I was like, this is not going to work.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. The way you do it is you can probably use make doc. Like if you don't want to code, I assume you don't want to code.

[Tony]

No, I'm.

[Steve Chou]

And you're willing to pay money, right?

[Tony]

Yes, but like not a ton of money. Right. So when I started researching. Yeah. So what I was thinking, though, this is going to happen to a lot of people. Right, Right. A lot of people have videos that they need to probably get now because of Facebook's new policy.

[Steve Chou]

What do we do, by the way? Is this only for live videos? I can't remember.

[Tony]

It's just for live videos. That's what they've said so far. So, you know.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, so what you do is you can use make.com, okay, throw all your videos in Dropbox and then create an automation that feeds it into the OpenAI whisper model. And if you guys are listening to this, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Make.com is like a. It's like an. A workflow type of tool.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Like you. The hardest part about creating any app is making things talk to each other. Right?

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

So essentially, you need to make Dropbox talk to OpenAI. That's exactly what this does. You. You drop down a Dropbox widget. It feeds the files over to OpenAI, the whisper model.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

It's super cheap. It's like 0.000001 cents per token, which works out to be, I don't know, like 50 cents maybe for.

[Tony]

So you have to use the token model. Gotcha.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Anyway, and then you just have it drop those transcriptions into Dropbox again in a different folder.

[Tony]

Okay. That's a good tip. So just talking about the transcript side of things, because I looked in, I started doing some research and you know, you can. There's a lot of services that are really expensive or.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, wait, if you want the free model, that's even easier than that.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Riverside FM offers a free transcription service.

[Tony]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

You just have to drag it over manually, though.

[Tony]

Yeah. So when I. When I asked Chad GPT, you know, how can I do this for free? Their top tip, which I actually, you know, this is something where I think if you have an overseas VA or something like that, this would be probably worth doing. Is basically upload them all to YouTube and have YouTube do the transcripts privately.

[Steve Chou]

This is way better than that. Yeah, I don't.

[Tony]

Your idea sounds way better. I'm saying that's what they gave me.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, no, no, no. I meant the Free Riverside method.

[Tony]

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That sounds better than upload because you obviously, you don't want them public on YouTube, so.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, how many videos are we talking about here?

[Tony]

I don't think. I don't. Happy Housewife probably only has. It has under 50.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, okay. Then just do the hand drag method.

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah. One of my clients, though. I think we have over 100. So.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. 100 even is also borderline hand drag.

[Tony]

Yeah. Cuz you've got thousands that you're dealing with.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Oh, and it's not even if this goes well, I might do this with the podcast and every blog post on.

[Tony]

My website so that people can find something quickly if they have a question.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Because sometimes there's something in the class that was covered actually in a blog post, but I didn't do like a whole video on it.

[Tony]

Right, right. I feel like that happens actually a lot, especially when we do our webinars. People ask a question and usually the answer can be found in one of the blog posts that you have.

[Steve Chou]

Correct.

[Tony]

YouTube at this point. Now it's YouTube for you. Really?

[Steve Chou]

I was debating whether to, to, to include my blog post in it because Google's kind of already done that for me.

[Tony]

Right, right.

[Steve Chou]

You know what I mean? Like it's already been read. The YouTube videos is also another avenue. Yeah. I don't know. I, I just want to get like the course videos here first. The goal also was to consider just charging for the, for the bot. I don't know.

[Tony]

So charge for people to be able to use the bot.

[Steve Chou]

Correct.

[Tony]

But not people in the course.

[Steve Chou]

Not. No, obviously not people in the class. Yeah, yeah, just like a. It's kind of like a stepping stone into joining the full class, so to speak.

[Tony]

Gotcha. Okay, so you, you did the next step. Got the transcripts.

[Steve Chou]

You get the transcripts. Here's what's. Here's what, like confounded me about the whole process. I was under the impression that you could just throw it all into OpenAI and it just magically transit. Right. That's what we're led to believe.

[Tony]

Yes, I mean, I believe I, I'm a believer.

[Steve Chou]

There's a couple limitations though. One, you can only feed in so many, so much information at one time.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Because all these models have context windows. Right. And so what you have to do is you have to break up each of these transcripts into blocks.

[Tony]

So individual transcripts have to be broken up.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. I mean, think about, if you have a 20 minute video.

[Tony]

True.

[Steve Chou]

The context window might be like a thousand words. I don't know the exact limits. I.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

I just asked ChatGPT for what a good block size was. A good block size is 500. I don't know where that got that from. But basically you need to break these into chunks and if you can, you summarize each of those chunks and you tag them. So. So think about like a video. Let's Say we do a podcast. We talk about a lot of different stuff on this podcast, right?

[Tony]

Yes, we do.

[Steve Chou]

So you can't just shove it all in. And since we skip topics all the time, a podcast, ironically, is probably the hardest thing to train the AI for. So what you need to do is, ideally, you give it. You break it into chunks that are all about one topic.

[Tony]

Mm.

[Steve Chou]

And then you name the topic and whatnot, and then you feed it in that way now, ironically. And this gets really. You can actually use AI to pre process the transcript into these chunks before you train the AI itself.

[Tony]

Okay. Because that was my next question.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I didn't have time to do a really thorough job of that in the first iteration, but the way my videos are laid out in the class, it's already pretty good, Right. I only cover a very specific topic, and I cover it for 10 to 15 minutes and then I move on. So in itself, each of my lessons are already kind of pretty good to go.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Whereas with a podcast where, like, if it's. Especially if it's with you or any guest, we talk about, like 10 topics, sometimes we skip all over the place. That's harder.

[Tony]

Okay, so my next question is, you're doing this in reverse right now, right? Like, all the content's already been created. Moving forward, as you create. You're giving a lesson today on Steve Bot, right?

[Steve Chou]

That's not the lesson. Actually, I have to work on the lesson right after this, but I'm going to introduce Steve Bot if it's ready.

[Tony]

Yeah. So let's just hypothetically, you're giving a Steve Bot lesson today in the course moving forward, is there another way to do it so that you're not doing all these sort of. Because right now you're going back and getting all the stuff that's already happened. Moving forward, is there a way to do it where you don't have to. You can skip some of these steps?

[Steve Chou]

No, you always have to do these steps. What do you mean? I don't understand.

[Tony]

So, like, right now you had to take all your videos, download them, get them, and drop. You had this whole process, right, to get the transcript, to divide the transcript up, you know, but like, today, as you give the lesson, is there any way to do it as you're giving.

[Steve Chou]

Like, oh, as I'm giving the lesson. So it's.

[Tony]

Or like. Yeah, like pre. And I guess not pre, because there's nothing pre done in about it, but, like, you know. So you're maybe skipping. Being able to skip some steps?

[Steve Chou]

Uh, no, I Mean, all the steps are going to be there. And in fact, what's unfortunate about Steve Bot is like when a lesson comes on, I have to manually retrain the model again with the new lesson so that it knows how to answer stuff in that lesson.

[Tony]

Oh, okay.

[Steve Chou]

So I'm probably only going to update Steve Bot like once. It doesn't take very long, to be fair. It literally takes, I know, probably 10 minutes.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Nothing. It's not all automated right now either. Right. Because I'm just trying to get the thing up. So there's like several manual steps I'm doing. But yeah, once it becomes all automated, in theory, once the video is there, I just throw in a directory and it automatically updates debug. I'm not there yet, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tony]

So when you say, you know, you give a lesson today on Steve Bot, you have to train it, what does that entail?

[Steve Chou]

That. That's what I was just talking about. You got to break up the transcript into logical blocks.

[Tony]

So that's all that. That's all that is. There's nothing else after that.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I mean, so the more information and context you can give it, the better the training will be. So right now what I do is I give it a title like of that chunk, right? And then I tag it with the URL and then the title of the video so that if it ends up grabbing from that chunk, the URL is automatically embedded in. It tells you which video it's part of and then it gives you a little mini title so that summarizes will.

[Tony]

Send people to the correct location to get the rest of the information.

[Steve Chou]

Correct. Correct. I've only tested this on like three lessons so far, and so far it's pretty good because I gotta upload the rest. I mean, it takes time to run all this stuff, right?

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Like through AI. So here's where it's like so simple and kind of brain dead. The way it works is. And I, I kept asking ChatGPT, is this really the best practice that everyone's using? And they're like, yep, this is, this is what all these companies are doing. What's dumb about this whole thing is you ask it a question, here's how it works, and I'll try to keep it as simple as possible. You ask it a question. OpenAI turns that question into math. Okay, Right. A vector or whatever. And then what happens behind the scenes is it takes that math vector and it compares it to all the little chunks that you've broken up. Right. For similarity. Right. Whether basically Whether that chunk will answer that question, and then it returns a bunch of chunks, and then based on the chunks that it returned, AKA parts of the transcript that gets only that little chunk of 500 words gets fed into AI to summarize the answer.

[Tony]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

It's not like AI knows all of your stuff and you're loading up everything.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

You're doing most of the work and feeding AI only the portion that you believe answers the question.

[Tony]

Hmm. Okay, so how do you see this as a. Obviously, obviously for your students, this is a huge value add.

[Steve Chou]

Yes.

[Tony]

Right. This is. I feel like this is going to be such a game changer for the course, because I remember when I first met you and you had had the course, I don't know, maybe four years. Right. But you already had several hundred lessons in the course, and it was really, it wasn't well organized because you would ask me, like, hey, I'd like some feedback. And I was like, I can't find anything. And. And then you did a really good job of, like, rearranging everything. And, you know, like, when you get started, start here. If you're here, go here. Right. Like, you kind of took people on a trail. So to me, the value add for the students, phenomenal. Right. Like the ease of getting information. And I think this on the flip side for you, the cut down on customer service. Right. Answering questions that are available for people to find on their own is the other benefit, the cross benefit. If you don't have a course. Right. Like, how do you see this benefiting you outside of the course?

[Steve Chou]

I haven't even thought that far ahead, Tony. I've been head down trying to learn all this stuff. There's a lot of technical pieces involved.

[Tony]

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But going forward, I was going to do a trial. Here's what I was thinking. Like, I'm gonna build a community in the. In the end, Right?

[Tony]

Yes. I mean, I have ideas for you. That's why I'm asking. I want to see.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, you do. Okay, so I'll tell you mine. I want to hear yours.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I want to build a much bigger community that obviously goes beyond the course. Like, the course members will always be the top priority.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But like a tripwire, so to speak, would maybe be to give them access where they can ask questions to Steve Bot for something ridiculously cheap. Like $5 a month or something like that. I. I don't know. That doesn't include, like, any of the live portions. I. I think, like the live office hours and the live zooms are always going to be the value add.

[Tony]

Right, right, right.

[Steve Chou]

In the discord group. And then once they're in the bot, if they like the questions and whatnot, then they can consider joining the full class.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Plus this makes great content.

[Tony]

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But as far as after that, I haven't. I'm gonna do it for profitable audience.

[Tony]

Mm.

[Steve Chou]

And that in theory should be faster because I know what I'm doing now.

[Tony]

Right. And there's a lot less content.

[Steve Chou]

There's a lot less content.

[Tony]

Yeah. There's only a couple hundred lessons and.

[Steve Chou]

Then maybe I'll make a Tony bot where the bot responds and like with hugs. I haven't even done the fun stuff yet. I can make it like reply as me and use Steve Isms. You know what I'm saying?

[Tony]

Yes. See, I think that's really fun. Like, I mean this is done. We were talking about this with some friends last night about how we're Talking about like AI and ChatGPT and how my son in law was saying like, I'm always really nice to chat GPT because when it takes over the world, I wanted to remember I was one of the good guys, right. Like, and I was like, yeah, there's, you know, there's this. I think people can have fun with it. Right? People. Like, I mean I remember when I was planning my trip and I was like, hey, this is what I'm thinking about doing. Can you give me some suggestions of places to. To go? Here's a little bit about myself, right? And I kind of gave like my little personality thing and it came back with, wow, aren't you a fun and exciting person? And you're like, I am. You know, but I think that part of it actually really adds to the value. Like I think people for the most part like those little quirky things that you can get out of it. And so I think, you know, making it more personable is like a huge value add. Right. Even though it's kind of silly. But, but I do think people enjoy that.

[Steve Chou]

I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of if you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show. So I'm logging every question, every answer and then who asked it? Just so I can. Just so I can see what's going on. Because yeah, one thing I didn't want to do is hallucinate. Right, right.

[Tony]

Yes, yes.

[Steve Chou]

So I'm very strict and we'll see how all that works. Like if you ask the question that isn't covered in the transcript, it will say, I don't know the answer to that question.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Instead of just making something up.

[Tony]

Right, Right.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

So is Christina going to get the award for the most questions she get?

[Steve Chou]

I have no idea. But it will be cute.

[Tony]

Shout out to Christina just for fun.

[Steve Chou]

Like I was abusing Steve Bot. Like, like you suck. You gotta be in high school.

[Tony]

You, yeah, you were only second chair on the clarinet.

[Steve Chou]

Just to see what it would, it would say. So so far it's, it's working. But you know, the true test will be, well here this is the other interesting part. So I'm logging all the questions so I know what to cover going forward. I never really had this real time feedback before.

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I. So my thought was similar to what you're talking about as far as far as how to make this work on a bigger scale. I mean, I think if it was just for the course, it would be worth it. Right. I think it's such a value add to the course that like, even if that was where it ended, it's something worth doing. However, if you're going to go to the trouble of building it, why not figure out a way to monetize it in a bigger way? And so to me, the value definitely is like giving people some sort of access to that. Right. Like, because I think one of the reasons why people do buy the courses is because it gives them the access. Right now with the Steve Bot, they're not getting the same type of access. Right. But they are getting a lot of information that realistically if you wanted to go find all that out, it would take you a good amount of time. Right. And you might not. And you might not know. Like, I still like get information back from AI and I'm like, is that really true? You know, is that actually, you know what? Because I was actually, when I was looking for the transcript stuff, it gave me like six suggestions, but one of them Was wrong. Right, Right. And obviously I double check those things. So I think for people to know, like, hey, I can ask these questions to Steve Bot, but I know the answers are all generated by something Steve said. Right. So I do think that's a really nice, like $7 a month, you know, value add. I think if you could get your YouTube videos included in that, that would.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, the YouTube videos are always less detailed versions. Much less detailed versions. The lessons, right?

[Tony]

Yes. But I think, I mean, to me it's like, okay, how do you leverage this with YouTube because you have so many subscribers, right. You've got a huge channel. You know, I don't Even know, like, YouTube offers all those subscription models. Right. And like, to me, it's always like kind of foggy what you get when you pay for a subscription with you. You know, when you read, like, what people offer most time, you're like, is that really offering anything? But like, to me, if you could figure out some way, because I do think. I do think that would be nice because now you've got I don't even know how many videos. Several hundred. Right.

[Steve Chou]

It's a ton. Yeah. I was shocked by how many there were in there.

[Tony]

You've got five years of weekly video content. Right?

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

So, yeah, I mean, to me.

[Steve Chou]

And obviously, public math. No. Okay, go on.

[Tony]

Yeah. Five times five, whatever that is. So. But yeah, I think, to me, if you could figure out a way to leverage that. I think about Kellen, right, in our class that has the huge Pokemon channel, you know, and he's always trying to figure out ways to monetize the channel outside of just the ad revenue and brand deals and things like. Like that, like somehow getting people. Because I think, like, for his stuff, because I know he's teaching people, I believe, how to play a game or showing people, like game strategies or something like that. I'm not a Pokemon person, so I. It's like watching something in another language to me, but like being. For people to be able to like, type something in and being able to get directed to like, this video, you know, will give you that. To me, that's. That seems like really. It's like a directory. Right. But with like instant answers.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Everything you need.

[Steve Chou]

I think I was going to keep them separate for now, like the class lessons bot. Maybe a YouTube one. And I might combine the blog post one with. The problem is there's some blog posts that are out of date because I haven't been updating it. Yeah. So regardless, you know, there's a lot of Potential there. What I was also thinking. And I brought this up to Jen, she did not like it at all. I was going to do this for Bumblebee for product recommendations. Just feed in all the products, all the descriptions, all the policies, and then just have this bot here, you know, like a product recommendations bot.

[Tony]

So I'm curious as to what, because I know her pretty well, and to me, that doesn't seem. That actually seems like a pretty good idea without invasion of privacy.

[Steve Chou]

Well, the problem. And we didn't even have a talk about this because you just got the ax immediately. I just got. Yeah, I just got the ax. You know what's funny is I always put it on a priority, and then she always just gives my ideas an ax. Like, right off the bat, it's like the first reaction. I think if customers, like. I think you just have to make it obvious that this is a bot.

[Tony]

Oh. That people would think they weren't. We're talking to a real person.

[Steve Chou]

Right. Like, this is a bottle. It's only here to help you find the product that you're looking for. That's it.

[Tony]

Yeah. Okay.

[Steve Chou]

And answer common questions like delivery and whatnot.

[Tony]

Yeah, I do get that side of things, for sure.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. And then you also have to worry more about it hallucinating. Right?

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So let's say it says, oh, no, shipping's free. Always free. You know, it makes up something like that.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Then that's a problem, too.

[Tony]

Yeah. Okay. I definitely see that. If there's a way that you can avoid those pitfalls. That seems like a genius idea because we. I've been talking to one of my clients, actually, all week about, you know, how do we get people to buy either more things in their order, like making. And we have, like, you know, one click upsell. And we have, you know, other things on the site that make recommendations, but, like, where people could actually type it in. Right. Like, I just did this curriculum. I did this. What should I do next? Right. Because we have. We know what it is. We know what people should do next. Right. But I do see what you're saying where. I mean, we had that issue happen several years ago where it wasn't. It was actually with our texting service where basically people could text in something and then they got a free shipping code. Well, the texting service only had, like, it didn't allow you to seg. Segregate your free shipping. So, like, you only got the basic, free. Like, if you wanted basic parcel post, whatever that was free. But, like, nothing else would. You couldn't get overnight free. Right. Like, no one gives away overnight free shipping. But the SMS service didn't have the ability to distinguish the two. So when it went out, you could get any kind of shipping, international, what, whatever. And it took us like 14 hours to realize that people were getting like $50 shipping for free. Right. Because they're overnighting stuff to themselves. So I can see like a bot doing something similar where it's like, shipping's always free, or, you know, buy one, get six free monograms, or. You know what I mean? Like, I can see that.

[Steve Chou]

So don't get me wrong. This is going to be implemented.

[Tony]

Yes. You just have to figure out how to avoid that.

[Steve Chou]

Well, no, no, no. I'm going to do it, but I'm going to start by replacing the search bar with this. Okay, Right. Because my search bar is something I actually wrote years ago. And it works kind of well. It presents the. It prevents. It presents the project products in the search based on, obviously, keywords, but also what was bought along with it in the category. But this AI one would be way better.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And then the goal is. This is all, like, in my head for Bumblebee. Like, I have to go through all the products again. And there's like almost a thousand now. I'm gonna do a lot of products.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

The key is figuring out what occasion each of those products are ideal for. So I'm gonna go through. And I have AI generate all the possible occasions that a handkerchief that particular style would be good for. And it's not obvious like some of these handkerchiefs. And I. I just wrote a little routine to do this. There was this red handkerchief that had something on it or whatever, and it suggested some real esoteric. Well, not esoteric, but, like satanic.

[Tony]

Is that what you're like?

[Steve Chou]

No, no, no. If you're. If you're like a bird lover or, you know, stuff like random things that you probably wouldn't have thought of. Right?

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Or this red one would be perfect for like, Valentine's Day.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

Because of something obscure in the embroidery. I wish I had examples ready to go, but find out all the possible use cases for a particular style of handkerchief. Feed that all in. And so when someone asks, hey, I need something for, you know, a baptism or something, it automatically pops up.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

All of them bright red.

[Tony]

No.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Not for a baptism. Don't do that. Okay.

[Steve Chou]

So that's an easier project, actually. Cause it's all text.

[Tony]

So here's the bigger question. You're doing this all yourself? Most of the people who listen cannot do it all by themselves. Is this something that you think people could one figure out how to do with, you know, maybe some research and like, how much technical knowledge do you truly need to have to do this? Or do you have to pay somebody? Or is it going to be you have to pay someone to set it up or you're going to end up using a subscription tool that's going to cost you?

[Steve Chou]

I think for most people, you, you, you can't set this up. Like, I literally, you should see my chatgpt thread learning this stuff.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I literally spent probably 6 hours straight just reading all this stuff just because I was interested. Like, I kept asking little questions, which actually brought me up to the way we teach stuff in schools is all messed up. Right. I was just thinking to myself as I was doing this, I, I remember when I was in school, and this is completely random. I remember I was in school, I was afraid to ask questions sometimes the professor. Because I thought I'd come across as dumb.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Or like if I asked a friend how to do this, I might be afraid to ask certain dumb questions. That showed my friend that I was dumb.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

But with ChatGPT, I was asking all the dumb questions and it was giving me answers. So I actually ended up learning things a lot more thoroughly.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Right. And so I was going to the real nitty gritty, like, how does this technology even work? Like, how does this, like, what's the math behind it? You know, all little questions like that. And so that's why it took me a long time.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

If someone were to just try to plug and chug this, I still think it'd be pretty overwhelming.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I was actually considering offering this as a Shopify plugin because it's actually useful. Right. It reads all of your descriptions and it's like a recommendation engine. I'm sure something like that already exists, to be honest with you.

[Tony]

Probably. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But this one would be like dirt cheap, I think.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Like, and I probably wouldn't. Maybe I would just do for the class, I don't know.

[Tony]

So if you were to have to pay for it, what do you think it's worth? Not like to price something, but like, if someone's like, hey, I think I would really like to use this. In my business there are some services like, what do you think the value is of this? Because most people aren't going to be able to do it on their own.

[Steve Chou]

Well, I will tell you that a friend of mine offered a service like this two years ago, and she was ahead of her time.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But she was charging $500 a month.

[Tony]

Wow. Okay. So expensive.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. But realistically, like, once it's all set up, it's like pennies to run.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

You know, so really the hard part is the setup and the maintenance.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. Like, how do you retrain it again with new things that you have? But in terms of the value, I think I don't want to jump too far ahead because I haven't tested it enough.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

But I think if even it works, like 75%, it'll be a huge value to the course. No question.

[Tony]

Yeah. I mean, I think even at 5, let's just say $500 a month, let's just say if you're cutting down on customer service time and you're cutting down on your time. You know what I mean? And you're increasing your average order value, let's just say in your store, because everyone's adding an additional product to the cart, it doesn't take very much for it to pay for itself.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Like, if I were to prioritize this, you have to make sure that you track all the incremental revenue from the service. Right.

[Tony]

Correct. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And then show the customer that it's worth it.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

You know, like I said, I'm sure all this has been implemented by somebody already. No question. But they probably want, like, a couple hundred bucks a month for it, when, in fact, the code is not that hard. Right. I mean, actually, I think about this for any app in the Shopify App Store. Most of the code in the App Store is not hard.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Which is why I think the Shopify App Store will probably have problems in the next couple years as more and more people don't need code. Like, everything I had to write for this AI was written in Python, which is a language that I did not know at all. I did not know a lick of it. But all programming languages all kind of blend together after a while, if you've been doing it long enough. And so I could get through it with the help of AI without knowing how to write it at all. And so I suspect that'll get better in a couple years to the point where anyone will be able to tell it what it wants and then debug it and make their own stuff.

[Tony]

Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's pretty exciting.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, I was. I was giddy. My. My wife, like, I told her what I've been working on. She's like, oh, great.

[Tony]

I mean, I think. I think literally nothing else for the course members, it's awesome, right? It's gonna cut down on their time. It cuts down on your time, you know, and then if you can leverage it further and earn some additional revenue from it, I mean, I think that's really valuable too.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, we'll just have to see how it goes.

[Tony]

Yeah. See how, See how good of a job it does. Being a.

[Steve Chou]

See how good of a job it does. Yeah. I mean for the first like two or three videos that I did and I was just asking questions about knew, like, I mean it has the entire transcript, but I would ask it stuff that wasn't covered and it would give a pretty good answer, you know, around it and then it provide the link which is the important part to the actual lesson.

[Tony]

Yeah. So, okay, I guess my last question would be if so let's just say Steve Bot says I don't know the answer. We don't have content on that. Right. Like whatever. Then what happens to people? Do they get funneled into like an email form or is it just like this?

[Steve Chou]

Is, is this for the class you mean?

[Tony]

Yeah, let's just say for the class.

[Steve Chou]

For the class I'm logging all the questions and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a, a search for anyone who got an I don't know the answer to that question and then I'm going to see how many times that form of question was asked and then I'll make a lesson on it.

[Tony]

You know, I get that part. I'm saying like, so let's just say I'm in. Well, I am in the course, but I log on. I want to know something, you know, can I link my Amazon and Tick tock shop, something like that? Right? Like, and maybe it's probably something you haven't covered. So, you know, and it says, hey, that's a great question. You're such a fantastic student. A plus you know, all the compliments. And then it says, it says, I don't have the answer for you. What, what next happens in that chat?

[Steve Chou]

Does it say right now nothing.

[Tony]

Yeah, but what is gonna. Cause then like do they have to go back and like now email support or is there like a click to a form? Like what's the next step?

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, the next step would be to just email support.

[Tony]

Yeah, it'd be cool if you could integrate like a little click here to email. You know what I mean? Like just get that integrated too. Be easy.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, that, that part is easy. Like just email and then the email address. Right?

[Tony]

Yeah, no, I'm saying that's super simple. But I'm like, that just. That little feature would be like a great ad because I can't stand when it's like email support and then they just put the email there and then you have to copy and paste it. Especially if you're on your phone.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, you want to click.

[Tony]

I want to click. And it opens everything, which. That every. A lot of people do that for other things, so it could be done in this, too.

[Steve Chou]

I've actually never done that. But how does it know which email client to open up?

[Tony]

I would, I would. I don't know. It always opens up the default one on my computer, so I don't know how it knows.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, I see. So if you click, it'll open up Gmail, for example.

[Tony]

Well, on my desktops, it opens up the Mac mail because I've never uninstalled it. But when I don't have, like, on my phone, it opens up Gmail.

[Steve Chou]

I see. Send me an example of that. I'd love to see it. I'm sure it's like a line.

[Tony]

Yeah. I was gonna say this doesn't seem like a very complicated ad, but I. What I can't stand is when they just give you the email and then especially if you're on a mobile device, you've got to copy that. Open up your mail app.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, the easiest way is to just have a little box where you just type in the question right there and you hit submit.

[Tony]

Yeah, that would be.

[Steve Chou]

That's easy. That's easy to do. Instead of opening up an email client.

[Tony]

Yes. Add. Add that to your priority list.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, I will write that down. That's probably a good suggestion.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

I am very curious to how people are going to treat Steve Bot, though. Are they going to be rude? Are they going to be polite?

[Tony]

Are you going to track that? Like, who's a bad tipper?

[Steve Chou]

Well, I'm obviously not going to manually track anything. I'm going to shove all that stuff in and then have it tell me, like, what are the common questions and who's asking the most questions?

[Tony]

That's right.

[Steve Chou]

And.

[Tony]

And then. And then when someone logs on and they're like, this is your 32nd question this week, Kathy. You know, you're. You need to take a break.

[Steve Chou]

It'll cost one point per question.

[Tony]

Yes. Yeah. Oh.

[Steve Chou]

That'D be hilarious.

[Tony]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I think there's a lot of uses for this. I think it'll be interesting once you get it up and running. I'm I'm curious like how often is it going to get stumped? Like.

[Steve Chou]

Well, I mean obviously I don't cover every topic.

[Tony]

Right, right. Right.

[Steve Chou]

So it should get stumped if you ask it anything that has been covered.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

Hopefully it won't make anything up. That that's my biggest worry actually.

[Tony]

Yes. And someone sends you a email, an angry email saying they have $130,000 of trinkets that they've ordered because Steve Vought said go for it.

[Steve Chou]

Like I'm sure someone's going to ask like should I sell this item?

[Tony]

I was gonna say that's probably gonna be. That's probably gonna be the top Steve bot.

[Steve Chou]

And then, then it'll probably reference all the niche research ones and ask. Tell it hey, if it follows under these guidelines, that's what I hope it'll answer.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Okay. We'll have to do a follow up episode.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Once everything's, I mean like I said, it's still transcribing and generating like the, the files for the to train the bot right now but should be done by today and I should be able to release this bot by tomorrow at. At a bare minimum. I think so.

[Tony]

Yeah. I can't wait.

[Steve Chou]

Hope you enjoyed this episode. At some point I'll release part of this bot to my Discord community so stay tuned. For more information and resources go to My wife quit her job.com episode598 once again the recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to my wife quitherjob.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.