← The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
607: Will Vibe Coding Replace Shopify Apps? A Discussion With Toni Herrbach
00:45:02
In this episode, we’re diving into vibe coding and asking the big question: will you ever need to buy a Shopify app again? Vibe coding lets you build custom features on your store without stacking endless plugins,
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- [00:00]
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, we're diving into Vibe coding and asking the big question, will you ever need to buy a Shopify or a WordPress app ever again? Vibe coding lets you build custom features on your store without stacking endless plugins and it could change the entire Shopify ecosystem. We'll cover what it is, who it helps, and whether this is the beginning of the end for paid SaaS apps. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over@sellersummit.com and if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most e commerce conferences that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step by step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches. People who are running their own e commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We've sold out every single year for the past eight years and I expect this year to be no different. It is happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And if you're doing over 250k or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they're ever going to be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. We have Tony back after a long, I don't want to say vacation. A long break.
- [01:52]
Tony
Break.
- [01:53]
Steve Chou
And we're gonna talk about you. A break. Correct. And I've been insanely productive.
- [01:58]
Tony
You have actually, yeah.
- [02:01]
Steve Chou
We're gonna talk about vibe coding today and I think I've been talking about this for a long time now. I think the Shopify app store is in trouble.
- [02:12]
Tony
So yes, you have been talking about this and I've been playing around with it a little bit. Our friend Liz has been like. That is her new hobby, she says, is vibe coding on the weekends. I'm hearing a lot of buzz about it on TikTok. Are you, are you in that TikTok algorithm?
- [02:27]
Steve Chou
I am, but like I actually. This is the first Time I actually sent a comment to some people who were. I was. I was like, I would like to see some of your Vibe coded apps. Just to see. Because you can't create anything super complicated just yet. Because you can create something, you can get to work to first order, but once it works, anytime you want to add anything or change anything, it often, like, ruins what you've done so far. Yeah, but.
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Tony
So we've used it, which this is pretty simple, is we used it to create a quiz on a WordPress site. So pretty simple stuff.
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Steve Chou
Well, actually, no, let's think about that for a sec. Before you would have to sign up for a service to do a quiz.
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Tony
Yes. Pay for a plugin.
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Steve Chou
Play. Pay for a plugin. I think, like, Octane made a lot of money doing this, right?
- [03:19]
Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
It was a quiz and now you can. So this is what I mean. Like these simple apps where you can get charged like 50 bucks a month. For now, you can just Vibe code yourself. How. How long did it take you guys to make that app?
- [03:31]
Tony
I want to say it was probably. Probably did it in a weekend.
- [03:34]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
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Tony
Because there's basically the two. And I. I would assume this is. I've. I've only worked, like, peripherally on developing, like, apps and things like that, so I'm not on the technical side, but I would say there was two main components of it. Right. The information that we wanted. Right. In the quiz. So coming up with all that stuff, which is what you would do on your own, you're not gonna. I mean, we did use AI to help us, like, narrow down some quiz answers and stuff like that. And then the secondary part was building the actual quiz. Right. And having the code and then where it lives and then connecting it to. Obviously we wanted to connect to ConvertKit. So that way, you know, it's all automated once people take the quiz. But I would say it was probably a full weekend of, you know, one, figuring out what we wanted to do and then two, being able to tell AI what we wanted, how we wanted it to look, and then, you know, installing it. And, you know, the one thing that I think is cool that I saw happening when we were doing this was when it didn't, like when we would put something in and we would see it and it didn't look right or it didn't work right, then you can ask AI to find the errors for you.
- [04:46]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
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Tony
Which is nice because as someone who doesn't code, I probably wouldn't be able to tell you unless it was like a really obvious, like, HTML sort of thing where I'm like, well, that's not how you code that. I wouldn't be able to tell you how to code a quiz. Right. Without the use of AI.
- [05:03]
Steve Chou
What platform did you guys use? Just curious.
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Tony
That one was in Claude.
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Steve Chou
Oh, Claude. Okay. Okay. Nice.
- [05:11]
Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
I was just thinking to myself just the other day, like, I feel like I am all powerful right now. Like anything that comes to my mind right now, I can just instantly code, even if it's like a complicated app. And if you just even know like a little bit, I think like if you know nothing and you start vibe coding, that's the equivalent maybe of like a first or second year computer science major, like right off the bat. Yeah, but if you know a little bit about coding, like, you can pretty much become like a master coder almost overnight.
- [05:48]
Tony
Yeah, I think having a little bit of knowledge is actually really powerful. Liz having a little bit more technical knowledge than I do because she built her extension. Right. Was able to troubleshoot some stuff pretty quickly where I think, as if it had just been me working on it, I think I would have still gotten to the same finished product. It probably would have taken me a little bit longer because I don't always know the terminology or like, you know, it's like you see something, you're like, that looks cool, right? But behind whatever you're seeing is all this technology, right. And all this code that built it. And if you're not quite sure what that, what's that called or how you know it's going to be recognized, I think that's where it becomes tougher for people who have zero knowledge.
- [06:34]
Steve Chou
I mean, that's what I like about AI, because I know nothing, I knew nothing about, like, the underlying technologies of what I was developing. And so I would ask like stupid questions like, what is that? What is that? What is that? And if I was asking my friends helping me on the app, they'd probably think I was like the biggest idiot in the world. And I think that's like one of the biggest benefits of AI. Like, they're not going to judge you or, or they might be judging behind the scenes.
- [06:57]
Tony
But yes, we actually had this debate this weekend, actually with my kids about being nice to AI. When you said AI won't judge you, I'm always very polite when I like, ask questions and I'm always please and thank you. I found out one of my kids is kind of a jerk. And I was like, oh, no, no. Like, you can't. You got to be nice. I feel like, it remembers that you weren't a nice person to work with and they're not going to give you what you want.
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Steve Chou
When I get frustrated, then I start, like, if it makes the same mistake like three times, I'm like, look, okay, I'm paying you 20 bucks a month here.
- [07:35]
Tony
I deserve better. Yeah, Yeah. I think it's been fascinating. Although I will say, like, my biggest use of AI still is I use it as a cheat sheet. Like, I needed to find something in Google Analytics yesterday and I was like, I don't know how to find this because I don't know Google Analytics for. And I made ChatGPT walk me through the entire process to get what I needed and it worked. Um, so that's. I still. That's my biggest, like, anything that's like a little bit. I wouldn't say Google Analytics is technical, but, like, how do I operate in this system? Um, I've been using same with like a Shopify report that it's like, hey, I need to find this really specific thing. I love that it will, like, take you step by step through stuff, which is similar to the coding. It'll walk you step by step how to build something.
- [08:24]
Steve Chou
I've been. I'm back on the Claude bandwagon, actually.
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Tony
Okay.
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Steve Chou
For. For writing. I don't know what happened when ChatGPT5 came out. I hate it.
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Tony
Interesting.
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Steve Chou
So one, it takes like 10 times longer to get an answer, and then two, the answers are just much more verbose or something. So I've been actually using chat GPT4.0.
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Tony
Okay.
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Steve Chou
Again, I just. I just don't like five and then Claude just writes so much better. Something about five made my. Made the writing worse or different, I should say. Interesting from what I was expecting. So kind of back on the cloud bandwagon. Well, let me just talk about some of the.
- [09:01]
Tony
I haven't played with the writing side on. On 5 yet, so I'll let you know. Because I do a lot of the script editing with CHAT GPT, so I'll. I'll see if I hate it when I get back into it.
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Steve Chou
And everyone seems to praise Claude code to me, Claude code and the ChatGPT coding. So the way I do my coding is I scaffold the whole thing and then I have AI fill in all the functions. Scaffolding means, like, you break an app down into separate functions, like really small functions. And then I have AI write the functions.
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Tony
Gotcha.
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Steve Chou
So it prevents it from just like going off in the total weeds. It's not like code this app. Right, right. Instead I just kind of break it down. I need this function, this function, this function, and then I have it fill in these small blanks so that if it goes off the weeds, it's limited to that, like, small function that I had it right. To me doing it that way. Claude and. And Chat GPT are. I mean, they're pretty much identical, so I. I can't really tell the difference person.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
But let me tell you some cool stuff. So now this has opened up everything. Like my wife had this huge to do list for me for the longest time where I was like, you know, could you tell me the priority of that and whatnot.
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Tony
The priority talk.
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Steve Chou
But now I have time to do all this stuff. So recently I wrote this warehouse tracking app because we got all these boxes in the back. Right. But they keep disappearing. Or someone takes down a box and they'll grab something from it and then that box just. The inventory was done on a piece of paper basically of the boxes in the back. And I remember in the beginning I was like, well, why don't we just pay like 20amonth or something like that for. For an inventory tracking system? Turns out none of them. I shouldn't say none, but very few apps actually track like a box. And the ones that do, where you have a scanner and everything. Literally hundreds of dollars a month.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
For something like that. But this thing I vibe coded in like literally four hours. So now when someone, when a box comes in, you just take your phone, it's a QR code, and then you scan it. Whenever you take it down, you scan it. And then whenever you're done emptying that box, you scan it again and then toss it. And so all these boxes and everything are completely tracked. Here's the other thing that I've always been curious about. But since I'm not in the office day to day, I wanted to know what the productivity is like. Right. People listening to this are probably like, don't you track your productivity of all your employees, like, regularly? Actually, one person said that. I was like, actually no. Like, should I been doing this whole time?
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Tony
Okay, but I would. Can you just clarify what you mean by productivity? Because my mind is racing right now of what that would be.
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Steve Chou
Okay, so we have an embroiderist who stitches orders. We also have packages that go out the door. Like, how many can go out the door? And then we also have print orders. Like, how quickly are those being fulfilled? Right.
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Tony
So that means actually being printed, packaged, shipped out. Yeah. Okay.
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Steve Chou
Correct. And I'm not in their day to day. So I really don't know what. What the output is. I just see like a stressed wife sometimes when I do a good promotion and, you know, a whole bunch of orders come in, which has always been this tug of war, actually.
- [12:30]
Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
Because my wife has always wanted to just keep the business as is because we make enough money and just growing anything and hiring more people just always leads to more headaches. So she doesn't want to hire anyone. But since I've been, you know, growing the business or trying, I'm always hesitant to grow it too quickly, if. If that makes sense. Because then I get an angry wife.
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Tony
Right, right.
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Steve Chou
Because she doesn't want to hire. But I've always wanted to know what the limits were. You know what I'm saying?
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Tony
Yes, yes.
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Steve Chou
Like, how many orders can I generate where we can actually handle it comfortably or what not.
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Tony
And you're not.
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Steve Chou
In order to do that, you got to track it, right?
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And then sometimes, like, sometimes I'll look and I'm like, why are there so many outstanding orders? Like, what. What's going on? This isn't a hard problem to solve. Right. Anyway, so I talked to a buddy of mine and they're like, oh, my God. We have this complicated scanning system where they take when an order is being packed, they scan the order and then they have a photo booth where they photograph the contents of it so no inventory is lost. Right. So they literally photograph the contents of the order, who's actually fulfilling it, and then they scan the order, they take a photo, and then the person's logged into the. To the system.
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Tony
Right.
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Steve Chou
So they know which person is fulfilling what. And I was like, oh, my God, that sounds amazing.
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Tony
Yeah. I mean, think about, like restaurants do that. You've got to log in when you cash somebody out. And like, I mean, that's pretty normal tracking that you haven't been tracking.
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Steve Chou
Yeah. I mean, does that work for your. Do you guys do that for your client?
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Tony
I'm not sure, actually. But as you're saying this, I'm like, oh, we should be doing this. Like, if we're not. Like, I think. I think they know who packs which order, but I know Paul and Tiffany track who packs orders, so I know it's definitely a common thing. I like the photo, though.
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Steve Chou
Well, because the inventory. Okay, here, here's the other thing. Like, sometimes customers, I hesitate to use the word malicious, but they lie. Right. Hey, you didn't ship us this.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And then Jen goes back and she checks the weight of the Package. She's like, it's the exact weight of all the items.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And then sometimes she actually packed it herself.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
On certain occasions, she knows it was all in there.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
But what do you do? You just, you know, give the customer.
- [15:00]
Tony
Yeah. You. Obviously, you don't really have a choice.
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Steve Chou
Give them the benefit of the doubt. But now, like, if you have this photo tracking system, whatever, you know, hey, hey. Here's your photo right here.
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Tony
Right.
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Steve Chou
Well, anyway, actually, I. I only talked to a handful of people, and it was two out of half. Half the people had a similar thing. Mainly because I think employees, when it comes to just picking and packing.
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Tony
Mm.
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Steve Chou
Tend to be just all across the map in terms of how responsible they are.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And I get it. Right. It's. It's not like the most glamorous job.
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Tony
No.
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Steve Chou
In the world. But anyway, so I, I, I started implementing tracking of all that stuff. And I don't know how annoying I am. You're annoying.
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Tony
I'm gonna tell you right now, it's gonna be annoying.
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Steve Chou
There was one day, and I, I was just shocked by the variability in production.
- [15:53]
Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
Right. Like, some days, you know, insane productivity. Certain days, like, really, really bad.
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Tony
Could you track it to the day of the week?
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Steve Chou
Was it, like every single day?
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Tony
Fridays are, like, not productive versus, like, Tuesdays, which are super productive.
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Steve Chou
I track every single day. And then now, because I can vibe code this, I can put graphs.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
I can do, you know, I can annotate, you know, what happened that day and whatnot, and then create a nice report out of it.
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Tony
Okay.
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Steve Chou
But anyway, so I saw, like, a whole bunch of days where in a row that were low and the person doesn't know that we're tracking all this. And so we mentioned it, and then all of a sudden, everything was good again. And it's been good since.
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Tony
Okay.
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Steve Chou
And we did it in a nice way, you know.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And then in terms of orders out the door, same thing. So I created this dashboard where, like, we do personalized items and they take. Sometimes they take five days. We allow up to five days for them to be filled, but then there's orders that can be filled next day. So what you end up having is a whole bunch of orders that need to go out on different days. And then we also have rush shipping where, you know, you can bump up the queue for a personalized order and shipping pass. So you got all these things. And then before we, we had no idea when, you know, how do you track something going up on time?
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Tony
Right.
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Steve Chou
So now I Have I vibe coded this dashboard where everything goes, you know, exactly what needs to go out and when.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And so we can track the productivity. I don't know, this is just all fun stuff that's probably boring to anyone listening to this.
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Tony
I don't think it's boring, actually. I think this is something that's really important because we got into this issue in August where we had a promotion and it did better than expected. Right. Like it didn't, like it wasn't like a unicorn, but it was, you know, probably performed 20 to 30% better than all of our expectations. Right. And the warehouse actually couldn't keep up with the shipping. And so when I went in and looked at something like a week after, there were, there was stuff a week old that hadn't been shipped out.
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Steve Chou
Yep.
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Tony
And we don't personalize, you know, there's no personalization aspect or things like that. And I was like, hey, the week is not acceptable. Not in the days of Amazon prime and Walmart today and all that stuff. And so it led to a greater discussion of like, what's the capacity of the warehouse? Like, because we need to know that on the marketing side that the warehouse is only capable of shipping 8,000 orders or 800 orders a day or 200 orders a day, whatever it is. Right. So I think knowing that is actually huge, hugely important for your entire team. Right. Because if you know you're only capable of doing 200 orders a day, then you maybe can't have a sale at a certain time or promotion or send that email out because your warehouse isn't capable of. And what's the point of, what's the point of having a promotion if you have a bunch of unsatisfied people.
- [19:00]
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 ecommerce 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 obtained@mywifequitterjob.com 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 my wife. Quitterjob.com free. Now back to the show. It's true, you know, although you could argue, you know, you Just apologize profusely.
- [19:45]
Tony
Sure, sure. But like, having. Having a grasp of like. Like, I think now that, you know, like, okay, Bumblebee's capable of 100 personalized orders a day or whatever it is. Right. Probably high.
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Steve Chou
Yeah.
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Tony
But then, you know, like, hey, we're not going to feature personalization in this promo, but we are in this one because of time and bandwidth and everything.
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Steve Chou
Else, you know, where it gets really complicated, where people don't think about these things. And maybe this is just unique to my industry, but there'll be people who get their address wrong, and then you can't ship it out. And so you got to put them in this separate bucket but still get tracked. Yes, right. And then you have to track whether you called them or reached out to them. And then there's another bucket of people who, like, spell something wrong in their personalization. But, you know, technically you're supposed to.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
Stitch what they wrote. But if they spelled bride wrong.
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Tony
Right.
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Steve Chou
You know, but. But we got in trouble for that once because they spelled something wrong. But it turned out that was how they say it. It was slang or their own.
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Tony
Oh, yeah.
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Steve Chou
Way of spelling it, you know, just for fun. And so we no longer just make blatant corrections. We contact them.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And then sometimes these people have wrong phone numbers, they have wrong email addresses, and so these orders go into the ether unless they're completely tracked.
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Tony
Yeah, that's a good point. And that was one of the issues that we were having, too. When I saw all these backlogged orders and the warehouse manager was like, well, the ones from this day are all incorrect addresses. So, like, we're waiting on them. But, you know, just in Shopify reports, it's just showing up as an unfulfilled order. So. Yeah, I think that's really important. And you would. I mean, I. Anyone in E Commerce would not be surprised, but it always was surprising to me how many people got their address wrong in an order. Because, like, I don't know, you probably more secure than me, but, like, my. My address just automatically populates, like, into everything. Like it's saved on my computer.
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Steve Chou
Oh, I. I don't do that.
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Tony
Yeah, I know I do. So it's like if it's. If it's wrong, you know?
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Steve Chou
Well, I mean, Google populates the address for you. Right. You start typing and then. Google.
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Tony
Yeah, exactly.
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Steve Chou
I. I don't know. I. I don't get it.
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Tony
So nobody knows you're tracking them is the other part of this.
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Steve Chou
Yeah, that's the fun part. And Jen's like, you know, you're, you're being really annoying to me right now because I'm like, hey, can you talk to this person? I, I really need to. Day to day you do.
- [22:19]
Tony
To do stuff like this. You need to be in there.
- [22:22]
Steve Chou
Yeah. It's actually really fun. And whenever Jen goes out on vacation, I actually go in and I'm like, okay, let's make this place more efficient. Like, what do you hate doing? What's annoying?
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And then when she comes back, I, I've usually written something but now like that's like 10x what it used to be.
- [22:38]
Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
Because now I can pump out this code.
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Tony
Like, well, now it's not like a three week project for you. It's like, oh, I can do this on Saturday.
- [22:45]
Steve Chou
Exactly.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
Yeah. It's so fun.
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Tony
And I will say, like, that's something that I think is so exciting about AI is the efficiency, like the improved efficiency on things. Like, I. We were talking before we recorded that I have someone who's doing all their illustrations with AI now. Right. As. Whereas before they were having to wait on illustrators. And one, the money savings, but to the time savings, right. Is that, you know, an illustrator could take two to three months to churn out that many illustrations where you're getting them in a weekend, you know, using AI. Although I did see a flub up yesterday. There was a man with a tail, so it's okay. So you still have to check.
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Steve Chou
So we're talking about images. So Google just released what they call Nano Banana. It's. It's actually, this has already been out for a long time. It's called like the tech. They had the worst names. The technical name is Flash. Image generation experimental 2.5.
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Tony
Oh, good.
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Steve Chou
Like when you select it, they had 2.0. 2.0 was already pretty good.
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Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
But 2.5 allows you to take any image and alter it however you want.
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Tony
Ooh.
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Steve Chou
So I'll have a, a picture of a woman holding a handkerchief. I can tell it, hey, can you make this person cry into the handkerchief? And it instantly does that now. Like just the other day I was just being lazy and I sent out a sales email and it was last year's sales email and the graphic said 2024. Right. I just, I just uploaded the image to Google and I said, can you just change all this stuff and make it 2025?
- [24:27]
Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
And it did it. And then I just cut and pasted it back in. Whereas before I'd have to bust out Photoshop, make a couple edits and whatnot.
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Tony
Are you happy with the images?
- [24:38]
Steve Chou
So it's not as good at just generating images from scratch. It's good at editing for the editing.
- [24:44]
Tony
Yeah.
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Steve Chou
Yeah. Fantastic. It's. I think it's going to put Photoshop out of business.
- [24:50]
Tony
Yeah. I mean, it's. Because what I've been using it for with images is giving me ideas and then I send the idea to the graphic designer and she takes it and makes it, I think, significantly better. But I feel like there's a day coming when that's not going to be the case.
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Steve Chou
Yeah, I'm just talking about, like, the editing here.
- [25:07]
Tony
Yeah.
- [25:07]
Steve Chou
Like, you can take. Let's say you did a photo shoot with a model. Right. Let's say you sell clothing.
- [25:14]
Tony
Yeah.
- [25:14]
Steve Chou
You can literally just take this outfit and say, hey, can you put this outfit on the model? And it does a pretty good job of it.
- [25:21]
Tony
That's crazy.
- [25:23]
Steve Chou
Yeah. So if you guys haven't tried it yet, I think you're going to be pretty shocked.
- [25:29]
Tony
Yeah.
- [25:29]
Steve Chou
You could put yourself up there and say, hey, let's say you're going shopping for clothing. So we always do a family photo shoot every year. You can literally just take photos off of the stores and put them on yourself to see how they look without even actually. Google's had this technology for a long time, but now it's easy for just anyone to do it. Yeah, it's freaking amazing.
- [25:52]
Tony
Yeah, that's.
- [25:54]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [25:54]
Tony
I like the. I like the idea of removing the 2024, putting it in 2025.
- [26:00]
Steve Chou
Well, that's just me being lazy.
- [26:01]
Tony
Yeah. But no, but I have a lot of, like, LA projects like that that have just been sitting there. Right. Because I didn't want to do all the work, so. Yeah.
- [26:10]
Steve Chou
Yeah. Or just take this front splash image and can you just replace the product with this one?
- [26:15]
Tony
Yeah.
- [26:15]
Steve Chou
And it'll just do it. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I'm just amazed by, like, how powerful everything is right now. And this is why, back to the old Shopify app store in trouble thing. I remember, remember when I implemented the loyalty program back in the day, I think the provider that I was looking at wanted 500amonth for my sales level. We had talked about this, but it took me, what, a week to do that? But now with the way the tools are now, I could probably put that thing out in a weekend, maybe even less and not have to pay any fees whatsoever.
- [26:57]
Tony
Yeah, well, that's the. I mean it. That's the good and the bad. Right? Because these apps like, it's a great, It's a great business model in the past. Right. Where people are paying monthly, they get tight. Like it's hard to change. Right. Like if you sign up for that loyalty program. So we had the one that you were referring to. We switched to a less expensive one because the cost was insane. It was like getting several hundred dollars a month. Yeah. But changing over. Even though the company that we changed to was like, we'll do all the work, they don't do all the work. Like, it's not bad, but it's like you still end up. And then not everybody's points moved over correctly. So then you're like doing manual uploads. And so what happens with all these subscriptions is they get you in. Right. And then you're never going to stop using them unless the pain is too great. Right. Like the price becomes ridiculous. Like, so you're going to stay and pay the $99 a month, you know, $149 a month, even $27 a month. Right. You're just going to pay that forever and ever because it's too painful to switch. But now that some of this stuff can be done fairly easily. I mean, I agree with you. I think it's going to put especially some of the real simplistic apps that, you know, are 999, 29. I mean, I think the ones, the less they do, the quicker they're going to be out of business.
- [28:17]
Steve Chou
I mean, the most recent one was that AI search thing that I made. Actually, I made it first and then I realized that there were apps out there, but something like that where they wanted $50 a month to do an AI on site search is just ridiculous to me.
- [28:35]
Tony
Yeah.
- [28:36]
Steve Chou
Because you do it once and that one was super fast.
- [28:41]
Tony
Yeah.
- [28:41]
Steve Chou
To, to code up and then all of a sudden you don't have to pay. On the flip side, I was also thinking to myself, hey, why don't I just create these apps myself and then sell them? It's hard actually. I, I can't really relate though. Can you tell me, like, would you still just pay for an app if you had a means to just code up something in a weekend?
- [29:00]
Tony
So I, I think how the apps will still work is that there are so many people out there and we know these people, Right. That are running like a one or two man show. Right. They've got a business, they're doing half a million a year, 750,000 a year, and they have one contractor. So like the thought of like, oh, spend the weekend Coding up something or spend the weekend redoing my ads or spend the weekend shipping out packages, you know what I mean? Like, I still think there's a bucket of people who just don't have that weekend to code it up. Right. So that's, that's where the rub still is. I think there's a lot of people out there that are already spending 60, 70 hours a week on their business and they don't have any margin to do something like that.
- [29:46]
Steve Chou
Hmm. I would think the opposite, actually. Like, if you're small, you have more incentive to do it. But if you're like this big gigantic company, just throw an engineer at it and you're done. Right.
- [29:57]
Tony
But I think, I mean, you've got to, I mean, you have a different mindset too. But like, you've got to remember back, like when you were working full time shipping bumblebee, out at night, embroidering, like, and maybe you had a baby. Right. Like, are you going to spend the weekend coding something up or are you going to be like, well, this is the only time I get to see my kid? You know, I feel like. And for you, like, already having some base knowledge, it seems less intimidating because we have people in the courses, Right. Who are. Don't have any knowledge. And it seems when we talk about it with them, they still, still seem very intimidated. There's other people in the class without that knowledge that aren't. They're like, no, I want to try this and I'm okay messing up. So I just think it depends on, like, where you are.
- [30:40]
Steve Chou
Yeah, I guess. I mean, it's still not at the level where anyone can do it.
- [30:44]
Tony
Yeah.
- [30:45]
Steve Chou
Just yet. But I mean, with every new release, it gets easier for me.
- [30:51]
Tony
Yeah.
- [30:51]
Steve Chou
Which means it's got to be getting easier for everyone else too.
- [30:55]
Tony
Totally agree.
- [30:56]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [30:56]
Tony
And I, and I think the best thing that people, if you are in this position where you don't have any experience with this and you're wanting, I mean, just have, like, ask it to teach you. I mean, that's a lot of the stuff that we were doing when we were trying to build this quiz is like, well, tell us what we, what are the components? Like, what are we forgetting? What are. You know, I was just like, educate me on how to do something like this. Right. And it, I think it does a fairly good job, especially if you're polite. But I do, but I do the same thing with like every time I'm like, going on there, I try to at least get some, like, hey, show me how to do this, Tell me how to do this, show me this. That I don't know yet. Right. So I feel like every time I'm on there, I'm trying to at least learn one or two things that will help me, you know, overall, but I feel like not everybody has the. That extra time.
- [31:50]
Steve Chou
Well, let's switch gears and just kind of talk about tools. I. Okay. So I have a vested interest in this right now because I want. My son wants to make this app for this game that he just loves, and he wants to just have a contest with, like, all of his friends online. It's like a card game.
- [32:09]
Tony
Okay.
- [32:10]
Steve Chou
And so I was like, okay, well, if you want that, why don't you code it up yourself? Right. He's not really a coder. I mean, we did send him to a computer science camp once, so he kind of knows the basics.
- [32:21]
Tony
He went to one week of computer science camp. He's fine.
- [32:26]
Steve Chou
So I've been looking into all these tools, and that's why I kind of asked you that question in the beginning. I think jumping into Claude code is a little intimidating for people. So, like, if you want to create, like, a simple quiz or a web app, I think Lovable is a pretty good start. If you want to create a game that has, like, a database where you're storing, like, the scores of your friends and whatnot, What I've. I think I'm going to pull the trigger on for my son and then just kind of hopefully guide him to write it himself. Is this tool called Replit.
- [33:01]
Tony
Okay.
- [33:03]
Steve Chou
It's basically. I think it uses, you know, Claude code behind the scenes, but it has, like, the database and all the stuff that you need to just literally deploy, like a fully functional app.
- [33:12]
Tony
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:13]
Steve Chou
And if you're just doing, like, stupid stuff, like kind of what I do, like where you're willing to scaffold out everything and. And then I think any AI tool will work honestly to do stupid stuff. Like the amount of stupid questions I ask chat GPT on a daily basis is. It's just incredible. This is why I don't like Claude. I always run out of credits on Claude.
- [33:34]
Tony
Yes, you. We. We've talked about that.
- [33:36]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [33:36]
Tony
I never run out with chat.
- [33:38]
Steve Chou
I've never, ever run out with chat. Actually, there was one time I did when I was using the video generation, but that's a different. I think that's a different tool altogether. Yeah.
- [33:47]
Tony
Yeah. I've never run out my. My chat is funny because I always have to remember to start a new project. When I want. Because sometimes I'll just ask it like really dumb questions. Like if a banana is, you know, xyz, is it safe to eat? You know, like I'll like ask those types of questions too. So I'm like, oh, new chat. I can't put that in my Google Analytics analytics tutorial bucket. But yeah, I ask it a lot of dumb questions as well.
- [34:09]
Steve Chou
Well, here's a quick tip also for chatgpt, at least under personalization you should say always give a contrarian answer, be contrarian and always give the pros and cons. Because otherwise it's just going to tell you what you want to hear and then you'll end up just feeling good about your decision even though it's a bad one. Like what, what they suggest has ever happened to you.
- [34:33]
Tony
I always say give me the pros and cons. So it's probably the same.
- [34:36]
Steve Chou
Okay, but this is like an implicit for every query that you give. Okay, it'll. And then I also have it rank all the answers it gives me on a scale of 1 to 10.
- [34:47]
Tony
That's a good one.
- [34:48]
Steve Chou
And then that way I can just kind of determine which one's the best.
- [34:52]
Tony
I always. So one of the tips that I use for whenever I'm looking for it, to create pieces of content. So I'm like feeding it some content and then I'm like, hey, turn this into something else, right? I always have it do three. I say give me an emotional response, give me a logical response, and give me a humorous response.
- [35:13]
Steve Chou
Interesting. Wait, explain to me what, how that works basically.
- [35:18]
Tony
So like I'll feed in like, let's. I can use type A because that's what I use it for primarily, right? So I want to create a piece of content about the. The hustler, right? The personality type. The hustler, right? So. And I want to talk about why. Why business. Why Busyness has become such like an idol, right? Like that's kind of the topic. So I feeded in some information about that, like some, some like paragraph of content. And I want it to give me more information, right? Like I want it to turn that into something bigger. I'm always like, give me three different options. I want the logical. So I want to appeal to someone in a logical way, right? And then I want to appeal to the a different person in an emotional way. And then I want a humorous one too. And so sometimes on their own, they're really good, right? Like the lot. And it does a really good job of like really keen in on emotions. Or whatever it is you ask. But then sometimes I take all three and I'm like, okay, let's put this into one, right? Like, let's touch on all three types. Let's. Let's try to hit them everywhere. But sometimes I just want, like, especially when we're doing scripts and TikToks, like, I just want the logical script. I just want the emotional script because it's going to be two separate things.
- [36:30]
Steve Chou
So interesting. I would think that the emotional one should be like, the only one that you do, right?
- [36:37]
Tony
Well, not every, I mean, emotional stuff doesn't work with you.
- [36:41]
Steve Chou
That's not true.
- [36:43]
Tony
Yeah, I know. You cried during the Michael Jordan 30 for 30.
- [36:49]
Steve Chou
Are you convincing me to do something Every time I.
- [36:52]
Tony
Every time I see a Michael Jordan club, I think of you now. No, but like, I think when you're. Because we're talking about marketing, right? We're talking about marketing to a group of. A specific group of people. But like, for me, usually the logical is much more appealing than the emotional. If I see an emotional appeal, I'm like, oh, you're manipulating me. But like, I've read scripts of on the emotional stuff to other people who I know are much more impacted by emotional arguments. And it works, right? Like, I watch them get teary or I watch them, like, swallow, right? Because they're like, oh, I'm really read. This is resonating with me. Whereas, like, I can listen to that same thing and maybe be like, okay, yeah, that's good. Like, I think it's a good piece of content, but it doesn't resonate with me. But the logical side of it is like, oh, yeah, 100%. So. But I think when you do it that way, especially for copy, like, you get a really good blend that you can use overall. Like, even if you combine them into like one, you know, so that you can. I don't know. I think you got to hit people in a lot of places.
- [37:55]
Steve Chou
I'll have to use that one for my scripts. Do you use. Is it. This is for.
- [38:00]
Tony
Mostly for scripts. Yeah.
- [38:01]
Steve Chou
Okay.
- [38:02]
Tony
Or yeah, web page copy. Any sort of copy, you know, that you need, right. I've tried a little bit with the curriculum stuff and I think it doesn't know. It knows the type A stuff back and forth now because it has so much type A content in it. It doesn't have like, store content in there enough to like, do as good of a job. And I also think the more content it has, the better it does, right? Like, the more you can feed it the better. The better it gets, in my opinion.
- [38:32]
Steve Chou
Yeah, I can see that. There was just a stat that I came across because I was going to use it in my YouTube video. It was something like 23% of people shot based on logic, and the rest is all emotion.
- [38:45]
Tony
Yeah, but that's still 23.
- [38:48]
Steve Chou
Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess. I mean, you're not always logical. Ms. Toomey. Bag. Like, would you pay, like, 10x?
- [38:56]
Tony
I'm in a fight with them right.
- [38:58]
Steve Chou
Now, so are you. Really? What happens?
- [38:59]
Tony
I am. I. They. So I. My backpack, you know, the dog chewed the. The leather strap at the top, the little. Little top handle, and I sent it off to them, and they're like, we can't repair this. I'm like, it's a handle. Like, what. What could you possibly repair on this bag if you can't repair this?
- [39:15]
Steve Chou
Right?
- [39:17]
Tony
And so they offered me 200 bucks and they would throw my bag away. And I was like, you can't even buy a backpack for under 400. Like, send my bag back. I'll take a broken bag. Like, it's still usable. Just doesn't have the top handle.
- [39:29]
Steve Chou
So they just don't sell the handle by itself.
- [39:31]
Tony
They won't repair it. But I'm like, I could take it to, like, a leather shop here and they would repair it 100 some.
- [39:37]
Steve Chou
Did you want a free repair, though?
- [39:39]
Tony
No, I paid to have it shipped out. Like, I was going to. They were like, we. We can't repair this. And I was like, well, you suck.
- [39:45]
Steve Chou
Like, I see.
- [39:46]
Tony
Like, Osprey has a lifetime guarantee on their bags. Those are. That's the other bag that I let's. All my travel stuff.
- [39:52]
Steve Chou
But I see. Okay, so you weren't asking for anything unreasonable.
- [39:56]
Tony
No, I just wanted it. I was going to pay for it to be fixed.
- [39:59]
Steve Chou
Right, right, right.
- [40:00]
Tony
And they're like, no, we don't fix straps. I'm like, what do you fix then? Like, what possibly could you fix on this backpack? So, yeah, I was like, oh, time to buy. Time to be loyal to another brand. I don't know. But. But here's the other thing. So that's a good example. So when I was on the To Me site, because I knew I was gonna get 200. Like, when I was like, well, is it worth it just to take the 200? And then I was like, looking at the price of their backpacks, and I was like, well, no, because I still have to pay another, like, 250 to get a back. Like, basically to replace my backpack. But Then I started looking at like I always click on the sale button, right? Because I want to see like what's on sale. And they had a bag that I really like in a color that I didn't like, but it was like really clearanced. And so like I spent like 20 minutes like thinking about like, well, like that's a really great deal and I'm sure I could give it to somebody who likes this. Like I had a whole like logical. There was no emotion at all. It was all price based, right? Like it was like the value for the price. But then I'm like. But then I'm mad at them. So. So I don't want to buy anything. And anyway, so yeah, I'm. I could be logical, but I. The motion gets me. Of course I can't watch the. What is it like the Apple commercials at Christmas time.
- [41:12]
Steve Chou
They're very emotional. Actually. I just want to end with this. And this just kind of popped into my head. You know how all those tools now interface with like Gmail and.
- [41:21]
Tony
Yes.
- [41:22]
Steve Chou
So you can look up. You have to be careful with that now actually because there's been some security issues recently where they can inject. I can't remember how it works exactly, but let's say someone emails you an image that has like a hidden prompt embedded into it and Google reads that back. There is, there is a loophole where One of the LLMs was actually running that prompt and giving out sensitive information in the email somehow. I, I need to find the article. It was from a reputable source.
- [42:00]
Tony
Okay.
- [42:01]
Steve Chou
So like I'm a little hesitant now to connect all of my stuff up in that regards, so.
- [42:08]
Tony
Well, that's, that's.
- [42:09]
Steve Chou
We should, we shouldn't end on that. We shouldn't end on. I know we should. We shouldn't end on that. It was just like a word of caution though. Like when you're, when you're connecting up anything sensitive. But.
- [42:19]
Tony
Well, I think, yeah, I think that's, that's a big lesson though is when the more people start doing this and the more people start connecting things, like you do have to be careful with your information and what you're choosing to allow.
- [42:32]
Steve Chou
But on the flip side, I do want to end with this.
- [42:34]
Tony
Okay.
- [42:35]
Steve Chou
Is even if you do not know how to code, go up and just sign up for level. Well, they have a free account and then just ask it to create something for, for you that you might need. Could be a quiz, it could be a little app that tracks what you eat. Something simple like that. And just prove to yourself how easy it is. Right. And if you want to do anything more complicated, I think the right way to go about something complicated is to just spec out in a document what exactly you want done and pretend like you're a user and this is the functionality that you need. And then ask AI, like okay, what are the different components of all this that need to be implemented? And then just try to break it down to as small of pieces as you can and then use AI to code each small part one by one. I don't know if that's clear to, to someone who doesn't code, but I think the, the problem with most people who use AI to code an app is like they're just like, give me an app that does this.
- [43:44]
Tony
Right.
- [43:45]
Steve Chou
Right. When there's a lot more. Like if you told that to a master coder, let's say they wouldn't be able to do it. Right. Because they need all these details.
- [43:53]
Tony
Yeah.
- [43:53]
Steve Chou
So that's why you need to provide all those details. I'm willing to bet that most people who can't get what they want out of AI, it's because they're not good at explaining what they need. Right. And so this is kind of like an exercise in understanding what you want and being able to communicate to a real person. Like pretend AI is a real person and communicating to a real person what you need. And I'm sure you'll, you'll, you'll get a lot more results, better results that way. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Before you buy your next app on Shopify, go and ask Claude or Chat GPT to write it for you. And I'm pretty sure you'll be shocked at what you can accomplish. For more information and resources, go to my wife quitherjob.com Episode 607 Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellers summit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to my wife querjob.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.