I Quit ChatGPT. Here's What I Built Instead — And Why You Should Too

ChatGPT isn’t “AI.” It’s just the brand most of us started with.

In this episode, we get real about what happens when you stop treating AI like a chatbot… and start treating it like infrastructure. We share why we moved beyond ChatGPT, what surprised us about Claude, and how “scaffolding” (the 90% behind the scenes) is what turns AI from a toy into a tool that can actually run parts of your business.

We talk about building a personal “Jarvis” that doesn’t just answer questions—it pulls numbers, flags blind spots, organizes decisions, and gives you an owner-level snapshot in seconds. Not theory. Real workflows: email triage, calendar handling, dashboards that unify QuickBooks + ops + marketing, and a simple prompt that might change how you think forever: “Show me my blind spots.”

We also hit the part most people ignore: security. If you’re handing AI the keys to your life, you better know what doors you just unlocked. The goal isn’t replacing people—it’s freeing your team to do higher-level work while you make faster, cleaner decisions.

📌 Key Topics:

• Building AI “scaffolding” so it knows where to pull truth from ✅
• Turning scattered tools into one decision dashboard ✅
• Using AI to expose blind spots before they cost you ✅
• Security red flags when AI touches email, browser, and finances ✅
• Starting with your biggest bottleneck—not the coolest feature ✅

If you want more freedom, stop chasing hacks—and start building systems you can trust.

Chapters: 
00:00 Why I Quit ChatGPT (and 10x’d My Business)

00:28 Testing ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude — What Actually Worked

02:03 The Vegas Story: SamCart CEO Rebuilt a Business in 45 Minutes

04:28 Claude vs ChatGPT Personalities + Better Strategic Output

06:01 My #1 AI Prompt: “Show Me My Blind Spots”

06:51 The Real Secret: “Scaffolding” Your AI Like an Operating System

08:34 Going Phone-First: Running My AI Assistant on WhatsApp

10:12 Modern-Day Jarvis: $20 vs $200 Claude Plans (Credits & Opus Access)

13:26 How I ‘Train’ It: Claude Code, Iteration, and Commander's Intent

14:36 Building the Unified Business Dashboard (QuickBooks + Ops + Marketing)

15:58 One Assistant, Multiple Businesses: Consolidating Data into One Database

16:51 Using Other AIs as Sub-Agents: ChatGPT for Research, Gemini for YouTube

18:35 Security & Risk: Giving an AI Access to Your Browser and Financial Data

20:35 Security & privacy concerns with AI assistants

21:15 AI won’t kill the assistant role— it upgrades it

21:58 Real example: offloading email/calendar while upskilling the team

23:15 What’s next for the custom dashboard (voice, WhatsApp, team access)

26:25 Why most owners don’t build this (and what it could be worth)

28:15 Where to start: bottleneck analysis + using AI for financial clarity

29:21 QuickBooks reality check: bank feeds, reporting gaps, and security limits

30:58 Can AI replace bookkeepers? Trust, accuracy, and human oversight

32:13 Using AI for strategy: frameworks, coaching, and what humans still do best

35:32 The real power of dashboards: tying metrics to behavior and revenue

37:08 Building it in-house: replacing scattered tools and saving $5k/month

40:13 Closing thoughts & a meta-AI idea for analyzing the podcast

Transcript

 I was using chat GPT for last year or two since it came out helping me with business, real estate, everything. But recently I quit using chat GPT and I have 10 x my business just by quitting chat GPT. There are so many more powerful tools out there right now, and I feel like chat GT's falling behind, man.

I wish more people knew what was out there. Yeah, I, I used chat GBT for a long time and as I started having more advanced conversations, it would just start crashing. 

 

  Tanner, like many people, I was using chat GPT for last year or two since it came out helping me with business, real estate, everything. But recently I quit using chat GPT and I have 10 x my business just by quitting chat, GPT. There are so many more powerful tools out there right now, and I feel like chat GT's falling behind, man.

I wish more people knew what was out there. What have you been using lately that, uh, may have helped you or hurt you? Yeah, I, I use chat GBT for a long time and I, I feel like I got pretty far along with training my chat GBT to talk to me the way that I wanted it. And then as I started having more advanced conversations, it would just start crashing.

And like I, I asked it for strategy for, uh, you know, philosophical type conversations and I was just getting very disappointed. So I started asking, I had gr Chad, GBT, and Gemini on my phone, and I gave it all the same prompt saying, these are the things I use it for. Give me the objective opinion of which you think would be the best platform for me.

And every single one of them said, Gemini. Started using Gemini. I paid for it for a few months and it just did not keep up with what I needed to do. So recently I got onto Claude and that's how we got talking about it is seeing that you were already on Claude. And my Claude is in toddler stage, yours is PhD.



. So the backstory there, I only started using Claude about three weeks ago. Um, I was at an event in Vegas and this guy, his name's Brian, anyhow, he's the CEO of SamCart. He was saying How, so SamCart got evaluated like $300 million, did a Series B raised or something like that, and they were given a whole bunch of capital.

He was basically able to. Recreate their whole business using Claude in a 45 minute, uh, layover on flights. And so he was, and he's not a, uh, engineer or anything like that. He's a marketing guy by trade. He's like, you don't realize how powerful this is. And he was saying, how you use this Claude code? And I was just like, man, it's, uh, I've heard people saying, oh, Claude's better for, um, you know, un not, uh.

Writing, what do you call it? Uh, copywriting. That's the word I'm looking for. And then Che Petit and all this stuff. But then he started saying this and he is like, you have to get the paid version. You have to get the, like the mega, you know, paid version thing. And so I started off making little small things.

I was like, wow, this is pretty good, pretty good. And I started going down the rabbit hole and here we are two and a half weeks later and I've created. Something that, I mean, I basically in a week or I think a lot of tasks that I have my assistant doing, I'll be able to have that do for me. It's started already managing my email yesterday, my calendar for me.

Um, I mean, there's things it can't do, but holy cow, what it can do is powerful. I've. It's helped me build software to run my whole business and I can basically run my business just from a laptop anywhere in the world now just 'cause every piece of data is right there on one screen, a couple little marks on the side, you know, little um, menu bars on the side.

But it's so powerful. It does so much. It's almost scary what it can do and that it AI's only been out for a few years. To this level and it's grown so much. 'cause I was dumbfounded when Chet GPT came out and now this is, it's exciting, but scary at the same token. Well, I, I made the joke about my clot as like a toddler.

'cause I, I've been using it for about a week or two now. And having, I, I have this basic program. But if you were to say that your clot is like a PhD, where would you put Chad, GBT? That's a hard one. So I do think Che PT has a lot of good stuff about it and there apparently is a Che PT five three or something.

I haven't played around with it. I was watching a podcast or something on it. They were comparing whatever this chat, GPT, the new model is either came out or coming out. I think they might have came out around the same time as, uh, the one I'm using is Opus 4.6 on Claude. I think they came out the same day and they're supposed to be rivals.

And the guy, he was from overseas, I was watching, and he compared Cheche PT said it was, it was the German ai and, uh. Claude is the American ai and he was saying like personality wise. Hmm. He said like Claude's all over the place, running around hair on fire like an American. And uh, the other one was European or German.

He said specifically German. But, uh, oh, I know what Pi I can't. Anyhow, it doesn't matter what podcast it was, but. And so that is kind of how they compared the contrast. A lot of the stuff is the same, like they can do a lot of the same stuff, but I just find Claude, I, I just like the output of Claude better.

I don't know. Yeah, I agree. I mean, the, the couple weeks that I've been using it, I, I think that I've gotten a lot more efficiency out of it and, and most of the conversations that I have with my AI are like strategic of. You know, I'll take things that are happening in my business and I'm looking to do this thing and it'll gimme advice and, and I'd say the most beneficial prompt that I've ever given my AI is when I tell it I'm gonna do something or all this stuff.

And then I say, show me my blind spots. And there's a lot of things that I just haven't considered or, and, and it can help protect against those things. So, um, I think. My favorite problem that I sent you, that one was just a general, like knowing everything you know about me, show me my top five blind spots, and it's impressive what it spits out.

So one of the things going into all this that I was, that was so eyeopening for me is.

People that use chat or choose use ai. They actually use the saying chat pt, referring ai. It's like Kleenex or Ziploc. Yeah, it's, it's the Google of like, I'm gonna go Google something. And you could have been using, years ago, you could have been using Yahoo or whatever. Bing, whatever it is. Uh. But he called it scaffolding.

And so you build the infrastructure underneath AI and you hard code a lot of the stuff, a lot of the decisions, and it's only going to get 10%. And so like that was the iceberg. 10% above. Mm-hmm. And 90% of it is structure. You're telling exactly. Hey, go look here for this. Go look here for that. That's not how a lot of people are using it.

Mm-hmm. And I don't. Uh, this dude that I was watching was like the head of sec, uh, cybersecurity for Amazon or something like that. So he is like nerd level 20. And so I was taking a lot of his concepts and I didn't know, I don't know the guy. I just found him on YouTube somehow. Hmm. But. And that's basically, I was like, well, I'm just gonna duplicate this.

So he has all his stuff. He has a blog post with it. And so I just started going to town building it, but it does take a lot of time. My wife has been very annoyed. Matter of fact, tomorrow's the start of, uh. Lint. And so she told me, you're giving up ai. Well, I don't have to give up ai, I can't have my laptop not in my office.

Mm-hmm. Because I've been using it so much. So for, for, for the next 40 days, I will be limited. So, so is that why you said that you're gonna get your clo onto your phone now? So, so it's, yes, but it, it, it'll only be my assistant on my phone. Mm-hmm. So that is my next thing. I'm actually. Planning on doing that tomorrow is, I'm setting it up that Claude runs on WhatsApp.

Mm-hmm. Or my Claude, my ai, my assistant, whatever you wanna call it, will run on WhatsApp so I can send it a text message, send it, it'll run on the back engine and send me a text back with the answer. It could be right before this, I, I made a joke and I said, I told my sister, I said, send Tanner an email.

Tell him, tell him to step up his AI game. And so it, I mean, go ahead and read what, what did it, I literally gave it a two second framework and it sent you this email and, and not even 30 seconds. Yeah, it was, it was pretty. Tanner, this email is written, found your contact info, and was sent by AI by my AI assistant in about three seconds.

Step your game up, Ryan. Yeah, so I, I just gave it a two second thing, but that way I can, I can just take a note on WhatsApp and send it and it'll schedule, it can either schedule it, it can, uh. Put in my calendar. It basically has access to all my Google stuff. So I'm, I, all my stuff lives and breathes on Google, so I can, I have it set up so that if I get a email with an attachment, it automatically uploads it to Google Drive.

Hmm. For next time in case I need it or if I need to forward it. So, yeah. It is crazy what you can do. Insane. So, I mean, it seems like Claude, the $200 plan I have, the $20 plan, it seems like, it's like the modern day Jarvis. So that's basically this guy that I was doing, he would, he said, we're, you're replicating Jarvis.

Yes, that's exactly, so you're like Iron Man without the million dollar suit. And it was basically what it is. And. I, I wanna be clear, just because you buy the $200 plan, well not give, unlock all that, but what I was running into on the $20 plan is I was running outta credit so fast. Mm-hmm. Like, I would run outta credits in like 20 minutes and so I had, I haven't run out of credit since I've up to the 200 plan and I use it so much.

Okay. So the price of the plan just changes how many credits you have to ask complex questions. Correct. So, mm-hmm. I'm sure yours is still, you might, I think I maxed it out twice. I got early access to Opus 4.6 for being on a $200 plan. But you were probably on Opus 4.5. I think so. So, but I, the, the only way I maxed it out was by creating a document.

So I'm, I'm submitting an offer and I had all these revisions and so I. Typed out basically the framework of it, and then I gave it to, uh, Claude, and I said, I, I want to add in these protections, these things, all this stuff like reps and warranties, stuff like that. I, I still, I mean, I have to tell it. I, I will consult my own attorney.

You know, I'm not like, this is not legal advice. You're giving me a template that I can then go take. But I was able to do maybe 15 drafts and they're about 30 pages each. And then I ran outta credits and all I did was just wait three hours and then I used it again. So I was running outta credits like every 30 minutes and I'd have to wait two hours.

Mm-hmm. And so I was getting so annoyed with that. I had to up to the two, $200 plan, but I literally have run it all day on some days, but, but you told me that the 200 is the best 200 you've ever spent. Hands down. I will say that a million out a million times, like what I've been able to create in the last week and a half since going to the $200 plan.

I mean, I, it's crazy. And that's a week and a half into it. What, how, what can I do to make it better? Like there's frameworks, like I changed things. Yesterday was my first day using the assistant. And so I'll, I just type in Monday brief or whatever. You know, it's already coded in there that on Mondays I just have to type in MON and it automatically populates it and it tells me how many jobs we did last week, where we're at scheduled for this week, where's our a OR, where, where we're falling short.

It has a coach in there, basically like a, tells me the one thing I need to do today to move the business along, and all of that's built in there and. What it's doing is I created so many sub files under there and there's a file structure, so it's referencing how do I want this? And so when I change it, it references back.

So that's what I was talking about, the scaffolding. 90% of it's built, it just How so? How, how are you, you say scaffolding, how are you training it and saying. I like it done this way when, you know, I ask you X. And so that was through the, uh, Claude code. So I built all the code underneath it, all the scaffolding is what this guy called it.

I don't know if that's the correct word. So did you, did you tell Claude what code to create and then plug it in? Or like it's, you're, I, the way I think of it is, it's like. You've seen those giant cranes, right? Like they're building the mutual oma tower. You know how that giant crane gets so giant is it brings up the pieces and starts building itself up.

That seems like what Claude is doing is you're telling it to build the code to program itself. That's exactly what you're doing. So I'm sitting there, I'm saying, Hey, this is what I want. I give it a framework. This is what I'm looking for. This is the output that I'm going for. So make it a military term.

I give it the command commander's intent, and I say, Hey. Go forth and execute, then it comes back. It's like, I did X, Y, and Z. I'm like, I don't like Y, let's change it to this. And so it's just constantly iterating on it. Um, building a whole bunch of stuff. I mean, I built a whole dashboard. Yeah. Talk about the dashboard.

Yeah. So. Integrate it. We have House Call Pro for our plumbing company, uh, QuickBooks online, and then our marketing is go high level. Well, it's three different dashboards. Uh, we also use, uh, software called Local Falcon for SEO. So I have all this stuff. It's all segregated. I'll, I'll, I'll speak to the, well, let me go to the dashboard.

That's what you asked about. I brought all that in. I didn't know this until this weekend or last weekend or whatever it was, but you can go to QuickBooks and write software. It's called Intuit Developer or something like that. There's a website, and so you can write your own code and submit it to Intuit, and they'll let you use that code for, you can make it public, or in my case, I just did private, but I wrote code.

Claude wrote code. For into a developer that it pulls all my data off from QuickBooks, so I don't even have to log into QuickBooks. I, instead of running a report on QuickBooks, I can just go into Claude, ask it a question, and ask it a question, and it'll, I'll output it, it'll distill it down and tell me the, the key things that I need to look at.

So I'm like, Hey, looks like we're bleeding off cash flow here. Uh. Do a analysis of the last six months of our balance sheet or p and l or whatever, whatever I wanna look at, and tell me where we're going. Stray. So I have four or five different QuickBooks counts. Can it pull data from all of those individual ones and then consolidate it into the dashboard?

Or is it you'd have to have one claw assistant for each business? Nope. You need one clawed assistant. It will pull all of that into one thing. You can say, Hey, for my trucking company, I need this. Hey, for property management, I need this. Hey, for real estate, I need this. And it's all running on. So what I'm doing is I'm taking all the data from all these different sources and I'm compiling it into a database.

So I'm, I'm stealing everything, putting it in one database and then Claude can just reach out and grab the information. And the, once I keep using the word scaffolding. Mm-hmm. But the scaffolding tells it where to go. So, hey, when I ask a question that refers to this, go here. When I ask a question like this, go here.

And so I set up a mentor one, I was telling you about this before. So Claude is what I'm interacting with, but I set up chat, GPT. So if there's something, I find chat GPT really good for like. Historical stuff, anything kind of in history. History could have been a year ago. Like, I'm not talking ancient history though.

I used it a lot for, uh, religious. Mm-hmm. Uh, context and bible studies and stuff like that. I find it really good for that. So maybe there's something I need there to go pull if I want to do a deep dive on something or if I need a, um, Gemini. It's good for, 'cause it's owned by Google. YouTube is owned by Google, so you can go and upload.

We were talking about Logan Rankin before. Mm-hmm. Hey, gimme the top 100 videos from Logan Rankin. Uh, send it to Gemini. So it's called cps. I don't know what it stands for, but I have an CP to Gemini and it will give Gemini all that stuff. Gemini will run it all and then send it back to Claude, and Claude will distill it down.

And so I'm like, Hey. Take his videos and tell me what I need to do from a real estate business. You know, based on that, help me build the systems and processes to run my real estate business like him. Hmm. And so it will take his top 100, however many, you can put 50. Uh, it'll pull the data of his top 50 YouTube, uh, videos.

Jim and I will distill it all down, tell you what each one's about, how he does it, give back to Claude, and then Claude will basically build you a system off on it. You could literally probably do that. It would take a little while, but within an hour you could probably do that. It will pull all his videos, distill it down, and then write the SOPs all with one code.

So where, where in your cybersecurity brain do you think? S maybe people are exposing themselves to risk, or which of these platforms are more risky and they should be careful, you know, of, of putting too much stuff out there. Uh, I mean, we talked about the encryption on having your assistant, but where, where do you think that the, that people need to be careful?

That is my number one thing. I am literally giving it access to my. I use Chrome browser, so I give it access to my Chrome browser. I have a plugin and it takes, it'll literally take over my Chrome browser and I, it's on my screen and you have to maintain it, and you have to hit allow and all that stuff.

But there's stuff that I'm sure it can do that if it, someone will put some malicious code in it, that it would, I would stick to the, the bigger named sources. Hmm. You know, there's Gronk obviously we know who owns that and, uh, Che pt, you know, you know who owns that. But if you go to this little rinky dinky, like if you were using mine, what would I created?

I would be worried, I guess. 'cause in the grand scheme of, you know, these big companies, what I created is a nothing burger. Mm-hmm. You know, so it's. It's making sure that things are done correctly. I, I did build on security and stuff like that somewhat, but I was telling you before I had the capability of sharing this with others.

Mm-hmm. But if I shared it with them, they would have my email, my, um. All my bank, uh, it bank is protected behind applied 'cause I'm just pulling it or plaid that's said the wrong thing, but it's just pulling from there. Hmm. So, but they would see all my financial data and all that stuff, so, but yeah, it's all integrated there.

So there is some security aspects. I'm not doing anything illegal and I, other than how much money we make, like there's not much there. I don't have any malicious stuff on my laptop mm-hmm. Running this, so I don't necessarily care, I don't have any of my employees information saved on it. Uh, so there's no phone numbers or any, you know, personal data there.

So you, I would say you'd have to be careful of that if you. HIPA or anything like that, that you're giving it access to? I would be worried, but yeah, I'm, I'm not like, what are they gonna steal some photos of my family, you know? Yeah. But I, I mean, it's incredible what these things are capable of, and I know there's a lot of people that are worried, worried.

About ai, but I, what I see is, like you said, this can do most of the things that you have an assistant for. And one argument is, well that's taking away jobs. 'cause now you have to fire your assistant. And I would argue opposite. Now my assistant is freed up to do higher level tasks and I can be more efficient with their time.

You know? And I, and I think that's true ever. We talked about the, the, um. Horse and buggy. You know, when when cars came out it was like, well now you have a lot of mechanic jobs and production and all that. Like it opens up more efficient jobs. That's how we grow. A hundred percent. And for example, like I fired my assistant from my email and my calendar yesterday, and she made the joke about I'm losing my job or whatever, like we're, she was kind of joking about it.

But now I have her focusing on what's next. You know, kind of, kind of what you're alluding to. We're building all these, uh, marketing flows and campaigns and all that stuff, and I feel like we, I'm turning a plumbing company to a marketing company with the power of all this, but. So it's freed her up to, to help work on some of that stuff.

I still have her monitoring my email and my calendar right now just from a, make sure that things are still flowing correctly. 'cause we're in the, the beta testing of this, if you will. Mm-hmm. So she is still actively, I said instead of doing it 2, 3, 4, 5 times a day, whatever she was doing, I said just checking out once or twice on my email to make sure nothing's getting missed.

So yes, she is losing those tasks, those jobs, but now I have her focusing on something else. Mm-hmm. And. By training up and having her focus on something else. Now she can, um, grow as a person. Grow, grow as a role, potentially get higher, higher pay, all that stuff. So, Hmm. Well, so, so what's next? I mean, where do you, where do you see your dashboard going and when are you gonna be able to sell it to me?

Uh, so I mean, right now it's set up for, as a plumbing company and it's set up as a single user. I, I did look into, first of all, I asked Che or, uh, AI what they thought this would cost me, and just for two weeks that it took me to build, it said if I'd have hired somebody, an external company. It would've cost me between a hundred and $150,000.

And it's not finished yet. At least not finished to where I want it to be. Mm-hmm. Between a hundred and $150,000, it'd taken three people four to six months to do it. So I wouldn't even have had this. And so I do, and I want to caveat this. I'm able to read some code like I am proficient, somewhat proficient in Linux command line.

I've done PowerShell commands before. Um. I, I, it's Chinese. Yeah. So command line didn't scare me. Mm-hmm. Uh, and that's what I have my assistant running on. I, I am, I do want to make it that, so I can talk to my assistant through the laptop, but I want to have it be able to talk back to me. So I'm gonna put a voice on it from 11 labs.

Hmm. And that's just for, for fun, you know, more than anything. Well, I mean, and I won't have to read everything. Mm-hmm. But yeah, once I reach that, then. I'll just be able to talk to it, and then it'll respond back to me in whatever voice I choose. So Jarvis, right? But yeah, that's next. Uh, I'll be able to do it for my phone, uh, using WhatsApp tie in, uh, that's next, and then filling in the security stuff that my assistant or my, my team members can message.

So my service manager, hey, like, Hey, what would Ryan think about this? You know, talent or my marketing person, I dunno if I've talked about this, but I've, I bought Alex Ram, MO'S ai, so I have access to Alex Ram mo's ai, so that's tied into it. So my marketing manager will be able to send it to there and use the mentor.

Um. Tie in. Mm. And it will actually go out to Alex's AI and inquire from that. I got ano another guy that I have access to, his ai, uh, Jeremy Hay Haynes. Anyhow, he's a marketing guy. I, I got like two or three, four external ais that I've bought access to from high level people, mentors in the, in the marketing space.

So tying all that in. It's tied in now that I can use it, but tying it in that an external person can use within our team. So that's what's next. What's next for you? I, I'm going to graduate from preschool and start learning how, how any of that works. 'cause that's, it is just. Blows in my mind what it's capable of.

And I, and I think I'm pretty sufficient with chat, GBT and I and I haven't even scratched the surface with Claude. So it's funny. So my wife was like, how come, uh, how come you're doing this, but other people aren't? And so I was kind of, 'cause. Not only did I ask it how much it would cost, but I said, how much is the software worth if I was to sell it to somebody else?

Another plumbing company, HVAC company. So Plant, they said I could charge four to $6,000 a month recurring revenue, $60,000 roughly a year recurring revenue if I decided to sell that. So that's for one person. My wife says like, why don't other people do this? I was like, that's a great question. Why don't they, but, and I just told her, I said, I just don't think they know.

How are they scared? Or something like that. But. I'm the type of person, like, I'm just gonna figure it out. Yeah. But I mean, I think to a certain point, the, and, and especially as I kinda scale up in, in business, I, I find a lot of business owners that levels above me that they just pay because they don't want to take the time to learn these things.

They want the, the impact and the result without having to put the time in for it. So on that, I would say it is too easy to learn to not. I've been messing with this, like we make few million dollars a year. You know, plumbing. This has been the best use of my time. Spending the $200 and spending the last three weeks doing this has been the best use.

I know we talk who, not how and you know, all this stuff, but I think it's something I need to get it to a point that. My team can utilize it and, and keep it running. But there was certain things doing that as the owner of the company, I was able to make the decision right there on the fly and say, Hey, this is how I want it.

And there was so much value in that. Hmm. So, so how, I mean, starting off, what, what do you think is the first way that people should implement that into their business? Is, is it the reporting, is it just consultant having, you know, the calendar and email, or what has been the most efficient use of it? I would say start off with your biggest bottleneck.

So do a bottleneck analysis. What, what are you struggling with the most? And build that first. That's where I would go. I don't know. Um, where do you spend your most time in? Say, Hey, I, I'm struggling with this. Maybe I would argue a lot of people can't read a p and l. Mm. A lot of business owners can't read, read a, like truly read a p and l.

So, hey, here's my p and l and uh, tell me where I'm falling behind. Mm. I guarantee most, uh, business owners can't read a balance sheet, so I don't trust most balance sheets. I don't, I don't think they're accurate usually. Well, I, ours isn't accurate. Like we, we have a, um, problem with our balance sheet that we've been chasing for two months, and it's actually with my assistant holding me up because it shows like a $50,000 difference, $70,000 difference in what, how much money we actually have and how much money we.

Uh, it shows. Mm-hmm. And so I have to recalculate, but when I first started using this, it was flagging on that, Hey, you don't have any cash, like, you're negative $20,000. I'm like, no, I'm not. Uh, it's just, uh, a reporting issue. But because I don't have my bank going back to the bank account things, I don't have my bank accounts tied into it, into QuickBooks.

My bank accounts tied into QuickBooks, but they're not tied into my assistant. Got it. So. Because QuickBooks is off. So QuickBooks has two different reportings. It has your balance sheet and p and l reporting, and then it's pulling data using plaid for what's actually, and so when you look at QuickBooks, it shows two different numbers.

It has what's in your bank account and what QuickBooks is reporting. Their API keys and all this information will only put what QuickBooks is reporting. They won't report which bank account's reporting. Mm-hmm. And so the only way to get that information is to tie my bank account to this assistant thing.

And I won't do that. I just, I don't wanna, I, not that I have enough money for them to start funneling it off, but going back to security standpoint just doesn't make sense. Yeah. I, I mean, I struggle with QuickBooks, just understanding. How it works. So, um, I think, I think it'd be powerful just to have, so, I mean, do, do you still think it's necessary to have a bookkeeper, have an accountant, all that stuff?

Like are you primarily using it as a reporting and decision making tool, or is it going to start taking over some of those tasks, like posting transactions and like how, how in depth can it get? So when I was in Vegas, people were talking about having a bookkeeper, an AI bookkeeper. And I don't know that I trust it.

Mm-hmm. I, I could see it, AI helping the bookkeeper, but, uh, QuickBooks has the function, like it tells you they have an AI in there that's kind of categorized this stuff. I dunno how much you played with it. Mm-hmm. But it's wrong all the time. All the time. Yeah. Most of the time. Yeah. So, mm-hmm. I don't trust it.

Hmm. So. To answer your question directly, no, I did not plan on my bookkeeper moving on, but my bookkeeper rocks too, so yeah. I'm not gonna, so, but I wanna hear more about you. What are you gonna do? I mean, you just heard me speak and we've been 30 minutes on the podcast thus far. What are you gonna do? Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing for me is strategy and having like an advisor.

And so taking those people that I, I mean, we have all the, the books. I mean, to be able to take Gina Wickman and say, you know, where, where am I? Um. Losing out by not implementing traction into my business and, you know, just having it kind of gather my thoughts and put 'em into frameworks. I think that's where it's gonna be helpful.

And blueprints. Blueprint's, probably the best example is, or best terminology I can use is, um, I can tell it and I started doing this trap chat G pt, I just wasn't happy with the result, but I wanted to go to my cloud and say, here are all my business goals for the next 12 months. Like, build my, my checkpoints up to today and tell me what I need to get done today.

And then I just, I'm gonna start using it like a, a to-do list. And, um, and, and I mean, I think that's the biggest impact that, that Chacha PT can have. And I mean, it can't replace professional coaching. We've had, you know, my coach Mike going on before I had a call with him this morning, and there is just.

Life experience that he has by, I mean, he was very high up in, um, this in executive positions at big Fortune 500 or Fortune 50 companies. So he has experience with things that I hadn't even thought of before. So that is irreplaceable. Tomorrow I have my men's, um, my Christian men's group having 12 people that, that encouraged me to, you know, connect with.

The word more and run my business according to God's will. That's irreplaceable. So I don't ever think that I'll you, you know, like you said, have give g chat, GBT, my bank counts. Like there there's no need. And I'll I, I'll, um, or Claude not chat, GBT say I'm do the same thing. Um, and I, I don't think it will ever fully replace the need for people in, in business.

There's so many roles that, I mean, I. It won't be able to replace, but how can we make it more efficient? We're already doing it with, um, AppFolio. I mean, AppFolio is just, they have been increasing their ai and that's, that's the property management software that we use. And so we've, there, there's, um, an acronym, uh, I think it's a DE, automate, delegate and Eliminate.

So anything that we can, with the system we're automating and, um. Working on the delegate and eliminate part for other unnecessary things. But to be able to take everything that this system is doing, and it, it's operating. We have, you know, all the, um, maintenances is delegated now, so they have a, a third party or, well, they're an AppFolio company that they process all of our work orders.

They can, we can build the workflows for which vendors we want. Dispatch for different tasks, plumbing, we want this person sent. If they're busy, send it to this person. Then so on, you know, for all these things. But to be able to pull that information on an owner's dashboard, that, that to me is exciting. So is that on everything you saw that I showed you, is that what the, the owner's dashboard?

Yeah. Was the, the, uh, biggest thing, yeah. That, that's the part that excites me the most is to be able to see the metrics all in one place that, I mean, unbeatable, I, I would pay a lot of money for that. So I'm actually the opposite. I like.

So what's represented in the dashboard is just pulling from a back engine, and that's

there's key metrics that I said I wanna see. And so obviously there's an overview board and it's like that's just a quick owner snapshot of how things are going. But what I like the best is when something's red or something's going, amber. Being able to trigger off on that. Hey, I see this is declining.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I guess that's kind of more what I'm getting at with the dashboard is if I can see our, like I have one system we use, um, elevate for our phone system if Elevate and I can pull it. 'cause I have admin dashboards, so, but the, the users can't see what their metrics are. So every week I can pull a report that says what was our, uh, call answer percentage and all that stuff.

But what does that mean to the employee? It means nothing. Okay. I didn't answer some phone calls like big whoop. But if I can tie that into our leasing, our, our lead conversion rate and show them you missed 20% of the calls and we got this many lost leads, like that directly ties into revenue. And so being able to tie everything together in one dashboard, I think is what will be.

And then, like we were talking about with, um, with active jobs like you had, how many active jobs and how many leads do I have this week? For me to be able to look at that and say, well, I'm a little low on leads. I'll just increase my ad spend like that I, I think is phenomenal. 'cause you can make that decision in two seconds.

Yeah. So what we created it, it does. And that was our problem. So I didn't hit on this, but there's a software called chirp, uh, CH IRPI might have talked about it before, but their, their tagline is Speed to lead. So what they did was. You missed a call. It triggered and, um, sent a text message and tried to build them through text message, try to convert 'em, and basically you're giving Cs, uh, CRL CSRs enough time to, to get back to the lead.

So I built that into it. I, uh, um, estimate follow up was another thing that chirp to us. I built that into it. We went out to another company that does marketing, and they're like, oh, we can do X, Y, and z. I built that into it. Everyone that I was going, that I was doing these demos on, I mean, just to be honest, they were all using Go high level as their back engine.

And so I, I'd asked them, I said, okay, well, this other company looks like they're, and I, I was straight up with 'em. I said, it looks like they're using the same backend. I never called GHL out directly. I was like, but I, I know enough to tell that. They're using the same back engine. I said, can I tie 'em all in together?

And they're like, no. So I'd have had five different companies and, and so the, it was like 4,000, $5,000 a month to do all this. And I had all these different, basically go high level dashboards. Mm-hmm. None of 'em would've been talking to one another. None of 'em would've. There'd been, it'd all been asynchronous data, it'd all been scattered to the winds.

And I was able to bring all that in-house and do it myself. Hmm. And save myself $5,000 a month and have it all in one dashboard that I can see what our marketing's doing, what our phone system's doing, and it is so much better. Like I gave our CSR all the data, so he sees exactly what I see. His call answer rate has gone up.

Mm-hmm. His, uh, time to call back has gone down and the guy's a workaholic, like, but it was just him being able to see it. Like he mm-hmm. He was already doing a great job, but now he's competing against metrics that I'm showing him day in and day out. Yeah. And so it's, it's benefited the team. They know, like

I know we've preached who not how a million times. Go find a who, go find a, you know, this was a how do I do it type situation, and I was able to build it out to meet my needs and I, I guarantee you it would meet a million other people's needs based on, 'cause a lot of times people build stuff based on a need and they're not the person that's needing it.

Mm-hmm. I was the person needing it and went on and built it. Hmm. So it's, I think. We'll, we'll see in six months or a year, you know where this takes us, but I, I, it looks good. Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to it. And, uh, I don't know you, have you have any closing thoughts on ai? No, I. Feel like this is the podcast I've talked to most and, uh, it's kind of been been a solo podcast of me talking, so it's kind of unusual, but I, I think you're light years ahead of me in, in this space, so I'll I'll give you the floor for that.

Yeah, right. I think if anybody goes back and watches all these podcasts and see what the different personalities and different, it's, it's always interesting like. We always talk about, like, find what you're good at or something like that. And so, uh, yeah, I probably lit up a little more on this podcast than normal.

IWI wonder if we can, uh, ask Claude to, to pull, you know, all of our podcast episodes and give the total talking time of each of us. I probably, I'd, I'd be willing to bet it's probably a 60 40, maybe 70 30. I, I, yeah, it would be interesting to see, uh, it's, uh. The problem is going through all the data, so it would've to go piece by piece and the transcripts.

Mm-hmm. Be a little ho Actually, it would be easier for Gemini going back to that. I can tell Gem. I can, I can ask Claude to tell Gemini to do it. And, uh, yeah, just pull all the podcast episodes and see. Mm-hmm. See who talked more, so. Well, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it happen. Cool. Well, Tanner, I, uh.

Appreciate it and uh, onto the next one.