How I AI

How a Developer Builds Fast, Learns Faster, and Delegates to AI

• Brooke Gramer • Season 1 • Episode 13

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In this episode, I’m joined by Erik Faz Jurgensen, a visionary developer and one of the most creative builders I’ve met. Erik has worked across Web3, government tech, and AI innovation, often managing more than 20 projects at a time. He taught himself to code using YouTube and hands-on experimentation. 

This conversation explores what it means to “vibe code,” why Erik avoids full YOLO-mode with agents, and how he built an AI assistant that manages a whole team of task-specific AI agents. If you’ve ever wondered how to go from gamer to full-stack AI-enhanced dev, this one is for you.

🔥 Topics We Cover:

  • How Erik taught himself to code without a CS degree
  • His journey from gamer to solo dev with a profitable freelance business
  • Vibe coding: what it means, why it works, and how AI accelerates everything
  • How Erik built an AI agent team using Relevance AI and n8n
  • Why developers should say “yes first, learn later” in the AI age
  • What people are still sleeping on when it comes to AI adoption

🧰 Tools Mentioned in This Episode:

  • Learning: YouTube, Stack Overflow, ChatGPT
  • Coding + IDE: Cursor, GitHub
  • Voice + Media: 11 Labs, Leonardo AI
  • Models: GPT-4, Claude, Gemini (Google X), xAI (Twitter)
  • Low/No-Code Platforms: n8n, Relevance AI
  • UI Tools: Bolt.new, Lovable.dev, v0.dev

📚 Mentioned Book:
 Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

🎥 Tutorial Discussed:
 Relevance AI: Build an AI Agent Team (YouTube)

🔗 Connect with Erik:

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Website: brookex.com

LinkedIn: Brooke Gramer

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"How I AI" is a concept and podcast series created and produced by Brooke Gramer of EmpowerFlow Strategies LLC. All rights reserved.

Brooke:

Welcome to How I AI the podcast featuring real people, real stories, and real AI in action. I'm Brooke Gramer your host and guide on this journey into the real world impact of artificial intelligence. For over 15 years, I've worked in creative marketing, events, and business strategy wearing all the hats. I know the struggle of trying to scale and manage all things without burning out, but here's the game changer, ai. This isn't just a podcast, How I AI is a community. A space where curious minds like you can come together, share ideas, and I'll also be bringing you exclusive discounts, free trials and insider resources so you can test drive the latest tools and tech yourself. Because AI isn't just a trend, it's a shift. The sooner we embrace it, the more freedom, creativity, and opportunities we'll unlock.

How I AI is brought to you in partnership with The Collective designed to accelerate your learning and AI adoption. I joined the collective and it's completely catapulted my learning, expanded my network, and show me what's possible with ai. Whether you're just starting out or looking to refine your AI strategy, the collective gives you the resources to grow.

Brooke:

Stay tuned to learn more at the end of this episode, or check the show notes for my exclusive invite link.. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of How I Ai. I'm Brooke Gramer, your host Today I have a very special guest. His name is Erik Faz Jurgensen, and he's a builder, he's a visionary mind, and he's the first developer I've had on my podcast, so I'm excited to dive deep into his journey and his background. Erik, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Eric:

Thank you for having me, Brooke.

Brooke:

Yes, and I love to leave the floor open for you to share more about yourself.

Eric:

Okay, so I'm a software developer. I've been coding for the past six years almost. Mm-hmm. I have my own business called Spy Dev, which is a one man. I'm a serial freelancer.

Brooke:

Okay.

Eric:

I just have an a brand name behind it, but yeah I just code all day. I love coding. I was a huge gamer before I started coding. And then I saw YouTube video on how to gamify your life and get dopamine hits out of simple stuff the same way you do in video games. So coding I literally haven't touched a game controller in five years.

Brooke:

That's so fun. One YouTube video changed your whole trajectory.

Eric:

Yes.

Brooke:

My brother's a gamer. He loves that space as well. He's also very smart. He's a background in engineering and works in cybersecurity. So share more about that journey of what was like the first initial step and what did you study in school exactly and how did you really get into this space?

Eric:

So in school I was studying, innovation and development engineering. And I actually took some coding classes and I hated it. Oh. I thought I was gonna like coding. I really, I hated coding and I would cheat on my exams to pass coding classes, and then I started making websites. And started running my solo business and eventually dropped out from college. And then a friend of mine who has a big company in Mexico, they raised money and he was like, Hey, I want you to join my team. I want you to code with us. And I'm like I don't code, I don't know how to code. And he's like, that's all right. We'll teach you. Wow. So I accepted the gig and their way of teaching me was just, okay, these are the programming languages. This is what you have to do. Look it up. So I started looking things up, like handing something in, and then they were like, okay, now do this. Now do this. And I started having fun and I started coding that way. And since then I've just worked on a lot of different crypto projects. Mainly crypto projects, coding in Web3. Crypto changed my life forever. The space, I didn't know anything about it until I started coding inside of it. And yeah, been part of huge projects in crypto and now of course AI is part of my, like I do AI projects, but mostly I use AI all the time.

Brooke:

How many projects do you have at any given time?

Eric:

So the most I've had in any given time is 23.

Brooke:

23,

Eric:

23 websites. Wow. Right now, I guess it's five or six. Okay.

Brooke:

Yeah. Do you primarily work on websites or what kind of projects do you feel like you specialize in?

Eric:

Before it was websites. Now I actually don't like making websites that much. I like to do like web applications and more robust systems. The best project I'm working on right now, the one I enjoy the most is called Veeam. It's like my full-time job. Okay. And we're basically creating a, an AI platform where people can generate video memes with ai. So we're training some models and we're getting a lot of context from clips, from memes and using that to create video memes. Yeah,

Brooke:

I love how. You have fun with it. And that's how you started learning was from a place of just excitement.

Eric:

It's excitement. And also I truly believe in getting paid to learn.'cause that's how I started. So now whenever a new client comes in and says Hey, I wanna build this platform, even if I have no idea how I'm gonna do it. I'll just say yes and learn. So by the end of that project I learned a lot. I got paid. Mm-hmm. I had fun. So. It's cool.

Brooke:

So do you ever take on projects where you don't know how you're going to solve their problem or complete the project?

Eric:

All the time.

Brooke:

All the time. All the

Eric:

time.

Brooke:

And how do you learn, how do you figure that out?

Eric:

YouTube. YouTube. YouTube. Yeah. Before it was YouTube I credit YouTube. As my reason for dropping out.

Brooke:

Wow. I call

Eric:

it YouTube University.'cause literally YouTube has everything, not only in coding, whatever you wanna learn. Yeah. Changing the tire to coding. It's all on YouTube and then first it was YouTube, then GPT.

Brooke:

ChatGPT is how you learn everything now. You just ask it what you need to know.

Eric:

Now I don't learn. Now it does the work for me. You know?

Brooke:

It does the work for you. Yeah. Most of

Eric:

the work. Yeah.

Brooke:

That goes to my next question is what are you using right now? What's your technology stack? What are your favorite? I. Tools or do you create your own in-house for everything?

Eric:

So my, my favorite tool, hands down is this app called Cursor. Cursor, which is what we call an IDE. I don't know what it stands for, but basically it's like my coding tool where I write code and it was the first of its kind that integrated ai. So now I have a sidebar uh, with AI that has all of my project as context. So if I tell it, Hey, now create this new tab, or this new page for the project, or whatever, it knows that design I'm using the colors fonts, styles, everything I already have in the project. So it'll do a great job. So I mainly use cursor. I pay for GPT for my sisters to use it. Mm-hmm. Uh, I cursor is my everyday app. Everything app. I just code all day and I just pay for different subscriptions to try out 11 labs, Leonardo different apps, just to like a new thing comes up, I'll pay for it, test it, forget I subscribed, pay it a couple more months and then unsubscribe.

Brooke:

That was my next question is how much do you think you're spending a month on ai?

Eric:

So thankfully my projects pay for my stack. Okay. Most of my stack, yeah. I just pay for like different subscriptions I wanna have fun with. But I'd say probably a hundred bucks a month.

Brooke:

Okay.

Eric:

Which is not that much.

Brooke:

No, not at all. And it

Eric:

could actually be$20. And I could do the same work with 20.'Cause cursor, what's great about Cursor is it has ai but it's not specific to one model. So inside of Cursor, I can use GPT Claude from Anthropic, Gemini, from Google X, AI from Twitter or X. So I got all in one for 20 bucks a month. Wow. And. It's crazy.

Brooke:

That's cool. So what else are you excited about learning right now? What is new to you in this space?

Eric:

What's exciting and new for me is catching up, right? Catching up. Catching up. Like I, I feel I'm super advanced, but at the same time, being at the forefront of everything that's happening gives me like anxiety.'cause you never you don't know what is better than what, right? Last week, Claude four was released, and then today GPT 03 Pro was released. And they made 03 super cheap for developers. But then tomorrow, Google Gemini's newest model work will come out and they're all really good. The hard part and the exciting part at the same time is figuring out which one best fits my needs in coding.

Brooke:

Do you feel like there's a lot of. Overlap or they're still unique in what it is that they do for you?

Eric:

For me, I think there's a lot of overlap. A lot of overlap. I just go through Twitter and see what other coders are saying about the models and okay, now I'll use Claude. And if I start seeing, if my algorithm starts saying oh no, Gemini is now the best. I'll just switch to Gemini. But realistically all of them. Do a great job. And it's crazy, like working with them every single day actually makes me notice how good and how better they're getting over time. Literally by the day. Yeah. Like yesterday, there's a bug I couldn't solve with Claude today, it'll solve it, yeah. They just keep getting better all the time. It's scary.

Brooke:

Do you have a community of coders and developers that you're in? Nah. Do you feel like you just chat with people on like Twitter? I

Eric:

just, yeah. Yeah, I just chat with people on Twitter.

Brooke:

Yeah.

Eric:

Yeah. Because before there was this thing called Stack Overflow where whenever you had a question or something you couldn't fix by yourself, you would post a question post your code, and a community of coders would help you. Now, ai. It is my community. I think I, I talk to the robots.

Brooke:

Yes. We're in a community together, the collective, and we just had a

Eric:

Mastermind. I, we're not all coders, that's why I didn't say that. We're not coders. Yes, it's not a coder community,

Brooke:

but it's more of an AI in general community. We recently had a mastermind and Hacker House and you're absolutely the most favorite person there because what does everyone need to have their dreams come true? Developer, someone who knows code. So I'm curious because everybody has an app idea. Everybody has a business idea. Everybody has a super unique problem that they're solving in their personal lives, and the next step is always how do I make this come to life? How do I. Build. And the next step is obviously to work with a developer or have a CTO in your company. How does someone go about procuring that? What would be the best way? And speaking from a developer, how do you like to work with people? How do you approach that relationship?

Eric:

So I really like working freelance based. Not getting a full-time job Yes. Or something that will make me only work in that project.

Brooke:

Okay.

Eric:

cause now I think it's a win-win.'cause now we devs can work faster. Way faster. You don't have to hire a team of five devs. Mm-hmm. You can have one or two devs. And if you allow them to work in other projects we'll deliver faster, right? We'll do your project, we'll do it fast so we can move on to the next project.

Brooke:

Okay.

Eric:

So I really like that. And from the employer's point of view I think it's super important right now to focus on searching for devs or people that. That are hungry to stay up to date. Mm-hmm. Right. So before you needed senior developers mm-hmm. with 15 years of experience stuff like that. Right now, it's funny'cause those same guys are the ones with the most resistance to ai. They're so pro, they have their own way of doing things. And they're super expensive. And they all work in Facebook, apple, Netflix, Google. Yes. Now like junior developers or people who haven't even graduated can get way more work done with way better quality. I believe, than senior devs.

Brooke:

Wow.

Eric:

So that shift is crazy. And I'd say just look for people that, that wanna stay up to date.'cause if you're staying up to date, the tools do the most part of the work mm-hmm. right now. And it doesn't have to be super expensive. You can get your MVPs or ideas brought to life super fast, super, super fast. Wow. And allow the devs to work on different projects.

Brooke:

Yeah. That's awesome. One thing that we chatted about a bit last week was vibe coding. If you could share in your own words what it is and what you see the future of Vibe Coding and ai.

Eric:

Yeah, so Vibe coding is what we now do every day as coders. So instead of writing code, we'll type in natural language like, Hey, please add three cards, or Please change the background color to red, or whatever. AI will do the job. So that's why it's called Vibe coding. And then you just review. You have to do minor changes, like super small changes.'cause the models are super good. But life coding is basically instructing ai on what you need or what needs to get done. Yeah. And then just overseeing that. And there's a ton of apps. So inside of Cursor, what we do there, there's a lot of browser apps like Bolt.new Yes. Lovable.dev. Yeah. v0.dev from Vercel. Those are all great, but I think those are great for beginners. Because you just type your idea, it'll bring it to life. But once you go into the coding Trenches Cursor does the same thing. Whatever you can do in those apps, you can do in Cursor, it just looks a bit more overwhelming'cause you do need to know more stuff. But it's super cool'cause you can change the models and. Let's say I ask GPT to fix something and it gets it wrong, so I can revert and now tell Gemini the same prompt, until one of them gets it right. And then I'll just stick to that. Yeah, that's pipe coding.

Brooke:

I wanna touch a little bit more about the anxiety of being into this space. I thought that was like very vulnerable of you to share just'cause on from the outside we would think that developers feel very confident and they're very excited and just sharing how, oh my gosh, there's so much to stay on top of, and feeling like, you know, all the right things. Do you see that going away, or do you think it's gonna just always be this rat race of trying to stay on top of everything? Because

Eric:

I think it'll get harder actually. Yeah. So what's crazy is I was blessed to use Chat GPT the day it came out. Wow. I was scrolling through Twitter, saw this new tech. Started using it, not even for coding, just asking stupid questions. Yeah. And I was like, wow, what is this? And then we started using it for coding. And we were like, wow what is this? But when that came out I don't remember the exact roles or the exact order, but basically we thought developers and designers, out of all the jobs in the world, were gonna be. The ones taken last by ai. And it turned out to be the other way around. AI first came for designers. You can create images, cool videos, cool websites all through prompts. And then it's coming for us devs. Mm-hmm. Because now like vibe coding, people who have never coded in their lives can do apps. Can do websites in minutes before it took weeks, maybe months if it's an app. And also two or three years ago, computer science was the most on demand skill. Yes. Two or three days ago, news came out that it's the number one unemployed wow. University degree right now in the us, like from being the number one employed to the least employed. Wow. It like computer science is now worse than arts and history. Wow. Which is crazy. Which is crazy. That's part of the anxiety, right? You've gotta either keep up or, though AI won't take your job, but someone who uses AI will. That's uh, saying I'll never forget when I read it. So it's anxiety, it's fun.'cause if you stay up to date, it just keeps getting better. But for people who refuse to use the tools to try new things out they're gonna get wiped.

Brooke:

For instance, someone who vibe codes but has a computer science degree is gonna be able to do it way better. Yeah. Than someone who doesn't. So I still think it's important to have this background and skill and knowledge, whether it's YouTube University or real university.

Eric:

Yeah. But probably for a year.

Brooke:

Just a year.

Eric:

I think maybe less, like right now, yeah. You do need a dev. Let's say you vibe code something in Bolt and you wanna add your specific domain to it. You probably, you can YouTube it or you can have a dev do it. In the future, all of these tools are getting way better. Like before it would only do the design. Now it does the code. Now you can integrate Stripe for payments and you can integrate a database. Before it was just the front end. So now you can deploy directly to GitHub, which is the Google drive for devs. So every week all of these tools keep getting better and I feel that gap from having to have a computer science degree and not having it. It's shrinking so fast.

Brooke:

So it's valid to not be going to school for that.

Eric:

Yeah.

Brooke:

Wow. Yeah. So what, I think

Eric:

it's valid not going to school for anything, to be honest.

Brooke:

Yeah. What do you think, what do you think people should be learning? What do we need to know?

Eric:

I think people should learn how to learn.

Brooke:

Learn how to

Eric:

learn how to learn. Whatever it is you wanna learn. Yeah. Just have the passion and the discipline of Google it, you know? Mm-hmm. or now Chaskt it that was Sam Altman's way of Google it for ChatGPT Mm-hmm. Chaskt it

Brooke:

Chaskt I haven't heard that one.

Eric:

Yeah. Chaskt it YouTube, it, Google it. All the infos out there. And i, don't like universities because there's no way they would be teaching everything we're learning right now. Yeah. For example, everything we talked about in the hacker house. Yeah. Not only us, like everything you can find on YouTube, I feel universities have their boomer way of teaching. And super methodological, like step by step and using AI is cheating. And they make you study on your own. Do homework on your own, like you can collaborate'cause that's cheating. Tests are on your own. But then you go to the real world and it's just teamwork everywhere. So I need to encourage everyone to drop out. Actually, I need to do it.'Cause everything you wanna learn, you can learn it way faster, way better outside of school, in my opinion.

Brooke:

Do you work in a team?

Eric:

I work in several teams. Yeah.

Brooke:

That's awesome that you have that support and you made such a valid point. We only rarely do team projects in school where it's like the opposite. It's mostly teams and then it's,

Eric:

you need a team. You need a team in the real world. Like I, I am a solopreneur. But I think, what's that saying that says you can go faster by yourself mm-hmm. but further with a team. So I do think it's all about teamwork. Funny enough, I think AI can be part of that team, if not most of the team. Your

Brooke:

co-pilot.

Eric:

Your co-pilot. Yeah. And co-pilots. Co-agents. New Tech is coming out for basically everything. Um. And it's just weird'cause I'm reading a book called Who Not How, and it talks about the importance of having teams. Yes. But this was written, I don't know how many years ago, and I just keep asking myself okay, valid. It's true. You have to set bigger goals that you can't achieve by yourself. But how many of those who's can now be different AICUs? Because you can literally use it for everything. I use it for code, but you can do whatever. You can run ads, you can do design, social media content. Yeah, automate everything. I don't know. It's scary, but fun.

Brooke:

What does your AI copilot team look like? Do you have a bunch of agents working for you at one time?

Eric:

Yeah. Yeah. So my team would be, I have my personal manager who's ai. Okay. He's the only agent that talks to me. Okay. I only talk to him and based on what I ask it or what I say that needs to be done, it'll talk to a team of AI agents and delegate those tasks to each agent.'cause in the AI world, it's super important to have, specialized agents. Not having one charge GPT that says, ask me anything. And it'll do everything. So if you train each agent to be very good at emails, very good at ads, at coding, whatever, and you have one personal assistant that is in charge of delegating the tasks to them that's my team.

Brooke:

And how did you build out your team?

Eric:

With a lot of tools. I love N eight N. Okay. We went over that in the hacker house. Yes. I forgot to mention Cursor. N eight N is super great. It allows you to not only build agents, but create automations with those agents. So I've built a team with N eight N also an app called Relevance ai. Which is basically for that to build your AI team. And actually the idea of. Having a personal assistant and then delegates tasks to other AI team members came out from a YouTube tutorial. Wow. On relevance ai,

Brooke:

do you still have that YouTube tutorial? Of course. Maybe I'll link it in the show notes.

Eric:

Yeah,

Brooke:

that's a really good one. And so when you wanna talk to your agent manager, how do you talk to it?

Eric:

You can send emails, you can send it a WhatsApp message. You can do telegram. I like Telegram better.'cause WhatsApp like Facebook or Meta has a lot of permission issues. And you have to have a business and verify the business and get approved and stuff. Telegram, you can just connect it or you can even connect one or several agents to Slack. So you can send a Slack message to your personal assistant and then have it delegate the tasks. So it can be the trigger, as we call it can be anything. You can imagine something in your CRM an Instagram message, whatever. Okay.

Brooke:

Cool. And so it just reports back to you when the project's finished or it needs additional support?

Eric:

Yeah. You can either enable YOLO mode, which is you don't need any approval from me, just get the tasks done and post or do whatever you have to do. Yeah. Or you can have approval, right? You can have approval by the personal assistant, or you can also integrate to your team. Agents that verify that the work is being done correctly, right? So the agents will talk between themselves make edits or whatever needs to be done. And then post, I still like approval. I think it's important'cause you never know Yes. When the agents can hallucinate and just start doing stuff on their own, which can be really dangerous. You can approve, you can get an email report or a message or whatever that just says, this is done, this is the post. Do you like it? Yeah. Boom. And it'll post.

Brooke:

I've heard that there's a workaround for hallucination using the RAG system. Do you use that?

Eric:

I do use it, but I I don't think it solves hallucination. What RAG does is basically, it's a better way of giving your agents knowledge.

Brooke:

So

Eric:

They will hallucinate less on the knowledge they're trained on, but that doesn't mean they'll hallucinate less on the actions they're taking. For example, we built a really cool agent and he had replied to new emails that were coming. Basically, it replaced perfectly using rag, but it started replaying two emails from three years ago.

Brooke:

Oh no.

Eric:

And stuff like that. So RAG helps for, from a knowledge standpoint, but not like action.

Brooke:

Yes. I think if I haven't made agents yet, but I feel like I would like to have the approval process. I wouldn't go YOLO mode.

Eric:

Yeah. I don't do YOLO mode even in coding. Okay. I always have to approve even what sources is the agent gonna search? Yeah. Or what, and I mean, it's bit tedious, having to click, accept or approve or whatever. Mm-hmm. But it just makes it better. You lose, you use less tokens. It's less expensive. Okay. And it gets it right more than if you just do YOLO mode right now, I think in a few months you can just have your mode on everything.

Brooke:

Love dining out. Here's a little gift for you. I've been using InKind and it's honestly a game changer for food lovers. It's like a universal dining wallet that earns you 20% cash back at amazing restaurants, cafes, and bars nationwide. And as I thank you for being a listener, you can grab$25 off your next$50 tab when you sign up with my link in the show notes. Just pay with InKind, earn rewards and use them on your next outing. A quick heads up. This offer is for new InKind users and covers food, drinks and tax, but no tips or fees. The credit expires 30 days after you claim it, so don't let it go to waste. Check the show notes for my affiliate link and enjoy your next meal on me. Well kind Of. So with everything that you know in this space and its adaptability and its ease of use, what do you think a lot of people are sleeping on right now when it comes to the benefits of ai? Because even I feel like. I'm only tapping into 2% of what I could be doing. What do you think is something that people could be doing beyond ChatGPT as a beginner, what would you recommend they could be immediately using for ai?

Eric:

I think what people sleep on the most is, realizing they can use AI for literally everything.

Brooke:

Yeah,

Eric:

literally everything. What do you wanna do? For example, for the podcast, you wanna run ads for the podcast, you wanna reach out to people. Like anything you can imagine can be done with ai. Mm-hmm. But I feel there's a lot of resistance in my personal experience. I've seen a lot of resistance on people saying if I start using AI for this and this, then I'm gonna stop using my brain. And I'm gonna become obsolete. I'm gonna become lazy. Yeah. That's one common denominator I've heard in everywhere. Like here in Bali or in the US or in Mexico. They're like I don't wanna stop using my brain. Yeah. And it is just super funny'cause I don't feel like it's, you're not stopping your brain, you're actually automating repetitive tasks and liberating your brain to think about new stuff. Yeah I just question everything, right? Question everything, everything you're doing, whether you like it or you don't okay. How could AI do it or how could AI help me do it better? I think it's a mind shift that's hard to get to, but I think it's necessary'cause tech's moving so fast, right? Yes. And I feel like the tech that's out there right now is just the tip of the iceberg. And they have new tech ready, but they haven't released it.'cause they first want people to start using GPT for most things. And start learning how the world is gonna work before they just automate your life, wow. So I think stop having resistance and question everything. Question everything. And for people who have this resistance I was talking to a friend and my friend was saying how ai, artificial intelligence, what's artificial is not the intelligence artificial are the tools we're using to talk to this intelligence.'cause this intelligence has been out there. He compares it to Mother Nature, right? There's intelligence everywhere. In plants. In trees, yes. Like everywhere. And we're just creating the tools to tap into that collective intelligence. So I think it's inevitable and people should, instead of being scared learn to have fun with it.

Brooke:

That's really good advice. Do you feel like that's how you approached it in the very beginning? A

Eric:

hundred percent. Yeah. I've been so excited ever since since day one, super excited. And I, and even I I use it for coding, but I feel I should use it for way more stuff like running ads. I've never run ads in my life. Never. And I need ads to grow my business or whatever I want do. Yeah. I should start using it even more.

Brooke:

You can clip up this podcast and run some ADs

Eric:

I should.

Brooke:

I should. I should.

Eric:

'Cause I feel like once I do it and I start getting results, it'll be like, wow.'Cause three years ago since I wanted to run ads, I would never do it.'cause I had to learn ads and learn AB testing and learn have someone that creates the copy, have someone that generates the image. Someone that's a master like ad manager. Now a, I know ai. Can't do this, and I'm saying it so I hold myself accountable. That I need to run. At least thats, there's a lot of stuff I could use AI for Yes. That I should use AI for, but at least running ads or for example, I hate being in front of cameras. And I really wanna start my YouTube channel. And right now it's so easy to clone yourself. And create all of these tutorials, right? I don't even have to be in the camera and I'm still putting it off and I know it's easy. I've cloned myself. I just gotta, I don't even have to write the scripts. I just gotta get started. So another piece of advice to me and to everyone is just get started. Whatever your idea is, your project. You just gotta get started. And I think you're a really good example. I've been talking about this podcast with the guys and it's crazy how you just said, you know what, I'm gonna start a podcast. And now I don't know which number of guests I am, but you got started, right? Yeah. You got started. And that's super important.'cause now I feel creativity is democratized. Like now. Now there's no. Doing whatever is not hard. You just gotta get started. I just gotta get started.

Brooke:

Just get started. Yes. This past week together with all of us coming together for the conference we were in, really inspired me to do more with the podcast and be doing more promotions and getting out there more. So I'm excited to just be putting more energy into it and I don't know, I think you're like, guest 15 by now. That's, yeah. It's cool. That's fish.

Eric:

Super. No, congrats. That's crazy. Yeah.

Brooke:

Thank you so much. So you spoke a lot about the benefits. I'm curious, have there been any downfalls or Oh crap moments with using ai? I think it's fun to hear like how we've had learning moments with using ai.

Eric:

Yeah, I feel coding projects has become so easy using AI that we almost take it for granted. Yeah. And then when we actually push the code to production, to live mode. We don't realize, like we don't even double check now. We're so confident. It's doing a great job. Sometimes we don't even check. And let's say it fixed a huge problem. So now that problem's fixed, we pushed that, but we didn't realize that fixing that problem, it messed five things up. Oh, or the videos are not working or whatever. Oh. And it has happened more than once. Especially in a team.'cause it's not only me, it's three of us. Let's say we are all using ai. I don't know what these other guys are coding, for example. So I might use AI to fix something missing up their work without ever realizing,'cause I never touched their code. So yeah, I think that's why having YOLO mode is a huge learning moment. But I think that's the only, oh, crap moment. I fucked things up for the code. You can always revert, right? But yes, sometimes it's not us that realize. It's clients sending messages, like horrible user experience in this part, and we're like, oh, shit. That wasn't a problem yesterday. That, that's the only,

Brooke:

yeah. So nothing too bad. My next fun question for you is, since you're in that space of creating so much as a developer, what are you wanting to wave a magic wand and create right now for yourself? Because I'm sure you do a lot for other people, but if you were to create something just for fun that isn't out there yet, what would you wanna develop just for you?

Eric:

It's hard to say something that isn't out there unless it's like magic, like Umer was saying, teleportation and stuff like that. Yeah. But what I really wanna build is so I feel for people, especially new people they come to GPT. It says Hey, ask me anything. And they'll ask something and don't get the result. So I think it's very important for people to pay GPT. Pay for GPT. Yeah.'cause of the models, right? Like you get way better models when you pay. But people who haven't paid or maybe they've paid, but they come, they ask something, they don't get the result they want, and they're like, this shit doesn't work. Why would I pay? Or whatever.

Brooke:

Yes. So I really

Eric:

wanna build a platform that guides users through prompts, using workflows, to get the best output in images instead of a cat sitting under the tree, having some kind of form. They fill out like what style of image, what dimensions, what, different stuff not only in images but in text or video or whatever, but just guide prompting users. That's something I've been wanting to build and there's a lot of examples and I think they're super cool. So I just wanna do my version'cause I feel especially doing all these workshops. With The Collective, right? I come into the event thinking I'm gonna teach an automation or something, and then I realize people can't even copy paste prompts.

Brooke:

Yeah.

Eric:

Like they have a lot of trouble.

Brooke:

Yeah.

Eric:

Getting their desired output. And even trying to teach them how to prompt like the anatomy of a prompt and stuff it's not only hard for people, but sometimes they don't even want that. They don't wanna learn the anatomy of a prompt. Just want their image, right? Yeah. Or they just want whatever. So I wanna build a platform that. Guide prompts users to get their best result.

Brooke:

I've noticed that as well.'cause I work a lot with clients and teaching them the basics of AI right now, and I've noticed that some of them just want done for you solutions. But I do think it's still important to start to learn it in some basic elementary way because it's a skill that everybody needs to know, especially just something as simple as prompt engineering or just how to speak to AI in general. I always recommend to say, okay, this is my end goal on the prompt, and then. To follow it up by saying, okay, ask me anything you need to know to give me my end results that I might have missed. And that helps a little bit with that solution of it, it being like, oh, actually we also need this, and this background and context so that helps as well. I also feel like that would be just beneficial coming from a developer because even when I generate images on ChatGPT, I feel like I'm not doing a great job with describing and prompting, but if I were in a developer's or a creative design mind, I would know better questions to answer. So that's a really cool educational moment. Do you like teaching?

Eric:

I think I love it. I'm just getting started, right? Yeah. I'm just getting started. I started doing speaking at events this year. I never thought I'd do it. I've always wanted my YouTube channel, but I never got started'cause I'm camera shy. But after these events I feel like can be a good teacher. Before, I didn't know that. I didn't feel that.

Brooke:

Yeah.

Eric:

But now, after receiving feedback and stuff I think I could do a good job, especially'cause I learn all day, right? All day, every day. I'm on YouTube, so I know how things, or I consider, I know how things should be explained to people who don't know ai. Mm-hmm. Or, Or even for devs, right? I wanna teach. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think. That, guide prompting platform alongside a video vault. I just wanna do a video vault, right?'Cause there's two types of videos I would do. One is what's new in AI every week.'cause it never stops, right? Never stops. 20, 30 different stuff coming out every week. And a tool or different tools people can use instead of just like using ChatGPT ask me anything, like having optimal outputs. I really wanna do that.

Brooke:

I would tune in, although I don't know if I'd be able to keep up. I've tried learning from you a couple times and it just, it was a little difficult for N8N for me.

Eric:

I think it's also, it's difficult to try to teach something in an hour. Yeah. To a group of 30, 40, 40 people where there's a lot of that disparity gap is so big, right? Somebody might catch it, somebody might not, but I think in video format where people can go back a hundred times if they need to, but if by the end of the video they'll get what's promised, I think that's way easier. That and one-on-ones.'cause everybody learns different, right? Yes. So I think one-on-ones would make it way easier than trying to learn in group.

Brooke:

That's interesting to think about because as I train teams, I do find that there is a bit of disparity to your point, and then sometimes one person just has a question that goes like completely off script and that derails the training a bit. So one-on-one actually sounds like a great use case. So when you watch your YouTube videos, you just pause when you have a question or figure it out.

Eric:

Yeah. I pause until I get that part of the step. I also feel in groups, let's say we're teaching automated LinkedIn posting. Some people don't even use LinkedIn. So they'll try to follow along just so they feel they learn something, but it's not the same energy they put into it as. Where when I go on YouTube I'm looking for what I wanna learn. I'm super hooked on the video. But having to come up with something that will interest everyone. Yeah. Super hard.

Brooke:

Yeah. Just today I was editing a video. I was trying to align audio and video onto script and I came to a point where I needed like very specific help and I had ChatGPT link, a YouTube resource, and I even said do not give me a 45 minute video. Give me like short to the point exactly the problem I'm having. And it gave me two different options. It gave me an Instagram video and a YouTube video, and it was like, which one do you like prefer? It's been getting so smart in that way.

Eric:

Super smart.

Brooke:

Yeah. And I was able to watch the tutorial and solve the problem within 20 minutes.

Eric:

That's crazy. Yeah.'cause another thing I don't know is people who use chat GPT. I don't know how many of those users. Actually realize how better they're getting or if they just take GPT for granted and yeah, feel it's the same GPT as day one,'cause it's really not. No, it's super crazy. And open AI has to do a better job naming their models.'cause right now, like everyone, so you go into ChatGPT on the top left, you will always see the model you're using and it says GPT 4o. Yes, it's their worst model. But how would people know that? Unless you click and then you see o1 o3, but you say, ah, four is bigger than three, right? So it's probably better, but it's actually the worst. So they gotta do a better job. I agree. In naming conventions, and also. A better job explaining what each model does. Reasoning models versus non reasoning models. Doing a better job explaining.'cause every time we explain this to people and show them the difference, they're like, oh, that's their oh crap movement. Yes.

Brooke:

A very key point. What do you feel is a key takeaway that you wanna share with anybody that's getting new to AI and just jumping in for the first time? That's a lot of my audience is people just starting to learn. As a developer, do you have any word of advice?

Eric:

Be open to learning. Just be open to learning. Yeah. Yeah. Keep in mind like this is something that is already changing the whole world. Don't be scared. Don't be scared and don't be negative about no. It's taking everybody's job and I think you have to adapt. And you gotta get started. And you gotta have fun. You're gonna have fun.'cause once you start using these tools and see how they benefit you personally.

Brooke:

Yeah.

Eric:

You won't hate it. You'll love it.

Brooke:

I love that feedback. You said that you are looking for more clients and thinking about running ads this is your opportunity for a shameless plug. How can listeners reach out to you?

Eric:

Just message me, I'd say on Twitter. That's something I really wanna go. I'm not big into personal brands or stuff, but Twitter Yes. I'm saying Twitter.'cause you need to get into Twitter to stay up to date. And I personally use Twitter all day, so I'll always see the messages. But yeah, seriously, YouTube and Twitter. Getting your algorithms right instead of them showing you. Unnecessary stuff. Yeah. Or just wasting your time. Like you can really take advantage of that tech, which is also ai to make your algorithms better and just learn in small videos. Even a tweet, like reading a tweet will make you learn crazy amounts of stuff.

Brooke:

Wait, how do you use AI to make your algorithms better?

Eric:

So you, you start scrolling on Twitter, searching for AI or whatever, let's say as an example, or crypto. And then tweets you find interesting. There's different weights on if you like post or you retweet a post. Or you bookmark bookmarks are the highest. Yeah. So if you start bookmarking stuff, the algorithm will start showing you more of that stuff. Yes. So bookmarks are the number one.

Brooke:

I knew that about Instagram, but I actually don't have an X account

Eric:

or TikTok. No comment. Okay. I don't have TikTok but x. It's a little Gotta have it. Gotta have it.

Brooke:

Yeah. Gotta have it. Do you use LinkedIn?

Eric:

No. That's for boomers. I mean the, the best, The best job opportunity I've had came through Twitter.

Brooke:

Really?

Eric:

Yes.

Brooke:

How did that happen? Someone just saw something that you shared volume, you for one and your project

Eric:

launched. And I found some bug on their website. So I reached out and say Hey, this is not working. This is not working. I'm a dev. I could fix it. The guy was like, send me your cv. And I'm like, what is a cv? I'll send you my portfolio website, and I sent it and he was like, okay. And it's been my biggest and best project.

Brooke:

Wow. That's amazing. One thing that we didn't touch on was crypto. Actually, now that you just mentioned it, I don't know if that's something that you wanna chat about at all, if it's relevant to AI in particular. But I know you're very passionate about that space, so I just wanted to open the floor if anything that you want to share about.

Eric:

The intersection of AI and crypto I feel is super important.'cause right now AI is super beginner. But as it gets more advanced and you start actually hiring ai, not only creating your custom GPT, but having AI do their tasks for you AI agents can't open a bank account. You can't pay them pesos or dollars or euros or whatever. So the way, the only way we're gonna be able to transact with ai, like paying them and receiving payments from them is gonna be. Crypto and blockchain. So I feel, that could be a whole other episode Yes. On crypto and Bitcoin but basically I feel it's important for people to maybe not fully understand blockchain, but just keep in mind, AI won't want your devaluating money. They're gonna want crypto and it is gonna be the only possible way to interact with them in a monetary way. So buy Bitcoin.

Brooke:

Buy Bitcoin. Yeah. This is your plug. Not

Eric:

financial advice, but buy Bitcoin.

Brooke:

What do you think about people who use AI to invest and give them advice on that? Do you think that's legit?

Eric:

I hope. Yeah. I hope'cause going back to your question on what I would love to build for myself would be a cool, trading bot. There's millions of trading bots out there. I think eventually my prediction is eventually AI will become so good at trading that everything will just collapse. Like all the aas will be so good that I don't know how the world's gonna work. But if you don't know how to invest, getting advice from AI is probably good. I don't know if I'd rely a hundred percent of it, but, me personally, I would heavily rely on it.'cause I'm not a savvy investor, right? Yeah. I'm just like buy Bitcoin hold, yeah. But if you wanted to trade and stuff like that, probably there's algorithms and stuff that can do a better job.

Brooke:

I dunno if I would feel confident in it,

Eric:

but like you feel confident in AI creating images for you, right? Yes. And drafting emails. Yes. And a lot of stuff like. Why? Why would trading be different?

Brooke:

I don't know. I guess'cause it's more weight to it.

Eric:

You can start small.

Brooke:

Yeah. Maybe you can start small. That's how I approached crypto is just with small money.

Eric:

Yeah, small money. And then if it's doing a great job, you can scale up. I don't know if it's there yet'cause a lot of people would just rely on ai. I do think it's gonna get there. No problem.

Brooke:

Interesting. What is your Twitter handle so people can reach out to you?

Eric:

It's ErikfazJU E-R-I-K-F-A-Z-J-U. We can link it at the bottom of the podcast.

Brooke:

Yes, we will. Thank you so much, Erik. I appreciate your time. Thank you. And it was an honor to be your first podcast ever.

Eric:

Yes. It's an honor for me. Thank you a lot for the invitation.

Brooke:

Yeah, you did such a great job.

Eric:

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Wow, I hope today's episode opened your mind to what's possible with ai. Do you have a cool use case on how you're using AI and wanna share it? DM me. I'd love to hear more and feature you on my next podcast. Until next time, here's to working smarter, not harder. See you on the next episode of How I Ai. This episode was made possible in partnership with the Collective ai, a community designed to help entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. One of the biggest game changers in my own AI journey was joining this space. It's where I learned, connected and truly enhanced my understanding of what's possible with ai. And the best part, they offer multiple membership levels to meet you where you are. Whether you want to DIY, your AI learning or work with a personalized AI consultant for your business, The Collective has you covered. Learn more and sign up using my exclusive link in the show notes.

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