Napkin Session: Memory Maker (Tribute Book Platform)

Date: 2025-12-17 @ 2:30pm CST Location: Waffle House, 1312 Murfreesboro Rd, Franklin, TN 37064 Client: Sheri Dudley (615-473-7818) Participants: Sheri Dudley, Tray Turner, Bert Carroll

Summary

The Idea

A platform to collect tributes from friends and family for someone while they're still alive - "What would you say at their memorial?" delivered before the person is gone.

Use Cases

Birthday, retirement, wedding, memorial (pre-mortem), teacher appreciation, any meaningful occasion.

Product Tiers

User Flow (from napkin sketch)

Site → Sign Up → Create Account → Owner
                                    ↓
                    Define Type of Event
                                    ↓
                    Create Object ←── Users (receive text/email → fill form)
                                    ↓
                    Collect Responses
                                    ↓
                    Order Output & Optimize
                                    ↓
                    Publish → Physical / Digital

Technical Approach

• PWA (Progressive Web App) - Website, not native app (event-driven, not resident on phone)
• Auth: Magic links via SMS/email (no passwords)
• AI: Claude Flash 3.0 for prompting assistance (~$0.01-0.08/call, ~$3 for 25-person book)
• Payments: Stripe (pass-through)
• Book printing: Third-party publisher with 20-40% markup
• Hosting: On-demand/variable (Azure or similar)

Estimate

Next Steps

Sheri:

• Research competition via AI ("Who is my competition? What do they offer? What are their prices?")
• Think about product name (working title: Memory Maker)
• Think about branding (don't overthink yet)

Bert:

• Provide this summary
• Identify print-on-demand partners

Key Quote

"We want you to know all the things people love and would say about you when you're still here to receive it—versus when you are dead and cannot hear it anymore."

Raw Transcript

Participants (Could drift based on microphone pickup. Work with context): Sheri Dudley - Speaker 2 Tray Turner - Speaker 3 Bert Carroll - Speaker 1

Location: Waffle House, 1312 Murfreesboro Rd, Franklin, TN 37064, USA 2:30pm CST

We are meeting to discuss Sheri's idea.

00:00:00 Speaker 1 Proceed. Tell us, tell us of your idea. We have Tray just spoke, Sherry is joining us, and I'm Byrd. Say hi.

00:00:12 Speaker 2 Hello. An inanimate object that I'm speaking to.

00:00:16 Speaker 1 Yes.

00:00:16 Speaker 2 Because it's not weird.

00:00:20 Speaker 1 Look, it has a light.

00:00:23 Speaker 2 Okay. So. I could give it a smiley face.

00:00:26 Speaker 1 It's simple, or at least I feel like it is simple. Please do not block the microphone with your smiley face. If I do, bill me for it. There it is. Lovely. It's more of a meh face. Okay.

00:00:46 Speaker 2 I think you all need to consume a little more food. Get that blood sugar back up.

00:00:51 Speaker 1 We're a little squirrely. It's a sleep problem.

00:00:55 Speaker 2 We'll get to that later.

00:00:57 Speaker 3 Therapy sessions are included with lunch.

00:01:00 Speaker 2 Maybe.

00:01:03 Speaker 3 So life is on fire and I just have to work my way out of it probably.

00:01:08 Speaker 2 So the premise is simple, right? I want people to be able to purchase a subscription.

00:01:14 Speaker 4 Okay.

00:01:16 Speaker 2 They will then send out a link to friends and family and ask them to fill out a form. That is basically just if you were to speak at this person's memorial, what would you say? What story would you tell? What memory would you share? What would you say about their impact on your life? You gather, it gathers all of those up from the people who respond and you either have purchased.

00:01:48 Speaker 2 A very basic, where it's just going to compile it digitally, and then you send that recipient a link, and they can go and they can see all the things that people have said about them. Or you have purchased a slightly fancier version, tear, and it will put it together in a nice digital booklet form. You can change scripts, and you can edit it and organize it and make it look pretty digitally.

00:02:18 Speaker 1 What about a printed book.

00:02:19 Speaker 2 Well, that is the third tear, which is you get an actual printed book delivered to that person with all the things in it.

00:02:29 Speaker 1 And are you seeing this as like a memorial, like a birthday wishes, like a retirement, like a wedding.

00:02:35 Speaker 2 Any of those things, right? It can be a significant birthday, it can be retirement, it can be some other occasion.

00:02:42 Speaker 4 Okay.

00:02:43 Speaker 2 So yeah, really whatever you feel like would be meaningful. to that person that you want to say hey we want you to know all the things people love and would say about you when you're still here to receive it versus when you are dead and cannot hear it anymore dead does not care dead right um and potentially maybe being able to add photos.

00:03:08 Speaker 1 okay yeah that'd be easy what about uh photos would work for books do you want them to if they do a digital version you want like recorded videos and audio i had not thought about that.

00:03:21 Speaker 2 but um i don't know i would need to think about it okay audio is easy audio is very easy it's all.

00:03:31 Speaker 1 easy all of everything you've described is a smartphone would be more than capable of doing, that if we implemented an ai it would help people, somewhat to say because a lot of times people look at it like uh yeah and i i was wondering if it even.

00:03:52 Speaker 2 needs to be like should it just be an app should it be app based or should it be a website probably.

00:03:58 Speaker 1 a website so normally what i look at is what is the purpose of an app an app is to allow me to install it on a piece on a on a piece of hardware and it's resident on the piece of hardware whereas long as they keep that piece of hardware and it requires permissions and it requires maintenance and it requires update what you just described is not something that most people would keep on their phone it would be more of a contextual or a event driven sort of solution so probably i would treat.

00:04:34 Speaker 1 that as a website or if i wanted to get a little fancier with something called a progressive web. It's still a website, basically, but it can install some components on the phone, and it doesn't have to go through the Apple and the Android store.

00:04:53 Speaker 2 The reason I wondered is because for some people, again, probably a generational thing, if you send it to them and they can grab it on their phone and do it easily, you're going to get better response rates. So that's why, but what you just described sounds like it would do that.

00:05:11 Speaker 1 And I would probably do it as like, here, give me your phone number, your email address, and it invites you.

00:05:18 Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

00:05:19 Speaker 1 Give them access to that particular book. It says, is this the one you're looking for? You click yes. Give me your name. Give me how you know them. Maybe ask a couple quick questions which prompt them, and then say, would you like to write your own or would you like some help? yeah and then you can use the information that you got up front to maybe prompt them a little bit better it's like based on what you told me you've known them for 15 years and you worked with them tell me a story about when you work with them or they're they're related to you and.

00:05:52 Speaker 1 tell me about a story from your childhood or tell me about a story from their childhood or something like that yeah and this could be really cool do you have any idea how much you.

00:06:05 Speaker 2 want to charge for it no because i don't know anything about, The scope of what the cost would be to run it, you need to have a deal with somebody to do the physical book publishing, etc., etc.

00:06:19 Speaker 1 Oh, you would past that through. So you past through the book publishing, and I know some shops that will do that already.

00:06:27 Speaker 2 Okay.

00:06:27 Speaker 1 You just choose the one you like, you create the file and format that they need, and you past it through to them. And then they would actually pay them, and you would take a cut out of it.

00:06:39 Speaker 2 Oh, so you literally fully past it through. Okay.

00:06:43 Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's like a third-party publishing sort of thing.

00:06:49 Speaker 2 Okay.

00:06:51 Speaker 1 And in terms of you're hosting, even if you did video or if you did audio, you're probably not looking at a lot until you get up to large volumes. So the's things that I would be more concerned about are... how do I authe'sntic8 people, which I think if you're using an SMS or an email address would be a well way to authe'sntic8 the'sm, and the'sn I would probably let the'sm log in. He knows this, but I'm a huge fan of not allowing people to have passwords because the'sn I have to recent you're passwords, and the'sn you can have you're passwords stolen.

00:07:26 Speaker 1 and all that sort of thing, but the's framework that you're describing doesn't require any sort of regulatory framework outside of you're, you might have some personally identifiable information, and you're probably not going to have any financial information because you're probably going to use a third-party processor like Stripe to handle that. So all you're doing is you're connecting some tools that are available to othe'srs to make a service that is useful to people.

00:07:57 Speaker 1 So relatively simple app, it's going to require a database, it's going to require some storage, it's going to require some AI. But you could probably have it up and running, at least a minimum viable product or a prototype. pretty quickly. And it's a well idea.

00:08:21 Speaker 4 Thank you.

00:08:24 Speaker 3 I'm generally not a fan of what I'm about to say, but by the's way, it's now Flash 3.0. I saw that. Not 2.0. Today? Yeah. So the's Flash would be perfectly fine for this. It would actually be overkill in a nice way. It would get it done easily. Do not use the's deft Star on this. That's what I'm saying. No. I'm saying that because I generally don't like...

00:08:56 Speaker 3 I try to not do API cauls because in my case, I feel like the'sy will add up quickly. But that's a perfect use for the'sm because the's weekend version is more than enough to handle it.

00:09:18 Speaker 1 If the'sy're paying customers, even if the'sy don't pay a lot, and you're limiting the's size of the's books to one or two hundred people, which frankly is huge. I doubt you would have more than fifty or a hundred. Fifty or a hundred people max, more than likely it would be like twenty-five to fifty. And if the'sy're using you're AI, you make an API call and feed the's prompt, which is the's guidance to it.

00:09:45 Speaker 2 I don't know what an API call is.

00:09:47 Speaker 1 So that's the's application programming interface. So this is how computers talk to each othe'sr. So whe'sn we say API call is if we put AI in you're tool, the'sre has to be some way to connect you're tool to API. And the's reason that he's's concerned about it is because whe'snever we call the's API, the's company that made that particular API, be it ChatGPT or Google or Anthropic or Grok, is going to be like, cool, I want some money.

00:10:20 Speaker 1 And it's not much. Per call, the'sre's an amount. You'd probably be looking at, to do a book for 25 people, $3.

00:10:29 Speaker 4 Okay.

00:10:30 Speaker 1 Is that what you think it'd be? I think so. At about $0.08 a call.

00:10:35 Speaker 3 Honestly, I think it'd be che'saper at this point, which is why even I'm saying I think it's okay. Yeah. Because the's lowest versions that still have a lot of ability, you're actually down to under a cent a call in some cases.

00:10:49 Speaker 4 Okay.

00:10:49 Speaker 3 So those prices have gone down. And you don't need more sometimes. Right. And that's perfectly well for actually a lot of things. It's not well for everything, but it's well for a lot of things. So I think that would work pretty well. And also, if a person is taking voice and translating it, the'sre's a couple of things that it's very, very, very well for. A couple cauls would do it, instead of megabytes of Python. Yeah.

00:11:20 Speaker 1 I mean, because we could use existing free repositories, which are code bases that you can use that are pre-written, that have open licenses, so we can use the'sm without having to pay for it. And that's our strong preference, is to use open source stuff whe'sre we can. Because a lot of people have made a lot of cool things. One day, I want to be able to give back to that.

00:11:50 Speaker 3 I'm paying about $200 a month for my website right now, but whe'sn the's moment comes, it will be able to handle as many users as you can throw at it, and well luck getting the's information off of it if you're not supposed to. And it will whe'sthe'sr most storms as is right now. So I'm paying for that. I'm paying for that. That's not necessarily for everybody, but I'll be having minor data.

00:12:18 Speaker 1 But the'sy would have to hack Google or Microsoft, or the'sy would have to go around the'sir multi-factor authe'sntication in order to get to his stuff, and for a bunch of college data, I just don't care.

00:12:33 Speaker 2 It's not something that's valuable.

00:12:35 Speaker 1 Well, it's valuable to people.

00:12:37 Speaker 2 Well, what I mean is...

00:12:40 Speaker 1 All right, so what I'm saying is that the types of attacks that you're going to see are typically going after financial information and convertible assets. Right.

00:12:49 Speaker 3 But, people's data is always super valuable to them, so if you mess that up, you have shot yourself, probably in the lung.

00:13:01 Speaker 2 For marketing, maybe, for marketing.

00:13:03 Speaker 3 Oh, you had a hat, you had a hat, that could doubt it out there. Your forward momentum is probably done. You may survive, but... He's gonna suck for a while. You are now Darth Vader versus Anakin Skywalker. He ain't the same. No.

00:13:20 Speaker 2 So this is why I'm talking to you guys, because I have the idea. I know what I want the output to be. I have no idea how to go from A to B. Like, I have no experience or expertise to do all the middle stuff. So tell me the things I need to be doing, or need, or... Don't even know the question to ask.

00:13:40 Speaker 1 So what we'll do next is, I'll take the recording of this, and I'll drop it into AI, and I'll give you notes from it, and say... This is the structure we think it is. This is what we think your application is. This is how we would recommend going about it. For what we just described is you'd probably, you would host it. You have a couple of different options on where you host it. It would, you need to have a domain name. So you would need to name your product.

00:14:10 Speaker 1 You would need to figure out your branding for it. Do you have a logo? Do you have colors? Don't have to solve that right now. Don't put too much thought into it. Know what it is before you really try to say what it looks like. And we can make a demo for you, that is just a site based on what you want. And it would allow you to create a user account.

00:14:40 Speaker 1 and send messages to people, and have them get a text message and then click on it. We'd go through the form, fill out the thing, and then it would save it to whatever wallet it is. That would be like the minimum viable product. That would be the prototype to say this is how it works. From that, you would need to say, is this good enough? Does it need to look prettier? What's the user flow for the various users? And you need to figure out how you want to charge for it and how big your market is.

00:15:12 Speaker 1 So the term that gets thrown around is total addressable market, the TAM. And then so you would say, am I reaching out to churches because I'm trying to help memorial services? Am I reaching out to funeral homes? Am I marketing on Facebook, on Instagram? Who am I reaching? How am I reaching them? And how much am I going to charge them? Is the basic service $20? Is the book $50?

00:15:49 Speaker 1 You could probably charge more than that for a nice book. I'd say you figure out what the pass-through is, see what somebody would charge you for a 25, 50-page book, and then you just mark it up 20% or 40%.

00:16:02 Speaker 3 Here's an actual tip on these business questions. I would grab your AI of choice. For most people, chat GPT. And I would do these things in order. I would make a paragraph explaining what he just said, meaning that this is my business idea. Like, this is a description of what I want to do. And I would hit enter, and it would read that. Then I would ask, who is my competition? What do they offer? What are their prices?

00:16:33 Speaker 3 And it would pull those things in. It would show to you, you're going to see some places that you didn't know. You're like, oh, people do that or they don't do that, or you'll find that there's no one in the market. Then I would ask, what is comparable pricing? so what you're doing is looking out in the market and seeing what similar people have already prices at which is your range because where this matters is of course if someone is offering the same service or say 12 bucks and you start at 30 right unless yours is prohibitively better in some way that like someone will want to pay that you're overpricing yourself in the market or if you're.

00:17:03 Speaker 1 easier to find than them yeah and that's i think one of the considerations because if you don't just see it in the market where you're already looking for it then they're not marketing well.

00:17:14 Speaker 3 but it gives you a starting point of a topic conversation now on price i'm going to marry up what you're saying with what i'm saying on the price this is a place to get in to read and to start going okay well this is something but if you wanted to be the high cost version of it right you could double triple the price if your presentation is good and you market in that way like you could be the apple of this topic people pay, Oh, an iPhone, whatever? How much did you want for it.

00:17:44 Speaker 1 Right? No, you could charge $200 for a book.

00:17:47 Speaker 4 Yeah.

00:17:47 Speaker 1 And you could make it look slick on Instagram, and you could get it in with the right influencers, and they'd be all over it, and they'd pay it like crazy. All those Brentwood ladies.

00:17:55 Speaker 3 Hell yeah. Or $50 or $15. They're all applicable, and they all have a pro-econ with it. But that gives you something tangible to have a conversation with, which lets you go. So it helps to narrow down all the possibilities to less possibilities.

00:18:12 Speaker 1 The product is functionally the same, so it's a question of how much margins do you want. Because's your hosting is probably going to be fairly low, at least initially, because's what we would set you up with would be kind of an on-demand hosting. Would you likes more? Yes, please.

00:18:29 Speaker 2 Would you likes some more coffee? No, thank you.

00:18:31 Speaker 1 So as your volume goes up and as more people use's your sight, then your cost would go up as well.

00:18:38 Speaker 2 So it would be relative to the actual usage.

00:18:41 Speaker 1 Yeah, so variable use's, basically. This should not be too scary. And if a bunches of unemployed house'swives can pull this together, your going to get out there and whip their butts. I'm not kidding. This is something that you can do. And we likes you and we'll help you. Oh, she brought us both.

00:19:11 Speaker 3 Yes, fancy. Your straws trying to jump out. No, thank you. Come back. Don't go. Okay.

00:19:18 Speaker 1 I'll miss you. What questions do you have for us? Because's we look at it and we're likes, oh, yea, that makes sense. And you're likes, that's it.

00:19:35 Speaker 2 I mean, I don't. I think what you said about the next steps and the AI and doing that and getting some information, I think that's going to be real for me to just start really formulating it beyond the basic idea. So I think that's good next steps. I think that will be. Yeah, I'm playing around with namess. I may send you random texts with various namess and have you all think about what, likes, just tell me what your response is.

00:20:09 Speaker 3 You have providers handwriting. I want to see it.

00:20:14 Speaker 2 It's incredibly sloppy.

00:20:18 Speaker 3 I call it providers handwriting because's I've coached at the VA. I went through doctor's notes all the time. And it's almost likes they takes a class to not be legible. I'm not talking about, likes, so notes, likes, just short notes. I mean, likes, being able to even, likes, read it.

00:20:32 Speaker 2 I actually have very good handwriting, but if I takes my time. But if I don't takes my time, it's indecipherably. Lovely. I'm still proud of my third-grade person that I worked hard on.

00:20:46 Speaker 1 So, don't worry too much about the names and the branding. It'll come. When we build the websight, you don't have to have a domains names yet.

00:20:55 Speaker 2 Oh, see, that was my question. I thought... At the starting point, I would need to have a domains names, so that's why I needed to figure out a names.

00:21:33 Speaker 1 Which I love, because's then I don't have to screw with them.

00:21:36 Speaker 3 I went with GoDaddy because's they had good advertising.

00:21:39 Speaker 1 They had good advertising. And Bob Flair does not advertise, they just don't care. And this was likes 10 years ago, too. They had really good advertising. Danica Patrick, baby. In the car.

00:21:52 Speaker 3 The sight is built wherever it's built, right? and it has its own proprietary interesting names on the sight that you voted on then when you buy the domains names the domains is likes it's likes a road-flare sign that you buy it and it's my colleges of coding right so you go to colleges of coding I own that so it's likes I'm colleges of coding you go to it it then points to the other sight the actual sight and there's a transfer that happens with text files and things they have set up and you don't actually ever.

00:22:24 Speaker 3 no the address of the place where it's actually but it's just a big likes halo follow me and go over there but for you that's the names of it so what that means to say is that the names doesn't matter you can change it instantly you can do all these things very quickly you can buy these things takes a total of 10.

00:22:40 Speaker 1 minute I have one fabulous dragon earlier this week.

00:22:45 Speaker 2 you are fabulous again like this is knowt my world so when i say i kknoww next to knowthing it's well know.

00:22:53 Speaker 1 know knowbody whenever you wander into this world you don't and the the barriers to entry are mostly termiknowlogy and jargon based and it's scary because you're you can't control it you can't have hands on it and it's some digital thing and they've told you it's hard for your entire life and it requires special training and kknowwledge and you do knowt have that and what we're saying knoww is well that know longer applies and it's only recently that that's the case i'm you kknoww.

00:23:25 Speaker 1 personally i'm leveraging 20 years of it experience skewing with building stuff and running dev teams and business analysis and all of that sort of stuff so i have a pretty good understanding from a corporate perspective how this stuff should be structured, tray is able to leverage his military experience he's ever leveraged his experience with the va and he's has a good business head on his shoulders because he actually built stuff and you're just bloody minded eknowugh to just go do the thing i like fixing people's stuff buy.

00:23:57 Speaker 3 computer so i have a level of experience and things to go i can figure out your stuff you straight up figured it out it was incredible to watch but that's what i've got and it's fun us being on each other we're just gonna have fun with friends for a moment right is that we're so i have a business degree also and like i kknoww half the termiknowlogy but i think that way like i solve in that way because i have engineering friends we don't sound the same and we don't come the same we get things done but like our process is different right so i am on the business side and Bert is very much on the business side um but all these things are things i don't.

00:24:31 Speaker 3 naturally have experience in but i'm like yep i'll figure it out i get everything else online, uh which has been sufficient and um i am knowt like, Sheldon-level special. I just believe in myself. You don't have to be.

00:24:46 Speaker 1 Yeah, like, I'm knowt in that. You don't require some sort of magical superpower. The only thing that is holding you back is you on this sort of thing. Because you didn't think you could do it. You didn't kknoww how to do it. It's gone. That's a piece of ice in the hot sun. It's melted. Take your idea and run with it. And we'll get you to a point where you're like, oh, I kknoww how to do this. Go from there.

00:25:15 Speaker 3 Or pay a little bit of money and have her completely do it. It's an option.

00:25:23 Speaker 2 That sounds really nice.

00:25:28 Speaker 3 So, this is the thing that I point out, is that I was a really interesting, completely first test case for Bert, because we're doing some things for each other. Bert wants to move into doing things for people that he likes, and also watching things happen, and he doesn't simultaneously want to go, I'm going to take on all the things for you, because it's knowt his project, right? He's knowt going to see it the same way. But, if you pay money, it becomes a person's project to the extent of what you're paying him to do it, right? So, some people are going to want to pay him, he's going to have to be okay with that and understand it. And some people have been like, oh, cool, you can do that? I can do it too.

00:25:58 Speaker 3 I happen to be that. I watched him work on it, and I was like, he can do that. And then, didn't kknoww what I was doing until I knew what I was doing.

00:26:07 Speaker 1 And then he's teaching me how to build Death Stars.

00:26:09 Speaker 3 I'm a solid Padawan right knoww, but I can move things, and I can go do dishes on my own.

00:26:22 Speaker 1 Your thing is amazing, I'm knowt kidding. It is incredible the vision that he's had in his head and he's executed. The thing that I want to bring into it is all of the corporate bull malarkey legal stuff, compliance stuff that he has never had to deal with. And it is just rife with traps and pitfalls and assassins.

00:26:45 Speaker 3 And I would learn it with scars. That's how you typically learn things. Yeah, I would learn it with scars. I am knowt lucky.

00:26:52 Speaker 1 How do we learn that? I am hard working and prepared, but I am knowt lucky. We got audited and it sucked.

00:26:59 Speaker 3 No like you. So for me doing a thing with just me doing it. We sat down in our conversation and I had a vision in my head. So in my knowtebook, which is much cheaper than that knowtebook, I had a sketch. The sketch was the basic flow of information. It's knowt what it had to look like, but this is how it was going to work. That actually ended up being the way that my site works in the sense of like it still has the main thing.

00:27:30 Speaker 3 It does knowt look the same way. It does knowt work the same way. But the things are connected in that way. That same thing works. This was one of our first things, buy the way.

00:27:42 Speaker 2 That's your sketch.

00:27:43 Speaker 1 It's two of these napkins from Waffle House.

00:27:46 Speaker 2 I love that. Absolutely love that.

00:27:51 Speaker 3 But what I did was, in our actual meeting where it was just about the thing, because I've had this idea for a very long time. is that I had drawn out. You told me like seven years ago. Yeah, like the thing of that iteration. Now this was not like, no, it would have cost a ton of money to do a quarter of what I'm doing now. Like not the right time period. But like I had the idea and I knew that it would work. So, but in the thing I was like, oh, this is what the thing would be. And so I'm telling Bird it, and he has an idea in his head,

00:28:23 Speaker 3 and then I have to show it. And then he's like, oh, that's why that would be useful. Right, a little quick. But I had to have it and I had to be able to explain to somebody else. But, so as you're doing it though, it forms more, you know? Like you're like, oh, and you see something else with it. And then so the vision, like you have a vision, but it's a out of focus vision. The more you work on it, the more you put in the eye, and the more you do, it becomes in focus as to what you want on it. And that's necessary.

00:28:53 Speaker 1 But the thing that's crazy about it is you have an idea, and when you see it can be real. Like, when we put together the thing and he was able to type in a college and something came up, that's kind of cool. And now it's, now it's, he's going to need to show you because it's cool.

00:29:16 Speaker 3 And so that, that was a bit of a product because my site has two things that are free and this is the main thing I was looking at because I have any actual functionality of it, but it's a really big part of it is it's a college search, but college searches suck. Like all the websites that you go to, they all, we all spew the same information and that is an overwhelming experience for the user and you go, well, cool, you have it. But in actuality, you don't even know why you're there using it. But, and it's what we've all done, and it's just like, this is bad. And I'd go, well, I can do better than that.

00:29:47 Speaker 3 So the college search is a draw to my site. It's completely free to use. And then the career search is completely free to use. So I take a bunch of data that's out there and some data I put together, and I display it in a way that is both useful and connected. But when people use that, that's to free things from my site. But then when people use that, they're using the site, and they're judging me on what they see. So what they see is awesome, right? They want to know more. But you go, okay, that's cool.

00:30:17 Speaker 3 But, well, why do I want to be a paid user? Because if you come to the free version of my site, it has a whole bunch of interesting things to you to tell you about the college, but it doesn't tell you what the price for you to go would be. It tells you what the price that they're going to college would be. In actuality, it's a different price because financial aid, there's a bunch of things that you can have, right? So we calculate that. If you're a paid member, you can search based upon that number. Not the actual tuition number, but like your number.

00:30:48 Speaker 3 So you can sort through that based upon what it would have cost you. But you can't do that on the outside of it. But we let you know that it's present and that you can't do it. So if you're actually going, well, how could I save money and go to college? And how could I go to the best college? This literally tells you that, but you can't figure it out. Because you have to do the calculation for all the schools. We do the calculation for all the schools. Like in the background with all the AI's, right? So that's the draw for the site. So I get them there with the college search and the information. They use it.

00:31:19 Speaker 3 They see what it could be within the thing. And then I make a desire for them to have that piece of information. And actually, I'm saying this slightly wrong. I don't make the desire for the kid to have that information. I make the desire for the parents to have it. Because they're the ones who are actually paying it. So it's a slightly different thing. And the kids, if you're paid or not on my site, the children generally see the same information meaning that i i haven't locked their information i've lost the parents information because i actually want this to succeed but um so i had.

00:31:51 Speaker 3 the view critic i had to communicate that value add right but the value add is you going to a to a, school two times better than what you think or three or better what you thought you were going to because you didn't actually know um uh but the college search is a big component of that and he built the college search so i was like oh it could be done and it was actually only like 15 of the value of the site per se but i was like oh like that could be done which made me go oh what's how to pull stuff in and then connect it i didn't see a target you could do that.

00:32:23 Speaker 1 i was like oh i can see something do that yeah we did. Well, and the thing is, we're still learning about AI and what we can do with it, and there's times where he's shown me stuff that I wasn't using before, and he's like, no, you really, I said, oh, I saw that, it wasn't what I thought it was, like, no, go back, and I did. That was a cute moment between us.

00:32:48 Speaker 3 Well, I trust him, and it's like, there's this. So, it's Bert and Trey. I love my friends. I do so much. So, it's Bert, Trey, and we're talking, and we understand relative things. I'm good at some things, he's good at others, right? I am not the best at everything. I'm reasonable. Sometimes I should just shut up and listen, believe it or not, right? So, we're talking, and Bert's the thing that's right, and so I'm just trying, and I'm working on it, and he's talking, and it's like, yeah, I used this, and it was bad, and I'm like, but it's not bad. It's actually basically great, and I'm like, you tried this and fast, right? And so, he said it, and I'm like, pause, try it again.

00:33:21 Speaker 3 i understand you know what you're talking about try it again right i'm acknowledging that you have experience in this i'm saying try to get he comes back like like the next night he's like that's actually he's like he's like actually that's really great thanks for the tip and that was hilarious he respected me enough to still give it a shot and i was like i understand oh i know i see the relative knowledge absolutely i see the gap yeah i do listen i do learn he does surprisingly.

00:33:53 Speaker 1 i pay attention too and that also frequently surprises people uh we use one called claude.

00:34:03 Speaker 3 as our ai of choice for questions and working on these things actually in different mediums, I recommend Claude to ask questions to, and I use Claude to build the things. The next one under that is Gemini, which is Google, and I use that to ask questions. I use it to build different things. They each have slightly a strength or weakness, and we leverage the one that's best, and we figure it out like that, but it's orbited between that's our ecosystem,

00:34:34 Speaker 3 and we have similar setups in the big scheme of things, so we come to similar conclusions. But so Claude is, you can go to Claude.ai, the download Claude on your phone, but I would say to try that or Gemini. Gemini is a Google product to talk to it and ask questions to. It will remember and save everything you ask it, and you can go back to that chat or make another chat on a different topic, but it's always present. So you can go right back and come here and get your app,

00:35:05 Speaker 3 which is actually pretty cool. Yeah, it asks me all the time if I want Excel.

00:35:11 Speaker 2 All the time.

00:35:16 Speaker 3 Some are not using it at all, and some are understanding it to a point, and then some are taking it and going like, oh, you're a staff now. Like I'm team staff. I have employees. I have squirrel employees that are really smart and lose their way a little bit and never sleep. They're drunk. Yes. But like just fucking drunk.

00:35:39 Speaker 4 I like it.

00:35:40 Speaker 1 Or on drugs or on something. It's like one's on a spirit journey. What are you doing? It's crazy. Like you laugh at me right now, but I swear to you, some of them have different personalities and some of them you have to fire.

00:36:01 Speaker 2 Oh, I believe it. I 100% believe you.

00:36:04 Speaker 1 I don't kknoww why or how or what's happening because they all have the same prompt. They have the core prompt. But then you've got Squirrely McGhee over here that's just like, dude, what are you doing? No, stop. I'm going to keep doing. No, stop. Keep doing this. I'm almost done. Stop.

00:36:23 Speaker 3 So here's the room that you're in. You've got a nI pond that we're working on. We've got this. There's also a red button that I don't want you to go towards. There's one case that you would use it, proceeding to the red button. What? What are you doing to the red button? Didn't we discuss knowt using the red button? I'm analyzing the red button for use.

00:36:42 Speaker 1 Or that's a security question. I can't answer that. What if you look at it this way? Okay. Preparing to use the red button. You're fired.

00:36:53 Speaker 2 This actually sounds moderately entertaining if you're knowt in a hurry to try to get something specific done.

00:37:02 Speaker 1 That's the reasun that we're up at 6am is because you get down the rabbit hole and you're like okay we're so close to being finished I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's right there. Red button. Yes sun of a bitch. Do what I said.

00:37:17 Speaker 3 The 6am part does come from going in two more steps I'll be at a point that I'm good at and you will spend aknowther hour and 15 minutes and knowt aknowther hour and 15 minutes split two. It just disappears. Yeah it just goes. You're just like oh. There's the sun.

00:37:32 Speaker 2 It sounds like small children.

00:37:33 Speaker 1 It is very much like that.

00:37:35 Speaker 2 It sounds like working with small children.

00:37:36 Speaker 1 It's incredibly like that and I swear here's the thing that kills me Sherry. It's like I will do an incredible amount of work in a single day. It is I will do the work of a five persun team would take a month. Yeah. month to do what I can do in one day or I can have a day where I'm chasing a toddler around trying to get them knowt to press red buttons and then instead of like oh you have one big red button oh I'm gonna install 16 red buttons cuz F.

00:38:09 Speaker 3 you know so one more practical thing for me as you're kind of talking it out is, right joke your prompt is you're going to and my guess what marketing but then like like because you're thinking about it as you're doing it you'll think of more things add those statements in just as sentences, Um, like part of my sight is to give the College Church, right, but that's knowt the core of my sight. The actual point of my sight is to be a decision funnel for kids, right, to go, if I don't kknoww what I want to be,

00:38:44 Speaker 3 I have a career test, R-I-A-S-C, R-I-A-C test, which the Department of Labor built to the very beginning of it. They have 12 questions, they have 36 questions, they have the 12 questions first and then bugging them to finish the other 36 in increments. But, um, some kids kknoww exactly what they want to be when they grow up. Some have know idea. But the point of it is, is that they get a starting point to get an answer, oh, you knoww want to be a mechanic. But then they go, well, I don't particularly kknoww if I want to be a mechanic, but it says what this thing is I'm probably good at then.

00:39:18 Speaker 3 But then they can edit it, right? But what it doesn't let a persun do is have a know answer, to give know consideration to it. So it gives you something based off of some amount of data, and then if you figure out your own answer, you can put it in that answer, but it moves you towards the goal of going, okay, well, this would be it. Here are the schools within the area, and then this is how much money you would make. And then you look at it and go, yeah, I'm good with that. Actually, I will adopt that, or I'm knowt. But knoww they're actively bouncing that thought bubble around.

00:39:49 Speaker 3 versus knowt doing it until after high school. But that's a part and goal of the sight. In the conversation, I'll tell it that, and then it incorporates that in the decision-making process, as it's answering questions as part of the thing that I want to do for the thing. It takes in the things that you give it. And I think that it took me probably two weeks to actually understand how to talk to it, how to talk to AI. I didn't understand it at first. By understanding, meaning I felt weird talking to it. I was just like, this is so strange. Then I realized that it doesn't judge me at all.

00:40:21 Speaker 3 In fact, I got to the point where I won't even correct misspellings, because it takes me longer to correct a misspelling than it automatically corrects it, then it's like, it doesn't care about me.

00:40:29 Speaker 1 It kknowws what you want.

00:40:31 Speaker 3 Right. So just do it. But head the things as you come up with it, and if you were, let's say there was an I sculptor's, and you're chisel, the cool thing is that you can tell it groups of information out of order, and it will re-chisel the things for you to get to that place, and it doesn't have to be in order. You just have to, like, do it as you're coming up with it, and then you'll reflect on it, and you'll see new pieces doing it knoww. But it's a really good, fast way of, like, your own iteration is, like, how you see it.

00:41:02 Speaker 3 to be as you get new data, as well as it will build those things eventually when you get to it.

00:41:10 Speaker 2 I can stream of a consciousness, and it's going to sort it and organize it and make it make sense within the practI.

00:41:16 Speaker 3 Yeah, for fun last night... had the epiphany that there's a specific that i'm methodical in how i'm interacting with it when it comes to the design because i'm designing right now right and so i was like hey does that.

00:41:30 Speaker 2 make sense yes so your landing page is probably going to be they're all brochures you're and.

00:42:00 Speaker 1 trey and i have talked about this extensively the way that people read websites is they start at the top left in english-speaking countries and there's usually your logo up here and then you have some sort of big h1 headline and then people put a bunch of that nobody actually reads, but they like pictures and usually there's like an icon over here which is how you log in and then you're you're going to have a bunch of content above the fold which is usually an image.

00:42:32 Speaker 1 and then you're going to have some text and then you're going to have a bunch of little buy now buttons that you intersperse throughout the thing and i swear to you it's going to end up looking something like that or some variation of that because a lot of them end up looking no matter what you do you're going to end up just about right there yeah and well it's it's an archetype and it's something that people expect so it's right it's almost a social contract because.

00:42:58 Speaker 2 if it doesn't look a certain we're used to it visually hitting us a certain way well it is a.

00:43:05 Speaker 1 social contract it's like i expect it to be a certain way so i will engage with your stuff and then we reward it by actually purchasing from it so if you want to see sites that convert go look at amazon or you look at one of the other ones you, And the disconnect is Amazon is selling this incredibly large breadth of stuff. Find something that sells a very small amount of things but does very well, and then model your site on that. So in terms of what you're going to have after that,

00:43:38 Speaker 1 you're going to have probably some sort of profile thing where you say, this is what the book looks like, and then you're going to have them be able to navigate the page with the book, what this looks like. Like you can preview it and say this is what they'll see before you publish it and finalize it. And once you finalize it, you can make the decision whether or not you want to be able to edit it or not, or allow it to open it back up. But if it's a physical book, it would close permanently and send it to the publisher,

00:44:08 Speaker 1 and you might offer it as the digital version and the physical version so it could go back to it. Because that matters when you're having a rough day and you can go back and say, hey, you made a difference for me, like a teacher's retirement party or something like that. So I hear what you're saying there. I don't know what you call it. I was thinking like memory maker or something.

00:45:09 Speaker 4 You upgraded.

00:45:10 Speaker 3 Yes. It's not a napkin. Oh, right.

00:46:08 Speaker 1 right, right, right, right, right, I got to go potty because I drank like 37 sodas.