So I raised a couple million dollars for that as the CEO 

>> and you sold it to millions. 

>> The startup was 7 years, 6 years and 364 days felt like failure. We hired machine learning PhDs to build separate models. Our entire 20s we were just broke. One YouTube in the morning repurposed into a newsletter then I have lunch and then 20 Tik Toks. 

>> How did you even create 20 Tik Toks a day? 

>> Because I had a personal brand before launching it. This current startup is way easier, way more fun and bringing in way more money. Is there anything else for people who are starting out? Is there anything any final word that you'd like to share? Um, hey Sabrina, I am so happy that you're here. This is especially exciting for me because I've been wanting to talk to you forever. When I first started this journey, you're the one of the top five people that I follow and the only woman that I follow to be honest. It's like the only lady that I follow and then top five when it comes to AI. I'm like, I need to follow her. And it's pretty fascinating because when I f first followed you, you have such a great background, but then you share everything for free. You're like, I'm not really doing any consulting role. I just share everything for free. So whatever you can gain, you just learn that. I thought that was pretty fascinating. And for those of them who's watching this, hopefully I'm hoping that they're going to gain so much value out of this specific [clears throat] episode just because you and I were like real person. It can seem like all over the place in terms of AI because whenever people don't know AI, we're talking about AI, we're talking about code, people are pretty intimidated. But I'm just hoping that people who you were a couple years ago before you start even blue potato even. It's like people can learn so much value today. 

>> Yeah, super great to be here. You know, I I love teaching people for free. I get the question all the time like why don't you just charge for this? And honestly, I I came from Silicon Valley where there's very much a pay it forward mentality. um the idea of courses and masterminds and that kind of thing like that is actually not prevalent at all in Silicon Valley mindset. And so I view my teaching as a way to give you the kind of education access and opportunity that I had access to in Silicon Valley because I started in AI in 2011 was my real first AI class ever at UC Berkeley. Uh, and since then I've been in AI, started my first company in AI, and I've had access to mentors in AI, and it's just been so many incredible opportunities that have come my way because of Silicon Valley, because of being able to meet people who shared their wisdom and knowledge with me, even though I was young and hadn't accomplished anything yet, right? So, I bring that same spirit to my education. Like, I want people to have worldclass Silicon Valley level education and not be left behind when it comes to AI. 

>> That's awesome. So you're trying to like share something you you gain value of, right? You're like duplicating what you pretty much got help from. That's pretty much what you're doing. So instead of charging like thousands and ten thousands of dollars, you're just trying to teach everybody for free. That's that's pretty inspiring right there. 

>> That and I didn't it didn't start like that. When I started making content, I was I made pretty technical content on agents and automations. Like if you check my LinkedIn banner and my YouTube banner, it's still from two years ago. AI agents and automations with my two fluffy dogs. And it was only through interacting with my audience that I met so many people who are just confused by the word automation, confused by the word agent, but so hungry and eager and curious to learn AI, to build new income streams, to build a different life for their families, to try do different career paths, to learn this stuff. Um that that's what inspired me to kind of broaden my teaching. not necessarily just focus on agents and automations for technical people who already know AI, but to broaden it to like welcome everybody to this world of AI and here are different things you can do and here are all the possibilities. 

>> So let maybe let's talk a little bit more about when you first when was the first time you used AI ever because you just mentioned briefly that was in class right in DC. [laughter] 

>> Yeah. Talk to me a little bit more about when was the first time you learned AI and what was your thought behind the AI back then? So my very first AI class I believe was in 2011 at UC Berkeley and we did cool projects like reinforcement learning to build little games for example like optimizing for uh like uh little Pac-Man types of games and stuff with AI and I just thought it was so cool like like what this thing kind of like has a mind of its own. And then my company, what we founded was in speech recognition and natural language processing. That was the area we focus on. And that's because like a lot of my background is writing and reading. Maybe people don't know this about me, but I'm just like a voracious reader. Like I read every single day. I actually don't watch videos to learn. So I don't watch YouTube videos. I read documentation. Um that's [laughter] I'm very textbiased. Yeah. And so that the idea of being able to do so natural language processing is basically like AI applied to text like can it analyze the sentiment of what people are saying or analyze different things in a document and then speech recognition was like trying to uh basically transcribe what you're saying in real time. We applied that to sales and support conversations. So, we built technology that would like listen in on a live conversation like this, transcribe what people are saying, and identify objections, questions, and frustrations, and then suggest what to say next to help steer the conversation in the right direction. Yeah. And this was really hard to do, by the way. Don't recommend. [laughter] It was really hard with the technology back then. Yeah. But even then it was like so it was it's just been crazy being in AI because I thought I was late to AI in 2015 2016 and I [laughter] know [gasps] 

>> yeah uh yeah I thought I was late. I was like wow AI is so mature already like this is years before generative AI and chat GPT. Um and so yeah, I just it's I don't know it's been a wild ride and what you can do now with chat GBT people don't understand like at our startup we hired uh machine learning PhDs to build separate models for tasks like sentiment analysis identifying questions uh summarizing what was talked about in a conversation and it was really really tough like we'd have to get data for each of those tasks label the data train an algorithm just for each task whereas in chat at GBT you can just like dump a meeting without the even the transcript. It'll transcribe it, give you the sentiment, give you all the questions that are asked, summarize it correctly. And this is available like for everyone, for the masses. What used to take so much effort to do what used to take PhDs in machine learning to do. And the results today are way more accurate and higher quality than what was possible 10 years ago. So, it's it's just been mind-blowing for me in particular to um to witness all this. 

>> Oh, wow. That's that is fascinating because I do want to learn a little bit more about your thought behind AI just because you've been there since 2011 and now it's 2026. Like in about five years, what's going to happen with AI? In about 10 years, what's going to happen with AI? Because the how fast AI is growing is kind of scary to be honest. I mean, I'm not AI doomer. I'm not AI hype person. I'm just trying to be more realistic when it comes to AI. 

>> But I do know AI is enhancing like crazy. AI is building AI right now 

>> which is so fast. So 

>> for people who's listening, let's just pretend that they're new to AI. It's like, hey, I know the importance of AI, but I don't really know how to use AI. For those people who are listening, like what is one recommendation you have like when it comes to AI? Do you think they should be learning AI at this point or like what are your thought behind that? 

>> Yeah, I think you should definitely be learning AI but it doesn't have to be in such u like a high pressure environment. Um like use chat GPT for the use cases you care about. Uh for example, if it's like identifying plants when you're out hiking, just take a picture, ask ChatGpt, hey, what do you think this plant is? Um, and usually a light bulb moment is let's say chat GPT gives you an answer, you're not quite sure, ask it questions back, uh, or give it feedback back. Um, one of the things people in the AI bubble don't understand is like AI is the first technology that responds to our feedback, you know, like when Siri talks to you and it's wrong and then you you're like, "No, you're you're wrong. I wanted this instead." It just keeps repeating the same wrong answer. or like think of any other piece of technology when it's broken and you yell at it, it doesn't do anything else [laughter] like it's just stays broken. So a lot of people because of that's been their experience with technology. When it comes to AI, they don't even realize they can just give it feedback. Like if you did not like the answer from chat or claude, tell it why. If you did not like how it roast uh how it wrote your social media post, tell it why. give it an example of what you like instead and it will actually like learn your preferences over time and improve. Like just just embracing that like just learning that is a huge light bulb moment and unlock for everyday people. Uh again, because we're so used to technology that does not learn, that does not respond to our feedback. And so working with AI is different. And so people aren't used to that. They just see like the headlines and stuff and have no idea where to start, you know? So that's my best advice if you're really brand new. Like start asking it questions back, start giving it feedback back, and it will change your relationship with AI. You'll start to see it more like a collaborative partner that you can talk to, work together to arrive at solutions rather than like some all- knowing oracle to be feared. 

>> That is so true because when I first learned AI, well, first of all, I hated Siri. I think they were trying to make improvement on Siri by the way. But I hate a Siri because it's not really 

>> five years later. 

>> I [laughter] know. I was like, "What the heck Apple? You're so slow." Just like, 

>> "Dude, my Siri gives me the wrong time." Like I have one Siri that gives me the right [laughter] time and the other one or my Alexa actually gives me 

>> either way they're like they both suck. I was like, "What are you doing? Apple, Amazon, you have so much money. Like what the heck? [laughter] You're so behind." I mean that's literally I can make better. I'm sorry. Like I'm not trying to be cocky but I feel like I can make better with cloud code. [laughter] But that is so true though because my relationship with cloud code has changed so much. When I first use cloud code I'm like this sucks. Like the result that I'm getting is so crappy. Not knowing or not realizing my prompt is the problem. It's like my prompt was the sucky part. So I needed to refine my relationship with the AI in terms of I needed to learn their language. Not necessarily I'm not talking about JavaScript or not talking about Python, none of that. It's more of a how do I more how can I talk to AI in the most effective way so they can understand and actually get the result that I want. Right. 

>> So yeah, I mean that's pretty fascinating because I feel like that's how you were able to build your first SAS application. and sold to millions of dollars. And that's called Curious, by the way, if you're curious. Oh. Oh, see that [laughter] not trying to make me [laughter] sorry. I'm not trying to be funny, but anyways. And tell me a little bit more about that experience, Sabrina, because I think that's the app that you built with your husband. Is that right? 

>> Yeah. So, we started that company right out of college. We had just graduated uh with computer science degrees from UC Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay area. And we made the classic startup mistake of focusing way too much on the technology and not enough on like the painpoint and distribution. Um so we love the speech recogni real what's called online speech recognition is like real time speech recognition and then the natural language processing. We built technology around that. Um but it was it was it was hard but it was like so exciting looking back on it. So I raised a couple million dollars for that as a CEO. We hired a team of PhD machine learning scientists and like I said earlier, we really targeted uh real-time conversations where there was ROI at stake. So sales conversations and customer support conversations at the time, I know this is hard to imagine now, but we even launched a version of it that could join your meetings and take meeting notes. And our number one objection was I don't want AI listening to my meetings. Like this was 2016, right? So before COVID, this was considered like crazy. And now you have like more AI meeting notetakers on a call than people [laughter] sometimes. So just to paint the picture of like 2016 like people did not want AI to be like listening in on meetings and taking notes and things like that. Um but yeah it was an amazing experience just it was our like my first startup. I made so many mistakes, burned out super hard, but we built really awesome technology and we were able to find like an acquisition partner that figured out the distribution in marketing. So, the company that acquired us, they do over a billion in revenue um and business process outsourcing and what's called robotic process automation, which is basically workflow automation but for big companies. um they are pioneers in that space for several decades and so they use their technology it's called voice AI now in their product portfolio and it's deployed at uh supports call centers in the US where there are thousands of agents like handling incoming calls and then our technology analyzes the conversation pings the knowledge base based on what the customer's asking and then surfaces helpful relevant context to the support agent to be able to handle your complaints the reason you're calling in Um, but yeah, it was it was definitely a crazy ride. Um, [laughter] and that that was my first foray into startup. So, I really never had like a full-time job prior to that. So, [laughter] 

>> Oh, wow. I mean, you and then you Okay, so that was your first startup company that you 

>> My first real work experience. [laughter] 

>> Yes. And you sold it to millions. So, you pretty much you never failed in the past, have you? 

>> Uh, it sounds like you never did. 

>> I don't know. I mean the startup was 7 years about 6 years and 364 days felt like failure. So 

>> [laughter] 

>> um I don't know um start startups are really hard like obviously now I have a personal brand and it solves the biggest problem I had with my first startup which was lack of distribution cuz like imagine we're selling to enterprises and call centers. We were doing an outbound sales process. I was like 22 years old with no experience and have no idea how to do any of this. 

>> What? Like what do I do? [laughter] 

>> Yeah. Oh, like please meet with me. Please watch my demo. Um, so it was really brutal from that standpoint. Like we we love the technology and believed in what we were building, but it was really brutal from a marketing and distribution standpoint. And so it's so interesting now to compare it to my current startup, which up until two months ago, I was operating completely. solo and then I built it up to very large amounts of revenue. Uh but because I had a personal brand before launching it, it was way easier. This startup, this this current startup is way easier, way more fun, and bringing in way more money and way more profitable than my first company ever was. Um, and so like a big part of that is AI obviously in terms of scaling myself, having leverage to be able to do these things, but also a big part of it is just social media distribution and building a personal brand. 

>> Oh, 10,000% I agree with you on that. Um, so we that the app that you're talking about, it's Blow, which I do want to talk a little bit more about that because it's a fascinating app. When I first heard Blotato, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, who built this?" I mean you [laughter] are like coming from creators perspective you knew our pain points and you're like we got to have this feature we got to have this feature. So people who actually used it they know exactly what they're looking for and they're like this is a game changer and I recently talked to one of the creators and she talked about the exactly the same thing. She's like without I would have not grown my channel to $20,000 20,000 subscribers on Instagram. So like this statistic actually works. So but I do want to talk a little bit more about that. the you said the curious app you had to do a lot of outbound. You had to like actually find different people to use the app and really keep trying to find people to invest in your app and eventually you sold it. You're like off to go, you know, like good to go. But then you eventually made another app called. Were you a creator before you made potato? 

>> Yeah, honestly I was so burnt out from my first startup curious that I never wanted to do another startup again. That's why [laughter] when when you say never failed, uh I don't resonate with that statement. [laughter] 

>> I like psychologically I don't reate. 

>> You got burnt out. 

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um like I like looking back there's so many things I could have done better, could have handled better, you know, I like I see that side of the of of all the list of failures in that sense. Um but yeah, if I forgot I forgot your your question. 

>> Yeah. No, you're fine. You're fine. But [laughter] then like were you a creator? So after let's just say you have a millions of dollars now you're like oh I can be retired but then you didn't like you actually started content. 

>> Well I actually did first and then I was like so I mean you have Yeah. I mean our our entire 20s we were just broke. Like so my husband and I we lived in a living room of a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. There's no law. live in the living room and now people 

>> as a married couple and yeah we had a roommate over there roommate there really 

>> yeah as a married couple like we were we were we were you know like I we had to make every dollar stretch you know cuz it's like I need to make this successful so a lot of people don't understand like we didn't do much in our 20s like we didn't get to travel the world we were many of our friends who worked in big tech they were bringing in big salaries which we could have gotten too but like we chose not to do that and So the first thing we did when we got acquired was like you know buy buy eventually buy a house for my parent or his parents and then uh travel the world as well. So we backpacked all over Europe and that was really fun. Um but yeah at some point it was very like empty is not the right word. Um like on one hand it was amazing to reflect on what we accomplished and my parents were finally proud of me. The entire time by the way my parents were like why don't you just get a job? [laughter] So 

>> there's such Asian parents, huh? My parents are like that. 

>> So 

>> I go to Samsung and work with this big company if I'm like not that they want me [laughter] either, but it's just like 

>> Yeah. [gasps] 

>> Yeah. So like it's a cultural thing, but [laughter] 

>> like uh like I don't know after selling your company, we could have just chilled honestly and we did for a long time. Like I learned to ski, traveled all over. I I healed mentally. So, I lost 50 pounds that I had gained when I was like super burnt out. I know. I know. 

>> Wow. [laughter] 

>> Maybe I'll make before after photos, but I'm not I'm not that confident to do that. [laughter] 

>> But, uh it it it was just like a period of like healing and reflection, like figuring out what I wanted to do next. And um I felt like one thing I was missing was a sense of community. Uh it's it's hard to explain but it's like we moved away from Silicon Valley so we were not surrounded by people who are into tech who are into startups. Um and like I just started making content online teaching other people AI because like I thought this was super cool and I had learned so much in my journey and in the process of doing that like even within the first few months I started feeling community. I started feeling like wow I'm serving other people and this feels really good. Um, so yes, you could just like chill and not do anything, but I think you'll find like a lot of people who get to that outcome also feel the need to do something, whether it's give back or do another startup. 

>> That's true. Have you ever heard of Bernay Brown before? I mean, you like to read Bernie Brown. 

>> Yeah. She she talks about a lot of vulnerability and just being part of the community because that that kind of remind me of one of her talk or one of her book talks about you know in order for us to feel like we're part of the community you have to like actually engage with others like you can't human we can't live alone that's what it is right so I mean I'm naturally kind of introvert versus extrovert but then I still feel like having a community is very important so I I agree with you on that because you have your own community you can talk to, feel like you're part of the somebody, right? Um, but that's fascinating. So, when did you first started your content then? Was that 20? 

>> Uh, just a a little over two years ago. So, I think it was it was like the end of ski season. I remember [laughter] I would like go ski and then I'd hit up this cafe after and like write a LinkedIn post. Like that's all I did for the first two months. Just write one LinkedIn post [laughter] a day. 

>> By the way, you 

>> Yeah. So, I I slow rolled. Yeah, I don't like I slow rolled. I started on LinkedIn first, had my first viral post on there. Um, then my second viral post was actually on Hacker News and then I think my third viral post was on Tik Tok eventually, but it was about two months into Tik Tok that I finally had something pop off. 

>> Okay. And then you went to Instagram afterwards and then YouTube. 

>> Yeah. then Instagram and then I I think I started an email newsletter on Beehive and then I started a YouTube one video a week and then I I started a Facebook page like maybe four months ago. Um a little bit active on Twitter threads as well. I just repurpose content to those platforms but not super uh actively engaged on those. 

>> Gotcha. I think it's just fascinating how you grew from zero followers to three million followers a little over two years now like solo. you're doing everything alone because I don't even know how you did it. Like let's talk about let's talk about how you did it like what is your exact process of how you get to where you are today. 

>> Yeah. So for the I do have I'm experimenting a lot with long form YouTube. So now I do work with editors for my long form YouTube contents but that was only starting January this year. So up until like yeah up until January yeah it was just me solo doing it one day a week very part-time. So a lot of people again they label me a creator, they label me an influencer, but it's like what I it's like the tiny minority of my time is actually creating content. I try to my philosophy is to maximize my time learning and really playing with this stuff and building and then just take that one day a week to make content about what I've learned. Um, so in terms of like uh specifics for how I do it, so for the longest time from zero to almost two million followers just that one day a week, I'd make a YouTube video in the morning, repurpose it into a newsletter, usually by lunch and then the second half of the day make uh like three short videos, so three Tik Toks, and those would be repurposed across platforms as well. And honestly, that all fit in a day. Uh so one YouTube, one newsletter, three Tik Toks, but then those Tik Toks are repurposed to other platforms uh as video or as text depending on the platform. Um and yeah, you could you could do it all in a day. So um because I did so [laughter] even if you're working full-time, like you definitely could do it. 

>> Yeah. But now you're creating like three videos per day though instead of per week, right? Because when you first started YouTube for or like for Tik Tok or Instagram, I seen your content coming out more than one time a day, right? 

>> Oh, so for the longest time when I started Tik Tok, I always did my quota is 20 videos per week. So I do 20 that afternoon and then I just schedule it. So it goes out like two to three per day. 

>> Oh, so like um let's say batch create. So, like you're not doing only one day a week. It's more of a 

>> Wait, hold on. Like, I just want to make sure. 

>> It's one day a week. [laughter] 

>> It's one day a week. 

>> Just one day a week. Uh, one YouTube in the morning, repurposed into a newsletter. Then I have lunch and then 20 Tik Toks 

>> and then those go those get repurposed across platforms as well. 

>> Gotcha. Gotcha. I thought it was three Tik Toks instead of 20 Tik Toks. That's insane. 20 Tik Toks. How did you even create 20 Tik Toks a day? Like, tell me a little bit more about that. 

>> That's the thing. Like I spend all of my other time building. So I just have ideas like thoughts just come up like this was really frustrating or I'm going to try this new vibe coding tool. This was frustrating or like I tried to build this automation for repurposing content. Oh, it worked. Yay. Here's how it works. You know, [laughter] so like I just maximize my time building and learning and so it makes it very easy actually to to make content because I can just share what I know. Um, so yeah, like and also when you start making content when and people engage with it, they ask comments and they'll ask questions and then I can just reply to those like make new videos addressing what people are asking me about. And so I I never really run out of ideas per se. It's more like my decisions now are more like do I want to pursue viral formats that I know will perform better or do I want more like GAP style videos where I can just like chill and not not try to chase viral formats, you know? U because I have a decent sense of like this video will probably do well. It's talking about money, super fast-paced, blah blah blah DM automation, blah blah blah, you know, [laughter and gasps] but I also like videos where I just like yap. Like there's a three and a half minute video where I was like I'm just going to share all the tools I pay for in my current startup and just like talk about what each one does. Totally flopped. But the few people who watched it said this was the best video ever. [laughter] 

>> Yes, that's the thing. I mean there is a video that converts and there is a video that does not convert. Right. That's what I found out for myself too is whenever I talk about claude and money. You and I talked about this last time and I'm like, I gotta record a video regarding this topic. And I did and it went viral. But the next video I talked about, all right, but do you want to know about me? You know, like yapping style. It didn't go viral. It flopped. But then the comments that I get, those are like real comments. It's like, you know what, Sandy, you should talk about this and like it feels more authentic, per se, instead of just people. You know what I mean? Building really trust. I think personally as a fan of yours who who's been watching for a while, 

>> I think you should talk about Yap style. You should like show your personality more and your story more because people are curious to hear those. And especially with AI, how good they're getting right now. 

>> AI influencers, 

>> they can easily replace news channels in my opinion. You know what I mean? Like any news channels because AI, they're so good. 

>> Like some guys, they're already doing that. they replace themselves with AI avatar talking about different news I'm like that's replaceable but people connecting with you your story that's different so yap style for one vote two votes [laughter] 

>> yeah that's that's me but that's fascinating so 20 videos that you post based on your experience um what you're building what you're learning maybe tell me a little bit more about building and learning part like why are you learning those resources what are you learning what are you building because you already have the app like what are you doing for that? 

>> Well, my app has a backlog of a hundred open bugs that I need to fix. So, [laughter] um yeah, people kind of think I spend all my time making content, but it's completely reverse. I spend all my time on Blot, like trying to improve the product, planning out what I should do next, um analyzing support tickets to help inform the product roadmap, um and for the longest time answering support tickets, like obviously I have my AI agent for support. It handles about 70% of tickets automatically, but then the remaining 30% is me. And for the longest time, up until two, literally two weeks ago before my trip to Vegas, it was all me. Like I hired my first support person finally uh just a few weeks ago. Yeah. Just at the start of this month. 

>> Um so that's all my Yeah. So everything you can imagine in a startup like every single department. So marketing, websites, um the like the actual product engineering work, bug fixing, supports, building the systems that support uh the AI support bot, building the systems behind marketing. Uh yeah, that was all me. Uh and this is also why there are many parts of my product that suck because I just didn't get around to fixing it. But [laughter] now you know why. 

>> Dude, it's so good. And now you have MCP or API key that you can connect with cloud. That is the best thing ever because 

>> dude I 

>> yeah people if they don't need to learn about different platform and they can just use it in cloud or 

>> just talk 

>> they can just talk to them. That's exactly what it is and I just love that. Maybe tell me a little bit more more about blot. When did you first start making it and why did you decide to make this app? 

>> Yeah so I first started six months into being a content creator and I made it because I was feeling like overwhelmed as a creator. Um cuz like I don't have many friends who are creators. I was like brand new to this whole world. Um it I just felt like oh man it's taking so much time to post on all of these different platforms to make fresh content every single day. It's like a lot of pressure and I don't want to burn out. So I really made Blotato to first of all cancel like the seven different subscriptions I was paying for to for each platform to be to like create content and distribute on them and also to make sure I don't burn out. So I always build it with that in mind. So the very first use case was simply taking my YouTube video and repurposing it into a newsletter and social media posts. Like that was it. That was just the V1. I filmed myself building the first version. It's on my YouTube. It's called Build SAS with AI. Um but that was it. I really built it for me. But I validated that the need existed because I made a Tik Tok video. I asked people, "Hey, would you guys be interested in something like this?" A bunch of people said yes. I DM'd some of them, hopped on calls with them, and I was like, "Okay, well, seems like there's a market here, and honestly, I'm gonna be a creator for the next five years. That's what I committed to. So, I might as well just build a product that I'm going to use for the next 5 years." [laughter] That was literally my thought process. And also, it seemed very like risk-free. Like, let's say I launch it, doesn't go well, I could just give it away for free. Like, here's the codebase. If someone wants to do something with it, go ahead, you know? So like it I kind of just approached it as I kind of need this thing anyway because I don't want to burn out um as a creator and if I end up not using it or throwing it out I can just give it away for free too. Like 

>> that's awesome. And you already had audience so you were able to just kind of beta test the whole thing towards the beginning. It's like okay actually it's pretty cool because you learn or you built this app for yourself but also um you didn't make the app just to sell it. You know what I mean? like you built it for yourself because as a creator you're actually using it and also you were able to test it with the people who might actually use it and then market it later with your personal brand. So like that's super fascinating to hear like how that works because the old traditional way is you build the app and then you try to sell it marketing it but then you did opposite 

>> and that's this is the path I recommend for most people or partner with somebody who has a brand or access to distribution for example like if you are an excellent builder like partner with someone who has an audience or partner with someone who has some kind of access to distribution like they're comfortable reaching out to influencers to establish those partnerships. But like those are the two pieces of the startup puzzle, right? It's like product marketing. Um, [laughter] but if you have a personal brand, you can you can do both. If I don't necessarily re recommend it if you don't have a technical background, like you probably want to hire a developer at some point. But because you have a personal brand, you can like accelerate through the hardest part, which is the first zero to 10,000 in monthly recurring revenue. That's where most startups like die, right? They just never really get any momentum. Um, and they kind of keep spinning around. They hear feedback from like five customers who aren't serious. Each customer tells them to build a different thing. They get confused and flustered. They go build it and then the customers still don't want to pay. You know, [laughter] like I see this all the time. Um, but a lot of this can be solved if you have build a personal brand first. Then you get people in the door who like give you real feedback like serious feedback and you also get volume of people because not everybody's feedback you should listen to. Like I personally ignore all feedback from users who are not paying users. Like I just don't listen to it. Um I really only listen to feedback from users who have been paying for some time. So 

>> that makes sense. What was your major Sabrina [clears throat] in college? 

>> Computer science major and physics minor. I also took a lot of other random classes. So like I took a tea making class, uh rhetoric class, economics class, a lot of math classes. Um [laughter] 

>> yeah, I mean you're like you do have a technical background. My major was a freaking political science and my minor was peace building. [laughter] 

>> I know. I was like there you go. 

>> Yeah. Because I always wanted to work for United Nations. So I thought this might be the fastest route which I did uh as an intern. I work for UN and I'm like never mind. I'm getting out of air. [laughter] Anyways, um but why the reason why I asked is because the appot did you build it uh using actual coding or did you vibe code the whole thing? 

>> Uh so I vibe coded the first version and that's what I filmed and put up on YouTube. But the code base was honestly like really terrible, like totally spaghetti code. So I really had to refactor or rip out like 95% of it like heavily. Um so this is a concept I talk about like the transition from vibe coding to AI assisted coding. Um I think for MVPs vibe coding is great because you can test things very quickly but when you have a production codebase with hundreds or thousands of customers who are paying they expect it to work and like not crash all the time when you push a new feature. Um, and to ensure that level of quality like you need to be really involved in uh knowing what is exactly in your codebase, how are things architected, what are the trade-offs you want to make when you add this feature, how will it affect the user experience, how will it affect other P features, um, how do you ensure this codebase will be maintainable over time like good documentation, refactoring it on a regular basis. There's a lot that goes into building a high quality product. Um, so five codings is great for the initial testing, but as you gain more and more users, you're going to transition to a lower slightly lower percentage of AI coding. It's going to be very it's it's going to be you as a senior developer or you hire a senior developer to drive the process and AI is going to assist them, but the senior developer is still very much the one like hands in everything, understands everything in the codebase, etc. Um, similar for content creation. It's like you're you're like I'm involved in the process of creating all of my content. I don't just like hey Claude just like write everything and don't check with me, right? Like [laughter] um like I'm very involved in all of the skills. I read every single output. I review every single output. I usually still tweak it, add my two cents and everything. And so just expect that level of like full-time hands-on involvement. So what I recommend for non-technical people, yes, vibe code, and then eventually hire a senior developer to take over the product. And that's a good thing. That means like you've validated demand, you have paying customers, like you're ready for the next level to scale it up for real. That makes sense. Do you think AI will ever get to that point where it's got to be so good like as if a human would write it? Like the senior developer you're talking about, do you think Vive coding can get to that point? What What are your thoughts? So the new Fable 5 when I was testing it, it was noticeably better at coding tasks, but coding is just one small part of software engineering. I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand that who aren't software engineers, but like a software engineer's job is to understand like, okay, here's where we want to go. What is the best way to get there in terms of the trade-offs? And the challenging thing is when you have a complex existing codebase, um there isn't necessarily always a right answer. And also AI tends to like overstep like it'll do this but accidentally change a bunch of other things and also it saw something over there and then it changed that as well. And so there's still a lot of like handholding and oversight at least in my opinion at least for the next five years. Like I I see the role of senior developers as more important than ever before. um and they can be massively uh more productive with the use of AI, but it still involves like a tremendous amount of oversight um and like caring about the codebase and understanding what it does and the trade-offs you're making. 

>> I love that. That's very reassuring to hear to be honest just because I don't want AI to ever replace human in general. Like AI is just a tool that we can use for us. That's what it is. It can replace a lot of tasks that we can we've been doing like a lot of repetitive tasks. That's why I've been telling people but AI is not going to replace us. People who use AI, right? Maybe they are going to replace us, but it's not the AI because it's just a tool. So, it's very reassuring to hear that from your perspective. 

>> Yeah. I also think if you're not in from an engineering background, you might think it's just it's a black and white thing, but it's also a creative process as you build a product. Um, I'm also talking about product management and software engineering, but like choosing what features you should build, choosing what features you should not build, designing a user experience that is insanely simple. Um, then architecting the codebase so that it's easily maintainable, it's fast, it's efficient. Um, like it's it's it's a it's very dynamic and it's actually very creative, much more than you would think. And so, you know, but you may not know that if you're not uh currently an an engineer or you're not currently vibe coding, but there there's a really a lot of creativity and and caring and love that goes into the best products you use like the products you love. There was a lot of love from a lot of people of humans who spent days and days if not years obsessing over how to make that product insanely amazing. 

>> Yeah, that's awesome. I Yeah, thank you for sharing that. um in the recent content you talk a lot about how how to make money using claw, how to make money using AI, right? And even like you broke down in live stream, hey, these are the method how you can make it. And then you and I our conversation last time is like you hit like four of those or five of those. 

>> Yeah, you and I talked about that. But I'm just curious if somebody's watching today, they are not so technical but then they do want to make sense money with AI thing like side hustle still a full-time income what do you think is the fastest way that they can make money like what is the one path that you are recommending to people right now 

>> I think AI education is still a blue ocean market um and there are different forms of it so if one form is what we do like we make contents on YouTube and other channels to share that education. And in terms of monetizing that, there's also multiple paths like you can do sponsorships. You can you'll have people reaching out to you for onetoone coaching, you could do consulting, you could do paid speaking engagements, but education is a lot easier to scale and to start because really like if you just invest 40 hours learning Claude, you will be so far ahead of most people on Earth, right? So, um, and like it's only 40 hours. Like we're not talking about a four-year college degree, guys. Like, you know, like like you have to compare it to what we what is traditional schooling. So, 40 hours, like seriously, just follow YouTube tutorials, try to build your own thing, break your own things as fast as possible. Um, that's how you're going to learn. And then turn around and teach other people who are at who who haven't started their 40 hours. You know, they're at hour zero or hour one. um like I don't know I I there's there's other ways to go about it. So let's say you don't want to make content, you can go local. So I have I've seen a lot of success stories with this as well. Like be the person within your community, go to your chamber of commerce, you can run local Facebook ads to your own local training event, but be the person in your town that is the AI expert. There's almost always no competition unless you are in a super tech city like San Francisco, New York, LA. even then there's a ton of opportunity because everybody in those cities wants to learn AI. Um, so that's another approach. If you don't want to make social media content and like put your face out there on the internet, just go local, stay kind of private, but just within your community. Um, but yeah, those are the two paths I I would recommend because um, so many people want to learn this stuff. like anthropic grew 80x in quarter 1 which means you have incredible demand of people trying to learn claude and relatively low supply. So I talk about this a lot. Same thing with Microsoft Copilot. That's another one I talk about like millions and millions and millions of people have to use Microsoft Copilot but there's like almost no tutorials. like one of my YouTube videos with Sheree is one of the top YouTube tutorials on co-pilot and that's my only co-pilot video ever in all of my YouTube and it hasn't been updated. So like there's people just don't realize like there's the disparity between the demand of all the people trying to learn this stuff and consume the stuff and like the relatively low supply and kind of generic supply. By generic, I just mean like uh like none of a lot of the influencers don't work in big enterprises for example. So their use cases don't cover what you would how you would actually roll this out in an enterprise setting. Um or like let's say you're trying to understand how do I use Claude as a lawyer? Well, there's like no influencers who really talk about that in depth. Um how do I use Claude if I'm an asset manager finance for private equity? Um, good luck finding that YouTube video tutorial because there's none. Um, I'm launching one soon, but like that's it, you know? Like there's really not that much. There's just not that much in terms of like how do I really use Claude for my specific industry for using the tools I actually use on a day-to-day. Like, you know, a lot of our examples are like plug in your Gmail, plug in your Slack. Well, what about like all the other use cases that use like all these tools I've never heard of? you know like they're really industry or role specific. Um so that's why from my view I think it's a huge blue ocean opportunity um in terms of AI education. 

>> So how can they actually learn because there like you mentioned this very fascinating concept where there are a lot of tutorials and information out there but at the same time there's not it's like there's not one specific tutorials about this specific topic. So for those of them who's listening, let's just say they're in the law industry and they're trying to learn everything they can when it comes to cloud AI, but first of all, they don't even know where to start. There are too many tutorials yet they're not too specific to them. You know what I mean? So they're lost. Like for those of them who are lost, where would you guide them to start? 

>> So I still encourage starting with the general tutorials on YouTube so you can get the basics of where to click, right? Cuz um if you've ever watched someone uh interact with new software, they're like I don't even know like up from down or like where to click or like what is what does this do like [laughter] you know? So like follow along the tutorials so you are comfortable like literally like okay I click here to set up a new skill or I click here to see all my connectors. I click this is the settings button. This is how I create a project. Like just fundamentals of where to click around. Number one. And then number two, once you're comfortable with that, you can literally ask Claude, okay, I saw this general tutorial, but I'm trying to learn this for my specific use case. And then just share as much context as you can about what use case you're trying to do and the tools that you use and any constraints or that you have. And Claude will literally create a personalized learning plan of like, okay, why don't we do this step by step? Um, that's honestly the best way right now. And if you want to turn around and be an AI education creator, then you just take that, do it yourself, and then make a YouTube video out of it. Like that's literally the process. 

>> Is that what you do? Like do you literally try to build it something your own? And whatever you're learning, you're I mean you mentioned that whatever you're learning, you're sharing, but then like are you where are you getting the news? Are you going to X to find those news when it comes to AI? Because you share a lot of news news content as well. 

>> I'm personally like pretty behind on news. So, I uh like I really only see news in the school community or if like I if I see it pop up and maybe on LinkedIn or the school, but like I personally don't have any social media apps on my phone. Um I know that shocks a lot of people, but [laughter] you're like, 

>> "How is it possible?" Because 

>> it is. Yeah. So, cuz like I can post all of this content and I don't have to doom scroll, right? Like it's great. It's just me and Claude. Um, it saves like 15 hours a week of pure doom scrolling time, by the way. Um, [laughter] 

>> that was me yesterday. Two hours long doom scrolling. 

>> Yeah. And it's like, oh, I'm coming up with ideas, but two hours later, you're like, I still don't have any ideas. [laughter] 

>> Oh my gosh. People, I'll put in the description below [laughter] so then you can check this out. For reals, 

>> just so you can remove your social media apps from your phone. Like, I really only install them if I'm like on vacation or, oh, I want to take a break. I'm like watching a movie. I'm gonna install Instagram now. Um but uh sorry your question was 

>> what was my question [laughter] or like where do you learn those because I mean I I saw you mentioning about this you know 

>> news. 

>> Yeah news in general but I'm [snorts] like where do you get because I'm not news channel and I'm curious news channel. 

>> You're not news channel either but you have so many valuable information. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm not a news channel, but so when I batch content um on Saturdays in the morning, I have a cloud code routine that researches a bunch of stuff that I can decide to use or not. So it will research news, it will also research like free education resources because my community likes those. Um and then it will just like populate my air table with different ideas for the content. So that's how I'll look at the news. But I personally don't like to follow the news too closely because I feel like it just creates feelings of FOMO all the time. Um, and people feel like, oh, I'm behind every single day. I need to learn this tool and that tool and this tool and that tool. Even when the whole open cloth thing was around, like I most I made videos mostly about like the security risks and in the description I'd say just stick to cloud code. That's my honest recommendation. So I missed out probably on another million followers. I could have just rode that wave, but um I just I don't feel good about that. Like I can't I don't personally think you should just chase every shiny object. I think it's actually quite harmful and distracting. Um just choose like a few core tools, go deep and go make money. Like if if you're if you're currently not bringing in five thou at least 5k per month from AI, it's not a tools problem. Like it's just it's not a it's most likely a distraction, lack of focus, lack of consistency over a long period of time problem. 

>> Yeah, that Oh, that's a really dang I hope you're listening. [laughter] 

>> That's my guru side. 

>> Just know that's like whoa. That's that's really cool. That is so true, Sabrina. I love it. U but you mentioned something really valuable right there because you're not doing the research. It's actually Claude was looking around and giving you some content ideas, too. So Claude is doing the research. Do you have a skills that's set up for that? 

>> Yeah. So for example, so there's news research and then there's also viral research. So if you for example hook up Claude to Apify, um you can have it scrape, let's say, Instagram videos with a certain hashtag in the past month that have achieved over whatever number of views. You can do the same for YouTube. You can do the same for Twitter as well. So that's one aspect of the research. And then another aspect is just news on certain topics I like. So right now Claude is like the main one I'm following. So I like to see updates there. But it's but honestly like I see a lot of the same it's like a lot of it's like an echo chamber for better or worse. So like you know some creators I follow will just also post the news and then some women in the school community will also post the same news. So I kind of just it just kind of triangulates in my face whether or not I like it. 

>> [laughter] 

>> So, 

>> it's just like, "All right, let me talk about this news." 

>> But you get inspired by other creators a lot too, right? Because you and I, we both kind of I am not all about being original to be honest. I I I mean, being authentic is very important, but I don't really care much about being original, at least towards the beginning. And for me, I just tell people you need to copy other people's format, what's working, and talk about that in your own unique spin to it. And I feel like you and I talked about this in the past. Um, do you also do that or do you recommend people to do that when it comes to creating post because being authentic or being original all the time is kind of hard to be honest. 

>> Yeah, I think um so the reason so I'm saying this as the creator of a platform for social media content. So I have seen the journey of thousands of users, many thousands who've failed to gain traction on social media and many who have succeeded. Um, the number one reason people fail is they quit too early. Um, because it takes they're in it for like four weeks. They get really discouraged. They have no momentum. All their posts are flopping and they feel it's a total waste of time and they feel they look stupid. And because they're not getting any views, their family and friends probably think they're stupid, too. Of course, they're not even watching, but that's what you think. Um, so when I give the advice of copy when you're brand new, it's from the spirit of I want you to succeed. I want you to have your first win and your taste of success because once you have a little bit of that momentum, you keep going. And like that is the whole game. If you can just keep going, um, I don't worry about originality. People eventually figure out like this is what I like to talk about. This is what I don't like to talk about. This is the style in which I like to talk about it. and I don't like to do these things. And as creators, we all go through that process of trying a lot of different things. But in the beginning, like you need to get your first win. So my advice to anyone who's just starting out creating content is to copy other people's viral formats. Like specifically, let's say we're talking about copying Tik Tok videos, take my Tik Tok videos and copy the first 10 seconds, the hook. You can say whatever you want after the hook. It almost doesn't matter, but just copy the hook. and you'll start to get better at like creating your own hooks and deciding like, "Oh, this is a good hook. This is not a good hook." Like having judgment and taste around that. Um, I do think it's the fastest way to get results if you're brand new to content creation. And like literally don't overthink it. You don't need any frameworks. You don't need to do AI analysis. Like literally just watch a video for 10 seconds and then say the same exact thing that Sabrina's saying in the first 10 seconds. Use the same title Sabrina uses, the same color. Like, don't overthink this, guys. You don't need AI and you don't need like fancy courses or even frameworks. 

>> And you're not going to get offended if we do that. Do you would you? 

>> No. I I openly tell everybody just just like take all of my content. Yeah. Just take it. Like even my newsletter today, like I know what I wrote is like thousands of dollars worth of training, but I said at the at the top like take it, repurpose it. Even if it takes you four hours to learn this stuff, it's 100% worth it. just go run with it. 

>> You're amazing. You're amazing. And I same thing with me, too. It's like guys, if you want to copy mine, like go ahead. Like, if you want to do that, if that's helpful, go ahead. But I'm just curious your mindset behind that. Like, why are you sharing so much to public in terms of like you're so generous? Like, does that give you some sort of like fulfilling like moment or I'm just curious like what you're thinking behind that because it is so amazing to see how generous you are. And that was actually my conversation with Brooke. We her and I we've been talking for minutes about how generous Sabrina is. Like your your name should be like generous Sabrina. That's what it is. Like that's the synonym. [laughter] 

>> Yeah. For reals. But I'm just curious like your thought behind it. Like why do you teach so much for everything that you know for free to people? Like I mean 

>> it's be it's because I met my audience. Like so I mentioned in the beginning like at first I was talking about agents and automations. I was building agents for like little game scenarios um because I figured I'd want to build like a more technical brand. Like I came again I came from Silicon Valley startups. So like that was my mindset. I'm going to build a more technical AI brand. But then I started talking to my I just book call. I'd be like hey I just like want to meet like do you want to just chat? And I did this for like at least a hundred people. And what I learned is that there's a lot of financial insecurity. There's a lot of people who have been burned and scammed by expensive courses, expensive gurus, expensive masterminds, and who still feel helpless and lost when it comes to building a new life for their family. um who feel like like everybody's trying to sell them something, pitch them something and take advantage of them as beginners because they're feeling overwhelmed and want to have an easy solution. And I just met so many people who fit that profile that I was like, "Wow, like I I need to share all of this for free and just just help bridge the AI literacy gap so that people truly don't fall behind." Like I I like it would pain me even from our school community, right? It would pain me if a woman who needs support couldn't join because like she can't afford $100 per month. If like that $100 is the choice between like buying a little nicer food for your family for the week versus joining my community or paying for my course, like I don't want that money. I cannot it like I cannot in good conscience take it. Um so like that's that's where it I it came from really meeting my audience members and and like recognizing yes AI is like really cool. you can be productive with it. Leverage, shiny stories, people making a lot of money. But there's also this constant subtext of financial insecurity. A lot of people being burnt and scammed and looking for like that next easy solution. And I don't want to take advantage of that. I would just rather teach people for free how to do this. And uh and if they want to become friends with me later, that's great. [laughter] 

>> That's amazing. I know. And I love that you're, you know, you're like, is that next week that you're doing the retreat for next week? I'm like, that's so amazing that you're like literally making friends and helping them out as I feel like I see you not only as a creator, but also you're like one of those neighbor friend vibe, you know what I mean? That who's [laughter] like genuinely wanting to help other people. So, that's very cool to see that and cool to hear that. Um are you like compared to you before two years ago which is when you first started your content journey and because you said like you went backpacking to Europe and after selling your business you were semi-retired or retired but then you went you went back to this you know kind of busy world again like content and also fixing hund different code like whatever that you're doing with potato. Are you happier? Like, are you grateful that you started this content journey or do you wish 

>> you ever regret? [laughter] 

>> I'm pretty happy I started it. It's just it made me better in a lot of ways. Like, it made me more comfortable with my own voice and skin. Um, because you have to understand obviously Asian women as well, but like Asian women, young in tech, like I felt so much pressure to be a certain way that I wasn't. Um, and I struggled with that a lot. Like building the perfect resume. Like I I know I don't wear makeup now and I'm very raw now, but guys, like every day I wore makeup in college, you know. 

>> Did you really? I don't think I was in a sorority and everything. Like I can clap and do all these things. [laughter] 

>> Multi-talented. No, 

>> but um and then even out when I was raising funding like I felt like I had to look a certain way, be a certain way, act a certain way. uh investors would ask me if I really studied computer science or if I was one of those people that just took one class and put it on their LinkedIn, you know, [laughter] like [gasps] like it was just so funny. That's what you were [laughter] thinking. 

>> Oh my god. 

>> But it was Yeah, it was just like a lot of pressure. And then even when I even when my company was acquired, it was acquired into a big corporation like thousands and thousands of employees. So I also felt like I had to be a certain way. It's hard to explain, but now that I'm a creator, it's just I feel like, oh, I can just be myself. I can actually just say my voice. I don't have to wear makeup. I didn't brush my hair, as you can tell. It's pretty bad right now. [laughter] Um, [gasps] like it's changed me for the better. Like, truly being um just more authentic. I like I know creators overuse that. I I personally hate the word authentic because like the creators who say that word have like camera crews following them around and putting makeup on them. You know what I mean? Like I that's why I don't really like to use the word authentic. Like [laughter and gasps] 

>> um but I like for me at least I feel like um I I don't have to live by those certain stereotypes anymore. It feels like I can just achieve success in my own weird way. [laughter] And if that inspires certain people who are also weird like me, then then that's great. We can be friends. So [laughter] 

>> maybe they that's why I resonate with you cuz I'm weird too. weird. [laughter] Just kidding. You're not weird. But that's that's hilarious. I recently watched one of one of the Instagram um and then he talks about this a lady. She no makeup and she's like I'm not going to wear makeup because I don't want to. But if I do want to wear makeup, I'm going to like who cares? Like stop telling me what to do. You know what I mean? I'm like that is so true. You just do whatever you want to do. That's what it is. And being creator allows you to do that which is fascinating. Like I mean the lifestyle that you have right now, Serena, is that the lifestyle that you want for the rest of your life until you actually retire I guess or start family or like you have a family already? I'm talking about kids and all that. 

>> Yeah, we do want kids. Yeah. So, we have two Floops. Um they act like kids, but um [laughter] yeah, we do want a family. I don't know. Like honestly, my quality of life is very high. Um I have a friend staying with me right now and she like has observed me throughout the pet. Oh actually on our school that was who who I was like [laughter] 

>> she's like just crashing here right now and like she observes me throughout the day and she's like wow you got like you got life right like you're you're doing something right. Um [laughter] cuz like honestly guys like my first startup I was like overworked all the time. Like I felt I had to burn the candle at both ends. wake up early, stay late, otherwise I'm clearly not working hard enough, and obviously I will never become a billionaire, which is what I'm supposed to do in Silicon Valley, right? This was like the talk track in my head. And now it's like like I sleep eight hours a day. I go on vacation whenever I want. I have basically no meetings, which is why I always forget when I [laughter] have meetings. 

>> Yeah. No, I love that. I'm like, I want your wife. I have too many meetings. [laughter] So, um 

>> I I do think I could have seen a path where like I said yes to a lot more things, but I think since I'm a little bit older, I'm like, "No, I just I need my time to like recharge and deep work and deep focus time." I do think if this all of this was happening like being a creator influencer in my 20s, I would be very tempted to like go travel anywhere and do sponsorship deals and like kind of have like a glam lifestyle to it cuz I I would be in my 20s, but I'm like not in my 20s. I'm like I like get tired by 900 p.m. Guys, like I like to 

>> Girl, you're still so young. What are you talking about? [laughter] 

>> But I don't have like that boundless energy of like we're just going to drink Red Bull and stay up like that. No. Like, dude, even in Vegas, I went to sleep at like 10 PM every night. 

>> Oh my gosh. [laughter] Okay, so 

>> it's so funny. So, I you and I were kind of similar in age, right? I'm in my 30s, too. And I drank two energy drinks to stay up uh late. Yeah. A day. I almost got heart attack. And I'm like, "Oh, never again. Never again." Yeah. I was like, "That's this is not healthy." Like, literally, my heart was pounding so fast. I'm like, "Oh, okay." Like, I can see my age right now. I'm not doing this again. I live on a hill. My heart pounds walking up the hill. Like I I I'm reminded daily of my limitations like [laughter] physical reality. But like honestly if yeah if I was in my 20s I would probably say yes to more things especially that involve travel cuz I like I just the idea of like traveling and you know travel's so much better when other people pay for it. [laughter] 

>> 100%. I know. It's like this class please. It's like but not [laughter] anymore. Like even though you pay for it, I don't want to get in the plane and go over. 

>> Like you couldn't pay me to go there, dude. Like [laughter] I need my sleep and like the jet lag's going to mess everything up and then it's going to mess up my diet too. Like I can't handle it. 

>> Oh yeah, 100%. And like my back pain and I have a disc and it's just 

>> Yeah, I [laughter] know. It's just like things are a little different. So that's very fascinating cuz but like I mean let's let's be a little bit more real here though when people are starting out though do you think do you agree that they have to put a lot of time towards the beginning like what is the realistic time frame because for me I spent heck a lot of time right now even now but I want to step down a little bit because I think I shared with you like I hit 48k last month um just from where I'm like I know like [laughter] thank you I'm doing this emoji. 

>> Yeah. [laughter] 

>> But then that was me sleeping two hours a day, three hours day. You know what I mean? Yes. And then like no kids time. I'm like, "Kids, mama's busy. Like go with grandma." Like that's money. Yeah. 

>> Yeah. Mama's going to print some money. And I got really burned out last month to a point. I'm going to say no to sponsorship opportunities now because I'm like, you know what? No way. 

>> Oh, really? 

>> Yeah. And um 

>> I heard potato is a really good sponsor. I hope it come [laughter] but 

>> I've been recommending Blueotato with without sponsorship by the way. Yes. [laughter] 

>> No, for reals. If I believe like I've been recommending cloth to people. Same thing. Blot I've been recommending in my channel. It's like yeah you I told you last time like you do not need to pay me because I believe in your product. I'm just going to recommend you. [laughter] But in general, like you know, one of those expensive um sponsorship opportunity from Chinese companies, you know what I'm talking about. 

>> I'm like, heck, I don't even use that product. [laughter] 

>> Yeah, I know they pay a ton of money, but 

>> I don't really want to do it. You know what I mean? It's just worth it. Money is not everything. And also like client work. I'm like, I'm just going to drop this, too. Because life is too short to be stressed out, to be honest. And I'm like constantly try to be more conscious of what kind of lifestyle do I want, which I want kind of like what you have right now. No meeting lifestyle. [laughter] 

>> But for beginners, that's kind of unrealistic, would you say? Right. 

>> I don't think so. Cuz like when I started, I really only did one LinkedIn post a day. like that was considered a win. I'm a a much bigger fan of consistency and building habits. So, I always use a habit tracker when I want to build a new habit. When I started creating content, I committed to doing it for 5 years and all I had to do was post anything each day like one two words on Twitter that counts as a post. And there have there have been days I've done that when I'm like exhausted. I will just post like one sentence on LinkedIn. I'm like I'm done. I hit my high quad. 

>> Yeah. So, [laughter] so like I like if I had to recommend any strategy, it's consistency over a 100 day period. It takes there's been science that shows like 100 days is actually the length of time to build a new habit. And after that 100 days, it feels wrong to not do it. It feels it's it's like such a part of your identity. It feels wrong to not post something today, to not have some piece of content going out this day. So I honestly don't think you have to burn yourself out in the beginning. Um I would s just suggest like tuning out a lot of things. So I think people also burn themselves out because they listen to too many conflicting sources of information. Um like this framework and that framework and this framework and this frame but this guy said to do it this way but Sabrina said to do it that way and then this other tool came out and then this other tool came out and like I'm behind on everything. Right? So there's that aspect of burnout where people spiral because they're consuming too much conflicting information. Um so my general advice is to just pick one or two creators who have achieved whatever you want to achieve. Don't listen to anything else and just do the frameworks that they are teaching because the truth is like my framework works some other person's framework works. Hormos's framework can also work. But the variable is actually you like the listener here. the variable is whether you can stick to it for a long enough period of time without giving up. Um, so that's always like the the problem I'm trying to optimize for. And I I don't want people to listen to this and think they have to like burn out like crazy during the first month. It's true you may get to Sandy's outcome sooner, like 48K per month, but uh I would say that's just the beginning of your journey. um in order to get there and ensure you have a long journey. You don't want to burn out early. You want to like just do it a little bit every day. It becomes a habit. You find something you really enjoy about content creation and you get your wins in like your first viral videos. It could be 10K views, right? That's viral when you're just starting out. Um but it's yeah, it's it's just really important to build that habit consistently over a long period of time. 

>> I love that. I mean, when you first started posting content, Sabrina, did you have some imposttor syndrome as well? Because I know many people they do like, how did you overcome with that? Because I some people are freaking mean like, yeah, they can be mean. But how did you overcome with imposter syndrome to a point you're consistently posting on social media? 

>> That's really tough. I just did I just listened to I just kept brainwashing myself with Alex Hormosi and Gary Vee. So for me personally, those were the two people, the only two people whose content I listened to when I decided I'm going to make content. So like even if I had a tough day, I would just brain even if like people my friends didn't understand like why am I doing this? Why do you look up to for again I come from Silicon Valley so like people like Hormosi and Gary Vee are like no one. So [laughter] they're just they're like they're like not idolized at all. Like it's like like why would you care about them? Why would you listen to them? Ser. No, seriously. And 

>> we look at 

>> of course. Yeah. In Silicon Valley, we look at all the mega tech billionaires like why else would why would you look at this dude or this dude, right? Um and so I like in Silicon Valley, I always felt weird like I didn't quite fit in there because I loved listening to like Russell Brunson. Nobody talks about him even though he bootstraps a company doing like hundreds of millions in revenue, but nobody in Silicon Valley cares about him. Like it's but I did like I was that weird person that was like have you heard of Russell Brunson and Clickfunnels. Like I listened to Hormosi I listened to Gary Vee. That's this is one of the reasons why I didn't fit in in Silicon Valley. Um but so what was important for me though in the beginning I only listen to those two people. For me it was Horosian and V. You should choose the two people you who have achieved the thing you want to achieve and whose content you resonate with. So like you feel like smarter or happier or more pumped or more energetic after listening to their content. Pick your one or two people. Just brainwash yourself with their content and do whatever they say for the next 100 days and and make a habit out of it. 

>> So that that's really how I overcame like the the kind of the cringe factor and imposter syndrome. Like if I found myself spiraling with those thoughts, I just like put on a podcast and Gary Vee would talk it out of my head, you know? Like I would take his voice and like drown out my voice. [laughter] 

>> He's so good at it. He's like, "F them." You know, like he's just like super motivated. 

>> What are you waiting for? Oh my god. 

>> Yes. Go ahead and do it right now. [laughter] 

>> Yeah. I used to listen to all of his podcasts. That is very fascinating. Um do you ever do you like read all the comments as well until I know you did towards the be? No, you don't do it anymore. Did you 

>> in the beginning? Oh yeah, in the beginning because I was like, "Wow, people are commenting." Like that's that's a new thing for this is novel. Wow. Um my first viral LinkedIn post was actually about comparing like the old way of building an AI startup versus the new way. And that got a lot of heated debate from data scientists, machine learning engineers on LinkedIn. It was very civil actually like it was not like Twitter style. It was actually a very civil debate at the time. Um, but that was my first taste of like, oh, people are going to disagree with me in public. I have to like say something back or recognize they're correct. So, that's generally like how I view comments. Like, yes, there are some comments purely toxic, like just mean and insulting personally. So, those I will just ignore. If the same person keeps doing it, I will just block them because that's like just abusive. But then there's comments that disagree with you. And like I like to think about why, like where is this person coming from? What are they missing? and I try to reply with that with my perspective and try to keep it civil back and forth so I can learn something too. But that was just the beginning. Now I have like a billion comments every day and honestly I don't read them. So [laughter] um so I really only like to be to be in my screen of stuff I'm reading, you would need to be someone like in my community or like someone I interact with a lot because I just don't read comments anymore. 

>> Gotcha. And you don't really look at the views either. Like I know view count because you and I talked about this off the camera before. Um but you mentioned during the podcast you said I'm just debating between yapping style or the viral format which is money with Claude. Like why are you debating between those two from the first place? Is that because of potato? Like because the more attraction you have you're going to you know basically have more viewers like I mean what what is something that made you debate between those two different type of content I guess? Um, at this point I think it's just ego. Like, oh, it's like cool to say x million followers. Uh, and I'm trying to hit like uh 1 million on Instagram before my birthday, but honestly, there's no there's no real reason. There's no strong compelling reason for me to continue chasing verality. I've been experimenting with it. Like, what happens if I just do a lot of content based on viral formats? So, that's what I've been experimenting with the last couple months. And the results are pretty clear. If you copy other viral formats, uh, your likelihood of going viral is also much higher than if you just yap about random stuff on your mind with no structure. [laughter] 

>> Like the the data kind of shows that. Um, I think for every creator though, they will come to and it it's not like a one-time fork in the road. I think it's a continual decision of like who do I want to be as a creator? What is the message I want to get out there? Who is the audience I want to serve? Like these are all things I reflect on probably once a quarter to be honest with you. Um but yeah at this point like um it is it is cool to chase more followers because it's like wow x like my goal is to teach 10 million people AI for free and the way I track that is just through my follower counts but definitely I think ego is just a driving factor like I want to have more followers and more followers. But there's nothing more deep behind that to be [laughter] honest. So I just I'm just being real. It's just more like, "Oh, okay. Well, if I do more viral videos, I'll get more followers and that boosts my ego." So, 

>> is [snorts] 10 million like, is there a reason why you you chose 10 million or did you just choose that? 

>> I chose 1 million and then I blew past that. So, I just added a zero. [laughter and gasps] I was like, "Wow, cool. I hit my goal." I feel like I was sandbagging or something now looking back, but [laughter] then you have like 3 million now. So, seven more million to go. That's what it is, huh? 

>> Yeah. 

>> Yeah. Sounds like a big goal. [laughter] 

>> After uh you hit 10 million, is 100 million your goal? 

>> I think 100 million would be my goal. I would just add a zero like and just keep it very consistent, easy to understand. [laughter] 

>> Oh gosh. What's your Do you have any specific goal for like revenue-wise or is that just 

>> like I mean you can technically retire already, Sabrina, but 

>> I guess what what makes you happy? I'm just curious 

>> what makes me happy is reading messages from people who have been inspired by my content in some way. And it's it's not just about making money. It's about like especially from people who um may not have had access to opportunities like I've had or who stopped believing in themselves or who are stuck in corporate for so long that they literally forgot what it's like to be curious again to kind of like play with stuff and learn stuff and experiment and be able to just pursue their creativity uh without the pressure to make money out of it. Like I get all kinds of messages like that and it's it's the most fulfilling thing. Like I I I love reading stories like that. If if my content has impacted you positively in some way or honestly if any creator's content has impacted you positively, let them know is I can assure you they super super appreciate it. Like it's the main reason I'm still doing this. Even though yeah, I could just like stop now, [laughter] you know? It's it's really like the main thing I wake up to. I love the messages of how my education has inspired people um to explore a different part of themselves. Uh whether that means building a new career or trying different businesses, that's cool, too. But oftentimes it's just like I I started using Claude and I realized, wow, this is really fun and I just built my first app and I had absolutely no idea that I could do this and I'm 65 years old and I feel like, wow, the possibilities are endless. 

>> Yes, I love those. I absolutely love this. I got one of those emails recently and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is very heart touching and I'm just I just so happy to see that cuz 99% of the people who are watching your content, they're all gaining something out of it, right? It's super positive. It's just like the 1% who are not super nice sometimes, but you just have to think about those 99%. That's what it is. you have to focus on them like you're making the positive influence and just for your record you're one of the top you know AI people that I follow when I first started this journey which was seven months ago. So I I've been looking at your content and studying your content. So kudos thank you thanks to you. That's what it is. Thanks to you for making content. I'm so grateful. 

>> It's so interesting because when I first uh saw your content on YouTube I think you had like 50k 

>> and I was like 300k. Yeah, I know. I was like, 

>> "Yeah, I didn't I didn't take YouTube very seriously for a long time." 

>> Yeah. Like, no, but your [laughter] YouTube was like awesome. And I Okay. I don't know. I know you don't like the word authenticity, but then you seem very authentic towards the beginning. Like, I mean, even now, like when I first saw you towards like when you first started it and when I first started it, I'm like, "Dude, this girl is super authentic. I need to follow her. I can resonate with her a lot." And um it was just a couple weeks ago when we first jumped on the podcast. I'm like, she's funny. Like, [laughter] her personality is like hilarious. People need to see more. That's what it is. So, anyways, um I guess just personally, I'm curious. How do you know when to say no to opportunities because you've been getting so many different opportunities here and there? Like you even told me about this cruise thing, you know, teaching on a cruise. Like, how do you know whether this opportunity is good or not? Um, that's a hard one. I I assume no unless proven otherwise at this point. I assume the opportunity is not good enough. Um, unless there's like some convincing data otherwise. It also depends who's involved, right? Like I like to do stuff that's a tier, like brand name stuff, like people at the top of their respective fields. Um, so that's another way I look at it. um I do get a lot of opportunities but since I'm building a SAS startup um I have to laser focus on that if I want to keep scaling it. So it it feels like a loss having to say no in the near term but I know the enterprise value I've built so far for the startup as a multiple revenue and that is like way higher than people can imagine and to protect that I have to say no to these other shiny objects. So, it's it's the same muscle or instinct of like resisting shiny objects as well. Like every opportunity sounds nice until you say yes and then you get all the details [laughter] and you're like, "Oh crap, why did I say?" 

>> Yeah. I I also genuinely feel like opportunities won't go away like this. Like why are people reaching out to me now? Okay. Is it like number of followers or the brand I've built or the product I've built? They want me to do something for them. Well, why wouldn't they reach out to me a year from now when I've doubled all my numbers, doubled my revenue, you know? Like, as long as I'm polite, like, I'm just not I don't have bandwidth at this moment. Like, as long as I'm polite about it, I don't feel like I'm closing the door forever. 

>> I love that. Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much for h I think Oh my gosh, I gained so much value out of this podcast. Like, personally, I'm like, this is like the best. Everybody needs to listen to this. That's [laughter] literally what it is. And people should try like if you're listening to this you and then if you're wanting to build your personal brand definitely try blue potato that's that's one of the fastest way like literally because legit yesterday I spent so much time on Instagram doom scrolling like I got to find different ideas and I got to post content right um but you got to use the right tool and is worth every single penny of it in my opinion like that's just how I I appreciate that. Yeah. 

>> Yeah. No, for real. I'm so grateful that you built it and thank you for building the MCP or API. Is it MCP or API? I'm like keep forgetting. 

>> Oh, it has both. Yeah, 

>> it has both. Okay, both. [laughter] Thanks for building both so that it can be connected to cloud. Uh because I'm a big cloud user. So, that's the best. Um is there anything else for people who are starting out? Is there anything any final word that you like to share with them? Um, just like I I know that it's everything's overwhelming. Um, and just know that so many people feel that way too. Um, and the biggest ways to kind of get over that are ironically number one to shut off social media so you're not just bombarded with all these shiny objects. And number two to just follow along YouTube tutorials, Sandy's tutorials, my tutorials. just like follow along, enjoy the process, have fun, keep an open mind, and like it will work out for you if you keep trying and you're consistent over a long period of time. Um, people like us, like we fully support you. Like I believe in you personally, even if I've never met you person who's listening to this and I just want you to keep going and believe in yourself and all the resources are there. They're all freely available. All of my content is freely available and just keep going. So, 

>> oh you're amazing. Thank you Sabrina. Thank you. And for those of them who wants to follow you, obviously you have YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, your newsletter. I think newsletter is so valuable that you have. 

>> So yeah, subscribe to those and also like website from Blotato too. So that's amazing. The blog. Thank you again. Um I'm gonna hit stop the recording here, but thank you again for yeah joining this podcast today. Thanks so much for having me.