Latest / App Minded / How To Build A Thrifting App With Claude And Replit (No Code)

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How To Build A Thrifting App With Claude And Replit (No Code) · App Minded

• Nina Kolari: While not being technical, being able to have this framework with me helped me to expedite on things that I think would have stopped other people. I knew I wanted to use a software development team, not just a software developer. It was thinking about things like security and front-end development and user experience and market research all at the same time. How long did it take you to actually create the first kind of working prototype? ⁓ so that was two days. Okay. Yeah, it took two days. Welcome to App Minded. I'm Nina Klary. I'm an AI product builder and have shipped over 20 apps in the last year. I'm in a mission to help you to create your very own app with the help of AI, with or without technical background. Today I'm talking with Chiara. She has experience in tech but as a recruiter. She knew the lingo but did not quite know what that actually means in practice. When AI and Chat GPT came out, she went all in to learn it. And she since had developed her own framework in using AI. Along with that, she also started learning how to build an app because she had a need or problem in her life that was ideal for an app. So she built it and shipped it. But Kira is not the only app builder in the family. Her daughter has also started to build apps and uses AI frequently. This episode is not just practical, but it's also really motivational and especially inspirational. So let's get into it. Welcome Chiara to the show. Why don't we start with if you introduce yourself to the audience? Sure, Nina, that sounds great. Hi audience. My name is Chiara Barden. My first name is Italian, my last name is German. Neither one of those things, though. ⁓ I have been tech adjacent for quite a while. I've been in the HR space for over 20 years. ⁓ a lot of that time has been spent recruiting technical people for positions at some pretty awesome companies like Fanny Main, Freddie Mac, ARP, Mospargo. And more recently, I was working at Capital One, ⁓ where I was the program lead for national partnerships. So that was my day job. Side of desk, ⁓ for the last three years, I started like dabbling in AI. I started doing workshops for students in AI and started training ⁓ teams internally on how to use AI in a way that has been a bit different than the way that people normally receive it. It's not so simple and not too overwhelming. And so I found like really nice. almost Goldilocks zone as it were when it comes to training. So people really enjoy my my hands on trainings. And through that I decided to start my own consulting company. And when I decided to start my own consulting company, I decided to code an app. ⁓ the app that I created is one that really hits home for me because when I was really young, I grew up in a large family that when I was young we didn't have a lot of money. ⁓ And so my mom would often go thrifting or she'd take me antiquing. And so I've always just really enjoyed doing that. But one of the things that I often found is that when we went, we wouldn't know the worth of things. ⁓ and so we'd always wonder, did we just leave something like amazing on the table and have somebody come behind us and find George Washington's pipe or whatever that might be? ⁓ And so through that curiosity, I decided I wanted to build it app. And from that point, I ⁓ really have over the last few months just made these iterations to it that fit what I've found from feedback from others really fits that thrifting lifestyle. So having things like I call it the AI treasure hunter. So ⁓ it just has a lot of fun features to it. I know we're gonna talk more about the development and the app itself, but that's just a little bit about Me and how I got to this place and got a chance to meet you to talk more about app development. Before we start talking about your app, I'm very curious. You said you've found a way to train AI in a great way. I'd love to hear about that first. Yeah, so it's so interesting. I started using AI because I've always been an early adapter to technology. So Ten years ago I started learning about AI and how it was ⁓ something that was going to be disrupting the HR space. So I became very, very well aware of it. And knew that a lot of people in the tech space have started to use machine learning. And so I was familiar with that. Again, I am not technical. I know you have a lot of people who are who come on your podcast and say that. But I'm not technical, but I am dangerous in that because I was a recruiter, I had to learn. ⁓ technical terms so that I was able to make sure people were telling the truth when they were interviewing. So I know things like the difference between an inner join and an outer join with SQL, which this was only because that was an interview question I had to ask. It doesn't go any deeper than that. Like I'm not getting in there and doing development with it. But I started there and because I started there and started knowing what was happening with AI. I once it started become available, I started playing around with it right away. I started getting into it, ⁓ breaking it and figuring it out on my own. And once I was able to do that, it also made me realize the applications that were available for both students and professionals and then also for my daughter and my dad. So those three groups really shaped the way that I approach creating my trainings. So I was working with college students who some of them were a little bit more technical and some of them were not. So I've had to find that middle zone when I was creating any of my workshops. And I've presented workshops for hundreds of people at conferences like Grace Hopper and Ship and Tapia for anyone who is ⁓ in the tech space. But then I started working with my daughter because she wanted to learn how to do things like sell things online. So she actually sold enough of her toys by using Facebook Marketplace and making AI act as a marketing expert and create all of her ads as she bought a bed for herself. ⁓ and so she really inspired me because she was like, mommy, I want to make apps and I want to develop so she's developed an app and she's in the process of getting it on the Android store. ⁓ we just got Android development approved so that'll be going up soon. So she developed that when she was 10. ⁓ and she developed it because she has functional neurological disorder, which also impacted my development as well. So her functional neur neurological disorder is basically a high level of anxiety that causes her body to stop working. So she would have times where she couldn't walk or where her arms would be in pain for hours or her legs would be in pain for hours. And it took us a year to figure this out. How that impacted my development and my relationship with AI and getting even more ⁓ more attuned to how to use it is because I was going and to see 10 different specialists with her and every single one of them wanted different information and I really needed to be able to advocate for her and to make sure that we could figure out what was going on. I mean, I felt like at one point in time she saw every different allogist there was endocrinologist and neurologist and ⁓ And so that was quite a process to go through and it helped me to feel empowered. At the same time, I had to take her to all of these doctor's appointments. ⁓ and in taking her to tons of different doctors appointments, I had to pull away from work to do that. So started to be able to use AI at work. I had to get time back so that I could do both and was able to learn how to do that and share what I was doing with others. I also started doing workshops at work around like how to create workflows and how to just make you get your time back and get your energy back because that's what I really needed. At the same time that I was doing this, ⁓ I was working in the diversity space, which anyone who's in America knows that last year working in the diversity space, whether you were for it or against it, that it was a crazy time. So working in that space. I also had to be able to navigate a lot there as well and making sure that ⁓ I was helping in in with with ⁓ my teams and making sure that we were able to keep the company protected. ⁓ and so AI was really helpful for me in that space too. So long story long, ⁓ the last group that I talked about was my dad. And so my dad, he is an executive now. When I when we were younger, we were poor, he was able to work his way up. ⁓ and he said to me one day, AI is for young people. I was like, Dad, you're like Van Gogh and he was like, What do you mean? I said, Well, if you gave Van Gogh and a novice a paintbrush and you asked them both to paint a tree, they would paint a very different tree. So the knowledge and the experience that you have when placed with this tool makes you an exceptional person to use it. And he is a very logical thinker. And so he's really helped me because he's helped me to look at how to approach AI when problem solving in a very logical way. So he he helped introduce me to tokenization when putting names into the system. And ⁓ he's used problem solving for over 40 years in the corporate space. So he helped me look through how do you apply problem solving to AI before you start using it. So it all shaped a framework that I created that really looks at how do you pause before you use AI, how do you think through your problem, what are the different areas that you should be considering when prompting, including things like personas and formatting. Sorry, my cat just came in. ⁓ including personas and formatting. ⁓ in a lot of other areas too that I talk about, and then owning that process when you're done. So I've helped ⁓ over 8,000 people now with this framework and with the way that I ⁓ train in AI and have decided to branch off and become a ⁓ independent business owner. And so now I get to do this all the time where I can go and help people learn this framework and not be frustrated with AI because I I feel like ⁓ it reminds me of a story that I made up where I said, My daughter and I, she's you know, she's 10. We decided to go get ice cream one day. And ice cream place is like ten miles away. Well, we hit a pothole on our way in the car. Yeah. So of course we've got out of the car, abandoned it, and walked nine miles to go and get ice cream. Now that would be crazy if it was true. And it's not true. I did not like and walk nine miles for ice cream. But that is exactly what's happening with AI. I see people get into it, they don't have the framework to understand, ⁓ I need to stop it from doing hallucinations. So that's what's happening, or I need to change up the tone. And so because they don't have the logic going into it, abandon it when they get frustrated and just stop using it. So that's that's a little bit about what I do with that. That is really, really awesome. I think we could even do ⁓ like a separate episode only talking about that framework. I think it would be very helpful for for many. was that framework also basis on when you started building the app? I mean you obviously know how to use AI, but there's also a framework how you tackle the problem. So was that something you used yourself? Yeah, and I think that like I said, while not being technical, being able to have this framework with me helped me to expedite on things that I think would have stopped. People when it came to doing development and to keep me motivated and positive as I went through the process. One of the biggest wins for me was when I went from using one persona to stacking personas. And for anyone who's not familiar with personas or roles, when you work with AI, it takes information from the internet and tries to guess what a good answer would be for you, right? So it takes all this different information and then Provides you with its best guess. When you tell it to act as something, it becomes so much more powerful because it's starting to look through all that information with a very specific lens, almost like you hired someone who has that specific skill set. So when you actually create a group of personas that are working together in ⁓ one chat or in one project or in one gym, whatever you're using. it creates an even stronger output because now it's running your questions and your thoughts through a series of professionals. And being someone who is in tech, I knew I wanted to use a software development team, not just a software developer when I was developing my app. So when I was working with AI, I did give it multiple personas so that it would be really strong when it was providing me with answers. It was thinking about things like security and front-end development and user experience and market research all at the same time. ⁓ so that was one of the most powerful pieces for me. Yeah. I got a follow up on that. So you had your own kind of ⁓ team of AI agents, I guess, that were assigned a role for a very specific purpose. ⁓ How did you use them and what tool did you use? Well were you on Claude or Replit or something? And how did you use those agents? So I use Replit and I use Claude, but I am not a software developer. So what I did was I created a project in Claude where I could talk with it because ⁓ it helps me to not use all of my tokens in Replit. I think it's called something else in Replit, but it helps me to not run out of the ⁓ the paid amount that I'm using. So I'm only using like $20 a month on Replit. So to keep myself within that space, when I'm using a very smart prompt, I don't have to go back and forth with Replit. Right? I can give it that information and it can go ahead and just run, ⁓ run with it, fix the bugs, fix the problems, whatever that might be. So a good example of that is I was on my app Because I had my mom and I decided to go take a road trip from Richmond to Connecticut to test my app out at different stores. Excellent. It was the best market research. ⁓ my mom is a hoot. ⁓ but I was finding like bugs and issues. And what was great about that is I could take screenshots of it, go to my cloud software development team and say, hey, I'm noticing that I don't like the way that this feels when I'm moving from this part of the app. That part. ⁓ I think it's a user experience issue. Can you write code for me to be able to diagnose this and to be able to create a better user exper user experience? So it would write it all up. I can review it, which also helps to train me more to understand how the development works, right? And then I can either push back on it because the more that I'm doing that, the more I'm realizing. Hey, you're only impacting the front end, but actually we also need to be looking at the back end on this. So go back to the team and figure out a better solution. Once it gets to a good place for instructions, I drop that into Replit. It updates the information. I review it on the app. If everything looks good to go, I publish it and move on with my day. And what's really cool now is that you can connect Replit and Claw to talk to each other. ⁓ so that's another like they keep coming up with new things every single day, right? It keeps growing. But what's cool is that core of understanding the logic behind how to iterate with AI doesn't change. The human element, judgment, creativity, that's not gonna change. That's something that I bring and to keep the human in the loop. And so ⁓ while the by the time this video becomes available or podcast becomes available to people. There could be a whole slew of new changes and updates to AI that we could have never dreamed of, but logic still is going to need to be in place for humans to be able to work with it. Yeah. Yeah. It is it's moving so fast that even if you are head first, like you are in AI space hundred percent, it's really, really hard to stay in track, like what is going on? What should I be doing now? And ⁓ I think there's quite a lot of like shiny tool syndrome. You see like, ⁓ my gosh, something new. Let's should go there. It's sometimes hard to actually stay grounded and stick with what you what what what you're actually working on. Because the it's such a fast space at the moment. So it really is. And tools, the most popular tool changes, it feels like almost weekly now. Cause I know for the longest time it was chat GPT. For a hot minute it was Gemini because of Nano Banana and everything else went crazy about that. And then it became Claude and now there's some things on Chat GPT that are coming back that people are like, Well, that's even better over there. ⁓ and I do go between Claude and Gemini myself. Those are two tools that I really like enjoy using. But in working if you're working with Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Kimmy, whatever tool you're using with, like Like I was saying before, those baselines of knowing like how to ask good questions, understanding your problem fully, knowing what the solution should look like, like which where you're trying to go with it, all those things remain the same as the systems change. Yeah. Yeah. So with your first app, how long did it take you to actually create the first kind of working prototype? ⁓ so that was two days. Okay. Yeah, it took two days. I I knew really what I wanted to do and I did start with a solid software development team when I first went in. So doing that helped me to be able to really expedite what I was doing. I understood what my problem was I was trying to solve and I understood what good looked like. My problem that I was trying to solve was I wanted to create a fun app that I would enjoy when it comes to thrifting. And I knew that I wanted it to be very user friendly. I wanted to be able to scan items. I wanted it to be able to tell me what the value was, and that's where I started. ⁓ now since then, because that was a few months ago, it has really evolved in some really cool ways. ⁓ when I went with my mom, we were using ⁓ just Google to try and find thrift stores, and we ended up going to places that were closed. And we were like, ⁓ my gosh. And then we ended up going to a place that just wasn't opened yet because the hours were off. So we had to sit in a parking lot for like an hour. And I was like, Well, this isn't a good experience. So I became a Google developer and I was able to make it so that the app now has this cool feature called ⁓ a treasure map. So because I always think of thrifting or antiquing as treasure hunting, right? So with your treasure map, what it does is it actually allows you to pick a bunch of different places that you might want to go to and then it optimizes it. So it shows you which one to start with, which one to end with, when they open, when they close. And along the way, you can check in and take pictures of items while you're there so other people can see what items exist at these different thrift stores. You can give them different badges. ⁓ because that was the next part for me was I was like, I want to create community. I want people to be able to see these really cool places there are some really amazing thrift stores out there that just have so many cool items. You can't purchase them all, right? But you can share. what you found, especially if there's another collector out there that's looking for that lunchbox or would really love to see there's there's a gentleman who pull who brings in all of these costumes. It's in Havida Grace. He brings in costumes from all of these different ⁓ movies. And so somebody might just really want that experience of being able to see all of these different really cool costumes in person. So it helps people to share and it helps to share these really cool spaces that these people care a lot about. I've talked with so many owners of antique stores and thrift stores now and their passion behind what they do also inspires me to want people to like go out and have fun and share, just share their spaces. Yeah. How much did the app change from the initial forty eight hours to let's say what it is now? Is it like Fifty percent, twenty, eighty. Wow. I would say like it's ⁓ maybe like seventy percent. Okay. Yeah. 'Cause it started off very, very basic. I wanted to take pictures, I wanted to know what something was worth. And then I figured out that it I needed to be able to know like what else I needed to compare this to. ⁓ so Before I started the app, I did try to just use AI to go thrifting because I was like, I should be able to do this. I created a project for myself and it was so cool because it scanned all these books for me and it showed me that this one book was probably very old. And then as I like took additional pictures of it, it told me that the book was actually owned and from a private Spanish library of a woman who was best friends. with the first female diplomat of Spain. Maybe like five dollars for that book and the its value is in the thousands, which is amazing. So I was inspired to to start there. So that was the very first starting place. Then it grew to the to treasure map. Then it grew from there to we need to have eBay involved. So now there's links in there that show you what was something sold as. And then I wanted it to give confidence. So AI is not always going to be perfect. So it actually says how confident it is in what it's telling you, especially if you're gonna purchase something. I wanted to say, I have low confidence. If it has little confidence or I have high confidence. ⁓ and then also I wanted to flip things. And so I started to have it it would give ⁓ you can now have it create a description for you. And the description it gave me, because eBay creates descriptions of AI too. But I will say the descriptions that come from the app are, ⁓ in my opinion, of course, I'm a little biased, but I feel like they're they're ⁓ more description more descriptive and ⁓ more engaging. And I have sold items through eBay now using the app, finding something. So I've gone through that entire cycle myself. And so it's been ⁓ really cool. And then also there's the the iteration of hey Part of this is just being able to enjoy the experience. You don't really have to flip something. You don't always have to make it a big deal. And so that's been really cool. And the last part of it was I had so many friends who said, Hey, I just find stuff at my house. Or my aunt, I just had someone reach out to me two days ago. She said, My aunt was moving. She had a bunch of antiques in her house, and we just wanted to see what things were worth. So that was another change, is now you can just say, I just found this at home. ⁓ and just want to be able to find out what something at home is worth too. So it's been really cool to to see those updates and changes. Yeah. I'm I'm a little bit curious. ⁓ how did you how do you manage the AI and how do you manage that it gives good enough answer? I guess you don't really need to worry too much about burning tokens. ⁓ But how do you manage the AI so it actually gives accurate information, especially the confidence? ⁓ yeah. So a lot of that comes down to prompting, especially when it comes to we mentioned this word a little bit before, but hallucinations. So the prompts that I crafted with it, ⁓ and I literally crafted with it. So what I do with Claude is I'll say, Hey, this is what I'm trying to do right now. My problem, this is my solution. And my problem was I needed accuracy. So I said I need a strong prompt that helps to eliminate hallucinations when people are utilizing the app as much as possible, provide solutions. And it provided solutions in a few ways because it definitely provided solutions from the way that the app itself is is prompted on the back end. But when it came to things like the user experience to be able to have it see confidence. It also had some things. For a while, it when you first logged into the app, it would start by saying AI is not always confident. And that really turned a lot of people off. And I said, it's important that we make sure people know that you're not always confident, but we got to figure out a different way to ensure that that's being said. And so it then changed it to after someone scanned, it was saying whether or not it was confident. And it showed the value of this is the value of what this item is. Here's some information about it. ⁓ and then it goes into a green, a blue, or a red of how confident it is about what it's shared with you. And you can do down ⁓ drop downs after that to be able to learn more information. You can go on eBay and see what other things have been sold at that look like that item. So it helps you do a little bit more research before you make that choice of should I purchase this item. That's awesome. what have users ⁓ like how o you're open you're live at the moment, right? Yes. And it's a it's a web app and just like with my daughter's Android app, we're about to put them on the Android store. But it is a web app right now. Okay. ⁓ are you gonna turn or are you able to turn the web app as is and convert it into mobile app or do you actually need to do some coding again? So what It also when you first log in, it gives you instructions too on how to do that. So I actually have it on my phone where it is a logo I can just click on or an icon I can just click on. And so it gives you instructions on how to do that so that you could easily access the app ⁓ whenever you would like to. And for anyone who wants to try it out, you there are some free scans that you can do each day to test it out, try it out, see how you like it. But then once you do start to become a paid user, you're able to access a lot more like the treasure map and all those things too. So I like to be able to let people see like what they would be getting into. But it's ⁓ yeah, it's really fun. Yeah. ⁓ have you also thought about doing iOS or iPhone app or only Android? Yeah. No, I I do wanna do both, but we're taking it just one step at a time because I'm also ⁓ I love my app and I have so much fun with it. And it's in such a good place right now where I feel it's really solid for the users that are using it. ⁓ but I'm also really building up this business too. So this was something that that I just really enjoyed and just wanted to build and put out to the world because I was like, more people are going to enjoy this too. but because of that, like it's been less of a rush for me to like get it on the app store. ⁓ but something I really want to do because I know that people are asking about it, wanna use it, and ⁓ so that's been really fun to be able to like know that there is an audience out there. Yesterday someone from Singapore was on the app, which is really crazy. And before it was even like fully published, because it was searchable, ⁓ there was like two people who were using it. Like, and I was like, It isn't even fully up yet. So there's definitely a ⁓ a desire for it and I want to be able to have more people get access to it. Yeah, yeah. That's really awesome. And I guess ⁓ you said you ⁓ your daughter, which would be another great episode by the way, 10-year-old app developer. ⁓ you are doing Android with her so it's obviously natural also stick with Android. ⁓ I guess if the same account ⁓ in her app is so cool because she wanted to program it for children to be able to regulate their moods because of what her experience is. So if she can journal or if she can play ⁓ games, it helps her to regulate her amygdala. I know that's a big word, but I I'm saying that word because her therapist who helped us to discover her cognitive behavioral therapist who helped us discover that she had functional neurological disorder. and helped her. She hasn't needed to use a wheelchair since February of this year, which is absolutely amazing because she was using it like every other week last year. she was like blown away by this app. She was like, Do you know neurologically what it does? She was like, Because when we have high anxiety, our frontal cortex, which actually our frontal lobe, which actually helps us to be able to manage our emotions, shuts down and our macula, which is in the back, just takes over. So what it does is that her games, because they're calming games, shut down that amygdala and help you to re-regulate your emotions. And she didn't know that. She just knew that that was something that helped her. And so she has actually it to help her, which has been really cool to see. ⁓ and to be able to sit and code with her has been really cool too. So she's she's quite brilliant as a as a kiddo, which is funny because she does not have a cell phone. We try and keep her away from technology. actually quite a bit. because in our family we we do believe that like technology is there is a tool, but this the interactions you can have with others are so much more valuable. So we use technology to help us get that time and energy to spend ⁓ with our family, which has been really, really cool. And when it came to our apps for both of us, and this goes to the company name that I have, which is Better by Design, we didn't just wanna duplicate what was already out there because there is there's a lot of apps that are out there right now that are thrifting apps. There's a lot of apps out there that are anxiety apps. But one of the things that we both did was we sat down with AI and said, hey, review everything that's out there that looks like this thing that I want to create right now. Look at the feedback that is there, market research, right? And then figure out how we can make it better. Yeah. And so that's what our goal is is we want to be able to put something better out into the world. ⁓ we want to be able to add to the world as much as we can. So not stealing from others, but looking at how can we improve what's already available so that we're not just duplicating. Yeah. I g I'm very impressed by your daughter. It's a beautiful story. And I I just love that that's why I love doing these interviews because lot of these apps come from real life experiences and problems and issues and building kind of the custom solution for them, but actually figuring out it actually can help a lot of people. I think it's it's really, really cool what she's done. and obviously also helped her tremendously. She's doing ⁓ she spoke, she did a TED talk, not with Ted. So You're not she did ⁓ an AI conference earlier this year that really I was just like I was surprised they let her come because it was for middle school students and high school students and she was the youngest person who got to go 'cause she's in she was in the fifth team when she went. ⁓ and now they're bringing her back and she actually created a presentation for herself with AI and she was able to ⁓ to To present and she stood at a booth and talked in the line with people and just had so such great composure. So yeah, I would love to be able to sit down here and talk with her and just get her thoughts about AI. Also because she's done a ton of other things with it too, outside of what I've even discussed. I think it's 'cause she sees Mama a lot on it. Yeah. She's taken her own path with it. Yeah. Which is really cool to see. Yeah. I think you I having a great role model somewhere nearby who's also I guess positive about AI and the abilities it can help. I like what is the next generation is gonna what what are they gonna come up with AI? I'm like, can we go faster so we figure it out quickly? But ⁓ yeah, children using AI and building solutions from their point wherever they are. whatever age they are, I think it's gonna be phenomenal what we're gonna have in five, ten years. She has when we were waiting when we wait for food or when we'd have to wait in line, ⁓ we came up with two games that we've played or done or things we've done with AI. One, ⁓ we play who, what, where with the image apps. So that's where somebody says a who, somebody says a what, and someone says a where and then we have AI create a picture with it. And they are in the mid slump. Really crazy fun pictures that have come out of that. And you also test the limits of the system because sometimes it's like I can't create that because that's a real person or whatever that might be. ⁓ and then the other one that she did one day that just really impressed me a lot was ⁓ she made it make a story for her because she was waiting for food. And then she had to make a whole storybook with images to entertain her while she was waiting for her food. And it was really story ⁓ that she had come up with. ⁓ but there there's just so many applications for it. I know this Friday, because I do free Friday trainings for people, I'm doing a training around how I've used it for road trips and work trips for the last three years. ⁓ So that's that's gonna be one of my funnest trainings that I've gotten to do because it has been it has really enhanced my life so much because I no longer well I wouldn't sit in the hotel rooms when I go on work trips anymore. I'd actually like Go and explore the city and give myself like three different locations to go to that AI provided me and see these things like a local. ⁓ and there was my family. I have a family of five, I have a Brady Bunch family. Like my husband's two my husband and his two kids are my bonus kids, and then my daughter I've talked in lengths about. ⁓ but we love going on road trips. And so one day we were like, hey. Let's take the kids to Niagara Falls. And we planned a whole trip the week before to go to Niagara Falls and only drove in two hour ⁓ segments the whole way from Richmond to Niagara, except on the way back where we just drove straight back. But I'm gonna talk more about that with people ⁓ in that training and some of the crazy stories that came out of that. But that's just one other like awesome thing that helps to really enhance people's lives when they start using the eye in different ways. Yeah. I totally agree. There's so many opportunities and options one can do with AI and especially on the positive side. ⁓ AI seems to have kind of negative connotation with w whatever we're discussing, but there's also some so many good things and you and your daughter are prime examples of the positive sides. ⁓ what what what comes with AI. So ⁓ AI it's been l Such a great to hear those stories. ⁓ what is happening with your app? What is the next goal for the trifting app? So ⁓ the next goal for me or next iteration that we're looking at is to really support those shop owners more. So I wanna make it so that shop owners can actually own their locations and be able to post things like if they got new items in or if they have special sales going on. So if someone does ⁓ choose to add them to their treasure map for the day, they can be like excited about what they're gonna go and see and be able to continue to promote the great work that those ⁓ that those store owners have. And then of course getting it on Android so even more people can see the application is another ⁓ major goal for me too. Yeah. ⁓ you said you are monetized already with the app. Yes, I am. I Yeah. How have you tackled, is it like Stripe or ⁓ what's the Yep. So I did use Stripe and what I loved about Stripe too with the app is it really allowed me to be able to or it allows me to be able to offer ⁓ sometimes discounts or things. But the way that I started working with Stripe is I did use Claude. So I was like, hey, what are some options for me to be able to monetize this? what and then once I started using Strike, I ran into so many roadblocks. ⁓ same thing happened with MailChimp too, because I used MailChimp for a different workflow. But I would just take pictures of whatever I was going through and I'd bring it back to COD and I'd be like, hey, I'm trying to do this thing. I don't know where I need to go in here. And it'd be like, ⁓ just go here and do this. And it would give me very simple steps to be able to make that happen. ⁓ so again going back to one of the core principles, which is using AI to teach you things because once I learned how to do things like being able to provide discounts, I can now go on strike myself and be able to do that. But if I wanted to make any other major changes, I might lean on AI a little bit too to be like, how can I do this? So then I can just learn and go. Yeah. I think the learning part is I use my AI tool to teach me things all day long. Every app new app that I create, I want to learn something so we figure out an app that allows me to learn and ⁓ I also ask it to comment my code so I understand why something is there and what is it really doing. So I use it as my mentor. So I stop watching tutorials and get Claude to explain why is is this here and what does it do and why should I care or should I even care. Why should I care? I love that. Yeah. ⁓ sometimes I do have to ask it to teach me like I'm a fifth grader, and sometimes I have to ask it to teach me like I'm a third grader. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It depends on the topic. Yeah. Yeah. And I I'm learning and I'm growing just like you. And I think that that's ⁓ really important for people too to just not stop growing and not stop learning and to not just rely on the tool. I know that there's this. big fear that people are going to get brain rot is one thing that the kids are saying these days. ⁓ because they're not using their cognitive abilities to be able to use the tool. And one ⁓ there was a study that was recently done where they were college students and they were either able to use AI right away or they were given a problem to solve and they had to solve it themselves and then use AI to like get them past the finish line. And those that just started to use AI right away. ⁓ when they asked them questions later, sometimes they didn't even remember the questions they originally asked with the problem. And those that like went in first to use the tool actually learned and their kind of abilities went up. So I do think that it was very validating for me because as I've I've kind of hinted at and mentioned, that's the process that I teach people is to attack a problem first, figure out how much you should use AI. Because I want people to constantly be growing and learning and stretching themselves. ⁓ and so yeah, it's I think that we should still be careful because you know it's a it's a tool. ⁓ and it can have these negative effects, but there's things you can do to combat those negative effects. Like there's things you can do to make sure you're not putting facts out that aren't true, which is a very big thing that AI loves to do. Yes. But there are things you can do to to help yourself with that. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So if anybody's listening here, where can they find your app and potentially hear about your daughter as well? I'm sure a lot of people are keen to hear about that as well. So both of you, where they can find you. Well to find me, she has less of a social media presence 'cause she is ⁓ she is eleven now. She was doing she meet her up, she's eleven now. But to find me to find my app, if you go to better by design ai dot com You can download my app and use it right away. As I mentioned before, we'll be getting it on the Android store as soon as possible. But if you're eager to try it out, you can go there. And that's also where you can join any of my free Friday sessions that I have or be able to work with me directly. I do a phone of friend with people offer companies. So you can ⁓ you can get me on retainer to be able to help, or you can have me come in and work with your teams. Love working with entrepreneurs and founders and nonprofits. ⁓ but I would be happy to talk with anyone who thinks that my services could be of service to them. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And I said in the beginning before we started recording that I love hearing all these stories. And i I can definitely walk out of this that I loved hearing your and your daughter's story. And please Pass a little hi to your daughter that say that I'm really impressed what she's done. And equally you, non-technical, and then shipping an app and, you know, tackling the whole building process. It's really it is a huge achievement. Thank you. I appreciate that so much. And Nina, thank you for being brave and having this podcast and Bringing so many amazing people together. I just really appreciate the work that you're doing. And I'm so impressed with you and the apps that you've built as well. ⁓ that's amazing. I wanna be you when I grow up. And so hopefully I'll be But thank you again. I can't wait to see who else ⁓ comes and joins your podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you again Chiara for sharing your story. Along with your daughters. Both are very inspirational and motivational. If you would like to know more about Chiara and her apps, I link everything in the show notes with the episode. Until next time, keep on shipping.