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How She Built 10+ Apps With AI (The Hard Part Wasn't Building) · App Minded

• Nina Kolari: Today my guest is El Wang. Elle spent 25 years in the financial services before getting into AI. She had no technical background, but that did not stop her starting building apps. And she didn't just build one, she just kept going and building new ones. Her first app taught her a pretty important lesson. Just because you want something doesn't mean other people do so. So with every app since, she's changed how she researches, plans and decides what to build. We talk about that journey, the apps that didn't work, the ones she's still building, and why she thinks women have a huge opportunity right now to start building with AI. And she also tells me about how she built her very own version of an app she was paying for. It took her about 20 minutes and now she uses it every day. Let's get into it. Hi everyone. I would like Elle to start the episode by introducing yourself and let the audience know a little bit about yourself and your background. Hi Nina, thank you very much for this opportunity to appear on your podcast. Yes, my name is L Wong. It is L is short for L and R, but I'd love to be called L and it's easier to spell. I am an AI trainer and business coach. So I teach all things claude related and other ⁓ AIs. I also teach workshops on how to build with no code tools so that you can build your prototype. and the importance of that is that you're not spending too much money or time trying to build a business solution and ⁓ you're able to do it quickly, iterate, and move on or monetize. ⁓ I'm ⁓ Canadian and currently I'm in Montreal. I'm a Vancouver transplant and I hope to ⁓ explore a bit of the East Coast a little bit more before finally ⁓ moving back to the West Coast. Yeah. What is your background? Do you have like technical background or completely something different? Yeah, thanks for that question. So I am a non-technical AI trainer. So much like you, I dove into Chat GPT and Claude ⁓ two two and a half years ago and I was enamored by the technology. And I actually hired a guy. to do my lead generation ⁓ for my ⁓ coaching business. And he was showing me all this ⁓ AI tools and I was just floored. My mouth just like just jaw just dropped open and I couldn't believe this kind of technology existed in this way. ⁓ and then the more he was doing the work for me, I was like, I I can do this. I could do this. I don't need to teach me how to do that. Right, or doing it for me. And yeah, I just got like went down a rabbit hole like much of us do because this technology is so fascinating. And ⁓ you know, I'm a ⁓ you know, I'm a corporate girly, you know, 25 years in financial services, more than. And a lot of my my my ⁓ responsibilities was training and and development. So learning and development. So I've tr I've done a lot of training. ⁓ I've trained in-house, I've trained businesses and ⁓ nonprofits and and ⁓ community. And I thought, well, I've gotten pretty proficient with this AI technology. Why don't I just, you know, start delivering AI workshops? and in an with non technical and ⁓ you know very beginner friendly. And to be honest, that was only like, you know, maybe five steps ahead of anybody else, right? And and that really became more of a relatable ⁓ method than having somebody with a computer science degree ⁓ teaching, you know, AI, right? So that was kind of where ⁓ things kind of rolled for me. And then the coaching, the AI coaching started, especially with Claude. ⁓ thank goodness Claude was in the spotlight because I was using Claude way before it became popular. Like, what's Claude? I'm like, okay, let's get continue with Chat GPT. So ⁓ so thankfully for that. But yeah, ⁓ two years of of of you know diving really hardcore into AI. ⁓ and prior to that was mostly just financial services with a yeah, a learning facilitation ⁓ background. Yeah. So how did it ⁓ You didn't have a technical background, but you also started teaching others how to use all these tools. who was your first client or customer to training that you held? Yeah, so it was a group of women that just came together through a social media platform and we just were feeling the vulnerabilities of being left behind in AI. And so I just ⁓ created this event, right? Work ⁓ this workshop and people attended and couldn't believe what they didn't know. Because everybody was like, ⁓ AI, I will just say, write me a email about XYZ and da da da da, right? And then it didn't sound like them, it didn't sound personalized, it didn't sound great, it was just really kind of generic. And so that kind of created ⁓ a light bulb moment, knowing that okay, there's more to it than just ⁓ you know, delivering this sort of first set of skills to learn. ⁓ so yeah, so these these women came together and ⁓ and then from there I just kind of ⁓ th thought to just build bigger. Yeah. So you were training others how to use Claude. ⁓ when did you actually start building your first app? Yeah ⁓ my gosh. Okay. So I about a year and a half ago, ⁓ I started hearing this this term vibe coding. Yes. Like, you know, you follow all these people, you got all these AI newsletters and like vibe coding this, vibe coding that. And and I got really again, got really intrigued. Like anything AI, you're getting you're you're kind of pulled in so many different directions. But this one really spoke to me. I've I felt like I missed the ⁓ the website or the like the app building ⁓ phase when it was like early 2000s when everybody not everybody, but like many people were building apps. And I was like, ⁓ I have an app idea, but I don't have the thousands of dollars, the tens of thousands of dollars to build it. And so I I kind of had, you know, a fear of missing out that this next wave was coming and that you could build with just plain. language. And I thought, okay, I gotta look into this a little bit more. ⁓ and so I started by coding, you know, I started using lovable, base 44, bold, ⁓ raplet. And ⁓ you know, some of them were easier to use than others, and they have come a long way from a year and a half ago. ⁓ and so I just started playing around with lovable with base 44. And then the next thing you know, you've got this really awesome looking app that you want to share with friends and family. And and then I realized that in sharing and getting feedback that it was breaking down, like it wasn't really flowing the way I wanted and I hoped. And so you know you're just you're consuming more tutorials and you're, you know, reading up more about it, researching. And then it, you know, you just kind of evolve over time. And and then eventually I found a couple of communities that I joined that were very helpful in in sort of more of a structured approach to building with ⁓ with no code tools. Yeah. So ⁓ if we go back to the first app that you classify as an app that you built with wipe coding, what was the app about? What did it do? Yeah, so I'm really into pickleball. And I know pickleball's very hot right now and it's probably been hot for a few years. I just got into it. ⁓ so I really felt like I wanted to put together two obsessions, pickleball and like AI vibe coding. And so my first app it was a app that helped ⁓ pickleball players organize ⁓ pickleball games. and organized payment of of games. So this included not only ⁓ the the time of play, the club the club or the court that you're playing at, how much it was, and ⁓ the email and text reminders that the that the where when and where the game was and and whatnot. And and if you've paid. So that was the first one. I have it here. I built it on Lovable actually. Is it still live? It is not because of the whole ⁓ API for ⁓ the t the texting. So ⁓ Twilio. Right. Twilio. Yeah. and so so over time what I felt with this app is that based on s like some feedback, ⁓ it really wasn't needed because people didn't want to sign up for an ⁓ when they can just like text. And even though the texting may have been disorganized, they were okay with it because that was something they were familiar with. So this is where I think Nina, like where the marketing would have come in really handy. Like like really stressing the the barriers or like the the discomfort, the ⁓ the headaches. And you know I I feel that marketing was really key in this. So it didn't get monetized or anything like that. It was more like, ⁓ okay, this is probably like the wrong sort of idea feature. After that though, I realized I should have done more research, like w on Reddit, on overall research, like even talking to people about like what is missing, what would be a ⁓ ideal sort of solution for those folks that like to organize games, pickleball games. ⁓ so that I think was a great lesson. After collecting all this information, I was on to my next ad. Like and like ten more after that because I was like, ⁓ I get it. I need to c I need to get like like understand what the gaps are or what people really want, not what I want. That was really a good lesson. Yeah. I I like what you said there, that ⁓ the gap of, you know, the I guess in startup world product market fit, like can you actually find people who are who have the same problem. and when the more apps you build, you're gonna find those that okay, this didn't work, but this did. So it's it's I think every failed app, if you take the learnings from that, it's really not a failed at all. It's actually a winning because you're gonna learn so many good lessons. Yeah. I think l not only the lessons, but the ⁓ the ⁓ yeah, for sure the lessons, but also like you're you're just more in tune to finding solutions because of those lessons. And that is the beauty behind failure, is like you're you're not just sulking with a failed, you know, app. You're like, Okay, well, what could I have done better? And what and you're you're just in tune with finding like an improved way of doing things. The the vibe coding tools themselves have come so far in less than a year. Like even from like this month, I cannot believe how much easier it is to build with with these these vibe coding tools. It's it's unreal. Unreal how how like how much progress they've become they've made. Yeah. Yeah. So from the first app, you took everything you learned ⁓ into the next app. What was the next app? Yeah, so I ended up doing ⁓ fun sort of ⁓ micro SAS solutions. So I I had built like ⁓ there you know there's a there was a lot of talk about ⁓ being visible in AI. So answer engine optimization. I was like well I can build a tool to d to detect whether or not your website you know, has is visible in AI. So it an AI visibility booster, you know, so and I just put that link on my website. And I'm like, if you wanna know how well you're gonna be, you know, showing up in answers, you know, fill out this, fill out this sort of ⁓ I I don't know what you would call it now, but like a an assessment. And it just ⁓ it kind of spits out a a sort of like a score and then what you should do and then obviously to you know, go into some of my resources if you want to learn more about answer engine optimization. and then I created like a fun like video game. Excellent. Love that. So jelly cats are apparently very popular. so I built a ⁓ a jellycat Minecraft sort of game 'cause Minecraft is also very popular. And it was more about just demonstrating like like the the the fun part of vibe coding, ⁓ and just taking like everyday, you know, ⁓ trendy ⁓ I don't know what you call them, but trendy things and just combining them into like a vibe coding tool. And so that was kind of fun. That needed a bit more work. ⁓ and I'm not really a gamer, but I just thought, you know, I might as well try, you know, like a gaming, a gaming app. Yeah. Yeah. So you build multiple apps. ⁓ How is it different from the first app you built and let's say the latest? How is your process of building an app? Or even what do you do before you build the app itself? Yeah. So these days I'm much more about prepping, ⁓ in terms of what I want this app to do. and iterating what that what my original ⁓ sort of purpose is for that because again, what I want isn't what what other people want. So really setting aside my ego and realizing that ⁓ in order for your app to be successful, you need to hear from the people. You need to hear, you need to gather intel and do research about, you know, what the pain points are maybe for existing apps or what the paid part pain points are right now. that it there where there is no solution. And so from there, really building out a very ⁓ informative ⁓ app summary, summarizing, you know, the the ICP, the what the app should be doing, the different features, and I'd say five max features, and then also what what version what version two or three, you know, like are might be. They put it on the back burner. ⁓ but, you know, just something that can that we can aspire to do or I can aspire to do. ⁓ but also keeping in mind that feedback from the users are is super important. Really the prep rather than just, you know, putting in a couple of sentences into the vibe coding tool and expecting a miracle. I think that's what vibe coding was thought to be in the early days, was just like just talk to it and and and without any prep or without any ⁓ kind of thought. and and that's fine. I might work for, you know, a simple app or might be some something for folks that, you know, maybe don't want to monetize. You know, it's just maybe just a a simple business solution. That's fine. ⁓ but when it comes to actually like monetizing it really really thinking through and preparing well ahead of time before putting in the prompt. How d how do you find the current tools? What is your ⁓ current tool of choice of building apps? So I flip between lovable. I love it because I'm very familiar with it. ⁓ but I also love Cloud Code now. I don't it's not I don't think it's a vibe coding tool, but it's it's not but it it's it's a great tool to to just use you could just use plain language too. So it may not have like the the integrations with Stripe or the suggestions like Lovable does like in terms of like, you know, what to build next or what's what's what next steps to to take. But I'm pretty impressed with Claude Code. Yeah. And I have that to connect the two. Like, well, I have I have lovable on cloud cowork, but I haven't invoked lovable on it just because I still really love lovable's interface. Like, yeah, it's it's not the same using cloud code. Lovable on cloud code. I know. Yes. I I also my tool of choice is cursor for ⁓ iOS apps. But if I do anything web, I quite often go to Lovable to play around different visuals that I get very quickly. ⁓ and then I might take it back to Cursor or sometimes Claude ⁓ to finish it off the the build. ⁓ But I think Lovable particularly is phenomenal for newbies. It is such an easy tool to pick up and you can have everything built in for like twenty dollars a month and you can literally launch a business for twenty dollars a month. And you can build something in like two hours, you know, like yes you know, connected to Stripe and everything, right? I mean literally and I and these are my favorite workshops to teach. ⁓ you know, I've taught a lovable all day workshop and I couldn't and this was for women too, and I couldn't believe the app ideas. I was inspired by them. ⁓ and And I just to have women, so many women in the room d talking and doing something that was generally a male dominated industry, just made me want to dive deeper into this no code vibe coding world. As if we can inspire women to take control of, you know, building. And to overcome the the psychology around AI, tech, ⁓ you know, it's not for me, ⁓ it's too difficult, it's it's I don't understand it. Well, these vive coding tools have democratized like building and shipping and being and monetizing an app. Like it c it's so much easier now than has ever been before. And I say that with only like like two years of being in the AI space. So, you know, I'm not that f much further ahead of most people. So ⁓ I feel like if these tools are out there and you know, some of it you can do for free. Like you can really build on lovable for free. You don't you don't have to subscribe to the $20 plan. You could do it for free and just go buy month, you know, when the re when the credits reset. And then yeah, once you validate and start getting more confidence in building your tool, then we can all reach equity ⁓ you know, far more faster. I mean, it's just a matter of playing around with it and me and maybe some accountability of trying to finish it. Finish the app, I think is is really helpful. Yeah. So I'm really looking forward to ⁓ you know, more of these building workshops ⁓ targeted at ⁓ at women. So that's that's that's kind of a passion for me too. ⁓ I'm I'm on the same boat. I really think ⁓ women have a great opportunity at the moment with the app app space. I heard somewhere that it's less than ten percent of app builders are women. I don't know if that's accurate, but ⁓ it feels like it. It feels like five percent on like social media, building in public. It's all guys, usually in the twenties, thirties, and the rest is like there's nobody. Yeah. There's no midlifers. There's no women. Yeah. No. ⁓ so I and I think ⁓ it's such a great opportunity because most of the apps are built by men. They lack the female perspective. Anybody well I've only so far had women as my guests. I welcome men, but so far it's been all women. And their solutions are I think all of them have had some solutions that no guy would probably get to them on their own. Because they it comes from their life, they know like mothers and th they realize okay, I'm not the only mom going through this. I build it up and, you know, find find other women who are going through something like that. So Yeah. That's why I think it's so cool. ⁓ the decision tables, you know, ⁓ companies. ⁓ yeah, our experience really counts. Yeah, and it even goes to like the LLMs behind all these tools. If if it's only men using and only men's point of view coming across like it is at the moment, if we don't start skewing the information that's in there by being mo being more public and going out and building apps, ⁓ it's it's gonna stay that way. Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. I do feel that you know, one of the things, one of the main things of making sure that your app is successful monetization wise is building in public ⁓ and kind of bringing people along in your journey. And and I've tried to do that, but for some reason those get the lowest views. So I I probably just need to be a bit more consistent with it because as said, I've seen many men that are younger being super successful at building in public. So I have yet to ⁓ figure that one out. But yeah, the the data suggests that building in public can really ⁓ help you with the success of your app. And yeah, the distribution, the marketing and all of that is is the other half. Building the app is half. the the marketing and and getting it out to the masses is the other half or your specialty. Yeah. Since you mentioned marketing, ⁓ how ⁓ how are you marketing your apps? How are you tackling that side of the app building? So my app, ⁓ SkullChat, I have ⁓ talked about SkullChat on LinkedIn, on social on TikTok and and Instagram. And it it gets like for like some some views and whatnot, but I have to be really honest and vulnerable here. Marketing is not my strong suit. So I have analysis paralysis when it comes to marketing skull chat. So I don't and I want to do it organically. I don't want to pay just yet, right? I kind of I I and I don't even that's a whole new other thing that I don't want to unlock and and understand just yet, like the whole AD ads and and all of that. ⁓ so right now it's being organic and you know, obviously there could be a lot more ⁓ you know, monetization in that respect. But I also feel like it is it is a learning experience. It's something that ⁓ you know, it's a personal board of AI directors. And you know, one of the comments in my Claude conversation around before building it was, well, why Why would you think that this would make any money? Because all someone has to do is just create their own board of directors in their own AI. And I was like, but there's only like two percent of us using AI. Yes. So I had to challenge Claude, Claudette, I call her. and ⁓ but it but it was it's true though, like, you know, anyone can build their own personal board of AI directors, you know, if they're proficient enough in using AI. I'm banking on the fact that not many people one have the time to do it or two know how to do it. And there is there is part of that that gap that I was thinking of of meeting, closing. ⁓ so yeah, so it's mostly around ⁓ trying to build a solution and trying to find the most organic ways of promoting it ⁓ without sounding too salesy. Yeah. Yeah. Is it is it hard to do the marketing part versus the building? The marketing. Yeah, I you know, Nina, I really feel like marketers are winning in this age of AI. I honestly feel like it like, you know, they you're all in the know of I don't even know what funnels meant. You know, I need magnet, like all of that is such a such a learning curve and part of part of that is like a whole new language for me and I I find that not plain language enough ev even though vibe coding sounds harder, right? Because it's ⁓ so yeah ⁓ that's a that's a whole new project area for me. Yeah. If we go back to the building part. ⁓ you you mentioned ⁓ SkullChat. So how did you build that and wh what did you build it with? Yeah, so I used ⁓ Bolt. Bolt was the ⁓ tool of choice I used there because I was I was flipping between I really wanted to understand the difference between Bolt, Lovable, and Raplet. So I was kind of yeah having different projects on all three. Right. Building many different ⁓ apps at the same time and I was trying to document it too and then that didn't work. But yeah, so it was it was bold and I had ⁓ done, you know, my app summary. I created my simple PRD. ⁓ I had put in some I used Google Stitch for some UI, UI UX, and put it all in there and everything. And it was running pretty good at the very beginning. And then you max out on the credits. And then you have to wait. That's fine. And so it took me a lot longer to build it. Yeah. And I I had, I think I spent about four months building it. And I launched it really probably too soon, ⁓ December ⁓ of last year. And I had my first user and my my app broke. I it it just it didn't work. And so I had to take it offline. But I had to wait till the next month. to build to to like fix it. Yeah. And and Bolt at that time anyways didn't have the top up. I don't know if they do now, but you couldn't top up. You couldn't upgrade, but you had to wait six months and and unless you upgraded. And I didn't want to upgrade. And ⁓ so I was collecting information, like I just had the one user and I was collecting information and I was just trying to improve it and iterate it. And Bolt was not making it easy. For me to fix the errors, to troubleshoot. ⁓ luckily, Claude was able to help. ⁓ but but again, it did it did take a while for me to finally fix it in in bolt. And then I finally think I launched it in in three or four months later. And I should have been building in public at that time. I shouldn't have let low views dictate my my journey, because I think that would have brought in ⁓ a lot more true users. you know, had a wait list and everything. and I think I have like maybe one person actually want to go through with it. So that was a lot of learning too. Building on ⁓ the tool of choice is one thing. you know, having having lodged too soon and then retracting was another. And then because that tool of choice didn't have the top up waiting. ⁓ and while you're waiting, you're distracted with other things. You know, it's is no longer a priority. And then you forget what you what you iterated and and where you are in the process of of trying to troubleshoot. ⁓ and I documented as much as I could. Like in I use a a notion ⁓ ⁓ I use a notion site for checking off like, you know, w what I was doing and what the outcome was and everything. You can only go so far with that because it was manual. And then yeah, it would just it just finally all worked out ⁓ after a few months of of waiting for the credits to refresh and yeah. How did you feel the moment it actually went live after all that? It was such a milestone moment for me because I really felt like ⁓ all that hard work really paid off. And in in hindsight, I really am thankful for it not being easy. Cause now as I run workshops, I can empathize, I can advise, I can suggest, I can warn. Yeah. ⁓ so it makes it a little bit more real rather than saying, ⁓ it's easy to build. You just do this, this, and this, right? Like, Here are some of like the the barriers we might face. And ⁓ so so yes, you know, it was a great feeling. And to to say that, you know, me, who originally back in the early 2000s thought I missed out on app building to finally say that I created an app was so fulfilling, so fulfilling. And it really inspired me. It really inspired me to want to bring this capability. To other women. You know, it really was a a feeling of modeling. Like I could model, I could be a good model for other women. I'm in midlife. If I can midlifer be, you know, successful at building an app, like imagine how many people I can inspire. That's awesome. I that's but also ⁓ what I like about what I do now is Especially the I think the this podcast has been my best idea out of everything because I've I've heard so many good stories from women who did not know what they were capable of. And then they got and went and built an app and they were like, How did I just do that? And it's like I think it was Samantha was saying like the confidence she got from app building actually spread every part of her life ⁓ also. So it's not just a confidence, ⁓ I can build an app, but it's like y you sit a little straighter and you're like, I can do this. Like I think that's really, really great. You know, when I'm in in in person events and say I'm a builder and it's all men, that is really rewarding. Like and you know, sometimes, you know, they feel like, you know, I might get like, you know, the the eyebrow up or whatever, but like I'm representing women. Yeah. And we desperately need more women in these rooms. I've gone to so many tech events. Like the only place you don't women don't need to have to queue for a toilet is a tech event. Conference. There's none. You get a private bathroom. Like that was my experience when I went to my first IOS conference. I was like, well I can see maybe few women, but I have a private bathroom here. Yeah. That is so true. ⁓ and the more women we get into the rooms ⁓ to build to bring their ideas to life, the more entrepreneurs we get, the more, you know, things start leveling up. So I think for women, if they take up on the opportunity to build now, I think it will have quite a great impact, like rolling over the years. Totally completely. And I feel like also you just don't know. what comes out of app building and sharing your your journey and and and building. So I as I said I I I did an all-day event on how to build an app. From that I got business. Like I got like consulting gigs, ⁓ coaching gigs, right? And and it's because you've inspired these women and they feel like there's hope that there's ⁓ you know a part of AI that can be that they can leverage, that they can that can help them in their lives, whether it be personal, whether it be work. You know, women do so much. We are responsible or we feel that we're s responsible for so many things. And by using AI to, you know, by leveraging AI, we can be so much better moms, wives, partners, sisters, aunties, you know, coworkers. CEOs, everything, right? So you build quite a few apps. I know you also I'm very curious about one app also. ⁓ we share a AI group and in the group I saw that you cloned a ⁓ I guess I can say the name, Whisperflow or build your own Whisperflow so you don't have to pay Whisperflow for twenty dollars. ⁓ how did you I mean w Why did you even think about building ⁓ cloning it or building a tool like that? Dictation tool. Yeah, well I my Whisperflow ⁓ subscription is ending. Okay. ⁓ so I like, you know, why don't we try to use COD for this, right? Like I've been reading so much about people building Similar tools, right? Almost like duplicates. And I thought, well, why don't I give it a go? And ⁓ I found this prompt from another community that I belonged to. And actually, this community founder ⁓ posts a lot on social media. And he, Marson AI, posted his prompt on on social media. And so I just copied it and did exactly what he did. And literally Within twenty minutes, I had my own version of Whisperflow. That's added fast. Yeah. Yeah. I I again like ja dropping. And then that I went into a rabbit hole and started cloning all my other favorite apps. Okay. Excellent. But I'm not using them actively. The the Whisperflow one I am definitely using actively every day. So yeah, my my Whisperflow subscription. I know there's free and I could definitely use the, you know, the free version of it, but ⁓ I'm just using my own and it's working pretty good. Awesome. That that's really cool. I don't use Whisperflow. I have an another app that I use for free with local LLM. But I did see your post and I was like, Hmm, maybe I should clone one too, but I didn't I'm still with the other tool that I use, ⁓ with local LLM. I'm tinkering with the idea of building one as well. Show you that I can show you my compt. ⁓ excellent. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So out of all the apps that you built, what is the app that you use most yourself? Ooh, okay. So I have been building an app called The Last Monday. ⁓ like the name. Yeah, yeah. Lovable came up with it. Excellent. And so I have ⁓ a friend who was using an Excel spreadsheet to count down to retirement. And I was like, that so I was I was in financial services, right? So, you know, we this is the stuff that we talk about like with colleagues. And and he was it kept counting down, like he just emulated ⁓ so that it would count down every day. And I was like, what a great idea. This was years ago. And I thought to myself, you know, like I've been hearing a lot more about like people wanting to retire and like this, you know, just l lots of conversations around it and me being in midlife, you know, you're obviously like exposed to more of these kind of conversations. I thought, well, why don't I make an app that's a retirement countdown calculator? So it's called The Last Monday. And I I think I started like four or five months ago, and you know, things you get busy, you start like doing other things. And so I've created a feature where it would email me every single day a retire a pre-retirement quote, encouraging you and ⁓ giving you like good feelings about, you know, retirement approaching and like really fun comments that ⁓ kind of help you in that ⁓ excitement that it's like it help you look forward to it even more. Cause sometimes people just retire and just I care people just retire without like, you know, fanfare or whatever, you know, just have and so if we could if this could be a a way for people to really look forward to really feel good about it, ⁓ and to think more about what the day after Monday would look like, like the first great Monday would look like. So ⁓ yeah, so I was getting the emails every single day and I was like, Okay, this is working out really well and everything, I gotta start adding Twilio for the for the text. And you know, that's that's now in my in my the current app ⁓ that I have not launched yet. But ⁓ so this is the one that I've probably been using the most, ⁓ just because I've been getting the daily emails. And I'm not even at retirement yet. Like I don't even have a date. Like, you know, five plus years, but ⁓ yeah. Are you gonna ⁓ publish it also live too or is it for only for your own use? Yeah, it's definitely ⁓ creating a way where it's gonna be monetized. ⁓ I'm just working on maybe two more features and then I'm going to launch it. And again, Nina, I should have built in public with this how what is going on. Like I've learned so many times how important that is. So I will definitely take a look at Pinterest now. Yes. ⁓ we can create a little accountability group because I gotta do that too. And it always helps if there's I had to report to somebody if I've done it or not. So Yeah, let's do that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think accountability is important. ⁓ when you're building alone, it's so easy to just build and build and build. ⁓ and e even I forget the marketing. It's like, ⁓ I'm just happy building here, but ⁓ you get you get So like happy and in your zone when you're building, it's like an it's just like it's it's an obsession in a good way, but it also like is not good because you're too in the weeds. Like it there really is other aspect about you know having an app. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I totally get about the obsession part. ⁓ I'm I'm guilty of that as well. How do you build your products? I mean, you come from financial services. I'm I doubt you weren't building too many products, thinking about branding or what a screen should look like. How did you learn to build products? Yeah, it was mostly through originally it was mostly through what I thought thought was a need. So because I really felt like I want to build something that is interesting to me, like for a solution that is interesting to me. And the more that, you know, you build and you learn, you know, what works and what doesn't work and what's making money, what's not making money, you you I learned that I gotta remove myself out of it. Yeah. I mean, yes, I can build for myself and use the tool for myself, but when it comes to monetizing, it really is about a solution for an ICP. I think that was the biggest thing is different ways to look at it. And my way is not necessarily the way that is going to be the most successful. If somebody's listening, because you build multiple things, multiple apps, different kinds of and use different tools. If somebody is now listening, it's like, could I do that? What would be your advice to the listener thinking about it? Yeah, I would say, you know, watch a couple of tutorials and pick the creators that have a lot of authority. Like maybe your favorite ones in the AI space or the in the vibe coding space. ⁓ and then just stick to the one or two creators and just start creating. Don't be a consumer, be a builder. Like just apply what you're learning almost in real time. Test it out and ⁓ play around with the tool, you know, maybe go back to the tutorial and apply, you know, the next, you know, learning or whatever. ⁓ but just start building because You can ⁓ you can learn a lot by building more so than by consuming tutorials. nowadays these tools are kind of helping you along the way. Like it is it has come to a point where it's offering you suggestions. And of course we want to stay in scope, but these suggestions are very helpful in ⁓ helping you test, helping you realize, well, maybe this is missing. And it and it's still in scope. ⁓ so just yeah, just start building. Yeah. No one else in Palace is here. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I agree as well. The faster you start building and creating, the faster you also like you can consume so much content on this space and AI in general that you'll never get out of it if you kinda go into that rabbit hole. Yeah. And that was my mistake early on too, is before I started ⁓ my business, ⁓ my AI coaching business, is that I was consuming so much tutorials, so much I I never felt I was ready. You know, I was consum maybe three or four months before I finally launched, I would say, you know, you y you could cut that time in half, you know, even even less. What do you think people get wrong or think wrong about AI and building with AI? Yeah, I think that A lot of people think that AI is like cheating, especially for women. You know, women want to do everything on their own. And I feel like AI is a tool to help you be more efficient, a tool to help you reach places, reach areas, reach experiences that you've that you thought you couldn't do before. It is a tool. It's not the hundred percent use tool. use it to like 80%, maybe even 70%, and always have human oversight. ⁓ I think people are thinking that, you know, they're just gonna copy and paste and that's that's not advisable. And so if you can overcome that, yes, it's built on on, you know, tons of training data, but it, you know, we could have gone to the library and consumed, you know, similar information for the outcome and the output that we wanted, but AI is just facilitating that at a faster rate. I don't think it's cheating. I feel like it's leverage. Yeah. That's a good way of putting it. Is there a what has been the most unexpected result out of your AI or upbuilding journey? Ooh, unexpected. I really love the in-person events. Where I'm known to be like an AI strategist, you know, a a builder. and there's not very many people in the room that look like me. ⁓ I feel like it's maybe flex is the wrong word, but it's great for representation. It's great for changing biases and stereotypes. ⁓ I I kind of I kind of feel like yes, there's some weight on my shoulders, but you know, representing, you know, you know, half of the demographics, right? But at the same time, I'm slowly changing stereotypes. ⁓ when people talk to me and, you know, learn my journey and learn that, you know, there's other women that are coming along in that journey. Like, you know, there's a whole community of us, just changing mindsets of people. I think has been such a great part and great rewarding part of of this journey. I agree. Totally. It's dri driving us, right? Like it's the partly like for us, but partly for like all the people that are coming behind us. Like it's Yeah. So if we have somebody listening here and they want to check out your apps, where can they find you online? Yeah. Well I ⁓ I have my website, ⁓ superpowers withai.com. ⁓ a lot of my information is on there. ⁓ skullchat.com is also ⁓ the personal board of AI directors. ⁓ but yeah, and then I will share my socials too because I'm hoping to talk more about ⁓ building in public. Thank you so much ⁓ for joining and telling your story. it's been really nice to hear from somebody who's built multiple apps. ⁓ a lot of my guests so far that it's gone published, they've only built one app. ⁓ so your journey is different and you used multiple tools, which is really, really good. So thank you very much for your time today. And ⁓ I can't wait to see what you'll build next. I can't wait to, Dina. Thank you so much. Well, one thing I really liked about this conversation was how open she was about the things that haven't worked. She built apps that people didn't really need. She launched an app only to have it to break when the first user arrived. And she learned that building the thing is only part of the job. You still have to figure out how to get people to actually use it. But she kept building and now she also teaches other women how to do the same. You'll find Elle, her apps and everything we talked about in the show notes. 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