Grockbot is here and there's a reason

why it's going viral. I mean, anyone

who's non-technical could spin up these

agent teams and actually run a business

end to end. Today's episode is for

anyone who's interested in starting a

business, running a business that is

completely run by AI agents. And we show

you not just big ideas that you can run,

small ideas that you can run using

Grockbot agent teams that do 2, 5, 10,

$25,000 a month. I had my friend on

Billy Howell come on the podcast and

show you exactly how he runs his local

newsletter business using Grockbot

agents. So, this episode is for anyone

who's interested in starting a business

that actually has agents running the

entire thing. We're going to show you

how to use Grockbot. We're going to show

you how to spin up these agents. We're

going to show you the best practices.

We're going to show you the business

ideas that work here. Enjoy the episode.

I'll see you at the end. and I can't

wait to see what you build.

[music]

>> Thank god Billy Howell is here. And

Billy, by the end of this episode, what

are people going to learn?

>> You're going to get an inside look at a

business that I built and run with

Grockbot. And you're going to come away

with how you can set up your own

business using Grockbot.

>> Okay. And

a little birdie told me that you think

Grockbot is like the best place that

anyone could run agent teams, right? So,

you're going to go through the best

practices of Grockbot, how you're using

it. You're a guy who literally tests

every single tool. You test hundreds of

tools to millions of people with the

rundown. You're going to show us how

Grockbot works. You're going to give us

the best practices. You're going to tell

us how we can use Grockbot to build

businesses and run Asian teams. And by

the end of the episode, can you commit

that the person that is going to give

their time to this episode have will

have a better understanding than anyone

on the internet to run a business with

Grockbot. Yeah, 100%. Because most of

the content I see around Grockbot is

wrong. They totally don't understand why

this tool is powerful. And I'm going to

just transmute all that information into

people's brains because I'm so excited

about this and it's all I think about.

All right, let's do it.

>> Okay, so Grockbot is this new agent team

tool. And if you haven't seen it, it

looks like this, Greg. Now, what we're

looking at here is the team that runs my

newsletter. My newsletter is called the

Arlington Bagel. You can see it here on

the hat. Pretty sweet. And it goes out

to 6,000 Arlingtonians

every Thursday. And I used to have an

intern, my cousin Marshall, run this

newsletter. He would research it. He

would put it together. He would edit it.

He would man the email desk. But cousin

Marshall, I had to let him go because

Grockbot is just so much better.

>> Sorry, Cousin Marshall.

>> What actually happened is he went to

work at a summer camp where they don't

have internet. So Grockbot kind of saved

me. And Greg, have you used Grockbot

yet?

>> I have.

>> Okay, cool. How many agents do you have

over here?

>> I have one, two, three, four, five, six.

>> Six. Okay. So, the best thing I think

about Grockpot is that you have a

limited amount of agents. And I did the

math on this and I think it's about

is 76 or 88 possible unique agents

because when you set them up,

you've only got this many shape and

color combinations.

And you can upload a custom avatar. But

the point is it it's all built around

constraints. And that's why it's so

useful for me. Uh because if you're like

me, you probably use lots of a agent

tools. You probably have lots of

business ideas. And

what that turns into is an agent for

every single task you think of a chat

GPT thread. You'll never come back to a

clog co-work project folder that sits

there until you remember about it two

weeks later. But what I like about

Grockbot is you are forced to be

missionoriented

because it's one thread, one bot. It's

DMs. It's like talking to a teammate.

And I actually think that design thing

is one of its best selling points. Color

and shape is all the human brain needs

to differentiate something. So you can

easily recognize all your different

little teammates here versus like a

grayed just like a gray thread in chat

GPT or Claude. It's just I find this

tool saves you so much on switching

costs and organization.

Um, so right off the bat, we're saving

time using this.

Am I sounding crazy here talking about

the design of the agency?

>> Well, you're not. I think like, you

know, a few weeks ago, the buzz was all

around Jack Dorsey's Buzz product, which

I think was such an interesting product,

but I think what, you know, I posted a

video about it and a lot of people were

just like, I don't I don't know how to

how to get this started. you know, it

was a lot of the technical people liked

it, but what it feels like is um

Grockbot is almost like a non-technical

version

uh of some of the features of Buzz. So,

if you're non-technical and you want an

agent team and you want this almost like

Slack-like experience,

um Grockbot is a good place to start.

Now, I think the big question that a lot

of people have is, and this is what I

want to get to by the end of this

episode, is you know, it's not cheap.

It's, you know, $200, $300 a month. Um,

you know, if Yeah. How can we Yeah. How

can we You have it right there. How can

we make Grockbot pay for itself? 5x,

10x, 20x, 50x. Um, where do we go?

>> Okay, Greg. Uh, you're not going to like

this, but you're going to have to pick

one project to work on with Grockbot.

>> Okay. So,

the problem that I found as someone who

uses lots of AI tools and builds lots of

business ideas is you can't you can't

you don't have enough tokens to build

four businesses as one at once. Uh

you're you're going to go into debt

paying for tokens. And even worse than

that, you're going to have context bleed

that's going to make all of your agents

less effective. So how Grockbot works is

these guys actually run on the cloud

which is different than a lot of agent

kind of team products that you use. Um I

don't

>> well they spin up a that's the

difference here right is they spin up

virtual machines for your agents

>> virtual machine they all live on one

computer in the cloud. M

>> I like pretty sure on that. I actually

hadn't

>> thought. Um

>> but why that's important is if I do my

newsletter in here and then I also do

like managing my Twitter and then also

I'm sorting receipts in my Gmail. That's

just going to add context bloat. That's

going to add files to trip them up. Uh

it it's going to slow you down and it's

going to ultimately burn tokens that go

towards your limit. Uh, I've noticed

that the Grockbot usage plan is pretty

generous. Uh, I think in the first week

I used it pretty heavily. Uh, but was

able to get through week one with like

10% of my usage left. And that's me

running one newsletter. So, Greg, like

imagine someone starting two new

businesses and managing their email.

you're gonna hit that limit and you're

gonna be like, "Well, I just set $200 on

fire and you're gonna be frustrated."

Uh, so you I I think you need to pick.

>> So, can you walk us through like, okay,

your cousin quits. Um, you need you need

to create an agent team. Like, walk us

through some of your agents, how people

could think about best practices,

setting them up, and and and just give

us the sauce.

>> Yeah, man. So, when you start, they give

you a bunch of preloaded agents that I

can't recreate here, but I like I picked

chief of staff from the list. And then

because I already had an existing

business, so if you have an existing

business, give it access to your

existing business docs and have it do

day one just like an audit research kind

of plan. So, I had it look at my notion,

my Slack, my Gmail, and I said, "Hey,

take stock of this business." And then I

need you to tell me the top three agents

that you suggest we create first for

this team to drive revenue. Right? Our

mission is to drive revenue. So what do

we need? And so my chief of staff went,

if we scroll back far enough, I can

probably find it. Um but that's probably

not worth doing. It kind of took it. So

it took a deep look at everything and it

said, "Okay, uh we're going to need a

research agent that researches the

newsletter items." So, it's a local

newsletter and we give you three things

to do every weekend and restaurant new

restaurant news, right? So, it was like,

we need a research agent. Um, we and

then chief of staff was like, I'm going

to edit it the first issue. We're not

going to do an editorial bot yet. So, we

just started with research sales and

then the newsletter goes through

Beehive. Uh so it suggested we have a

beehive expert agent that just anytime

we have a question about can we do this

in beehive like how does this look in

beehive stuff like that it goes to that.

So if your business is really dependent

on a platform say you want to set up a

Shopify store which is something we'll

talk about definitely having a Shopify

dedicated agent is a good idea just so

your chief of staff doesn't have to be

an expert in everything. So, is what I'm

hearing the first step is to set up a

chief of staff.

>> Set up a chief of staff. You need to

figure out how to get your team mission

aligned. And so, the mission of your

business should be to make money and

that's where you need to start. Have it

set up three teammates to start. Um, one

of the pitfalls I see people make is

having their agents make too many

decisions for them. Um, so for example,

I've been struggling with where does our

content live when we're writing the

newsletter. Does it live in a notion uh

database? Does it live in local files?

Do we have it in Google Sheets? Agent

hasn't been able to make a choice for 3

weeks. Uh, so finally I I was just like,

we're doing notion. No more tinkering.

Okay. So, for some reason, I think

that's just a rabbit hole people get

stuck in with AI is shopping around for

the perfect solution. So, at some point,

you're the person that has to make the

decision, not the agent. And so, then I

suggest once you build the team, just

run the damn ball. Run with that team

for a week and see what you can get

done. So, if you're starting fresh, use

that team to buy a domain, set up your

website, uh help you set up a new Gmail,

help you make your first sales list. So,

think about your chief of staff as as

the CEO of the business. CEO is not

going to run the be able to run the

business if it doesn't know how it

works. So, I'll give you an example. Say

you want to set up an outbound sales

agent for your newsletter and sell ad

space, sell ad space. Have your chief of

staff do that exact task once and then

once it does it and you've reviewed it

and it worked, be like, "Okay, now

create an outbound bot that does that

thing that you just did."

>> Yeah, it makes sense. Basically, you

have someone, you know, you you call a

chief of staff. I think of it more as

like a COO type person, like someone

running operations. And you're basically

saying like before you go ahead and go

crazy creating a bunch of new agents for

every single job to be done that you can

think of, the move is basically to

perfect it with the chief of staff or

the COO. Get it to a point where it

works. You're happy with the output.

Once the the output is pretty good, then

you're like, "Okay, I've earned the

right to create another agent that just

focuses on that." And then you give, you

know, I I would imagine it's important

to give that particular agent a goal as

well. So with the outbound agent, maybe

it's like you need to send x amount of

emails or you you know, we want y amount

of, you know, visits and stuff like

that. And then you know we haven't

talked about it but you know within

Grockbot there is the concept of um

essentially a cron job or a weekly you

know something that you can have it do

on a daily uh a routine I think it it's

called a routine on Grockbot where you

can have it uh automated right

>> yeah that's exactly that that's where I

was going to next so you don't have to

do it exactly like this but this is how

I did it I built the team we kind of

learned how to fly the plane. Uh, no

tinkering was the week two of running it

with Grock with Grockbot. Um, I didn't

allow myself to create any new agents,

not mess around with skills. I mean,

maybe add some connections, but it was

really about execution. And then week

three is when we expanded the team. So,

we found those gaps. So, okay, we need

someone manning the Gmail inbox because

chief of staff can't be doing that every

day. Uh we need someone manning the the

Shopify merch shop. Uh and then comes

automation. Um I mean you can do

automation at the top too after you

build the original team if you have a

good idea of how your business should

work. But basically what I did was I

said to my chief of staff bought in

here. I was like hey based on how we ran

this this week and our agent team what

are some routines we could set up to

make progress while I am not working on

this? So, I want you guys to move the

ball forward while I'm sleeping

automatically and you need routines for

that. Uh, so it put together a plan.

Most of these agents have depending on

their role

a daily or weekly or bi-weekly end of

day brief. So, those are that's a really

powerful tool with AI agents. Let me see

if I can pull one up.

So, it's got this instruction here and

it's routine. This is the social one. He

runs my he creates my graphics for

Instagram and runs the content calendar.

And so the instruction is to look at

your current to-dos,

what's new, like basically what did you

create today? What blockers do you have?

And then write a quick five line report

and send it to the chief of staff.

Um,

I think that you just five lines is all

you need. More than that is you're just

going to be burning tokens and context.

Uh, and then my chief of staff bot will

it'll be it'll pull up sh what's

shipped, what's stuck, and what needs

you. Uh, and so I told it this too. So

what's been done, what's blocked, and

what do I need to do to unblock.

>> That's awesome. And the reason why it

makes sense to have

multiple agents and not just giving the

chief of staff to do some of these tasks

is because you don't want to burn tokens

and you don't want to uh cloud up the

context. Is that right?

>> Yeah. Well, I mean, you need you need to

think about this like it's a real

business and like it's a real team. you

wouldn't have the the CEO or COO, let's

say, Greg, of a company, uh, going in

and making Instagram social posts every

day. Um, and like a real person, it

takes up mental bandwidth for that

agent.

>> Mhm.

>> And that's the idea. And you can click

in here and see it messaging other bots

and like asking it [clears throat] for

updates, which is pretty cool.

>> That is cool. I mean, that's like a

that's what's so cool about all this.

That's like a glimpse into like the

future of work where you have all these

agents kind of like messaging each

other, getting work done, coordinating

work together. Um, and then you're just

sitting there like kind of

updating

the the northstar and the metrics and

the goals and the context.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so mostly I

interface through this chief of staff

bot. But if I need to go deeper on

something, I I cut out the middleman

like you would at a real company. Uh I

would go right to the social person and

be like, "Hey, uh we need these

graphics." Like I I would give it

feedback and be like, "Can you change

the subtitles? Can you change the

background?" Just little edits like

that. Uh and then

you can tell it like, "Hey, when you're

done, uh update chief of staff when

we're done here." uh and it'll go report

back.

So the chief of staff kind of routes

tasks around

>> and theoretically, you know, you could

in the future create a so, you know,

bagel social strategist that's trained

on how like

Arag Eisenberg does his Instagram posts

and says that like pretend you're, you

know, Arag Eisenberg, here's some

context. Imagine he was reviewing these

posts. What would he say? and then feed

that context back to social bagel

social. Is that how you do it?

>> Yeah. Uh I've been lately having having

it do QA loops. Um

not so I haven't done it in Rockbot yet,

but in like Codeex, this is a general

agent pattern. So what Greg's talking

about is how do I automate feedback uh

for work product that agents create? And

there's this hack basically where you

say, "Okay, once you've done this once,

uh, create a a panel of sub agents for

Grockbot. It could be, you know, the

chief of staff or just other agents on

the team and have them do an adversarial

review of your work. Do that in three

rounds." And that has got that has made

me so much progress on stuff that

normally I would have to come back and

painstakingly review and critique. I get

a much more polish. It goes from like a

50% done

output to like 90% done.

>> Yeah. I mean, it also allows the human

to be less involved, which is helpful.

>> Yeah. So, to be less involved, but you

you really have to run you have to be in

the weeds with the team for a couple

days, a couple weeks before you can run

it autonomously. And you do that with

the routines like we said uh and you do

it with having agents review work that

you you teach them how to review like

you. So a useful thing could be so say

Greg like I gave all this feedback on

these posts that it did. I could say

okay take what we did in this thread and

turn it into a skill uh that another

agent can use when it's reviewing so it

reviews exactly like Billy, right? And

that's exactly what you would do.

>> And so if you want to see do you want to

see how the newsletter actually works?

Do you do you want to talk about like

the business case?

>> Yeah, I think Yeah, absolutely.

>> Okay. So

>> I do I do because I think that

there's thousands of potential

newsletter businesses that could be

built and run with Grockbot.

>> Yeah, thousands for sure.

So this is this is a local newsletter.

Um, but I've run newsletters in tech and

sports for different clients and

basically all you need to get started is

a niche and where to get the best

information to to put in the newsletter,

right? So, if you're really into I I

don't know, board games and you know all

the best board game subreddits and the

best board game review sites and and

message boards, then you can make a

newsletter where you aggregate and

editorialize

about new board games uh every week,

right? And so what you would do is you

would get a Beehive account. Mine runs

all through Beehive. Uh, I like to use

Notion for laying out my newsletter. And

you can connect Grockbot to it.

It's really easy. By the way, Grockbot

does connections way better

than any other agents.

>> I think it it it's called plugins,

right, on Grockbot.

>> It is called plugins. That's true. Okay.

So, this is a look at my

newsletter in notion.

And so in Grockbot,

so sometimes, this is a pro tip, if you

don't see a plugin that you want to use

or if for example you want to do

Shopify,

Shopify can it it can like the built-in

Grockbot

integration or plugin

just is skills for using Shopify.

It can't actually do anything in your

store. So you'd have to install the

Shopify CLI. And so to do that, I would

just say, "Hey, set up this command line

tool and it can use that on its own

computer here that you can view at any

time."

>> And that's because Shopify has a CLI,

right?

>> Yes. Yeah. But it's pretty intelligent.

If you want to connect something, it'll

just create like a card in the chat and

be like, "Okay, here's where you put

your API key or click this to go sign in

with OOTH." It's it's like really easy

to use, very low friction.

Okay, so basically

what you would do for creating a

newsletter with Grockbot is you would

make a list of your sources in can be a

Google sheet, it can be a notion and

then you have your research bot go out

and look. So I do mine twice a week. uh

we send once a week on Thursdays and I

tell it to go look and then uh it fills

in these cards in notion with okay this

this is a new restaurant story um here's

when we should publish it here's a short

summary

and then if it's an event

here's when they're showing Shrek it'll

look like this and I have it set up so

then when I move it to process uh

there's make.com automation that writes

like the actual blurb for my newsletter

how I want it. Uh, which is a little

advanced, but you can have Grockbot

write the actual like news item for you

like in the page in notion.

>> Yeah. Like why why even have a make.com

automation?

>> Uh, so this is like a big agent thing in

general is

once you've got a workflow that's

working for you, you want to get rid of

all the ambiguity. Uh, so I could have

Grockbot write the blurbs every week and

it does a really good job. Uh, but it I

if the model changes or I don't know,

just depending on how the bots's

feeling, it might write them differently

because that's just how it is. They're a

black box. And so if you're running

something business critical, you want to

automate it as much as you can. And that

also frees up tokens for you to do more

building with Grockbot, right? So you

want to you want to build, you want to

execute, and then and then automate. Um,

so when but you can have Grockbot

automate stuff. So I can and Greg,

you're right. I can do a good job having

it make an SOP and I can say, okay,

every time you write an article, a news

story, run this script that formats it

exactly how I want. And Grockbot can run

a script on its computer every time. Uh,

so you could do it that way. And it's

just I don't know you can do more volume

on make.com with like an open AI key for

little widget tasks like that.

>> So it's a cost thing.

>> It is. Yeah. So like with the scale of a

newsletter, I could I could waste

Grockbot tokens uh writing news stories

on

say like 200 potential news stories. Uh,

or I could have Grockbot filter out and

just keep the best ones and then have my

make.com chattbpt automation write the

little two sentence blurb. I don't want

to waste It's like a real employee. If

you have a high performing employee, I

don't want to waste it writing little

two sentence summaries uh over

like every week for for a hundred items

that I may or may not use. But again, I

got here because I stood up the process

and did it manually with Crockbot first.

I had it writing those blurbs every

week. And I can give you an example. I

keep saying blurbs, but this is what

these events bas that it finds basically

turn into. Uh, and they're formatted the

same every week. There's like emoji, uh,

event title,

the time, and then a summary. That's the

part that I use OpenAI for, but Grockbot

can do it.

>> Um, okay. And then sales. So, Grockbot

actually found me a sponsor this week.

Uh, and it's because I connected it to

my Gmail and had it just monitor for

inbound. And there was something I

missed like last week with a local

actually bagel shop owner reached out

and

he actually invited me and my wife and

we went over there this morning and he

gave us free bagels and we're talking

about him sponsoring and that's because

Grockbot found it and was like, "Hey,

you should follow up and you should

pitch him on this exact ad slot." And

that's because I set up this outbound or

uh this inbox monitor and this uh sales

agent. And the sales agent, what you

have to do when you're setting up the

business is, okay, I need you to set up

and price everything that we sell. Uh

and so in this case, it looked at what

ad slots we had and how they were

priced, and then it updated them based

on the market and the growth of the

newsletter. Uh, and it made a sales

sheet that we could show this local

business.

>> That's awesome. That seems like a

nobrainer. So, um, I'm just thinking

about myself. It's like I should have

like let's say I have any media, you

know, any media property should have

like an email, I guess, right? And we

should have like for for sponsorships

opportunities, reach out to sponsorships

at whatever. And then basically what

you're saying is you have Grockbot

monitoring that inbox, pricing things

out, sending messages. Um, and then does

that go to your chief of staff

eventually that reviews it or it just

goes like how does the flow work?

>> Yeah, it goes to the chief of staff. The

salesbot will say, "Hey, chief of staff,

we we're looking at uh this

potential sponsor. Does this email

outbound message make sense?" And right

now the chief of staff runs all of those

by me. And so I'm kind of being like,

"Okay, put this in Gmail and I'll edit

it and send it." Uh, and then the idea

is it'll just improve over time as I

give feedback. I

for something like this, Greg, I believe

with cold email, it's quality over

quantity for especially a local

newsletter. So it that's the thing

that's worth your time to make little

tweaks to. And

the beauty of Grockbot is it kills that

writer's block for starting that

outbound message. And so here's the

trick. If you're new to doing this kind

of outbound outreach for your business,

even with AI,

you don't want to boil the ocean. So,

you don't want to make a sales bot and

say, you know, get me every car

dealership in the state of New York and

write a message to every sales agent

there and set up three subdomains so

that my email stays uh not in spam,

right? What you should do is set up an

automation that goes on Monday that

goes, okay, your job is to add five

prospects to our list and then on

Monday, okay, pick the top three

prospects and create an ad package

custom to them and draft an outbound

email and then send it to chief of

staff. And you'll make more progress

doing that, I promise you, than doing

200 outbound emails at a time. What

about ideas for the agents? So, one of

one of my

one of my Grockbot agents is just an

idea agent and his his role is to come

up with ideas for my other agents like

creative ideas because I don't want to

be this the person always prompting my

agents to come up with ideas. like how

how do you think about that

>> for for business ideas or

>> like I specific ideas for agents? So for

example like

>> um yeah like for uh the social for

example bagel social it's like

>> you know you I think what makes humans

amazing is like we're at least creative

humans are going to be like coming up

with new ideas always trying to push it

forward like you know culture changes

therefore like you know you move social

content based on where culture is going

and I find that agents you know one of

the reasons why AI slop is a thing is

it's it if it's under the same loop, it

just kind of follows the same loop and

you end up getting like creative and you

get product that kind of looks the same.

So my question for you is do you have

any ideas around using Grockbot

to come up with creative ideas? My

example is I actually went and asked it

to create an idea idea generator and it

works with my other agents.

>> Yeah. So, how do we keep it how do we

keep the Grockbot agents out of the loop

of

not not improving, right?

>> How do we introduce new ideas?

>> Um, I don't, Greg, really. Like, I Why I

like Rockbot and how I use it is I only

add an agent if we really like need it.

I just I'm so anti idea creep and agent

creep because that's how you burn

tokens. That's how you spin your wheels.

That's how you don't make pro progress.

Um,

you can do what I did at the beginning,

that chief of staff audit. You can run

it regularly and say, "Hey, look at how

we worked this week.

>> What agents can we add? What can we

remove? Um, what should we turn into a

routine or a skill?" Uh, you can do that

kind of automated improvement, but no, I

don't I don't have a good solution for

that.

>> Well, you're you're you're basically

saying like, "Let the agents cook. Let

the and and basically don't like it

sounds like what you're saying is and

you've been consistent in sense like

don't create a lot of agents. Create a

small amount of agents that focus on

high quality, high value work. Uh make

sure that it it it meets your bar. Have

a chief of staff manage these agents,

but only create an agent if it is

missionritical.

Correct. Yeah. And that's exactly how

you should talk to your chief of staff

who manages your team.

>> What else haven't we covered around

Grockbot that people need to know about?

>> Well, we talked about the computer a

little bit, but it can access files on

your computer.

So,

I'm not sure how you I think I think it

asked permission like one time and then

it's allowed to. Um, you can get it on

your phone and then it can run either on

this computer or if the app is open and

your your laptop's on, it can do stuff

on your computer.

Um, I would say my main takeaway from

that is like don't go against the grain.

So, Grockbot works well on its computer

and it can read stuff on yours, but I

find myself falling into this trap of

okay, you know, generate a report and

then put it on my desktop and then put

it in notion. Uh, so and I I don't know

if other people are like this, but you

end up just working on the system more

than the actual output. So I'm kind of

like I tell my agents like, okay, work

create stuff on your computer and then

when it's done, send it to me in chat

and

put it in notion.

Not like when it's done, like after I've

reviewed it. Um, that way you don't have

to be like, "Hey, that thing we were

working on yesterday, like where is it?

Is it is it on your computer? Is it on

my computer? Is it in the cloud?" Right?

You're you're just creating problems for

yourself.

>> So, I think a lot of people are going to

watch, listen to this, and really like

the whole agent team idea is going to

click in their heads.

>> Yes.

>> Um, I think that there's tons of

different business ideas that you can

build on top of this. You know, one of

them is local newsletters.

What else could people be building?

>> Anytime of new any type of newsletter

doesn't need to be local. Uh probably

would be easier not uh to get the ball

rolling on one that's not local. That's

a whole different can of worms. Um,

Shopify. I'm I've got a diff a separate

Grockbot account that I pay the $200 for

because I'm so crazy about keeping the

contact separate and it's just Shopify.

And so I'm training it to be uh to use

the Shopify developer tools and to

source products. I have a sourcing

agent, a developer agent, and like an

email agent right now. Um, and I'm still

setting those up, but Crockbot does an

outstanding job of researching products,

sourcing products. Uh, and so I'll just

I what I would do is say I have an idea

for this product. Um, I have I really

like this company and its product. I

want to do something that's in in the

same category, uh, similar price point.

and it knew to go look at Import Yeti,

which like can just look at people's

Shopifies and tell you like exactly what

they're sourcing and like what their

margins are. It did that on its own. I I

was kind of blown away and it made these

reports on each product idea and was

like, "Here's my recommendation." Always

ask for recommendations, by the way.

here. Like my bulletproof system for

testing business ideas with Crockbot is

I want to do this, this, or this. So,

I've got three ideas. Maybe they're

similar, maybe they're different. Go

research each of them, figure out how I

can price it, what the cost is going to

be, and then give me your top three

recommendations on how to do the damn

thing. And it just works. uh you it your

task should not be open-ended when

you're doing research or you're just

going to end up doing research for two

weeks.

>> That's fair. Okay. So, you think I mean

you think Shopify that there's still

opportunity in in finding products,

finding audiences for those products and

then having agent teams manage that

whole process. That's,

you know, that's interesting because

like a, you know, on on this podcast we

talk a lot about like digital products,

SAS, vertical, AI,

um, not so much on the Shopify side. So,

it it is it's just interesting. Yeah, I

I'm not like an ecom expert. This is an

experiment uh I'm working on, but I

think it's nice to work on something

physical because the cost of creating

digital things is going to zero. there's

no friction there.

>> Uh actually making something physical uh

a brand that you can just like build

over time. I think that I think that's a

smart thing to do.

>> And over here I see you have site

builder stack. What do you mean by that?

>> Yeah. So I I just have an agent uh on my

other account that has this simple stack

of Cloudflare um the CLI tools. Uh

Porkbun is where I buy domains. So it

can log into that on its computer and

buy a domain. Um, and then I use this

thing called Astro for for it's a

framework for creating static sites and

it's connected to my GitHub. And so

basically like I needed I needed a link

for people to book meetings with me. Uh,

and I didn't want to pay for Calendarly.

So I said I got it set up on this stack

and I said go embed my three different

Google calendars on this. And I was

literally sitting on the phone on the

beach and it would send me, okay, here's

a mockup of this. And I would tell it,

okay, make another branch and do a

mockup in this style and it would come

back and through Cloudflare, it would

have separate developer links that I

could review the different styles in.

And then when I said, "Okay, I like that

one." It connected it to the domain that

I owned. Uh, and it went live all from

the beach. And I set that up in 2 or 3

hours. that that that stack uh and I'll

probably use it for a long time just for

simple I need something to exist on the

internet. It doesn't need to be perfect

or pretty.

>> So is you know is that just like

internal tools building internal tools

or is there an opportunity to build some

of these tools and sell it to other

businesses?

>> Yeah. So what I would use this for is

landing pages. So yeah, it's kind of an

internal tool. If I want to sell say a

local business on being a sponsor, I

could just say, "Hey, um, you know, make

a landing page that speaks directly to

this customer or directories." Uh, so

Astro specifically is really good at

directories. So if you if you're

interested in the SEO game,

just drew through that. This is the

stack for testing and iterating.

And I would just have a research agent

that adds to the directory. So if you

want to make a directory of pickle ball

equipment, I would set up a coding agent

that uses this stack and a research

agent. And every day the research agent

investigates a new brand and writes a

great page on that brand as markdown and

then it hands it to the engineer who

posts it. Um, then you would, you know,

set up an agent that collects referral

links and does outbound to get to get

deals once you have the traffic. Uh, and

you could rinse and repeat that if

you're interested in doing kind of the

SEO directory game.

>> Yeah. So, I've done a few episodes on

directories in the past. I'll include

the latest one uh with my friend Frey

who does a good job of kind of

explaining why directories matter, how

it's a good like 10k, 25k, 100k a month

business. Um you know what is a

directory? It it's basically just

curated data on a website. So it's

you're picking a topic and you're like

here's the best xyz in this topic. And

in an AI world, we actually need

directories more than ever because um

there's just too much information. So

when it's curated,

uh it's helpful. Also, the whole like

SEO game is changing right now. Like

what's being, you know, like people are

going to chat GBT and they're going to

Google AI overviews

um to actually get, you know, con to

consume content and they need platforms

like that need directories. So I think

using Grockbot as the basis for your

directory is absolutely brilliant. And

the be beautiful thing about a directory

is it's a once you build a strong

directory it's a foundation and you're

getting thousands of visits a month

let's say and then you could say you

know what I want to build a Shopify

store. Actually you know what I want to

build a newsletter. Oh you know what I

actually want to build a SAS or you know

what I want to build a mobile app. So,

it's actually a really good place for

people to start.

>> Yeah. And the cool thing about a

directory is it ties in with this. Not a

local newsletter, but niche newsletter.

So, say we're doing that board game

idea. You could have it built out like

board games that are good for for

parties could be your niche directory.

And you could have a newsletter that

talks about that, too. Uh you could have

this on a sub subdomain or a different

domain than your newsletter. and uh they

tie into each other. So you can monetize

uh by linking people to the directory

and have a referral link there. Uh you

could do those warm leads from those

referral links could become sponsors in

your actual newsletter. Uh the I think

the the lowest barrier to entry with

Grockbot to start a business is probably

newsletter and then directory. I think

that stack goes together really nice.

>> Beautiful. All right. I think uh I think

we covered what we wanted to cover. Is

there anything anything else you want to

leave people with?

>> Yeah. Um I would do this try this for a

month. Set up Grockbot for one project

and uh run it like a real team like we

went over and

let us like let me know like tweet at me

like did you make progress doing this? I

I like this is your sign to pick

something that you've been thinking

about and pursue it aggressively versus

trying a new tool and researching ideas

for 4 weeks. Uh so do this. Build a

Spotify or newsletter or a directory uh

with Grockbot and I think you'll see

what I mean. This I haven't been excited

about a tool like this um

maybe like all year. Maybe this is my

favorite this year. Um

Yeah. So, tweet at me.

>> What's so interesting about this tool is

we've seen glimpse of this in other

tools, but nothing has been as simple

and has just like worked as well as

Grockbot. So, it's really fun. Also,

like the value that you can actually

create is massive. And I'm glad that

during this episode we covered it wasn't

just about the big ideas, right? These

are like little ideas that you can start

today that anyone can do and who knows

where that goes. Yeah, maybe that turns

into a big idea. Um I'm sure when Rowan

was starting the rundown, he didn't, you

know, think it was going to get to

millions of subscribers uh on his on his

newsletter worth millions of dollars.

So, you know, you start small, you

automate what you can, you keep it, you

a few agents. I love your I love your

framework. build team week one, execute,

no tinkering, week two, week three,

hire, fire, week four, automate. Um, and

uh, and do it with one business and and

just keep iterating and creating value

for customers. I love it. Billy, thank

you for coming on. I'll include links

for where to follow Billy in the show

notes, in the description. And I want to

hear and Billy wants to hear what you

know what you think of Grockbot. So, in

the comment section, please let us know.

I read every single comment and I and I

and I reply to most. So, let would love

would love to see you there. And uh

thanks again, Billy. You're a legend.

>> Thanks, Greg. It's been a blast.