Another busy week with a lot happening and nothing happening at the same time.

Underestimated timelines and over delivering for potential clients.

Topics for this week:

• Schedule Iterations

• Double Business

• Yesterday’s Weather

• ChatGPT Tasks

• New and Returning Guests

Schedule Iterations

It does not feel like it’s only been 2 weeks of working a 9-5ish schedule, it feels much longer.

It’s been working well though, trying to run 2 businesses at the same time.

It’s a bit like multi-threading, switching back and forth between each process.

Admittedly I did break the schedule some this week though.

There were a few times where I was on a roll with app development or getting an automation flow to work when I’d need to switch to the other project or try to get a workout in and completely break the zone I was in.

It’s not a perfect schedule yet, but it’s progress for sure.

I think prioritizing a workout in the early afternoon needs remain a staple.

If the highest priority is to stay alive to be able to work, then working out should be the cornerstone of the schedule.

So workout early afternoon needs to stay, but I may rearrange the blocks.

Rather than 2 different 2 hour blocks in the morning before working out, a nice 4 hour block may be the one that makes more sense, then a shorter block in the afternoon for whatever I didn’t do in the morning.

At this point though, I’m sticking with the new focus on doing instead of thinking.

Try it out, see what works, and continue that theme of iteration this year.

More schedule changes to come.

Double Business

Two main goals I’m bouncing back and forth between at the moment, which is the reason for all the scheduling talk.

Divs Design has a major project right now building a mobile app, which is nearing the final stages of an MVP.

I’ll be excited to share more once it’s in a place to properly share, and I have the OK to talk about it from the founder.

At the same time I’m ramping up the Automation Agency, trying to build a foundation of productized templates that would automate valuable business processes.

So far I have a solid AI Proposal Generator system thanks to Nick Saraev:

And I’m working on an email responding system for booked appointments next.

Basically I’m trying to go through the flow that I know from having had a business few clients and identify automations that I know I would use, so I’m sure that other businesses would be interested in using as well.

The goal is to have at least 5 automations ready to build for others, then it’s time to find clients.

Looking forward to unveiling the Automation Agency once it’s good to go, but I’m going to hold off until it’s ready.

Yesterday’s Weather

A friend and I wanted to dip our toes into app development at one point in the past so we decided we’d build some dumb apps to practice.

Our first winning idea was Yesterday’s Weather.

We had looked at a few weather apps and determined that most don’t give you the weather from the day before, only future forecasts.

Clearly this was a huge problem that Yesterday’s Weather could solve.

Flutter was a relatively new project at the time that intended to make developing an app for the Web, iPhone, Android and Desktop with one project a much easier thing to do so we decided to try building the app with Flutter.

After a few days of learning Flutter syntax and fighting with massive nests of parenthesis, we had a one page app that showed you yesterday’s high and low.

It was valuable experience getting on the Google Play Store, but not the most enjoyable.

I was not impressed with Flutter’s syntax, it was too hard to read with parentheses inside of parentheses, inside of parentheses, forever and ever.

With that in mind for the next app foray, the first version of Hype Bid, I opted for React Native and Expo to build and test locally on my own phone, which was a way smoother experience.

I was still learning React Native at the time, though which was a real source of resistance, and when it came time to compile the app into something I could install on my phone, not just access through wifi with Expo, creating a build was a painful experience as well, managing all the various dependencies and finally successfully creating an .apk file.

Fast forward to the app I’m currently working on, I ended up choosing React Native again since I haven’t given Flutter a second chance yet (I’ve heard good things about it lately) and both projects seem to be about even in their pros and cons for cross compiling apps.

But this time around, building an app has been surprisingly smooth thanks to AI and Expo’s EAS.

Cursor and Claude Sonnet 3.5 have made generating and managing React Native components so much easier, and so much more capable than I would have been on my own, not only creating the elements I need, but adding stylized animations and interactions effortless when it normally would have taken hours to figure out how to properly configure.

On top of that, Expo has leveled up their game and now offers Expo Application Services where they build the project for you in the cloud and produce the files you need to submit your app to the App Store and Google Play Store, completely eliminating the hassle of setting up your local machine to correctly compile with all the necessary dependencies.

I actually created an installable test version of the app while writing this newsletter, running the command below and checking later for a link to the downloadable app.

eas build -p android --profile preview

My first foray into app development made me a little leery of the process, but this most recent project has changed my mind.

The app development process has improved unbelievably since Yesterday’s Weather.

ChatGPT Tasks

Common advice for AI startups is to avoid building around missing features in something like ChatGPT because chances are, OpenAI already knows what’s missing and will release that feature eventually.

One such feature was scheduling tasks.

GPT didn’t have a way to schedule and trigger anything on it’s own so it required outside sources to handle the timing and call GPT when it was time for that thing to happen.

I debated building something like an accountability coach app that would do just that, but I’m glad I didn’t because OpenAI has already taken care of it.

This week they introduced tasks for ChatGPT:

It’s subtle, but could be a really powerful feature.

Automated systems don’t forget things like people often do.

And now there’s something that can interpret complex tasks and schedule them to automatically happen.

You could build your own accountability system in the app by providing a prompt with the context of what you’re trying to accomplish, then set a task to remind or motivate you toward that goal every day in more creative and inspiring ways other than “9:00 AM - Work on Project”.

I haven’t tried it yet, but if it can update the task on the fly, it could easily be a system that tracks your progress and gives advice based on your daily input.

Really fancy routines would probably still require additional integrations, like reading all your chats and emails from the night before and providing a briefing of what you need to deal with the next day, but I’m sure that kind of capability isn’t far off.

In the meantime, Tasks in GPT are one step closer to having Iron Man’s Jarvis on your phone.

New and Returning Guests

I haven’t completely given up on consuming way too many podcasts but I certainly have cut back on what used to be a normal amount for me.

This week, 2 significant podcasts released that I made sure fit into my routine, though.

First was Alex Hormozi reappearing on Tom Bilyeu’s podcast, Impact Theory.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first time Alex was on Tom’s podcast and was thinking it had been a while since he’d been back on.

That first episode really inspired me to have a different perspective on business and sales and helped me understand one way to build something successful.

Plus it seemed like they both were enjoying the conversation which makes it more entertaining.

This second episode is much the same, they both excitedly continued their conversations about business and how to help make sure that others can be successful in business too.

It’s a 2 hour conversation but there are some gems in there worth hearing:

The second from this week was Tony Robbins on Chris Williamson’s podcast.

Chris has a huge guest list of big names at this point and Tony Robbins is a staple in the self improvement world, so it was great to hear them discuss ways to pre-frame, re-frame, and de-frame aspects of your life to get to where you want to go.

Tony is a powerful speaker who I’ve referenced a few times in this newsletter, and I regularly refer to Chris’s podcast, so naturally this was one that I was going to prioritize.

It made was the perfect sound track for a chest day at the gym.

On the shorter side, less than an hour and half! But worth the time if you have it:

And that’s it for this week! App development, automation, AI and motivation. Couldn’t ask for more.

Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I personally worked on.

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