In this episode of Channel 4, the Open Tabs series, Bob Dunn and Adam Weeks tackle the complexities of managing digital workflows and business processes in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. The discussion centers around real challenges like handling multiple email accounts, choosing and using CRM systems, and dealing with concerns about AI integration and software lock-in.
Drawing from hands-on experiences including working with YouTuber Tony Florida, they share the ups and downs of keeping track of clients, sponsors, and communications. The hosts also discuss when it’s best to embrace new tools like Slack, Claude, or custom-built CRMs, and when a simple notebook still does the trick.
As they look ahead to topics like WordPress, open source, and the role of AI, they invite listeners to reflect on the best ways to stay organized and productive.
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Takeaways
Managing Business Growth Requires Better Tools: Adam discussed helping his friend Tony, a YouTuber, grow his business from solo management by email to thinking about more robust organizational tools like a CRM and communication hubs such as Slack or Discord. The challenge lies in maintaining efficiency as the business complexity grows 01:00.
Software Lock-In is a Concern: Both Adam and Bob expressed hesitation about adopting large SaaS solutions (like Notion, Figma, or CRMs) due to fears of data lock-in and uncertainty around long-term viability, especially as technology and AI tools evolve rapidly 05:25.
CRMs Are Only as Good as Their Usage: The value of CRMs or organizational systems comes from consistent use. If information isn’t systematically entered or kept up-to-date, the tool becomes ineffective, no matter how powerful it is 07:44.
AI and Automation Offer Both Promise and Complexity: Adam highlighted experimenting with AI integrations, like Claude and granola.ai, to consolidate communication and automate processes. While powerful, these tools present complexity, new dependencies, and ongoing learning curves 08:32.
Spreadsheets and Simpler Solutions Still Hold Value: Even as they discussed advanced tools, Adam noted the continued value—and limitations—of using basic tools like spreadsheets, recognizing that AI struggles to update and manage them efficiently without human upkeep 15:01.
Custom Solutions Are Becoming More Accessible: Adam’s work with Blue Vineyard showed that building custom CRMs is now more feasible, especially with AI, although it’s not practical for everyone. Having a developer available provides greater flexibility and solves unique workflow needs 17:22.
Not Everything Needs High-Tech Solutions: Bob frequently turns to pen-and-paper for task tracking and sponsor management, emphasizing that sometimes simple, analog solutions are best for quick notes and memory aids, especially to avoid overcomplicating workflows 22:21.
Learning New Tools is a Balancing Act: Both Adam and Bob acknowledged the pressure to try new technology and methods but stress the importance of balancing innovation with practical usefulness. They aim to avoid change for its own sake and stick with what’s effective for their unique needs 26:45.
Open Source in the AI Age is an Ongoing Conversation: Adam previewed a forthcoming discussion focused on the intersection of WordPress, open source, and artificial intelligence, noting the shifting landscape, importance of open licenses, and the economics of code written or aided by AI 28:04.
Questions This Episode Answers
Q: How can solo YouTubers manage sponsor relationships without missing important emails?
A: Adam Weeks discussed the challenge of managing sponsor communications via email, especially as the business grows. He suggested considering tools like CRMs or even integrating communication into platforms like Slack, while acknowledging the risk of missing emails and the responsibility that comes with being a single point of contact for sponsorships 04:19.
Q: What are the downsides of getting locked into one business software ecosystem?
A: Both Adam Weeks and Bob Dunn expressed caution about large software lock-in, like with CRMs or productivity suites. They worried that once a business relies heavily on a particular platform, it becomes difficult and potentially expensive to switch later, especially as needs or technologies change 05:28 07:12.
Q: Are Slack and similar tools essential for organizing small team or client communications in 2026?
A: Adam Weeks observed that Slack feels almost like a required tool for professional communication today, although he questioned if that’s really true for everyone. He explained how integrations with AI tools like Claude can extend its usefulness beyond just messaging, but noted that using any tool consistently is key 08:25.
Q: How are AI tools being used to help manage and summarize work communications?
A: Adam Weeks described using Claude, an AI tool, to access and summarize information from his Slack channels, emails, and even note-taking apps like Granola. This helps reduce manual tracking and allows for more automated organization and follow-up 08:47.
Q: What are some simple alternatives to complicated organizational tools for keeping track of tasks or information?
A: Bob Dunn shared that despite technological solutions, he still often writes notes in physical notebooks or on whiteboards for immediate reminders and ad sequencing. Both hosts admitted that sometimes low-tech solutions are the simplest and most effective, as they don’t require batteries, logins, or subscriptions 22:06.
Q: How do you decide if you really need a CRM or advanced organizational software?
A: The conversation highlighted that the necessity of a CRM depends on the size and complexity of a business. Bob Dunn mentioned he’s been able to manage with simple systems because he has only a few sponsors or clients, while Adam Weeks said advanced tools only provide value if used consistently and are often overkill for very small operations 18:31.
Q: Are custom CRMs worth building or should you use ready-made solutions?
A: Adam Weeks discussed working with an agency that built its own custom CRM, appreciating the flexibility to tailor it directly to their workflow. While this approach can be effective, he acknowledged it’s not feasible for everyone, though AI tooling is making custom solutions more accessible 17:22.
Q: How do professionals balance trying new organizational tools with sticking to familiar systems?
A: Both speakers reflected on the tension between exploring innovations and staying with methods that work. Adam Weeks emphasized the importance of not adopting new tools just for novelty’s sake, while Bob Dunn admitted he sometimes spends more time debating a switch than would be required to stick with his existing system 25:40 26:45.
Mentioned Links and Resource
- Tony Teaches Tech (YouTube Channel by Tony Florida) – Adam mentions Tony’s channel focused on owning your own data and tech how-tos.
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/@TonyTeachesTech - ClickUp (Productivity and Project Management Platform) – Used by Bob as an organizational tool, though not fully for CRM tasks.
🔗 https://clickup.com/ - Castmagic (Podcast Audio Automation Tool) – Utilized by Bob to transcribe podcast audio, generate notes, and streamline WordPress posting.
🔗 https://www.castmagic.io/
Timestamped Overview
- 00:00 Managing multiple email accounts
- 03:45 Discussing client management tools
- 09:13 Using Granola app for note-taking
- 10:45 Trying out new tech tools
- 14:38 Trying Slack and AI Integration
- 18:51 WordPress, AI, and Open Source
- 23:08 Considering AI for CRM tasks
- 25:55 Learning to Use a Teleprompter
- 27:57 WordPress and open source with AI
Episode Transcript
Bob Dunn:
Hey, Bob Dunn. We’re here at Channel 4 and continuing our OpenTab series. Today I have joining me one of our hosts on the podcast. You’ve heard him a lot, I’m sure. Adam, welcome.
Adam Weeks:
Hey, Bob. Oh, it’s so good to be here. It’s been too long since we have spoken. Any, any time apart from you is too long.
Bob Dunn:
I’m not sure if— I’ll have to think about that. I hope that’s not your open tab.
Adam Weeks:
No, it’s an open tab in my brain. Like, I haven’t talked to Bob for a while. Like, that’s— yeah. So now I get to close the tab talking to Bob.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah. Okay, cool. But I know you do probably actually have an open tab. You want to tell us about it?
Adam Weeks:
I have so many open tabs right now. The specific one that I would love to talk about is, all right, we’re here in August of 2026, and a good friend of mine is a YouTuber, and he is trying to turn his YouTube business into a proper business, not only doing everything by himself. And when you think about sales and it’s just you, you know, really he’s kind of like people come to him, they email him.
Bob Dunn:
I’ll—
Adam Weeks:
I can drop his name. I’ll drop his name. Tony Florida. He’s, uh, has done a lot of stuff in, in WordPress. He’s actually expanding out to, uh, he loves this idea of where like owning your own data. And he’s gonna be doing like a series on like how to get rid of Google Photos, uh, where you can have your own hardware. And I think it’s a really interesting topic. That’s kind of his niche. He’s just sort of passionate about owning your data and how your physical hardware and some of those things. So he’s taking this channel in that direction. Brilliant guy. Look up, look up Tony Florida, Tony Teaches Tech. But we were talking about, hey, right now we’re managing everything via email. And so he will get an email from someone who is interested in sponsoring his channel. He will then make an introduction for me and he CCs me on that. And between that and like texting, that’s how we’re keeping track of, of these engagements. And when it’s only a few here and there, sure, email is fine. But one of my big fears is, you know, this is his business and if I am the blocker for him getting that business, that’s a responsibility that I feel. And I don’t want to— oh, no, I missed an email because we all— are you an inbox zero, Bob? Are you really good about your inbox?
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, I don’t get a lot of email, or I don’t deal with a lot of email, which is— I’m thankful. So it’s easy for me to get down to zero inbox.
Adam Weeks:
Bob, when I’m older, I want to be just like you when I grow up because I have so many email addresses. I have my personal, I have my work. Because I do contract work, I’m often brought in. Like this last week, I just got added another Google Workspace. I’m like, oh my goodness, like how do I, you know, keep track of all of these? I’d love for anybody, if anybody has a good suggestion on how to keep track of like 7 different Google Workspace accounts, I would love to hear your suggestion. Yeah. But so Tony, we’ve been working together for a while. I don’t wanna lose track. And I said like, hey, do you have like a CRM? Have you thought about a way to keep track of this? And he’s like, you know, I just never have. I’ve always just done email and, you know, that’s been the work. And we’re also talking about, hey, what if we were to do some, you know, longer-term work with a client and it’s a, if it’s a one-off video, like, yeah, you, you do the video and you’re done. But if they’re gonna be a channel sponsor, um, maybe having them in some kind of a Slack, some type of a way to, ’cause he doesn’t, never use, you know, doesn’t use Slack.
Bob Dunn:
Mm-hmm.
Adam Weeks:
Uh, I described, uh, he’s like, I use Discord, or I have used Discord. I was like, well, yeah, Slack is kind of like Discord but for business. And so, That was helpful. All right. So, here’s the open tab in my brain. So, that’s the problem. All right. And here in August in 2026, the thought of getting locked into a CRM. And I also want, like, this needs to be his. Like, you know, maybe I don’t work forever with him. And I want him to be able to take this and keep going with it. This is his business. So yeah, I’m curious, you know, like, what do we do in 2026 about this, the CRM and also just like large software lock-in, like whether you’re with Notion or even beyond and other things with Figma or whatnot in this age of AI, how do we think about those big— ecosystems, those big SaaS ecosystems. I’m curious, have you had any thoughts about doing this kind of thing?
Bob Dunn:
You know, it’s interesting because I’ve never really, I mean, I’ve, you know, been in business, so I was in print design stuff. So back then, you know, for a long time, it’s always been, you know, it was Judy and I, my wife, and We never needed anything very complex to do what we needed to do. And especially when my clients started— my first clients in my first business were all local. So this was back in the day when you would work— you wouldn’t work globally. You would work— go see your clients.
Adam Weeks:
Who’s in your neighborhood.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah. And so even moving into— What I’ve done over the years since, you know, more online, I haven’t really felt the need to get it. It kind of freaks me out because it always seems overwhelming. I tried, and it’s not really, you know, I guess you could call it that.
Sponsor Announcer:
I use—
Bob Dunn:
I don’t know if you’re familiar with ClickUp.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah. I tried to use that. I got that and I still actually have it, but I tried to use it in a way that would be sensible to use in ClickUp, and it just wasn’t working for me. It was like, this isn’t, you know, and I had some different, I think I did it with hosts and we had the hosts in there and it just wasn’t, nothing was clicking, I guess I should say.
Adam Weeks:
It was not clicking up appropriately.
Bob Dunn:
No, not at all. And so I ended up using it more or less just to store documents and notes and kind of organize them. And that’s what I’ve been using. Sometimes I don’t really know, you know, I’ve got so much stuff in there now. That’s interesting because it was a lock-in because I dumped all this stuff in there. And then I’m thinking, how do I reorganize and pull that all out if I want to not pay for this anymore? So I’ve just paid for it. It’s not an incredible amount of money for my needs.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
Because I’m almost scared to, you know, get rid of it because it’s like, okay, I’ve got to do something which I absolutely have no idea.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s— and a CRM, like anything, it’s only good if you use it consistently. And, you know, like, it’s every single thing has to be in there, or it’s not helpful. And I know there are some automations, there are some ways where, like, you know, The different ones can read your email and can do some of that. But you do have to maintain it. And that’s one of the things where we were talking about, like, well, so the open tab in my brain, kind of an experiment, is everybody is using Slack, which has its own lock-in. But Slack feels kind of like a requirement now. Like, it doesn’t feel optional.
Bob Dunn:
Mm-hmm.
Adam Weeks:
And I don’t know if it is, but it doesn’t feel optional. And you can have Claude. So I have a subscription to Claude. I’ve given it my access to Slack, and then it can go and I can just talk to Claude, my AI, and it can go and check different things. I’ve also given it my email so it can go check all of my emails. I’ve given it— I use granola.ai, which is my note-taker. Have you tried Granola?
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, I did for a while, and I thought it was pretty cool, but then I found myself hardly ever using it. So I think I let my subscription run out.
Adam Weeks:
Right. It’s not super cheap. I mean, it’s cheaper than other things, but it’s like, yeah, like $12, $14 a month or something.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
I was at a conference this last week, and you can get the Granola app on your watch now if you have an Apple Watch. We were sitting there talking and it was with a client and like, hey, can I just take some notes? And I just, you know, boop boop. And then it’s just taking notes. And now I’ve got a whole summary of our conversation. I can then give that to Claude and then help me like do follow-ups. And yeah, Granola has been good because it’s not, it’s just on your computer, on your device. And then— You know, we were— I was on a Zoom call where it was a bunch of people, but like half of them were all just note-takers. It was like the AI note-takers in Zoom windows. It was a little ridiculous, but—
Bob Dunn:
Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
So that’s what I’m thinking about is that the open tab in my brain is right now where things are changing so quickly and we do have a need. Do we jump in on a big software, you know, of like, you know, like Mailchimp or something. We need to solve these problems still, but I’m like, I’m not sure I want to do that.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, that’s interesting because I, I think one of the reasons I’ve never really dove into is I don’t have clients I’m working with. I— the sponsorships I’ve— when I’ve ran sponsorships throughout the years, it’s always been a minimum amount of people. So it’s like—
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
And right now it’s like 4 of them, you know, and you’re not gonna, you know, we kind of have it down and everything. So yeah, it’s working out what’s going to be best in the long run. And then like you said, you know, that lock-in, does that— you know, it’s— here’s an example. I’m hooking up Claude to something I use called Castmagic that does audio. So creates notes, it does all this stuff. And essentially what I wanted it to be able to do, which it can do, and good luck, I’m going to try this weekend, is hooks up to my WordPress site. So I can— it’ll— you’ll have all these different prompts and I will have Claude supposedly, you know, that’s what everybody says.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
I’ll have Claude go in when I download an audio and it’ll grab certain prompts on that app and drop it in as a new post draft in my WordPress site. Well, which saves me literally a lot of cutting and pasting. And then I thought, well, What happens if I decide not to use this cast magic anymore? So that particular thing, but then I thought, well, I’d just probably go back to cutting and pasting or ask Claude to help me or something.
Adam Weeks:
Claude can do it. Yeah, I’m curious about what subscriptions can we get out of that we have? Because I’ve got so many AI subscriptions. Can I get rid of some of the old stuff I’ve been using?
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, yeah. So I think that’s, I can relate in that sense because there is this thing. What if this happens?
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
You know, and you got to have, I guess, you know, some kind of plan to at least, or think it through to know that it’s just not going to crumble on you or something.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
So that’s my open tab. I don’t know. So with Tony specifically, we’re like, all right, let’s, let’s try Slack. Let’s see if we can connect, you know, Claude or whatever AI to that and if we can use that to keep track of what we’re doing. Because part of the problem is, I’ll add this one thought, is he’s like, I got all my emails and I just put them into a spreadsheet. He had, I think, Jim and I put it into a spreadsheet. The problem is that AI isn’t good at updating spreadsheets. You have to, like, once you create the spreadsheet, you either have to create a new spreadsheet with AI or you have to go in and update it yourself. And part of me doing this on open tabs is I’m kind of open sourcing my brain. Like, if anybody has solutions for these things, please let me know.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, yeah, it’s definitely a challenge. So I’m kind of curious, I mean, how does he feel about it since it’s kind of a new area he’s stepping in? Is it like he’s pretty much trusting you to help Guide you to the—
Adam Weeks:
Yeah, and that’s one of the things that can be surprising sometimes because in so many areas, people can be very confident in certain parts of their business. Like Tony is a brilliant mind, like really good at certain things, but he is also smart enough and intelligent to know that he doesn’t know everything about everything and is willing like, yeah, I’ve never done that before, Adam, like what do you think?
Bob Dunn:
Like, oh, Okay.
Adam Weeks:
All right. I do have experience on this. Like, all right, well, let’s see what’s best. And I take that very seriously because I’ve used a lot of these things and I’m working with clients in these different ways. But it does— at what point did I become an expert in that? And it just kind of happened a little bit over time. And I’m obviously not the expert, but I have— An expert is someone who knows just enough more than your client.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
So I know just enough more than my client to help on that. And yeah, but I hadn’t thought of it in that way because before, like, yeah, there’s a, I have different CRMs I’ve used in the past. They have different pros and cons and you just kind of like make your decision based off of that. And I would’ve, in the past, I would’ve said like, all right, here’s 3 recommendations. All 3 of these are good for these different reasons. You know, which one would you like to do? But right now, I’m like, I don’t know if I can recommend any CRM to lock in when things are changing so quickly.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah. Yeah. What— are you using one for your own business?
Adam Weeks:
So one of the businesses I’m working with is an agency called Blue Vineyard, and they have built their own custom CRM. And that’s been really helpful where I can talk to the developer and say, hey, could we do it a little bit differently this way? And so yeah, like that’s been really interesting is custom CRMs, but not everybody can do that. Although with AI tools, custom software, it’s a lot more approachable.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, it really is.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
And honestly, I am, When Tony’s like, well, what should we use? I was like, well, I have CRMs, I’m using them less. And like we said, if you’re not consistently using it, it’s not valuable. And I am going to Claude and having it pull all of my data and I’m storing it in Slack because it can also— it can write to Slack.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, yeah. That’s what I’m thinking of. Like I said, with ClickUp, I don’t know. There’ll probably be some point I’ll just try to figure out because there’s a lot of stuff on there that I don’t need either.
Adam Weeks:
That’s the thing is I’m not a 50 or 100-person company where we all have these things. I just need to keep track of just enough things.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, right. That’s plenty, right?
Adam Weeks:
Right.
Bob Dunn:
Right.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
So what’s another open tab you got?
Adam Weeks:
So another open tab is, I don’t know that we’ve talked about this briefly, briefly just on Slack, but later today I’m going to be doing a recording for Open Channels and it’s WordPress and the age of AI type of topic. And a good friend of mine, he’s been in the WordPress ecosystem for a long time, but he has now moved to the Bay Area. He’s here in Northern California, and he is ready to be kind of— he’s been swallowed up in all that is Silicon Valley and starting an AI pre-seed, seed, all that type of stuff for a pretty big, cool idea. But he is someone who is very also passionate about open source. He’s built his— what he’s doing— with— it’s called Runtype. What he’s doing with that, he has an open source part to it that he really believes in. And how is it to launch a new, you know, open source part that works on WordPress right now? And so I like— so he’s been thinking a lot about that. I was like, let me pick your brain on a series of podcasts. And we kind of broke it down to a bunch of different topics.
Bob Dunn:
And yeah.
Adam Weeks:
WordPress in the age of AI. What does that mean? And really more about open source than just WordPress.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it touches each other so much and there’s so much crossover and it’s just, yeah, looking forward to that for sure. So, and I’m glad you reminded me about that because see, I didn’t have that in my CRM. It’s like sometimes these ideas come back to me or I have some things and I should organize them. And I don’t know, maybe I’m getting to the point where I’m just like, Like, um, it’s just the old Bob CRM is gonna struggle.
Adam Weeks:
Well, that’s the thing is like, if I forget something, just send me another message.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, I know. I’m really into writing notes around. I have like little notebooks around and I, I just find it just the quickest and easiest way for me to do something when I’m thinking of it right there. So I was actually looking online. I’m thinking of buying a On a stand or a tripod or whatever you want to call it, a whiteboard that I can write things down on.
Adam Weeks:
I got a big one right here.
Bob Dunn:
I don’t know if you can see it. Yeah. And I don’t really have a good place to hang it, so I’m going to get one there. But it’s just, you know, there’s so many little things and this is about the simplest little thing. Probably people go, oh yeah, you could do this. You could do that. So every episode I have 3, right now I have 3 sponsors. And in the middle of that episode, when I do the ad rolls for them, I have a sequence. So I change the sequence each time. And I need to remember that.
Sponsor Announcer:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
What I did last and what that sequence is. And as much as I’ve made little notes and different things like that, it’s like I always have to click somewhere to find them.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
You know, it’s just, it’s hitting somewhere. Such a simple thing. And so I’ve been writing on, in one of my notepads, I have this page I basically tore out that just, every time I do it, I have the 3 initials of them and I just reorganize them. And I, that thing I was thinking, well, I could put out on my whiteboard and just put a little check mark by them. So still that there’s some things that are so simple that Sometimes I overthink it and with everything around, I’m making it complicated.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, don’t overcomplicate things. We do that.
Bob Dunn:
I do that. Yeah, I do it a lot.
Adam Weeks:
Sometimes a piece of paper doesn’t run out of battery and it works really well sometimes.
Bob Dunn:
It does, it does. Except I got a pencil at WordCamp Europe as swag. But anyway, I’ve been using it and then I’m at the point where I’m thinking, oh, I’ve got to buy a sharpener, I guess.
Adam Weeks:
Oh, yeah. No, we just complicated it. Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
It’s like, oh, okay, now I got to buy this because if I want to— I’ve kind of enjoyed writing with a pencil again. It’s just like, wow, this just feels different. And anyway, then I’m thinking, you know, I’m not going to put something on the end of my desk and go over and stick it in and do the little handle or anything. Yeah. But— Yeah, I think that’s the whole thing is, you know, and kind of going back to what you were talking about, the CRM, it’s like even making sense if you need one. And then you got all these other options now. Well, what if AI could do something and what’s, you know, does that make sense? And I mean, when it comes to email and different stuff, but it’s so, to me, it’s almost like I have to have somebody Like when I thought of these things, I think I first, I asked because there was different connections made. So I asked Claude, is this possible? But then after they said it was possible, I contacted like the developer team that works on my site and said, you know, I don’t wanna just do this and go in and really screw up something major.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
So here’s kind of what I’m thinking. And, you know, It’s like, I don’t expect you to do this for me, but I kind of want permission that it’s safe to do.
Adam Weeks:
Right.
Bob Dunn:
Because I still get that, you know, the simplest thing can screw things up. And something that to me is, it seems major. It’s like all this data being moved around. And is it, you know, if it doesn’t work, you just click it off. And is that the end of it? Yeah, so there’s still a lot of questions I have.
Adam Weeks:
It’s things have gotten easier and more difficult all at the same time. And there’s so many things vying for our attention. Hey, have you tried this? Yo, you should do this. Oh, what about this? And keeping up on all of the tools and everything that we’re supposed to be doing, or I can’t believe you’re still doing it that way.
Bob Dunn:
Like, yeah. Yeah, hey.
Adam Weeks:
It works.
Bob Dunn:
Deal with it, okay?
Sponsor Announcer:
Yeah.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, we’ll all get there and figure it out. But there’s a lot of things that I think, oh, can I do it this way? Or can I use AI now? And I just back away from it. Some things, it’s almost like I spend more time thinking about changing something than just going ahead and continuing it the way I have been.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah, it’s a balance because on one hand, I don’t want to be stuck in my ways. I wanna be willing to like try something new. I also don’t wanna try something new just for the sake of it being new.
Bob Dunn:
Exactly.
Adam Weeks:
And there’s a balance there is that our brains are looking for like, hey, what’s the, you know, we want patterns. We’re really good at pattern recognition and some of the ways that our brains are comfortable. But I do like the idea, like, yeah, I’m like, I was, Before we actually, before we started recording, like I’m learning how to do a teleprompter. I’ve never done a teleprompter before, but I’m not doing one now, but I was asked to record something and it really needed to be like very specific and concise and, you know, right, like a 6-minute mark. Like, all right, well, let me go ahead and try this teleprompter. And it’s been kind of fun learning it and like, all right, well, I can’t do it that way, or this is not working for me. And I think it’s good to try new things, to learn different things and to stretch ourselves, and yet not just for the sake of it.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, that’s exactly it. And I’m, you know, I’ve always been that way. I’ll keep trying things. And that’s probably why I have a closet. Nobody can see it behind to the right of me, but packed with technical stuff, a lot of podcasting stuff that I thought I would use. It just didn’t quite work. You know, I made the attempt. I was telling you with the teleprompter, I had one. I pulled it out. I tried to use it. My brain didn’t work with it no matter how hard I tried. I took it down and then I begrudgingly took it out again because I was just kind of upset at myself for spending that much money. Tried it again and it hadn’t changed at all. Didn’t magically—
Adam Weeks:
Nope. Still not good.
Bob Dunn:
Work with my brain. So I finally ended up just giving it to somebody I know that wanted one and needed one and figured that’s better than it sitting in that closet. So yeah, for sure. Exactly. Well, very cool. Yeah. Well, you got an open tab that sounds like it’s going to stay open quite a while.
Adam Weeks:
It’ll probably stay open for a while.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
Yeah. No, you didn’t close it.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah. Didn’t close it. Yeah.
Adam Weeks:
But the one that I did, the open tab, you know, I need to talk to Bob. It’s been a little while. We got to, we got to catch up.
Bob Dunn:
So yeah, definitely.
Adam Weeks:
So I can do that one, but I’m going to open that right back up again when we record later today on this new, yeah. WordPress in the age of AI. And really, maybe we should call it, you know, open source in the age of AI. Because yeah, what does that mean? Code and all, you know, when it’s written by AI, is it as valuable? And yeah, the whole economics around it. It’s interesting.
Bob Dunn:
Yeah, very cool. Looking forward to it. Well, thank you, Adam. It’s always great to chat. Often we don’t get a chance to actually record it. And that’s probably a good thing because sometimes we just ramble away and I think we’d bore people to death.
Adam Weeks:
But Oh goodness. Oh, very cool. Thank you, Bob.
