🎥 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL7oNW13D3U 🛠️ Hire me to implement AI in your business: https://mjs.link/work?s=fbp-ep98 🎓 Join my community and learn how to leverage AI: https://mjs.link/mbs?s=fbp-ep98 💡 Book a 1:1 advisory call with me: https://mjs.link/advisory?s=fbp-ep98 🎙️ About this episode with Jake "The Wizard" Tlapek Jake "The Wizard" Tlapek built his agency on TikTok. He only started posting because a networking group needed someone to give a talk on social media, he was one month away from quitting it forever, and then two videos in a row hit a million views. At his peak he was pulling about 20 leads a week from organic TikTok alone, and he grew Wizard Marketing past seven figures before it was acquired. I'd been watching his stuff for years, and what got us talking was a recent video of his about walking away from done for you work to consult instead. I commented, we went back and forth, and here we are. We go through the whole story first: Air Force IT, a board game that sold 300,000 copies, a marketing job he took knowing nothing about marketing, and the day he handed his boss a resignation letter and an offer letter from his own agency in the same meeting. Then we get into where things are headed. Jake is pro AI and treats it as a tool, with a folder of 74 projects he's building with Claude and ChatGPT. He thinks execution is the first thing to go, gives Meta ads about two years before the whole thing is "give us your website and your budget," and argues that the part of this work that holds its value is the human, emotional side of helping a business owner. I pushed back a little from my side, because I think you can build a system that knows you well enough to catch some of that too. We also get into his book Eight Dominoes, his mastermind, why fun is the fuel, and whether this is the last great boom. 🔗 Connect with Jake "The Wizard" Tlapek Website: https://www.jakethewizard.com Book (Eight Dominoes): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HD48KJGD Mastermind: https://www.jakethewizard.com/mastermind Consulting: https://www.jakethewizard.com/consulting TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsjakethewizard YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@itsjakethewizard Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsjakethewizard/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-tlapek-10b55962/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itsjakethewizard X: https://x.com/JakeTtheWizard 🔗 Connect with Mark Szymanski Website: https://markszymanski.co Facebook: https://mjs.link/fb?s=fbp-ep98 Instagram: https://mjs.link/ig?s=fbp-ep98 LinkedIn: https://mjs.link/li?s=fbp-ep98 X: https://mjs.link/x?s=fbp-ep98 YouTube: https://mjs.link/yt?s=fbp-ep98 🎧 About this show Fueled By Progress is a long-form conversation series with builders, operators, and thinkers exploring business, technology, and what it actually takes to build a meaningful life in a modern world. If you're new here, welcome. If you've been here since episodes recorded in my car, thank you. We're still just getting warmed up 💪 🆓 Free Value - Get your AI Resource Bundle: https://mjs.link/resources?s=fbp-ep98 - Full AI Crash Course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cd_ntgOuY - Claude Code Beginner's Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0nJ_8_77Yg - Follow my thinking between videos: https://mjs.link/newsletter?s=fbp-ep98 ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:40 Intro 03:51 Meet Jake the Wizard 05:12 Air Force IT tech to marketing 10:04 Marketing is a game with victory conditions 13:21 Hearing aids, free vacuums, and learning offers 17:37 The technical side: complex WordPress builds 20:26 Quitting and making his old boss his first client 24:33 The networking talk that put him on TikTok 26:55 About to quit social media, then two million-view videos 27:51 20 leads a week from organic TikTok 29:29 A nine-person team of executors 32:55 Lives, and why he never sold to other agencies 35:36 The worst creator in the history of creators 38:38 The Eight Dominoes Mastermind 41:54 Most owners already know what to fix 43:19 Writing Eight Dominoes, a 10-year process 47:08 Why every first-time author needs an editor 49:41 From doing the work to consulting 50:36 Consulting takes the energy of two people 54:09 Selling his shares and going solo 55:32 Fun is the fuel 58:40 Enter AI 1:02:31 Beating up Claude and a folder of 74 AI projects 1:03:24 When AI takes the shovel away 1:04:47 The six types of working genius 1:07:57 Everything gets commoditized, then artists get to play 1:09:41 Why hire Jake when you could ask Claude? 1:12:13 Execution is the first thing to go 1:13:10 Jake's case for emotion 1:17:34 You can't hold the hope, so borrow mine 1:19:45 Building an AI that knows you better than you do 1:25:39 AI vampires: 4x the output and more time 1:26:11 Is this the last great boom? 1:27:41 I want you to graduate 1:30:01 He wants to create experiences 1:30:55 Where to find Jake 📃 Ethics Statement: https://markszymanski.co/policies/ethics-statement/

🎥 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kas27lxen4 🛠️ Hire me to implement AI in your business: https://mjs.link/work?s=fbp-ep97 🎓 Join my community and learn how to leverage AI: https://mjs.link/mbs?s=fbp-ep97 💡 Book a 1:1 advisory call with me: https://mjs.link/advisory?s=fbp-ep97 🎙️ About this episode with Lars Faye Lars Faye is a self taught developer with about fifteen years in the trenches, co founder of Chee Studio in Buffalo, and the guy who wrote "Agentic Coding is a Trap." That article hit the front page of Hacker News, got read on air by Theo (t3.gg), and got covered by Cal Newport. He and I actually met arguing about this stuff in the comments on LinkedIn, so this conversation is the long version of that argument. We trace his whole path first: five years old on an MS DOS prompt, a computer repair job he hated, his wife telling him he could just do it himself, first client websites in 2008 right as the economy collapsed, then going all in on agency work. Then we get into it. Lars is not anti AI. He uses agents every day and says every developer alive wants to type less. His argument is that there is no free lunch, that the tools which make you fast are the same tools that quietly stop you from learning, and that only a sharp developer can catch what a model gets wrong. We cover why he thinks the real problem is composition rather than code quality, what he means when he says the agents start to own you, why pointing an LLM at your own back catalog makes you stagnant, and the part I did not expect, which is that he thinks LLMs are going to cause the biggest surge of real programmers in history. I pushed back on a lot of this. He pushed back on me. If you are a builder trying to figure out how hard to lean into agents without hollowing yourself out, this is the conversation. Read the article: https://larsfaye.com/articles/agentic-coding-is-a-trap 🔗 Connect with Lars Faye Website: https://larsfaye.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@larsfayedev LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsfaye/ Company: Chee Studio https://cheewebdevelopment.com 🔗 Connect with Mark Szymanski Website: https://markszymanski.co Facebook: https://mjs.link/fb?s=fbp-ep97 Instagram: https://mjs.link/ig?s=fbp-ep97 LinkedIn: https://mjs.link/li?s=fbp-ep97 X: https://mjs.link/x?s=fbp-ep97 YouTube: https://mjs.link/yt?s=fbp-ep97 🎧 About this show Fueled By Progress is a long-form conversation series with builders, operators, and thinkers exploring business, technology, and what it actually takes to build a meaningful life in a modern world. If you're new here, welcome. If you've been here since episodes recorded in my car, thank you. We're still just getting warmed up 💪 🆓 Free Value - Get your AI Resource Bundle: https://mjs.link/resources?s=fbp-ep97 - Full AI Crash Course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cd_ntgOuY - Claude Code Beginner's Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0nJ_8_77Yg - Follow my thinking between videos: https://mjs.link/newsletter?s=fbp-ep97 ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:40 Intro 05:56 Meet Lars Faye 06:25 The article that went viral, and Theo reading it on air 07:42 Where "agentic coding is a trap" actually came from 16:14 You need a job to get expertise and expertise to get a job 23:08 Self taught from MS DOS, computer repair, and going solo 26:14 First websites in 2008, then going all in on agencies 36:05 Right tool for the job, and the sites nobody ever touches 37:57 Why developers get ossified in one stack 45:14 Writing custom blocks, and learning to love Gutenberg 47:25 Building brand guardrails clients can't break 52:27 Two ways into business, and the e myth trap 55:57 I don't sell a tech solution, I sell the collaboration 59:16 Enter AI 1:01:09 Every developer wants to type less 1:06:19 Cursor, OpenCode, and moving to Chinese models 1:10:20 The three ways people actually use AI 1:14:56 Why he won't hook an agent up to his Gmail 1:16:25 Would he let an agent build the whole site? 1:23:23 Code quality is fine, composition is the problem 1:24:22 At that point, the agents own you 1:27:55 Point an LLM at your old work and you go stagnant 1:31:51 There's no such thing as a free lunch 1:34:13 What happens to a generation missing expertise 1:39:46 You can't learn to cook by watching 1:40:49 Why a surge of real programmers is coming 1:44:33 The steelman, the personal computer and the secretary 1:47:21 Why he's long term optimistic 1:51:29 We're arguing in front of the 0.01% 1:53:26 Have LLMs already plateaued? 1:56:00 Where to find Lars 📃 Ethics Statement: https://markszymanski.co/policies/ethics-statement/

🛠️ Hire me to implement AI in your business: https://markszymanski.co/work-with-me 🎓 Join my community and learn how to leverage AI: https://ModernBuildersSociety.com 💡 Book a 1:1 advisory call with me: https://markszymanski.co/advisory 🎙️ About this episode with Caleb Ralston Caleb Ralston is the brand strategist behind some of the biggest names online. He scaled Gary Vaynerchuk's TikTok from 300K to 3.5 million in three months, built an 18 person media team that generated billions of organic impressions for Alex and Leila Hormozi, and then stepped out on his own to teach founders how to do this for themselves. In this conversation we trace that whole path (carrying lights at his church, the Crush It book that changed everything, Team Gary, VaynerMedia, and the leap to going solo) and then get into the frameworks he teaches now. We cover why most people build a prison instead of a brand, what Gary really meant by document don't create, the student vs expert distinction that tells you exactly how to position yourself, why niching down is non-negotiable even though everyone tells you not to, the name as brand play behind Ralston, and how he uses AI as a multiplier of his own thinking instead of a source. If you have ever felt like you should be putting yourself out there but do not know how to start without sounding like everyone else, this one is for you. Watch Caleb's 6-hour course on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch4Sl0POBhU 🔗 Connect with Caleb Ralston YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CalebRalston Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/calebralston LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebralston X: https://x.com/calebralston Website: https://calebralston.com 🔗 Connect with Mark Szymanski Website: https://markszymanski.co Facebook: https://mjs.link/FB Instagram: https://mjs.link/IG LinkedIn: https://mjs.link/LI X: https://mjs.link/X YouTube: https://mjs.link/YT 🎧 About this show Fueled By Progress is a long-form conversation series with builders, operators, and thinkers exploring business, technology, and what it actually takes to build a meaningful life in a modern world. If you're new here, welcome. If you've been here since episodes recorded in my car, thank you. We're still just getting warmed up 💪 🆓 Free Value - Get your AI Resource Bundle: https://markszymanski.co/ai-crash-course-resources - Full AI Crash Course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cd_ntgOuY - Claude Code Beginner's Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0nJ_8_77Yg - Follow my thinking between videos: https://mjs.link/Newsletter ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 Intro 04:25 Meet Caleb Ralston 05:23 Carrying lights to GaryVee, VaynerMedia, and the Hormozis 14:08 Why he finally bet on himself 19:30 Getting the guts to step in front of the camera 20:33 A personal brand vs a prison you are stuck in 22:52 Why most founders can't brand themselves 28:23 What Gary really meant by document, don't create 32:18 Student vs expert, and picking your pond 38:03 Why niching down is non-negotiable 41:18 The name as brand play, rebranding Ralston 46:20 Show your persona while dispensing expertise 49:02 The lines he won't cross 55:33 AI as a multiplier, not a source 59:54 Where to find Caleb 📃 Ethics Statement: https://markszymanski.co/policies/ethics-statement/

🛠️ Hire me to implement AI in your business: https://markszymanski.co/work-with-me 🎓 Join my community and learn how to leverage AI: https://ModernBuildersSociety.com 💡 Book a 1:1 advisory call with me: https://markszymanski.co/advisory     🎙️ About this episode with Mansel Scheffel Mansel Scheffel is an independent AI builder and consultant (AtomicOps) breaking down what actually works in production with Claude Code, agentic workflows, and AI automation. He went from a hungover 22 year old pianist in South Africa to a solo consultant landing some of the largest banks and governments in the world, all without a degree and without ever hiring full time staff. In this conversation we trace that whole path (the leap to London, learning Splunk by getting thrown to the wolves, and the intermediary layer playbook he used to reach clients a solo operator should never have been able to reach) and then bring it into the present, where he runs his AI consulting business AtomicOps alongside a fast growing YouTube channel and community. We get into the no hype, no doom view of AI that we both share, the Anthropic billing change that just broke a lot of the elaborate AIOS builds people sell on YouTube, why he builds constraints first, and how he thinks about vibe coding, security, and what a software engineer is actually worth in a world where the model writes the code. If you are a builder or a solo consultant trying to figure out what actually ships, this one is for you.     🔗 Connect with Mansel Scheffel AI Transformation Academy (Skool community): https://www.skool.com/ainative LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mansel-scheffel/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mansel.scheffel     🔗 Connect with Mark Szymanski Website: https://markszymanski.co Facebook: https://mjs.link/FB Instagram: https://mjs.link/IG LinkedIn: https://mjs.link/LI X: https://mjs.link/X YouTube: https://mjs.link/YT     🎧 About this show Fueled By Progress is a long-form conversation series with builders, operators, and thinkers exploring business, technology, and what it actually takes to build a meaningful life in a modern world.    If you're new here, welcome. If you've been here since episodes recorded in my car, thank you. We're still just getting warmed up 💪      🆓 Free Value  - Get your AI Resource Bundle: https://markszymanski.co/ai-crash-course-resources  - Full AI Crash Course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cd_ntgOuY  - Claude Code Beginner's Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0nJ_8_77Yg  - Follow my thinking between videos: https://mjs.link/Newsletter      ⏱️ Chapters  00:00 Intro  04:00 What Mansel does now (banks, cybersecurity, AI, solo)  07:54 South Africa to London at 22  10:25 Splunk, the first big bank, going solo  14:14 The worst risk is not taking the risk  17:59 The first solo year and land and expand  20:00 The intermediary layer playbook  22:48 Big clients vs small, and why he started a community  33:38 Starting YouTube and content as lead gen  46:48 No hype, no doom, and who is actually watching  50:01 The Anthropic billing change and constraints first  59:41 The community and the live workshop playbook  1:07:24 Syntax vs orchestration and vibe coding  1:14:38 Making AI builds secure, and the future software engineer  1:25:23 The AI skeptic at the family table      📃 Ethics Statement: https://markszymanski.co/policies/ethics-statement/

🛠️ Hire me to implement AI in your business: https://markszymanski.co/work-with-me 🎓 Join my community and learn how to leverage AI: https://ModernBuildersSociety.com 💡 Book a 1:1 advisory call with me: https://markszymanski.co/advisory 🎙️ About this episode with Jake Goldman Jake Goldman is the founder of 10up, the WordPress agency he scaled to about $45 million in revenue and roughly 300 people over twelve and a half years, before merging it into Fueled and stepping into a partner role. We get into how he started, why he deliberately built a company that was never about him personally, what it looks like to live through the AI transformation as a founder instead of just commenting on it, why he believes customers will keep paying agencies even as AI does more of the work, and his closing call to install one of the tools this weekend and just go try making something you didn't think you could. 🔗 Connect with Jake Goldman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobgoldman/ Fueled: https://fueled.com 10up: https://10up.com 🔗 Connect with Mark Szymanski Website: https://markszymanski.co Facebook: https://mjs.link/FB Instagram: https://mjs.link/IG LinkedIn: https://mjs.link/LI X: https://mjs.link/X YouTube: https://mjs.link/YT 🎧 About this show Fueled By Progress is a long-form conversation series with builders, operators, and thinkers exploring business, technology, and what it actually takes to build a meaningful life in a modern world. If you're new here, welcome. If you've been here since episodes recorded in my car, thank you. We're still just getting warmed up 💪 🆓 Free Value - Get your AI Resource Bundle: https://markszymanski.co/ai-crash-course-resources - Full AI Crash Course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1cd_ntgOuY - Claude Code Beginner's Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0nJ_8_77Yg - Follow my thinking between videos: https://mjs.link/Newsletter ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:41 Mark's intro 05:48 Meet Jake Goldman: how he started 10up 12:42 Scaling 10up to $45M and 300 people 18:06 Joyful UX and the developer mindset 23:50 Jake's day to day at Fueled now 25:34 Going all in on AI tooling 37:18 Why this AI shift is genuinely different 39:13 The "golden era" that minted today's web devs 45:03 Personal brand vs entity brand 49:49 Why customers still want humans accountable for code 01:20:00 Emotion, defensiveness, and the AI debate 01:32:49 Jake's advice: just go try and make something 01:34:44 Mark's closing thoughts 📃 Ethics Statement: https://markszymanski.co/policies/ethics-statement/