1398: None of this matters anymore...

0:00Hey, what is up? Welcome to this episode of The Wancherpreneur to Entrepreneur Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Brian Lofermento, and I will admit that the title of this solace on the episode kind of reveals that this is my first somewhat alarmist episode in this show's history. More than 1400 episodes, and I promise you, now's the right time. We have to talk about this stuff. Let's dive in. So, it's pretty clear that everybody these days is talking about AI, and I think that whether we're talking within the business and entrepreneurial world, whether we're talking in the educational world, heck, just turn on the news these days, and you are going to see that AI is now the dominating conversation in politics and geopolitics and security and literally every sphere of our life. And so, I obviously, I love AI. I'm going to say that at the very top of today's episode, is that I think that AI has so many incredible powers, and it serves humanity in so many

1:04powerful ways, and it's going to help to build a brighter future when it comes to education, when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to a lot of things. And of course, just like any new technology, things can be used for good and for bad. I'm not even going to say or because every single thing can be used for good and for bad. And so, it's up to us how we want to shape that. And there will always be bad actors in every single field with every single tool, with every single piece of technology. So, I'm not going to focus on any of that today. But what I am going to focus on is I, for any of you who follow me on social media, you know that I do not really post on social media. I'm very much a lurker. And so, I do like seeing other people's perspectives. And it's why I love scrolling through Reddit. I love scrolling through Twitter. I love scrolling through TikTok. That is for sure one of my guilty pleasures. But Twitter in particular, I'm totally going to call out because that is the place truth be told. And I think the algorithm is just super dialed in for me there, where I do get the most helpful insights and

2:09conversations that I get to follow along with and lurk through regarding business and entrepreneurship and technology. It's pretty clear to me that Twitter has identified that I love tech and I love business. Whereas other social media platforms, I think they've more narrowed me in as a soccer, antennas, and basketball fans. So, we're specifically talking about some of these conversations that I saw on Twitter recently. And what's been really fun about Twitter is that it seems to me like people on Twitter, at least the ones that the algorithm is showing to me, they're really pushing the envelope in new ways with AI tools and with new technologies and with new ideas and strategies. Or maybe it's just an environment where people share that stuff more because it's in super bite size tweets. You can't make any of those long LinkedIn. Here's the seven things that I learned that most people have never found until they sell their first company. I don't really care for those types of conversations. I want short and punchy, which is also why today's episode is going to be pretty short and punchy. But along those lines, one type of conversation keeps coming up on my Twitter

3:13timeline. And that is a bunch of people who are very into vibe coding, which if you're not familiar with vibe coding, essentially five years ago, if you and I wanted to create an app or a software or advanced web stuff, then you and I would need to code it. We'd need to program it. Or obviously, I'm not a programmer. We'd have to hire somebody to do that. But with the advent of incredible tools, such as lovable and cursor and a replet and Google AI studio and a bunch of other tools out there, we are now in the era of vibe coding, which means that you and I can code based on vibes. We don't need to code based on actual, you know, open brackets and open chevrons and all of that. We can prompt it just like we prompt chat GPT or Gemini. We can prompt it and build a full software app. Does that mean it gets us to the finish line? Doesn't mean it's perfect. Doesn't mean it's totally secure. Doesn't mean all those things. No, I'm not even talking about any of that today. But what

4:15it does mean is that you and I on a consumer level, whether we ever launch it publicly or not, we can create literally any app that we could dream of. And that's the beauty of vibe coding. vibe coding is a ton of fun. I love vibe coding. I vibe code a ton of things in my personal life, as well as in my professional life. vibe coding has unlocked so many new doors for me. And so the reason why I bring all this up in today's conversation is because I've seen so much chatter online from these people pushing the envelope with regards to vibe coding where they say, holy cow, we are now entering the world where everybody is going to have their own apps. And I've seen others chiming in saying, well, the problem with this vision of the future is that everybody's going to have a bunch of their own personalized catered customized apps, but nobody's going to have any users because now we can all build things for our own unique needs. And that's stuck with me. And I started to see over the past week that comment, that remark, that observation pop up

5:18more and more is that there have never been more apps in the world, more softwares in the world than there are today. We are definitely far along in that timeline. We have more apps and softwares than ever before in history. But we also have more apps and softwares in history that have literally zero users. Never have we had so many apps and softwares that have literally zero users. And I find that that's such an interesting. It might seem very simplistic, but it's an interesting observation because it really reminds you of the fact that we've reached this super interesting time period where nothing really matters anymore. None of it really matters. Any of us can create something incredible. And so the barometer used to be, if you created, why did Google get the attraction that it had? Because it was just, it was such a powerful search engine. Nobody had ever created a search engine that powerful before. I remember what life

6:23looked like pre-Google. We were all using Yahoo. We're all using Ask Jeaves. We're all using, I feel like Web crawler was that a thing. I can't really remember all the names. I was super young, obviously. But I remember that world pre-Google where we were just kind of looking for what the best tool would be. And it wasn't really a universal tool that everyone said, oh, that's the best. Until Google came around. And then it became a verb. It became part of our nomenclature. It became part of something that we all say kids and seniors alike. They all know what it means to Google something. And so historically, it was if you had the best thing, the best algorithm, the best results, the best tool, the best software, the best user experience, the best something that you would win. And the users would follow. Well, in today's day and age, we're starting to see that I could create something amazing. I could create the world's best, most functional SEO tool. But guess what? It's going to have no users. Because unless I build a business around it,

7:24unless I build systems around it, unless I build a foundation around it, unless I build a team around it, unless I build marketing and distribution and sales and conversions around it, then that tool no longer matters. It's no longer good enough for any of us to build something amazing. And we know this to be true. Because we know that all the things that we see are obviously not the best things ever. They just so happen to be the thing that has come across our desk and come on to our radar because of its distribution, because of its hype, because of its marketing, because of its social media virality. We see things not because they're the best, but because of all these external factors. And so the more than I thought about that, it made me ask myself philosophically the question of, well, in a world of AI, where anyone can build anything, and it can be pretty freaking good, by the way, if you've never used a lovable, oh my gosh, I promise you, go to lovable and just build something. For me, the first thing that I ever built,

8:28because honestly, I felt like the biggest limiting factor for me was I didn't know what I wanted to build. So I hopped on lovable and I just built my own coffee shop radar. And so that coffee shop radar, basically it used Yelp's API. And you could search any and all coffee shops in the world thanks to Yelp's API. And you can build your own coffee shop rating system. Because for me, I never really use Yelp because I feel like everyone wants to use Yelp based on the quality of the food or drinks and, you know, the ambiance and all that. I'll be honest, a lot of other things matter to me when it comes to me grading coffee shops for my own personal use. I care more about, hey, what's the parking situation? Am I going to get a seat every single time that I go there? Because I work from coffee shops every day. I need to reliably have a seat. I can't go to a coffee shop, see that it's full, and then have to restructure my dance. Hey, oh my gosh, now I gotta go to somewhere else. Where the heck am I going to go today? It needs to have good Wi-Fi. It needs to, it can't have blazing loud music so that I can't do conference calls or record loom videos if I need to.

9:32There's so many, it can't be too cold living in Florida. You never want a 50 degree difference from the outside to the inside because how the heck do you dress accordingly for that? So that's something that I hopped on lovable and I built it. Yeah, I thought I don't really have any other good ideas. So that's exactly what I built. And that then quickly reshaped my view of vibe coding in what's possible to build. Because then by doing something and realizing that holy cow, it really is anything I can imagine I can build, then it made my brain start working in other ways. And I started building cooler things, more useful things, more powerful things. And all of that has made me realize that the quality of what we built, I've built some cool things that I know would be valuable to other people. But guess what? It literally doesn't matter because I've never published it. And I'm not going to publish it because that's a whole different beast. And so what I've realized is that quality has no bearing on anything anymore. It's all distribution. All it is is how many users are we serving? What is actually getting traction? And when I think about

10:34that, the philosophical question that I keep coming back to is, is this different? Is AI ushering us into this era where quality no longer matters? And it's all just about distribution and marketing. And then instantly where my head went is all the way back to 2012. So in 2012, I just graduated college. I started a marketing and SEO agency with a business partner of mine who's a former friend from high school. And when we started that agency because we were in our early 20s, we were 22, 23 years old. And when we started that, we wanted to be super innovative because innovative seemed to be a word that was rewarded and applauded and celebrated and encouraged in the business world. And so part of what we did one of our lines of service was we developed and deployed WordPress websites. And so WordPress is such a powerful platform from an SEO perspective. If you have a website built on WordPress, you have a world of possibilities that your fingertips thanks to plugins, thanks to the built-in functionality. There's a lot of good things there. And so we were

11:39just beasting out WordPress websites. We were doing it internally for ourselves, for our first few clients. And we thought we were going to take over the entire local market. Well, we quickly realized through the Chamber of Commerce and through BNI and other local networking groups that there was this one lady in our hometown in central Massachusetts that owned the market. And when we looked at her work, I can very comfortably and confidently say this. When we looked at her work, we thought to ourselves, gosh, her stuff is so archaic. And she was much older than us. I will say that. We looked at her stuff through that lens of holy cow, her stuff is so old. It's not optimized for SEO. And anyway, there's no multimedia. None of her clients' websites had any video. And this is, you know, this is 2012. This is when video is on the big come up. This is where you can differentiate yourself and your local marketplace by having videos on your website. And so we thought we were super innovative and we knew it. We had a better product. There's no doubt anyone who we could get to sit down with us who had previously worked with her would say,

12:41yeah, no, you guys are doing big things. But guess what? She won. She had way larger market share than we did. And again, was her product the best? No. But she won on all the other things. The most important things, market penetration, traction, reputation, distribution, client roster. And so the same was true all the way back in 2012 is that we did not get rewarded simply for having a better or more innovative product. And so fast forward all the way to today. 2026, here we are 14 years later. And I'm being reminded of it again is that innovation is not the barometer. We all hear that word innovative innovation revolutionary. We hear these things as if they are the keys to success. And so today's solace on the episode in this really out loud reflection for me is just me reflecting on the fact that none of none of that stuff matters anymore to be honest. And I actually think that's a good thing for most of us is that we don't need to have the most

13:45innovative or revolutionary product. And how frequently do you hear me in conversations with guests that I'm so appreciative for them sharing all their wisdom? How frequently do you hear me coming back to that reflection of the Albert Einstein quote? If you want to impress somebody, make it complicated. If you want to help somebody make it simple. And I think that in a world where everybody is playing with innovation, everybody is pushing the envelope in very cool ways. The only businesses, the only entrepreneurs who are going to be winning are the ones who achieve distribution. That's it. Nothing beyond that matters anymore. Because if you want to have the fanciest looking website, you now can. If your budget is $20, you now can do that. I'm so excited to announce that. If if nobody's ever announced it to you before, if you have $20, you can have the coolest freaking website that's ever been made. If you've $20, you could build the coolest freaking marketing app or design app or the other day furniture shopping. For example, I thought

14:52to myself, gosh, I wish I could just give a floor plan to an AI tool and it would recreate it and then I could to scale and then I could drop in different pieces of furniture. I just vibe coded it. It took maybe 40 minutes for me to vibe code that app. It was unbelievable. And it's really cool. And so in today's world, anyone can build anything. And so for you and I, what does this mean? What does this reflection mean? What is my hope that you take away from this episode mean? What is all that? To me, it just means ignore all that. Ignore all the noise. You don't have to be innovative. Truth be told, it's such a weird thing to say in today's world. You do not have to be innovative. Innovation is starting to reach the point or it takes care of itself. All you and I have to do is focus on serving people is focus on getting customers and clients is focus on having conversations converting those conversations to service, getting people to understand, oh, in a world where there's a lot of noise and I can't keep up with everything, this person is going

15:53to help me with this specific thing. That is the thing that matters these days. None of the other stuff truly matters. Doesn't mean that we're all going to get left behind. Well, I argue very much that we all have a responsibility to ourselves, to our businesses, to our clients, to our future businesses, to our future selves, to be on that train. I'm a big proponent of AI. I play with AI all the time, both during my work day and after my work day. And so I'm not saying ignore all of that, but what I'm saying is if you believe that that is your ticket to innovation, which is your ticket to success, which is your ticket to freedom, which is your ticket to clients, it's not anymore, because everyone has that in their pockets at their fingertips. Be the one who focuses on serving others. Be the one who's focused on getting customers and clients. Be the one who says, hey, in a noisy world, I'm just going to cut through with raw simplicity and show people and share with people how I can tangibly help them, because that is increasingly becoming the only thing that

16:57matters. And when you pair it with some cool technology and some systems and some healthy foundations, good things happen. But we always have to have clarity on what it is that matters. You and I could play in an endless sandbox of AI possibilities, but that doesn't mean it's going to get us anywhere. So that's it for me in today's episode. I hope it hits you where you need it in today's or for today, because I'll tell you what, this is a reminder that I need constantly in business, because I love playing with different tech tools. So for all of us, it's about service. It's about tangibly helping other people. That's what counts in 2026. That's what always counted in 2012. That's what counted 100 years ago. And I promise you in a world where it's just full of humanity. It's what's always going to count is helping people and serving people. That's it for me. Make sure you pound that subscribe button. Holy cow, I'm super excited. I know I'm always excited, but this week's episodes get me super jazzed up. We've got some incredible entrepreneurs

17:58coming your way this week. So pound that subscribe button and we'll see you right back here every day on the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.