✨ the SPARK 238 ~There Are No Rules Because They Keep Changing Them
Welcome to the new Wild West
If someone had told me when I started my business 17 and a half years ago that I wouldn't really feel like I'd found my thing until now—that I would feel like I'm just getting started at this point—I would've told them they were nuts.
Yet here I am, living in Pioneer, CA (because I’m a “pioneer” 😂 couldn’t resist), feeling more excited about what I'm building than I have in years.
Not because I've finally "made it," but because I've finally learned the most valuable skill in business: patience.
Not the zen, meditation kind of patience (though that helps too). I'm talking about the gritty, teeth-clenching patience you develop after 17 years of business ups and downs. The kind that serves you well when you're building with AI tools that are all essentially startups, figuring it out as they go.
Case in point:
This week I burned through credits trying to fix TypeQuiz that was stuck in loading mode, only to discover it wasn't me—it was Mocha (my vibe coding tool that I love).
My personal site domain? I waited 3 days for the domain to verify, and after getting a response in Discord (is this seriously the new version of customer service? 🙄) was told it only works 80% of the time and to delete it and try again (um… can you give me the old-fashioned way of just pointing the domain manually, please?).
I still love Mocha, but it seems that the entire AI space collectively decided that traditional support was too mainstream (it appears that most of these tools use Discord as their customer support).
The Credit Burn Chronicles 🔥
Here's what nobody tells you about anything with AI: budgeting for the learning curve needs to include time, tokens, credits, or whatever else they’re deciding to call how you pay for AI.
All those little charges that add up while you're trying to figure out why something that worked yesterday doesn't work today.
I've started thinking of credit burn like the cost of doing business in a gold rush town. Everything's more expensive because we're all pioneers, but the alternative is standing on the sidelines watching everyone else build the tools that could buy back your time and freedom.
After all these years of building online businesses, I thought I'd developed patience (my therapist may disagree, lol).
It turns out that AI building requires a whole different kind of endurance. It's not just waiting for results—it's adapting to a landscape that shifts under your feet daily.
The truth is, there are no rules right now because as soon as you understand the rules, they get rid of them.
✔️ New models drop weekly.
✔️ Interfaces change overnight.
✔️ What worked in your prompt yesterday might need completely different wording today.
✔️ Discord becomes the new help desk.
It's chaos, but it's also the biggest opportunity I've seen in my entire career.
Most people aren't building yet.
They're watching, waiting for the dust to settle, for the "best practices" to emerge, for someone else to figure it out first. But here's what I've learned from nearly two decades in business: by the time the rules are clear, the biggest opportunity has passed.
What I'm Learning About This Wild West 🤠
Everyone is figuring this out as they go.
That creator cranking out AI videos in minutes?
They've probably burned through just as many credits as you have; they're just not posting about their failures on LinkedIn.
The polished tutorials and "I built this in 5 minutes" posts are the highlight reel. The real work happens with the failures, iterations, and yes, burning through credits. And of course, many of those creators have completely nailed the AI avatar version of themselves and crank out multiple videos a day.
*We’ll see how long it takes YouTube to penalize that (although many of those are screen capture videos, and the AI avatar is just the talking head in the bottom right corner of the screen). But seriously… some of these people are cranking out multiple videos a day.
I won’t be doing that, but I will keep learning.
The learning curve levels the playing field.
In traditional business, experience often creates insurmountable advantages. Not here. We're all starting from zero with each new platform, model, or interface update. The 20-year marketing veteran and the recent graduate are equally perplexed when ChatGPT updates its model or when a new AI tool is introduced.
Patience isn't just helpful—it's a competitive advantage.
While others bounce from one shiny strategy to another, I’ve learned to stick with what works for me. As you hit midlife, the trust you have in yourself is everything.
Transparency builds trust faster than expertise.
I'm not a developer building AI tools, and I'm definitely not the fastest. But I'm willing to share the messy middle… the stuck loading screens, the credit burns, the domain verification delays. This honesty resonates because everyone else is experiencing it too.
Why I'm Actually A Pioneer (Literally) 🏔️
Something is fitting about being a literal pioneer and a digital one. The mindset is the same: you head into uncharted territory not because you have all the answers, but because you're willing to figure them out along the way.
Most gold rush pioneers didn't strike it rich on their first day.
They learned the territory, developed systems, and built something sustainable. The ones who succeeded weren't necessarily the smartest or the fastest—they were the most persistent (and remember, they were often the ones selling the shovels, not panning for gold).
That's what I'm doing with AI tools, and it's what I'm showing others that it’s possible. Not because I'm special, but because I've learned that "figuring it out as you go" is actually a skill you can develop.
SPARK Spotlight 🔥
I’ve been playing with this for the last few days, not too bad. I’ve been using the new AI Designer to generate bulk social media images for one of my apps. I uploaded a couple of screenshots, and it created these images, without any other direction (it’s a course, community, & coaching platform).
Introducing, Genspark.ai.
It does a lot more than images, but that’s all I’ve tried so far. You can also generate AI sheets, docs, slides, podcast, video, research & agents! Oh, and there’s an AI developer.
A Little Brainpower 🧠
An excellent article on AI SEO from
. “SEO for AI: How to Make Your Product Discoverable by LLMs.”From the creator of one of my favorite tools (WriteStack). “From 600 Days of Failure to $1.3k MRR” by
& .I’ll always choose depth over speed. “No One Is Behind. Everyone Feels Behind. Both Are True” by
.Tool Time ⚒️
Social Media: An AI-powered content assistant that helps create authentic social media content using photos and trending topics. Check out PersonaRoll here.
Personal AI Agent: With a personal test and Deep Memory, Macaron grows with you and remembers what matters. Try Macaron free here.
Vibe coding: I know, another one, but this has something unique. A visual backend builder, live code editor (above my pay grade), and front-end import! Try VibeFlow free here.
Screenshots: Style your screenshots with rounded corners, shadows, and custom backgrounds in seconds: no heavy apps, no learning curve. Use Pixxel free here.
AI Agents: Create AI agents for any task in 1 minute. Each agent works independently with 350+ apps. Build your AI team in minutes. Try Dabe free here.
Haha… we all have those days 😂
I can’t believe we’re already at the end of August.
Tell me I’m not the only one who says, “I can’t believe it’s already [insert whatever month it is here]” every month. 🤪
This month flew by because I've been having too much fun getting my hands dirty with all these AI tools. Sure, I've burned through credits and had some colorful conversations with my computer screen, but there's something magical about being in the thick of it all.
Keep experimenting, keep sharing your wins AND your "what the heck just happened" moments, and remember… the best discoveries happen when you're curious enough to click that "generate" button to see what happens.
See you in the September edition (if I can believe it's September by then)!
With coffee & kindness,
Kim
I've finally found a groove with adding these instructions to the end of my vibe coding prompts when I'm testing something, or need something done:
Please examine these issues
Do not take action
Provide a safe, surgical implementation plan
Do not create new files that duplicate functionality
Ask me questions
Allow me time to ask questions
Took me until this week but it's really reduced burning through credits. Forces it to slow down.
I love it here in the Wild Wild West, and like you enjoy vibe coding until the vibe crashes and burns. One day it works and then you go to bed smiling and then you wake up the next day and something new is broken. Like how?!? It worked yesterday. It's frustrating, but then on the other side of that frustration will soon be a completed app, one that I have already been told will be appreciated by designers like us. lol.