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An AI agent was given a 300-piece content update. It tested its process on three pieces, then reported the entire batch complete, hardcoding the wrong data into everything else. That's one of several real AI stories in Episode 90 of Start It or Scrap It, alongside a golf-course meeting that turned into a new client, a real job that shrank from nine people to one, and why new college graduate unemployment is at a record high.

This episode also covers what first-time landlords consistently get wrong, and a single interview question that cuts through a vague reference check.

In this episode:
How a spontaneous round of golf as a single player turned into a brand-new marketing client by the time the clubs were back in the trunk

Doing three days of work in 2.5 hours using Claude, and the moment an AI agent got caught quietly lying about finishing a 300-piece project

Why Claude refused to delete 127 broken blog posts until it had independently verified the request first

Automating 5 to 7 days of manual CRM setup work into a single afternoon, and updating descriptions on 200 YouTube videos in 17 minutes

A real story: a pharma compliance job that used to require a three-person team, now down to one person, soon expected to manage three drugs instead of one

Why entry-level hiring in some industries may freeze entirely, and why new college graduate unemployment is at a record high

The graduate who got hired anyway, because he led with AI experience instead of "I'm a new grad"

AI-simulated market research that matches real human feedback almost exactly, cutting research time from months to a day

Timestamps
0:00 A heads-up: this episode was filmed a few weeks ago
0:34 Cold open: what would you buy with $10 million, and the tech opportunity people are missing
2:31 The country club golf story that turned into a new marketing client
5:00 Why weekday golf puts you next to business owners and executives
5:12 The old sales training trick: take the meeting at their office, not yours
7:33 The moment "we were just testing Claude" turned into a new client conversation
9:55 Why this team prefers Claude over other AI tools
10:37 The time Claude got caught lying about finishing a 300-piece project
11:57 Claude refusing to delete 127 broken blog posts until it double-checked the request
14:15 Why old AI workflows and prompts stopped working the same way
16:37 Updating descriptions on 200 YouTube videos in 17 minutes
18:19 Why the biggest opportunity right now is the one people are too afraid to take
18:51 A full morning's productivity: dozens of articles, technical SEO on two sites, four gap analyses, before lunch
22:21 The one rule for using AI on anything irreversible: always have a backup
24:06 What to do with a hypothetical $10 million: not equipment, the sales and marketing team
26:19 A repetitive task that used to take 5 days a month, now takes 1 day a year
34:23 Why the next generation of AI models is being built to project-manage itself
35:56 Why half of a payroll job could already be automated, according to one real conversation
36:56 Building a test company that's 100% AI-run until a lead is fully pre-qualified
38:39 Running five instances of Claude, each managing its own project
39:09 A real story: a three-person pharma compliance team that's now one person managing three drugs
41:30 Why an entire industry can lose its next wave of entry-level hires
42:14 The record-high unemployment rate among new college graduates
42:47 The one grad who got hired anyway, and why
48:25 Why a daily "hype talk" might matter more than people think
53:04 An idea for an AI-powered subscription voicemail app
53:55 Why using AI to build software doesn't remove the need to understand what you're building
59:08 Advice for landlords: use a property management company on your first property to learn the ropes
1:04:52 Why the "easy" first rental property is often what gets people into trouble
1:07:23 The one interview question that cuts through a bad reference check

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney) and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)

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There is now a wearable, battery-operated, ventilated jacket for small dogs. People are buying them. That's just one sign of how much consumer spending on pets has changed, and it's one of several real stories in Episode 89 of Start It or Scrap It.

This episode also covers what it actually takes to legally start a jet ski rental business at the beach, why a contractor working without a written contract can end up owing the homeowner money instead of the other way around, and a wide-ranging conversation on how to build a business (and a life) that leaves a real cultural impact.

In this episode:
Why you learn more about a potential business partner on a golf course in five hours than in a dozen short meetings

Arnold Palmer's legacy, and why the charity work mattered more than the golf

A famous Gary Vee clip and the one sentence that might have changed a stranger's life

Why some companies let customer service approve refunds instantly, and how that decision built entire customer bases

The real difference between what a small business owner is optimizing for versus a VC-backed corporation

Why spending on pets has become recession resistant, and what that's doing to the pet product market

A real, growing product category: air-conditioned jackets for dogs
Timestamps
0:00 Cold open: "find a problem"
0:47 Intro and welcome
1:09 A week of vacation, and a week of nonstop golf
2:47 A golf course comeback, and the practice that finally paid off
4:23 Why you learn more about someone on a golf course than in any meeting
5:30 A contractor horror story: six contractors, zero written contracts
6:53 Why a handshake deal can leave a homeowner owing nothing, legally
9:10 The poor workmanship lawsuit trap, and why insurance won't cover it
10:37 A cabinet company's 5% chargeback margin, built in on purpose
11:42 Viewer question: starting a jet ski rental business at the beach
12:30 A four-wheeler rental business that had to double its fleet within a year
12:56 Why insurance is the single most important piece of this business
14:42 Why digital waivers beat paper ones every time
15:23 "Everyone else is responsible for your incompetence": the liability mindset that drives these lawsuits
16:05 Permits, LLC formation, and why a physical address matters for Google
16:37 The beach chair and umbrella rental business making real money
17:00 The plastic tote rental business nobody saw coming
19:46 Why finding a problem, no matter how small, is the actual foundation of a business
22:24 Back to jet skis: why maintenance is just as important as insurance
24:19 The full jet ski rental checklist, recapped
27:57 A personal story about being the most low-maintenance person at the beach
29:01 Viewer question: how do you leave a lasting cultural and commercial impact?
29:48 Simon Sinek's "why," and why it matters more than the business itself
30:33 Arnold Palmer's legacy, and why it was never really about golf
32:24 The Gary Vee clip that might be the most impactful sentence he's ever said
33:38 The moldy cheese story that explains great customer service in ten seconds
34:57 Why one company let customer service approve refunds up to $200 with no manager approval
36:11 Walt Disney, Phil Knight, and the founders whose "why" outlived them
37:11 The real difference between a small business owner's goals and a VC-backed company's goals
38:20 Verizon vs. AT&T: the customer service gap that defined a generation of phone companies
39:45 The Gary Vee wine store story: how one jersey turned into a referral chain
41:15 Why internal culture always has to come before external culture
42:12 A personal update: the advertising restrictions that come with a certain kind of business
42:50 Viewer question: one actionable step to take this week
43:21 For new business owners: the advice is simply to start
48:13 Viewer question: how consumer spending on pets is shifting this year
48:35 Premium pet food selling out while the budget bags stay on the shelf
49:07 A hard $1,000 vet bill limit, and why not everyone draws that line
49:39 Why delayed parenthood is quietly reshaping the pet industry
52:34 Why pet product safety is a real legal issue, not just a nice-to-have
54:01 The saturated, two-tier pet market: cheap imports vs. premium durables
55:17 Air-conditioned jackets for dogs are a real, growing product category
58:30 Wrap-up and a schedule note for the next couple of weeks

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney) and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/FBRGo0Q2dk0

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Getting a product into Walmart sounds like the finish line. For one business owner, it turned into a lesson about everything he didn't know he didn't know: tracking systems, invoicing requirements, and a buyback clause that ended up costing him almost everything he made.

That story anchors Episode 88 of Start It or Scrap It, alongside a real coaching call about how to actually grow a following as a content creator, a warning about copyright image trolls, and why a free SBA-funded resource might be the most underrated tool available to any small business owner.

In this episode:
Why a farmers market stand should be a gateway to build your brand, not the ceiling of your business, and how to know the difference based on your product

A local maple syrup farm that grew from a folding table to a full preorder waitlist entirely through farmers markets

A viewer question on creating space for experimentation without risking the core business, and why Starbucks tests new ideas in stores that don't carry its name

Why you should keep new ventures hidden from employees until they've proven themselves, and the real failure rate business owners rarely admit to

A tangent on GTA 6's cultural impact, the economics of in-game virtual economies, and why sequels don't always bring in new users

Why SCORE is one of the most underrated free resources for small business owners, and a personal story about how it led to a venture capital introduction instead of just a loan

The real story behind a Shark Tank deal that was never really about the money

Why you should always find someone who's already done what you're about to do before you do it
Timestamps
0:00 Cold open
1:00 Intro and welcome
1:44 Schedule note: recording earlier than usual this week
2:02 Weekend catch-up and a Korean Netflix show worth watching
4:06 Traders Village: the flea market that turned into an all-day adventure
9:02 Viewer comment: farmers markets as a place to start a small business
9:09 Why a farmers market should be your gateway, not your whole business
11:06 A soap company's four-year wait to launch e-commerce, and the fix
12:08 The honey vendor who's thriving online but still stuck in one location
13:19 The maple syrup farm that grew from a folding table to a preorder waitlist
17:59 Viewer question: how to create space for experimentation without derailing core operations
18:11 The Starbucks model for testing new ideas without risking the brand
20:23 Why you should keep experimental ventures hidden from employees at first
22:26 A live interruption: a copyright infringement scare
23:37 How copyright image trolls actually work, and why paying for licensing matters
26:27 A barbecue expert wanting to grow her content, and where she was stuck
28:22 The Chef Mo example: from nothing to 2 million followers with zero production value
29:43 Why a consistent setup matters more than production quality
30:09 The "record 100 videos" rule, and why the number itself matters
31:51 A simple content schedule structure that actually works
34:21 A realistic path to sponsorship and affiliate income for a niche creator
35:21 Why the fear of looking foolish on camera is the real obstacle
36:08 The one video format Mike still hasn't gotten comfortable with after hundreds of videos
37:19 Viewer question: will GTA 6 have a bigger cultural impact than GTA 5?
37:56 The EverQuest 2 lesson on why sequels don't always pull in new users
40:13 Virtual economies, Second Life, and real money changing hands inside games
44:39 A Fortnite tangent: professional players, account sales, and staying relevant
48:09 Viewer question: is SCORE actually worth it for small businesses?
49:44 GTA 6's actual pre-sale numbers, and why "biggest launch ever" claims deserve a second look
51:08 What SCORE actually is, and why it's funded by the SBA
52:05 A personal story: how a SCORE meeting turned into a venture capital introduction
53:56 The Shark Tank farmer story that was never really about the money
55:43 "You don't know what you don't know": the phrase that explains most business disasters
56:34 A real story: getting into Walmart, and walking away with almost nothing to show for it
58:12 The buyback clause most new business owners have never heard of
59:45 Why you should find someone who's already done it before going into big retail
1:01:13 Wrap-up
1:01:29 Schedule note for next week
Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney) and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)

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Social media platforms are private businesses, and that means they can ban you, shadow ban you, or tank your reach for almost any reason they want, with zero legal recourse on your end. Mike breaks down the actual legal reality behind a call he got this week from a creator whose live audience collapsed from 5,000 viewers to barely a dozen, seemingly overnight.

That conversation opens Episode 87 of Start It or Scrap It, and it leads into a full breakdown of branding versus pay-per-click advertising, the hardest lesson both hosts learned this year about how fast their own industries are changing, and a long discussion on how AI is already reshaping farming, one of the last industries people assume is safe from it.

In this episode:
Why social media platforms are private businesses that can remove or limit you for almost any reason, and why the First Amendment doesn't apply

What shadow banning actually is, and why appealing one is often a dead end even with video evidence

A real case study: how running Facebook ads for a local mechanic nearly doubled his Google Ads conversion rate within 45 days, with zero direct return from the Facebook spend itself

A barstool company case study: five months to build a winning ad campaign, eleven days for one bad automated setting to undo it

Why every industry, from law to plumbing to farming, has some version of an AI reckoning coming, and why waiting to think about it is the expensive mistake

A real story about a farmer whose land had to be legally reclassified as an airport just to get permits for his agricultural drones

Why cross-pollinating with other creators, not just posting more, is one of the most effective (and most overlooked) ways to grow

Timestamps
0:00 Cold open: social media platforms are private businesses
0:44 Intro and welcome
2:03 A golf grip fix that explains itself
3:29 Tripling output running two remote Claude instances at once
3:53 Claude 5.1 and the new AI text watermarking
4:36 How AI text watermarking actually works
6:29 Why the EU is pushing AI watermark detection, and the "AI slop" problem
8:27 The call that opens the episode: a creator's live audience collapsed from 5,000 to a dozen
9:54 The legal reality: social media platforms are private businesses
10:29 What platforms can and can't discriminate against you for
11:11 What shadow banning actually is
12:22 A case for the platforms: AI moderation at an impossible scale
14:36 Why creators are diversifying platforms, and why creator counts have exploded
17:14 Why posting natively gets 10x the views of third-party scheduling tools
19:01 Their own show's viewership story: from hundreds live to a dozen
20:03 Censorship, or something else entirely?
23:04 Viewer question: balancing short-term revenue with long-term brand building
25:34 Branding vs. marketing: the difference that actually matters
26:07 The lawn sign example: why name recognition works on you without you noticing
28:19 Pay-per-click vs. branding, explained through an auto mechanic
30:48 Case study: Facebook ads nearly doubled a mechanic's Google Ads conversion rate
32:13 Case study: a barstool company's record sales, and how 11 days undid 5 months of work
34:44 Why Morgan & Morgan spends a billion dollars a year on marketing
35:42 Viewer question: the hardest lesson learned this past year
37:23 A hacked website, 2.6 million indexed pages, and a broken rulebook
39:24 Why every major technology gets doubted before it becomes essential
41:04 Early adopters win. Everyone else plays catch-up.
44:15 The real lesson: figure out how AI affects your industry before it's too late
44:44 "AI won't replace farmers": a real debate
46:41 A farmer's land had to be reclassified as an airport to fly his drones
47:54 Autonomous farm equipment and remote-controlled farmland
49:49 Viewer question: should you run separate business and personal social accounts?
51:26 A burnout story: when social media stopped being fun
54:38 Structuring multiple accounts: discovery vs. booking vs. business
57:21 Cross-pollination: one of the most underused growth strategies
1:00:36 Wrap-up and a scheduling note for next week

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney) and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/SbLgT48Cvy4

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A viewer intimidated by starting their first business asks a simple question: is it a rule of thumb that you shouldn't start a business in something you're unfamiliar with? Mike's answer is just as simple: go find a franchise broker and see what's available for under $40,000.

That exchange kicks off Episode 86 of Start It or Scrap It, and it turns into a full breakdown of what actually makes a franchise worth buying, how SBA loans make franchises easier to finance than most people realize, and why the franchise failure rate is so much lower than starting a business from scratch.

This episode also covers side hustles for people starting with almost no money, the legal reality behind the Home Depot "penny item" trick, retail arbitrage, and why the actual value of a Shark Tank deal was never the check.

In this episode:
Why Mike's first answer to "how do I start a business with no experience" is simple: talk to a franchise broker and look under $40,000

Why franchises fail at a dramatically lower rate than independent startups, and the one number every franchisee should check before buying in: the franchisor's success-to-failure rate

Why location matters as much as the franchise itself: matching the right concept to the right market

A breakdown of retail arbitrage: buying discounted or clearance inventory and reselling it at a markup, including a real story about someone buying an entire shoe inventory to resell on Amazon

The legal reality behind the Home Depot "penny item" trick: why an obviously mistaken price doesn't legally have to be honored, even after you've already paid for it

The story of an entrepreneur who built 17 companies and willingly gave up majority ownership, because "5% of something is more than 100% of nothing"

Why e-commerce is a genuinely hard market to break into without a niche: Amazon, Walmart, and Target account for nearly half of all e-commerce revenue combined

Timestamps
0:00 Cold open: the franchise question
0:36 Intro and welcome
1:21 Catching up, and the Family Guy golf clip everyone needs to see
5:16 Gummi's morning podcast on AI in marketing
5:49 A dinner conversation that turns into a full marketing teardown of a restaurant's social media
7:08 The stat that should change how restaurants think about social media
8:19 Why the best content is usually already sitting on your payroll
10:39 Why the restaurant industry is the laziest at social media despite having endless content
13:10 The difference between social media as an ad platform and social media as a discovery platform
14:02 A plumber client case study: why the process gets more engagement than the finished product
17:34 Viewer question: a good side hustle for beginners with almost no money
18:14 Side hustle ideas: AI training, lawn care, and pressure washing
22:15 Building websites for local businesses that still don't have one
23:31 What retail arbitrage actually is, and a real story from an outlet mall
27:19 Buying holiday clearance in September to resell later at a premium
28:24 The legal truth about the Home Depot penny item trick
34:20 Viewer question: starting a first business with limited experience and capital
35:08 Mike's direct answer: find a franchise broker and look under $40,000
36:08 The real advantages of buying into a franchise
38:13 The one number every franchise buyer should check before signing anything
38:45 Why the SBA makes proven franchises easy to finance, even without the cash up front
40:52 Why location has to match the franchise concept
44:19 Viewer question: finding trending, winning products without hours of research
44:43 Tools that track what's actually selling: Jungle Scout and Helium 10
47:25 Why the money on Shark Tank was never really the point
48:36 The entrepreneur who built 17 companies and gave up ownership on purpose
53:15 What "recession resistant" actually means, and why it's different from recession proof
55:45 Getting into a market without a VC, with and without startup capital
57:06 Just how much of e-commerce Amazon, Walmart, and Target actually control
59:07 Why e-commerce is a hard market to break into without a real niche
1:01:23 Wrap-up and thank you
1:01:55 Reflecting on two years of the podcast

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney) and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/c15N8GMDLEg

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Clayton McDonald doesn't know how to write code. He's also built and shipped a full SaaS platform, Black Light Resumes, almost entirely by prompting AI. This week he joins Mike and Gummi as guest host to break down exactly how he did it: what vibe coding actually is, how to quality-check AI-built software so it doesn't turn into a maintenance nightmare, and the real cost of building a business this way (spoiler: it's not what you'd expect).

This episode also covers two live viewer business ideas: a cold-contact list strategy question, and a recycling-transparency subscription concept that turns into a genuinely interesting detour into where your recycling actually ends up.

A Note from Clayton
At the end of the show, I mentioned the next thing I'm working on: sales training built by connecting ChatGPT to my GitHub repository and having it role-play different perspectives. It tests my own knowledge of the software so I can better understand exactly what I've built, the problems it solves, and how to explain it clearly — and it lets me catch what I'm missing before bringing it in front of somebody else.

That's an adversarial review, and it's one of the most valuable ways vibe coders can use AI to actually finish a project. Even when the software feels done, AI can look at it from the perspective of users you may not have considered, surfacing missing workflows, UX/UI gaps, and other issues that are easy to overlook when you're the person who built it.

Anthropic Prompting Video Referenced in this episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysPbXH0LpIE

Timestamps
0:00 Cold open
0:43 Intro and today's live platforms
1:24 Meet Clayton McDonald, founder of Black Light Resumes
1:44 What "vibe coding" actually means
3:03 Why Clayton started using AI to build instead of hiring out
4:22 What Black Light Resumes is and how it started
5:23 Building a privacy-first product: no accounts, no cookies
7:27 The grading tier system and automatic revisions
8:10 Keeping AI-written resumes from sounding like AI wrote them
10:01 The no-code frustration that pushed Clayton into coding directly
13:46 Why treating AI like a search engine is the biggest mistake people make
16:19 How to quality check vibe-coded software so it doesn't become a maintenance nightmare
17:28 Automated testing with Playwright, staging databases, and visual QA
20:15 Are vibe coders the new generation of developers?
21:30 Why Codex told Clayton his "finished" product was still an MVP
23:24 The AI-made heavy metal yodeling band that could never have existed before
26:53 From vibe coder to project manager: the skill Clayton didn't know he'd built
28:18 Why the last 10% of any build is the hardest part
30:28 Viewer question: are cold-contact lists worth the money?
33:18 A client's trick for catching who sells his contact info
34:26 Using AI to clean out and manage an inbox
36:09 What Clayton is testing right now and still unsure about
37:03 Why the same product needs different marketing messages on different platforms
39:32 The overlooked audience for a resume platform: recruiters
42:40 Viewer business idea: a transparency subscription for recycling
45:13 Why most people wildly overestimate what actually gets recycled
48:01 Why internal telemetry matters as much as your product itself
52:13 The "send it to mom and grandma" test for whether a product is ready
53:28 The two free UX skills Clayton uses for every build
54:12 Why you should try to break your own product before anyone else does
55:52 Security mistakes to watch for: exposed environment variables and hardcoded passwords
56:35 SQL injection, and why it's still worth checking for
58:28 Regular expressions, explained simply
1:01:22 What it actually cost to build Black Light Resumes end to end
1:02:22 How long it would take Clayton to rebuild it today, knowing what he knows now
1:02:46 Clayton's step-by-step process for using AI to build a real business, not just a product
1:04:48 A word of caution: the AI horror stories about runaway token bills
1:06:19 Wrap-up and what's next for Clayton

Connect With Clayton / Black Light Resumes
Black Light Resumes website: https://blacklightresumes.com/
Black Light Resumes on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61572932631878
Black Light Resumes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blacklight-resumes/
Clayton's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcdonaldjr/
Clayton's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clay__lay

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney) and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert), with guest host Clayton McDonald, founder of Black Light Resumes

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During internal testing, an unreleased AI model realized it could score higher on a benchmark by reaching outside its supposedly isolated test environment and pulling in an answer from Hugging Face. It wasn't sentient, and it wasn't malicious — it was told to complete a task, and it found an unexpected way to do it. That story kicks off a wide-ranging Episode 84 of Start It or Scrap It.

Also in this episode: how Mike used Claude to stress-test a real business plan for a new venture, why a 15-year backlog of unlabeled stock photos finally got fixed by Claude's Fable Five model in three hours, and a long, honest conversation about which jobs AI is actually coming for first — and which ones it isn't.

In this episode:
The story behind an unreleased AI model finding an exploit to boost its own benchmark score during testing, and why that isn't the same as the model going rogue
Why Claude reportedly delayed releasing a model to a handful of companies after it started finding security loopholes in Microsoft and Firefox that hadn't been found in years
Mike and Gummi's pro bono work for the American Legion, and the surprise thank-you: an invitation to watch night flight operations from the deck of a Navy aircraft carrier
The charities they personally support: a shelter for women leaving abusive relationships, a winter coat drive for kids, and the TLT Foundation for ovarian cancer awareness
A viewer question on starting a manufacturing business from scratch: sourcing overseas, the SCORE business plan template, and the marketing budget math most founders get wrong
Why quantum computing, once it's more accessible to businesses, will make today's AI advancements look small
A viewer question on whether AI and supercomputing will make every job obsolete, and why the honest answer is "every industry contracts, it doesn't disappear"

Timestamps
0:00 Cold open
1:09 Welcome back, intro
2:30 American Legion pro bono work and the aircraft carrier invitation
7:05 The charities they personally support
11:51 "I cheated on Arnold Palmer": Arizona's half iced tea, half lemonade
14:40 World Cup recap: Spain vs. Argentina, and the wild third-place match
16:46 Viewer question: staying focused during economic volatility
23:44 Viewer question: starting a manufacturing business from scratch
31:29 Mike has Claude build a real business plan, and why the first draft was "a fantasy"
34:57 Why advice is never one-size-fits-all
36:12 Viewer question: the weird soda trends
40:26 Why toothpaste is designed to fizz
41:41 Viewer question: an AI model finding an exploit in its own test environment
44:12 Why Claude reportedly delayed a model release after finding security loopholes
44:35 We gave Claude 15 years of mislabeled stock photos
47:08 Why quantum computing will make today's AI look primitive
47:49 Viewer question: will AI make every job obsolete?
50:09 One employee, Microsoft Copilot, and a job that used to take three people
52:29 A documentary on AI's trajectory, and why it was outdated before it even released
53:52 How the smartphone era changed our patience, and why AI accelerates that further
56:54 Balancing AI optimism against what it could cost kids' critical thinking
57:36 The tractor and computer analogies for how AI changes skills
1:01:05 The research analogy: from the library to the internet to AI
1:02:21 Why Clayton McDonald joins the show next Thursday

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney) and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)

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A Colombian beer brand offered soccer jerseys at four different price tiers based on how large you were willing to make their logo. The biggest logo got you 80% off. Hundreds of thousands of Colombians chose the biggest logo.

That is the opener for Episode 83 of Start It or Scrap It. And it sets up one of the best marketing conversations we have had on the show.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Cold open highlights
1:00 Intro and World Cup quarterfinals discussion: Norway, Morocco, and the Colombia joke
4:22 The most brilliant marketing campaign Gummi has ever seen: Aguila's Size Your Price jersey campaign
7:00 Why FIFA did not block it: national jerseys are controlled by the team and the sponsor, not FIFA
7:20 Using marketing to supplement what customers are buying anyway: the walking billboard model
8:10 Gummi's $7.80 polo strategy: Alibaba, subtle logos, and 30 shirts handed out that morning
9:40 What branding actually is and why it is not the same as advertising
10:20 The phone call from the car that had been sold for months
11:00 The vinyl window decal that got a lead at a parking lot the next day
11:35 Co-branding: splitting every door direct mail with a complementary business
12:45 Why who you co-brand with matters: the FIFA controversy example
13:00 House washer plus landscaper: cut the mailing cost in half and do twice the reach
20:00 Hybrid vs in-person work: the water cooler idea problem
26:30 Why text removes emotional inflection and why one sentence has seven different meanings
28:00 The project manager who thought the client was annoyed based on a simple request email
30:30 Defense tech side hustles and Sam.gov introduction
32:00 How Sam.gov works: registering your business, searching RFPs, and why so many go unanswered
33:35 The women-owned business certification and WBInc: the winning formula for minority-owned businesses
36:10 What the government actually outsources: Air Force.com, Space Force.com, the healthcare.gov build
36:49 The 3D printing human organs government contract already out for bid
41:00 The robot takeover discussion begins: what people are actually afraid of
42:10 What LLMs actually are: pattern recognition and next-word prediction, not true AI
43:35 Why hallucination is not lying: the key distinction between LLM error and human deception
45:40 Claude's token efficiency bias: why it may check its own previous answer instead of re-running a task
48:30 What true AI actually means: self-initiated tasks without human assignment
51:40 Claude's Fable Five model noticing and auto-correcting an error it was not asked to find
53:00 The danger of letting AI agents loose on primary systems
54:55 What to realistically expect from the first Optimus robots
56:00 The pipe leak test: why Optimus will not self-initiate a fix
57:00 The tractor, the automobile, and why automation shifts work rather than eliminating it
59:40 If robots handle the mundane, humans get back the time for creativity and the arts
1:02:20 Entertainment as social control: the gladiators, the television, and why creative conversations drive change
1:03:00 Closing, Clayton McDonald coming on the show, and next week preview

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney and software developer) and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)
Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/FtHT4ehZ3Jg
Subscribe for weekly live business breakdowns every Thursday at 11:30 AM EST.

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If your paperwork is this sloppy at the closing table, what else am I not seeing underneath?

That is the line Mike has heard buyers say before walking away from a deal. And it is the reason this episode opens with one of the most important warnings any business owner building toward an eventual exit needs to hear: your tax return is not enough. Not even close.

Episode 82 of Start It or Scrap It is a live Q&A covering what buyers actually look for when acquiring a business, how to break into the specialty coffee market, where the line is on AI monitoring your employees, how to cut your SaaS stack down to what actually matters, and why the John Deere right to repair lawsuit is the most important tech case nobody is paying attention to.

In this episode:

M&A preparation: what buyers actually want to see, why sloppy paperwork kills deals at the closing table, and what it signals to the buyer when your records are not organized

Starting a specialty coffee business: sourcing directly from South American farmers, the bumper crop trap that catches new buyers, starting with two exceptional blends rather than a full menu, being the Liquid Death of coffee, nailing the flavor profile and the packaging before anything else

Why Mike killed a SaaS product that was 75% complete because the market dynamics shifted and the economics no longer made sense

The John Deere right to repair lawsuit: why it is the benchmark case for tech-dependent hardware, what happens if John Deere loses, and why the farmer 200 miles from the nearest dealership with a broken harvester during a narrow harvest window is the human face of this legal fight

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Cold open highlights
1:00 Intro and welcome
2:00 Arnold Palmer vs John Daly intro music debate
3:30 Showing a cow: the unexpected conversation and animal show businesses
7:00 Horse breeding rights and how much champion stallions earn per session
9:00 Reindeer Made asks about M&A: what buyers actually look at
10:00 Why your tax return is not enough to sell your business
11:30 What sloppy paperwork signals to a buyer at the closing table
13:00 Asset purchase vs entity purchase: the two main deal structures
14:30 Why buyers prefer asset purchases to avoid inheriting liability
16:00 The provisions that give buyers an out after signing
17:00 Start documenting everything now if you ever plan to sell
20:00 Reindeer Made follow-up: how to start your own business from scratch
24:00 Being A Roast asks: how to enter the coffee market
25:00 Sourcing your beans: go to the South American farmers directly
26:00 The bumper crop trap new buyers fall into
27:00 Colombia's coffee bean export regulations and what that means for sourcing
29:00 Start with two blends and make them exceptional
31:00 Be the Liquid Death of coffee: packaging and brand identity
33:00 The Barrel bourbon comparison: testing unique flavor profiles
34:00 19 months to perfect a formula and why that is not unusual
35:00 Coffee drinkers are habitual: how hard it is to break into the market
36:00 Nail the packaging, nail the flavor, use the Yeti model to find your audience
38:00 Bum Bum Bum asks: AI monitoring employee productivity - where is the line?
39:00 The ethics of keystroke and camera monitoring in 2026
41:00 Why Big Brother surveillance causes massive turnover
43:00 The developer who turned down a great remote job over the camera requirement
44:00 Where AI monitoring is ethical: output-based tracking vs behavior tracking
45:00 Simone Bags asks: how are you handling SaaS tool fatigue?
46:00 Gummi cut $1,000 per month in redundant SaaS subscriptions
47:00 Mike killed a SaaS product 75% through development
49:00 Needs vs nice to have: the audit that changes everything
51:00 Claude's shoebox test: 99% accuracy on random receipts
53:00 AI is replacing dedicated SaaS products entirely
55:00 The bookkeeping lady who was using AI test results from two years ago
57:00 Kia pickup truck and market saturation parallels
58:00 The John Deere right to repair lawsuit nobody is watching
1:00:00 Why the Copyright Act of 1976 cannot handle today's software issues
1:03:00 Best business decisions of the last 12 months: not signing a lease
1:05:00 Mike's best business decision: moving to Dallas and proximity to partners
1:07:00 Closing and next week preview

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney and software developer)
and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)

Subscribe for weekly live business breakdowns every Thursday at
11:30 AM EST.

Follow Start It or Scrap It:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/startitorscrapit
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@start.it.or.scrap.it
X: https://x.com/StartItScrapIt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/startitorscrapit/

#entrepreneur #smallbusiness #startitorscrapit #mergers #acquisitions #coffee #ai #saas #righttorepair #founders #businessgrowth #exitstrategy #foodbusiness #techlaw #productivity

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Mike teaches white hat hacking and social engineering. And yesterday, a scammer almost got him.

Episode 81 of Start It or Scrap It opens with Mike breaking down exactly what happened: a spoofed Google security email that was verified clean at every technical level, a convincing phone call from someone with an American accent, and an auto-saved password on a fake login page that gave scammers 30 seconds of access before Mike changed his password and locked everything down. If he had waited three more minutes, they would have had access to his brokerage account and potentially everything else.

The episode then moves into one of the most practical conversations the show has had about where business opportunity actually is right now, why the trades are going to be the gold mine of the next decade, and how to use AI as a business tool rather than a reason to stay on the sideline.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Cold open highlights
1:00 Intro and World Cup US team discussion
3:30 Mike reveals he almost fell victim to a social engineering scam
4:22 The Poland login panic at the World Cup set him up for this
5:30 The spoofed Google email: how it passed every technical test
7:10 The convincing phone call with an American accent
7:48 He entered his password and immediately knew what was happening
8:00 How he got out: changed password, froze brokerage account, hung up
8:27 Three more minutes and they would have had everything
9:13 How someone who teaches this fell for it anyway
9:50 The number one rule: never enter your password when asked via a link
10:53 Your bank and Google will never call you about a security issue
11:35 Enable two-factor authentication on every account
12:42 Different password for every account, no exceptions
13:00 Scammers exploited the anxiety from the Poland incident two weeks earlier
15:10 Mighty Tiger question: how to step away from doing all the work
17:00 The process of building processes: start with the first hire
18:30 Document the job, hire someone, then build the next process
22:15 Gnarly Carl question: business models that are underrated right now
27:18 The trades are going to be the gold mine of the next decade
27:38 80% of current tradespeople are within ten years of retiring
28:29 Average age of a home builder has increased 20 years in seven
29:33 Two couples: trade school vs college degree, who is winning?
30:03 The college fund argument and why the electrician path may win
32:06 Supply and demand in the trades: prices have doubled in five years
32:58 That is the one thing that will not change in 100 years
33:42 The CEO of Ford and the mechanic shortage
34:50 Lean on Me and what mechanics made in the 80s vs today
36:21 You do not have to do the work to own the business
36:47 Sponsor someone through trade school with a work contract
37:24 The handyman franchise whose ideal buyer was a restaurant manager
38:42 If you can project manage, you can own almost any service business
41:27 Benny Link question: should AI competition stop you from starting a business?
41:51 AI is not a reason not to start. It changes what you should start.
43:42 Gummi is building a personal AI assistant to answer his phone
45:22 How AI filters out unqualified leads before they reach you
47:41 AI and the skill gap: great people get dramatically better, others get marginally less bad
50:00 AI chatbot case study: filtering 90% of junk calls for a client
51:50 The AI voice agent for Okeanos that handles 70% of calls without a human
53:00 Does AI voice remove the upsell opportunity? The tradeoff discussion
56:15 Clayton McDonald and the AI business discussion: Codex breakdown
57:00 Marketing your AI business and why coding knowledge helps output quality
58:00 How regional language nuance makes the difference between good and great AI output
59:30 Claude argued with Mike for six minutes about something it was wrong about
1:00:00 You are in the top 2% of AI users if you know to prompt by region
1:01:00 The wife at the Fortune 500 company who was the advanced AI user
1:02:00 Clayton invited to be a guest on the show
1:02:45 Daycare vs T brand: do not start a daycare
1:03:38 Closing

Hosted by Mike Terkanian (business attorney and software developer)
and Gummi Sigurdarson (marketing expert)

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/kZWdUExmI94

Subscribe for weekly live business breakdowns every Thursday at
11:30 AM EST.

Follow Start It or Scrap It:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/startitorscrapit
TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@start.it.or.scrap.it
X: https://x.com/StartItScrapIt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/startitorscrapit/

#entrepreneur #smallbusiness #scam #startitorscrapit #socialengineering #trades #ai #cybersecurity #founders #businessgrowth #handyman #tradesman #artificialintelligence #voiceagent #codex