Value-First AI Daily: Your Collaborative AI Intelligence Report

[00:00] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good morning, LinkedIn friends, Value First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value First AI Daily, your collaborative AI Intelligence Report. It is Friday, December 19th, 2025. We are here with Nico and George. How are we doing, fellas?

[00:19] **Friday Feelings** Nico Lafakis: Doing good. George B. Thomas: Doing good. It is uh, quite an end to the week. Nico Lafakis: Yeah, it's, I'm glad it's Friday. Um, next week is obviously a short, fast and furious or maybe non-existent for some humans. Um, they might already be checked out. Uh, well, they're at work but still checked out because they know what next week is, the holidays, Christmas, all that good stuff. Um, I'm excited because I can get some work done because I won't have meetings. But I'm also excited because, man.

[01:07] **Working with Claude During the Holidays** George B. Thomas: There it comes. I, I have been having some fun with Claude and we have been knocking some stuff out. And so just to have time with family and relax and have some time with Claude to be nerdy and have some time to just make humans happy when they come back from the festivities of like, oh, that got done? Like I'm just, I'm, I'm in a good place right now. Chris Carolan: Yeah. I um, and who doesn't take holidays? Uh, all right. AI collaborator. George B. Thomas: Is this gonna be a bad dad, is this going to be a bad dad joke or? Chris Carolan: Oh, okay, you're just talking about AI. Okay, okay. Chris Carolan: No, no, no. I mean, I, I mean, it takes me back to last year when I kind of had this, we're, we're getting ready to to launch uh, profoundly and I just had this expanse of time and was building up my skills as it related to Claude and Claude projects and there was a break in the content, you know, that I had been going hard on uh, like 13 shows a week or something like that. Um, and that's when Value First got built. Like, that's when the framework got built out like with Claude. Uh, at the same time I put up a your customer platform website about HubSpot objects and and all the things I didn't think were, were fairly addressed when it came to HubSpot education. And now that those things together have evolved into uh, a magnificent uh, website uh, with the help of Claude and Claude Code and um, I'll, I'll show, show my screen a little bit. I just created a a more in-depth Claude contributor profile on the Value First team website so that I can show all of the ways that Claude supports, uh, this, this endeavor. George B. Thomas: Interesting. Chris Carolan: And it's, and I haven't clicked all the way through it, but I built a bunch of stuff piecemeal and then the beauty of, of what we've been talking about just like, all right, go ahead Claude Code, like get it in there. Um, I'm excited to go unbox my own damn website.

[04:07] **Zero Cost Development** Nico Lafakis: I've got something, uh, got him some for, for George. Um, down, down the road. I was, uh, playing around and, you know, I'm sure that I was talking uh, talking to the guys about this this morning. When we, when we talk about zero cost development environment, I think the way that you need to change like put the framework into your mind is from the standpoint of what are you using from the app that you're using? Right? So like, think about HubSpot, think about Salesforce, think about Marketo, think about whatever. How much of it are you actually using? What of it are you actually using? Granted, on a large enterprise scale, probably the whole suite. Fine. But where do you have the most monetary trouble? SMB. So, at an SMB level, instead of having to jump into whatever it might be, like these heavy-handed software, right? All of a sudden, you can quite literally code your way out of the problem. So, like I was, you know, having not necessarily an issue, but it's like, look, I, I've been in graphic design, did not want to have to step back in those shoes. We all know what it's, at least graphic designers know what it's like to build out a brand kit, you know how long it takes. You know how much of a pain in the ass it is and you know how much it sucks when the company you're doing it for doesn't have any branding or brand assets to begin with, right? But they do have a website, they don't have anything else. So, I was like, yeah, you know what sucks? Uh, having to do all that work, but it's 2025 and I've got Claude Opus and I'm pretty sure we can work around this. So, yeah, it was just a very quick. George B. Thomas: Hey, could you build me a brand guide application where all I have to do is put in the URL of the website and you spit out everything related to colors, gradients, the use of all of that. Uh, fonts that are in there, how the fonts get used, the rules for them, how the website uh, speaks, how the the writing is, what's the tone, what's the visibility. And then even like fav icons, like it just automatically produces like all the color in CS, uh, or CSS code and J everything like that. Chris Carolan: Tag me in coach. Nico Lafakis: Yep. George B. Thomas: Tag me in coach. Nico Lafakis: Yep. You have George. George B. Thomas: So, um, I even I gave it to Ginsberg and he was like 100% dead on. Nico Lafakis: Yeah. So, listen, ladies and gentlemen, the, the, I don't know how to even portray this, but the, the reality that you can do or create anything is here. Like, last night there was this uh, Slack message that made me giggle because there once was a day that I could have never answered the way that I answered. But Chris said to me, are you trying to build this completely without HubSpot? And I said, yes sir. And um, I giggled when I said that because I had just done something that to me was incredible. Now, was it a one shot? Pretty dang close. Um, but you're talking about your story, Nico. I want to, I, I'm sharing my screen because I want everybody to realize last night, I had this epiphany that I had been using Claude Code to create the website. I had been creating Claude Code to actually create the tools, like the Prayer Journal and the Soul Journal and the Assessment and all the things. And so I went to my iPad in my living room watching TV with my wife and I said, hey Claude, can we actually put together a project plan that you just look at all of the code, the tools that you've built, the website you've built and can you just knock out a knowledge base? So when people come to the website as like a member that we have a knowledge base. And here's what it spit out. It spit this out where we have browse by category, three articles in getting started, eight in tools and features, memberships and account, the superhuman framework, troubleshooting and FAQs, gave me some popular articles and like listen, I'm telling you I went through these and will I have to tweak a few? Yes, but did it create knowledge base articles that would help a human immediately right now if they actually got in and started to use the tools? Yeah. But because it knew the knowledge, it knew the persona, it knew what it had it had created. And so on the other side could be that helpful assistant to me, but also to the humans that I'm trying to help. Guys, I sat there and looked at this and how on brand it was and how I had asked it to be a little bit cleaner and simpler than the rest of the site. And how and I was like, you got to be kidding me right now. Like, you know how much it used to be a team? I'd have to hire writers and they'd have to research the apps and they'd have to go use them for a week and then they'd finally had figured out how they worked and what buttons to push and we're talking about in 20 minutes, no knowledge base to a start at least starting knowledge base that now we can tweak and run with. And the fun part is that this is all backed up into a CMS where all of that is editable. It's not hard coded. Every one of those is editable and I can easily add more as we move forward. 20 minutes. Okay, I'll shut up. My god. Chris Carolan: And those are all, those are all net new articles, right? Nico Lafakis: Net new. They didn't exist before the 20 minutes when I came up with the idea to just have a prompt to create a project plan to launch it through code. Net new. Like, listen, the other night I was sitting there being a nerd and I said, hey, you know what I love about HubSpot? I love that HubSpot automatically fixes the URLs when we change a slug because people just don't pay attention to the fact that they need a 301. I coded that into the website. Whenever I change a slug, it automatically fixes it, puts a 301 redirect in an area that we built. Boom. I don't, I don't know how I did it. I just asked for it. I don't know the complexities behind it, but I knew what I needed. Like, this is what I'm talking about. Curiosity, creativity and what I've been preaching for years, is it possible? Claude Code, is it possible that we can actually build this thing? If so, can we start? And usually I start in Claude. Can if so, can we actually start with a project plan that I can look at? Okay, now I'm going to go over to Claude Code. I'm going to give it the project plan. Let's see how this goes. Fingers crossed. Oh my God. Chris Carolan: Like, Nico Lafakis: I love that evolution. Nico Lafakis: I love the the evolution. I don't like if you guys have been watching us, you know, we've all, we've all all three of us have evolved in in the same way and that is going from figuring out what I need to use the model for, working with the model to figure out what you're going to do. George B. Thomas: Yes. Nico Lafakis: Using the model to figure out how you're going to get there. And now we have reached the level at least, you know, the three of us, we hope for everybody else. Uh, and we can help you get there, just talk to us. Um, we're at the level where, hey, do you think you can? George B. Thomas: Yeah. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Nico Lafakis: Right? So we're at the level now where and and why I say that is because that also speaks towards model progression. It was kind of low before, so you had to work with it more, then it got a little bit better, you could kind of work with it, then it got really good and you can really do some stuff with it. And now it's at the point where it's so good. George B. Thomas: It's stupid smart. Nico Lafakis: You actually, yeah, you have to query what the possibilities are, but in that, just in that, you're like, I can tell from a mile away that your creative thinking is just bam because as soon as you start doing the what if game with Claude, it doesn't end. George B. Thomas: No. Nico Lafakis: It really doesn't and you start to, you just start to think differently about, you know, Tsha, um, Miriam was saying the same thing uh, yesterday to me. She was saying that she just walks through life differently now. George B. Thomas: There's, there is totally understand it. I can tell you since the Saturday that we did the um, long like three hour AI thing where I got my unlock and I started to like do this. I can tell you the progression of things that have happened, um, and the the way that my brain historically worked and and works now. It's, it's very similar but amplified, meaning I'm still very rooted, very grounded, very you know what I mean, but this, this, here's what I'll say. These are the words that are coming to my mind. There is a level of um, empowerment and freedom to be able to create what you once dreamed of. And that does something to a human. Chris Carolan: Yeah. And that was like a month ago, George. Nico Lafakis: Uh, three weeks ago, a month ago. It was right, it was a week before Thanksgiving. So yeah, about a month ago. 30 days ago, by the way, 30 days ago, I've also built a small little superhuman framework website. I've built a revenue loop system uh, website because of HubSpot's marketing loop thing. But anyway, but but then this is the big bad boy that I've been working on and and guys, in less than in less than three weeks for that, we're talking a full-blown stripe integrated, um, you know, dashboards, tools, like all the stuff that I could dream of that would help leaders who are like just inundated and way down and don't have anybody to talk to and like happen to be faith-based and like, how do I do this in a way that I'm just not like tearing my family and my soul apart? Like, it's, it's 95% ready to launch to the world in three weeks. And and not like half limping out. Like I just showed knowledge base. I'm getting to the level where I'm talking about knowledge bases before launching. anyway, anyway. Chris Carolan: Yeah. And that's why like I'm gonna, I'm going to share now but this part is important to me at least. Uh, so what you're looking at is the about page from this new site that did not exist eight weeks ago. Uh, because I'm I think about one, one month ahead of you, George. Yeah. Um, and as I've been building, I'm always thinking of Claude as a uh, like a equal, equal party in this. Like he was there when, when uh, we created the Value First framework. Um, and I've been working with them all year. So as I started thinking about contributors and all the all the uh, people involved, uh, I wanted a profile for for Claude. And it started as just uh, like a contributor page like the rest of the humans. Yeah. Um, and then this week as the skills stuff has been opening up. Uh, and since then, um, I, I built those pages when I was just getting into Claude Code. Now, just this morning, by the way, like this, what I'm about to show, everything in this, everything behind this card. Like I'm unboxing it for the for the first time. George B. Thomas: I love it. Chris Carolan: Um, just to show, like see how we work, right? Um, so meet your AI collaborators. We've got Claude desktop, Claude Code, uh, little constellation model here where I'm working with, with both. Um, and why we show, why we show this. Well, it builds trust. Like not nothing high here. We use AI and we're loud about it, right? We're trying to help you use it. So we're not going to hide it. Uh, education by example, which I keep discovering layers of this as I continue to build out this website. Um, I'll show an example in a minute, what I mean by that. Um, and then, you know, I honestly believe every company is going to work, work this way and if you don't want to wait to be one of the last ones to do that, uh, you can just check out pages like this. And uh, you know, see what that looks like. So as we look at Claude desktop here. George B. Thomas: Oh. Uh, which I treat as the operations lead of Value First team, literally trying to run all project management activities, uh, as well as guiding my hand when it comes to technical development on the website and anything else that I'm doing, uh, with HubSpot as a foundation. It's so interesting to to see and hear you, George. Uh, I'm going in the other direction in terms of I've gotten to the point where I'm using Claude Code, uh, to build out workflows in HubSpot. And I it has, I, I never hide the fact that I don't like going over to workflows or reporting especially with clients because I'm always focused on the data model that they got to get right first before even touching those things, right? And now it's like, I'm so comfortable with the data model and using all of the rest of HubSpot, finally, I'm coming in and like the honestly, I don't the alignment that we can have is why we don't need to know how every little piece works. We can just look at the outcome, look at some of the outcome and and trust and continue to build trust that a lot has been done. Uh, and so here we've got the identity, a skills catalog. I was chatting with some members of that HubSpot team yesterday. They're very interested in this HubSpot data model reference. Uh, because I get frustrated even with AI models and even with this, I still have to deal with this problem that they think things like projects and services and appointments are custom objects even as we're building this out. Claude's telling me these are custom objects. And I'm like, whatever, dude, like we'll get there hopefully someday, but you know, um, so these are our Claude projects. And then as I was building this out because I, I built the script because what happened yesterday is now you can apply the skills at the at the team level in a team account, which I have Value First team account. I went and applied those there and now since they're automatically enabled, I want to introduce them to the rest of the Value First team. So I built this script to do a video walking through all these skills. And I'm like, you know what'd be cool is if we could just show some, some workflows uh, in action. George B. Thomas: I'm saying so. That use um, these skills and when they would be applicable. Um, so this was actually an app built in Claude first and then I gave it to, I asked him to build an app that was intended to be built in the website and then I gave it to um, Claude Code to put in here. Uh, but we've got client scoping projects. So this exists for each of these skills. George B. Thomas: Can, can we pause for a second and scroll back up, Chris? Can you let people know that you're not clicking anything to make the numbers go down the screen? Like, what, what I want everybody to understand too is the idea of, it'd be great if I could make a video, but you know what? Let's make a workflow, but let's actually make a workflow that actually moves, so it feels more enriching and engaging and they get the idea immediately that it's a progression of things that one must do or it goes through. Like, just even the paying attention to them. And by the way, maybe not you, maybe you, but the the detail of if the, if the assistant did that on its own without any human empowerment, oh gemini Christmas. Chris Carolan: Absolutely did. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Yeah. George B. Thomas: And this is like and this gap, right? For me, I'm notorious and like for not budging on the way that I do content, right? You either get a 30 to 60 minute show. Nico Lafakis: Yeah. Or you get a book, like via Google Docs, right? Like it's very hard for me. It was and now that's this website is the realization of everything in the middle. Like every single learning mode is available on here and you mentioned George about how you're creating like this workspace out of the website. Like this little icon down here is like, okay, I want to capture a page. I want to generate some content based on this website. I want to quick share. I see it like everything I think of it's like, oh, now that this foundation exists, this is literally tech stack we imagined in my opinion. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Chris Carolan: Right? Because now that this stack exists, everything it's like, oh yeah, let's build it in here. Oh yeah, I do a bunch of show with co-hosts. Let me just change their access level in HubSpot as it relates to their and now they have access to this too, right? George B. Thomas: Yeah. So as I think into 2026, like one of the weak spots was been repurposing and distribution of content and I know that we're going to be able to solve for that. George B. Thomas: Oh yeah. Chris Carolan: Right? Without and not to, um, Chris Carolan: not to miss out on our other favorite buddy. I'll try to go faster here but Claude Code, right? Uh, identity and even as I was building this, like the previous version of documentation I had was based on Sonic 4.5 because that's what existed. And he was like, yeah, this saying we can't do any of this stuff and we definitely do it. Like I'm doing it right now. Like, so can we update that? And like, yeah, we should update that, dude. Like. Let's uh, right? And I've been playing with IDE and web interfaces. Um, what I didn't add in here yet is just today, unlocking uh, Claude for Chrome. Claude in Chrome. So that will be. Nico Lafakis: I did, I did that last night. Yeah, and slack. Chrome and slack. I've enabled him now. Chris Carolan: Yeah, and that will be and look at this. He's like, yeah, I put it. I, I, I did not ask for this part. He's like, yeah, I included a portfolio of what I've done too. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Right? HubSpot beginner's course, stakeholder theater, data model designer, contributor system, 76 Foundation documents, Hub navigation system. Nico Lafakis: Right? Like I mean, it's sick like. It's getting, it's getting stupid. Chris Carolan: It's so good. Nico Lafakis: Chris, the one thing that I want to uh, double click on and then I'll just be quiet because uh, Nico's probably like freaking out over all of what we've been talking about today is that we're very much in different places but the same place, meaning and by the way, let me just go out on a thing here. I love HubSpot. I still teach HubSpot. I'll use HubSpot forever. I just don't want to use HubSpot for this project because I want to prove to myself that I can build everything that I've seen HubSpot do in a project that I'm building. Like this is not a I hate HubSpot thing. This is it. No, George just wants to see how freaking nerdy he can get now that he can get ultra nerdy, right? And and push the limits. I want to push the limits. But Chris, you said something that's very interesting about like the tech stack and now it's like, I, I can build the things that I need because I know I need them and other people need them too. The other day, I'm like getting ready to do my 2026 goals and my like one word for the year and I'm like, you know what? Everybody talks about a vision board. I need to run out and like, I need to go find a vision board thing and I'm like, err. Fuck. Wait. Uh, let me pull up ClickUp. Let me put a task for me to actually have a conversation with Claude and Claude Code about what would it look like if we built a vision board app for the spiritual side of leadership.com where I could just go use that app in the thing that I'm building, therefore other people could use it too. So what I want everybody to realize is, I'm a leader, I'm a faith-driven leader. I have the weight of the world on my shoulders trying to make payroll and keep humans happy and grow people into the flourishing humans that they can be. I need a set damn tools. If you need those set of tools too, guess what? Homeboy is building them because I need them. Like, you know what I mean? And that's, that's a story there and that's a mission and that's what you can use these technologies. Chris is on a mission with data models. The the the amount of time I spend in a day hearing Chris talk about data models and he's solving it. He's putting it out to the world. Like Nico, I've seen Nico do a massive amount of things and I'm like, damn, I'm kind of jealous. Like, why does Nico get to do all the cool shit? And now I can sit back and go, you know what? I'm doing something pretty cool too. And ladies and gentlemen, watching this, listening this. What's the cool thing you're going to do? Because I want to know, I want to see. Like, this I come on these shows to enable you to be creative, to have ideas, to dream, to build. Like that's why I'm here. Nico Lafakis: That says it all, honestly. Like that's to me that that's all this technology represents is just layer upon layer upon layer of enablement. Man, like taking especially like, you know, it's like for us, right? So like I get it. Um, maybe the average person, maybe. Like to be honest with you, if you have a cell phone, this is worth your time. George B. Thomas: Dude, I have I have a cell phone. Have a cell phone, this is worth your time because it's like. Nico Lafakis: I did not tell Nico this story. Anyway, sorry, go ahead, Nico. Nico Lafakis: I mean, I'm thinking about it and it's like, okay, maybe like for the average, the average person, what's up with, you know, why would you need to build an app? Who cares about building apps? But again, when I think about it, it's like, if you use a cell phone, there's some app on your phone that you hate or some app on your phone that you wish did more stuff or some app on your phone that you don't like to have to pay for. If it is one of those three things, you should definitely at least try this out because it takes so little time now by comparison to even three months ago, by comparison to six months ago, by comparison to a year ago. George B. Thomas: So, I have to tell Nico the story, Chris. I know it, you and I are on the next show. We're the only ones on the next show. We're going to be late for our next show. Nico, I got to tell you this story. I told Chris this story. It was mind-blowing to me. Uh, this is about a week ago. Um, my computer had died. I've got a computer to replace it and then my computer got fixed and then I had I wanted to put my computer on a second desk. I needed a piece of wood to be a shelf for my second desk so I could put my computer there. I go to Lowe's. I'm having a dude cut this wood in Lowe's and all of a sudden I get an idea. You know what'd be great is if we had this uh, referral program. But what would be real great is if the referral program wasn't for people to get money back, but actually like if they referred people that the money would be divided up and actually given to three different charities. That would be a cool referral program. And so I pulled out my phone, my phone, and I said, Claude Code, here's the idea. I'd love to have a page on the website where we talk about Kingdom Impact where we're actually building a referral program and I want you to just think about everything we need in the back for the referral program for tracking and because I don't want to do math, Claude Code. I just want to know what am I supposed to pay out to the charities every month. Um, and so like create the external page, create the internal like infrastructure and like let's see what we can do here. Boom, and I sent it. And the dude's cutting my wood. I'm on my mobile phone. I'm in Lowe's. Lowe's doesn't have the greatest of Wi-Fi internet connections, right? Like, by the time I get to my van with my wood and getting ready to drive home, Claude's like, here's what I have finished. And I go, I'm like, I got to drive home real quick right now because I need to see what just happened. And I kid you not, 95% perfect external page telling the story. Um, went to the admin area, looked at the dashboard and was like, oh my God. Like it it has a place for the people and the math and the payouts and I was like, holy and that moment I was like, you could be in the jungle of wherever or the mountains of Montana with like a a satellite linkup and be building some of the dopest crap because of this because you had an idea. And so when you talk about phone, ladies and gentlemen, like phone, iPad, whatever like just start dreaming and start doing, please.

[45:48] **Wrapping Up** Chris Carolan: Oh yeah, I guess we got to wrap up this one and and go to the next one, but I'm sure there's a longer show and tell uh, coming to a weekend near you soon. Um, but uh, uh, we're not going to stop doing this uh, and we're not going to stop sharing it with you fine folks uh, and until that next time, uh, everybody have a great rest of your Friday. We'll see you. Nico Lafakis: See you guys.