In this episode of Digital Marketing Masters, host Matt Rouse explores the revolutionary concept of software on-demand, powered by AI. He discusses how this technology is transforming the way businesses operate by allowing them to generate custom software instantly, tailored to specific needs without the hassle of traditional software subscriptions.
The episode outlines ten ways software on demand is changing the business landscape, including improved data security, real-time optimization, and the ability to adapt swiftly to new challenges. Matt emphasizes the competitive edge businesses can gain by utilizing AI to solve problems on the fly and create new revenue opportunities.
Listeners are encouraged to rethink their approach to software and consider the potential of AI-driven solutions to enhance productivity and efficiency. Matt concludes by reiterating the transformative power of software on demand and its role in the future of work.
(00:16) AI Revolutionizing Business
(01:09) Software on Demand Explained
(02:45) Transforming Work with AI Tools
(06:42) Customizing Software for Business Needs
(09:12) Competitive Edge and Adaptation
(12:19) Revenue Opportunities and Software Updates
https://serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/digital-marketing-masters/264
https://serve.podhome.fm/digital-marketing-masters
Hook Digital Marketing:
https://hookdm.com
https://hookdm.ca
Want Matt as a speaker or guest? https://matthewrouse.com
SMB Autopilot: https://SMBAutopilot.ai
Sim Theory: https://simtheory.ai
[00:00:02]
AI Narrator #1:
Forget software subscriptions and overpriced tools. What if you could generate custom software on demand, instantly tailored to your business? Today, we're diving into how AI is revolutionizing the way we work, saving time, cutting costs, and giving small businesses a competitive edge like never before. Get ready to rethink everything you know about software because this is the future of work. Now here's your host of digital marketing masters, Matt Rouse.
[00:00:51] Matt Rouse:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to digital marketing masters. I'm your host, Matt Rouse. Hey. I wanted to talk to you about something, no guest today, but I wanted to talk to you about something really cool that we've been working on for a while, but it's really kind of a game changer for the business itself. And this is software on demand. And what I mean about software on demand is I use an AI program that can both write the code and then display the results, of running that code using a virtual computer. And we have several different ways to do it, and there's a few different apps you can use to do this. Currently, I'm using Sym Theory, which I like a lot, but you can also do it, you know, I'm not gonna get into the specifics of all the different ways you can do it, but there's about maybe five or six apps out there. There's a couple freeware ones that also do something similar.
But the idea of software on demand is that when I need a piece of software to do something, instead of going and searching online and looking at all the different ones and trying to figure out how much it costs, and is there a free trial, and do I gotta give away my email and all this other information, Can I just have the AI write the software that I need on the fly? And this is something that's unless, you know, you're some old school script kitty or something, there's no way that you're writing a piece of software to do a business process quickly.
I know some stuff could be done in spreadsheets, and there's some drag and drop workflow software. But to actually describe the the process that you want for your business or your use case and have it write the software and show you the result and then iterate on that is really, really powerful. So this is 10 ways software on demand will transform work and small business. And number one is SaaS subscriptions. Every company has too many SaaS subscriptions. I mean, as a company who also runs a SaaS program, we have one called SMB Autopilot that is for trade businesses and businesses that have a physical location.
We help them rank better in search. Anyway, even us, we have too many other SaaS subscriptions. So it's a good idea to review your SaaS subscriptions, you know, once in a while. Make sure there's stuff that, you know, somebody in your company is actually using it if you're paying for it. But there's a lot of little programs that just do, you know, maybe you use it. It has 800 features, but you use it for one thing. Just have the AI write you a piece of software that does that one thing, and then you can eliminate that SaaS subscription. It also saves you a lot of time having to go search those out and see if they do what you want because I don't know about you, but there is nothing worse than searching around, finding an app, looking it up, it's got a free trial, I sign up for the trial, it sends me an email, I gotta click on the email, I gotta put in all the information for my login and everything, I go into it and then it does not do what I needed.
It's super, super annoying because it is such a waste of time. So number one, fewer SaaS subscriptions. Number two is you can create some tools in seconds. So I had a PDF file, from a client. They basically want it regenerated. They want all the information because it was under a different business name. There's few changes that they need, has some mistakes in it. I was gonna go and put it into Adobe Acrobat and edit it, and I thought, oh, maybe I can just use this tool for it. So I had the AI write a tool that reads the PDF, puts all the text into a flat text window, and then gives me a separate window with a numerical listing of all of the mistakes it thinks are in there that are either spelling mistakes or grammatical errors.
And then I took the text, pasted it into my document, and just did some quick formatting on it. And then I looked at all the errors to see if there's any obvious ones, then use the spell checker in my app. Bam bam. Done. So you can create some simple tools and even some some somewhat complex tools in seconds. Another one that I made is I wanted to put together some really basic slideshows to set up some images. So it took me five or six iterations to get it working, which still was maybe ten minutes. I got the tool working. I can upload a bunch of photos, and it even put a little slider in there for how many seconds between photos.
And if I wanna transition like fader or like zoom to the next photo or whatever, swipe, and then it gives me the file and I can play it back and I can watch it. Took me ten, fifteen minutes to make that tool. Works great. And I know I could do that in Canva, but it takes me an hour to do it in Canva. And maybe I just don't know how to do it. But the the funny part is, you know, I was able to write this tool so quickly that now I have it essentially forever. I could use it as often as I want, and if I need to make changes to it, I can make changes whenever I want. So because there's no licensing fee, right, I'm already using, an AI agent builder app for other things, I don't have to pay an additional fee for each piece of software unless there's some kind of API or something fee that goes into the software, which for most of what I'm doing it's not, then there's no other cost. Right? Save your money.
Number four, the workflow in the software fits your need instead of you changing your process to fit the software. And perfect example of this is, a tool like you know what? I don't wanna throw anyone's tool under the bus, but there's tons of tools out there where they have a certain way of doing things, and you need to follow how they do things instead of the tool being able to be modified or changed to fit your workflow. Another thing is data security. So when I have the AI write a piece of software, the information that I put in and take out of that software is on the virtual computer that I built it on. So it's not actually going to the data provider. So, you know, if that's OpenAI or it's, you know, DeepSeek or, you know, Anthropic or whatever, I don't have to send them my data because the only part the AI is being used for is to write the software, not the inputs and outputs from the software.
So you're not sending anybody out your data. Especially good if you're in some kind of industry that has data controls. Know, if you're in finance or something like that, medical. There's also real time optimization. So, like, if you build the tool and and you run, you know, like like my PDF one that I made earlier, if I put my information in and it it does its thing and I go, oh, you know what would be great? If I could export it again as a PDF. I could just tell the AI to make an export to PDF button, and it'll add that feature to the software. Then I save that version, and now I have a version that will do that piece. So you can, in real time, you can customize the software to your needs. You don't have to wait for an update from another company or contact a developer or whatever. Right? You can just do it on the fly.
It I should say that this is not a replacement for a developer. Like, your software developer is doing much more complex tasks. You know, if you are a someone with some basic programming skills, you're easily gonna be able to tell it how to make basic software. But, you know, you're not making HubSpot or something. Right? Also, I think and number seven here, I put competitive edge. If you and your employees, you know, if you have employees, contractors, or whatever, if you have a tool that you can use where if they have a problem and they could use software to overcome that problem, if they can generate that piece of software on the fly and then use it to solve their problem, that is a massive competitive edge.
So, like, all the kind of hours and problems that come up with not being able to do that are gonna slow down your competitors. Also, there's kind of a faster way for your business to adapt, and that's number eight on my list today is adaptation. So if you need to make a change to a process or a project kind of last minute, you know, you could just do it. You don't have to wait for somebody else because a lot of times what happens is we say, okay. We have all the requirements for this project that we're doing. We go in. We've selected a vendor for the software or whatever it is.
We get that information. We're doing everything. We get to the last, you know, two, three requirements of the software, and we go, oh my gosh. This doesn't actually do this thing the way that the client wants it done. So what you can do is you can you have your AI write a small piece of software or a script or a plug in or whatever it is that can do that piece. And, I mean, you may need a developer for that. It depends, you know, what it is, obviously. But I'm just saying there's in a lot of cases, like, if I need a quick WordPress plugin to do something, you know, I just have the AI read it. I don't even write it myself anymore. So, number nine is revenue opportunities.
So there's a lot of times where we say, you know what? I could provide this for my clients if only I had x y z. And if those, you know, x y z is something that you can generate software to create, then you can start, you know, providing those services to your clients. So there is an opportunity for you to make more revenue with the customers you have or maybe even get into a new market because you can generate the software that you need to do those things. And a lot of times, you know, even basic software development, if you engage with the software development company, it's thousands of dollars. Right? I mean, I know it. Like, even the simplest little program, either no company's gonna do it for under a couple grand because it's not worth their time or, you know, a bigger project is gonna cost you tons of money where you might be able to take an off the shelf product that you could customize or an open source product that you can customize and have the AI write a plug in or a script for it.
And then last, if you need to update your software or the tool that you're using, you can update it now yourself on the fly. You don't have to wait for that company to update their software. And there's nothing more aggravating than, like, a feature or a bug that's in a piece of software that you really, really need it to work, especially if it breaks your workflow or your task. And you are hounding them, you know, hey. Can you fix this? Can you fix this? Can you fix this? When are you gonna add this feature? When are you gonna add this feature? And it never happens. You know? It just it's aggravating.
But now, right, if you write your own software and the AI writes that software for you and you can say, okay. I wanna change this. I wanna update this feature. I wanna do this. And, you know, maybe it can't do super complex software now, but that's now. So you gotta remember, right, as even the same thing goes with, you know, AI, as goes with LLMs, as goes with AI agents. The worst one you're ever gonna use is the one you're using right now, and it does a pretty good job now. It's gonna do a really good job later. So I think that on demand software is an amazing opportunity for entrepreneurs and business owners. And you combine that with a little bit automation and, man, you've really got something where you can work, smarter, faster, improve your productivity, you know, and all the things that you do. So let's go over it one more time. Software on demand. Number one, fewer SaaS subscriptions.
Number two, you can build a custom tool in seconds. You don't have to wait or contact anybody. Number three, you could lower your cost, improve your profit margin. Number four, you can have workflows that fit your needs instead of having to, you know, change your process to somebody else's process. Number five is data security because it's your data on your server. You don't need to worry about sending it even to the AI provider. Number six, optimization on the fly. Right? If you need to change something, you can just change it. Number seven, gives you a competitive edge. Number eight, you can adapt your business faster if there's some kind of complication or you know, I think one thing that came up just this last week was there was, you know, possibly gonna be tariffs between different countries.
Well, I can write a piece of software that could calculate all the tariffs. I don't need to, you know, hope that it's in Shopify or or, you know, for an ecommerce store or whatever the thing is. Right? So business adaptation. Number nine is new opportunities. Maybe you could generate some software that can help you do something you weren't able to do before or you couldn't afford to build a software tool custom to your business to do that thing. Good example here is I got a friend who, kinda does carpentry stuff specifically for Windows, actual physical Windows, not the program Windows.
And we were able to use the AI to write a tool that can give him the lengths of all the cut pieces, and it can figure out how many pieces of wood he needs to buy and what the most efficient way to cut those pieces of wood is so that he has the least waste. So, you know, things like that, revenue opportunities. And the last is outdated software. Since you can update the program that you made whenever you want, then you don't have to worry about software being up to date. Right? So, anyway, short episode this week. We'll be coming back. We got got some great guests coming up soon too. And I just wanted to go over software on demand because it's something we're working with at the agency here. We love it, and, we'll talk to y'all soon.
[00:15:57] Narrator AI:
Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Masters podcast with your host, Matt Rouse. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us an honest review on your favorite podcast app. Be sure to check out Matt's book, Will AI Take My Job, and have a wonderful day.
Forget software subscriptions and overpriced tools. What if you could generate custom software on demand, instantly tailored to your business? Today, we're diving into how AI is revolutionizing the way we work, saving time, cutting costs, and giving small businesses a competitive edge like never before. Get ready to rethink everything you know about software because this is the future of work. Now here's your host of digital marketing masters, Matt Rouse.
[00:00:51] Matt Rouse:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to digital marketing masters. I'm your host, Matt Rouse. Hey. I wanted to talk to you about something, no guest today, but I wanted to talk to you about something really cool that we've been working on for a while, but it's really kind of a game changer for the business itself. And this is software on demand. And what I mean about software on demand is I use an AI program that can both write the code and then display the results, of running that code using a virtual computer. And we have several different ways to do it, and there's a few different apps you can use to do this. Currently, I'm using Sym Theory, which I like a lot, but you can also do it, you know, I'm not gonna get into the specifics of all the different ways you can do it, but there's about maybe five or six apps out there. There's a couple freeware ones that also do something similar.
But the idea of software on demand is that when I need a piece of software to do something, instead of going and searching online and looking at all the different ones and trying to figure out how much it costs, and is there a free trial, and do I gotta give away my email and all this other information, Can I just have the AI write the software that I need on the fly? And this is something that's unless, you know, you're some old school script kitty or something, there's no way that you're writing a piece of software to do a business process quickly.
I know some stuff could be done in spreadsheets, and there's some drag and drop workflow software. But to actually describe the the process that you want for your business or your use case and have it write the software and show you the result and then iterate on that is really, really powerful. So this is 10 ways software on demand will transform work and small business. And number one is SaaS subscriptions. Every company has too many SaaS subscriptions. I mean, as a company who also runs a SaaS program, we have one called SMB Autopilot that is for trade businesses and businesses that have a physical location.
We help them rank better in search. Anyway, even us, we have too many other SaaS subscriptions. So it's a good idea to review your SaaS subscriptions, you know, once in a while. Make sure there's stuff that, you know, somebody in your company is actually using it if you're paying for it. But there's a lot of little programs that just do, you know, maybe you use it. It has 800 features, but you use it for one thing. Just have the AI write you a piece of software that does that one thing, and then you can eliminate that SaaS subscription. It also saves you a lot of time having to go search those out and see if they do what you want because I don't know about you, but there is nothing worse than searching around, finding an app, looking it up, it's got a free trial, I sign up for the trial, it sends me an email, I gotta click on the email, I gotta put in all the information for my login and everything, I go into it and then it does not do what I needed.
It's super, super annoying because it is such a waste of time. So number one, fewer SaaS subscriptions. Number two is you can create some tools in seconds. So I had a PDF file, from a client. They basically want it regenerated. They want all the information because it was under a different business name. There's few changes that they need, has some mistakes in it. I was gonna go and put it into Adobe Acrobat and edit it, and I thought, oh, maybe I can just use this tool for it. So I had the AI write a tool that reads the PDF, puts all the text into a flat text window, and then gives me a separate window with a numerical listing of all of the mistakes it thinks are in there that are either spelling mistakes or grammatical errors.
And then I took the text, pasted it into my document, and just did some quick formatting on it. And then I looked at all the errors to see if there's any obvious ones, then use the spell checker in my app. Bam bam. Done. So you can create some simple tools and even some some somewhat complex tools in seconds. Another one that I made is I wanted to put together some really basic slideshows to set up some images. So it took me five or six iterations to get it working, which still was maybe ten minutes. I got the tool working. I can upload a bunch of photos, and it even put a little slider in there for how many seconds between photos.
And if I wanna transition like fader or like zoom to the next photo or whatever, swipe, and then it gives me the file and I can play it back and I can watch it. Took me ten, fifteen minutes to make that tool. Works great. And I know I could do that in Canva, but it takes me an hour to do it in Canva. And maybe I just don't know how to do it. But the the funny part is, you know, I was able to write this tool so quickly that now I have it essentially forever. I could use it as often as I want, and if I need to make changes to it, I can make changes whenever I want. So because there's no licensing fee, right, I'm already using, an AI agent builder app for other things, I don't have to pay an additional fee for each piece of software unless there's some kind of API or something fee that goes into the software, which for most of what I'm doing it's not, then there's no other cost. Right? Save your money.
Number four, the workflow in the software fits your need instead of you changing your process to fit the software. And perfect example of this is, a tool like you know what? I don't wanna throw anyone's tool under the bus, but there's tons of tools out there where they have a certain way of doing things, and you need to follow how they do things instead of the tool being able to be modified or changed to fit your workflow. Another thing is data security. So when I have the AI write a piece of software, the information that I put in and take out of that software is on the virtual computer that I built it on. So it's not actually going to the data provider. So, you know, if that's OpenAI or it's, you know, DeepSeek or, you know, Anthropic or whatever, I don't have to send them my data because the only part the AI is being used for is to write the software, not the inputs and outputs from the software.
So you're not sending anybody out your data. Especially good if you're in some kind of industry that has data controls. Know, if you're in finance or something like that, medical. There's also real time optimization. So, like, if you build the tool and and you run, you know, like like my PDF one that I made earlier, if I put my information in and it it does its thing and I go, oh, you know what would be great? If I could export it again as a PDF. I could just tell the AI to make an export to PDF button, and it'll add that feature to the software. Then I save that version, and now I have a version that will do that piece. So you can, in real time, you can customize the software to your needs. You don't have to wait for an update from another company or contact a developer or whatever. Right? You can just do it on the fly.
It I should say that this is not a replacement for a developer. Like, your software developer is doing much more complex tasks. You know, if you are a someone with some basic programming skills, you're easily gonna be able to tell it how to make basic software. But, you know, you're not making HubSpot or something. Right? Also, I think and number seven here, I put competitive edge. If you and your employees, you know, if you have employees, contractors, or whatever, if you have a tool that you can use where if they have a problem and they could use software to overcome that problem, if they can generate that piece of software on the fly and then use it to solve their problem, that is a massive competitive edge.
So, like, all the kind of hours and problems that come up with not being able to do that are gonna slow down your competitors. Also, there's kind of a faster way for your business to adapt, and that's number eight on my list today is adaptation. So if you need to make a change to a process or a project kind of last minute, you know, you could just do it. You don't have to wait for somebody else because a lot of times what happens is we say, okay. We have all the requirements for this project that we're doing. We go in. We've selected a vendor for the software or whatever it is.
We get that information. We're doing everything. We get to the last, you know, two, three requirements of the software, and we go, oh my gosh. This doesn't actually do this thing the way that the client wants it done. So what you can do is you can you have your AI write a small piece of software or a script or a plug in or whatever it is that can do that piece. And, I mean, you may need a developer for that. It depends, you know, what it is, obviously. But I'm just saying there's in a lot of cases, like, if I need a quick WordPress plugin to do something, you know, I just have the AI read it. I don't even write it myself anymore. So, number nine is revenue opportunities.
So there's a lot of times where we say, you know what? I could provide this for my clients if only I had x y z. And if those, you know, x y z is something that you can generate software to create, then you can start, you know, providing those services to your clients. So there is an opportunity for you to make more revenue with the customers you have or maybe even get into a new market because you can generate the software that you need to do those things. And a lot of times, you know, even basic software development, if you engage with the software development company, it's thousands of dollars. Right? I mean, I know it. Like, even the simplest little program, either no company's gonna do it for under a couple grand because it's not worth their time or, you know, a bigger project is gonna cost you tons of money where you might be able to take an off the shelf product that you could customize or an open source product that you can customize and have the AI write a plug in or a script for it.
And then last, if you need to update your software or the tool that you're using, you can update it now yourself on the fly. You don't have to wait for that company to update their software. And there's nothing more aggravating than, like, a feature or a bug that's in a piece of software that you really, really need it to work, especially if it breaks your workflow or your task. And you are hounding them, you know, hey. Can you fix this? Can you fix this? Can you fix this? When are you gonna add this feature? When are you gonna add this feature? And it never happens. You know? It just it's aggravating.
But now, right, if you write your own software and the AI writes that software for you and you can say, okay. I wanna change this. I wanna update this feature. I wanna do this. And, you know, maybe it can't do super complex software now, but that's now. So you gotta remember, right, as even the same thing goes with, you know, AI, as goes with LLMs, as goes with AI agents. The worst one you're ever gonna use is the one you're using right now, and it does a pretty good job now. It's gonna do a really good job later. So I think that on demand software is an amazing opportunity for entrepreneurs and business owners. And you combine that with a little bit automation and, man, you've really got something where you can work, smarter, faster, improve your productivity, you know, and all the things that you do. So let's go over it one more time. Software on demand. Number one, fewer SaaS subscriptions.
Number two, you can build a custom tool in seconds. You don't have to wait or contact anybody. Number three, you could lower your cost, improve your profit margin. Number four, you can have workflows that fit your needs instead of having to, you know, change your process to somebody else's process. Number five is data security because it's your data on your server. You don't need to worry about sending it even to the AI provider. Number six, optimization on the fly. Right? If you need to change something, you can just change it. Number seven, gives you a competitive edge. Number eight, you can adapt your business faster if there's some kind of complication or you know, I think one thing that came up just this last week was there was, you know, possibly gonna be tariffs between different countries.
Well, I can write a piece of software that could calculate all the tariffs. I don't need to, you know, hope that it's in Shopify or or, you know, for an ecommerce store or whatever the thing is. Right? So business adaptation. Number nine is new opportunities. Maybe you could generate some software that can help you do something you weren't able to do before or you couldn't afford to build a software tool custom to your business to do that thing. Good example here is I got a friend who, kinda does carpentry stuff specifically for Windows, actual physical Windows, not the program Windows.
And we were able to use the AI to write a tool that can give him the lengths of all the cut pieces, and it can figure out how many pieces of wood he needs to buy and what the most efficient way to cut those pieces of wood is so that he has the least waste. So, you know, things like that, revenue opportunities. And the last is outdated software. Since you can update the program that you made whenever you want, then you don't have to worry about software being up to date. Right? So, anyway, short episode this week. We'll be coming back. We got got some great guests coming up soon too. And I just wanted to go over software on demand because it's something we're working with at the agency here. We love it, and, we'll talk to y'all soon.
[00:15:57] Narrator AI:
Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Masters podcast with your host, Matt Rouse. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us an honest review on your favorite podcast app. Be sure to check out Matt's book, Will AI Take My Job, and have a wonderful day.
