Connect with Elliott Zelinskas
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Welcome and Guest Intro
Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. I’m Doug Cunnington, and today. Pretty exciting interview talking to Elliot, who was a teacher, and now he’s a full-time builder. He responded back to an email that I, I sent out and maybe some, uh, podcast episode. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but you were like, Hey, I’m actually, I’m making some ai.
. Tools and things are working out and it’s a great story. So we’re gonna dig in and one of the cool things is like you were a teacher and now you’re doing this full time, so pretty amazing. Well, welcome to the show. Thanks Elliot.
Elliot Zelinskas: Cool. Thanks so much for having me, Doug.
Speaker: So what’s your, what’s the, the story, what’s your background?
And we could just do a quick little intro and then I want to talk about like, some of the transition and like jump in, kind of like when you, um, went full time. So, yeah, what’s your general background and, um, you know, professionally, education, all that kind of stuff.
Elliot Zelinskas: Sweet.
From Teacher to Online Income
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah, so my last year of college I studied abroad.
It was my first time going abroad. Went to Budapest and I thought that was like the coolest thing ever. And then when I graduated, I moved to San Francisco and worked as a teacher’s aide, and then I learned about teaching English as a second language. And I was like, this is really cool because now I can get paid and live abroad.
And through that experience I was like, actually teaching is pretty cool. I like teaching something to a group of people. And then I went back to San Francisco after that experience, got my master’s degree, became a licensed teacher. And I was a really untechnical person when I was doing the master’s program.
I didn’t own a computer or anything, but it didn’t like take me very long to realize that I felt like. I wanted to do something that would allow me to continue to travel and live the way that I wanted to live. And I went and bought a computer in the specific regards to building websites. And after only five months, the website that I made started making more in passive income than I was making as a full-time teacher.
And, um, so then eventually I just went full-time on that and that’s what I’m doing right now.
Speaker: Wow. Pretty crazy.
Entrepreneur Roots and Early Hustles
Speaker: And then did you have like a entrepreneurship bug or some family history of, you know, working for yourself?
Elliot Zelinskas: That’s actually a really good point. I always forget about this, but my mom was an entrepreneur when I was younger.
She owned a like a. Little chain of women’s clothing stores. And so I kind of grew up in these like little clothing shops that she had, like local stores in the nineties. And I really liked that, like seeing my mom do business. And then when I became an adult, well actually as a teenager, I was always like mowing lawns and, uh, making I, I, I’ve always loved to make money, count money, manage my money, save my money, like just.
You know, have it. And then as an adult, I did a lot of entrepreneurial things before I bought this crazy device called a computer that you can do so much with, but I was really sort of like. Anti-tech. I was like, I’m not interested in that. I didn’t even own a phone when I, like was in San Francisco going to, you know, my master’s degree.
And, uh, I was just like, totally like here and now where I was, which is part of the reason I, I thought of teaching. I was like, I can teach, get the summers off. That’s super cool and I don’t have to be like, at a desk all day. And, um, so I, like I, in San Francisco, I started a skateboard school, so I used to skateboard.
I was like a sponsored skater, like when I was a little kid. And, uh, so I started like a skate school. And that became pretty popular. But I quickly realized like, I can’t get paid if I don’t go. And even I would try to hire other people to take, to do the lessons, but that was kind of a pain. It felt like this is like harder than it needs to be.
And then I, when I was teaching a a, I lived in Shanghai, China for three years, and while I was doing that, I. Like naturally I’m really into like the art scene. I like photography and video and painting and stuff like that. And I created this like Shanghai monthly party where like it was kind of like Instagram in real life and this was like, you know, 15 years ago or something.
Um, but people would submit, I would pick a theme. Like just a word or a phrase. And then people would submit a photo to me and then I would print the photos out, and then I would hang them up at like either a gallery, an art space, a bar, a skateboard shop, something like that. And then it became like the thing to do in Shanghai, like hundreds of people would go to that.
That was also very popular, but it also like didn’t make that much money. And so, and, and I, I’ve always like done tutoring and all of these like little things I’ve always tried. To like earn income. But it wasn’t until I bought the computer and started learning digital products that I was like, oh, this scales infinitely and I don’t need to actually complete or fulfill the work in order to get paid.
And that’s kind of like changed the game for me.
Speaker: Very interesting. Yeah. So cool.
Teachers Boost Tool Overview
Speaker: I wanna, I have like a million questions in my head, but let’s jump to, you know, what your website is, what the product is, and kind of how you’re making the money. And we could back into the, the origin of that, but you’re laying the foundation really well where there’s all these bits and pieces.
I could tell from the ideas you were kind of thinking. Outside the box where you’re like, I haven’t seen this done. Let’s try it out. Let’s explore it. Does it make money? Is it fun? Like there’s different ways you’re being, you know, paid not just straight currency. So yeah. What is, what’s your website? What are the products?
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah, so the website that I shared with you is called teachers boost.com, and I have this philosophy that the most reliable. Business idea that you have is not when you take your passion and turn it into profit or like, I think the best way is to turn your profession into profit because you already know that there’s money there.
And so I was a teacher, like that’s just a profession that I chose. And so I’ve been making products for teachers. Teachers Boost is not how I earn a living, but it is making some money. But, uh, I have other websites that, you know, that’s actually how I. Like, earn my income, like really. But, uh, the one that I shared with you, Doug, is called teachers boost.com.
It’s like a keyword research tool for a niche marketplace, kind of like Etsy for teachers. It’s called Teachers Pay Teachers. And so Teachers Boosto provides analytics and data for teacher sellers on the platform to essentially understand different products that will be easier to rank. It’s basically, it’s basically like a niche version of HH Refs.
Now it’s like not at all. I mean, HFS is super powerful, but like this is kinda like a mini version of it.
Speaker: Gotcha. So it helps other teachers who create products, find products via keywords that could be valuable to them.
Elliot Zelinskas: That’s exactly it.
Speaker: Okay. Very smart. And a couple, couple things I like on this is like you see other tools that do this in a broader sense, you know, SEMrush, hres, whatever, there’s other tools on like Etsy or for Etsy specifically that will help ex extract some data.
So you had an idea where it was proven in many industries, large. Niche, whatever, and it, they work there, so it should work here. Now it sounds like you don’t have a coding background based on the stories that you mentioned before, but did you create this tool on your own here? Did you hire developers and stuff?
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah, no to, I totally created it on my own. I used cloud code to do it and just to showcase like a little bit of my stepping stone process. The first website I ever made was a WordPress website, so that’s how I found that. And I just learned how to do that through a couple of videos on YouTube. And then, you know, you like follow it step by step and then by the end of it, like you have your own little website.
And I was just like so amazed. I remember. When I first like made a button that linked to a different page, I was like, I couldn’t believe it. I was like, oh my God. Like I can go from one page to another, you know? And like, this is so basic, but, and then you start to like learn blog posts and then you, you know, you’re like, how do I get more blog posts to rank?
And then there’s this thing called SEO you like, and it’s like day by day you learn a little bit, a little bit more. And now I’ve been doing this for about four years, but about two and a half years full time. And. I went on a little surf trip at the very beginning of January, so just about two months and two weeks ago.
And one of the guys, it, it was like a little founder’s surf trip in El Salvador. There’s like a total of four of us. And one of them, one of the guys had like already been using Claude code for like a month and he like looked at all, all of our sites and he was like, you guys, I don’t think you understand, you need to learn cloud code.
And we were like, yeah, okay. Like I’m pretty happy with like doing what I’m doing. And he was like. Let me just show you. And just one by one he like showed each three of us and like all of our minds were kind of blown because. None of us, except for the guy who was like teaching us. He’s, he’s a, he’s like an original CS programmer, but the other three, including myself, like we don’t know how to write code.
And so what you can do these days, you know, probably a lot of people have heard now, but like basically you can just do things that you don’t personally know how to do, but you might have the idea and then it can go ahead and build it. And that’s what I did with Teachers Boost.
Speaker: Gotcha. And. It’s important for us to maybe separate a couple things.
So you mentioned you’ve been working in general on, I guess your, your not side projects, but your, you know, online businesses of which there’s a few different pieces. Right,
Elliot Zelinskas: exactly. I just, you know, I have an idea and I’ll put a website together and see if it gets traction.
Speaker: Okay. And then teachers Boost the keyword tool is one that you built in a pretty short timeframe, and you mentioned Claude Code was, I guess it was on your radar, but you weren’t using it actively until the last couple months.
So there, since there are a couple pieces, can you just tell us like how many there, there are, so we get an idea
Elliot Zelinskas: like how many sites?
Speaker: Yeah.
Elliot Zelinskas: Uh, I think I have, oh, probably, you know, of even just like the Living Dead sort of, there’s probably like eight or something, but there’s like. Honestly, I would say like two that bring in revenue and teachers Boost is one of them, but there’s like a few that still make, you know, maybe a couple hundred dollars a month or something like that.
Speaker: And then of the two sites that are earnings, so. Teachers Boost is the one that you’re sharing. The other one is, uh, confidential. I get that. Okay.
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah.
Speaker: Thanks. Every, every, we read between the lines, everybody. So we’re saying, okay. That one’s what’s the breakdown of revenue between the two? Is, is, um, the other one, the cash cow?
Elliot Zelinskas: Definitely by like a thousand times. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, so perfect example. However, teachers Boost is earning money.
Validation, MVP, and Growth Lessons
Speaker: Tell us about going from, you know, the idea to actually, you know, maybe getting some customers in actually paying in validating the idea.
Elliot Zelinskas: Totally. Well, exactly like what you said. You know, there’s a trust, which is like for the internet, but then there’s also niche.
Etsy keywords, you know, there’s what is it? Jungle Scout for Amazon. All of these marketplaces have their own keyword research tool, and I don’t know anything about Etsy. I’ve never bought anything from Etsy. I’ve never made anything on Etsy. I know what it is. But the whole, like my own entrepreneurial philosophy is like you take what you know and make something from it.
Specifically. I, like I said, even like for me, like I grew up skateboarding, I love skateboarding, but skateboarding. Is monetarily less valuable than teaching because I’ve never been paid to skateboard. You know, I was paid to teach. And so you know that there’s money there, and if you can help other people, like teachers or you know, just fill in the blank, whatever your profession title is, then like, you know, they’re happy to pay for things if you can like either help them make more money or help them save time.
And so I, I did exactly what you mentioned, Doug. I, I took the idea that I saw existed in other. Marketplaces and I made a, you know, the, the same idea for a marketplace that I knew about. I had personally sold things on teachers pay teachers in the past. So I knew the process. I’m a part of all of the Facebook groups, like I know this ecosystem.
Speaker: Okay, very good. So you have the idea, you see it’s validated in other areas. So what, what are the next steps?
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah, so. I went into the Facebook market. Uh, sorry. Yeah, the Facebook groups, and then I saw people describing problems of. SEO specifically, like by this day and age, SEO, it’s not like 2010 anymore.
Like even people who don’t know about SEO know what it stands for, you know? And know that it’s important. They might want some guidance, they might want some tools, but they understand that in order to sell their product on the marketplace that they’ve chosen ranking high or being visible and seen is important.
And so they, same thing as I mentioned. Once you start the process, you dig a little bit deeper every day and you realize that there are things that you can do like. Create an SEO optimized title. Put the title, keywords in the description, things like that. Just really fill out your product listing and it’s gonna indicate to the algorithm of the marketplace that this is a completed product, and so that it would be seen by more people.
And so I just looked at Facebook groups and Reddit threads of the problems that were continuing to come up. And then I tried my best to make a solution for that. And then. In order to validate the idea, I just openly shared with like my own personal Facebook, you know, account with my name and my face on it.
And I said like, Hey, I’m a licensed teacher. I’ve sold on teachers pay teachers in the past. I made this tool. Check it out, love your feedback. And then people have been signing up ever since.
Speaker: How big were some of the Facebook groups that you were, you know, getting this information and sharing it with.
Elliot Zelinskas: I think on average somewhere, I think it’s a pretty common size between let’s say like 2000 to 20,000 people.
Speaker: Okay. Pretty. Or were they pretty active as well? Like people were in there, whatever, multiple times a day kind of stuff?
Elliot Zelinskas: Definitely active group, yeah. Okay.
Speaker: Interesting. Is there anything. Looking back where you realize, oh, I, I could have done something a little bit differently, especially interacting with the Facebook groups.
It sounds like because you have your credentials and you’re part of the community, they kind of accepted you. But if I walked in and tried to get into a Facebook group, they would tell me to fuck off and like they wouldn’t trust me. Right. So just curious if there’s anything that you would improve, um, knowing what you know now and seeing how it played out.
Elliot Zelinskas: Well. I think you are, you really hit the nail on the head because originally I didn’t say that I was a teacher. I said that I made this product and several people, but really one person in particular didn’t. They, they assumed that I wasn’t a teacher. They assumed that I don’t have a master’s degree in elementary education.
They assumed that I’ve never been in a classroom. They thought I was a developer and they like reamed on me and I sort of like asked a question back. I was like, what makes you think that? You know, and, and then like blah, blah, blah, and. Assumptions from really nowhere. Just, you know, maybe everyone has a bad day once in a while, you know?
And I was like, no, I have all of these credentials. I’ve been teaching for nine years. I’m like, I’m in this space myself. And then all of a sudden it totally changed. So I would, with the internet, I think, you know, you, I, like I said, you want to make things that are part of like true to your background, your interest, your skill, your knowledge, your profession, and so.
I, you know, I’m not a doctor. I, I would be hesitant on creating things for doctors unless I knew someone like in my friend or family group, I’m not a lawyer. I’d be really hesitant on making something for them unless they were like a client and then they asked me, but I wouldn’t go ahead and just, you know, make a product for someone that I don’t really know, you know?
So I’m glad I did that. For anyone who’s thinking about doing this in a maybe a, you know, different marketplace or just a different niche altogether, I am always. Amazed by what you can offer with just a Google Doc or a Google Sheet. It doesn’t have to be like a full blown app. And although you can make things quickly with Claude Code, you can make them even faster with a Google Doc or a notion or whatever your, you know, doc of choices.
And so I would highly suggest to make it as quick as possible because it’s amazing, like the value you can provide with just a spreadsheet too.
Speaker: I. My idea for a haircare product line. It’s probably no good then, huh? I’ll have to, I’ll have to scrap that one. Alright.
Elliot Zelinskas: Wigs, man. The wig industry. Get that going.
Speaker: It’s untapped. Yeah. Men do not wear enough wigs these days.
Elliot Zelinskas: That’s right.
Speaker: Okay, so you had the idea, we talked about the, some of the validation, so you know, it’s a problem. How about actually building the tool? How did you know how to. I guess spec it out and, and, you know, MVP, minimum viable product. Avoid scope creep so that you could act quickly.
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah, another really good question. So if you look@teachersboost.com, there’s actually a a little handful of tools. So for there, for example, there’s a keyword Explorer, that’s the main product, but there’s also like a shop auditor. So you can add your URL and then get a report back on your shop about how to optimize it.
And there’s a list of a couple other tools, but what I did. You know, in order to validate it, like you asked, is I just made one single product, which is the keyword research tool. That’s the one thing that the people want the most. And so I would be, ’cause I almost made the mistake of continuing to build sort of like in the closet or like without telling anyone.
And what I think is really important is that you make one thing and then you market that one thing and marketing. It doesn’t necessarily have to be so salesy, so like again, I posted on Facebook, then I also posted on Reddit and then I also made a YouTube video and if you Teachers Boost also has a YouTube channel and every.
A little product. I make like a, you know, a little tool inside teacher’s booth. I make a product that just demos it. It’s just me showcasing it. And it’s like, there’s no editing, there’s no music, there’s no like zooming in and out. It’s like, it’s a loom video of like how to do it. And they take just, it’s a one shot.
You know, I, if I make a mistake, I just keep going. And so I think marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or difficult, but I do think that it helps if you’re real and you’re true. And again, you mentioned like in the YouTube videos, I’m like, Hey, I’m a licensed teacher. I’ve sold on teachers, pay teachers, and in this video I wanna teach you how to fill in the blank.
And I feel like that’s gonna go over well no matter who you’re helping. If it’s genuine, if, if it’s true.
Speaker: You don’t have to tell us, but can you share how many users that you have?
Elliot Zelinskas: Definitely. Yeah. So with Teachers Boost, actually this used to be a, it’s, I, I’ve actually had this going for about three years, but for three years it was a.
It was a Google sheet, and no one knew it because I wrote Google App script on top of it, so I just laid an interface over it. So like, people had been paying a subscription every month for like three years, and, but it was, it was like the most janky product ever sold on the internet. It worked, but it was like, it was very thin.
It was like a very thin product. And, um. Hey, it was a Google sheet where I, I could like, you can pull data if you can, like write app script, which I couldn’t, but like I’ve been using chat GPT, like before, I’ve been using open AI before chat. GPT came out. So before chat, GPT, there was like a playground and you could just like, you know, you could just like prompt stuff, but it wasn’t called chat GPT yet.
And so that could still just write HTML code. So I was like. I wonder if I can. And I think that’s a whole part of like building with ai, you’re basically limited by your, like, your creativity and like your ability to like wonder. And so I was like, I wonder if I can take a Google sheet and I can write app script or if AI can write app script and then it can like lay an interface on top anyways.
Um, so I did that and like that. Also quick, like I think, you know, I made a sale like the first day, which I think is really important with a product and, um. So at the moment, I think, yeah, it makes probably like $500 a month and it costs about $10 a month. So that’s like 50 people a month paying.
Speaker: Okay, nice.
Do you have, like, do you think it can grow a lot bigger? Based on like the number of people that are in Teachers pay teachers, the whole ecosystem, or is it kind of at a, at a spot where you’re like, ah, this is, this is cool. It validated some ideas and then you, you have other bigger ideas
Elliot Zelinskas: for Teachers Boost.
I’m still figuring that out. As far as users of teachers paid. Teachers, there’s like. I th like, you know, a hundred thousand sellers or something. So like, you would think that more people would sign up, but honestly, like, not, not a ton of people are signing up. If anyone’s like, I’m gonna create the same tool that Elliot did, I wouldn’t do it.
I wouldn’t like, take the time because people are not like, oh my God, this is crazy. Like, you know, a couple people sign up and uh, and then I think they like, you know, I don’t know. Some people like it, some people don’t. I would think that more people will sign up, but. It’s cool, like I built it, it’s like a little personal.
The thing about like I like about building is like, these are all sort of like professional portfolio projects for me, and so I can say like, Hey, I built this and I can like, keep moving on.
Teachers Boost Vision
Elliot Zelinskas: The thing about Teacher’s Booth is like, it’s, it’s built now and. I can keep going and like building more stuff. It doesn’t, and so I hope it grows.
But if it doesn’t, then that’s cool too. Like I feel like the people who want to use it, they’re like genuinely being helped. And that’s important to me. And then the, at the same time, it’s not like a productized service or a service where like I have to keep doing the fulfillment, you know? It’s like it’s done.
And so if people want it, they can have it.
Partnership With TPT
Speaker: Have you thought about partnering with the teachers pay teachers ecosystem where you’re like, Hey, I’ll, I can do some training. Like tell people about keyword research, right? They make probably money on transactions or something like that, so they want people to do more and do a better job and sell more.
So is that a viable route?
Elliot Zelinskas: That’s a great question. I, I, you know, I should just reach out to them and ask, I haven’t done that.
Speaker: Yeah. ’cause it’s like they just, they want more people on there selling more stuff and
Elliot Zelinskas: True.
Speaker: I mean, it kind of makes sense. Interesting. Okay. Very good. Is there, um.
Rebuilding The Tool
Speaker: I guess any, anything else with teachers Boost as far as like the development, like you had the spreadsheet, like did you start from scratch or were you able to use some of the old stuff to build the The new tool?
Elliot Zelinskas: The only thing that I used was really the idea, Then it’s like a completely different website, you know, like before it used to be. So the tech stack again was also pretty scrappy. The original one, the, the website was built on WordPress and then you would use Thrive Cart in order to pay, and then you would use Thrive Cart Learn Plus, which is more like an online course hosting place.
And I literally just did like. Copy the embed code of the Google sheet and then put it into like a little HTML block. So it just embedded and it, it, it was like, it was just scrappy, you know? And, um, but it worked like, so that’s the important part. It just looked like. What am I using? You know, but the numbers were right and correct and everything.
Um, so that was like the original tech stack. And then I, I rebuilt it from scratch with Claude Code and now it’s like uses like CEL and like just more AI first type of products.
Speaker: From the user’s perspective, the front end, is it a lot better? Is it faster? Is it pretty much the same? Like how, how do they differ?
AI Features Upgrade
Elliot Zelinskas: Actually, that’s a good point too. So in the past, the original product was, it was just the keyword research tool, and all I could do was scrape the like competition score. But like I had to create like a little math equation to kind of convert like the amount of products listed to like a competition score.
But these days with Claude Code, it allowed me to become a lot more. Creative and showcase the same scores and data in, in like a much more aesthetically pleasing way. So now, like I also built in. Like a, uh, an auto like when you start typing in the keyword research tool, it will, it will auto suggest related key terms.
And then once you type in the keyword, for example, if you’re, like, I used to be like, the last position that I taught was third grade, and so I was like, I would type in something if I was still a TPT seller. I would say like something like third grade. Math review notebook or something like that. But, and I might have that in my head, like, that’s the product that I wanna make.
But now I learned because of like ai, you just have the idea and you can say like, is this possible? And then it can, you know, say like, maybe yes or no, we can try it. And so there are a lot of extra function functionality and like things that are, were like just part of like Elliot’s brain. Where all I have to do is like have the creative juice let, to like ask if we can do this.
But when it was like, you know, writing app script, I was like very much limited by like understanding more or less like how to do it myself. And now it’s not so much like it’s you doing it, it’s more like you thinking about doing it and then giving the instructions.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Payments Email Automation
Speaker: How do you, uh, just basic stuff.
’cause I haven’t used, um, Claude Code or I think I maybe mentioned. I, I don’t really have any like, technical problems I’m trying to solve, so I’m not going to create some fake problem where I’m trying to solve it, but yeah, like how do you accept payments? Like, uh, and, and again, you could tell us like what you did before with the scrappy solutions.
So that was thrivecart and then now is it, is it a better way? Is it like directly to Stripe or something?
Elliot Zelinskas: Exactly. It goes directly to Stripe, which I really like. I feel like that’s just cutting out, you know, another piece of software. And also in the past I would like, try and hook up. I used to have active campaign for my email marketing software and that was kind of hard to use.
And, uh. And it was expensive too. You know, like I don’t even have like that many paying subscribers and I was paying like over a thousand dollars a year and it’s, you know, when like, when something is like nearly a hundred dollars a month, you’re just like, dang. Like, I’m like, the project’s not even making that much.
So it’s hard to spend that on email. But then you, you know, you ask ai like, is are like, are there any other solutions that we can use that are cheaper and like. It has them. And so now for email marketing, I’m using what’s called resend.com, so like re send.com and they have like a great free tier. And now like the, like I asked Claude, I was like, can we just set it up that like, anytime someone like signs up, they uh, get like an automated email.
And it was like, yep. And, and then also what’s really cool is that I used to, because Teachers Boost is not my main income driver. I focus my effort on something else. And so. For the past like six months I’ve been, I was, I hired. You know, another teacher to actually write the Teacher’s Boost Weekly newsletter.
And then every week she would say like, Hey, TPT sellers, here are some great keywords to make. Uh, hope you have a great week. It’s like some information about being a TPT seller, all that good stuff. And now I’ve completely automated a weekly email that AI scrapes the system based off the system that it built in.
Teachers boost and then automatically says like. Hey, TPT seller here are 10 great products that you can sell. And like there, it’s dynamic. It works just as well. And now I don’t have to hire that like virtual assistant. Uh, and you know, I was paying her like a couple hundred dollars a month. And, um, and, and then now I don’t also have the actual email service provider, which used to be an active campaign, and that was a hundred dollars a month.
And it’s just like, it’s cheaper. It’s like less that I have to do. It’s like if, if kind of like, if it’s a digital service, then like AI can automate it for you these days.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Interesting. And so you were using open AI before, so you kind of like even before chat GPT, which is kind of interesting.
I wasn’t even on my radar at all. Um, so you were pretty comfortable with, you know. Prompting and getting extracting code and making things work. And you had some interesting solutions that worked in the past technically, but they weren’t the most elegant scenario. It’s getting better.
Agentic AI Shift
Speaker: When you first started using cloud code, was that literally like in January or whatever.
Elliot Zelinskas: Exactly.
Speaker: Okay. And quick note, I know people may not be specifically aware, but per my understanding, like things got much better like last fall of 2025, where like many, like Gemini, Claude Code Chat, GPT, all of them improved kind of dramatically as far as the output. From a coding perspective, is that roughly accurate?
Elliot Zelinskas: Totally accurate. Yeah, and I think the major difference is that AI moved from producing an output of some text or possibly code, but now it’s, it moved to a agentic where it actually can like do the thing for you. Kinda like I just mentioned, like automating a dynamic weekly email. Like it just, it’s like that’s its job now.
Speaker: Okay. And, and that’s like agent based. So agentic is, there’s some
Elliot Zelinskas: Right.
Speaker: Autonomous things happening based on what you ask it to do.
Elliot Zelinskas: Yep.
Speaker: Okay, got it. So with the fact that things are a little easier, you picked it up pretty quick, even though you had a strong.
Defensibility And Moats
Speaker: Background with actually creating, are you worried at all about like just more competition?
I mean, you shared your, your site here and kind of what it does, but does it make you nervous from a defensibility standpoint around your business?
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah, it does. The business that. Yeah, there’s a reason that I don’t wanna share my, my main income driver, you know, and, uh, yeah, that, that like business, like, you know, it makes significant Well, yeah, like I’m doing a lot better than I used to do as like a full-time teacher.
And um, and I know that that business. I mean, it has to be just straight up eating the lunch of the main competitor. That’s like old and big and I’m just a one person internet dude. Like I don’t have any employees and the site is like doing well and I just like I am doing to someone else like what we’re talking about right now.
So I’m afraid, of course, that like someone could do it to me later, you know?
Speaker: Right, right, right. So do you have any strategies around how to defend yourself against like the. Incumbent out there who probably has, I mean, if they’re, if they’ve been doing it for a while, then they probably have a lot of capital and resources to try to battle you, but you’re a little scrappier, so, yeah.
Is there anything that you’re doing now currently to help, you know, provide defense against them, stay ahead and that sort of thing?
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah, so I think that one thing like distribution is really important and. The, all of my websites, they have their own YouTube channel. I find like YouTube, like a combination of YouTube and SEO with blog posts is like really important.
But SEO, it doesn’t have. Like followers, you know, it’s like, like, you know, kind of back in the day we used to have like an RSS feed. Like that’s kind of like when I started like being interested in the internet. But like YouTube, if people start to follow you, then you have that little moat, you know, whether that’s on social media or YouTube or a podcast newsletter.
And so I feel like building a community of people who care about the thing that you’re making will continue to be important.
Speaker: Yeah. Super interesting. I I like that. And it is, I mean, as a, I I really like podcasting and if, did I remember this right? So you are not on my email newsletter, right? ’cause you don’t want, you don’t want garbage, so you’re like, all right, I don’t, I don’t need, I don’t need to stop stuff.
Elliot Zelinskas: Yeah. I also love audio. I’m a huge podcast dude. And I’m, I, I just, I’m not like a, I check my email, dude. Like, you know, I’m pretty much like not in my inbox.
Speaker: Yeah. And like respect on that, by the way. But like I’ll sign up for. An email list for a little while and then like after a bit I will turn it off.
’cause like it just gets cluttered. I’ll be inspired to sign up for a bunch and then I’m like, okay, this is, I don’t need this information right now. Um, but, but I mentioned it in a podcast and, and you replied back and now I forget the point that I was trying to make other than like the community is out there, even though like, I may not hear, but I see the download.
So I know like there’s a few hundred people that like. Listen to basically every show for the last several years. And you’re, I mean, you said you listen fairly often, which I appreciate, but the fact that there’s a community and people you know, I sh I show up and I, I publish the episodes and people check it out.
YouTube Community Strategy
Speaker: So with the, on the YouTube side, can you talk about, um, maybe any hurdles getting started with that? It’s a whole. Other beast in a, it’s a psychological thing to like, put yourself out there and then like look at the metrics and analytics, but don’t get burned out and freak out. So talk about the YouTube journey a little bit.
Elliot Zelinskas: Definitely. Actually, the YouTube thing is like one of the most interesting parts. I think right now. Actually. I, I don’t upload my own videos to YouTube anymore. I don’t make. For the, my main channel, not teacher’s Boost, but like the, like Claude code now uploads my YouTube videos for me. It writes my, my titles, it writes the description for me, like it makes the blog post and the email opt-in.
Like, I’m, I’m not a person who checks the analytics. I, I literally like never go and check analytics. I, I just make things all the time and that’s all I do. And so for the YouTube part. I mean, I think, you know, you wanna make something that’s, you know, either entertaining or it’s informational or a little bit of both.
But again, I think it really goes back to making something that you truly like connect with. And so I think YouTube is really cool ’cause it’s like, it’s kind of like a po it’s kinda like a podcast, right? Like podcast is so rad because it’s like Pirate radio and YouTube is so rad because it’s pirate TV and like.
You know, I just think about, remember the, like the old movie hackers, like in the nineties or maybe early two thousands? Remember hackers?
Speaker: Uh, yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah.
Elliot Zelinskas: It is like, you know, they’re like hack the planet. Like they have their own like little TV station show and I just find that to be so cool that you can, you know, you don’t have to pick a topic, but I think it’s cool.
It like. There’s something about human psychology of like, if you keep talking about this thing, then like you will attract people who are also interested in that thing. And I just find these two in particular channels, podcasting and YouTube to just be like undeniably super rad. And um, so I think if you, if you’re like, if you wanna make something, then you know, start with.
A YouTube channel. You know, I personally love to listen to podcasts. I don’t really watch, like, I’m not much of like a watcher of things, but I, I like to listen, but the hard part, as you’ll know even more than I do, ’cause I don’t have a podcast, but growing a podcast must be significantly more challenging than a YouTube channel because it seems like there are so many people who are down to consume.
And the thing about YouTube is like, it’s such a great little search engine, you know? So I think if I was gonna recommend. A channel to start for someone? It would definitely be YouTube. Especially because, I mean, I even have channels that like, you know, make actually, oh shoot, actually, yeah, I have, I have another channel, right, that like, it’s never showed my name or face and that does at least $500, like five, $600 a month.
This is not, teachers boost is a different thing and it’s just like. You don’t have to even put your name or face on it, but I think that you, you can if you want, like the Doug show should have Doug’s face on it, right? But if you like just pick a topic and you’re like, I help blank people do blank thing.
It doesn’t have to be about you. It doesn’t have to show your face. As a matter of fact, I find, find like a lot of the times if I’m gonna really. Watch a YouTube thing, like a video about helping me do something, like building a website or like if I am, you know, I mentioned like I’ve spent a good amount of years abroad.
Like if I’m, you know, I’m not interested really in that person. I’m just interested like do like, do Americans need a visa for that place type of thing, or. Like whatever, whatever video, it’s like I actually think the person in the video gets in the way a lot you can, like more oftentimes than not just like create sort of like a Canva or PowerPoint presentation and it’s actually like more informational, it’s like better for a learning experience and it doesn’t have the actual person in it.
So I, I don’t think there are any excuses. Like if you don’t wanna be put yourself on camera, you totally don’t have to. I think there’s YouTube’s rad because there’s like a lot of different ways that you can do it.
Speaker: Well said. There’s so many different areas I can go into here, but we only have a certain amount of time and that’s not too much.
Automated Publishing Workflow
Speaker: So, I wanna go back. Claude Code is, you said it’s posting or. Uploading your video, doing the title and the blog post, that’s your next tool, dude. Um, by the way, like what is it, like, what does it do? Can I set it up? Like if I, I don’t know all the things that it can do, but I’m like, oh, that could save a shit load of time.
’cause I end up wasting some time on that. So is this just your own custom solution to do your own stuff?
Elliot Zelinskas: It is, dude. And it’s amazing. It is so much better because by the end of the time that I make a video, I’m tired, right? It’s like I need to think about the best title, the, the thumbnail, like the a really informative description.
Like if I do a description, I’m just like, thanks, you know, like, I’m just like tired, right? So like, but you can make the description, like also SEO optimized, you know? And so these days, Claude. It uploads the video like all you, like, you have to like give it your, you know, credentials of YouTube. Mm-hmm. But it’s just like your like little secret API key and yeah.
It like does everything for you and it does it at such a better way that I than I I ever did, I ever could. I’m getting more views and what’s really cool is that I created my own like internal tool that it not only uploads the video. In like a really great way, but it makes the thumbnail and it’s trained that every video, it looks at the video and creates an email opt-in page on my blog.
So it writes a blog post about that video and then creates an email opt-in where people get a free digital download. I literally don’t do anything and the amount of people signing up for it is insane.
Speaker: No shit. Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, I could definitely do because I don’t spend a huge amount of time in my other show.
I have a producer, but like, just looking at or, and thinking through like my sort of streamlined process. It’s not bad. I use script to upload, so the transcript is already there. Would I be able to, and that it’s fine if you don’t know the answer to this, but I’m like, could I roughly follow. Like our, our process where I upload it, my editor checks it out, and then at this point I think I export it and then I send it over to Nic to master the audio, which does a little bit of a better, so there’s a few moving pieces.
Is that something that’s doable? Um, with Claude Code? Could I come up basically with what you’re doing?
Elliot Zelinskas: Do you mean the audio engineering part?
Speaker: Correct. Yeah.
Elliot Zelinskas: I dunno that I haven’t done it. I, I, yeah. The things that I make are like one shot. I just make it and then like,
Speaker: and then it
Elliot Zelinskas: goes, give it straight to Claude and it just uploads it.
It’s like there’s no production involved.
Speaker: Gotcha. When I wonder, I mean, some of the audio stuff, I don’t know if it’s super sophisticated, so it may just be like, Hey, actually Claude could. Do the audio and it would be fine. Mm-hmm. ’cause it’s just like, I think it adds a tiny bit of compression and usually mm-hmm.
Like, we’re both using good mics. Mm-hmm. Like this audio is probably fine. It doesn’t need to be messed with too much. Okay. I need to look at this last question around this, which is just helping me, which I appreciate the, um, thumbnail, how like Claude just creates the thumbnail. ’cause there’s some image generation kind of stuff in there.
Elliot Zelinskas: Actually, it’s not image generation. It’s code. So it’s like, I will tell it like the vibe that I want. Let me, okay, so like, what is the vibe? What does that mean? Like the aesthetic. So like, you know, I’m, you know, a teacher, so I want things that look academic and professional. But if you were, you know, like, I don’t know, a a, a New York based artist, you’d probably want it like.
More, I dunno, hip looking anyways, like it, like, you know, with code you can like, you know, ’cause basically a thumbnail’s like a two dimensional, like sheet of paper basically. Right? And like, you know, you put the background on there and then you have like a title and you have it the way that you want, if you want like, your image in there or not.
Like it’s just code put together. I don’t like the way that AI images look, I don’t use AI in image generation or video generation at all right now. Like what I’m doing is, it’s just exactly like what you would do in a PowerPoint or a Canva. Like if you’re making your thumbnails in Canva, AI can do that.
Like Claude Code specifically can do that. Like probably better too.
Speaker: Definitely better than me, that’s for sure. Because I go in, I, I do my best. But yeah, I use, I use Canva. Okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll have to schedule time with you later to just ask you a bunch of questions about, I’m like, oh, this sounds like a problem that I do need solving that.
This is great.
Wrap Up And Where To Find
Speaker: But we have to, we have to wrap up. So, Elliot, this has been enlightening, super inspiring. There’s probably some. Pieces that I should ask questions about. So maybe sometime in the future we could schedule some more time, but I want to give you a chance to, you know, let people know where they could find you and like maybe kind of the people that you want to talk to and that kind of stuff.
So yeah, where can people find you if they want to learn more?
Elliot Zelinskas: For sure. My name is Elliot Zelinski, and I feel like both Elliot and Zelinski can be difficult to spell. So it’s like my filter, like if you can find me, then like you’re the right type of person who can, you know, I want to be in contact with.
And yeah, I, I’m a builder. I like to build stuff and so yeah, I’m trying to like literally just meet more people to like, have. You know, conversations and get better at this. I post on, yeah, check out my YouTube channel. It’s just my name, Elliot Zelinski and I post stuff about personal finance, building, investing, and uh, yeah, would love for you to join.
So that’s where I’m at, Elliot Zelinski
Speaker: super. We will link up so people will be able to find it super easy. And we didn’t even talk about the personal finance stuff another. Big topic area that I’m interested in. So Elliot, I’m glad you reached out. It was really good to chat with you and hopefully we’ll be able to talk again soon.
Elliot Zelinskas: Thanks so much for having me, Doug.