Vibe Coding and Easy Automation

[00:00:00] Calan Breckon: Today’s episode is sponsored by Make.com, the Automation and development platform that helps you harness the full power of AI. I’ve been using make because it’s hands down the easiest way to automate the boring, repetitive tasks in my business without needing to know how to code or over complicate things. Make uses a super simple drag and drop visual builder which lets me connect all the different apps that I use to create workflows and saves me so much time. Honestly, it feels like having a virtual assistant running in the background 24-7.

Whether it’s sending out client forms, updating spreadsheets, or syncing your calendar, make helps you get it all done automatically so that you can focus on the stuff that really matters. And the best part? You can get started for free while you figure out how to set up the best automations that work for you and your business. To check it out, head on over to calanbreckon.com/make or click the link in the show notes. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.

Welcome to the business gay Podcast where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host Calan Breckon and on today’s episode I have Founder and CEO of Coconut Breeze Media, Juliana Olarte.

Coconut Breeze Media is a new media solutions agency that brings innovative content marketing and AI automation for the travel and hospitality industry. With a background in public relations, creative storytelling and technical strategy, she brings a unique blend of creativity and technical expertise to every project. Juliana also serves as Media Director for Space Coast Pride, championing inclusive communication and digital outreach. Her prior roles include leading AI initiatives at Dicapta and managing national travel PR campaigns at MMGY NJF. Based in Cocoa beach, she’s passionate about building meaningful connections through media technology and purpose driven storytelling. Today we’re going to be learning all about what Vibe coding is and how it can support you and your business. So, let’s jump in.

Hey Juliana, how’s it going?

[00:02:11] Juliana Olarte: Hi. Good, how are you doing? I heard it’s a little hot over there.

[00:02:14] Calan Breckon: Yes, we’ve been under a heat dome here in Toronto, but it has broken today, which I mean for pride it could have kept going a little bit longer, but we’ll see, we’ll see. Hopefully it comes back.

Thank you so much. I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. Today we are talking about a vibe, specifically vibe coding and I have no idea, like I didn’t know about it before this, so I’m really excited for this conversation to like jump in. So let’s just get going from the start. So what, what is vibe coding?

[00:02:46] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, I’m excited to talk about this. It’s all the hot vibes over here.

Over the past few years, Genai has obviously skyrocketed and there was a trend that started growing where you could essentially use ChatGPT or Claude or whatever platform you use to actually code for you.

And companies started to identify that and productizing it.

So like you need a website by code it sales deck, Vibe, Code it.

And there’s some older platforms that are a little more established that were made for AI developers and AI experts.

They’re called Windsurf and Replit and you could tell it what to do and it would like make the platform for you.

But then you had to take it out of Windsurf and Replit and know how to like deploy it and stuff like that.

They’ve since of course integrated those features. But two that really stood out that were targeting like regular folks like non AI experts, just like regular Joe that wanted to make a website.

They’re called Lovable and Bolt. And so essentially the concept that they are marketing is you don’t need a coder, you don’t need a developer. You can tell our AI platform from like a little chat box what you want and it’ll magically bring it to life. And that really is what it looks like and it is very cool to see. You can put in like, hey, give me a landing page for my company and it’ll really make you a landing page that aligns with whatever it is that you put into that little chat box. So it is, it is very cool.

[00:04:33] Calan Breckon: That is amazing. So I have heard of this, you know, as AI has been coming up and people have been using it to do all these things. I have heard about like using it.

[00:04:42] Calan Breckon: For coding and this and that and like it wasn’t perfect and like it’s still learning, it still grows like a baby. Like you give it to like a young person, you’re like, okay, like let’s see what you come up with. And then like the adults will have to come in and like proofread your work for you because you’re like, you know, you don’t know what back doors or anything it’s leaving open on your website or your product or whatever. And like you can’t really have those things if you want to like go to the moon. Although I have heard that now because of products like this, we are looking at a world where it’s like a one person show could end up exiting for like 30, 40, 50, $70 million. Because they used Vibe coding and like these products to kind of create what they needed. So if I was like an outside person, who would Vibe coding be for? Because I, I know I’m not a coder, I’m a tech person. I’m like SEO. I’ve built websites like on WordPress or like on other kind of like drag and drops, but I’ve not studied like HTML or any of the kind of codes. So who is Vibe coding for? And I’m going to preface this with like currently and who do you think it’s going to be for? So who do you think it’s for? Write this second.

[00:05:52] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, so I actually love this question and this is kind of where my hot takes come in because right now they’re being marketed for small business owners or entrepreneurs or even like designers that want to bring their ideas and concepts to life.

I will say it is very like, let’s say you want to put together a MVP or a concept for a client, just a simple landing page. Vibe coding is really great for that. If you have, let’s say a canva mock up and you want it to again come to life. Vibe coding is great. You can go into lovable bolt and it really will do exactly what you tell it.

But as you mentioned there, it’s like the junior developer that knows the basics.

However, you start bringing in complexities and that’s where I would recommend you take a step back and maybe don’t lean in as much to Vibe coding platforms because that’s when you’re going to need the developers to come in.

It is being marketed as a replacement for developers and I guess in theory you could make your simple one page website on a Vibe.

However, it is not very vibish, if you will, when you’re trying to build complex, complex builds, like let’s say client portals where you limit views and you have to like pull from a database. There’s all. There’s other platforms out there that are maybe let’s say more drag and drop, like for example Softr, where it might take you longer.

And by longer I’m putting up air quotes because it doesn’t take a long time. Nowadays it’s so quick. So by longer it’ll take you what, 30 minutes longer.

But at the end of the day it’s a lot more reliable than kind of blindly going in and relying on this code to understand exactly what you need.

And then in addition to that there’s which I’m sure you know, like you’re in the tech world and I know you use AI a little bit.

There’s the history of the chat and currently, as of today, you can’t add another chat to your project.

So you are not only relying on your initial idea, but if there’s some kind of error that it has latched onto, it’ll go into this, like, error cycle also. So there’s a lot of things that are being, I would say, hidden from the mainstream and right now it’s all the hype and it is very cool and I really like it and I highly recommend people tinker around with it.

However, I do say this with a big warning of like, proceed with caution, especially when you’re working with client data and need some kind of security restrictions, then that’s when you need to start considering your capabilities and being realistic with what you can accomplish.

[00:09:11] Calan Breckon: Yeah. So for right now, it’s kind of like tinkering, having fun, doing up some like, chill stuff. Nothing that would be like, you need to be very careful because there’s like big clients or like you’re in a big corporate, like maybe not yet using these or depending on these, but playing with them and then using that information or pulling some of that over to then do in kind of like your main setting that you would be doing. What.

What do you see as kind of being some of the biggest advantages to Vibe coding? As it’s currently sitting? Like I said, we’re probably going to jump into the future a little bit later. But like, as it’s currently sitting, what are the biggest advantages?

[00:09:48] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, I would definitely say speed.

So it is very quick. If you have some kind of prototype type in mind and you need ideas, it’s a great place to go in and say like, hey, build me a sleek website or a sleek landing page for a client that does A, B, C and D, it’ll throw it together and it’ll have like the animations, it’ll have some graphics.

So it is very cool in that sense.

And then in addition to that, if you.

The barrier to entry is quite literally zero.

So if you’re an entrepreneur that has, let’s say, a little bit of time, and I say that cautiously because I know none of us have a lot of time, but. And you want something that is approachable and kind of easy to play around with and you won’t have to invest a significant amount in it, I would say five code.

If you have a prototype or if even if you have an idea in mind and you are going to hire a developer, Vibe code something Together and then give that to the developer, because at the end of the day, they’re the ones that are going to put it together, but at least you have something for them to go off of.

That might make it a little more understandable and might make, you know, the time, the timeline a little shorter. And it might save you a little bit if you already come with, like, an initial product for them that they can work off of.

And then, yeah, definitely. Just like, when you’re starting to play with AI, if you are in that field and if you have something, if you have a big idea in mind, Vibe coding is the way to go because it really brings it to life.

However, that is the state of the current industry, and I’m sure it’s going to be different pretty soon, but it’s not at the level I think they are showcasing it as it being.

[00:11:40] Calan Breckon: Mm, yeah, it’s like play now, start.

[00:11:43] Calan Breckon: Learning, tinkering on the side.

[00:11:45] Calan Breckon: And then that way, you know, as things evolve and change, you can continue to grow with them. I really like that idea of, like, putting something together over here and, like.

[00:11:53] Calan Breckon: Taking that code and then giving it.

[00:11:54] Calan Breckon: To somebody and be like, this probably 100% isn’t perfect, but, like, this is a starting framework or starting structure to then build off of and, like, find the loopholes or find, you know, the spots where it’s like, ooh, this probably isn’t a good idea over here.

Talking about that, let’s take that a little bit deeper. Like, what are some of those potential downsides and risks on relying on Vibe coding to, like, write code?

[00:12:20] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, there’s a lot.

So obviously there’s the security side of things, but there’s also version control.

These platforms have no version control as of right now.

So if you have a really good prototype and you for some reason tell it to do something and it breaks it, rolling back is so hard because, like I mentioned, the.

The history of the chat is completely in there. So not all. It’s. It’s like no matter how many times you tell it, rolling back to a previous version, unless you have some kind of advanced prompting where you use, like, section dao, which is what I do, but folks aren’t doing that. You know, that’s. That brings in a whole other part of, like, prompt engineering that regular people aren’t bringing in, they’re not trained. They don’t.

So I definitely would say copy it. Download the. I don’t care if you don’t know how to code, copy and paste it onto a Google Doc.

Do, like, the Very minimum. You can make a copy of the project on all these platforms, but please do not by any means rely entirely on that version. Because you’ll be very upset when you’re 50 hours in and then something breaks and you’re like, well, now. Now what?

[00:13:48] Calan Breckon: Okay, that was something I didn’t even think about. But now that you say that, I’m like, oh, shit. I would real be real, real, real pissed if. Yeah, I’m like, working on something and I’m like, this is great. And then one thing goes wrong and then I get back to like, I can’t just control, delete and like, go back, you know, go back a paragraph.

[00:14:10] Juliana Olarte: It is so frustrating. And I have heard some horror stories and I. I’m in the AI world. I’m in the developer world is like, I’ve learned to code through AI, so I understand to some extent, because I wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t these platforms when I first started, which is a blessing in disguise because I kind of understand. But there’s these people out there that have client projects that will work on client projects and they’re like, yeah, we’ll get you this website, blah, blah, blah. And the client either wants one minor fix or they’re working on it. 50 hours in, something breaks and they’re like, now I have to restart.

[00:14:52] Calan Breckon: Oh, my gut just dropped. Because I know those feelings. It’s like, it’s like when you’re working on a website on like, WordPress and like, there’s one plugin or one thing that you update and it just like completely breaks the website because that has not been adjusted to work with the new updated WordPress or whatever it is. And you go. And you’re just like. You’re like, oh, that was live. That wasn’t not live. And then you’re like, okay, now I gotta go and like, reboot from backup. When was the last time I backed? Like, I’m pretty good. Cause I’m a little ocd, so I’m pretty good at backing up, like, consistently, like, this is a backup. And for the next hour, the next whatever, I’ll be like, we’re good.

Or like, any major changes, like, do a backup right before. But if you forget, because we all do that and you’re just like, oh, when was the auto backup done last? Like, I hope it was yesterday, not like a week ago or something like that. Like, I would die.

[00:15:47] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, no, it is. It is a nightmare. And that’s why I recommend people use. There’s platforms out there that already do it is basically vibe coding. It just is like you have to basically link the data set. So softr I’m a huge fan of there’s airtable. Like play with that first and then when you’re comfortable and kind of know the basics of like what the database and back end needs to look like.

Then, then vibe code because then you, you know what you need to fix if you need to fix anything.

But yeah, it’s definitely, definitely a lot of horror stories I see in our, in our near future with all these people.

[00:16:29] Calan Breckon: Vibe coding, definitely. So you were just starting to kind of jump into like products that you really like or websites you really like. Is there like ones that like a regular listener who’s not like, not a coder? That’s not their thing. But they want to start implementing these things or really utilizing these things. Like say, you know, maybe take my website and I want to redo the website, but I’m absolutely not a designer and I just want to kind of like get something that helps me like judge the website a bit or something like that. What are some like easy websites that they can utilize?

[00:17:04] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, I would definitely say starting off with your very basic chat, GPT and Claude. That’s the very first step. I wouldn’t even. And I would say pick one and stick with it. At this point, the models are changing so often you cannot try to keep up.

I don’t even recommend you tinker around with multiple. Just pick one, pick the prettiest one, Pick the one that you like the best.

Stick with it because you can train it to work for your specific company or for your specific need.

Once you’re at a level where you’re comfortable and you want to, let’s say, start automating or start bringing an AI to different aspects of your business, then I would say, okay, lean on make.com for example. Or actually, I’m not going to recommend Nan for anyone that is not at least a little techie.

[00:18:01] Calan Breckon: That’s a. Yeah, Nadan is definitely a little bit more advanced because I’m playing with it right now because I need to see like how it affects this piece because the way. Well, I’ll let you explain how it actually works. But in order for things to work together, I’m like, okay, let’s do a test run to make sure that this.

[00:18:20] Calan Breckon: Actually does what I want it to do.

[00:18:22] Calan Breckon: And it is a little bit more advanced so you can explain how that actually functions.

[00:18:26] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, sure. These are all like automation platforms are very cool. They’re, they’re what allowed me and my business to. We went from concept to launch in less than six months. I launched in January. I already have a few clients and it’s all thanks to automation and AI and just me dedicating a ridiculous amount of time to learning these. So there’s platforms like make.com, which I highly recommend for beginners.

It is so easy to use. It is all in the cloud, so you don’t even have to worry about self hosting.

And basically you can pull in information. Let’s say you have a Google sheet, you can tell it, hey, pull the information from this Google sheet and let’s say you want to analyze the sentiment of your social media.

You can add like a little chatgpt bubble and tell it, hey, analyze this, give me positive, negative or neutral and then add it to this sheet.

That’s a very basic example, but that’s something that it could do.

And then eventually you can get to things like automating your email inbox, helping with like qualify leads, helping with your lead, what’s it called? Whatever.

[00:19:42] Calan Breckon: Generation.

[00:19:43] Juliana Olarte: Lead generation.

Thank you. That is exactly the word I was looking for.

But yeah, like with your lead generation, with your social media captions and so making it easy to connect all of these platforms that you’re on nowadays, you’re on how many platforms a day. If you’re in the corporate world, don’t do all that. Identify one platform that you want to use and then figure out how you can do everything on there. Like I use airtable, softr and make.com. those are my platforms. Those are like, that’s my tech stack. And if I can do it on any of those three platforms, then I’ll do it that way you’re not going on Monday.com going on Google sheets, going on like your Google tasks and then having to update them Monday.com like client sheet. No, you, you don’t need to do all that nowadays. Which is, I think the beauty of AI and automation is that there’s so many products out there, but it is very overwhelming. So I would say start small, pick chatgpt, pick make.com and start playing around with it. And there’s so many tutorials. Everything I’ve learned has been on YouTube. It is. Or reach out to me. You know, it is right now I think the biggest barrier is education and time because money isn’t a barrier anymore. It’s not expensive. I think make.com costs like $50 for like a good amount of operations. They have a free plan, which is great.

The barrier is basically zero. So Starting up your company or bringing your, you know, making sure that you’re at a level that, where you could scale all of that is realistic nowadays because you don’t have all these barriers where you have to pay $50 for the Monday.com stuff subscription. You don’t even need it anymore.

[00:21:29] Calan Breckon: Exactly. I, I use Asana. Like that’s my personal, personal calendar where all the business goes in but like fun goes in there as well. So I could easily use this for like, you know, corporate, corporate calendar. Connect to my personal Asana calendar so that I don’t double book and so that everything is where I like to look but so nothing gets missed. And like all these little pieces coming together, an email comes in, it’s like, oh, hey, this, you know, this meeting at this time and it can automate and put it over there and so that I don’t have to manually go and add it. Be like, okay, okay, this calendar says this. Now I need to go put it on my calendar because it’s my preference because everybody has their own preferences so it is getting a lot easier. Okay, now I want to jump in to the future stuff because this is the part that I’ve, you know, we talked about already through here.

It’s like this is what it looks like currently for like the Vibe coding and all that. And like don’t exactly trust it 100%. But what do you think, like looking ahead as like, because it’s moving very quickly.

What does that future look like? What do you think that looks like? Or what have you experienced?

[00:22:38] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, I think that the future of biocoding is near. Is. We’re, we’re almost there.

There’s a lot of companies out there investing significant, a significant amount of money into agentic AI, which is basically like they have agency so they can like be proactive in things, which is really a weird concept.

And I think that’s going to be, that’s going to definitely come into vibe coding.

I think there is going to be platforms out there where you tell it what to do and then it not only makes the basic code, but it’s kind of like proactively fixing things.

And we’re almost there. Google released something called her name is Jules.

How are you going to name it Jules? And obviously her. She’s giving and she is the moment she will read your code and connect to like GitHub or something and really figure out what’s going on. She’s very advanced. She’s like one of like Google’s big, big projects. Highly recommend checking her out if you’re Vibe coding because she has been very helpful.

So I think there’s going to be like tools like that that will kind of assist with Vibe coding. And I also think, think that people are going to start realizing that it’s not there yet. So it’s going to be a great moment for developers actually because maybe they’re struggling right now.

Maybe it is time to start looking at plan B.

But I do think that right now it’s very doom and gloom.

I don’t think that everyone is going to be losing their jobs. I don’t think that we’re there yet. I think that now it’s just, I think you mentioned this recently. It is a time of evolution. We just need to adjust to the time that we’re living in now.

And Vibe coding is just another, another tool. It’s just kind of another kind of platform that is going to be out there. And so I do think that it is going to be for entrepreneurs and for larger platforms. However, right now I think, oh, you know what, I have one more, one more, one more take.

I think platforms like softr, where their core offering is industry like enterprise platforms so that you can make like a, like a client facing platform, you can make a community management platform.

These are going to embed AI and agentic solutions into that aspect of it and that’s going to turn it into Vibe coding, which you can kind of do now. You can give it a prompt and tell it like, hey, make me a real estate lead generation platform. And it will put like some kind of database together and it will put some kind of front end together.

I just think like the design stuff is going to come in pretty soon, but we’re almost there. I’m excited for it. I just would also say please be careful with security because.

Because your API keys are getting leaked and it’s very easy to find them.

[00:26:01] Calan Breckon: Yeah, this was, I mean data leaks and all that is a huge thing. There was just like, I don’t want to get into like current news or anything right at the end here, but there was that massive like passwords leak and all that stuff. And I’m just sitting here being like this like everybody’s just gonna know everybody’s stuff. Like the world is getting crazy.

[00:26:17] Juliana Olarte: Security is not a thing anymore.

[00:26:20] Calan Breckon: No. Especially with tech bros in charge of everything. They’ve never given two about security.

[00:26:25] Juliana Olarte: And you know what? Someone had to say it.

[00:26:27] Calan Breckon: I’ve like them like honestly bros pissed me off. I’m so ready for women to take over and like for the world to.

[00:26:33] Juliana Olarte: Like, hey, you know what? I’m here. I’m first. I’m first in line. Hey, Y Combinator. I’m right here. Yeah, call me. Guys.

[00:26:41] Calan Breckon: Perfect. Juliana, this has been a fascinating, fantastic conversation. I really loved it. I think you gave some really good places to start for people when they’re like, brand new, fresh. Get your, you know, dip your toes in and start that. I’ll make sure to have all the links of like, kind of like all the websites you talked about in the show. Notes for everybody. But if folks want to connect with you, where can they go to find out more?

[00:27:04] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, so Coconut Breeze Media, that’s my company. Please reach out if you need any kind of marketing, vibe, coding, development help. All of our solutions are custom made for you.

And find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active across everything, so you’ll find me. I’m chronically online, if you will.

[00:27:23] Calan Breckon: Amazing.

[00:27:25] Juliana Olarte: So, yeah, Juliano Olarte on LinkedIn, across everything. And if you can’t spell that, then you can always just type in Coconut Breeze Media.

[00:27:33] Calan Breckon: Amazing. Thank you so much for being a guest, Juliana.

[00:27:36] Juliana Olarte: Yeah, of course. I’m sure I’ll see you in Toronto soon.

[00:27:38] Calan Breckon: Yes.

Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The Business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.