From $95/Hour to "I Feel Like a New Man": Why Teaching Beats Billing in the Age of AI

#ai #freelancing #webdev #beginners

I just spent four hours teaching a client to code. We both had a lot of fun. No invoice was sent. This is the future of freelancing.

The Comfortable Rut

For years, Clifton and I had our shared pattern. He'd bought Clear Check from an indie marketplace but didn't know how to code. So a few times a year, he'd reach out on Upwork and link to a feature list. I'd code, he'd pay, and we'd both say "see you next time!"

It worked, but something about it felt... limiting -- for the both of us. I loved helping him with his business, but I hated being the bottleneck for what it could become. And if I was spending my time coding for him, I was limited in how many people I could help.

The "What If?" Moment

When Clifton reached out last week, I had this wild thought: "What if instead of me coding for you, we code together? What if you could learn to make these changes yourself?"

I know — "freelancer suggests client learns to not need freelancer". Not a great business model. But here's the thing: After years of coding, I'd noticed some shifts, both in myself, and in the software industry in general...

Everything's Different Now

The moat dried up: That specialist knowledge of syntax and file structures? It's all in AI assistants now. I rarely hand-write code anymore at my day job as a Senior Software Engineer. It's all vibes now -- collaboration with an AI assistant who does the coding while I steer our pair programming session.

The game flipped: My freelance work through my agency, Reification Labs, used to be careful, incremental, ordered — "validate, prototype, build, scale" — because building was expensive and time consuming. Now? AI lets us over-build fast with tools like v0, test them out quickly, then refine as need-be. More jazz, less classical.

Code's just the medium: I've always believed programming is a means to an end. Good craftsmanship matters, yes, but at the end of the day it's about the impact that software can make on real people's lives. That's what's always kept me going.

Sunday Morning Magic

Clifton admitted he'd been secretly hoping we could try this. So this past Sunday morning at 7am his time (talk about dedication!), we dove in.

The setup was tedious, I'm not going to lie:

GitHub ✓
Gitpod ✓
Heroku pipelines ✓
VS Code + GitHub Copilot ✓
Claude 4 subscription ✓
Not my favourite things to configure, but...

It was all worth it when the magic moment arrived.

The Vibe Shift

I showed Clifton how to introduce himself to Claude in the VS Code chat window — not as someone extracting code, but as someone learning to build. He explained who he was, what Clear Check does, who it helps, and his unique situation as a product-owner-turned-developer.

Claude was genuinely intrigued. It's not every day a non-technical founder comes asking to learn rather than just asking for code. The conversation felt more like meeting a mentor at a coffee shop than interrogating a machine.

They picked the perfect baby step: make the copyright year dynamic.

Tiny? Sure. But this little thing had bugged Clifton for months. And after all, it wasn't really about the copyright, it was about what happened next...

The Full Journey

With Claude's guidance, Clifton:

Created a feature branch ✓
Made the change (© 2023 → © {new Date().getFullYear()}) ✓
Wrote a commit message ✓
Pushed to GitHub ✓
Created a PR ✓
QA'd in the Heroku review app ✓
Merged it ✓
Watched it auto-deploy ✓
Got to see his changes live in production ✓

Magic.

Four hours. One tiny feature. One transformation.

"I feel like a new man!", he confessed as we wrapped up our call.

This is what it's all about. That feeling, right there.

The Real Shift (Here's Where It Gets Deep)

Something profound had just happened that I only fully grasped later that day. We'd broken a pattern—not just the "hire-code-pay-repeat" cycle, but something deeper.

The old model was extractive. I took his money in exchange for code, but despite helping him with his business, he was still dependent on me and had to balance my hourly rate against each feature's value.

The new model is collaborative. Empowering. And fun as hell. He's now only limited by his own time and imagination. No more bottleneck. No more dependency. Even Claude seemed energized by teaching rather than just pumping out code!

Is he ready to build the next Facebook? No, of course not — it was only four hours. But he's crossed the threshold from planning to shipping; from bottlenecked to boundless; from 'someday' to 'right now'. He can handle 80% of what he needs to extend Clear Check, and knows when to ask for help on the rest.

Enter Very Human AI

This is why I've started Very Human AI—a community for people like Clifton (like you?) who want to transform themselves from product owners (or product dreamers) to product builders through shared connection and AI collaboration.

It's not another coding bootcamp. It's a community for people ready to shift from extraction to collaboration—both with each other, and with AI.

We're exploring what happens when we approach AI as creative partners rather than code vending machines. When we teach each other instead of gatekeeping. When we measure success in "#wins" rather than billable hours.

The old model was "I'll fish for you for $95/hour." The new model is "I'll teach you to fish, then we'll swap fishing stories."