Toddlers with Power Tools: How a 57-Year-Old Built RankMagik in 4 Days

First there’s static. A faint spark, hard to even notice.

Then a pattern emerges, sometimes through curation like NTE Pro, sometimes through structure like NTE Zero To One.

The spark sharpens into a signal. The signal grows into a symphony.

And before you know it, what once lived only in the imagination now demands attention in the real world.
It Exists.

Rob is 57.
He’s been programming since he was 12.

That’s 45 years of building, from working on the Hubble Space Telescope in his early career, to earning two patents, to building SEO tools since 2005 when Google was still the underdog. He’s owned three businesses, partnered in two more, and even after all that… he still gets the itch to ship.

So when he saw the “Boring Marketer” share an SEO workflow built in n8n, most people saw a clever hack. Rob saw destiny.

“That’s the tool I’ve wanted to build my whole life. The tech finally exists.”

Most people would’ve bookmarked it. Rob dove in headfirst.

He tried duplicating the workflow in n8n, but the UI was a mess. Not what he wanted. That rejection was the spark.
He opened Emergent, a no-code platform he had never used before and went to war.

Four days later, bleary-eyed and $300 lighter in API credits, Rob shipped RankMagik,  an AI-powered SEO content strategy tool that uses YouTube insights, SERP analysis, and smart ideation to help creators generate content that actually ranks.

RankMagik… helps you find what people are already searching for on YouTube + Google, then turns that into content that ranks fast.

Lesson 1: Momentum Beats Mastery

Rob didn’t know no-code. He didn’t know Emergent. He had no playbook.

But he had momentum.

“It’s like going to a casino,” he said. “You’re always one test away from getting that feature to work. How can you not test it one more time?”

That feedback loop, test, break, fix, repeat is addicting. Four days of that cycle and RankMagik wasn’t polished, but it existed.

And that was the point.

Because Rob wasn’t testing theory. He was testing a dare: can a polished web app really be vibe-coded in just a few days?

Turns out, yes. But only if you push through the late nights, the wrong turns, and the “what am I doing?” moments.

Momentum > mastery.  The only real cheat code is refusing to walk away from the table.

Lesson 2: Wrangling AI Is the New Builder Skill

Here’s the dirty secret nobody tells you about AI coding agents: they’re toddlers with power tools.

Ask them to patch a button, and they’ll gleefully rebuild your entire UI.
Tell them not to touch something, and that’s the first thing they’ll rewrite.

“The AI coding agent is VERY gung-ho to do stuff, even if you didn’t ask it to and even if you give it explicit instructions NOT to do it,” Rob said. “If you take your eyes off the coding agent, it will screw up everything.”

So Rob babysat every move. He became a coach, a guardrail, and sometimes a firefighter.

This is the new builder skillset. 

“Pressing go isn't the magic. Pressing stop is.”

Lesson 3: Specs Save Sanity

Rob’s biggest regret? He let the AI riff without a script.

The result: spaghetti code, inflated API bills, and a cleanup job that took longer than the initial build.

If he could do it again, he’d start with a Development Guide: a simple one-pager telling the AI what’s allowed, what’s off-limits, and what the final product should look like.

“Designing ad-hoc is costly,” he said. “A guide saves time and money.”

It feels like overkill when you’re moving fast. But it’s the opposite.
A spec is a time machine. Spend an hour up front, save a week down the line.

Lesson 4: Deployment Is the Hidden Boss Fight

The build wasn’t the hardest part. The deployment was.

Rob thought vibe-coding the app was the mountain. It wasn’t. The real mountain was getting it stable, polished, and live for other people to use.

“It was do or die for this project,” he said. “I had to see if a complete, polished web app could be vibe-coded in a few days. Deploying it was way more challenging than I thought it would be.”

This is a reminder most builders forget: shipping isn’t hitting “save.” Shipping is getting it into other people’s hands. That last mile is where the pain and the payoff lives.

Anyone can build an app. Very few can get it out of their laptop and into the wild.

Lesson 5: Taste Is the Moat

The first thing Emergent spit out was slick: landing page, buttons, all pixel-perfect.

And for a second, Rob thought: “Damn, this is easy.”

Then he tested it. And realized looks can lie.

The app wasn’t trustworthy until it worked, consistently, without him babysitting it.

That’s the difference between demo magic and real magic.

Taste is the moat. Anyone can ship a shiny AI demo. But knowing when to push past “looks fine” into “feels right” is what separates apps people try from apps people trust.

Lesson 6: Funnels Beat Fantasies

Here’s the twist: Rob doesn’t even love SEO.

He’s a funnel guy.

“If you can build an ad funnel that converts at scale, you’ll get where you need to go faster than SEO ever will,” he said.

So he tested RankMagik like a marketer: ran Google and Facebook ads, tracked CPA, and scaled what worked.

People signed up.
The Boring Marketing newsletter even featured it,  the very community he thought might flame him for cloning their workflow.

Distribution isn’t dessert. It’s dinner. Rob didn’t wait for virality. He forced the issue with funnels.

What He’s Doing Next

RankMagik is live and now Rob is porting it into a Chrome Extension, betting that frictionless access will bring revenue without big ad spend.

And he’s already cooking the next project: LowFruit, a Chrome Extension that hunts for profitable Chrome Extension opportunities.

Because for Rob, side projects don’t stay “side” for long.

What He Thinks Needs to Exist

Rob’s wishlist isn’t just about SEO. He wants to see:

🧠 A no-code platform with longer context memory. Emergent got him part of the way, but the real unlock will come when AI agents can remember more and rebuild less.

💡 Image + video generation baked into SEO tools. Text is only half the game. When creative assets are frictionless, SEO automation hits a whole new level.

What You Can Learn From Rob

⚡ Momentum > mastery. Stay in the loop long enough for something real to emerge.
👶 Wrangle the toddler. AI agents aren’t magic interns, they’re toddlers with power tools. Babysit every move.
📝 Specs save sanity. A one-pager today is a week saved tomorrow.
🚚 Deployment is the hidden boss fight. Building is step one. Shipping is step two.
🎨 Taste is the moat. Shiny is cheap. Trust is rare.
📈 Funnels > fantasies. Distribution isn’t an afterthought. It’s the second half of the build.

Follow Rob

👉 Try RankMagik — SEO automation without the duct tape
👉 Check out LowFruit — find profitable Chrome Extension ideas

Oh, and if you think he only builds SEO tools, you’d be wrong. He also runs a weight loss spray and an anti-aging fitness site. Rob doesn’t sit still.
👉 Explore his other projects: TrimYouSpray.com and viiivfitness.com

Rob’s been building since he was 12. At 57, he’s still pulling the lever. The casino never closes.

What we chase at NTE aren’t just markets, but inflection points, those strange little shifts when an idea tips from fragile to inevitable.

Inside NTE Pro, you’ll find a library of sparks: thousands of overlooked patterns, waiting for the right hands to give them form.
And for the founders ready to push past the napkin sketch, NTE Zero To One is the place where momentum takes shape, turning raw ambition into a real first build.

Because every story we tell here carries the same lesson: the line between “someday” and “today” is thinner than it looks.