Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Jody Glidden - Tech Entrepreneur & CEO | Why Fast Learning Is the Only Protection Against AI Disruption

Transcript

Jody Glidden - Tech Entrepreneur & CEO | Why Fast Learning Is the Only Protection Against AI Disruption · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Crazyest thing about AI has been the growth rate, how fast it's been able to improve.
• 0:04
  The latest model, O3, is now the 20th best coder in the world.
• 0:08
  Well, people say, well, let's just make sure that it's not biased.
• 0:12
  We're not even the only country developing advanced AI.
• 0:14
  It's like trying to stop the water from a dam with your hands.
• 0:17
  From high school dropout to tech visionary,
• 0:20
  Jody Glitten didn't follow the traditional playbook.
• 0:22
  He rewrote it.
• 0:22
  He co-founded Intro Hive, a relationship intelligence platform
• 0:26
  that raised over $135 million and scaled to nearly a $500 million valuation.
• 0:31
  His superpower, spotting trends before they go mainstream,
• 0:34
  and building systems that turn connections into revenue.
• 0:37
  AI is coming.
• 0:38
  It will be in its absolute best form that will help us do our jobs.
• 0:42
  But at some point, it will replace our jobs.
• 0:44
  One of the ways that I've always adapted anyway
• 0:48
  and is by being open to learning.
• 0:50
  Watching videos and studying, reading books,
• 0:52
  that's going to be a more important skill than ever.
• 0:55
  If we're expecting to go do college and then we're done learning, you're done.
• 0:58
  From chalk media acquired by Blackberry to his current role as CEO and founder of Postilize,
• 1:04
  Jody has consistently built, scaled, and exited industry shaping companies.
• 1:09
  This isn't just about software.
• 1:10
  It's about people, relationships, and the AI that drives them.
• 1:14
  Jody's building more than a business.
• 1:15
  He's building the future of how we connect.
• 1:17
  So many people have a hard time with focus.
• 1:19
  If you just have a plan and focus,
• 1:21
  you're going to be so far ahead of most of the people.
• 1:24
  You don't have to be faster than the bearer.
• 1:25
  You just have to be faster than the people that can.
• 1:38
  All right, Jody, so you have built and exited five companies
• 1:42
  and now generative AI pulled you back to the startup scene and to the startup world.
• 1:47
  So what is the most mind-blowing, scary capability that you've seen AI be able to do?
• 1:57
  Well, I think the craziest thing about AI has been the growth rate of how fast it's been
• 2:03
  able to improve. Because if I look at like two years ago, it was really interesting.
• 2:09
  It was interesting enough for me to stop what I was doing and jump back in.
• 2:13
  But I really had no idea it was going to get to the point where it's the latest model
• 2:19
  03 that just dropped last week is now the 20th best coder in the world.
• 2:27
  It's pretty much at a PhD level in terms of the first one that can actually do PhD type
• 2:35
  inventing of new science, for example, right?
• 2:37
  We just never really thought that anything was going to get there in my lifetime.
• 2:42
  So this is how long has AI been around?
• 2:47
  Like, what's the timeframe? Because that's so I think that most people, listen,
• 2:52
  it's crazy because it's moving so fast that you have people that have not even touched it.
• 2:57
  You have people that are dabbling. You have people that are building in it.
• 3:01
  You have people that are sort of proficient users.
• 3:04
  And I think that even in the proficient user section of that proficient user AI category,
• 3:12
  I think that people mostly think it's an aggregator of information.
• 3:15
  Yeah, and this word wrapper.
• 3:17
  Yeah, wrapper, right? It's not like thinking of new stuff or most people don't think that it's
• 3:22
  thinking of new stuff. So you're saying that in a couple years, we're PhD level where it's
• 3:27
  actually coming up with its own ideas.
• 3:29
  That's correct. Yeah, it used to be able to, for example,
• 3:33
  sort of look at a bunch of jokes and come up with something along those patterns to,
• 3:38
  you know, to create a sort of new joke, but along all the exact same patterns.
• 3:43
  This is the first model that ever came out with 03 where it can kind of invent up an entirely
• 3:49
  new kind of joke, for example, right? Or it can look at the science along, let's say some sort
• 3:54
  of quantum physics and actually come up with a new concept or the same thing with DNA medicine.
• 3:59
  We're going to see new drugs being invented. We're going to see new science happening in
• 4:04
  rocketry and all this stuff. And now the AI is at the point where it's able to actually improve
• 4:11
  itself for the first time ever too. So, you know, I think to your point about when did it start,
• 4:18
  it really was November, December of 2022, which is we're not even at the three-year mark.
• 4:24
  This is incredibly fast. So, you know, I kick this off by asking, what's the scariest thing
• 4:29
  that you've seen AI do? And it's not like it's able to do anything too scary or too unnerving yet,
• 4:35
  but just the pace that it's improving. It's like a little bit, it's a little bit scary.
• 4:43
  I think so. Like I think I think a lot lately about the impact on our society,
• 4:50
  on, you know, our children. Not from the ethics point of view, a lot of people talk about the
• 4:56
  ethics part of it. I think that chip sailed a long time ago. I think not. Explain that though.
• 4:59
  What do you mean the ethics will have a sale? Well, people say, well, let's just make sure that
• 5:06
  it's not biased or this or that, but we're not the only companies developing AI. Like open AI
• 5:12
  is not the only company doing that. We're not even the only country developing advanced AI.
• 5:16
  So you can't just, it's like trying to stop like the water from a dam with your hands. It's
• 5:23
  impossible. So, you know, so AI is coming. It will be in its absolute best form that will help us
• 5:34
  do our jobs. But at some point, it will replace our jobs. You know, for a while, it will augment us.
• 5:41
  Yeah. And then there will be a point where they won't need us anymore.
• 5:45
  So what does that mean then? I mean, right now, I already feel like we're at the point where it's
• 5:50
  augmenting three years in. And like all technology, I'm assuming it follows some sort of growth curve
• 5:57
  where very soon it's going to, if it's improving itself, it's going to exponentially get more
• 6:03
  efficient and more useful. And we're three years into it. And now it's already augmenting. It's
• 6:09
  like six, you know, another three years. Is it already going to be replacing most of the jobs
• 6:13
  that we do today? Or I think around the replacing of the jobs thing, there's, there's what can
• 6:20
  it do? And then there's what will we let it do as a society? So there's government intervention
• 6:25
  happening in every different country. They have their own angles on it and stuff. And you know,
• 6:29
  we've now appointed like an AI, Zara, David Sacks and so on to sort of put the US's view on what
• 6:38
  we're going to do. But I think one of the biggest things people, I hear people say all the time,
• 6:45
  well, you know, I go into Chachi, we tea and it couldn't possibly do my job. Correct. But there's
• 6:50
  a whole bunch of people building companies out there like mine and, you know, a million others,
• 6:56
  where, you know, it might take us three to five years to accomplish whatever our goal is. But
• 7:02
  it will eventually completely do a certain job, whether that job might be customer support,
• 7:09
  which is kind of already being done now. Or maybe the SDR job, which is basically the, you know,
• 7:15
  the people that dial and, you know, do the sale, entry level sales people, right? The lead generators.
• 7:22
  They're taking the most repetitive, easiest jobs. Those ones were getting completed first. And
• 7:28
  then the more complex jobs will have a next and so on and so on. And I think that's really what
• 7:34
  you're seeing. I see sometimes in the forums where people say the job, you know, I don't see anything
• 7:41
  super impressive yet other than Chachi, we tea. It's just you haven't seen it yet. Do you have,
• 7:46
  have you seen it yet? Because you're in this space, you're building in this space. Obviously,
• 7:50
  you're like super into technology. Your whole life has been building tech company. So I feel like
• 7:54
  you're more advanced than the average person who's just messing around on Chachi VT on the weekend.
• 7:59
  So you mentioned 20th best coder in the world, PhD level. I know that there's a lot of talk about
• 8:07
  agents as well, sort of autonomous agents that can do tasks once you train them. So you know it,
• 8:14
  what's the most advanced thing that it can do right now that would be scary for somebody who's
• 8:18
  like a knowledge worker. I mean, it's, it's getting pretty good now at doing all of the high volume,
• 8:27
  like white collar work. So for example, paralegals in law firms are probably, it's pretty close to
• 8:38
  being able to do that job now. And without mistakes. Without mistakes. And people talk about,
• 8:44
  I hear often people saying about while hallucinations and things like that. But there's,
• 8:49
  there's ways to mediate hallucinations and, you know, cross-checking and using things like
• 8:55
  proplexity type algorithms. So people are often talking about it'll never work because of. And then
• 9:03
  the because of is something that was a two year ago problem, you know. So what are how are people
• 9:08
  going to learn or upskill if, you know, technology is completely replacing them? Like I think there's
• 9:15
  going to hit people coming out of college and university the hardest immediately because I don't
• 9:19
  know where they're going to get jobs anymore. No, I think that, you know, I have a daughter now that's
• 9:24
  that's 16 years old. And I think the most important thing is to be agile. You have to expect that
• 9:33
  the the job market that you're going to enter is not foreseeable right now. And so one of the
• 9:39
  the ways that I've always adapted anyway and is is by being open to learning and just constantly
• 9:45
  whatever that new thing is, there's always going to be a new thing. And whatever that new thing is,
• 9:50
  if you're on top of it, not trying to, you know, outsource it to people. You know, I'm all weekend,
• 9:57
  all evening. I'm like constantly watching videos and studying and things like that reading books,
• 10:03
  like that's going to be a more important skill than ever because if we're expecting to, okay,
• 10:09
  we're going to go do high school, we're going to go do college and then we're done learning. Yeah,
• 10:13
  you're done. Yeah. And I think that this is something that people first realized during COVID,
• 10:18
  like if they haven't upskilled and they got laid off during COVID, then they tried to get back
• 10:22
  in the job market and they were just doing the same job for the past, you know, 20 years and
• 10:28
  they have an upskilled, then there was a lot of friction with them getting a new job. Now AI is
• 10:32
  making it even more difficult for those people. I think that everybody has to start acting like an
• 10:38
  entrepreneur. That's really that's going to be a trend. Yeah, like I can see now already that
• 10:44
  the company sizes are shrinking dramatically, right? You're seeing that the big companies like
• 10:49
  Mehta and Google and all these companies are shrinking headcount and still achieving the same.
• 10:54
  And it's an exceeding revenue too. And I think there was a thing about Mehta, just
• 10:59
  strong headcount exceeded revenue numbers and people were giving them a hard time,
• 11:03
  like why would you lay people off? I'm like, what will those people do? Yeah, I know they do at Mehta
• 11:08
  or Google when there's exactly people are more productive. And you have to think the company's
• 11:13
  mandate is to grow the company, grow the revenue, decrease expense. It's their job. It's their job.
• 11:20
  So as much as it, you know, from a, oh, it's nice if the company just employs people to employ
• 11:26
  people at the end of the day, no companies ever going to act that way. So you have to understand how
• 11:31
  companies act and then you conduct yourself accordingly. That's the world we live in. Yeah. And that's
• 11:37
  the world, you know, our children are going to move into and everything. So, you know, I think
• 11:43
  I've seen it also at the smaller scale, right? Because I've done a lot of companies from zero to,
• 11:48
  you know, they call it zero to one, but these companies from zero to a hundred or several hundred people
• 11:54
  are now, I think you can still, you can build those same kind of companies with fewer heads.
• 11:59
  And so if you can, you have to because the investors will only give you that much money.
• 12:06
  So I mean, you built, you built several companies. If you look at, if you look at how you build in
• 12:12
  2025 versus how you used to build, what are some of the biggest differences? Like when you first
• 12:18
  started out, what was the, what was like the first company? Because I would have been how many years
• 12:22
  ago, I don't want to date you. But it was a couple of years ago, right? When you first started
• 12:29
  that company, what was notably different in how you had to think through getting something from
• 12:34
  zero to one, getting it off the ground, raising money, hiring? I'm just, I want to paint a picture
• 12:39
  for how much things have changed and how quickly things have changed. Yeah. You know, I, so my first
• 12:44
  one was like in the early 90s and then the late 90s. And back then, I think it was, it was,
• 12:53
  it kind of like what we were very cash constrained back then. And then the two, in the early 2000s,
• 12:58
  all of a sudden cash was free. And now it's starting to get more cash constrained again. Because
• 13:06
  people, investors know that you can do it on less cash. So back then, I was doing things like
• 13:11
  profitably, for example, you know, because that was the way I knew it was the idea. Yeah, exactly.
• 13:18
  Yeah. But I think now we're moving into, we're, you know, we're still doing the same,
• 13:25
  the same kind of thing where we're doing a cash constrained, but it's incredible what we're
• 13:29
  able to get done in a short period of time. In, in postalize my new company, from quarter to quarter,
• 13:36
  when I go back and show customers or prospects, the feature list that we've accomplished with such
• 13:41
  a small team, it's like blowing people away. So when you say blown away, what, what is so impressive,
• 13:47
  what is it doing? Because not everybody, like not everybody goes, not everybody's in the weeds on
• 13:51
  this. All we, we, everyone hears about, like no code, low code, but that's all, that's almost
• 13:58
  people ever hear about it. They don't actually know what that means. And I don't even think that
• 14:01
  that is even AI. It really, it's not, yeah, you're, so that's those things like bubble and things
• 14:06
  like that flutter. But, um, but this is even beyond that. I'm not sure that those are even,
• 14:11
  I think those are becoming obsolete now, because now you can actually make actual, you know,
• 14:17
  Java code, Python code, um, you know, no JS code. Yeah. Having like,
• 14:25
  not a lot of knowledge, I saw a guy on a podcast. He was one of the business guys at Uber,
• 14:32
  and he created, um, like a very, very successful app, just him. It's generation. He was not a
• 14:39
  technical guy. He was like a business development guy. Yeah. He has no staff. It's just him.
• 14:44
  And he taught himself, you know, what nowadays they call vibe coding. Yeah. Yeah. And he built it. And
• 14:51
  is that just as simple as going into chat GPT and saying, literally, I need to build this app.
• 14:57
  Can you code it for me? And then taking that code and then hosting it somewhere? Well, or is there
• 15:02
  most of the time that's going to get it wrong? Yeah. I get it. Um, but if I look at what was
• 15:07
  happening, say a year and a half ago, the code that it was producing versus the code that it
• 15:12
  produces today, there's very few errors versus back then. It was, you know, a lot of errors.
• 15:19
  So that's just continues to get better and better. On top of that, you have, um, you have to have
• 15:26
  knowledge of like the more knowledge you have of coding, the better you're going to be at it.
• 15:31
  Because if it's like 90% of the way there, then you can take a look at it. And that's still tons
• 15:36
  of time saved. Exactly. Yeah. That's what a lot of the developers are talking about is that it
• 15:41
  gets some 90% of the way there. Yeah. Although now with products like cursor and some of the newer
• 15:46
  models like O3, um, I'd say you can get it closer to like 95, 96% there. In the past, you said that
• 15:53
  intro high was going to be your last company before AI came along. So I mean, I, I'm laughing because
• 15:58
  I sit down with so many entrepreneurs. And whenever they say they're done, it's always a lie.
• 16:05
  It's like 100 times a lot. Yeah. So what was it about? What was it about? I mean, I think I know
• 16:11
  the answer, but I want to hear it from you. Like, what was it about generative AI that was so
• 16:15
  exciting for you? I know that it's efficient. I know that it can do incredible things. I know
• 16:19
  that it's the future, but you don't have to work again. So why do you want to build in generative AI
• 16:25
  and go from zero to one all over again? Like every time it's like an extra great hair, right?
• 16:30
  And it's, it's not less painful. Yeah, I know. The coding may be easier and all
• 16:34
  stuff, but, but it is for everybody else in the world too. Yes, I'm exactly coming out.
• 16:38
  Now exactly. Yeah. No, I would say that, um, yes, I was going to be done. And, uh, but I think now
• 16:45
  what got me are really a couple of things. I'm really worried about our future generations a
• 16:51
  little bit. So I think that there might only be, um, you know, maybe three to 10 more years left to
• 16:58
  earn before the middle class could be completely wiped out. There, because there might be so many
• 17:04
  blue collar jobs and white collar jobs that are replaced, white collar with the AI that we know now.
• 17:11
  And blue collar with the robotics and everything that's coming, maybe five years from now, um,
• 17:17
  that I feel like maybe the, maybe I need to earn more for, yeah, help with my future generations,
• 17:24
  my daughter and, you know, all of that. I can ask chat GPT for anything. What do I actually have
• 17:29
  to know? I know, I know how to interpret the output of a generative chat tool. So what do I
• 17:35
  actually have to know? Just enough to interpret it and prompt it? Well, I think really with all of
• 17:39
  those, whether it's, you know, physics or chemistry or math or coding, what they all, what threads
• 17:45
  through them all is logic. Yes. You know, and so the better we all get at logic, then I, that's,
• 17:52
  an adaptable skill that you'll be able to drop yourself into any environment, learn, you know,
• 17:58
  some domain and, and make yourself useful. I think like building a company is also a process
• 18:04
  of logic. You have to figure out what, what should the product be or the service be? You're figuring
• 18:10
  out, you know, what's the market sizing? What's the competition? Like, what, how do you pick a good
• 18:14
  idea? You have to learn all about how to pick. Then you have to figure out, well, how do I persuade
• 18:19
  an investor and you learn all about that? But these are all logic problems, right? And, and so if
• 18:25
  you don't get the logic skills built up in your early years, you're probably going to struggle
• 18:30
  later on when, probably, like you said, the main job will be building a company. It might be a
• 18:35
  company of one. It could be a company of one. And I mean, one of my favorite charts is actually
• 18:40
  looking at how many people it takes to make a million dollars in annual revenue. And if you look at
• 18:46
  the graph over, you know, a period of times, it's a 1940s or 50s. It used to say, pretend it was
• 18:50
  like 50 people. And now to make a million dollar, you know, ARR annual recurring revenue or annual
• 18:56
  revenue company, it's one person. Yeah, the guy that I was talking about. And not even just
• 19:00
  million. It could be several million with a Chrome extension or whatever. They're, they're,
• 19:05
  they're predicting, I think the same Altman might have said this, but a lot of people have that
• 19:11
  think that they're in the next several years. There's going to be somebody that will make a
• 19:15
  billion dollar company with one person. Crazy. What would be one of the most important skill sets,
• 19:21
  entrepreneurial skill sets that has helped you when you started your first company and is still
• 19:27
  relevant. I mean, five companies later. I think probably relationship building has been the most
• 19:34
  important thing because what there's, there's a few different hurdles that you have to be able to
• 19:40
  get through in order to build a successful company. And they're all really hard hurdles. One of them
• 19:45
  is hiring top talent. If you hire adequate talent, you probably won't make it. And that seems
• 19:54
  crazy, but that's just the way it is. You have to hire exceptional people. And that's a really,
• 20:00
  really hard thing to do. Why would an exceptional person quit a very stable job that's high paying
• 20:05
  and come work at a fragile startup? That's a really hard thing to do. I think the other thing is,
• 20:11
  is it's relationships that do that, right? They trust you because they worked with you before.
• 20:16
  I've always put a lot of work into my investor relationships and making sure that even though
• 20:21
  I might not be building something at the moment that I keep those investor relationships alive.
• 20:26
  And the relationships with my top customers, I make sure that when I get a customer,
• 20:31
  that I make them feel valued and that I stay, I even keep in touch with them after they're no longer
• 20:37
  a customer because they might be a customer the next time or maybe they can be helpful to each other,
• 20:41
  you know? Well, I think that, I mean, your strategy on how you build companies is very smart
• 20:46
  because you've always built in the enterprise space. And I think that that's maybe talk a little
• 20:51
  bit about how you sort of, again, built five companies in the enterprise space and some of the
• 20:57
  lessons from there because I think a lot of entrepreneurs, even after they have that first success,
• 21:02
  they do have a little bit of shiny object syndrome and then they just go down a completely
• 21:06
  different route and they make it harder on themselves and it has to be. And I think that's almost,
• 21:10
  I think shiny object syndrome is, it almost comes hand in hand with somebody who's curious
• 21:16
  enough to be an entrepreneur in the first place. But you've done a very good job of, you know,
• 21:22
  regardless of all the different opportunities in front of you and when you have a track record
• 21:27
  like yourself, you have a lot of different opportunities that you can pursue. You've done a really
• 21:31
  good job of staying hyper focused on what you know best. And I think that's probably been one of the
• 21:35
  keys, obviously there's many, but one of the keys to you being successful repeatedly. I think it's
• 21:39
  probably the main reason because I got pitched so many times on becoming a co-founder in some
• 21:46
  consumer startup or, you know, all these different things and my answer was always like,
• 21:52
  it sounds like a great idea, but it's not my expertise. I don't know anything about it. And I
• 21:56
  think you have to admit to yourself, what do you know and what do you not know? And enterprise,
• 22:00
  the thing about enterprises, I've worked in them enough to know how the marketing departments work,
• 22:05
  how the finance departments work, how the sales departments work, and I know a lot of people.
• 22:09
  And you know, one of the things I always say is there's only 500 or the Fortune 500. So when you know
• 22:14
  a bunch of those people, it makes your job a lot easier, right? So talk to me about relationships
• 22:20
  because you mentioned a couple things. So relationships are key. And relationships will probably be even
• 22:26
  more important in the age of AI where everything, every other piece of the business is almost commoditized.
• 22:32
  It's almost like it's simple. And the barrier to entry with technology is going to be lower than
• 22:37
  ever before. So then what's the what's the the X factor that's going to get a company to choose
• 22:44
  your product versus someone else's? I see I would say more and more the reason that people are losing
• 22:53
  customers. So customer retention going down or people not winning a deal is because in the era of
• 23:00
  COVID, everybody got used to they can sell by Zoom. And they no longer put the emphasis on
• 23:06
  relationship. I think you can go ahead and sell by Zoom, but relationship has to really matter.
• 23:10
  You have to make a point to see aside from what maybe I'm trying to sell you. Is there any other way
• 23:16
  I can help you? Can I make introductions for you? Can I introduce you to come up to customers?
• 23:20
  Like being a helpful person in the world is it always finds a way to come back to you. AI is going
• 23:28
  to remove the human component right of building a business. You've found a way to make it enhance
• 23:36
  the human component to a degree with fossilized. That's kind of how the business works. So I think
• 23:41
  that that's probably explain explain how you do that. But I think that's probably a healthier way
• 23:47
  to look at AI. Yeah. Like I noticed with my own personal like with my own friendships that
• 23:53
  sometimes I would go and be a friend that is really important to me. And I'd realize it's been
• 23:58
  like, you know, two months since we had dinner that we spoke or whatever. And I just think
• 24:04
  that's not healthy. No. And so a lot of times it's because we all just kind of we try to organize
• 24:13
  our day, but oftentimes we don't organize our relationships and how long has it been since we
• 24:18
  spoke to this person. And and you have to be able to do that measure the relationships as
• 24:23
  as like kind of scientific as that sounds. Measure the relationships that which which are
• 24:28
  going to be the top relationships that you're going to make sure that you nurture all the time
• 24:32
  on a personal and a professional. This is how you've built multiple companies because like you
• 24:36
  said, even your downtime when you're not building anything, you're still talking to investors.
• 24:39
  And you're still keeping in touch with your customers over past customers. And I'm assuming even
• 24:43
  you know, you mentioned to to make a company successful, you have to attract to that, you know,
• 24:50
  a plus level talent. Yeah. I'm assuming that you also keep in touch with the people that have been
• 24:55
  absolute phenomenal employees and peers over the course of the past five companies. So when you
• 24:59
  built something new, you're trying to bring those people back to work with you. Yeah. I always make
• 25:04
  made sure that I'll give you a good example. One of my best salespeople he wanted to start a new
• 25:11
  company. He came to me and he said, he's like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'd love to start a new company
• 25:17
  or whatever. Instead of saying like, you know, like given him a hard time, but I said, stay
• 25:22
  with me for two years. I'll get you more involved with, you know, the things of how to raise money,
• 25:29
  how to get your first customers and all these sorts of things. I will help you become a better founder,
• 25:34
  just stick with me for two years. And he stuck he stuck with me for I think maybe four years.
• 25:39
  And then he went and started a company. He's now raised, I don't know, five million. He's
• 25:44
  about to raise his blackstreet. He's doing really well. Yeah. Yeah. So, but and then, you know,
• 25:50
  we talk on a regular basis, it builds loyalty, you know, just being a helpful person, you'll,
• 25:56
  you never know when they might want to join back up and become a co-founder someday.
• 26:01
  Thousand percent. Okay. So what Possibleize does is it, it, I mean, we're all human and we all try,
• 26:08
  and most of us are trying to maintain our relationships. And it's difficult because there's a
• 26:13
  million different things going on in our lives. And so what it actually does is it helps you maintain
• 26:19
  relationships at scale, using AI to focus on and reach out to the people that are the most important
• 26:24
  in our lives, correct? Yeah. So one of the things it's doing is it's, it's just watching
• 26:29
  basically who are you emailing with? Who are you meeting with regularly? Who are you texting with
• 26:34
  regularly? Who are those people? Where do they work at the moment? What's going on in their lives?
• 26:39
  And, and the long-term vision is just helping make sure that you don't miss things that are
• 26:46
  really important. If somebody, you know, maybe even has a baby and you didn't know it or somebody
• 26:51
  gets a promotion or somebody moves to another company. Some of these things are, you know, points
• 26:57
  of time when you should be showing empathy, you should be showing excitement, you should be
• 27:01
  engaging with them. You should be taking them out to dinner. You should be, maybe it's a customer
• 27:06
  opportunity. But if you don't even know that these things are happening, how are you ever going to do
• 27:11
  that? If we lean on AI too much and we lean on software and tools too much, then we then we
• 27:19
  miss the human component and all our interactions. You know, we were talking even before we pressed
• 27:23
  record about how media and podcasting, you think it's going to be very important because AI can
• 27:30
  now write probably better than a lot of people can write, meaning that what's going to be the
• 27:37
  reason you read one person's writing versus a Seth Godin or a Malcolm Gladwell or a pick a big
• 27:43
  author or, you know, James Clear. The reason is because of their name. So I think that it's going
• 27:49
  to be very hard for up-and-coming writers to build a name just around their written work and
• 27:54
  you made this point too because people can just use AI to write now. Yeah. I think we're going to see
• 28:01
  probably a hundred X written content over the next three years, which will desensitize everybody to
• 28:09
  written content. And I think you're going to see an uprising in the value of personality and
• 28:17
  celebrity and podcasting, things like that because, you know, I tune in to your show because
• 28:24
  you know, you're familiar to me and I know what I'm getting when I watch the show. I know,
• 28:29
  you know, I know it's going to be you and I know what the kinds of things you're going to do.
• 28:34
  That I think is going to be one of the last
• 28:38
  replaced things in this new world is like personality.
• 28:43
  When you think about how to use AI for human interaction in a business context,
• 28:50
  even before AI, what I used to do when I used to when I used to sell and I used to train sales
• 28:55
  teams to do this as well, I would tell people to record videos of themselves and send those videos
• 29:00
  to prospects. Like short little 30, 45 second videos on LinkedIn to say like, you know,
• 29:06
  20 of their most perfect ideal customer profile avatars and do that at the end of every day and
• 29:11
  those got a much higher response rates. So even, you know, that was in the era of mass email
• 29:17
  and I was trying to sort of stand out in the era of mass email. So now I think it's going to be
• 29:21
  even more important because the one thing that, you know, back then before AI when I was still
• 29:27
  building companies with with the mass email, the thing that could differentiate yourself would be
• 29:34
  either a video which we did or we would research something about the person manually and include it
• 29:42
  in the email, something that would make it seem that it's impossible for this to be like a bulk
• 29:47
  sent. But now with AI, even the emails that you're getting, there could be data points that are
• 29:53
  pulled with AI, I can do the research and send an email. So you still don't even know if it's
• 29:59
  actually personalized or if it's something that's just sort of sent that scale, but video
• 30:03
  could be a differentiator then. Video could be a differentiator. I also think that there's a
• 30:08
  continuum of personalization. Yes. So I think we used to have templates, right? So there were
• 30:16
  companies like sales often outreach that they had these templates and you fire it at 1000 today.
• 30:21
  And then then we moved to insert a sentence. So take the template, insert a sentence.
• 30:27
  But now I think there's a potential. And you know, one of the things we're working on is
• 30:31
  fusing like what is your personality, let's say, let's say you're a seller. What is the,
• 30:37
  what is it that you are selling? What are the main benefits that you sell? And what's happening in
• 30:42
  the world with your customer or a list of prospects? Fusing those two things together and actually
• 30:49
  being consultative. So not just, hey, I noticed you tweeted this. Yeah, which is like the cheapest
• 30:56
  cop out of personalization. Yeah, exactly. But more like, hey, I noticed you went through some,
• 31:03
  you cut 10% of your staff and we happen to have this that helps that because of this.
• 31:09
  Like that's consultative, right? That's a whole other thing. And I think that is,
• 31:14
  that's where you just just understand using ad to understand both the what's going on with all
• 31:21
  of your prospects and the right time to contact them so that you won't be annoying. Yes, correct.
• 31:26
  It is the really the most important thing. And this is what, so this is, this is sort of bleeding
• 31:30
  edge outreach that that you can do right now. So this, I guess I was thinking too far into the
• 31:37
  future when I said that video is still going to be like with the one thing that people feel is
• 31:44
  truly human because at this point, what you're describing, that doesn't really exist yet for most
• 31:49
  people. Most people don't get this consultative hyper personalized team. There will be a point
• 31:56
  where this is the de facto where this is what you have to do. Maybe it's in two years from now.
• 32:00
  But right now, this is not the norm. Yeah, and you look at like in the consumer side,
• 32:04
  this has been happening. It's where I have a conversation with my girlfriend about some
• 32:13
  car and all of a sudden I start getting ads exactly about that car. So you're like, oh, the
• 32:18
  right thing at the right time. Yeah, exactly. But it hasn't really been happening in enterprise.
• 32:24
  And so this is what I'm trying to bring. Which is weird. Actually, if you think about it,
• 32:27
  when you're selling to businesses, you're just selling to people. That's right. So why do we treat
• 32:32
  it any differently? Yeah. Well, I think it's because people have always been doing things based on
• 32:40
  search primarily in enterprise. It's been like, okay, they're searching for this and then that was
• 32:44
  but that's not really how if you were to hire Deloitte to come in because you, you know,
• 32:50
  you're going through a mass layoff and you have some problem, that's not what Deloitte wouldn't
• 32:55
  just look through your search history, right? They'd analyze your business. They'd look at the SEC
• 32:59
  filings. They'd look at like what's what's really been trending in your business and then they'd
• 33:04
  be consultative and they would they would come up with some different approaches and they'd run
• 33:08
  them by you. And that's what we're trying to work. And you can do that now. Now you can do that
• 33:13
  without paying Deloitte $100,000. You're trying to help Deloitte. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Be able to
• 33:19
  do more of what they do well. Yes, really. So you said the generative AI might be the biggest
• 33:25
  thing that's happened in your lifetime or lifetime. What are some other ideas that you believe in
• 33:32
  how it will transform professional work? So you mentioned robotics. You mentioned that it will
• 33:37
  also obviously replace some knowledge workers. Are there any other things that it's going to do to
• 33:42
  our, you know, nine to five? I think it's going to completely change our criminal justice system.
• 33:48
  Did you disagree? We have humans now that are like looking at cases and trying to understand like
• 33:55
  remember when the, what was the FTC looking at how internet was going to be? I forget what that
• 34:02
  was that thing was called like a Senate hearing? No, they were they were looking at what kind of
• 34:07
  could Comcast go and just restrict what was going to go over our internet? Oh, okay,
• 34:13
  anyway, then you have judges who know nothing about technical trying to decide on cases like that.
• 34:19
  Oh, well, I've seen I've seen the Senate hearings about like crypto. Yeah, with people that have
• 34:25
  no idea what crypto is and even forget crypto. Like when you watch, like Zach or any of these
• 34:32
  fang executives or any tech executive sitting in front of the Senate and testifying and you can
• 34:38
  just tell that like the Senate understands maybe like 5% of what's actually going on in these
• 34:42
  people's businesses and they're asking the dumbest questions because again, that's this is not
• 34:47
  a political podcast, but they've been in the world changing the world's changing quickly. And these
• 34:51
  people have had their, you know, their positions for how many years and they grew up in a different
• 34:57
  world and they are not the subject matter experts. So the questions they ask are actually not that
• 35:02
  useful because these I'm a highly technical person. Yeah, I read every day and I'm watching
• 35:10
  podcasts and everything every day. And if I were made a judge right now to decide on a DNA case,
• 35:17
  I would say I'm unqualified, you know, because that's not my expertise. And so that's why I think
• 35:22
  AI is inevitably going to help assist judges at some point and then probably at some point
• 35:30
  beat the judge. And I think the same thing will happen with policy decisions. I think in politics
• 35:35
  right now, you have, you know, politicians making laws and I think what's going to end up happening
• 35:40
  is you'll have AI assisting politicians making laws and then you'll maybe someday have AI
• 35:46
  being the makers of the laws. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. Now, listen up,
• 35:50
  this matters for your business and today's digital landscape security isn't optional. It's
• 35:54
  essential. Without it, deal stall sale cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult. Now,
• 36:01
  why? Because investors, customers and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security
• 36:06
  practices before they commit. If you can't prove trust, you lose opportunities. So whether you're a
• 36:13
  startup founder, trying to land that first big client or an established company scaling your
• 36:18
  security program, Vanta helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by automating
• 36:25
  compliance across 35 frameworks like SOC 2 ISO 27001 and HIPAA. The exact certifications your
• 36:33
  prospects are demanding. Here's why you need to pay attention. Vanta gives you back precious time
• 36:38
  that you're currently wasting on compliance. Their platform automates up to 90% of the tedious
• 36:43
  compliance work. It helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires at the 5 times
• 36:48
  faster and it connects you with experts to get your security program running immediately.
• 36:53
  The results speak for themselves. A recent IDC report found that Vanta customers achieve over
• 36:58
  $535,000 per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months. So you're
• 37:05
  going to join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Korra and Factory who use Vanta to
• 37:11
  manage risk and prove security in real time. And don't miss this. For a limited time only,
• 37:17
  my listeners can get a thousand dollars off Vanta. That's real money back in your pocket.
• 37:21
  Visit vanta.com slash Scott right now before the software expires. That is vant.com slash Scott.
• 37:30
  Prolon is a success story partner. Now long weeks and busy weekends can leave everybody feeling
• 37:36
  depressed and tired. We work nonstop. And that's why I love Prolon's five day fasting mimicking
• 37:43
  diet. I absolutely love this company. Let me explain how it works. Basically they have a fasting
• 37:49
  mimicking diet that rejuvenates you from the inside out. It'll deliver plant-based soups,
• 37:54
  snacks and drinks to keep your body in a fasting state while giving you the nutrition you need.
• 37:59
  And when your body's in a fasting state, this triggers cellular renewal and it actually works.
• 38:04
  This is why I've loved intermittent fasting for so many years. This is the magic of Prolon.
• 38:08
  And the exciting news is they just launched their next gen five day program. It has all the benefits
• 38:14
  they had before, but now they have 100% organic ingredients in all their foods, better taste and
• 38:20
  ready to eat meals to make the whole process easier. I tried the original Prolon program. I feel
• 38:25
  incredible whenever I do it. I personally can't wait to try this new and improved version. And if
• 38:31
  you've never tried them before, you're in for a treat because the old one was great. I can't even
• 38:35
  imagine how good this new Prolon five day program is going to be. And for a limited time,
• 38:39
  Prolon is offering success story listeners. You guys, 15% off site wide, plus a $40 bonus gift
• 38:45
  when you subscribe to their five day programs. Just go to prolonlife.com slash clary to get your
• 38:52
  15% discount and your bonus gift. Prolonlife.com slash clary. What do you think if somebody is
• 38:59
  looking to sort of upskill themselves? What's the, you mentioned logic before, but how do you
• 39:05
  actually develop logic or what are some other important skills that somebody who is concerned about
• 39:09
  their job should start to master right now? I think, I think the most important thing is get in
• 39:15
  the habit of spending a lot more of your day learning. Because most of us spend, you know, an hour
• 39:24
  to a day just surfing social media. That's not the best use of time. The best use of time is
• 39:31
  having a plan. Okay, for this next month, I want to learn about, you know, let's say coding on
• 39:37
  AI or I want to learn about, you know, chemistry or DNA or whatever it is. And I'm going to, here's
• 39:43
  my plan and I'm going to, I'm going to focus on that. So many people have a hard time with focus.
• 39:48
  And if you just put a plan, if you just have a plan and focus, you're going to be so far ahead of
• 39:53
  most of the people. And I don't know if there's, remember there was that, that old joke about,
• 39:58
  you know, you don't have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than the people
• 40:04
  that can. They got me to run the bear. Yeah, exactly. I think that's going to be kind of like that.
• 40:09
  Just don't be, don't be the one that's lagging behind. As long as you're ahead of everybody else,
• 40:14
  I think you'll do fine for a quite a long time. You witnessed multiple sort of tech revolutions
• 40:20
  firsthand. What makes AI different than some other transformative tech that you've worked with
• 40:26
  or you've seen? Well, yeah, there's three big notable ones that I can think of. So, you know,
• 40:32
  first there was internet, right? Because I was using internet, sorry, I was using computers to
• 40:37
  develop software when I was eight before there was ever internet. And I was like, wow, email,
• 40:41
  this is crazy. I can send a message and they can receive it. And it did change things a lot.
• 40:45
  I was working in a company at the time and we got everybody from using drafting like on paper
• 40:52
  until like computers and it made probably a five or 10% increase in the amount of bids it could
• 40:57
  put out in the day. And then mobile came along. And that's when I jumped into creating software
• 41:04
  for Blackberry, because I thought, wow, you know, all of a sudden people have a mobile device in
• 41:08
  their hand. We could disseminate content to these dispersed work teams and train them quickly.
• 41:15
  That was maybe, you know, a five or 10% improvement on people's productivity. And then, you know,
• 41:20
  Cloud had a small impact on productivity, but I think AI is dramatic. You know, you're seeing
• 41:26
  people coming in and they're saying we're laying off 20, 25% of our people now. Imagine what happens
• 41:32
  three years from now. So I think it's, it's, um, people should act right now with urgency.
• 41:39
  Not to stop AI from happening. That's impossible. They should try to act with urgency on learning
• 41:46
  and building. What's it? What's an aspect? It is actually very interesting. So yes,
• 41:52
  there is a huge adoption curve. I was just listening to a podcast, um, where open AI published
• 41:58
  that they're getting. Uh, I think, I think it was three billion searches a month on open AI.
• 42:06
  And interestingly enough, though, which seems like a lot. Yeah.
• 42:12
  Then Google released and they have not released this in a very long time. I think since 2016 or
• 42:17
  something like that, how many searches they're getting, which was, oh my god, I have to find
• 42:25
  the numbers. It was in the, it was in like, it was like 13 billion a day or something like,
• 42:31
  it was in the trillions, uh, per, per, total searches in whatever, 20, 25. And they only released
• 42:38
  that number after open AI. We said number basically everything's okay. And they're like saying,
• 42:44
  like, no, no, listen, like we're still, we still, we still run the show over here. Um,
• 42:48
  I'll have to make sure that those numbers are correct. But that was a general takeaway. It's like,
• 42:52
  so yes, there is massive adoption. I'd love to see what the curve looks like, though. I know.
• 42:57
  Because I bet, I mean, I just know from my own use, um, that I do use Google.
• 43:05
  Probably as often as I use chat, but my results are dramatically better on chat,
• 43:11
  you, and, and now I have to scroll away down. I just do a simple search today. I searched for
• 43:18
  Office 365 admin because I was like working on something. And, and it was like the six through
• 43:25
  seven results down the page and the rest was all ads or people gaming the system. And if I
• 43:29
  ask chat, you be T, it's like, you know, I had a couple of conversations. So I just looked it up. It's
• 43:35
  the AI snippet. I don't know if this is accurate, but say I mentioned 13 billion per day,
• 43:40
  the AI snippet on Google said 8.5 billion per day around two trillion searches. The podcast,
• 43:44
  I listened to, I think it's at three trillion searches annually, which obviously open AI is not
• 43:50
  even close to this number. It's open AI is saying three billion per month, whereas Google is saying
• 43:55
  between eight to 13 billion per day. So massive difference. But you're right. I think that there
• 44:02
  is going to be from a business perspective, there's going to be this whole game of trying to figure
• 44:08
  out how to not only rank on Google and be reference in that Google AI snippet, but also find a way
• 44:17
  to get your company as an answer on chat GPT. And that's going to be the new SEO. And I don't think
• 44:25
  anybody's figured that out yet, because I've interviewed SEO agency owners that, you know, doing
• 44:30
  between $7,000 to $100 million in revenue. So obviously they're quite good at what they do.
• 44:34
  And they're just now trying to figure out, okay, how do we, how do we become the answer? When
• 44:38
  chat, when you ask chat GPT, how do we become the answer? How does so and so's pizza shop become
• 44:43
  the answer when you ask, okay, where do I, where do I go for pizza in New York? And there's going to be
• 44:48
  like 10 restaurants there. How do I become one of those? That's a whole other game that now people
• 44:51
  have to learn how to play from a business in SEO and marketing perspective. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm
• 44:56
  not sure it's gameable. You know, it's, if it's, I don't know, it might be slightly
• 45:01
  influential is the way that it feels. I think that even SEO in general, I think is less gameable.
• 45:07
  Like Google's gotten very good at. I agree. Yeah. But you know, just to your point about the
• 45:12
  difference in traffic, do you remember Google saying back in maybe the early 2000s when they were,
• 45:18
  they were going, they were saying that they put a lot of effort on taking the amount of time
• 45:23
  down that it took for to get your search results. Yeah. So it used to take maybe a second and then
• 45:27
  they got to tend to like point one seconds or something. And they said that every point one second
• 45:33
  that they reduced had something like a 10x difference in the amount of traffic that they would. Yeah.
• 45:38
  Yeah. Because people hate waiting for answers. So like, you look right now, you go on to chat
• 45:42
  with you and you ask something. It might take like 10 seconds. Right. That's not going to be forever.
• 45:47
  No, it's, that's hard. That's hardware and power right now. You know, we can produce enough
• 45:54
  chips to keep up as a as a nation or as a world. And we can produce enough power. And both of those
• 46:00
  problems are going to be solved. There's more chips being created all the time. And now the whole
• 46:04
  world is moving to micro nuclear sites and all this kind of stuff. So power generation is
• 46:09
  that problem is going to go away. And then that means that because like right now when I use chat
• 46:14
  GPT or or or or perplexity or cloud, I mean actually chat GPT and perplexity are the two like
• 46:21
  ones that could do deep research. It does take a little bit of time. Like the deep research component
• 46:26
  takes, I think whatever 5, 10, 15, sometimes a little bit longer minutes. But then it's very
• 46:32
  comprehensive. But I've also found that it's not perfect either. I mean, when I ask you to do
• 46:38
  deep research on a person, if I'm prepping for a podcast, sometimes it'll find information on the
• 46:42
  wrong person, same name, stuff like that. Like sometimes I'll ask you to read through documents.
• 46:47
  And I'll have to ask it like four or five times to confirm the information that it read in a
• 46:52
  document that I uploaded. So there's like a lot of it's good. But like all things, it is still a
• 46:59
  tool at this point. It is still very much a tool. And then you look at like
• 47:04
  O3 that just dropped last week. And even without asking it to do deep research, it kind of does
• 47:11
  deep research. So your answer sometimes come back in 45 seconds to a minute. And it's it's went
• 47:17
  and searched a whole bunch of sources just like deep research did. So we are really just
• 47:24
  that those times are going to drop dramatically based on the processing power and the processing
• 47:30
  power is limited really by chips and power. When you are now an AI entrepreneur, how do you build
• 47:38
  a company when the technology is changing so quickly? Because the way that I look at what you're
• 47:44
  building, it's like if the app store like legal guidelines changed every 24 hours. And that's
• 47:52
  what you have to deal with as an entrepreneur. It seems like yes, there's an advantage, but
• 47:56
  you're constantly having to innovate because you're building you're building on top of
• 48:01
  existing, right? Yeah, whole society. Yeah, you know, because like I remember last year,
• 48:07
  we got surprised with there were going to be a bunch of new Canadian regulations where
• 48:11
  anything that was AI assisted, you were supposed to put a big stamp on it saying this is AI
• 48:17
  which is kind of weird because if I had my actual EA draft something for me or notice something
• 48:23
  for me, I don't have to put a big stamp on it saying like of course not by assistant helping with
• 48:27
  this. It's kind of but anyway, yeah, you wake up to these things and you're like, whoa, there's
• 48:31
  a new law. And I got to deal with that. So I think the same thing will help us all succeed as
• 48:36
  entrepreneurs now that helped us stand out 20 years ago as entrepreneurs is speed agility.
• 48:44
  If you're working in eight hour day, you're absolutely not going to make it, you know, you have to
• 48:50
  go in these bursts of speed when the opportunity is there and it's unpleasant, but it's the
• 48:56
  unpleasantness that causes all the competition to fold. So if you can just handle it better than
• 49:03
  other people and keep that pace, you'll have these crazy laws that will pop up and then get
• 49:09
  knocked down and you just have to like thobbing weave. So, you know, you mentioned before it's never
• 49:15
  it never gets easy building company never gets easy. So now you're building another company.
• 49:23
  What what what is the I mean, it sounds like you're still putting, you know, 80 plus hours of
• 49:29
  work into this per week like minimum, like you never really this is like there's never an easy
• 49:35
  way to be a founder. Doesn't matter how many times you do it. No, this was Easter weekend and we
• 49:40
  worked all weekend. I did. Yeah, I feel that. And I think that that's what allows you to be
• 49:45
  successful. I think that if you look at like some of the most important sort of entrepreneur lessons,
• 49:51
  it's it's going to be a ridiculous amount of work for a period of your life and that's what you
• 49:56
  have to do. Yeah, just, but it's just for the period of time that you're building that company
• 50:01
  through the hard period. There will be a time like when when we got into our 13th, 14th year of
• 50:07
  IntraHub, things got remarkably easier. We had a brand. We had all kinds of happy customers.
• 50:14
  In those early years, there's no shortcut. Like if you can't put that amount of work in,
• 50:19
  you're better off not even trying and go work at somebody else's company. That's what I think
• 50:23
  that like entrepreneurship is not for everyone. No. And I don't like I don't like that people sell
• 50:28
  this, you know, this laptop lifestyle entrepreneur bullshit, which is not accurate at all. It's
• 50:34
  like it's going to be a lot of hard work. There's nothing passive about it. There's, there's
• 50:38
  no work like balance. There's no work like balance. I've heard this before where people say,
• 50:44
  how do I do it? I go, I'm on Reddit on the forum. It's like for for a wide combinator and you
• 50:50
  start ups. Are you ever on on fat fire? No, it's basically people that want to retire early
• 51:00
  and never work again. Yeah. Yeah. It's how to structure your life or how to build a company or
• 51:04
  how to get a job that allows you to retire at a ridiculously like young age. That's the
• 51:10
  that's the whole premise. But the point is, yeah, it's always going to be a lot of work. Yeah,
• 51:15
  I think the people that if you go into it, expecting to have work life balance, it's probably not
• 51:23
  for you. I mean, it isn't for you. And I think people don't like that message because it sounds like
• 51:29
  people are bragging or whatever, but like there's a reason that almost every entrepreneur you've
• 51:34
  ever seen in any podcast ever says this. It's because it just happens to be the reality of it. It's
• 51:41
  it's a lot of hard work. I happen to have personality and I think a lot of people do where it's
• 51:47
  fun. Like I find it's super exciting to wake up and work on it. You could try it and if you
• 51:55
  if you find you might find it fun too. And and there's going to be nights where you can't sleep
• 51:59
  because you you're like, how do I make payroll? That does happen. It's happened to me a bunch of times
• 52:04
  or you you thought you had a customer and then you lose them that happens all the time. It's
• 52:11
  but but as long as you can find the the fun day the updates are so up. Yeah, I know that it's worth
• 52:19
  it. That's how that's what gets you through. What's I mean, if you think about all the lessons that
• 52:24
  have been sort of instrumental in helping you build all of your companies, what's sort of the most
• 52:29
  important lesson that you've learned that will help you start something new? Yeah, one of the
• 52:34
  things I found over and over again is that when I hit a wall, usually like several years in,
• 52:42
  like at IntraHive, we had basically zero revenue for four years. And probably around three or three,
• 52:47
  I think most people would have folded up and said, forget it. But I think the a lot of the successful
• 52:53
  startups make it about one year after most people would have folded. And I've seen that over
• 52:59
  and over and over again when I when I listen to people's stories. So I think that's the one of
• 53:04
  the most important skills you can learn is resilience. And it's really difficult to discern. Am I being
• 53:11
  resilient? Or am I being irrationally stubborn? And I've seen that one too where where somebody came
• 53:19
  to me and they said they had no offense. If you're listening, they had a startup idea where they
• 53:25
  were going to do art for students. And it was all around art for students. And I was thinking
• 53:31
  market size is terrible. These are people that are not going to have a lot of money to spend.
• 53:35
  You're going to have a really hard time. And they worked at that for a lot of years. And I was thinking
• 53:40
  that's the corollary, right? You have to make sure that everything else is in your favor that
• 53:45
  competition is fine, market size is fine. There is a real need for what you're doing. It's just
• 53:50
  taking a long time. And that happens. When you're first picking out like a niche or a vertical,
• 53:57
  I mean, now you've again sort of picked out a niche five times in a row that has worked out for
• 54:03
  you. But that first time for that first time founder, how do you decide what to go into? Because
• 54:11
  I don't like the advice. Follow your passion. I feel like there's a lot there's a much better
• 54:15
  advice. And I know for a fact, I don't even I don't even have to have had no new way back in the
• 54:21
  90s when you first started enterprises. No one's passion. I was not passionate about enterprise
• 54:28
  learning management. No, I know what I did. So how do you pick a vertical when some of these
• 54:33
  all the options in the world? What's the advice that you give them? I think you have to do a
• 54:38
  fair amount of reading about that. There's lots of great stuff out there by Steve Blank, by Eric
• 54:44
  Reese, by Peter Teal and a lot of the great podcasts out there. But the most important things are
• 54:50
  the things that investors rate you on. So investors always rate you on. If you look up how to build
• 54:55
  a great investor deck, they always talk about talking about your market sizing, talk about your
• 55:00
  competition, talk about your competitive mode, talk about the, you know, the pain of the problem
• 55:06
  you're solving like Uber, right? That people calves were horrendous back then. And you know,
• 55:13
  if you go down that checklist and make sure that you have a big enough problem with a big enough
• 55:18
  market, with a high enough price point, a low enough competition, and a big enough mode, those are
• 55:24
  the ones I can think of off the top of my head, then you'll probably be okay. How do you think about
• 55:28
  timing when starting a company, both in terms of market readiness, but also sort of personal readiness?
• 55:34
  Yeah, good point. So I think that most ideas that you come up with, if they could have been done
• 55:40
  three or four years ago, you should stay away from it. Really? You don't believe in being like the
• 55:45
  Facebook to, you know, the Myspace? That's a good point too, because I mean, look at Google's
• 55:51
  another good example of that. They were a couple of years after. If you're going to do that, you have
• 55:54
  to be a much better version. Yeah. You can't just be a copy, because I see enough a lot of people do
• 56:00
  copies, and that's, that doesn't work. What about personal readiness? How do you know if you are
• 56:04
  personally ready to start a company? I think you have, if you have any doubt, then you probably,
• 56:11
  it's probably not right, because anytime I've ever dove in, I was, I never second-guested,
• 56:17
  I was a hundred percent. I was like, oh my god, this is a huge opportunity. I can't believe
• 56:21
  nobody thought of those. Turns out a couple of times people had thought of it. I just didn't know
• 56:25
  they were building at the same time as me. Yeah, yeah. But every time you felt that much like
• 56:30
  excitement about what you were building. Yeah. I used to keep a little notepad before
• 56:35
  notepads were at our phone, but I used to keep a little notepad. And I'd wake up in the morning
• 56:38
  sometimes, I think, oh, that was a good idea. So I'd write it down. I remember one of them,
• 56:42
  this was around 2000 or so, was like, students being able to share homework and notes and
• 56:48
  stuff like that among each other, like a community for students, right? And then, and like, I'm
• 56:54
  remember one time in around 2008, 2009, I was like, what if enterprises that sales teams could
• 57:00
  like top to each other and everything. And I was like, create this thing salesmason. I was like,
• 57:04
  this is, and then chatter came out. So yeah, I would keep these big lists of things. And then,
• 57:11
  I kind of like pick a way out a little bit. And then if I got enough conviction on it, I'd be like,
• 57:15
  okay, go. And you just lean into it and go. And did you, I mean, obviously that first little bit
• 57:22
  of motivation is fun, but it doesn't last forever. Like, like, did you carry that amount of energy
• 57:28
  through the entire building process? Or was there something else that you had to figure out
• 57:33
  that allowed you to keep going when things didn't go so well? Yeah, I think one of the things that
• 57:38
  I've, that it's always kept me going. Well, especially in the early years, it was sort of proving
• 57:46
  people wrong. I had a bit of a bunch of, yeah, I was younger. Yeah, because I came from like,
• 57:51
  like a poor, you know, upbringing. I didn't have much money. I had, like, I didn't have the
• 57:58
  clothes that all my friends had in school. And it was embarrassing. And I had to try to figure out
• 58:02
  how to earn my own money and all this kind of stuff. So later on, when people would, when people
• 58:07
  would tell me this startup isn't going to make it, it's a terrible idea or whatever. That would
• 58:11
  often drive me more. Like, I'd like that because I could like, yeah, like, you know, now and later in
• 58:18
  life, I've chilled out a lot. It's a lot less about that. Now it's, it's more like, I love, like,
• 58:24
  I just love AI. I love what we're doing. But I think you do have to have, and I've seen so many
• 58:30
  entrepreneurs that have something like that, they have either an extreme drive for money or they
• 58:35
  have an extreme chip on their shoulder or, or something. When, when you're building stuff doesn't
• 58:42
  go right, you know, you're not progressing, you can't make payroll, customer cancels, you get
• 58:50
  sued, somebody quits, you know, somebody's very important to company, they leave. How do you keep
• 58:56
  that energy? Because I find that very hard. Well, for even if I love what I'm doing, it's like,
• 59:02
  there's some days I'm like, oh my god, like the world, it seems like the world is ending.
• 59:07
  Yeah. I don't, I'm not good at that. I think it's a really hard thing to do. Yeah. I mean, I think
• 59:13
  I have a bit of fear of failure. I have an irrational belief that I will make it somehow every
• 59:24
  time. And, and, and like to the point where I've written checks like when investors wouldn't,
• 59:32
  I've done down rounds before and then still came back and then raised it. I remember I did a
• 59:40
  down round. I won't name the company because I think I'm not allowed to, but I did a down round
• 59:45
  at 80 cents. Yeah. And people say that's the kiss of death. And then I just kept on going, going
• 59:50
  for a few more years and we raised it raised at $5 and something to share next time. So, you know,
• 59:56
  sometimes you have to do things that people say, oh, if you do that, you're done. And if you just
• 1:00:01
  keep pushing on as long as you're making progress and you're still bringing the energy and you're
• 1:00:06
  still keeping the great people, you'll be fine usually. I just want to take a second and thank
• 1:00:11
  Cornbread Ham for supporting today's episode. Now, Cornbread Ham CBD gummies have been this really
• 1:00:16
  nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine after
• 1:00:22
  those extra busy weeks, but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off
• 1:00:27
  and just find your balance really just shut off from work. Now, what makes them special is how
• 1:00:32
  Cornbread Ham crafts them. They only use a flower of USDA organic hand plants. That's the best part
• 1:00:38
  for the purest, most potent experience. No fillers, no artificial fluff, just clean, full spectrum
• 1:00:45
  goodness and delicious watermelon berry and peach flavor. I keep them in my nightstand for those
• 1:00:50
  moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing. And I love how transparent they are too.
• 1:00:54
  Every batch is third party lab tested so you know exactly what you're getting and they put
• 1:00:58
  together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners. All listeners can save 30% off
• 1:01:04
  their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com slash success and use code success at checkout.
• 1:01:11
  That's cornbreadhemp.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing
• 1:01:17
  dummies. Fresh books is supporting today's episode and if you've ever wondered how successful
• 1:01:21
  entrepreneurs stay on top of their finances while growing their business, the answer is fresh books.
• 1:01:25
  The numbers don't lie. Over 30 million people have chosen fresh books processing more than 60
• 1:01:29
  billion in invoices and saving an incredible 192 hours every year on accounting tasks. Think
• 1:01:34
  about it. That's nearly eight full days. You can get back to focus on what really matters growing
• 1:01:39
  your business. Fresh books is more than just accounting software. It's your all-in-one financial
• 1:01:43
  command center, create professional estimates, track time, automatically build clients and capture
• 1:01:48
  expenses on the go plus it integrates seamlessly with over 100 business tools. You already use
• 1:01:53
  all backed by award-winning customer service. If you're ready to stop drowning in receipts and
• 1:01:57
  you're ready to stop chasing down payments, here's what I want you to do. Head over to freshbooks.com
• 1:02:02
  to start your 30 day free trial. No credit card required and for all you success story listeners
• 1:02:06
  out there, I've got something special. Get an exclusive 60% off for six months when you visit
• 1:02:11
  freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer. Transform your business with fresh books today. That's
• 1:02:17
  freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer for 60% off. You have an incredible amount of self-belief
• 1:02:25
  which I think is probably one of the most important things. Yeah, I don't know how that happened
• 1:02:30
  exactly, but I do have a lot of self-belief. I call it irrational self-belief because I always
• 1:02:36
  just go in. I read these stats that start off 7-90% failure rate and I just think, yeah,
• 1:02:42
  that won't be me. But it probably should be. Well, I think you mentioned this and I actually love
• 1:02:50
  this idea. It's like the success that you're looking for usually happens one year after you quit.
• 1:02:56
  Yeah. That's because you've been in it for so long and you've learned so much and the energy
• 1:03:03
  and the effort that you're putting into your company is not matching how the company is doing.
• 1:03:09
  So you're like, I'm so knowledgeable. I'm so experienced. We're doing everything right. Why is a
• 1:03:13
  company not growing? And that's depressing for a lot of people because you're most people are,
• 1:03:19
  you know, when they're putting in the effort and not getting the output that they think they should
• 1:03:23
  be getting creates this is creates this friction. And that's probably why they quit because
• 1:03:29
  yeah. But know that if they kept going because they were they were the experts and they are doing
• 1:03:36
  all of the good work that has to be done if they kept going eventually the output will match the
• 1:03:41
  input. Yeah, you have to you have to be very clear on what your goals are like, you know,
• 1:03:48
  what are the steps to getting the first 10 customers? What? And so if the product isn't resonating,
• 1:03:55
  you you can't just be doing the same thing. That's the definition of insanity. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:04:00
  You have to be tweaking things and like, okay, what what do I how do I make sure that this resonates?
• 1:04:05
  Okay, let's talk to a lot of customers. Let's hone in. Let's make a plan. Let's but you have to
• 1:04:09
  you know, as long as you're continuing to get closer and closer and closer by definition,
• 1:04:14
  it's going to eventually it might not be the same product you started with, but it'll get there
• 1:04:18
  eventually, but it will get there eventually as long as you can finance your way through it.
• 1:04:22
  That's a thing, right? It's the ability to sort of keep the lights on and keep going and moving
• 1:04:26
  in the right direction. Yeah, but you know, here's a good example in 2020. We had very little money
• 1:04:32
  in the bank. The company was already valued, I don't know, a couple hundred million dollars
• 1:04:38
  and and then COVID hit. And our sales went from several sales a week to zero.
• 1:04:47
  And it went this it went zero for maybe six to eight weeks. And the investors, the board,
• 1:04:53
  they were telling me they were like saying they wanted me to lay off 40% of the stuff.
• 1:04:59
  And and we had I don't know, maybe we had four months of payroll left.
• 1:05:05
  Really? Yeah, and and it was a massive team. We probably had two, three hundred people,
• 1:05:10
  something like that. And I remember just thinking it's going to work itself out. Like we're either
• 1:05:18
  going to we'll get the payroll lowered without reducing the headcount. So I just explained the plan.
• 1:05:25
  I was like I worked out the numbers and I said, okay, I'm going to I think I cut my pay like 50%.
• 1:05:30
  I said, I'll I'll do a 50% pay cut. The next level down will do like maybe a 30% pay cut, 20%
• 1:05:38
  pay cut and so on. The lowest paid people we wanted to try to work out that they got no pay cut.
• 1:05:44
  And and then we did do like a 5% layoff. And and then we just said, let's let's do this as long
• 1:05:50
  as we we do it. The approval rating on glass door in that went to the highest approval rating ever,
• 1:05:58
  even though we had given everybody a pay cut because everybody was just on board with the plan.
• 1:06:03
  And they knew that we were all like everybody was convicted. They're all like we are going to
• 1:06:08
  make through this. And then one more quarter or two more quarter, something like that boom,
• 1:06:13
  we were back. You know, how do you how do you as the founder of the CEO? I mean, how do you get people
• 1:06:21
  on board with that much conviction? Because it's always important to it's always important to get
• 1:06:27
  people to believe in the vision and believe in what you're building. But I think that most of the
• 1:06:32
  lessons about, you know, hiring the right people and getting them to see your vision, those lessons
• 1:06:37
  come from a place of if things are working and shit isn't hitting the fan. Right? Like that's
• 1:06:43
  usually that's very easy. Like you just have to get people on board with his rocket ship.
• 1:06:49
  When things aren't going well, what's what's the what's the strategy to make sure that they they
• 1:06:54
  stick with you? I think people can feel truth. You know, people can suss out if you're kind of like
• 1:07:04
  not if you're trying to tell them a story. The the thing I've had is I really truly have believed
• 1:07:13
  in those points. I was like, we absolutely will. So I was telling the board. I was like,
• 1:07:18
  like, here's here's what I think is going to happen. And here's why what we have is amazing. And
• 1:07:24
  here's the downside. If we don't do this, then we're about to lose something that's going to be a
• 1:07:29
  new category. And it wasn't it did become a new category at ERM. So I think like I mentioned earlier,
• 1:07:37
  I think about how persuasion is probably one of the most important characteristics persuasion
• 1:07:42
  and determination are probably some of the most important characteristics of being successful as a
• 1:07:47
  founder. And I think that's because it's really, really hard. And people can read the energy from
• 1:07:56
  you and the belief from you. And if if the customers don't think you believe in your product,
• 1:08:01
  they won't buy it. If the investors don't think you believe they won't invest and the employees
• 1:08:05
  won't stay. Was that the biggest gamble that you've ever taken? Probably, yeah, because I mean,
• 1:08:11
  that was a if I would have taken the 40% cut, we would have we would have been to break even. And
• 1:08:17
  then we would have saved the company. And it was a lot of my net worth at the time. Yeah. But
• 1:08:23
  I was I thought we're going to lose the category leader status. And so and there's going to be a
• 1:08:29
  residual. There's going to be sort of this, you know, butterfly effect of lack of trust. Maybe
• 1:08:36
  hard to attract good talent in the future. Nobody wants to work there because you laid off 40%
• 1:08:42
  so how do you know you're not going to do it again? You know, all the signals would have been negative.
• 1:08:46
  Yeah, we were too big for that, I felt like. And and so I wanted to and especially that early in
• 1:08:52
  six weeks into the pandemic, I was like, we don't really know anything yet. We don't even know what's
• 1:08:57
  causing this. We don't know how long it's going to last. We don't know how it's going to affect
• 1:09:01
  business in six weeks more. We'll probably know a lot more. If you think about what motivates you,
• 1:09:07
  forget financial success. You mentioned like you have a chip on your shoulder. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:09:12
  had a had a chip on your shoulder. What's the most important motivator for founders? Because I
• 1:09:18
  think that I think that financial success, yeah, that's what everyone wants to make some money. But
• 1:09:24
  I think very quickly, you're going to realize when you're building a company that there's easier
• 1:09:28
  ways to make money than building a company. I mean, like yeah, yeah, going to finance,
• 1:09:33
  go work for fang. Yeah, like there's a million ways to make money. So what's the what's the most
• 1:09:39
  important motivator for a founder? What should they look for? And if they find it, that's a good
• 1:09:45
  indication that they should go build a company around that thing. I mean, if if I were an investor
• 1:09:51
  looking at trying to predict successful founders, which I have invested in a handful of startups and
• 1:09:57
  I invested in six and two of them got quite big. So I think the thing that I look for, I think one
• 1:10:04
  of the biggest predictors of failure is somebody who just really wants to be a founder.
• 1:10:09
  I think that's like you can kind of read it off them. They're just like, oh, this is cool.
• 1:10:13
  Like you want the late you want to update the LinkedIn bio? Yeah, yeah. I want to say CEO in there.
• 1:10:19
  And actually, they'll put CEO instead of putting founder, they'll put CEO. They're at every tech
• 1:10:23
  event, all that stuff. I think that's like that's the that's a bad predictor. I think the the best
• 1:10:30
  ones and it always it hasn't always been me like in the learning management system one. It was
• 1:10:35
  but but I think the best ones are when you can tell that they they really love what what they're
• 1:10:43
  building. Like the I met a guy the other day who was building a thing for second opinions for cancer.
• 1:10:50
  I was like, what does that mean? So when you go to a doctor and you get diagnosed with cancer,
• 1:10:55
  yeah, the doctor usually never he probably dissuade you from going to get a second opinion because
• 1:11:02
  this the second doctor is most likely going to tell you that you you did the first guy screwed up,
• 1:11:10
  you know, really? Because they want your business. Oh, cancer is a business in the US. That seems
• 1:11:15
  like that's a really toxic. That's very toxic. And so he he this guy was just very passionate about
• 1:11:21
  making sure that patients don't get screwed over and that they have a much cheaper and more accurate
• 1:11:26
  alternative. And that the first doctor that like he's just you can just tell the way he spoke about it
• 1:11:32
  that he really believes in it and he believes in it for the right reasons. And his work ethic is
• 1:11:37
  crazy. Like I was hearing from him in the weekends and evenings and all this and I was like,
• 1:11:41
  I was like, this guy's going to make it. So I'm probably going to invest in a startup. And
• 1:11:46
  and and I've seen that pattern before being being being absolutely passionate about the problem.
• 1:11:53
  Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that that's a smart way to gauge whether or not a founder is
• 1:11:58
  going to be successful. I think it's also, you know, having a little bit of self awareness
• 1:12:02
  about speaking to founders, having a little bit of self awareness is about why you're doing this
• 1:12:07
  and are you actually passionate about the problem? Or is it a money thing? Is it a status thing?
• 1:12:12
  Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and also, you know, we talked about how it leads to, you know,
• 1:12:18
  two of the most important things are determination and belief. Well, that that kind of gives you both.
• 1:12:25
  Do you feel like people have to put life or dreams on hold to build a company or can
• 1:12:31
  is there balance? Is there something that is there some version of entrepreneurship where balance
• 1:12:38
  is actually, you know, allowed? Not that I'm aware of like, you know, my my family have been wanting
• 1:12:46
  to go to Japan for the last like few years. And and I just for for me, I keep saying like like,
• 1:12:54
  I would love to. I love snowboarding. I love. I love everything about Japan. I would love to
• 1:13:03
  go, but the amount of time zones away it is. I can't do a 10 day trip to Japan, even if it's a working
• 1:13:10
  trip. Yeah, I know. So I just don't think it's possible in the early years. Once you had once you
• 1:13:15
  get past like the B round, you've built a machine. Yeah. Then I think it's okay. When you have
• 1:13:20
  those layers of management, the people that can help you and when you can actually walk away.
• 1:13:25
  Yeah, because by the time you have to the B round, you know what your sales efficiency metrics are
• 1:13:29
  and you've worked them down as low as possible and you've got like fluidity in the in the sales
• 1:13:33
  machine and the marketing machine, it's a lot easier at that point. What's a failure that you've
• 1:13:38
  experienced that taught you a very meaningful lesson, maybe something that didn't work out that
• 1:13:44
  you haven't shared before? In high school. So so I was this is pretty crazy. I was like, I was
• 1:13:56
  always like a, you know, really good student. I was competing. I came second in the country
• 1:14:01
  in math and all this. I was like a really good student, but I was like, I don't want to go to class.
• 1:14:10
  So like, I think I missed something like 40 days of school. That's a lot. Yeah, it's all great.
• 1:14:16
  It's all great. And because they had a rule where you could just write the final exam and if you're
• 1:14:22
  and they would take the higher of your exam or your marks all through the year. So I was like,
• 1:14:28
  yeah, who cares? I'll just write the exam. They the school board met and put in a special rule for,
• 1:14:34
  I think it was because of me saying if you missed more than X number of days, you weren't allowed
• 1:14:39
  to graduate. And so I didn't graduate. I mean, eventually, eventually I did what I ended up
• 1:14:45
  having to do is go back to, I mean, I tried everything like a founder type personality would. I
• 1:14:52
  petitioned the school board and I fought and everything and I lost. And I was so disappointed.
• 1:14:57
  Everybody got to, everybody got to graduate and I didn't. And it was so embarrassing. I was
• 1:15:01
  already pre accepted to college, one of the, the college that I wanted to go to and everything.
• 1:15:05
  I ended up having to frantically do summer school to get all those. Oh my god. And I, and I,
• 1:15:11
  and I did summer school all summer long and then I entered, but that was embarrassing and traumatic.
• 1:15:20
  No, that's that's that's such an entrepreneur mindset trying to game the system, right?
• 1:15:26
  Oh my god, that just skip everything, take the final exam. That those marks will count and then
• 1:15:30
  fine, you'll be fine. Yeah, but that's a thing. This is, and do you think people are born entrepreneurs
• 1:15:38
  do you think they learn it? Because I always find the entrepreneurs, they always think differently.
• 1:15:42
  They always trying to like hack this or like dooster, you know, they try and think outside the box
• 1:15:47
  all the time. It's like their default operating mode is just outside the box. Yeah, I've been,
• 1:15:54
  I've been wondering this a little bit because what, well, the more the way I was thinking about
• 1:16:00
  is is a bit of defiance kind of required. And I think it probably is because most of the people
• 1:16:10
  that I know that have become successful founder is like, look at Travis Kalanick, right? At Uber,
• 1:16:14
  like there, there were laws in place that he should not have been able to build that company.
• 1:16:19
  And he was just like, we're doing it anyway. He would go into a new jurisdiction and find a way
• 1:16:23
  around it and Airbnb the same thing. So I think like, you have to have some, you have to have
• 1:16:30
  a combination, which is a weird combination, but you have to have a combination of defiance and,
• 1:16:35
  you know, sometimes rule breaking, but, but also being organized, an overachiever, have conviction.
• 1:16:43
  Yeah. You know, that's, that doesn't always go together. No, it's a very unique, to very unique
• 1:16:49
  combination. And it often ends up with people sometimes not doing well in school, or they do
• 1:16:56
  in well in school, off to a certain point, then they drop out of college, you know, you get all
• 1:17:00
  these kinds of types, right? If people, you know, if someone's listening to this, I think you've
• 1:17:07
  given a lot of value about what it takes to be a founder and also just giving people like a really
• 1:17:11
  good overview of where we're at with AI right now. But if somebody wants sort of walking your,
• 1:17:17
  you know, in your steps in your path, where do you tell people to go research and just say,
• 1:17:22
  we've spoken a lot about upskilling and staying relevant. So what's your recommendation for somebody
• 1:17:27
  who wants to stay relevant, doesn't want to be watching Netflix every single night, does want to
• 1:17:33
  make sure that they know what's happening in AI, whether or not they want to build a company,
• 1:17:37
  or they just don't want to be, you know, replaced in their job. Where do they go?
• 1:17:42
  I think I would start to put together a plan of how in case of emergency, you could start a business
• 1:17:50
  and probably a technology business. And what are the skill gaps that are that you're missing right
• 1:17:55
  now in order to do that? So what are the business skills I need to know? What are the marketing skills
• 1:17:59
  I need to know? What are the sales skills? The coding skills potentially. And you know, a lot of
• 1:18:07
  stuff can come from just watching podcasts. And then it's going to get into, okay, well,
• 1:18:14
  I've got this far. I've got a base of knowledge. Now I can go research more on AI or I can read a book.
• 1:18:19
  But I think, you know, one of the things I was really happy that I did early in my career is,
• 1:18:25
  I grew up through the technical side. And then one day I just, I was like, I'm hiring these sales
• 1:18:30
  people, but I don't really know what they're doing every day. Like, you know, I'm watching them do
• 1:18:36
  their job, but I've never sat in their shoes. So I had been a two-time CEO and I just joined the
• 1:18:41
  company and took an entry-level sales job. Because I was like, I love this. I want to, I want to
• 1:18:46
  see what this feels like. And you just did it and you'd learn. And yeah, and I, for four months,
• 1:18:51
  it was horrible. I was getting hung up on everything, you know, but then eventually I just, I was like,
• 1:18:56
  oh, now I get it. Now like, you know, and now I probably made you a more effective leader that
• 1:19:03
  allowed you to set up sales teams better, higher sales better for sure for sure. I love this idea.
• 1:19:10
  This is something that I've spoken about quite often. I think that some of my success has just come
• 1:19:15
  from figuring shit out and doing it. And even, you know, there isn't really a sales or marketing
• 1:19:23
  task whether or not it's figuring out what subject lines get the highest open rate or coding up a
• 1:19:30
  website or, you know, figuring out how to identify an ICP and a buyer persona or, I don't know,
• 1:19:38
  figuring out how to run a Facebook ad set and optimize like the ads and the creative to get a
• 1:19:43
  better row as like, there's not much that I haven't done at least once. And that I think has been
• 1:19:49
  a superpower because then it allows you, first of all, in zero to one phase. Before you have
• 1:19:55
  money and before you can delegate, you can get something off the ground, at least to, you know,
• 1:20:00
  a very basic level, but also then it helps you hire because you can tell who's full of shit.
• 1:20:05
  Yeah, yeah. And I think some of the worst failures that I've ever had in hiring have been
• 1:20:11
  hiring a person too soon. So like, for example, I used to always hire a salesperson and it would
• 1:20:20
  take them forever to learn to sell. And then I realized, no, all the best performing enterprise
• 1:20:25
  startups have had a really good founder selling. And they, it took them a long time, but then eventually
• 1:20:33
  they, when the founder can't sell anymore because you're just busting at the seams, then hire a
• 1:20:38
  salesperson and it's going to be way easier for that person to be successful. Yeah, because they know
• 1:20:42
  what they know what process is, you know, good looks like they know everything. All the objections
• 1:20:46
  that are going to happen and all that stuff, right? So I think, I think most of our, our internal
• 1:20:54
  instincts are usually, oh, I don't know marketing. I should hire a marketing person. I don't know
• 1:20:58
  sales. I should hire a salesperson. And that's usually, you're missing such an opportunity. If,
• 1:21:04
  if you, like, look at all the marketing techniques that you've learned and everything, it's,
• 1:21:08
  it's so important to, to rounding us out. And also, nobody's going to be as passionate about
• 1:21:14
  doing a great job out of this. The person whose life is on the life, thousand percent. And,
• 1:21:20
  you know, there could be a chance that you could get a good hire. Or if you screw it up and you
• 1:21:26
  don't know how to do it yourself, you basically, you might not even know, you might not even know,
• 1:21:30
  you, and there's a really good chance if, if you hire too soon and you make the wrong hire,
• 1:21:35
  your company's done. Yeah. Like, or it's going to be very, a very expensive mistake to come back
• 1:21:41
  from. Yeah. For sure. Okay. Where can people connect with you? What's, you know,
• 1:21:47
  what's the best place for them to, and on your writing a book, I think it's like the title
• 1:21:52
  undisclosed at this point. Yeah. But where can people connect with you? Social, LinkedIn,
• 1:21:56
  Instagram, where do you want people to go? Yeah, probably. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn,
• 1:22:02
  an Instagram, but mostly LinkedIn. And try, I try to be on Twitter a little bit, but mostly
• 1:22:07
  Jody Glidden at LinkedIn. Amazing. If you, out of all the things you've learned, I always like
• 1:22:13
  to ask this just to, to bring it home, but you've learned a lot of different ideas, tactics that
• 1:22:21
  have helped you in your life. If you could only pass one of those things on to your kids, one of
• 1:22:25
  the most important ideas, what would that idea be and why? One of the most important things that I've
• 1:22:30
  been trying to pass on to my daughter is to have, like, determination, passion about, about
• 1:22:38
  something, hopefully entrepreneurial. Yeah. Because I think passion will get you through a lot.
• 1:22:44
  It'll get you asking an expert, you know, a lot of what we all learn is conversations like this,
• 1:22:51
  right? Like, you know, we, we talked before the cameras came on and all that we learned a lot
• 1:22:55
  from each other. And I tried to ask people questions all the time, curiosity, passion, conviction,
• 1:23:01
  just care about something. Yeah, exactly. And that's going to put you ahead of 99% of the people.