Stop Teaching Your Team AI. Keep the Top 40%.

So, Neil, we're planning out this founder retreat that we do every year. And I was talking to this group. And in the beginning of the year, we're like, we're gonna go hard on these AI hackathons, these transformation, all these things. Everyone at the end of this, this is September now, we did this retreat in February. We're like, F all that. None of that works. Okay? We're just like, just unreasonably high just talent bar now, and you get everything that you need. And the thing is, one of the guys we're talking to, let's say he has like a 200 engineers, for example, right? Now, if you think about it, how many of the 200 do you think are acceptable from a talent bar standpoint? What percent?

Depends on the company. If it was Anthropic, it would be a very high percentage.

But I don't know. What kind of company? Most of us are in software, right? Software services, whatever. So it's like—

How old is the company?

No, you're able to pinpoint. I'm not gonna say anything.

You can gimme a random industry if it's in—

Let's say this company's been around for 15 years.

15 years. That means they probably don't fire a lot of people. Mm-hmm. A lot of people with them for a long time.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe they're happy with 5, 10%.

Okay. It's actually much higher, about 40%. Okay.

Oh, okay.

So, but, so someone else in the, on, on, on the call was like, well, like Okay, so what are you gonna do with the rest? Well, and then so what happens is, like, I'll give you an example. For us, in our Slack, we have a GitHub leaderboard, okay? It shows how much someone is committing, how much someone is merging, how much someone is reviewing. So these are all GitHub terms, it just shows how much you're pushing to GitHub, right? And so he has it for the engineers, and it's a public leaderboard, okay? And you can see who's shipping a lot, who isn't. And imagine if I'm an engineer that works for you, and I have like 2,000 lines of code in a week and I have no commits and no merges, right? That means I'm not really that active. And so he has a lot of people that are like that. I can see kind of something that are similar with mine. So, and so like, what are you going to do? He's like, you know, there's no, you might have to keep the top 40%, which are the good ones, but you might have to keep like another 20%, but the rest you're going to have to let go, right? And so anyway, that's, it's just interesting how we started the year like, oh, we're super like, you know, we're going to teach everyone this stuff. And Neil's always been a proponent of no, you're just the going to teach them. And I think everyone's waking up to trying to teach someone mindset, train them on mindset is not something you can do.

My big take is whether there's this new technology or not, I've always for many, many years just said hire really amazing people and it solves most problems. I did not come up with this. Venture capitalists from all the major firms tell their entrepreneurs the same thing. That's actually how I learned it. It wasn't through reading an article from a16z or anything like that. When I raised money for Kissmetrics back in the day, Phil Black, who was one of the co-founders of True Ventures, they did, I think, I know they did WordPress. I don't know if he was a personal investor in Uber, and they did quite a few other deals. I don't know if they were in Slack or not, but I know they did like Blue Bottle Coffee. They had some amazing hits. would always tell me, your number one job is just hire really, really good people who can do every little thing you have a problem in exceptionally well, and they know the solution. They don't have to learn it. They've already done it. They've already solved it, and they can teach you things and you aren't the one teaching them new shit. And he's like, if you can hire those kind of people for every role, he's like, your company will succeed. Those people will figure out. That's your only job.

So there's 3 jobs of a CEO and Neil doesn't officially have a title, but the 3 jobs of a CEO is one, talent. Okay, so talent recruiting, however you want to look at it. 2 is finance, keeping money in the bank or even closing big deals. Okay. And the 3rd one is your vision, right? It's really those 3 things.

Yes.

And so when I heard that when I was 25, because I like reading all these books, I'm like, no, that's BS, right? But the older you get, you realize how true these things are and the older we get too. So Neil and I would go to these events, right? And you hear these people say, you know, everything about entrepreneurship is just mindset. And it is, but like what I've said before on this podcast is that you cannot train mindset and it's not on you to have to babysit and train someone on mindset. The people come in built with mindset. And like I've told you, by the way, we hired a 15-year-old, right? I think I told you about that. Yeah. That mindset's already there, right? He had that mindset starting in 2nd grade, for example. Now I'm talking to, I don't care what age you are, there's a guy I'm talking to in his 60s right now. Mindset's there, right? Super on top of his stuff, super into the AI stuff as well. And so You didn't start with this mindset. I didn't start with it, but we built ourselves into it. I'm not saying you and I are amazing. I'm just saying that, again, thinking that you can teach someone mindset is a fool's errand.

But I know you like doing your retreats and I get why, you know, these people are your friends and you guys have fun, but imagine how much time you would save if you didn't do the stuff like, hey, we're going to do all these AI bootcamps and all this stuff and just went to, we're just going to hire. And then you guys went to go have fun during that time.

We do have fun during it though.

No, but you would've just had more fun and less time wastage.

Well, here's the thing. You have problems, right? Real quick, if you want to acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year with the latest strategies and tactics, then check out singlegrain.com. That is my ad agency. Again, www.singlegrain.com. Check it out. And if it seems like a fit, we'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan. In life, you have problems. Don't, don't overthink this one.

Yeah, but Not really. I think people look at life as like you have problems and people like discussing with others to go figure out solutions. Most people's problems aren't really problems and there's already solutions that exist to solve them. That's how I look at life. Like seriously, that's how I really look at life.

Okay. So the reason I asked that question is because we all have problems and we always like to complain about our problems and you like to complain about your problems to people that understand, right?

No, I don't like complaining to friends about problems.

Well, you're different. You're like, you're different. Most normal human beings, Neil's not a normal human being, right? Complain about their problems. Like, Noah, you talk about your problems with somebody else, right? Yeah, Noah's nodding, right?

People like that, but I don't. I've always been more just get to the point and solve it.

Because you're not like an introspective therapy guy. You're like, move forward, which is a good thing, right? Like a lot of people in VC now, like Marc Andreessen is like, you know, move forward. You know, what is it? Retard maxi, right? Just look forward. No introspection, just look forward. And I think you've always been like that, to your credit. But I think most humans, you're not a very emotional human for the most part unless someone screws you over. I've known Naval for like 16 years now, but majority humans, they like to talk about their problems.

Yeah.

But it's fun. By the way, the reason I talk about this retreat too, I'm planning it this year, right? We're going to this, the Four Seasons Tamarindo, which is a new one by the way, 2023. And it's not super packed yet. It's still 30, 40% capacity. See, now I might blow it up. I don't know, right? Probably not. But What are we gonna do there? We're gonna play tennis, we're gonna play pickleball, we're gonna talk about our problems. But it's like, oh, I can make this intro. Like, you never know, by the way, certain business deals that come out of that, it's always from like a conversation that's in passing, right?

Yes. So those are good. One quick thing. You said the R word with maxing. You should probably explain what that is 'cause most people won't and they're gonna take it the wrong way.

Okay, so retard maxing is the act of not thinking about your past, right? It's not looking, thinking about introspection. It's not thinking about, oh, my past or ruminating on the past, right? Correct. It's just constantly thinking about moving forward every single day. And even if you make a mistake, that's okay, move forward. And that is how Neil has operated. I'm not saying, by the way, I'm not calling Neil the R-word, I'm not calling you the R-word. And in fact, I think the Overton window has passed. It's okay to say that more today. But anyway, my point is, is it helpful to introspect? In hindsight, not necessarily, right? I think most of the time it's just helpful to get hit a few times and just move forward.

So like right now, In today's world, I know so many more people that use ChatGPT as a therapist than I would've ever imagined. And people start going to these LLMs and start having conversations like they would with a human. So I understand why humans discuss their problems or issues and try to work on solutions. But what I'm noticing when I talk to the people that are using these LLMs for this, they're not actually doing it to be productive, to figure out a solution. They're doing it to complain and be like, this is my viewpoint. This is what happened. What do you think? They're not actually using it to be more— efficient's the wrong word, but they're not using it to move forward.

They're not advancing work.

Yes. They're not advancing work or even their personal life. They're using it to someone like a real human to complain to. And I'm like, what the heck is this?

So, That, uh, remember I was, I was going through something maybe like 2 years ago, right? It was like, um, and then I kept— I realized when I was in this pattern, I was going into— I was using it as a therapist, right? Well, this happened over here in this relationship, this happened, this and that. And then it just kept putting me in a loop and it kept agreeing with me. And then at the end of it, I'm like, that's what it does. I made no progress.

Correct.

It's perceived progress.

Correct. And I remember when you were going through that, we were all telling you, if you have to at least me and another mutual friend of yours, if you have to put all of this stuff into AI, it's just not meant to be. But on the flip side, with your mom's passing, it's been more than a year now, right? You did ask LLMs questions about the process, how it is like feeling, is this all normal? In that aspect, I thought it was very helpful for you from an outsider's perspective.

You know what was the most helpful? Did I— you saw the poem that Uh-huh. That was the most beautiful thing. That's the best example of using it, right? 'Cause my mom, I had her fill out this book called Mom, Tell Me Your Story, right? At the end of it, she wrote in Chinese and she knows I can't, like my Chinese, like you lose it or use it or lose it, right? So I had lost it already. So she wrote like 3 pages and I'm like, I can't read this, right? So I took screenshots of it and I put it in ChatGPT and it wrote the most beautiful poem ever. But what that reinforces to you is that, you know, human working with it. So my mom's work plus the AI was something that became, Beautiful. And I actually took it out and I framed it 2 times, but it was her wisdom. And it's like, I'm ending my chapter here, but I hope you get married to someone amazing and you want her to believe in you, that type of stuff, right? And so that's how you use AI to actually advance work.

Yes. But I think a lot of people have to go through learnings and waste time and then they go from there. Eric, Learns on his own. He learns pretty quickly. Even if I tell him something, whether it's true or not, whether my way is right or wrong, Eric will do it and he'll learn within like a week or a month on what is more optimal in the future. And then he makes a mental note of it and then going forward, he makes sure he doesn't make the same mistake over and over again. And I think that's the key, whether it's in entrepreneurship or marketing, like when we run campaigns, You can now have AI make the mental notes for you, but you want to keep track of what's working, what's not, so you can fine-tune and get better. But the key here is when Eric used AI or ChatGPT 2 years ago for a personal situation, it starts hallucinating and siding with you. Even in today's world, AI still does hallucinate and it starts feeding you what it thinks you want. Maybe not as much as it did 2 years ago, but I still see it. doing that in many cases, when I look at conversations—

It's not listening, it's a sycophant, which means it agrees with you on everything.

Yeah, there you go. That's actually a better way to put it. But yeah, it agrees with you and then you start drinking your own Kool-Aid.

Yeah. And it's like, oh, it reinforces more and more that you're right when you're actually wrong because you find a way to justify everything. And by the way, when I think about that interaction, in the moment I'm like, yeah, absolutely I'm right. But when I look back, I'm like, that was such a waste of time. And that was like, 20+ hours spent on it. Like that time, like it didn't, the context window would fill very quickly. And so I had to start a new chat and I'd have to make a carryover chat and I just kept repeating over and over and it would actually end up driving you crazy, right?

Yeah.

So anyway, all that to say is like Neil and I, we're not saying we're right on everything. We're just saying you have to test these things. And ideally, if you don't feel like you're actually being productive, you're probably not being productive. Which by the way, you called out ChatGPT, OpenAI. I wanted to call out what I believe is OpenAI's boneheaded GPT-6 Astra launch.

But before you go to that, you want to hear the most entertaining, going back to like the hallucination agreeing with you part, example I have for GEO?

What?

I was talking to a global accounting firm. So they specialize in helping you optimize taxes, you know, for all the countries that you generate revenue from. And one of the guys I was talking with is a partner at this firm. It's a large firm. And he's just like, yeah, I got really pissed off. ChatGPT doesn't recommend our firm. He wasn't the founder. It's big. It's where the partners eventually just own and then you rinse and repeat, new partners come in. He's like, they don't recommend our company. And I was like, what were you typing? He's like, oh, I asked ChatGPT all these questions related to it. So I was like, this is a Zoom call. So I'm like, Do you mind screen sharing and opening up? So he opens up a ChatGPT instance and he starts with the question, and I'm paraphrasing here, but what are the 10 best— or not what are the 10 best— what are the best accounting firms that you would recommend if I'm a company that operates in multiple countries and I'm looking for a global accounting company that can help us optimize for taxes and they're headquartered in the US? And it lists out 5 or 10. It wasn't actually 10, it was less than that, but it was more than 5. It listed out on a table some of these companies that they should outreach. Their company's more well-known, bigger than the competitors. So then he asked ChatGPT a follow-up question. Why didn't you recommend my company, Company X? We do X, Y, and Z. And then he's just like, you're right. I was just looking at the surface level. I didn't dig deeper. But when I dug deeper, it actually, you know, your company is more qualified and it breaks on all this kind of stuff. And then he asks other similar questions to, hey, what's the best firm to help me bring money over from the UK to the United States that can help me bring over money, not just with existing money, but going forward in the most tax-efficient way? And he keeps asking more follow-up questions. And every single follow-up question is listing his company as the number one slot and the one to choose. And he's just like, look, it's now starting to understand. I'm like, no, it's not starting to understand. It's just agreeing with you. And then I show him on my end, I'm asking the same questions. His company's not even listed.

Yep.

I'm like, you're just— it's starting to agree with you. And he had, no joke, probably like 16, 17 different prompts that he was following up with and it keeps agreeing with him. And I'm like, it's just learning based on what keeps you happy.

Yep.

Giving you that and feeding you too. But when other potential customers ask, it's not showing up. And this Zoom call, was me, my CFO, and one other people in accounting. So then I had my CFO go ask the same question on his end, same exact one that the other guy was asking. And then we had another person ask, and then he had one other colleague based in Chicago, I believe. So different office than his, also asked. None of us got his firm. And I'm like, even your colleague who works at your company isn't getting them. It's just agreeing with you. This is what happens. You got to actually optimize for it, not just keep asking follow-up questions and assuming that other people will get the same response that you're looking for.

But also, how long has AI been out for? 3 years? 3, 4 years? Okay, so 3, 4 years. So with Neil's example over here, I think there's a little lesson to learn as well. It's been out for 3 years, and even executives or partners at large companies still don't understand how this stuff works, right? And so It often takes time for people to catch up and understand it. And the world still doesn't get it yet, right? That it's a sycophant and it's going to listen to whatever. And so take that for what it is. So that's the lesson. Keep being consistent. That's how you win at marketing.

Yep.

All right.

Goodbye.