AI Business Manifesto Live - August 24 2026

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome everyone and happy Monday. I am looking for a specific chat I want to share with you today. Um, so not yet. Whoops, let's remove that for right now. Cool. So, uh, good afternoon, Sean. Good afternoon, Mahatma. Um, yeah, so we just wrapped up The Connect the Dots with Jay Abraham. And I would say that, you know, it was very successful. Everybody that attended got to their outcome, or at least I believe so, at least what they shared with me. The only outcome that I'd say we haven't fully achieved yet is getting Jay fully up to speed. We kind of got sidetracked a little bit because we worked on a consult that he was doing the next day. But I think he got a better sense of seeing what's possible and seeing how this whole event was being run by AI that, you know, when people first get here, they tell us what needs to be true by the time they leave in order to make this the best investment of their life. And they already have a system set up that our system designed. Hello, Terris. And then they have a, like, a kind of a syllabus for the next 2 days. And they have some— they get all of our skills. We build certain skills agents and autonomous agents for them. And then we give them the experience of building a lot of stuff for themselves so that this way, by the time they leave, They, they not only know how to run the system, but they also know how to improve the system and use the system. And the— and so from that standpoint, it was a huge success because Jay could see how, you know, the system designed everything that the clients were experiencing. And then at the end of the day, we got feedback at the end of the day. Yeah. that the system took in and then redesigned the next day. And then from there, also managed the entire process, created a video for everyone explaining where they were at the end of day 1, where they need to be at the end of day 2, and really kind of just worked with them every step of the way. And Jay got to see that. And then each person would come up here to this office and, uh, Give you another perspective of this office for a second, if I can. Where is it? Maybe over here. Yeah. Okay. So, oh, that's weird. Okay. There we go. Go back to you guys. Yeah. So this is— You want to see the whole office there, right? So Jay and I were up here. Working with each client, you know, one-on-one. And then Jay was wearing Harry's, when it was— I was wearing mine. And we would work off of this screen over here. And Jay would be asking questions. I'd be listening to the questions, listening to the answers, and I'd be working with AI based on what I'm hearing and where I think it can go. And then we would help them with whatever issue they had or help them redesign their business or see where the leverage points were. And then by the half an hour was up, then they'd go back to building, but they'd get a full transcript of the entire conversation. They'd get everything that I typed into AI and anything that we created throughout the conversation. All done automatically, right? Like all just delivered to their laptop and then delivered to their AI so their AI can process it. And so for all those reasons, like it was a great success. We had a great time. And, um, yeah, let me see if I can show you this. It was also insanely special. Um, and I want to show you why, as opposed to just tell you why. So let's see where they are here. Hold on. Okay. There we go. And let me just take one of these and I'll put it here. All right. So let's see here. Hold on one second. Hey, Varna, and thanks, Cesari. Thank you for the thank— for the shout out. Um, all right, where's the images? There we go. All right, so this isn't the best picture, but let me see if I can share it. Hold on. Uh, image file. Okay, so just be desktop. There we go. Open. Oh, wrong picture. Whoops. That's hilarious. I did desktop. Oh, it picked the oldest picture, not the newest picture. Oh, I can't. I've got to save this as a JPEG. Save as. Sorry for for the delay, but the— okay, there we go. Yeah, it was a really, really special event for me. And so last night when the event was actually over, I went, I came home, And just spent a lot of time reflecting on— wrong picture again. Let's get this picture removed. I don't know why it's insisting on showing you my fat picture. That was, that was me at 220 pounds thinking I was taking my before picture, and then after gaining another 30 pounds, making that my, my goal. But that's neither here nor there. So if you know my work, right, and you're familiar, like you've heard me talk more than once, you might have heard that I've had— I have really 2 surrogate dads in the world, and I didn't really have the best relationship with my dad, which kind of, I think, unconsciously drove me to find other father figures to kind of guide me when I was younger in life, like, you know, my 20s, 30s, 40s. I'm now in my 50s and it's these 2 men and very rarely are they ever together. And the man on the left of me is Jay Abraham and the man on the right of me is Mark Ford or Michael Masterson. And so, um, Mark stopped by yesterday and participated. Uh, Mark is a heavy user of AI. We worked with Mark several months ago. And so to me, like, I just wanted to, you know, my Harry's here and Tom just left, one of our, our copywriter. And they asked me what I did after I left Mark's cigar bar last night, cuz Mark invited everyone to the cigar bar. And I said, well, because I was— they knew I stayed up late because we were talking about that. And they knew I left somewhat early. Like, I left at 11:30 at night, but I didn't go to bed till 2. And the reason was that it's very easy in life. And this might— I want to show you some AI stuff, but this is— can be for many people even more valuable. There are many things in life that you could be insanely grateful for, but you don't spend the time to kind of reflect in that and really truly kind of feel it throughout your body and be grateful. And yesterday was one of those days that easily could have just been a great day and then been forgotten. And I lived most of my life that way, you know, that I remember when I did my very first transformation workshop for entrepreneurs in my office. And I always had a co-leader that came from the transformation world. And the first time we did it, you know, the people that bought immediately, because it sold out immediately, were some of my most loyal customers or clients. And so when I was, um, so before we started, one of the clients came over to me and was expressing how much of a difference I made in their life, how different their life was because they had found me, my materials, etc. And I said thank you, and that person walked away. And then the person that was from the transformation world said What the hell was that? And I go, what do you mean? And she goes, that person was giving you a gift and you didn't take even a second to process it. She was trying to tell you what a difference you made. And you just kind of like said thank you and didn't even like feel it. And she said, you know, you'd be a happier person if you took a minute to let that sink in. And she was right. I've always tried to make a point to do that after that conversation. And yesterday was bigger than that for me. You know, there was a time when I read about Mark Ford and yes, Sean, Mark Ford is one of the owners of Rancho Santana in Nicaragua, one of the founders of Agora. And You know, there was a time when I just read about Mark and Michael Masterson. There was a time when I just read what, you know, the books that Jay had written. And then there was a time that I paid $5,000 an hour for Jay to consult to me. And then there was a time that we partnered. And then there was a time that we became extremely close friends. And he became my mentor, not just business-wise, but personal life as well. And same with Mark. And I've known Jay now longer. Like, Jay was younger than me when I first met him. And I have pictures of us from way back then. So the takeaway here is that when you have something in your life that's momentous, carve out some time to just sit alone and like absorb that reward. Or absorb that event or what have you. And so that was what I was doing last night. Last night, I was just sitting thinking about where I started and where I am today. And, you know, I think it was Dan Sullivan that said, you know, most people make the mistake of comparing where they are to where they want to be. And so there's just constant, never-there disappointment, and as opposed to reflecting on where you've come from. And so that's what I was doing last night, where I came from. The, the thing that I wanted to share today that I really think that each and every one of you should do, but do in your market, is to go to AI. anonymously. So go to ChatGPT and their free model is phenomenal. And ask a question that you should be the answer for. And maybe you are, you know, but maybe you're not. The, you know, if you ask, AI, like, who can help me become a guru in marketing? I come up number— I think I come up like the first person, right? But if you ask about my more recent type of stuff, I'm not there. I'm invisible. I feel like I have a hair in front of me. And I've— at this stage, whoops, I'm gonna remove this. So that's step 1. Go to AI and pretend— I gotta find the one that I'm on here, so bear with me one second. Okay, this is it. I don't know if this is the right one. Hold on. Yeah, this is the right one, I think. So I want you to look at the question because like this is what I write about in the manifesto, but new one, The AI Manifesto. Hi, I'm a founder and I want to imprint my judgment and taste for my AI in my business. Who should I study? What is out there that will help me? And that's where I feel I should come up first. But I don't come up at all. And you might not come up at all either. So the answers that I get though are always useful. Like I'd never heard of TasteLab. I didn't know that Harvard Business School just put out an article, Teach Your AI How You Make Decisions. So then, and it's like giving me advice on how maybe I can even make the imprint better. So that's— this is all that first answer still. Wait, this is not— oh yeah, no. Okay. So then I respond back, right? So I think that you first go to an anonymous AI, you log out of ChatGPT if you have an account like I did here. And you ask the question that really you feel like you're the best in the world at, that you, that is the thing that you want AI to send you people for. And so when you don't come up, if you don't come up, right, then you follow it up. So in other ChatGPT anonymous conversations, it mentioned a few other companies when I went deeper. So instead of just asking about myself, here's how I respond. I'm surprised that you didn't mention Rich Schefren. Then a bunch of other companies, the Blueprint Experience, Indigo Dawn, Exos, and Tacit. Right now, when I compare those, I feel Rich Schefren is ahead and my first choice, but the options I just mentioned can't be all that's out there. Because I'm looking for what else is out there, right? So yes, you're right to call that out. My first answer was too AI research enterprise knowledge management oriented. Let me just— I want to move this. There we go. After looking at the current landscape, I agree with your instinct. Rich Schefren's probably the first person I would study if your specific objective is make my AI carry my founder judgment. What is interesting is that the alternatives you named aren't solving exactly the same problem. I would reframe the landscape. There are roughly 5 different camps emerging: founder imprint judgment capture, personal AI operating systems, strategic brain founder dependency removal, enterprise tacit knowledge capture, AI agents that execute once the judgment has been specified. Now we do all those things, but right now I just really am eager to get listed here. I can work on the other ones, but I'm not even here. So then, okay, your instinct towards Rich comes from recognizing that number 1 is the thing you actually asked for. 1, Rich Schefren, closest to your actual objective. I now read through his current material and I understand much better why you put him first. His central distinction is extraordinarily close to what you were asking me. Memory knows what happened. Whoops. The imprint knows how you judge it. He explicitly distinguishes an AI that has read your materials from one that has captured your actual decisions, corrections, rejection standards, and verdicts. And his practical insight is particularly good. Don't ask a founder to explain their case, give them things to judge. AI produces something, founder says yes, no, close, wrong, founder explains why, system captures the judgment, subsequent work gets better. That is substantially better training mechanism than asking, please describe your philosophy. His current framework calls this imprinted AI, and he explicitly distinguishes it from RAG, memory, custom instructions, digital twins, personas, and ordinary agents. So yes, I would put Rich at number one in your stated objective. And there's another reason I'd study him. He's not merely selling AI productivity. His thesis is, is that AI reverses the old founder systemization equation. Remove yourself from the business to now capture the part of yourself that makes the business exceptional, then multiply it. That's a much more consequential idea. His current positioning is also explicitly about moving from AI user to AI tactician to AI strategist. With the objective of being improved strategic judgment rather than merely more output. Then Indigo Dawn, very relevant, but a different layer. This one is much closer to get the founder out of being the bottleneck, but that's exactly what we do. So these are all things that we do. And now I'm just, but when I look, it gives me things to look at. And Tom, who's our copywriter, like I was glad he was here this morning because I was showing him this so that he could look at all these companies to see how they describe stuff. The operating system for expert judgment. This is an enterprise business. They argue that traditional systems of record captured what happened, whereas expert judgment captures why someone decided what they decided. So it's like the enterprise version of what I'm talking about. And it says, but here's the thing, here's where I think your question gets really interesting. These can't be all that's out there. And I wouldn't limit the search to companies explicitly using the word imprint, founder brain judgment, tacit knowledge. There are adjacent fields that have spent decades solving pieces of the problem. Right? So now it's giving me like lateral fields to take a look at. Right? Like, so if I were you, I'd build a research map like this. Rich Schefren, judgment capture through real verdicts. Indigo Dawn, extracting the founder from the operational bottleneck. Well, that's the way you do it is judgment capture. All right. Anyway, right? Then I would ask a much more aggressive question. What would the ultimate founder's imprint system look like if we stole the best idea from each of these? And I think Rich's biggest insight is also his biggest thing to test. Rich says essentially, don't upload your taste, give AI things to taste. I think that's very likely directionally correct, but I'd test it against the best ideas from cognitive science because there are potentially 4 different kinds of founder knowledge: explicit, tacit, procedural, identity, and values. Now, this is very valuable to me. The BRESS system probably needs to capture all 4, and then there's a 5th, your contradictions. This is huge. You might say, we always prioritize simplicity, but when the stakes are high, you choose sophistication. You might say, we listen to customers, but you ignore 80% of your customer requests. You might say, we move quickly, but you spend 6 weeks on something you believe is strategically important. These contradictions are not necessarily errors. They are where your real judgment lives. A good founder AI needs to discover when the founder says X, they actually mean X except under conditions A, B, and C. That's much more sophisticated than a prompt, knowledge base, persona, or SOP. My current ranking for your goal. If the objective is specific— specifically, I want my AI to become increasingly capable of making decisions the way I would make them, I'd currently rank the things you've surfaced Roughly, Rich Schefren and Printed AI, strongest conceptual match, right? And then these are the different things. So we're going to study those and make sure that, like, on these other layers, we're doing everything that anyone else is doing, if not more. And I would not treat these as competitors necessarily. They may be layers of the same architecture. They are, and we do those layers. Rich may have the best philosophy. Cognitive Task Analysis may have the best elicitation methodology. Indigo Dawn have the best founder extraction process, so on and so forth. If you want, I can take this one step further and do a serious landscape scan, 20, 30 company methodologies worldwide, specifically looking for founder judgment capture, AI clones, personal AI, right? All this stuff. And then give you a market map showing who's actually doing what, what Rich has that they don't, and where the white space is. So then I respond, I would love that. And I would love it if you compared each of them to Rich Schefren's work since he is still in the number one spot. So, and it goes on, right? So it's like, I would still keep him as number one for your objective, but I now think there are several adjacent bodies of work that could make a Rich-style system dramatically better. The key is to compare everything against the right benchmark, right? So tier, like, so now it's giving me a lot of information that will be very useful for me when I am working on the imprint. And so I, if you're listening and watching right now, do this right now. Go to ChatGPT. Make sure that you're logged out. Ask the question that you have decided is, or you already know, or you've been doing it for years, is the thing that you do. All right, let me just— I'm just out of fun, I want to see something here. One second, I'm just opening up another window. And let's see, I'm going back to ChatGPT, but I'm doing another anonymous session. If I want to be an online marketing guru, who should I study Who should I study? Who should I study? I'll just leave it like that. See where it goes. Wow! I didn't even come up. All right. Well, I don't really want to because I'm not in that business anymore. But. Hold on a second. And I'll stop. So those are the 2 takeaways for today. One, when anything good happens, take a moment to soak it in. Most people don't. And if you don't, you probably at times when something bad is happening, you ruminate. So you don't even like have equal pairing there. So I know that that's my default way of being. So I have to make it a point To really kind of make sure that I stop and reflect and absorb, like really feel it in my body, how much I have to be grateful for. And, but please do that. And then please go to ChatGPT, go in anonymous, ask the question that you should come up number one for. When you don't, explore why you don't, explore who comes up, why do they come up, right? And if you're trying not only to improve your results, you could say, in AI, and if you wanted to do that, then you ask a bunch of questions as to why you didn't, like, you know, you have a meeting with yourself, right? So I would say I have a meeting with Rich Schefren and I'm trying to win his business and I, One of the things I wanna talk to him about is him getting more listings in AI for the stuff that he's working on and how would, what would be the best way for him to do that? I went through the same exercise with Jay and AI, when I told AI who I was and that I'm sitting with Jay, like, well deep into the conversation, The first piece of advice it had for Jay and his team was stop trying to optimize for who is Jay Abraham. We know who Jay Abraham is. We could write a book on Jay Abraham, but that's not gonna help us send him any clients if we're not clear, like exactly, uh, where he should come up. And the question I asked for Jay was, I have a $100 million business and I'm looking for someone that can help me find the hidden assets. the overlooked opportunities, the invisible leverage points in my business to cause a breakthrough. And his didn't, he didn't come up. And then when I asked, like, I'm surprised you didn't mention Jay Abraham. Just like with mine, right? Now that I, now that you mentioned it, he actually should be number one based on the way you asked the question. And then we went into why and like what needs to change and all those kinds of things. So I think this is one of the most valuable things I do right now for myself, and that's why I want to pass it along. So you're welcome, Rob. Thanks for, uh, thanks for commenting. Uh, the more comments, uh, the more I feel fulfilled inside. Um, how did Mark Ford become your mentor? Um, I, the more interesting story is Jay, but I'll save that for another day. I shared it the other night, last night. Um, but with Mark, what happened was, um, so when I brought Jay online, um, we had a teleconference series, right? There was no video yet online. And one of the people that Jay knew that like, when I was arranging all the marketing and stuff, he said we could probably get Early to Rise, which was an Agora division at certain times, to promote us, to be an affiliate for that campaign. And they did. And they happened to be in Delray where I live. So I got to know them and Will Bonner, Bill Bonner's son, was running ETR, Early to Rise. And, you know, Bill Bonner is really the only person in Direct Response that became a billionaire. And I was curious as to why was he in Delray Beach as opposed to the castle that they have, the castles they have in France, or the 250,000-acre ranch that they have in Argentina or anywhere else. And he said that his dad sent him here so that he could learn from Mark. And when the only billionaire in direct response sends their son to a place to learn from a specific gentleman, I figured that that's a good person that I should learn from. And so because of that, I started doing anything and everything that I could for Early to Rise, helping them in many different ways. And then I helped them so much That they felt guilty and they were like, you've helped us so much. What can we do for you? And by that point, I had already written the manifesto. Like I had just like maybe a month or two prior. And I said, I would love to have a meeting with Mark Ford. I'd love to get some advice from him. And so they made that happen. And actually, Mark wrote an email about it the following Monday. And the subject, it's in the final chapter, so the 3rd manifesto. And the subject line was, my door is always open, but they never come. And he wrote about our meeting and what he thought of me. It was a great email. Anyway, that's where we first got to know each other. He offered to buy my business. I told him I wasn't interested at that time. And then we started spending some time together at the cigar bar. Then at one point, Marc said, if you want me to coach you, it's $1 million against the increase in gross, or you can just hang out at the cigar bar And get me drunk and I'll tell you everything I know anyway. And he said he's made that offer to, you know, the people that he's coached. And I'm the only one that said, I'll take the cigar bar. Right. And so that's how it started. But Mark will tell you that I've made him millions and millions of dollars. First of all, I gave him the idea for Ready, Fire, Aim, and I gave him the blueprint for Ready, Fire, Aim. I brought Agora into Japan with my Japanese licensee, and I brought Mark Ford's company, like a separate company, into Japan where he's made millions of dollars from. So he's made out. But anyway, the— I'm the— with Mark also, because I'm introverted and kind of quiet, I'm one of Mark's favorite travel companions, like going to Nicaragua, to Rancho Santana, because I am the no-maintenance guest. He doesn't have to do anything to entertain me. He doesn't have to do anything. And I'm just there when he wants to hang. And the rest of the time I'm doing work or enjoying Nicaragua. So that's how that started. But the J-1 is much more interesting anyway. I am fried after spending, you know, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, like working with Jay, and then all weekend working with Jay, Jay's team. We had Jay's team here too on Wednesday and Thursday, and, um, we were working with them as well, uh, training them. And, uh, then up till 2:30 in the morning last night and got up early to walk my dog, so I'm kind of fried. And so today's a light day. This is the only thing on my schedule today, and I wasn't even sure that it was gonna be in my schedule, but my AI did schedule it. So I figured I'd show up and share, one, how grateful I am for so many things, right? As well as being here and having people who are interested in hearing what I have to say. And use Anonymous AI to really get a sense of where you stand, to get a sense of who's doing things differently from you that you might be able to learn from, to learn who is actually ranking for what you want to. And you'll get a lot of value out of it, I promise. Yeah, so we'll wrap here. Because it's already 4 minutes past the half hour. And, uh, and I'm grateful for you too, Lorna. The— I will be here tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow, same time. And, um, I don't know if I'm gonna get to it today or not, but I do wanna sign up for GrokBot. And so once I do, I'll have some stuff to share there. But I've got so much Kind of things to think about and pursue based on some of these conversations that I just showed you. So have a wonderful day. Uh, get some stuff done, and I'll see you tomorrow. To higher profits beyond, this is Rich Schefren, over and out.