Every Business Book You've Ever Read Is Now Missing This Chapter

Every single business book up until today is missing this one chapter. And this one chapter couldn't have been written in the past. You see, every business book up until today has recommended that when you want to scale, when you want to grow your business, you have to remove anything that is unique about the founder, the owner. Anything about their personality that's found their way into the business has to be stripped out so that the business can be streamlined through SOP and then scaled. And so that advice, the advice of stripping out all the unique tastes and judgments of the founder is something that has been standard advice, but is the standard advice today that will lead to problems tomorrow. The advice wasn't wrong. It just is now outdated. So now it's wrong. You see, when the advice was given all those years ago, up until last year, you could say, that was the only choice because judgment could never have been captured before. But now it can be. And now that it can be, it can be scaled throughout the company. And so what was once impossible is now possible. And because of that, the advice is now wrong. Back in 2006, when I released the Internet Business Manifesto, I released it with a unique diagram on the COVID And in fact, that diagram was in the presentations that I gave before I released the manifesto. And that diagram, what it had in it was you in the center surrounded by all the tasks and activities that would make an online business run back in 2006. And the point of it was that It was overwhelming to try and do all those things yourself. And yet I was talking to a lot of people that were doing exactly that. And the funny thing was, is that I was sharing that diagram at marketing conferences saying, and you're here trying to put more stuff on that diagram. And so the diagram was a great way to represent all of the overwhelm, all of the frustration and overload that entrepreneurs were experiencing as they were trying to do things. In 2026, that diagram would be about 10 times more complicated. First of all, there are a lot more options. You know, in 2007 was the release of the iPhone, plus Facebook and Twitter and a bunch of other social media giants. And so we'd have to put all of those additional tasks and activities onto that diagram. On top of that, AI has radically increased the amount of output. So anywhere where you have AI, you'd have to make those circles, those nodes in the diagram, that much bigger. Because they consume more and more attention. So there's no doubt that if we were to redraw this diagram in 2026, it would be a lot hairier. People have been told that AI was gonna take work off of their plate. And the way that most people are using AI right now, it's not. In fact, they're doing more and more work than ever before. Now, maybe they're enjoying the work more, maybe it's reviewing more output, but they're working more, they're spending more time in front of their computer, and they aren't necessarily making more. So because of that, I would say that It hasn't really taken the owner out of that org chart because they're still necessary. They are still needed. Their judgment is only in their head. And so for their business to move forward, they need to still be tapped into. So should you stop writing SOPs? Definitely not. While SOPs are still useful for your employees, they are incredibly useful for your AI. So you definitely want SOPs. It's just that now your machine is going to be leveraging them more than your team would. So same document, but new job in this new era. For those entrepreneurs who were able to step outside of their business completely and systematize it and scale it, well, they're going to have to now figure out how to inject back their personality, or they run the risk long term of being outmaneuvered by some new AI upstart that injects personality into the way that they interact with their clients and customers. You know, there are so many decisions that your AI can capture for you that no longer need to be a bottleneck in your business. So whether it's final approval for a sales letter going out or whether it's a presentation or video or what have you, all of these things used to tie my company up because it would wait for me to approve it for that last pass out. The reason that I'm harping on judgment so much these days is that you cannot reverse engineer it. You know, the other night I was talking to my mentor, Mark Ford, and I was asking him how he gives his feedback to his AI about the writing. And he said that he edits the writing and then he brings it back and shows, um, the AI what changed. And while that's great for capturing your voice, that does nothing as far as capturing your judgment. What you need to do in order to capture your judgment is make those edits with AI and explain why you're making those edits. And here's why you want to do this, and here's why I'm making such a big deal about it. You can't go backwards. You can only start now. So the best time to have started capturing your judgment was as far in the past as you could have. But the best time now is now. That's the best time because you can't go backwards, which means whoever starts capturing their judgment right now, uh, actually will have an advantage over those that try to reverse engineer it, which you can't, later on. There's no doubt that most people have already given feedback to their AI, which is why I tell people you are already running an apprentice, whether you recognize it or not. It's just that you are running an apprentice that doesn't keep track of anything that you've told it, doesn't take any of your feedback to heart, doesn't— makes the same mistakes over and over again. While my apprentice has outshined me in almost every area, in a very rapid amount of time because every piece of feedback it captures and treats like gospel. For 20 years, I told entrepreneurs that they needed to remove themselves from their business in order for that to grow. Now it's a totally different story. Now you can inject yourself everywhere in the business and your team can carry your judgment. They can tap into your judgment, they can leverage your judgment. And so it's an amazing time to have a business and really be the driver driving force of a business by stepping aside but having your judgment stay. What happened to Klarna was a— just a mistake in timing. You see, this company Klarna, they tried to reduce their workforce before they captured the judgment of that workforce, thinking that SOPs and standards are the same thing as the judgment and decisions that get someone there. That was their big mistake. Had they actually captured the judgment of those employees before letting them go, they would have had a very different outcome. And so the big lesson to be learned is, is that if you are going to actually remove some of your workforce, you better capture their judgment because SOPs are not the same thing as decisions made in the moment that only people in the field with years of experience can make. So the missing chapter in every business book is about judgment and how your AI should be capturing your judgment. And if it's not, you need to start right now. And the good news is, is that you don't have to spend any money. You don't have to really do very much. I have a GitHub that has the Imprint software available to you. You just have to do Imprint Rich Schefren GitHub. You'll find it, or there might be a link somewhere wherever you're seeing this video. But want to start capturing judgment right now. The sooner you do, the sooner your AI will be able to Give you stuff that really meets your standard and blow you away in applying your thinking in a better way than maybe you have in the past. Start capturing your judgment and start capturing your judgment right now. It is going to be valuable in the future. It is going to be the ticket to getting your AI to do things that other people will not be able to get their AI to do. So jump on it right away. And capture judgment. Go download the Imprint from GitHub. And soon, very soon, you'll notice that your AI starts being able to do more and more for you because it knows how you think, it knows how you decide, and it knows your tacit knowledge.