The Achieve Podcast - Shar Broumand (Zero Hiring)

Welcome to the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight the leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs who are building meaningful businesses and shaping their industries. I'm your host, Stephen Bunker, and today we're excited to learn from Shah, CEO with Xero Hiring. Shah is also a general partner of Infinity Constellation, a holding company for AI-native service businesses. Now, Shar, for those getting to know you, can you give us just a quick backstory of your business?

Absolutely. Um, Zero Hiring is, uh, an AI-enabled hiring business that we built, um, really out of necessity from building businesses over the last couple decades where talent and the ability to, to hire people, whether it was at scale or whether it's finding individuals with a very special set of skills for the purpose of building your business, aligning with your mission, growing your business. It's one of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest challenge, that business builders of all sizes experience. We went through a massive growth spurge in our— in the business that we founded. Some 11 years ago, uh, we had to grow from a few hundred people to over 6,000 in less than 18 months.

Wow.

And really just taught us that the, the recruitment workflow, like many other workflows, is very inefficient, um, and, and it's just— is an opportunity to make it better, um. And so we kind of used our, our playbook for, for, for the business that we built AI-enabled service model where you have an AI process platform. You layer that platform with the process and the best practices of how you get something done, get a workflow done, and then you provide human oversight at all the key steps, key phases of that process. We believe that that combination of, technology and services, you know, enabled services, um, leads to a better outcome, right? So, and what we've discovered in our journey in, in, at Zero Hiring, but also across multiple other businesses in other areas, um, is that we are able to deliver a faster, better, and cheaper recruitment solution. And I think that's what's exciting about the world that we live in today is that you used to only have, you know, you used to only be able to pick 2 of those 3 on the menu, right? You could go faster and you could go better, but it was never going to be cheaper. Or you could go faster and cheaper, but it wasn't necessarily going to be better. And I think we've proven, you know, we being collectively in the last couple of decades, you look at companies like AWS, faster, better, cheaper computing, and it delivered in a new model. Our friends at Tesla who don't market themselves this way, which I think is a mistake, but they've built a faster, better, cheaper car. I know they like to focus on the electric vehicle message and doing the right thing for the climate and so forth, but I just think at the end of the day, their secret sauce is that they're a faster, better, cheaper car. And I think we live in an age today where you're able to have those three things, right?

You don't have to make that compromise.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

That's a commitment to discipline though, to even approach that. I mean, like it's best in class to be able to do that.

It is. I think what we have now with, with the tools and also just the willingness to try different approaches. Because in order to achieve faster, better, cheaper, you have to kind of go outside of the box and you have to like reinvent the model, right? AWS is a great example. It built a different model for cloud computing. But the Tesla vehicle is just built differently. It's completely built differently. And you see, you see it, you see the difference in the model with traditional car companies now building their own electric vehicles, right? And the way they've approached it, they're two distinct models. So I think we live in an age where you've traditionally had tools, right, in the form of software. Or hardware, and these were tools. And like there was a set of people in your organization that dealt with the tools, maintaining them and making sure the tools are available for your people. And then on the other side, you've got services, you've got consultants and service providers who for centuries have been selling you time. The notion being that time is where the value is, right? It's a valuable commodity. And I think now with everything that's available to us, we're able to actually completely change that model where the value of time is quite rapidly going to almost zero, right? It's being— it's declining on a weekly basis right now at the rate that we're going. So where time is no longer the bottleneck or the issue, you're going to have the ability to do things differently. And when it comes to hiring, we've really just taken a different approach. So we don't sell a service, we don't charge fees based on how many people are assigned to your account or how many hours need to go into sourcing candidates, screening them, scheduling them for interviews, taking them through a process. That's the busy— what's the old way of doing things, right? And the service providers that do that—

because it's based off the time, right? The time and effort.

Absolutely. You know, and then, and then there's also— we're also not selling tools. We're not putting any kind of AI tools in the hands of your recruiters inside your company so that they can go and use those tools. That we— what we're delivering to you is an outcome. We're saying, you know, how many people do you need to fill? A 1, okay, 1,000, no problem. Right. And we're going to fill those roles. And based on filling those roles is how we, we get paid, how we were aligned with your goals. And that, that model is very different. It allows us to be faster, allows us to be better, and it allows us to be cheaper for a variety of reasons, which, you know, this isn't— this is not a sales pitch here. So I'm not going to go into like how we do that. But essentially we're able to embed in, in an organization in a way that wasn't, wasn't previously economically viable, but also the, the open— the openness wasn't there on, on behalf of the client. Like, think about the concept of outsourcing, right? The word out, you know, you, you're, you're essentially taking something from within your organization and you're tossing it over the wall so that it's outside of your organization. I don't know if insourcing is really a word, but essentially we embed our solution inside of our clients. We become part of their DNA and we meet them where they're at. So we're not, we're not like in the, we're not in the habit of going in and transforming, you know, redesigning recruitment unless it needs it. We don't need to go in and do that. We need to go in and figure out how are we going to deliver people to you in a faster, better, and cheaper model. And, you know, I get, I get chastised sometimes by, by people about why cheaper. Like, cheaper just sounds so bad. It just sounds like it's a negative thing. And it's like, well, I'm kind of unapologetic about that because when you look at what you're able to achieve profitably, The economics change, and I think we should be proud of that, right? I think that's a great thing.

I think we've seen that, like, in the— was it the 1850s to, like, the 1880s? There was a period of deflation, right? And it was tremendously economically powerful because people could get goods and services for lower. I'm seeing that in even my role with just a lot of the marketing I do. I'm like, this AI stuff is in some ways deflationary because it's, like, reducing the amount of effort to produce an output. But counterintuitively, I've seen more demand for services, like whether custom applications, because now businesses actually have the capability of producing these things much more cheaply. And so almost like I think demand's going up.

Yes. Yeah, it is interesting how those two things— you're absolutely right. I'm observing the same thing. It's interesting how those two things are going to battle inflation and deflation, right? You, you, you, you— on the one hand, you know, I think the open source debate is going to be a big influencer on that. Um, we, we, we, we, in the West, we've always believed in protecting our IP and, and, and delivering it, um, you know, as a closed source form, as an asset that, that, that is worth something. And I, and I, I fully believe in that. Like, fundamentally, I think that's that's, that's a great thing. Um, the world right now is pushing for more open source. Um, and so it'll be interesting to see how those two things, uh, play out. Um, haven't really spent too much time like thinking about that, but it is, it's there, it's lingering behind the scenes, right?

Well, it's interesting because like even as you use some of these AI tools, like I use Cloud Code quite a bit and I'm developing stuff out for my clients and it, it's surprising how often it recommends open source tools, and it's like, it's biased there. And so when all of a sudden I'm like, well, shoot, previously I would have bought a subscription and now I can use an open source tool to do the same thing, and it's recommending it, why not?

Uh, yeah, I, I think, I think what, what, what we're also seeing in, in, in, in the specific positions that companies like Anthropic are taking, right? Or, you know, more and more we're seeing kind of where Sam Altman is taking OpenAI. And I'm not passing judgment on either because there's so much more to this than what we on the outside see, right? Yeah. I think you have to ask yourself how core is your mission. So like for us at Zero Hiring, our mission goes back to a vision that, that our, our chairman had, you know, 11, 12 years ago where he just, he just, he wanted to— and in fact, longer than that, really back to his college days when he just saw this like opportunity. You know, everything was being gamified, right? The gamification. You go back about 20 years, 15, 20 years, you had this like game gamification culture where everything you do, there's points and scores and we're all competing and it's fun, but really it's about luring you into your store or into your business or whatever. Right. And he looked at it and he thought, wow, how do I get people to go one step further and actually do things like do something, get shit done, set goals for yourself? If I could get every human on the planet to truly work on meeting their individual potential.

Yeah.

How much of a better world would we have? Like, that was, that was kind of this, like, idealistic, you know, 17, 18-year-old kid's view on, on things. And, and I, I remember, like, being older and more experienced, like, listening to him and thinking, well, that's really interesting. How are you going to do that? And, like, He, he came up with an idea in college and I backed it. I invested in it and it was just, it was, it was one of the brightest, most awesome ideas, but it didn't, it didn't work out. And then after college, like, he completely pivoted away from what is, what his original career plans were. And he became an entrepreneur, moved to San Francisco. He opened, you know, he started another business all about enabling people to get shit done, to meet their potential. And I backed that and I was involved with that as an investor and as an advisor. And I watched them work and it was really amazing to watch. When you watch a young entrepreneur do their things and you're watching them not just like doing amazing stuff, but you're also watching them make mistakes. You're watching them just make like mistakes where it's like, oh, come on, man. Like you can't be doing that, right? But it is a fact. You gotta let them do that. It's kind of like learning how to ride a bike. Like, my, you know, my mom, I remember when I got my bike, my mom had training wheels on them. And she was all like, happy that I was out there riding it. My dad came home from work and was like, what's this? She's like, he's like, oh, this is awesome. But you gotta get those training wheels off. And my mom's like, well, he's gonna fall. And he's like, good. And he took them off. And I remember, like, I must have fallen 4 or 5 times. My knee, my knee scraped and bleeding. But, but within like 10 minutes, he had me riding a bike, you know what I'm saying? And I think entrepreneurs the same way. The concept here that I'm seeing, the mission that I think is being, is being laid out just as we laid out for our business, is how to not only maximize human potential, but also really from a long-term perspective, how do we preserve and progress humanity? Right? Like, and this, you know, to some people, this just sounds so like up in the air, La La Land type views. But if you don't have that North Star, what do you have? Like, ask yourself that question as an individual. Like, forget about anything else. It's just as an individual, don't associate yourself with whatever group you're with, whatever, you know, religion or group that you identify with, right? Like, just as you as an individual, right? You're Stephen. I'm Shar.

Yeah.

What is your North Star? Like, what's important to you? And I think when you align with that, amazing things happen. And the war for talent today, Stephen, is about that. Talent is not looking for you anymore, especially, you know, in technology and especially The very motivated builders, right, are not— they're not looking for, like, they don't see prestige in working for a big brand company that everyone knows, right? They, they're more about what the mission— they want to be mission aligned. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So as part of your recruiting process, like, you're really trying to focus in on people who not only meet the technical requirements, but also people who are like very aligned from a values perspective.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that if you, if you look at, um, recruitment at any level for any industry anywhere, um, the, the, the— when you look back on the people you've hired and whether they've worked out or not, um, the importance of selection is is, is core to everything, right? Yeah. What we're seeing right now with AI, with, with the tools that are being built, or, you know, we've, we've got an end-to-end platform, technology platform. I've got an amazing dev team that come from the who's who of the tech world, right? They're, they're ex-Meta, Instagram, Palantir. Google. We've just got this awesome team, and my co-founder Alan, that leads that, is an amazing young guy who, you know, he was one of the testers for OpenAI, right? So he's just one of these guys that sees things, yeah, 7, 8, 9 steps ahead, right? And we've built a great platform, but ultimately everyone right now is focused on automating the workflow. Flow. So in our case, it's recruitment, but you can apply this to anything else. Like, everyone's like, hey, how do we automate this? Like, why, why do I have to spend 5 hours every month, like, on these reports, right? Like, that we can automate that. So that's great. So now you automate, you automate every part of your recruitment process. Okay, um, what breaks next? Like, what's the next, what's the next thing, right? And, and The answer to that is it's selection. The important— the ability to take your, your, your candidates and choose the right one. It, you know, a lot of recruiters will tell you, well, that's the art, like, that's what I do, that I'm, I'm so good at. It's like, it's like this black box thing I'm really good at doing, right? It's like, you know, you ever been to a chiropractor? But like, my chiropractor tells me all the time that his hands are magic, right? Like, it's like, okay, great. But there's an art to this. There's a science to this that eventually, like, it's not about your hands, right? And so with recruitment, selection is what leads to retention, higher retention. So we are like deep in the lab right now working on the next phase of our platform, which is how do you assess the emotional intelligence of a candidate? How do you understand their personality? How do you understand, you know, their cultural fit to the organization that you're bringing them into, the management team and the leadership team that they're going to be working under? Because people generally don't leave their job, they leave their manager. Like, that's, that's a very real thing that we— yeah, out of all the exit interviews that we do, we like, we We see that. So we're working on that aspect of it. And people are like, well, how are you going to do that when you have such an automated process? Like, you know, you— we don't like— we don't do resume matching. This is one of those tools where everyone's real excited right now. I can take 100 resumes and I can in 4 seconds use the AI and I've got my, my, my top 10 candidates. And it's like, you're lazy if that's what you do. Like, that's my view on it, right? Like, if you're going to let just the computer decide or the AI decide, uh, that is all you've done there is like eliminated some, some work, which again, everyone's like, well, isn't that the idea? Well, yeah, it is. But when you're talking about something specific like recruitment, the, the, I, I'm a big believer you don't let the AI select, right? So you, you, our, our AI ranking technology is amazing. We, uh, will take whatever number of resumes, you typically get hundreds of applicants these days for a lot of roles, right? So we're able to, to have the AI stack rank those applicants, not just based on word matching, which is really basic, right? But, but really looking at what the transferable skills are of a candidate to what you're looking for, right? Like, we're, we're doing a search right now in, in the cosmetics world, right? And It's funny, like, there's definitely a number of amazing people that are experienced in the cosmetics industry, but there are parallel industries that are just as important, just as relevant to what we're looking for. And it's a very strategic role that we're hiring for. So, um, you know, you go to consumer brand, uh, businesses and you're going to find the skill sets you're looking for in cosmetics, right? So Our ability to do that and then understand, like, you know, from the screening calls, we do very short screening calls. We have automated that, but we don't do that 100% of the time. We don't apply AI telephony interviews to every single screening that we do because it's different. Like, we're, again, we're in talks right now with one of the top, top restaurant groups in the world. Yeah, right. They are the 1% as far as the experience and what they, what they've built, the 38, 40 restaurants they have around the world. These guys are not interested in having AI do screening interviews of their people. They are delivering the highest experience to their customers. They are in hospitality, right? It's— they're all about how you make the customer feel. So it's a very different approach there. I think the technology can help with what, what, what, you know, if you think about like what the, the, the intelligence services around the world have been doing for decades, right? Is they are able from a 5-minute phone conversation, uh, put together an entire psych profile on, on a person, right? Yeah. We want to apply kind of the same principles to how do we assess a person's, uh, emotional intelligence and match that with what we're, we're trying to achieve. And the goal there is to understand what the predictable, you know, rate of success is going to be for this individual. And that's, I think, where we're heading with, with, with recruitment, is it's— the focus is going to be on selection.

Yeah.

And then that'll lead to, to higher retention, which is, you know, ultimately, when you look at, uh the people problem, it's— the problem is retention inside most companies, right? They just don't necessarily realize that.

Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there. I wasn't quite involved with recruiting several years ago and I, with my team, I just encouraged, like, we— I set up a call center and we would call every applicant that came in and I would, I actually did that before looking at resumes and I obviously, you know, way more than me, but this is just my hunt. And so, because I was trying to hire a lot of sales reps, and I was like, well, a lot of these resumes don't really capture like the grit or like the desire to sell as much as like maybe doing like an interview, a short interview that kind of like assesses that character trait. And so I just like set it up so it was like every applicant we got, we would call, and then we had a very scripted like script that was like kind of trying to assess some personality traits. And then after that, I would look at the resumes And it was a lot more work, but at the same time, like, I actually felt like I was able to find diamonds in the rough that nobody else was finding, where people were just like, yeah, their resume didn't look great, they were maybe like 18 years old or something like that, but man, they had the personality that was geared towards success. And I was actually finding good talent that way because I didn't go the normal route.

It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, I, I share that with you. I remember specifically rebuilding a sales force for a medical tech company that I joined. And, you know, once you came on board, even with all the due diligence you do in the interview process, it's until you kind of look at what's under the hood, you don't really know what the situation is, right? So I had to rebuild a sales force and I went through the same process as you. And I was, first of all, like we were just a very small business that I needed, like, world-class salespeople. How do you get world-class salespeople in a small business? Like, it's hard. You gotta attract them to the opportunity. And so, yeah, you have to figure that out. You learn a lot of that by going through that process yourself as the hiring manager. That was one of my most, like, important experiences with recruitment was that process. We eventually built that that sales force and it was very effective. But what I did and how I did it was not a repeatable process. And I think today, again, we can take like what you did in your experience and what worked for you to find those diamonds in the rough. We're able to like really systemize that. Yeah. And I think that's the other thing. It's like really, it's one, it's a wonderful age we live in, but it's hard for people to grasp. Like I, I find myself in sales conversations doing more to help the person I'm talking to rethink their view, like take a different view on recruitment. Right. So, for example, we have a customer that has— we've been working with now for about a year. And they, uh, they, they, their model is built on, on commission-only salespeople. And so long story short is that's the hardest thing to recruit because these are people that are coming on board, they have to like earn, earn their keep, right? And, um, the churn, the turnover was at 220% on these roles, right? So like per year, 2.2, like It was just one of those, it's one of those situations. We've in less than a year with the system that we've set up, and of course, you know, you're never filling the roles, but we've basically taken that down from 220% to 17.9%, validated by their CEO, by their business. And the impact that has on their operations and their operating, you know, their bottom line is massive. Given that each salesperson on average ranges between like $700,000 and $800,000 a year in sales, right? Like it's a, it's a massive number. So the ability to do that is not just like, hey, we've got this tool that can do that. That's, that, that would be, yes, we have, we've built, we've built this amazing AI-enabled system that applied and rolled out the way that we do, it, it yields that. But it has— that has to be tweaked inside your organization. And we have that ability now with software. Think about how much, how difficult it has always been to implement software. You buy the software, but then implementing it to meet the company where the company or the client is was very difficult, very costly. It took a lot of time. We are able to do that now very, very rapidly. Right? And that's, that's the amazing times that we live in.

Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, I've personally seen business challenges of turnover and be able to go from like 200+ percent down to 17. I mean, just the amount of effort that goes into not only recruiting but training people— my goodness, like, there's a lot of overhead cost that goes into management and training and like, and even just the ramp-up time, like the lost productivity due to like new sales reps ramping. And not getting sales during that ramping period.

Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head. You have to, you have to connect what happens post-hire or what needs to happen post-hire with your, your hiring process. And many organizations, the majority of organizations don't do that. Certainly service providers in the recruitment world, they draw a pretty hard line saying, yeah, once you, you know, once you've hired the candidate, You know, it's, it's, we're done. Like we've delivered, right? It's not true. There's a, there's a massive integration that needs to happen there. And we're, we're, we're kind of like, that's part of the reason why we're able to, to have such an impact on churn. So yeah, we love, like, we love those roles, sales, sales roles, you know, customer service roles, workers at, you know, at the plant level. in manufacturing or like warehouse and distribution where you have again this natural high churn that happens, right? Um, we're, we're able to like really solve that problem.

That's awesome. When you think about like the next stage for your business, what excites you?

Oh wow. Um, I, I, I, what's exciting for me is obviously growth. Growth is, is, is something that, that If you've ever been involved with a rocket ship company, right? With growth comes this amazing challenge, right? I'm excited about, you know, we validated what we, what we built across high volume, high churn businesses, enterprise. And we've also validated it for smaller organizations, even early stage startups that you know, have VC backing will come to us and be like, we need, you know, a tech co-founder or we need like a very strategic, you know, go-to-market CMO or something like that. And we're able to, we validated it. I'm excited to see our approach scale. I'm excited to see like the recruitment profession, the recruitment industry, and also like leadership. I'm excited to see leadership embrace recruitment as, as truly a weapon as opposed to like a necessity. And I think that shift that we're going to see over the next— it's going to take time. Like, humans are not going to move at the speed of AI. I'm a big believer in that. Like, it's amazing how fast we're moving now as people, but it's going to take a while. I think the next kind of 12 to 24 months in my business is going to be about converting, you know, people to our model. And as that happens, more and more people will, will learn about our model. I went through this, you know, in, in, in the '90s with, with, with, uh, the startup that I was involved with, the first startup that I was involved with. We, we went and like completely changed the procurement profession. Um, it takes time and that's exciting. I'm very excited for that. I, I hope it happens a little bit faster than this than the last cycle.

Cool. I think people are— there's so much change. I think you'd be surprised. So when you look at your own journey, like the wins and the mistakes, like what lessons have stood out to you?

Um, yeah, that's a great question. Uh, and I, you know, I, I, I, I, the, the, the, the obvious one for me at the end of the day is it is about the people. Um, I, I look at the the wins and the losses. Do you have the right people on the boat with you? Right. Do you have the right people that are on your team building with you by your side? It's key. I've seen a lot of companies kind of just take a person because of their capability and their talent. But not do the work that you need to do to integrate them from a cultural perspective. And I think that's really, really important. I kind of use the analogy of a successful sports franchise, right? The most successful sport franchises, the ones that are truly like dynasties that win consistently, it was their ability to assemble the right team. And I know that sounds very obvious, think about it, like NFL, there's 32 professional teams every year. Any one of those teams could win the entire thing, right? But the one that does it consistently over time, and there's been a bunch of those dynasties, it comes down to like the right ownership, the right head coach that can, that can truly lead, um, the best, you know, the best athletes in the world. Right? That's a talent to be able to lead those guys. You, you need a general on the field, the executioner, right? The person that actually carries out what the, what the head coach's strategy— it tends to be in the owner's strategy. That's, that's usually the quarterback, right? Um, and then every championship team, it's very well known, it's the defense that wins the championship, right? It's, it's— you need, you need that championship defense. So you analyze like Patriots, or, you know, KC's been on a run, uh, more recently, right? Or you go back to like the great, uh, dynasties of the 49ers and the Cowboys and the Steelers. Like, these were, were all built around those four components. I think businesses are the same way. I, I, I, I, I, in my journey, I look back like we, we assembled amazing, amazing people to where we were really super successful. Where we were not successful, I can point to actually like that as being like the main issue.

Oh, missing those 4 components.

Yeah. Yeah. To not have to, to not assemble the right team. Yeah. Like, I don't know if you like, I don't know if you watch a lot of like shows on TV. My, I don't have the time to, but I used to, I used to like a few years where I wasn't leading a bit, operating a business. And you know, what always stood out to me, the great shows, like you'd take a Sopranos, right? Like, back in the day, think about the characters that they, they put together on that show. Like, they assembled— I mean, even like the ones that you hate, you hated, right? Like, I really did not like—

they were cast for the role, right?

They were cast for the role. Um, yeah, that's the difference. I think that's the difference between a show like that, um, and, and just another show. Like, and that's not to say that, like, you know, there's other shows that have been super successful financially. They've run their course. Everyone was, you know, it was a win, right? But it's like, yeah, did they have— was the whole cast like on point the way, like, again, The Sopranos comes to mind, right? And there's others. I mean, there's many others, but it's that ability to assemble the right team. And that's, that's why I think zero hiring spoke to me personally. It's why I looked at the portfolio companies that we launched with Infinity Constellation, and I kind of— this was the one. This was the one I was attracted to, this problem of how do we make recruitment better? How do we solve the hiring problem? And I want to solve that problem for everybody. I want to be able to like, I want that one-man startup that everyone's talking about. I want that one-man startup to just be able to press a couple of buttons and have Xero Hiring provide whatever talent and people it needs. Now, if it's a one-man startup, it's not going to need people realistically. But, but, you know, that's my goal is like, how do we, how do we help all businesses with, with the talent question? Because I think you solve that, you're going to, you're just going to see this progression, economic, And otherwise, it's going to be amazing.

Yeah, I really resonate with what you're saying. When I think about like every business challenge that I've ever faced, it's like, yeah, there's definitely big technical problems to solve. There's definitely sales problems and marketing challenges, but the biggest problems have always been people. Every time it's like it's always people. That's the biggest problem. I mean, not like the people are the problem, but like the biggest challenge is that is having the people that can solve those problems. That's— I, I love what you say. Do you have any final thoughts or advice you'd give to other leaders?

Oh wow, yeah. Um, we, we live in this amazing time right now where if, if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you are an entrepreneur that's, that's maybe going to be a repeat entrepreneur as I am, right? Lean in to the fast pace of change. That's my advice. Like, like, especially to the more experienced folk, right? The most, more experienced entrepreneurs that are coming in, lean into the tools and lean into like the culture that is now evolving. In entrepreneurship. It's, it's, it's moving incredibly fast. It's got— it's exponentially better than what you're used to, what you did in your last startup, right? What you— pre-2023, right? Like, like the world was different. And here's the other amazing thing about that is it costs a lot less. Like this model, this faster, better, cheaper concept is core, I think, to anything that you're building, anything that you want to do. And so embrace it. My advice is do not— like, I see a lot of great people, great entrepreneurs, great talent get stuck because they're worried about like their career or how it looks or failure. Like, they're afraid to fail. And my view is like, you know, I had a great piece of advice given to me by a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, uh, that's in the business with us. And he basically said, you're dead already. He goes, you need to operate like you're dead already so that you don't worry about the optics, you don't worry about like what happens if fail, you've already failed. So just go, like, go to war. Like, you just got to go get it done. Like, you're already dead. And it was one of the most liberating advice that was given to me in the heat of, of operating a business. And so I, I encourage people to just lean in, go for it, don't be afraid. Um, if you're, if you're stuck thinking about like, how am I going to pay my bills? Or, or, you know, how am I going to survive? Or how am I going to How am I going to be successful? You need to stop keep asking yourself that question. You just need to go out and do it.

Like, that's my advice. Just go. That's awesome. Get it done. Thank you so much.

It's an exciting time. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thank you for sharing your insights, and this has been great, a fun conversation too. Um, so yeah, to learn more about zero hiring, visit zerohiring.com. And then also, just as a reminder, Shah is a general partner of Infinity Constellation. holding company for AI-native service businesses. And that wraps up today's episode of the Achieve Podcast. And a big thank you to our sponsors, Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional leadership services for growing brands, and also Achieve Bootcamps, where entrepreneurs can learn hands-on how to build AI-powered systems and marketing automation tools. If you enjoyed today's conversation, follow the show and share it with another entrepreneur who would find value in it. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Achieve Podcast.