EP 60: Why Founders Become the Bottleneck — And How AI Changes Everything | Thea Brook

We get bespoke to each business and scenario that's happening, but underneath it, what's great is that we're working on the same things. And that's brilliant for the founders who are in it as well, because there's an element of crossover with them. So we do some of the work one-on-one and then we do some in groups, and that's so powerful for them to see, oh, that thing you're talking about, I've been struggling with that and I thought it was just me.

Or I've been there, done that, and solved that. Can I share my wisdom?

Absolutely, yeah. And it really multiplies. the effect of how beneficial that container is for them. I was at a local networking event a couple of weeks ago, and of the 5 business owners that I spoke to, not one of them was even using an AI note-taker in their calls.

I know I get asked in when I'm presenting out to groups of CEOs, what's the one thing we should be doing? Record all your meetings. I always get somebody that goes, oh, we can't do that because— don't record that meeting then, or delete the transcript. Record everything else. Yeah, because those conversations that take place, that's gold. That's information that gets lost normally, but if you're able to mine and use that, it's incredibly powerful.

Hi, I'm Freya. Welcome to the Skynet Chronicles: Business in the AI Age, the podcast that dives deep into the world where artificial intelligence meets business. Join us as we explore the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in this ever-evolving landscape. From innovative startups to established enterprises, we'll uncover the secrets behind the successful integration of AI technologies. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and get ready to unlock the mysteries of business in the AI age.

Well, Thea, welcome. Great to see you this morning. Thank you.

You too.

So let's start at the beginning of your journey. What took you into wanting to help people?

With the work I do now, it's very much a culmination of everything I've done to date and all the horribly painful lessons that I've learned along the way. And I remember being in some of those horribly painful lessons and thinking, this, this has to go somewhere at some point. Like— there's so many of us walking around learning all of this stuff for the first time in the most painful way possible.

Brutal business reality.

Exactly, yes. And I, I remember for quite a long time I had this back of my mind feeling like I'm not— I can't let this happen to everybody forever.

Yeah.

So I knew I wanted to put my experience into something. But this— but the kind of, I guess, the iteration of what I do now has been a really fun evolution of following the breadcrumbs as I've thought, how do I bring what I've done today in the best way possible to have the best impact for the right people? And in a way where it's a business that I really want to run.

Yeah.

Like, it's structured in a way that really supports the lifestyle that I want. And allows me to keep all my boundaries in the right place around how much I spend or what time I want to spend moving my body and making my own food and spending time with my family and all those important things to me. So it's— I think it's kind of been like shoehorned in over about 2 and a half years of both exploring the market and the, you know, what the product could be and not breaking those guardrails of how I want life to look. And if at any point some piece of information said no, doesn't fit, then I kind of bounced off that wall and went in a different direction to land where I landed.

Fantastic. And did you say that you're helping 8 or 9 business owners currently?

We've got 9 in the program at the moment. Yeah.

Fantastic. And what sort of spectrum are they in terms of business types?

Predominantly service-based businesses, although— and when I say service-based, it would be— I would describe it as a business where the, the skill set that the business owner started with— so let's say that he had a career in marketing— they have started selling that service themselves and eventually built up others around them who deliver that same service. So their team of people delivering that service around the core of what the founder was brilliant at. But not just agencies. So we have a functional medicine practice, for example. So yeah, like, I can't say just agencies. Um, however, because one of my past businesses was a product business, about 30% of the people generally I support come in with a product business, so e-com or retail or a mixture of both. Yeah.

And do you find that they generally have the same core challenges?

Yes. Yeah.

So every business is different, but every business has the same problems?

They do. Yeah. I think we hit Like, business is business. It's, it's really the same machine underneath all of it that makes it work, right? It's the same boxes that need ticking. And humans are human, and we all, as the people leading the businesses, hit the same blocks. So yes, we get bespoke to each business and scenario that's happening, but underneath it, what's great is that we're working on the same things. And that's, that's brilliant for the founders who are in it as well, because there's an element of crossover with them. So we do some of the work one-on-one, and then we do some in groups. And that's so powerful for them to see, oh, that thing you're talking about, I've been struggling with that, and I thought it was just me.

Well, I've been there, done that, and solved that. Can I share my wisdom?

Absolutely, yeah. And it really, it really multiplies the effect of how beneficial that container is for them.

Fantastic. And so thinking about, obviously we can't name names, we don't want to talk about businesses, but what's one of the most common challenges that you come across in the businesses that you're supporting?

Trying to pick from all of them.

For me, it always comes down to 2 things really. It's people or sales. They are the key repeating challenges that we see.

Interesting. So tactically, I'd say yes. What I find interesting is that we can't really get to the tactical challenges and have a lasting impact there unless we look more holistically at what is going on. And the, the number one thing that I see going on— so the point we work with typically is generally, especially if they're a service business, they're in the low 6 figures. product businesses can be closer to 7, but they're in that, that range. And they're at the point where really the, the founders become the bottleneck. That's, that's the easiest way to put it, right? Everything's built around the founder to date, and so they're in everything to an extent. Like, the team still need them for things, clients still want to talk to them, sales still come in because of their reputation. They've, they're signing off things, checking quality's right, absolutely in everything.

Everything flows through the founder. It's not founder-led sales, it's founder everything, isn't it?

Exactly, yeah. So that naturally just does hit a ceiling because you can't keep growing that capacity of that person. So the number one thing we have to tackle is capacity. And business owners often come into us and they're so ready to, you know, in their mind they're like, what's the tactic we need? Like, you know, it's the people thing or the sales thing. And I think And you just, you can't make sensible decisions around those tactics until you have capacity, because the capacity is not just about time in your diary. It's all the elements of capacity that you need for your nervous system to go, okay, we have some breathing room, we have some space. You know, we know so much about the brain now in that if it doesn't have that, it's going to be operating in this very narrow way and just looking at this immediate problem in front of them and making very short-term survival decisions. And we have to get them back into that state where the cognitive bandwidth opens back up again. So, you know, the solution might not be that thing you can immediately see there that will fix it today. It might be something over here that will strengthen the business going forward, but you won't see the results for 2 or 3 weeks. And you've got to be able to breathe into that gap and hold it to actually move the business into a place of more strength.

So I guess the advantage you've got at that point is that they've already bought into the service you're delivering. So you're not preaching to people who actually need converting. They've already got some faith and belief. But how do you get them to that, that point of the decision or inflection point where they make that change? They understand that, okay, I need to actually make this adjustment to free up my time so that I can be useful to work on rather than in the business.

That piece, if somebody needs to get their head around it, partly comes through coaching. A lot of what we do isn't coaching, it's somewhere in the balance of consulting, done-for-you, mentorship, more of that realm, more of us going, here's what works, here's what we need to do. But there are points like this where we really need the coaching because we really need the person to buy into it for themselves. Because, you know, all the work, really the first 2 phases that we work through with founders, are more led by them with our guidance. Because by the time we get into the really tactical stuff that starts from the 3rd phase, they need to be in it.

Yeah.

All right, they— it— that we all know, like, especially with entrepreneurs, we There's a reason we're unemployable, right? We don't want to be told what to do.

Or can't be told what to do.

We know better. So they have to know it's the right thing. So coaching upfront around, well, let's, you know, talk me through if you continue operating the way you're operating, how do you have time and headspace to work on this stuff? What does that look like? Let's actually talk. Let's pull up your calendar. Show me in your calendar where this week this is going to happen.

Right, so shining a spotlight on me right now.

Yeah, and it's, and it's, and it's getting them to make that realization for themselves, and then they go, okay, I really need this. What's really interesting, actually, quite often— and I had a founder say this to me a couple of weeks ago— but quite often what we hear from them is, I almost needed somebody to give me permission, like subconsciously give me permission to put something down. Because they were carrying all this weight of like, I have to keep all these plates spinning and I have to be busy and I have to be doing, and that's what keeps the business going. And if I stop and I pause or I slow down, everything's going to collapse. And they are, you know, so strung out operating that way. They don't want to be operating that way, but they feel like they should, and they're putting all this pressure on themselves. So when somebody with a very credible background who's worked with 250 other businesses to help them scale comes along and says, actually, the most strategic thing you can do right now is put 30% of that down, go to the gym, eat a nice meal, get to bed early. It's almost like this weight of somebody going, oh, I think I can look after myself.

It's the slip that they wouldn't take themselves.

Yeah. And it's actually the smart thing to do. It's not, it's not because you can't cope. It's not because you can't handle the pressure that everybody else in business can handle. And it's not because you're weak or lazy or any of these things. It's actually the most smart strategic thing you can do to take control back as a business owner.

So how important is exercise to business owners?

So important. I was actually, um, weekend before last, I went on a founders weekend that I go on every summer. There's 55 of us, all business owners. It's just absolutely amazing. It's ridiculously silly and brilliant at the same time. And almost every deep conversation that I got into that was more around business and whether people were doing well or struggling, fitness came up in that conversation. And either people were feeling great because they were, and, and, you know, part of that they said was, I'm all over my ex, like, I'm just in the habit with my exercise, or they were really struggling and they were all saying, I've fallen off the wagon with it. Like, it's so—

Just direct cause and effect.

Yeah, it's so linked. Like, we just You're— even if you just get out for a walk in the morning, your system starts working properly, everything starts moving, and you get rid of tension, and you just bring so much more energy back into your day and that clarity. And again, it's that healthy mind results in just being able to sit down at your desk and handle a problem that comes in, or, you know, have that resilience, have that clear thinking, think creatively, All of those things come back to feeling healthy, which links back to doing your exercise.

I think often when you're in that flow state of exercise, especially in more endurance activity, that's when I have my deepest thinking. So I can get into the pool or get onto the bike, get out the other end, and I've solved a problem that I didn't plan to. It's just when you get into that relaxed state, your mind starts sort of thinking through logically and challenges get solved.

Absolutely. So often all the pieces are in us. Some are in the brain, some are in the nervous system, you know, the gut, all that kind of thing. We just need to give some space and allow ourselves to listen to it rather than sitting there and thinking, I need to think up the answer. Like, I've really— I can solve this. Yeah, it's like we just— yeah, just give yourself some space and let it move around and it will all— they'll find each other and then suddenly you know what you're doing.

So you mentioned that some of the work that you're doing is on a group basis. Is that structured as a mastermind where effectively a challenge is set or a key topic is discussed?

No, it's not. So the way— it depends which phase that they're in of working with us. So the initial 6 months where a business owner works with us, we are actually taking them through 5 very structured phases. It's, it's what we know to effectively shift somebody from what I call 6-figure energy and running their business in 6-figure to 7-figure energy. And it's that, that shift from being the business to really leading it. And part of that comes from the human, and part of it comes from how we move the pieces around in the business. And, and they need to happen in order. So as, as the founders are going through that piece of work with us, elements of it, they can go and sit on a video with me and like learn what is this about, how do I need to operate, how do I need to think about this, how does this apply to my business, work through it. And then we have different open calls through the month. So there's 3 opportunities to come in and sit. It's effectively— I call it like my room is open for a couple of hours, office hours, or whatever you prefer to come in and sit in my room for a couple of hours every week. And then we have— so on the team with me, we have a head of marketing, a head of finance, and a head of people and ops, and they all have an open call through the month as well. So if the particular phase or challenge you're working through in the business is to do with your team, you would go into Emily's call and work through that with her. Um, so that's how the group sessions work. But it as well, what it means is when you're joining those calls, everybody on that call with you also is working through people and ops challenges and is at this same juncture of business growth. So it's, it's, yeah, I guess in a sense, yes, it is around the topic, but just not as specific as that.

And have you got a follow-on group that's the 8 to 9 figure energy?

Not yet, not yet. So we have— so typically Founders Work, they'll see that structured piece for the first 6 months, and then we stay on to support them as what we then call more of a strategic leadership team on tap, where that we know their business, they have all the disciplines, you're still not at that point where you can afford to hire everybody into those roles, but you do need to be able to tap into those. So we just work with them and keep them on a 90-day cadence. So every quarter we look at the business together— where are we at now, what does the next 90 days need to look like— lay out that roadmap and then support them through it.

Fantastic. So what's your ideal customer profile? If a founder's out there right now and they're thinking they're struggling, how do they know that yours is the right business to help them?

They are solo, sole founder, founder-led businesses, low 6 figures. They are typically female.

Interesting.

Yeah, so we, we do have a couple of male founders we're working with at the moment, but typically I work with women. I think particularly because there's a lot of work around the inner shifts For women, there's a lot of additional battles that go on. And that's not black and white between men and women, but typically with women, there are a lot more. You know, we've come from a corporate environment maybe where you've been fighting there and not been able to push to where you want to. So you're carrying all that extra.

That glass ceiling has felt like a proper restriction. It's carried for life then if you're not careful.

Yeah, and you've also, you know, a lot of women carry more of the domestic responsibilities. So they're juggling that side of things as well, whether they've got kids or not. So yeah, typically female, They know they have something really good. They know they're really good. They're not the kind of really bold, showy people, but they're just confident in, like, I know this is really good, and I know this could be better, and I know I could run this as a bigger business, but I can't get to that version of me or that version of business, and I can't figure out why. And they want to.

They're really—

determined and ambitious to get there. But at the same time, they don't want to give their entire life to the business, which is how they feel at the juncture where we start working together. So they typically feel like, this is just taking way too much from me, it's not paying me enough. I want to be able to give my energy to my health and fitness and my family and my friends and all these other things I'm interested in. And they're also frustrated in that they have so many ideas around how they want to develop their impact and their service. They want to be able to create around it and, and have that time as a business owner, but they're just in the weeds all the time, and they think they're just getting themselves out and they get pulled back into it again. So they're kind of stuck in this cycle. They're the people we come in and work with. And the thing that's amazing about it is if you've got a business that's low 6 figures you've done the hard bit. Yeah, it gets to be easy from there, but we don't let it be easy because we stay in this 6-figure energy. We stay in this—

Well, that control thing is trying to be the master of all puppets.

Exactly. Yeah, it's very hard to get out of that. I think, I think partly because it's what's worked to get the business to where you are. It's all you've seen, so it's all your brain knows as normal. It's like the signals the brain has is if I do this, I get to here, so I should keep doing this. So, it's actually quite hard to make that change around, well, actually, no, we kind of need to change fully how we're operating here. There's a lot we're going to have to change, a lot you're going to have to let go of, a lot that needs to be restructured. And getting that, you know, it's brave work to go, oh, okay, I can let go of some of this and it's not all going to fall apart, and it's actually where I need to go. And that comes back to the capacity piece again. You know, we really need the capacity in the nervous system to, to do it because it's brave work.

What impact has technology had on the processes and the changes that you see within businesses in the last couple of years?

Inside the businesses themselves, well, we're just so— we're such early days, aren't we, in terms of AI itself. Um, but I have seen— so we support all of our founders in understanding AI, understanding how it can fit into their business, building like understanding what particularly what agentic means and how they can build agentic agents and that kind of thing. And that's it. That's phenomenal. You know, showing somebody in a 2-hour workshop what they can do and then seeing them start posting messages in our group forum a day later of like, I've just created this and I've just done this.

Show and tell is so important, isn't it?

Yeah.

Learning through play and then sharing. Yeah, that is change management.

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. And a conversation we used to have frequently in the work was when somebody was first thinking about hiring, we would say, okay, before we look at that, let's look at whether the work is all in the right place in the business, if some stuff should be better automated, if it should be streamlined, all these kind of things. And then if we're hiring, like, what's the skill set and the things we need to hire? That conversation is completely different now because it's actually, well, hang on, should a human be doing this at all? And what else in the business should a human not be doing? And how can we quickly automate these things through AI so that you don't need to take on those additional costs as a business?

Yeah, the productive capacity of a business has changed. It used to just be These people work that job spec. This is what they do. Over time, you might change what they were doing slightly so it was outside that initial job spec. But now you can look across a business and say, here's all the work that needs to be done. How do we split that between people, agents, and hybrid? And how is that work allocated? And I think many businesses are struggling on as to how they do that allocation of work and understand what's possible. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I'm seeing 2 very different routes people go down. One is saving people a lot of time and money, and one is probably causing them double the amount of work and energy drain. I had somebody recently say, I feel like I'm running— I feel like I'm now managing a very junior, quite terrible team, and that's not what I want to do with my time and my business because they've got all these like bits of agents running wild and doing things wrong.

Um, I—

the big problem that I see is when people approach it and they say, okay, we need to AI our business, we need to learn AI. And then they go, they kind of step away from their business and go, okay, I'm going to go into the world of AI and learn all of AI.

I've learned it now.

And then I'm going to bring it back and put it into my business. Which, it just makes you so busy and so exhausted and so confused.

And it's changed by the time you've learned it anyway.

Exactly. Yeah. I recently had, I had a really interesting, like, afternoon session, session slash debate with a group of entrepreneurs around AI second brains, who was building them, what was happening, what was good, what was bad, all of that kind of thing. And we— the conclusion we actually got to out the back of it was this is a terrible and useless term that's actually not helping anybody.

No.

Because what's happening is if you— if you were— so I'm one of the people who has been building what I would have referred to as a second brain into my business since the beginning of this year. If you're one of the people who's been doing it for a while and has done it very you've kind of let it evolve over time. You started with, or I did in particular, I started with a little process and I worked backwards from the output that I wanted and worked back. Okay, so what inputs does that mean we need and how, and how should they be stored and structured and all that kind of thing to get to the output? And then I moved on to the next one and the next one and the next one. So I look at mine now and I have conversations with people around it being this brain that takes information in from all over the place and produces all these outputs. But it didn't start from me going, okay, I'm building a brain. The brain needs every bit of knowledge from everywhere.

It's not holistic, it's actually a series of action outputs.

Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's workflows. What, what we were really getting down to is ultimately what you need to build in that world, in that knowledge base, is that it's AI platform agnostic. Like, it could work because they keep switching which is better, right? So it's like one minute you've built everything on Claude and then Codex is better and then we're back to Claude and then like these kind of things.

Anthropic get Fable banned.

Exactly. Yeah. So we're going between them constantly. So you need any AI to be able to like work through your knowledge base. But the way in which you build your knowledge base, that's the piece that you need to make sure has cohesion to it.

Yeah.

So you're coming back to the same kind of database. I'm using Obsidian and I Love it for like organizing and managing like my file storage. And then at the moment, Airtable is my database off the back of that if I need it. And any process that I run through, I'm trying to bring through those tools, and then I can point Codex at it or Claude at it as I need to.

And the challenge is this is effectively the founder brain you're building. It's not actually the company brain.

So it does depend. We had one of the girls in that session, she was really trying to get everybody to adopt the terms. First brain in head, second brain is the founder brain, and third brain is the company brain.

It's too many brains.

It's too many brains.

Too many chefs.

I would agree. And also, we then got to the point where we said, let's not call it the brain anyway, because it's just unhelpful. Um, mine that I've been building is much more the central knowledge base of the business. So because we work with all of these different businesses, we have our knowledge base around what we need to be looking out for and, and what phases the business needs to move through depending on what we're seeing happen in the business. That used to be me looking at a business and figuring that out. We now have that built in and our methodologies and things to the brain. It then pulls in signals from different places, so takes all of our call transcripts with the founders, takes— we have a platform where we do a lot of communication we use Circle, so it aggregates all of the information from Circle, feeds that through. We have tally forms, we have various different things that are pulling in conversations that are happening around the businesses, and we know their plan for the quarter, for example. And then we have dashboards that come out the back of it that say, okay, so this is how this person's doing against each of the phases, this is where they're moving, here's a red flag that's popped up, or Something like that. So ours is very much the business side that's running.

Fantastic. And do you think many businesses are thinking in this way?

I think you might think they are if you're doing it because you're in the conversations with other people who are doing it. But I still think we're the something percent of the 1%, if you're doing this, are genuinely—

Fractions of fractions of fractions.

I was at a local networking event a couple of weeks ago, and of the 5 business owners I spoke to, not one of them was even using an AI note-taker in their calls.

I know I get asked when I'm presenting out to groups of CEOs, what's the one thing we should be doing? Record all your meetings. I always get somebody that goes, oh, we can't do that because— don't record that meeting then, or delete the transcript. Record everything else. Yeah, because those conversations that take place, that's gold. That's information that gets lost normally. But if you're able to mine and use that, it's incredibly powerful. You combine those call transcripts with knowledge in your CRM, with the information in your calendar, with the files on your file system, with your email system. You can extract amazing insights that then help you identify what's the next action that should be taken.

Yeah.

If you're missing that core piece of the conversation that your team are having and that you're having with customers, What are you even playing at? But there's always pushback. Somebody goes, oh, we can't do that. Okay, don't then. Yeah, watch everybody else do it.

It's what the advantage is. It's what we've always done in our brains, right? So if I think of me sitting in a company when I'm back in my CFO days, I would be in certain meetings and there's a lot of conversation that goes on, but your brain latches onto certain things. Right? So you're, you're really leaving that to chance that the person that's in that meeting for your company, whether it's, you know, if it's you, if you're a sole business owner, you're leaving it to chance that you're picking up on all these different things. Like, so often I will interrogate a transcript from a call that I've had, and these insights will pop out, and I think, God, I didn't even really think— I didn't connect those dots. Or it might take that transcript and then go, actually, this is a theme that you've talked about for the last few weeks, or the last 4 founders you've spoken to have all said some version of this. Like, we've got so much that we're trying to keep our brains on. Why not let this very smart assistant do a load of that thinking for you that can benefit the business?

Do you think we are in the process of creating a vast swathe of AI slop in terms of marketing content?

Oh, we're there. I don't think we're in the process. I think we're well into it.

So how do you guide the founders that you're working with to not be part of that?

AI slop comes from leaning too much on the AI itself to generate either the content, like the thinking, and/or the language. that it's using, right? This is actually so easy to not fall into this trap. It's so frustrating how much of it we're seeing because it's so easy.

People are lazy though.

I think they're lazy. I think we are inherently lazy. I mean, God, I stand on a treadmill thinking I'm going to do 20 minutes and by minute 8 I'm thinking maybe I'll do 10.

Do a sedate.

Yeah, our brains just do that, don't they? Straight away they try and make us lazy. We're not that lazy.

Um, if you—

one, one thing I think people don't get enough about marketing content is how to put in your base documents and skills, your base learnings. So one of the things we do with founders is we have a, a sheet with a set of questions on it, and we say put on your AI note-taker, have this in front of you and read the question and then answer the question, but answer it like speaking, you know.

Don't type.

Walking around your living room. And it's things like, some of the questions are like, how do you think about the world, you know, in particular, in a way that you think is different to other people? What experiences have shaped the work that you do today? They're really colourful questions that are really getting you to to bring out all of that interesting stuff that you might say in conversation or you might write if you were writing your marketing materials yourself. And that's doing 2 things. It's learning who you are and what you're like in order to write like you, but it's also picking up your natural language. It's like the easiest way possible to get an AI to sound like you is to give it lots of you talking. And how you talk is going to be how you sound like yourself through writing.

And ultimately it's more context. And that's what the AI models need.

Yeah.

Do you think that written-form content is better performing than human video content?

Human— I think it depends what you latch onto as better performing, actually.

In terms of— I guess my view is that know, like, trust is far easier delivered through video conversations where people can hear your views firsthand. They're not reading something that's been spat out by an AI. They're not looking at a video that was clearly AI-generated. It's a conversation with humans, wrinkles, freckles, and all, because that's what cuts through. And I think that that will continue to cut through because it's so easy for anybody to generate written and audio and now video content. So I think that actually all founders should be talking to camera.

I agree with you on that.

They hate it.

Yeah, I would agree with you on that. I think it's so critical for people to now know that— not just know that you're a real human, but see you on the spot, you know, in an environment like this where it's not scripted. You can't have—

It couldn't be scripted. I can't say the same thing twice.

Yeah, it's very— it's a very fast way to build that credibility that you can't do through writing. I think the writing has its place. I think people are so busy that we're not going to sit and watch videos every day. The writing is what needs to get people to the point where they're interested in you enough to watch you on video.

Yeah.

So they both have their place. I think people can get confused with what good performance looks like in terms of Oh, I'm putting out this viral content and it's getting loads of likes and impressions. Well, great. I just had a wild one. So on Sunday, I just, I didn't have anything to post on LinkedIn, and I had this hilarious photo from that morning of buying a Starbucks and the guy asking me my name about 4 times and eventually going, okay, and then just giving me the cup and it said guest name. They obviously just gave up. And that was my LinkedIn post, and the impressions were off the charts, like far more than any of my content. Like, you can look at that and go, well, I'm not going to sit and spend ages making infographics and carousels and teaching people stuff when all I need to do is post a picture of a Starbucks cup.

It gets instant gratification response.

This is it.

Doesn't actually have real engagement.

Exactly. So I think it's it's easy to get too hooked on that, the vanity metric side of written content. For me, if I put video content on LinkedIn, which is usually a short from a YouTube that I've released, the engagement is so much lower. Like, what I used to— I would have thought before is like painfully lower, but it's because of that, the right intent is on that. Like, the right people are looking at it, the right people are interested. And the right people are going from that to YouTube and they're actually taking action. It's like you don't— when it gets to that bottom of middle, bottom of funnel content, you don't need lots of engagement. You just need the right people.

Absolutely. And it, it is easy to go down the path of, oh, this one's only got 1,120 interactions. It doesn't matter if those are the right 20 people.

Exactly.

That's what really makes the difference. Fantastic. So what worries you about technology and the way we're heading in the next year, 2 years?

On a grand scale, I'm very interested to see what starts to happen around employment. That is the big one.

Interested?

Yeah, I use the word interested because I'm in so many conversations about it, and I see so many opinions about it, and I think none of us know, right, at all. There's, on the one hand, some people saying, yeah, we're going to have this huge swathe of unemployment, and other people saying, we've never failed to find jobs for ourselves. We're excruciatingly good at finding jobs for ourselves to do.

Yeah.

So I'm really interested to see how that plays out in the sense of the domino effect, how we start to feel the domino effect. Because there's a lot of people saying, oh, that won't impact these kind of roles, it won't impact this. Well, maybe not directly, but indirectly, it's going to be really interesting to see. And naturally, that's going to come with a lot of disruption and a lot of upset. So that's probably top of the list. I guess on a smaller scale, people who have— who can have a really good impact in the world, who are the right people from, you know, they have the right hearts to be doing the work, they're the people we want to be accumulating wealth and power, which is, you know, sounds dirty, but it's really what's happening when you get business right. Whether we're going to see the wealth and power end up in the right hands. That's why one of the reasons we really encourage all of the founders we work with that they need to get on board with AI. I work with a local construction company and they're like, we're a load of fanboys that do building, we don't want to talk about AI. And I'm like, no, we're going to talk about AI because it's not whether you as a company should naturally adopt this kind of technology, it's that if the 3 other main construction companies in your area all do, they're going to become faster, cheaper, you know, more efficient, better at their job.

Request for quote more quickly. Yeah, able to close that business before you're still looking at the opportunity.

Able to lower their overheads massively and then quote less. Like, this is the commercial reality of what's going to happen. And I think making sure that the good people of the world who maybe don't want to be spending all their time in technology, maybe want to be more hands-on and people-oriented, encouraging those people to, to see why it's so important to get ahead with AI.

Fantastic. So your services are obviously massively in demand. Assuming that they're the right person, how can a founder get in touch with you?

LinkedIn is where I hang out. Okay, they want to literally come and say hi there. I am generally allergic to social media, but I do, do hang out on LinkedIn and my YouTube as well. It was a really nice place to just come and sit with some of our work.

What's the channel name?

So channel is called Calmm with 2 Ms. And yeah, or come and find me via the website, which is theabrooke.com.

Fantastic. I've loved our conversation this morning. Thank you very much for being a guest there. It's been a great chat.

Yeah, me too. Thanks for having me.