Why I’m Going ALL IN on AI in 2026 (and you should too)
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about how AI is going to change the world and how you need to get ahead of it. AI will change the way we live, work, and play in the 21st century. It s going to replace a lot of jobs that were created only because of the internet.
Transcript
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All right, here's the reality. I'm going all in on AI in 2026 and the truth is you should too.
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I recently put on an event where I invited dozens of AI CEOs to discuss where is everybody going to
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be disrupted? What's working now? And I thought to myself, why don't I just invite the world?
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Why don't I show you? There's so many people out there that talk about shit that they've never done.
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We're doing it. I challenged Roddy. I said, we need a plan to build a billion dollar company
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in three years well he comes back he says we are going to build an ai venture studio that generates
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25 billion dollars in enterprise value the last two years have been exponential and parabolic
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this is not easy as you all know what man is upon
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before the internet there was whole companies and businesses and industries called magazines
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and newspapers and there was people that made paper products for that industry and everybody
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lost their jobs and then what they didn't realize is it created a new set of jobs called web designer
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okay that didn't exist literally before the internet there was nothing called a web design
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yeah and now there's web designers and then there's security people and system analysts
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and network engineers and all these new jobs that were created only because of the internet
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the ones that saw the internet come and said okay we have a newspaper but we also have the internet
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let's start investing in the internet and we're going to slowly as the memberships die off we're
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just going to transition online and we're going to become a digital online platform and make money
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this is what the role of a ceo has always been it doesn't matter if you're blockbusters kodak or a
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paper company your job is to look at where things are going and get ahead of it so the role right
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now for everybody honestly from my opinion teach everybody how to code i just got out of a meeting
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with a guy that said we have 50 people on the staff and we taught everybody cloud code including
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the HR people, including the marketing people, including everybody. And they all took all their
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workload and their workflows and they automated into new dashboards and they're all coding.
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Here's what people don't get. If you don't do this, your team will see what the world's doing
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and go find a company that is doing this because they don't want to become irrelevant. That's a
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fact. You can decide not to do this because you're worried to lose your people. You're going to lose
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them because they're going to jump ship because they're going to realize you're a sinking ship.
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There's this framework that I teach often called neural transformation, which is understanding
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what are the things that'll never change so it's like from a leadership point of view i felt like
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i had to pour into the people even the world's smartest ai folks just on understanding how they
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need to show up in this new world and then also show them how ai is going to completely change
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everything they're building most of the people in the world are that is a technical term and when
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Because they are still pretending like this isn't here.
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they're acting like all these innovations that have happened,
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they think it's gonna be similar so they got time.
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The good news is, is there used to be buildings
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there was a whole bunch of people managing spreadsheets.
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There's always been a de-skill and an up-skill of every industry.
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AI is going to create a whole lot of jobs, and it already has.
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It didn't exist before AI that will give people opportunity.
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Right off the bat, if you don't think AI primitive, AI native, AI first,
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If you don't go to AI and say, here is my goal, tell me how to accomplish it,
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before you start a task, you are doing it to yourself.
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You are acting like you don't know, that it knows more than you,
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than it could ever imagine, you could ever f***ing learn.
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It's got PhDs in every discipline of human mankind,
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While everybody else is stuck here, this room is going to elevate.
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The one thing I would take away at that event is there's another level,
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and you need to be aware of that next level.
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There's so many people out there that talk about shit that they've never done.
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Whether it's AI or a media company or leading teams or holding high standards,
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we're doing it, and I want to have the ability to show that.
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The world of technology today has completely changed.
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Where it used to be zeros and ones, then hexadecimal, then assembler,
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Because I understand that the rest of the world filters what it says to people
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because it doesn't trust that people can handle the truth.
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Because I would feel so shitty to have somebody feel surprised by learning something that I knew about a year and a half ago.
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So are you guys down to be exposed to what the future is going to hold?
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We had demos done by a lot of different people in my companies.
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Those talks blew my mind and during my companies, like I know them.
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I had my CTO, Etienne, go up there and talk about how language models actually work
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and use a very physical exercise that got everybody to understand it for once.
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A lot of people use these AIs, but they don't actually know how they work.
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It's like I'm telling you, write, Anton, a message, okay?
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As quickly as possible, group yourself with someone who picked the same word.
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half a billion to a trillion mathematical transactions
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has been tokenized. Let's say this is the index number 12, 200, 500, 80, whatever. This is all
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sorts of indices that point to an embedding table. The embedding table essentially is a
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table of vectors, a list of numbers. And every token points to one of these long rows of numbers.
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And then they go through this thing called the LLM.
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And the LLM is really a transformer where all these vectors are calculated against a bunch of pre-trained vectors.
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And this is the thing that happens 500 billion times.
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And this vector is a token ID that points to the same table that then is a word which apparently is sure.
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and he broke it down man he even built his own friggin agentic cto that he uses he talks to it
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to code stuff and it hired people hello this is tony hey tony that llm pipeline thing we did
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what was the url to that hey let me check the llm pipeline project for you the llm pipeline demo is
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For those who don't know, Tony is my new best friend.
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It's a result of a call that Dan and I had about a week ago.
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So think of Tony as like your CTO that you activate by just talking to it.
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But I want you to understand is the future of building apps is voice.
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Anybody in the development world already knows that.
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are the kind of tools we're building at Martel Ventures
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When I think of some of the people in the room,
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I think their philosophy that they haven't figured out
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to the highest level is the idea of being a director, not a doer.
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Because those tasks is where AI is going to disrupt them.
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Because most programmers today don't write code anymore.
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The big thing is they don't realize that the tasks that they all do as professions are going away.
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And what they should try to remind themselves of is what's the purpose of my role?
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If you look objectively to a CEO without knowing what they are saying or doing,
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you would think they're professional typists because they're always typing on their phone
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or they're typing on their laptop because they're communicating.
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my purpose is to lead and vision cast and inspire and coach up if you have expertise in a industry
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cool let's get rid of 90 of the task stuff that actually doesn't enable the purpose they think
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because they're a craftsman at that thing ai can't disrupt me oh no it's already disrupted you just
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don't know it let me show you that okay now that you know that let's let's lead the innovation
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don't allow yourself to be disrupted let's go create the disruption that supports you
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in the real purpose of what you're supposed to do in life anyway
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i made a decision a long time ago to be the example for people that don't have positive
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examples that shows up in the media but my happy place is actually helping people create things
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for themselves so martell ventures had to be created because i had so many incredible people
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that i'd coach worked with supported know of done life with but i didn't have a playground a place
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that was efficient and fun i needed a roddy to run it and that's why we did the builder summit was to
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then broadcast that to the world and show other people how it can be done
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december 2024 it was snowing and i knew he was going to call i just didn't know when he was
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was going to call. Bam, I get the call. He shares three profound things with me that day. Number one,
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we are going to build an AI venture studio that generates $25 billion in enterprise value
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by helping founders win. Number two, we have an unfair advantage. 28 years of building businesses,
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helping founders we have playbooks we have 350 plus playbooks on how to build
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businesses number three he said and I remember this vividly Roddy you will
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never have to be on stage ever I am responsible for the operations and the
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execution of our vision at Martell Ventures as the managing partner I
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typically like spending time in the back of the room and that was really the
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being the glue and the orchestrator of the event.
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is our it's my passion first off everybody's been asked to leave because they're all downstairs at
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the event this is a fraction of the people that's part of this organization these are just some of
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the companies actually five more that we've added martell ventures only started 13 months ago and
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in 13 months we've launched deployed and gotten companies to revenue 15 plus companies yeah it's
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wild man so it's funny because when we started i challenged roddy i said roddy we need a plan
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to build a billion dollar company in three years originally it was five yeah so i figured i'd give
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him the goal to do three so that we had some slack well he comes back and he says that's cool
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why don't we go for 25 and 10. i was like bro but at the same time i'm like
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dream bigger i can't ask him to trim it down but he also presented me a plan that actually made
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sense as an example the blue ocean the red ocean the red ocean is thinking i have a software
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company. AI is a big thing. I got to add AI to it. So then what happens is you have this product
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and an interface and you add AI powered features to the interface. The blue ocean, Martell Ventures
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is let's start with an AI first approach. And in that mental model of AI first, how would you build
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this solution? Every one of those companies are AI first companies. They're not a product that we
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added ai to we start with the premise with ai so for example hero a recruiting platform there's no
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interface you make a phone call you don't have an account it creates you an account it takes you the
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link to the job pose it runs the ad it does all this agentic automation for you behind the scenes
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why do i need to log into a software so that's what makes this a blue ocean strategy because
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we flip the whole concept of software on its head there's definitely power in a community like ours
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and the portfolio companies and the founders that they're all sharing so you don't have to
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spend as much time to get the same input back in the reason why i chose roddy to run martell
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ventures is a i've known him for 20 plus years he built and exited a software company at that level
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i'm always asking myself who i can trust he's the kind of guy that if i put 100 million on a usb
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key and gave it to him full of bitcoin when i came back it would be there it may not be worth
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100 million anymore it might be worth a billion but i know he would be there and he's got the
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technical background he's got the eq level off the charts he's a people guy the things that
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qualify him the most are not the technical skills because that's my nerdy happy place but what he
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does better than anybody else which you know ai can never take is he knows how to talk and manage
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people he's my fixer i'm like hey bro i got a problem here he goes heard this is not easy as
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It doesn't matter if you're technical or business
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based on the audience that we know we can serve,
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database structures and enrichment, process flows.
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If it speaks to your heart, do something with it right now.
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Don't wait, don't overanalyze, don't sleep on it.
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you feel it go you feel it move anyways we just had a big meeting here but essentially this is
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where i spend 97 of my time man i got my car down there that i get to to vibe on and look at all the
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time get the youtube flag got the two books i wrote i got a skateboard i created most people
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don't know i grew up skateboarding i've got all the cars and the stories of the cars and the logos
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and just the clean clean environment and this is like built custom into the desk this is the mountain
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Martell Mountain logo, and I created this really cool thing with the cars. Those are three of my
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favorite cars. I've got this beautiful lady that works next to me. Always getting in trouble with
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her. Perks. This is the operating companies. I've got, you know, one guy runs the finance
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departments of over 12 companies. One guy. People have probably 13 people for this one guy's role.
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and then we've got um a lot of go-to-market people growth assistants sales software tech cto
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portfolio managers what do you think is important to have them all in one space the speed we're
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moving you have to be in proximity i always say get on a plane and come see me come hang out let's
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just come and you'll get it just sit here for the day come talk come play come strategize come look
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be in this building yeah right martel media is in this building go be around the caliber of people
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yeah man it's just it's it's one part inspiration not part execution it's fun and escape it i've
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been talking to some of the people downstairs and that's what they've been saying is like i need to
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be in this environment more i know that's why i brought them here yeah every one of them i told
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them all you're in this room because i want to do something with you the hardest part for any
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company man it's it's it's knowing what to push on how much and when and that's what i'm great at
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We've gotten more results in the last two years than we had in the last eight,
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Is you invest a shit ton at the start, you get the engine going,
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but then once you have momentum, that's when you start to double down,
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and that's when you start to actually get results.
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Anybody that knows me, hopefully you know Sam, because he's been in my life.
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We built Martell Media together. He's my partner in crime.
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I wanted him to share how we've built the brand side of things,
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and AI is 100% going to replace a lot of the work being done,
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is the brand that precedes them before they ever walk into the room.
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I've started working with Dan almost eight years ago.
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and since then I've been able to scale that team from me
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The thesis of my talk was essentially going from bottleneck to builder, essentially step
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away from being the bottleneck in your business because a lot of leaders actually bottleneck
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their team because they're making all the decisions and they don't press their team
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One is when you're the doer, and I used to be that guy.
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I used to edit videos, I used to, you know, review my own videos and then post them.
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Then you move into a director role where you're actually, you know, directing people to actually
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So you have a bunch, a ton of editors, you have graphic designers, and you're just telling
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scales up to about seven people but when you scale past seven people and you want to go to you know
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15 20 25 people that's when you have to step back and be the designer and what a designer is is
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someone who designs a system that doesn't need that right where their presence feels additive
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not needed that's a big idea because i thought that you know i had to be involved in every single
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area of the process in the business for it to grow and so i wanted sam to teach that to these
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ai nerds because guess what especially the software guys they know that their jobs are getting
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disrupted but everybody's got the potential to build a reputation which is a brand and that's
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what sam delivered being a leader at 19 years old leading a team of three editors that were twice my
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age i had to earn that respect through these five rules and the first one is probably the most
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important heart for the soul train for the role right and i have three questions that i ask myself
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First question is, can they do the work? That's basic. The second question is, do they care about
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the work? That's a bigger one. The third one, the most important is, are they a good person?
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Rule number two, default to trust. We give an irresponsible amount of trust to our new employees.
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Give them 100% ownership, but then inspect what you expect. Rule number three, train no tell.
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and not show them what a high performer looks like.
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You have to measure the few metrics that actually matter
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which is just the first number divided by the second, right?
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And what that does for us, it gives us clarity,
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For example, I wanted my team to start posting content online
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And 65 days ago, I decided I'm going to do daily content.
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sorry for lack of a better term, but a little b****,
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people that are going to adopt attention right because in a world where you can spin up hubspot
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dropbox slack those tools in seconds right using an ai tool the problem now is distribution how
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many people can you make see that product and i think a lot of people under index the importance
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of media and building attention in the new age because it sounds hard but it's not if you have
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a system so i also had todd speak at the event who's a ceo of martel media and todd's an impressive
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guy and i'll tell you why and what i love about him and i used to joke all the time is like he's
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got two daughters and he writes poetry he doesn't like that i say that but it does explain like
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taught if you look at him he's like iron man type a driven value standards and he's got a heart of
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gold man like i would just trust him to take care of my family and and he does that and in many ways
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the team at Media, our family, and he's an operational genius. So I'm going to share a
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framework that I call, and again, it's new. It's called the Builders Pyramid, and it stacks four
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things. When I was asked to present at the Builders Summit, usually when I do talks, it's about stuff
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that I'm doing, right? I'm not going to talk about something I'm not doing. So when I was thinking
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about how I would approach it. I just thought about how I operate as a business, how I do things.
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And I thought there's got to be something in there that's going to be valuable. There's a big
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business lie that's out there. I believed it for a long time. And the lie is that people are your
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greatest asset. I don't think that's true. Standards are your greatest asset. The people
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that you have in your world or the evidence of your standards. Next one is talent. The way I view
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talent is two things. Number one is hire better than you and build those people up. The next one
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is strategy. Strategies are not a to-do list. In strategies, you're giving clarity to what you need
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done in the organization. So another way to think about it is strategies are a sacrifice. And the
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last one is dreams. So your dreams are the inspiration. All your people need to fit within
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there, but don't start with the numbers. If you want to get people to come in your world and you
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can't pay them what you maybe think they're worth, what gets them to come into your world?
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Your dreams and your story. That's what makes them come, right? Think about Apple or you think
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Steve Jobs had or Bill Gates. They didn't have the money back then, but they actually got people
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I mean, I love when people come into our events or come to the studio and why it's important for them to see it.
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Anything, quite frankly, even myself is because once you see something, you can't unsee it.
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I would say the Builders Summit first version was a test.
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Hey, can we bring cool people together and do cool stuff?
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I believe we accomplished that test pretty well.
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I think, you know, super cool that the team that we've built, the culture we've built and everybody that gets results from our coaching.
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But in that same breath, if we've gotten to this point after three years of taking it seriously, what can we do in another three years, right?
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Even the space of AI in eight months from now will be so completely different that when we bring people together, there's going to be a good reason.
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And because good people want to be with good people, there's never going to be a shortage of the right people who want to get together and talk about the front edge and clift of AI, quite frankly.
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everything i do is asking myself if i'm playing a small game and and and that's why it has to be
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expansive because every time i get to the edge of an idea or thought i'm like what else the number
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one thing that's going to change your life is the environment that you spend time in and if on your
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heart you think to yourself i gotta move i gotta say yes i gotta join this thing i don't care if
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if you know that you feel that, default to action.
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Don't let this be a moment where you just get inspired.