Screensharing top takes in AI/startups

On this week’s SIP Live we dive deep on the X timeline to give each post a sip or a skip, and we answer questions from the chat. This episode covers AI-native operations, a baby food app that earns a million dollars a month, iMessage agents, human customer support as a brand advantage, small teams, reading habits, and sales advice for builders. Listeners get concrete first steps, business ideas they can copy today, and two clear opinions on each take. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 00:59 – Where an AI-Native Company Starts 04:48 – The $1M-a-Month Baby Food App 10:31 – An App Store for iMessage Agents 16:32 – Customer Support Is Eating Engineering 23:38 – RIP to the 2-Pizza Team 26:36 – Paul Graham on Reading as an Advantage 33:31 – The Worst Moves for 2026 37:01 – From Designer to Salesperson Key Points Make the company legible first: keep meeting notes and SOPs in files that an LLM can read. Let the team explore AI tools freely, then ask one department, such as admin, to lead. A million-dollar-a-month app leaves room for niche copies that earn 10K to 30K a month. Build loops that turn daily support transcripts into prototypes and measurable goals. Human support works as a marketing advantage, and premium buyers pay for it. Sales stays part of the owner's job, so learn the frameworks and start cold calling. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIAL Unscheduled CEO Podcast: https://www.unscheduledceo.com/ X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jicecream LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  And we are live. Welcome to SIP Live, where we livestream, ask, answer your questions, look at the timeline, give you our takes. I'm your host, Greg Isenberg, and I'm here with my co-host, Jonathan Courtney. He's a shrimp millionaire from Berlin, originally from Ireland. Welcome to the show, sir. We're gonna get right into it. Yesterday, I posted, um, what's the one thing you'd ask me? And my fellow shrimp millionaire over here, if you had me on the phone? And we got 139 responses. I'm gonna go through, you know, three or four of them with you, Jonathan, right now.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  And then at the end of the stream, we're gonna go through a few more. And in the middle, we're just gonna go and talk timeline takes.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  This is coming from the X chat. We got M Peshi says, when you begin the process of making a company AI native, where do you begin? Is it departmental change? Where department by department, you're changing things? Or is it company-wide? Where do you start? And what are first steps? For me, I mean, I could spend four hours just talking about this. But the number one thing you can do is to make your company legible. So what does that mean? That means that if you're using an LLM, you need to have the LLM be able to talk to your company. And that means your meeting notes need to be legible from the LLM. That means that, uh, you know, your SOPs need to be legible.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  So basically going through everything in your company and then putting it so that it could be seen by, uh, you know, whatever, you know, if you're using Claude code, if you're using, you know, the Codex and the OpenAI ecosystem, the Google ecosystem, whatever it is, just make sure that it's being read. And then you start thinking about, that's step one. And then step two is, uh, going role by role. And then basically saying, okay, this person, what are the jobs to be done for that person? So if it's a social media marketer, they need to do research around what content they should be creating. They need to actually be creating the content. They need to be scheduling the content. They need to be looking at the analytics.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  And then they need to be taking that feedback from the analytics and then bringing it back to the front so that they could say, we want more of this content or less of that content. So, uh, what you end up doing is you build loops, you build, you know, AI employees essentially that end up doing some of those things. And then some of those things are, you're gonna obviously remain human. Those are the two biggest things you can do if you wanna go AI native.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Can I just add one thing to that? What we did, so we, I had already three businesses before all the AI stuff kicked off. So we had to figure out, you know, how do we go from where we are now to adding these AI tools into a system that's already kind of working? And also, not everybody in the company was excited about integrating AI tools. That's another thing. I mean, if you're, if you're asking this question from the perspective of a brand new company, it's a little easier. But I was building on top of what already existed. And so the first phase, honestly, was just giving everybody, you know, the pro versions of ChatGPT and Claude, letting people mess around with it for a while without any rules. Because I know that there was like these companies where like,

• 3:38Speaker 01

  you have to use this many tokens, or you have to automate all these things. I just let people use this stuff for a while. And then they saw me using things, getting excited about things. Then they would show me things, getting excited about things. And we just started to see that people individually found little shortcuts and little fun ways to use the tools. Uh, and then the only thing that I did sort of mandate was that the admin part of AJ and Smart was the first phase where, you know, creating proposals, pulling together paperwork for, you know, tax-related things, uh, basically repetitive tasks. That's something where I wanted us to start using these tools so that we could free up time to do other things like optimizing our revenue

• 4:22Speaker 01

  versus just trying to do all the paperwork. And so for us, it was just a matter of slowly letting people get excited and using this stuff. And then starting with one department, in our case, admin, bookkeeping, paperwork, legal. And that's where the AI tools started to come in. And now it's sort of spread throughout the entire company. But yeah, we didn't have like an overall top-down mandate that everyone has to use the tools.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  So I've got a bunch of, um, takes. But the first take I wanted to give, and by the way, Jonathan has not seen any of this. I saw this tweet. It says, there's a baby food app making a million dollars a month. I was searching for baby food apps for my newborn, and I realized the market is absolutely insane. The more expensive the app, the more parents seem to trust it. So you can see here, there's an app. This data is by Sensor Tower. Solid starts, baby's first food, making a million dollars a month. Now, Jonathan, I know you're a father. I'm a father too.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And a baby.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  You're a baby and a father, which is one of the most interesting combos known to man. And my question to you is, what do you think about this idea? You like it? Do you not like it? Do you think there's opportunities to create more baby apps? What's your, what's your reaction?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Wait a second. So what does this app do? Is it recipes or something? Can we have a look at what it actually? Is it a recipe app? Or is it for buying baby food?

• 5:51Speaker 00

  I think so. I don't know about you. When I, when I had my baby, um, when my wife had our baby.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  When you had the baby.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  When I had their baby. So, uh, my wife actually bought a course around the first hundred foods that your baby should be eating. And I don't know, it's a few hundred dollars. And so I don't know if you can see on the screen, but this is, uh, the app. And it basically says the first hundred foods that you should be buying and making for trusted by pediatric feeding experts, meal ideas, and then you can track food and reaction. So I was just, when I saw this, I was shocked. Like a million dollars a month for this? Like, you know, it's insane.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Well, you know, okay, here's the thing. I have a child. The first couple of months with your first child, it's so kind of scary and confusing. And especially when it comes to health stuff, you just kind of want someone to tell you, this is the safe thing. This is the right thing. Food is very confusing. And so for me, if there was a product that's just really clearly saying, these are the things you can feed your baby in the first hundred days, and these things will not kill your baby, most likely. I think that, but the fact that it is a, the thing that it says here,

• 7:21Speaker 01

  the fact that the more expensive versions of the apps actually do better and that parents trust them more. Yeah, I mean, similar with like, I guess weddings and stuff like that. There are these things where people wanna spend a lot of money because they just, you get one shot. You know what I mean? You don't get like loads of tries over and over again to mess this up. So if I'm looking for things for my child, the price is helping me figure out, okay, does this company actually take this seriously? Or is this just an AI-generated thing? So I think for me, when I'm looking at something like this, I didn't buy this particular app. But when I'm looking at baby foods, for example, in the store,

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I am kind of scanning the shelves and looking at the most expensive one. I'm like, that's probably the safest one, even if that's not necessarily true.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  So I think like, the take is, it's a SIP.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  It's a SIP. It's a SIP. I have two reactions to, to this little sippy right here. One is, if the product works well for babies, chances are it works well for pets. That's just the rule.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I feel like that.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Right? So it's like, okay, you know, what is the equivalent of you get your puppy? What is your first hundred days look like? And I think you can bring this solid starts idea to puppies that I think would work really well. So there's that. That's number one. Number two is, if something is making a million dollars a month, there's always an opportunity to niche this down into, you know, a niche. So that could be a geography. It could be solid starts for Canadian babies. It could be, you know, you're feeding them maple syrup.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  I mean, my daughter can't eat, um, cashew nuts or pistachio nuts.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  So you figure that out the hard way very early. And so if there were, I mean, basically, look, if this is making a million a month and someone would niche down and they're okay with not making a million a month and making rather like 10K a month or 30K a month with a product like this, that's probably not crazy difficult to maintain. I think that could be a pretty good business, especially if you don't have asset. I do think that this is something where parents do actually care about the quality. And so if you were to niche down, you know, 10, 15, 20K a month for a product that has a built-in market of new babies being born, I think it's worth actually putting a lot of time and effort

• 9:58Speaker 01

  into making it a really solid, no pun intention, no pun intended, product. I actually like that. I like the idea of niching down into like the little subcategories of general baby food. And yeah, but you wouldn't make a million a month, but not everyone needs to make that, right?

• 10:16Speaker 00

  No, definitely not. So, um, this is take number one. Ashley, let's go to our next take. In the chat, I'm just curious. Give that a SIP or a skip? So we know if you like, if you like the takes. So this is just a cool thing I saw. Stanley says, I made an app store for iMessage agents. It's a directory of the best AI agents you can text on iOS. And you know what it is, is you know, there's a bunch of different these assistants, Caddy, Poke, Tomo. And I thought what was interesting about it is you're starting to see just AI agents that are you just iMessage?

• 11:01Speaker 00

  And which which is so cool. So both from a consumer like you're you're European. So I know you live in WhatsApp.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  What's iMessage?

• 11:13Speaker 00

  I'll I'll literally iMessage you and you just like won't respond. But in WhatsApp, you'll just I'll just get a voice note, a four minute voice note from you like that's that's our dynamic. But we love iMessage here in the United States and it's a really easy way to just consume a product. So from a consumer, I love it. And then from a business perspective, I think that, you know, building iMessage agents, really interesting, something I'm going to be spending some more time thinking about. What do you think about this?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, as you said, in Europe, we don't know what iMessage is. I don't know what an iPhone is. We don't know about these things. We we still use like a stick and like a just like, you know, these types of objects. iMessage agents, honestly, have never used one and never even interacted with something like this. The closest thing I've ever interacted with in terms of messaging is OpenClaw, you know, building that into like a Telegram thing and being able to interact with it. I don't I don't I honestly, I honestly don't know. I think for me, I imagine that that is just going to be something similar to

• 12:25Speaker 01

  using OpenClaw or having it as like a front end interface to other objects that you have, you know, like, let's say it's a it's a smart home. This is now your interface instead of having to use the interface of the Philips Hue thing or Apple Home. Now you can just text and say, actually, hey, could you just turn on all the lights or hey, could you just do this? And it just figures it out and it interfaces with all the other things. But I actually don't know. Do you know many different, interesting use cases for these things? Because I imagine they're just like a front end interface to like a more main thing.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. So I mean, like over here, you can see Poke. If you haven't tried Poke.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  I don't know what that is.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  It's basically like a personal assistant app, just like it's it does. You should try it. And as like a UX person, you're gonna like be blown away. So

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Really, I'm

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, like the onboarding experience, like anyone who cares about UX, just download Poke, honestly, and just see how their onboarding experience is because it is world class and shows you a peek into what agent first onboarding experiences are going to look like. I think it's poke.com, no affiliation.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  So this this is the one, just to show you, this is the European version of it. So that's what you're talking about, right? Pokemon Go. Yeah.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  You can't get Poke in poke.com.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't look like it.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Damn. No AC and no Poke. You guys are you're struggling out there.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  You've just got Pokemon over here. I'm just checking on poke.com directly. So what's the difference between poke.com and using like Claude?

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, so Claude is wonderful, but you can do a million things with Claude. The these assistants that you're seeing like on this iMessage agent store are pretty verticalized. So they don't do everything. They do a few things and they do a few things well.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  And that's what's cool about them. Once you actually like, it's sort of hard to explain. But once you actually start messaging with your Poke or you start messaging with some of these other ones, you

• 14:47Speaker 00

  it just feels a little bit different. I invested in Lindy, Lindy.ai, which is like another one.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  I remember Lindy. Yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Lindy is is really focused on like, you know, you you work in a business and you're you want a personal assistant.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  So I actually asked Flo, the founder of Lindy, like, what's the difference between Lindy and say, working with OpenClaw or Claude or whatever? And his response was basically like, what we're trying to build is like the Apple version. Like it just like works really well.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  And so I think there's that's what's that's that's why some of these iMessage agent apps are really interesting. So that's why I wanted to bring it up. I thought I thought I could get people's creative juices flowing. I thought whoever created this, Stanley, who created this app store for iMessage agents was really smart. And I'll be I'll be looking looking at that some more.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I didn't get what you were talking about till I looked at their sales pitch here. And now I know what you mean, like, whereas most people I know are still just using ChatGPT, still just using it as a search engine. And if you would try to present, if I would try to present cowork or Claude code or any sort of automations to any one I know who's just using it as some sort of chat engine, they would just be like, no, I'm not. That's just insane. I'm not going to do that. Whereas Poke is like a, yeah, it's a it's essentially a polished front end for doing the complicated things you can do in these AI tools.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Without you having to know anything about these AI tools.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's that's cool. I didn't even know this existed, to be honest.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Customer support is eating engineering. Do you know? Do you understand what he means by this?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  I don't. I don't know what that means.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  So I understand what it means because, you know.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Because you're a genius. Can I try to just guess what I think it means?

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, guess guess what? What do you think he means by this?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Customer support is eating engineering. Okay, so

• 16:57Speaker 01

  in the age where it's much easier to create little if you have a product, if you have a digital product, if you have an app and there needs to be a change made to it, it used to be basically impossible. You'd have to collect all the information, relay that back to the engineering team, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That loop is really complicated. Whereas now, and we see this in our company as well, the people who are directly connected with the customers are actually able to make a lot of the changes that engineers used to have to make. And that's what I would guess it means, but maybe it doesn't.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  No, you're you're pretty much right. So basically, the whole idea is, in general, what you're seeing with AI is, you know, people are going to have their own personal brains, personal second brains, but companies have their own second brains. And you're seeing just companies, small companies, big companies, AI native companies basically put all their data, meeting notes, customer support, those things in MD files and places where LLMs could read it. So what's happening is, you know, there's been a lot of talk about engineering loops ever since Peter from OpenClaw and

• 18:14Speaker 00

  who else was talking about?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  I think

• 18:18Speaker 00

  I think Carpathia, Carpathia was also talking about loops. And they were they were talking about it with respect to just engineering, how you basically are gonna do slash goal in Codex or whatever. And you can basically say just like, build on the startup, build on the startup, build on the startup. But I think what's actually more interesting about loops is less about just engineering, but doing loops with customer support, meeting engineerings, meets engineering. So what do I mean by that? I mean, that if you're getting 50 customer support pieces of data every single day, they're telling you what they like and what they don't like about your product.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  If you can create a loop that says every day, look at those transcripts and every day, prototype a feature that solves their problem and give them a goal. The goal could be, you know, DAU over MAU increases, retention increases, virality increases, revenue increases. That I think that that's the beginning of how people are like, the future of startups is exactly what he's saying. Customers customer support is eating engineering. That's what he means. And I think that's a huge sip.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Massive gulp even, a massive like it's a sip, so much of a sip that it kind of goes back your throat into your lung. And then you cough it out and then you gulp it. I can I actually add something to this? So this is this is tangentially, tangentially, tangentially, I'm Irish, I can't say the word. It's somewhat related. Okay, a lot of products, if I'm looking at a really interesting way to differentiate products that are in a market where everything is kind of similar. One of the things you can really do to stand out is by clarifying that your customer support is not AI and that you're going to be able to access a human 24/7. A company in Berlin here, Trade Republic, actually, I don't know if they're German based or whatever.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  They did this entire billboard campaign all over Berlin about the fact that they do not use AI tools and it's a human every time when you call them. By the way, not sure how true that is. I had we'll see. But if you also look at Basecamp, Basecamp's website is one of my favorite examples of that. They talk about the fact that it's humans, but not only that, they actually show the person who's in charge of the team talking on the website. And for me, I'm like, okay, I want you to be using these AI tools to improve the product. But when I have a problem, I want to talk to a goddamn human and not to some bot. And so for me, I have my pet peeve, you know, especially if you buy an expensive product.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  I buy, you know, the eight sleep, the mattress, we love them, everyone loves them. It's all good. If you have to deal with the support.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  No, no, it's not. I'd rather they stop developing the product and just leave it as it is and improve the support and get more humans in there. I honestly think that companies can use that as a massive, massive marketing customer advantage. Just, hey, by the way, you'll talk to a person when you call here. And then the other thing is cool, too.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I totally agree. I think you, I think people are willing to pay more like premium, premium products that say you're going to speak to a human being, I think, is, is a big, is a big trend. And I like, I like that.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Dude, can I, sorry, can I say one more thing?

• 21:45Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Can I say one more thing? You know, you know, the trend of in shitification, right? You know, the general idea, everything gets worse. Like a company, once it kind of owns the market, they basically kind of make their product worse and worse and worse. And she, they, they cut corners because they know you have to use it. The perfect example of that is, back in the day, Amazon used to have the best customer support of all time. You're like instantly talking with someone, it's amazing. And then over time, they're like, we own the market. So now we're going to let a dog be the person on the other side of the screen, just hitting the thing. So in shitification is something people talk about a lot. There was even this big advertising campaign, I think it was in Norway, about how this is a thing that they don't want to have, whatever. Everyone talks about it's

• 22:25Speaker 01

  a really big, common topic on X. Someone needs to do an advertising campaign around how their product is getting reversed in shitificated. And that they're, one of their company's like mottos is that this is not what they're going to do. I think it is one of the things that for me kills brands faster than anything else, is when you're a big fan of a product, big fan of a brand, and then they're like, well, we have to grow it at all costs, fair enough. But can you do it in a way that doesn't in shitify it? And then can you use that for your marketing? Big if true.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  You know what's sad about a lot of tech companies is a lot of tech companies have the worst customer support. Like, because they're tech first, they, they, they, they take it to the extreme. And I think, like, customer support has to have a human element.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  And that's, that's my, that's where I'm at. I'm skipping, I'm skipping fully 100% AI as customer support, but I'm sipping heavily, I'm gulping heavily, this idea of human support.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  You're going to need a car.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Rest in peace to the two pizza team. Jeff Bezos gave us an all time great metaphor. Keep the team small enough to feed with two pizzas. It shaped how engineering orgs got built for 20 plus years. He was right about small teams, still is, but in the AI era, two pizzas is too much pizza. What do you think?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I live in Europe, so two pizzas is probably much smaller than two American pizzas. But I get the point, I get the point. We're talking about American pizzas. Well, obviously, the team size for making something like a piece of software right now can be as little as one. What I will say is, if you do actually want to be able to make money from that product, you probably need to pay, if you're the builder, you probably need to pair yourself with someone who's good at pitching and selling. And so I do think one American pizza is probably enough for the modern AI powered team. So I'm going to give it a sip. And I also just think it's a cute tweet, X post, whatever it is. So I'm going to sip it.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  So you're double sipping. You're double sipping. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to disagree with this one, right? It's like, I think, when you're building a startup or any company, really, you have problems, you, you, you have problems. And we always kind of say like, oh, if I just hired this one person, he, he or she will solve this problem.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  Like, what I've started to rewire my brain to do is, before hiring someone, I'm like, could I create a loop that can actually get this done? What, or I ask myself, what are the jobs to be done for the person that I think is going to save me? And then I start by actually creating agents to actually solve those tasks. That's what, that's what I've been doing. And I agree that like, two, two pizzas, what he's basically saying, like, the two pizzas team is like, probably 12 people, 12.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  How big are these pizzas?

• 25:41Speaker 00

  They're big. It's, it's America, you know, they're, they're big pizzas. They're, they're big pizzas. There's pepperoni on the pizzas, there's.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  They're like this size.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Like, two, two, two, three slices, you're done.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Exactly. No, we're talking about XL pizzas. We're talking giant, giant, giant pizzas. So, yeah, I think, I think, I think David, he's the CTO of Cursor. He's right. I like it. And he got me, he got me thinking about like, a team can't be more than seven people now, six people.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, look, he's right. I just, the pizza size, very different, you know, we're thinking about different sizes here, David.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  When, when he's right, he's right. Paul Graham, founder, Y Combinator, says, something I told my 14 year old. People are going to stop reading books. I wish this wasn't so, but I fear it is. The silver lining in this cloud is that if you're one of those, if you're one of the few people who still read, you'll have a huge advantage over everyone else. What do you think?

• 26:59Speaker 01

  I'm really glad the tweet ended there. I thought it was, because I can't see the tweet you're talking about. I thought it was going to be like, people are going to stop read, reading books. So here's a new app idea. And I was just going to roll my eyes. I, I 100% agree with this. I am, I force myself to read and I read fiction in bed with my Kindle. And I also am really putting a lot of effort into encouraging my daughter to read. I just bought her a Kindle Color Soft Kids. And I'm trying to get her to read it as much as possible. Guys, if you have kids, I saw the best tweet ever and it changed the game for me. It said, if you want your kid, if your kids read, it's just amazing for their brains. Everyone kind of knows that. But if you want to get

• 27:41Speaker 01

  them to read a lot, what I've told my daughter, who's seven, is, hey, when you're in bed, as long as you're reading, there is no, you have to go to sleep time. You can read as long as you want. You can read for five hours if you want. Don't, don't bother me. Don't get up and bother me and tell me I have to do stuff. But if you want to read in bed, you can read as long as you want. And she sees this as like, so I don't have, I can stay up all night, basically. And so she, she reads for like, two hours straight in bed. Whereas before I gave her that rule, she was too lazy and wanted me to always read everything to her, because she just wanted to lay there like, while I read. And so, reading, I think, is a massive competitive advantage. I think there's a huge difference

• 28:24Speaker 01

  between consuming the written word and watching or listening to something. For me, I get massively different outcomes when I read a physical book or read on the Kindle, reading words. I don't know, it goes indifferent. It's somehow, something different happens. And so, yeah, and I do think it's also an attention span thing, where if you're able to actually read a book, it says something about your ability to live within the modern chaotic mess of, and not being so reactionary. The only thing I would add to it is, don't just read nonfiction. Like, fiction is a big part of developing your brain and also

• 29:05Speaker 01

  getting really interesting weird ideas. So I do think, adding into that, make sure fiction is a big part of this and not just you're reading the stoic books on repeat or something.

• 29:17Speaker 00

  I had a visual of your daughter just like, being in bed at like, four in the morning, like, her eyes are like, bleeding, just like, how tired she is.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  She actually, she is reading. She, she has taken advantage of it in a way that I didn't expect. I thought she was going to read for a half an hour and fall asleep, but she's like, locked in, and it's 11. And I'm like, oh, man, okay, I need to, probably need to change the, the situation here. But right now, it's summer holidays, so.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Paul Graham, Paul Graham says, the people who still read won't just be better informed, they'll be, with a couple of exceptions, the only ones who can think well. You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. And I thought this was the, this was interesting. So this is the, the rebuttal to Paul, and he responds.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Oh, who rebutted?

• 30:08Speaker 00

  So Kiran Ritchie says, books are a monumental waste of time. 600 pages for every one page of actually valuable content. I should know, I've written three. Ha, ha, ha, ha. You want information density? Blogs, papers, articles, and a well curated X feed. And then Paul responds, and he says, most books are bad. Part of reading well is finding the good ones. And Kiran says, fair. I stick to textbooks these days for the higher signal to noise ratio. What do you think about this?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  I fucking know. I just don't like that, that way of thinking about the world. I think that you, you, sometimes I'll read an amazing book and I'll go on Amazon. I want to like leave a review. I want to like say that I like the book and then I'll always see someone who says, this could have been an email. This could have been a blog article. They don't get the point that a book, what it helps you do is to, it repeats case studies, it repeats things and it helps it get into your head in a way that's more lasting and more robust. And so from a nonfiction perspective, I think that almost every nonfiction book that I've ever read, when I look at the Goodreads or when I look at the Amazon reviews or when I tell a friend I've read a book that I really enjoyed, they're like, oh, you could have

• 31:23Speaker 01

  just listened to the podcast episode where he was on Tim Ferriss. And I'm like, you just don't, you don't get it. Like you're not, this is not, it's not about efficiency. And not everything has to be about efficiency and density. And I don't know who this Kiran person is. I'm sure he's a lovely person, but I 100% disagree. I think the same thing people say about fiction novels. They're like, you know, it was about 200 pages too long. Yeah. If you have, if, if, if you're trying to like, just absolutely get the most efficiency out of life. I don't think life is all about efficiency. I don't think knowledge gathering is all about efficiency either. And I really hate that sentiment personally. I'm not a fan of it.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's a barbell approach. I feel like you can, like both could be true. Like you can read good books and that's an advantage. And you could also have like a really curated information diet of like blogs and articles and X and stuff like that. You know what I mean? So I think like, the people that, yeah, just do both. Just do both, you know?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  I do both. I look at X and I also read, but like, I just don't get the, I, I've always really been irritated by that sentiment, to be honest.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think

• 32:45Speaker 00

  for people who, and you know, I'm, I'm guilty for this because sometimes I do this, like for people who spend a lot of time brain rotting, like at the end of the night, at the end of, like before you go to bed, you're kind of like, you got one eye open and you're just like scrolling through Instagram reels. Yeah. Then it kind of like morphs your brain in a way that like, when you go into a book and it's so slow, it just, it, it, it feels weird. So

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  You gotta, if you haven't read a book in a long time, like, and you, you consume Instagram reels and stuff like that, do yourself a favor and read some books. It's, it's, it's going to be helpful. And, and I agree with Paul Graham. It's going to be an unfair advantage. Let's see. I'm going to look at chat. See if there's any, if there's any last few questions, let us know. I see one question. Canon Idea says, the worst things to do in 2026 if I wanted to completely screw myself over going forward. If I wanted to let this golden age of opportunity elude me.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  That's a really fun question.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  What do you think?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Sorry, who asked that?

• 33:56Speaker 00

  At Canon Ideas, who you would think would have a canon load of ideas?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Canon. Yeah. I mean, okay, I'll just say, if we're just talking about from a pure financial perspective, I will tell you that the things that I'm seeing people doing, it's a combination of two things. One, I would assume that if you ignore all the, completely ignore all the AI stuff, it's probably not a good idea. Like if you actually decide, hey, you know what? This is all hype, whatever, I think is probably not a great way to approach things. Just because what I'm going to say next might make it sound like I think you should do that. I think the biggest mistake people are going to make, and if you would want to absolutely mess yourself up, what I would do is spend all of your time building apps and all of your time building software and all of your time building

• 34:45Speaker 01

  loads of complicated systems and none of your time actually selling things, getting users and building an audience. I still think the core of running a business is building an audience and getting people interested in what you actually are creating. And then so I think if you want to really mess yourself up, just spend the next couple of years building pointless stuff and not having anyone ever use it. I would say that that will also make you feel very demotivated.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree. I also think it's like a spectrum. There's like a spectrum of people. So there's some people who are like, okay, I know AI is a thing, but I'm just barely going to use it. I think those people are kind of screwed on this, at this point. Then I think it's like people, on the other end of the spectrum, you have people who use every single tool like crazy. And every new tool comes up, they have to use it. They have to understand every single piece about it. I actually think those people are get, are, are kind of screwing themselves over a little bit.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Addicted, overstimulated.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Overstimulated and they get, you know, and I, I get this too, because I love a new tool. I love a new thing, a new shiny object. So whenever I hear something, I mean, like I gotta try it. I actually think in the middle is the best place to be. You spend time building and marketing with, you know, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Grok, like the main, the main players. And then once a month or twice a month, you see something new that you think has the opportunity to really, that just interests you. So if like, for me right now, it's like AI, what they call like vibe filmmaking. So I

• 36:35Speaker 00

  feel like there's a few tools that are now getting really good that you could like actually direct commercials that are really, really good. And you can't do that today with, for example, you know, OpenAI. So you do need to like try new things. So I'm not saying don't try new things, but I think like the worst thing you can do is basically try too much or try too little. Just try the right amount. And I think this was, this is a really good question. At the RHN or RH Nutrino says, I've been a graphic designer, a web developer, but never a sales guy. Any advice? I mean, you have to, like, this is the age of the generalist, period. So if

• 37:17Speaker 00

  you're a, it's amazing that you're like thinking, okay, I was a graphic designer. Now I have to be a web developer. Now I have to be a salesperson. And I think salespeople, on the other hand, have to be like, okay, now I need to be a web developer. Now I need to be a designer, right? So I think what's happening in general is everything is converging. People, and the people who are going to do really well over the next five or 10 years. And by the way, just as how there was an insane amount of opportunity between, you know, 2020 and 2022, where people made insane amounts of money, huge opportunities. I believe that 2026 to 2029, there's going to be that same wave in the sense of if you know how to use a lot of these tools, if you know how to build right now, it's an incredible time.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  So good job on you. Step one, that you're actually doing this. How do you, like, I would be like, how do I, if I would want to be a salesperson, I would go and just like read the, the biggest sales books, honestly, to get like frameworks around sales. And then I would actually just start making cold calls and start doing the thing. The only way to learn anything is by doing the thing, right? So you can, you know, ask, you know, Google, ChatGPT, whatever, what are the best sales books that I need to read? Get the frameworks and just start making cold calls. Start getting rejected, rejected. Start meeting people and over time, you put in your 10,000 hours, you're going to learn.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  What do you think?

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's a like very important question, you know, how, you know, I am the, I am the person who can do the delivery, but what do I do about the sales part? It's one of the most common questions entrepreneurs ask me as well. So to the person who asked, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. I've been running a design agency for 16 years now. And when I started out, I was just a UX designer. I didn't really have many sales skills, but because my company started, started to grow, I kind of just got put in the position of, oh, okay, I am that, that's actually my job. What I always say to entrepreneurs is if you're the owner, if you're the CEO, and even if that's a one person company,

• 39:29Speaker 01

  then you kind of are automatically the CEO. A large proportion of your job, if not 50%, is to be the promoter of your business, to be both the marketer and salesperson for your business. And just before this call, someone on the call in the, in the background was saying, I wish I had more time to do my YouTube videos, but I'm going to be stuck doing delivery and calls, et cetera. And actually, what I wanted to say is actually your job is to be the promoter and you want to find people to deliver the work, not to, not you permanently delivering forever. Your job is actually to promote, grow, be coming up with a strategy for your business so that you just don't

• 40:11Speaker 01

  get trapped in it forever, if that's your goal. If your goal is to be a consultant who does the same thing over time, that's also fine. But learning to sell, learning to market is not really an option. You do have to do it. Or, and I, Greg, I don't know what you think about this. What I say to entrepreneurs is if you truly can't stick to that, you actually have to find a co-founder and they have to own 50% of your business. Because if you find someone who can find you clients, they will either take your clients or own your business very soon.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, guys. Thanks for having me on the show as well, Greg. I really appreciate it. Having European on here, you know?

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Thank you for, thank you for taking the time out of your, out of your day. I really appreciate it and being generous with your time and everything. So thank you, everyone, for tuning in. I know you're all busy doing your, whatever it is you're doing, you know, work, family, both. So appreciate you and, and I'll see you on the next one. Thank you, everyone.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone. Thank you so much.