Grow Without Hiring

[00:00:00] Ken: Over the last 20 years, we've watched humans move from thinking to searching, to creating with AI, with almost no friction at all, and it's that last shift that I consider the most dangerous one. No, not because AI is bad, I am a fan of it. I am a technologist. I'm someone who's made millions of dollars building websites, apps, and anything related to tech.
[00:00:28] Ken: I'm just not a big fan of what I'm seeing Founders do with it when used this way. There is a hidden cost and it will not help you grow without hiring.
[00:00:40] Ken: Because AI removes the friction required for actual deep thinking, doing that hard work that matters,
[00:00:48] Ken: And it's when spending time on something longer than you want allows you to develop that expertise. It allows you to develop judgment.
[00:00:57] Ken: AI makes it easy [00:01:00] to skip that part, and when you skip it, you don't get the clarity you think you do. You get this, and I want this to hit you between the eyes. You get convenience with a false sense of confidence.
[00:01:14] Ken: Now, this gets worse when you realize this about ai. It does not have an opinion, no point of view, and no actual sense of what matters. You know what I've talked about when it comes to tools? Yeah, but tools at least used to, even when founders consultants mistake tools for strategy, the tool itself actually implied a direction.
[00:01:38] Ken: It was opinionated, it was built to do a specific job and to do that job in a specific way. AI doesn't do that. It will happily help you automate lead gen. Before you understand what actually makes a great lighthouse client, it will help you quote unquote, build offers before [00:02:00] your positioning stands out to prospects.
[00:02:02] Ken: I, and it can make something half baked, or if you wanna put it this way, half baked thinking, sound finished.
[00:02:10] Ken: And that's why I consider this moment more dangerous than past tech hype cycles.
[00:02:15] Ken: Let me make this more real for you. you already see what happens when your clients try to use AI to solve problems that you are an expert at.
[00:02:26] Ken: They turn to ChatGPT to figure out leadership and culture strategies.
[00:02:31] Ken: They work with perplexity to build sophisticated financial models.
[00:02:36] Ken: They're in Claude trying to write homepage copy or a blog post. And you know the results. Because AI is optimized for average.
[00:02:46] Ken: Very few people know how to tune it to get the 1% results. So what happens? Everything sounds the same. It's lots of effort, lots of wasted hours for average output. It is [00:03:00] not work worth keeping, as I discussed in episode 32.
[00:03:04] Ken: The irony is that you vent about this all the time. I hear it from my clients constantly.
[00:03:09] Ken: So if you wouldn't let your clients do this, why are you doing the same thing in your own business?
[00:03:16] Ken: AI hasn't sold deals. It hasn't navigated objections. It's never built trust like you. And it's never made judgment calls when something didn't work.
[00:03:28] Ken: So why would you try to build your offers in A GPT that has never closed the deal? Why would you try to design a lead gen system that becomes infinitely complex? And I've seen this firsthand from clients simply because. AI is smart enough to do this over-engineer it,
[00:03:47] Ken: and this is where I do have an advantage compared to 99% of people listening to this, but not everybody. I have worked with engineers for decades, and I am a technologist by trade.
[00:03:57] Ken: so this pattern of making something that should be [00:04:00] simple, overly complex is not new. And I would see time and time again as we're working through building something for a client that my engineers would bring a jackhammer to a job a toothpick could solve. They're trying to use some exotic way to get into the vault when they don't realize that there is a door that leads right into it.
[00:04:22] Ken: And what this means is that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
[00:04:28] Ken: what AI allows you to do, and another hidden cost of it is to make those mistakes faster and easier.
[00:04:36] Ken: But I would say the end result isn't AI slop. It's actually worse. You become a business that feels undifferentiated vanilla. I don't care if you like the flavor. That's not how you want to describe your business. It's needlessly complex. And it doesn't give you leverage. It does not give you a clear path to grow without [00:05:00] hiring.
[00:05:00] Ken: So that's
[00:05:00] Ken: a huge cost. Comparatively, what does disciplined AI usage actually look like? It starts with the understanding. That not everything needs to be automated. Not everything needs to be a system, and not everything needs to be operationalized. I want you to make this shift. AI is about acceleration, not foundations. If something isn't working yet, that's not the moment to jump into ai. That's the moment to slow down and apply your brain. Apply this word we've been using today. Judgment.
[00:05:37] Ken: And this is also what we discussed in last week's conversation on what makes AI a system versus a tool. And moving from AI being a session to AI being infrastructure, so do yourself a huge favor before you pull open. ChatGPT Atlas or your favorite AI [00:06:00] assistant, and start typing into the inbox or using WisprFlow to dictate to it. Just stop. Just pause and ask yourself a couple of questions. Am I doing this by default? Am I accelerating something that's already working or am I avoiding work worth keeping?
[00:06:18] Ken: Am I avoiding the friction of the hard work?
[00:06:21] Ken: Am I putting myself into an environment with no guardrails even from myself? These questions matter,
[00:06:29] Ken: and if the answers to these questions. Are squarely around clarity, judgment, positioning. Just do this, do yourself a huge favor, and close the tab, close the app.
[00:06:42] Ken: That's how you're gonna do the best work of your career.
[00:06:45] Ken: Do you have to pick up a pen and paper? Do you have to go to a whiteboard? I don't know. I'll let you be the judge of what kind of creative space that you need.
[00:06:53] Ken: But I know that the best work of your career is gonna come when you have [00:07:00] friction.
[00:07:00] Ken: Because if you constantly remove friction, remove your taste, remove your opinion, and remove your judgment, you don't get leverage. You get false confidence and unearned certainty.
[00:07:14] Ken: And a business like that increasingly loses what made it worth building in the first place.
[00:07:21] Ken: As always, I appreciate having these conversations with you and I look forward to continue to help you to grow without hiring.