#611 You Are Probably the Bottleneck And AI Won’t Change That | Jordan Solender

Speaker A: Foreign. Uh, welcome back to any episode of the CTO show with my man today. I'm very pleased. Joining me from Washington D.C. in the U.S. jordan Solander. He is an investor, an entrepreneur, and a technology leader. He done a lot of things in, in his career, but usually, as I always tell my audience at the beginning, I don't like to steal, you know, the lights from my guest. I keep that intro and, you know, the journey and the background to them to tell us. So, Jordan, thank you again for being on the show here today. Traditional, I know, but, you know, for people who might not know you little bit about your background journey and what you're currently up to, and then we will dive directly into what we're going to talk about today, which is all related to entrepreneurship. It's related to startups. It's related also to, to AI, of course, and decision making. So the floor is yours.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. First off, um, my background is really as an entrepreneur and operator. Right. Uh, so I like to make sure people know I am still an operator. I like being an operator, but entrepreneur, operator, investor. I've built and scaled businesses. I've made plenty of mistakes. And today I spend most of my time helping founders remove themselves as the bottleneck in their own business. Uh, a lot of my work sits at the intersection of AI, delegation and systems. So I'm fascinated by one question. How do we build companies that can grow without requiring the founder to be involved in every decision? That's the problem I've been solving for myself and now for other entrepreneurs for, uh, just under two years now. And I am absolutely enjoying it. And it sounds like, uh, the audience that you have really resonates with that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm an operator myself as well. I consider myself this way. Love to speak about, you know, startups, about business, and of course, coming from technology background, this, this is what the whole show is about. Now, looking back, Jordan, on, on, you know, the things that you have done. So you've built multiple companies, you did successful exits, you invested in startups. So, um, where have. But you said that then, like, you, you see yourself as an operator, but looking at these experiences, like, what do you think is the experience that the most shaped the way how you think about building businesses?

Speaker B: Without question, the biggest lesson I have learned was realizing that I was the bottleneck. Right. To kind of bring this question full circle early in my career, I thought that great founders had to be involved in everything. And just like I'm sure you do, and most entrepreneurs do right. When you're involved with everything you wear, it is almost a badge of honor. And what I learned the hard way is that businesses really don't scale when the founder works harder. The scale, right. The business actually scales when the founder builds systems, delegates effectively and creates repeatable process. So today with AI, that lesson is even more powerful and it's even easier to do. There's no excuse to not have uh, delegation done correctly and systems build for you. The founders who win aren't necessarily the smartest in the room. They're just the ones who can leverage AI and document, delegate and automate. They essentially are building an organization that performs without them being involved in every single decision. So I learned this very early on and as AI became more and more relevant, I leveraged that and that's really helped shape who I am and how I operate today.

Speaker A: Right. Jordan, as a follow up question, and it's a question that I prepared, but I like the flow and how we're going to deep dive more into this. Now you call yourself the bottleneck breaker, right? So now it's a common thing we see sometimes where as you just described about becoming the bottleneck. Right. So why this keep happening and why do you think? You know founders, they don't notice that they are actually slowing down their own companies and the whole business. So why that happen in the first place?

Speaker B: Because the behaviors that made you successful early on are often the exact same behaviors that you limit later. When you start out and being in a business, it's normal to be involved in everything. It's, it's, it's very natural. Right? The company is built on your back. Your superhero power is the delivery and the idea. Being involved in everything is the superpower. In the beginning, you're the salesperson, you're the operator, the problem solver. But as the company grows, that same behavior actually becomes the bottleneck. And the tricky part is founders usually don't notice it because the business is still growing. And they think, look, everything is working. What they don't realize is the company is growing despite them, not because of them. Does that make sense? And I always tell founders, if every important decision, approval, customer issue or hire has to flow through them, they have built a job, not a company. And that's why I'm obsessed with operational knowledge. In sops and now AI, the goal isn't to make yourself more productive. The goal is to make the business less dependent on you. And that's when the real scale starts to happen because it's not dependent on you. And it can just grow naturally.

Speaker A: Right. Jordan, what are like kind of some early signs? You know, we, we can tell that these founders are trapped in the day to day rather than leading the business. And you know, I know it would be like little loaded question and does it happen mainly to first time founders or it might happen also to second and uh, third time founders,

Speaker B: early signs. So it happens to all founders of any company sides. So first time, second time, even founders who've had successful exits. I mean I get myself caught every once in a while and I have to take a step back and go, I'm inserting myself here and I'm making the business rely on me when I shouldn't. So the issue is an experience. The issue I uh, think is identity. With these CEOs, a lot of founders get rewarded for being the person with all the answers. And then one day the company grows to a point where that becomes the constraint. And I think that's where a lot of founders find themselves in. The early warning signs are actually pretty obvious. So you might have experienced this at some point. You're an operator, but decisions pile up waiting for the founder. Your inbox gets a little larger and you know, you roll over to the next day saying, all right, I'm going to handle these first thing in the morning. But that right there, right, the team is waiting for an approval. A customer's waiting for an answer. The team is constantly waiting for an approval. Vacations become impossible for you. Growth starts slowing down despite you working harder and everybody else working harder. And the founder, you starts feeling busy all day, but you're not spending time on. Going back to what I said earlier, your superpower, the thing that got you here, the strategy piece. So the less time that might be the clearest indicator, leading indicator that you're bottlenecked is that the time you're actually spending on strategy around the business, how to grow the business, not running in the business gets less and less every single week. So one of my favorite questions I ask people is if you disappeared for 30 days, what breaks m? And the answer usually reveals that bottleneck immediately.

Speaker A: Right now I know like also you, you talk about, you know, saying pick one thing and remove yourself. Right? Uh, it's, it looks like super powerful. But the question that might, you know, get asked as a counter idea, uh, is hey, yeah, but to who, you know, like I'm still um, you know, having ah, scarcity on the resources I don't have. Big team, team. I need to be involved in everything. How, how can I, you know, choose, you know, like, and how I can delegate this because, you know, again, actually I was trying to put that into two questions, but I think it's related to each other. So delegation sounds simple, Jordan, but actually many people, like, regardless if it's for business or not business. Right. Even as employees, sometimes, you know, delegation feels hard. Right. So, yeah, how we, how, how we can, you know, apply this philosophy of picking the one thing and removing ourselves and removing the excuses. I would say that we don't have resources, we don't have enough team people to take care of that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what's your point of view on this?

Speaker B: So my thought process for any founder is if you can document it, you can delegate it. But this is actually where most founders get stuck. They think that delegation starts with hiring and it doesn't. Delegation starts with documentation. Okay. Before I hire somebody, anybody, I want to have an sop, a standard operating procedure. Before I build an sop, I want clarity on the outcome though. So what do I want to happen in this project or role or task or repetitive thing that I'm doing on a daily basis? What should the outcome be? Now, today, AI can help you document a process in, in hours that used to take weeks, you know, in minutes that used to take hours. And the big mindset shift for CEOs. Thinking about that and asking that exact question is don't remove yourself from everything. Remove yourself from one thing. Pick the task you do repeatedly that creates the least value. Document it, systematize it in an sop, right? Then you delegate it and, and then repeat and just keep going with all the things in your day that you're repeatedly doing. And most founders aren't resource constrained, they're clarity constrained. Most founders have a va. Most founders have somebody on their team, whether it be a virtual assistant or a project manager that they can delegate things off to. So recently actually, uh, I asked a, you know, one of my, one of my clients that I'm, I'm coaching right now in jsc. Jordan Solander, coaching. What are, what are five things only you can do? Most can't answer that question because once you know that, everything else becomes a candidate for delegation, automation or elimination. And that's why my philosophy here is very simple. It's every quarter, remove yourself from one thing, do that for three years, and you've transformed your entire business. It's a totally different business

Speaker A: right now. You kept talking about SOPs, right, Jordan? So now if we want to apply this and you know, make ourselves first, accountable, and again, Track if we are on the right path of dividing and concurring, basically, um, how do you measure, like when you are working with your clients like as coach, like what do you tell a founder that comes to you on how they can track if they are doing, if they have first they have chosen the right things to do this, and second, performance wise, how we can make sure that we are on the right track and not we have to now pivot to something else maybe and try to delegate few other items and get back the control of these items that we delegated before. Right. So how we track this and put kind of KPI, if you want or like reporting on, on, on the enhancement that we had so far.

Speaker B: I think you, I think the question might over, almost over complicate the process here because I personally, I only carry about three things. Is the work getting done, is the quality acceptable and is the founder spending less time on it?

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: If all three are true delegation worked, the mistake is they delegate a task, but they keep all the decisions.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: For example, if you're delegating lead generation, but you and you don't measure how many hours somebody worked, right? If you're delegating lead generation, you don't measure how many hours somebody worked, you measure meetings booked, correct?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So if you're saying to somebody, go book meetings for me, you're my business generator, you don't care that they worked 40 hours, you care how many meetings they booked in those 40 hours. So if they booked 50 meetings in a week, do you care if they only work two hours or three hours, you care about the outcome, correct?

Speaker A: 100%.

Speaker B: Yeah. So if you're delegating customer success, you measure retention and expansion. If you're delegating operations, you're measuring cycle time and error rates. And the secret here that most people don't know that I teach constantly. If a delegated task fails, it's usually not a people problem, it's a systems problem. So either the SOP wasn't clear or the KPI wasn't defined, or the owner wasn't empowered to make the decisions themselves.

Speaker A: Makes sense. 100%. Yep. You talk about a rules. I know, but I think, you know, we need, we need you to explain that to us. Which is the 10, 8010 rule. Right? So tell us more about you're talking about, right? 10, 80, 10. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about it and how it can be used to create accountability without pretty much not going into the micromanaging. Because by the way, I've seen People who does, you know, the mistake of, you know, becoming over, um, exaggerating on the micromanaging part.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's tough not to micromanage. I understand the, the need or, sorry, the instinct, not the need to, to want to do that. But with the 108010 rule, it's, it's one of the simplest ways I found to avoid micromanagement with, while maintaining accountability. So just, uh, for anybody out there, listeners that don't understand what the 108010 rule is, the first. This is a secret sauce right here. So open up your ears, pay attention, drop your pencils. This. The first 10% of the 108010 is alignment. We define the outcome, the KPI, the SOP. What does success look like? What does good look like? 80% is execution. And this is where most founders make the mistake. This is the most common place they make the mistake. They keep jumping into the middle and managing every single decision. And if you've hired the right person and built the right system, get out of the way and let them execute on this. Now, the final 10% is review. This is where a lot of founders don't even make it to. So this final 10%, we look at the results, we see what worked, we see what didn't in how we improve the process. What founders instinctively want is control, but what they actually need is visibility. And they don't understand the difference between the two a lot of the time. And that's where micromanagement comes back in. Unfortunately, micromanagement happens when a founder confuses being informed with being involved.

Speaker A: Right. Um, let's talk about AI because you mentioned a couple of times Jordan and I know, like um, you have it select, which is the arm of uh, focusing on the AI. Um, so tell me how, if you can give me a use case, probably or an example, uh, of how AI is changing the way we are operating and um, leading currently and how this is shaping also the way the business itself it's done and what you expect this to go to in the future.

Speaker B: I mean, AI is changing the way business owners should be operating. The ones that will win will be the ones that learn how to leverage, insert, uh, AI across their entire, I will say five pillars of their business. Those pillars being lead, acquisition, lead nurture, sales, execution, fulfillment and delivery, and finally, um, retention. That being said, the, the AI, the ones that, you know, leverage AI will be the ones that win very easily. And I think most business owners still are dramatically underestimating AI, even with, you know, the, the major increases in people using Claude code or home, Hermes or openclaw. Today, just on a daily basis, the increase in those numbers, right now most founders are using it as a, as a tool. They're using it to write emails and summarize meetings and create content that's useful, but it' the equivalent of using the Internet in 1998 just to send an email. What excites me is AI as a digital workforce. So when I'm working with founders, a lot of the time I'm coaching them on building AI into SOPs, reporting customer follow up, KPI, tracking things like project management and decision support. Instead of hiring another person for every repetitive task, we're asking, can an AI agent handle 80% of the process in the 1080, 10.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So the biggest shift isn't that AI is replacing people, it's that it's allowing small teams to perform much like much larger organizations. The teams that are succeeding in the operators that are expanding rapidly and fast, they're leveraging AI to do 10x the output, 20x the output, they're thinking at a higher level. The biggest shift isn't that AI is replacing people, it's that it's allowing teams to act like larger organizations. And in five years ago, if you wanted to scale the simple quarter in, quarter out, math was you hired more people. Today you scale by combining great people with great systems and AI, you know, and that's why I'm so focused on helping founders document, build SOPs and remove themselves from this day to day, AI becomes this incredibly powerful tool and agentic workforce for you once the business is systematized. Chaos can't be automated. If your listeners take anything away from this podcast, I hope it's that chaos can't be automated, but a great system can be scaled almost infinitely.

Speaker A: I love this. I love this. Yeah, exactly. This is, you know, what we uh, we've been saying it with, with my guests in different ways. Like you know, uh, when, when the AI hype started with the generative AI, we're saying like garbage in, garbage out. Right. And when now with the agentic, like if you put cows in, they will get cows out. Right. So, um, and you need to, to make sure that you're doing it the right way. Now talking about, you know, the hype, um, where do you see people are doing the mistakes the most? And I can't blame them, Jordan, and tell you, I will tell you why, because even myself, as someone who have technology background and I've been an operator, as I told you, so when I look um, on the amount of information we are getting and the speed of the information that is popping out. I might get like, you know, confused on which system I should choose. Or like uh, you know, getting dragged into the models or like when people start to talk about a specific agent framework and let's go and use this even I start to see like these funny reels about, you know, the, you know, they call them the Jarvis bro. Like they go download something from the Internet and they make like fake videos showing like uh, I have this agent is doing everything for me but which is, I'm uh, not saying it's not real, but I mean still, you need to do some tasks before this. So where are people getting it wrong and how you're helping executors founders to go back on track when they decide to get the right AI systems in place.

Speaker B: There was a few questions in that question. Um, yeah, there were a few ones in there. So let me try to take one at a time here.

Speaker A: So sure.

Speaker B: Around the question around like which, which model should I use, which tool, which agent or framework should I use? Um, I think the real question they need to be asking is what's the bottleneck in the business? Right. Like I said earlier, we don't want to automate chaos. So before you build an agent or pick a framework or a model or a tool, you need a process. Before you need the process, you need an outcome. So if you don't have the outcome clearly defined, a KPI or a clear owner AI is just going to help make mistakes faster. And I think a lot of people don't truly understand that. So the founders getting the biggest wins aren't chasing every new model release, they're identifying one repetitive process, documenting and then asking how can I leverage one of the AI tools to make this better or cheaper. Now if the uh, question very black and white is which ADI do I use? It really just depends on the task. For creative writing and I'm using CLAUDE for research, I'm using GPT for coding truly. I've gone back and forth between Claude code and Codex. It's been great for agents and agentic stuff I'm using Hermes. Um, it truly all depends just on what the task. Is it an ongoing task? Is it a one off thing? Um, you know, for image generation I'm using Gemini for logic and thinking, I'm using grok. So I'm using all of them. So it truly just depends on the

Speaker A: task, it depends on the use case. But I'm happy you gave this example, Jordan. And I think you know, as humans, I believe this is my own theory. We have like, um, short memory span, right? Um, if people go and watch, there's a famous clip that always pop up, you know, when someone asks Steve Jobs about Java thing, you know, and he gave the best answer to this. He said like, it's not like, you know, forcing the technology into where we gonna place it, right? Or like, try to imagine, you know, how we will utilize this technology if actually there's no need for it. So I'm of course rephrasing a lot. He said, like, you start with what the customer want, like the outcome, right? What outcome you want to achieve. And then you move backward and you start to see like what technology I need to, to, to put in so I can give the customer what they want. And I think, you know, this is happening a lot with AI, uh, again, but at, at scale and at speed because of course, you know, things are coming very, very fast. And this is where I believe, you know, my own opinion. Like, feel free to correct me, Jordan. Like, I think what, what is, um, you know, differentiating people who are, um, utilizing AI is the people who, to your point, start with a use case at the beginning and then, you know, reverse engineer that into choosing which models, tools, agents, uh, versus the people who just like put the system. And then, oh, where should I start? Right? And you know, we always make this joke, like, right, like so we can bring the most intelligent system in the world, but if you don't know how to ask it the right question, it's got to stay quiet, silent, right? It will not tell you anything. So Jordan, like also one of the things we might think about, um, on how we utilize the AI, are you seeing leaders being able to use it somehow to do the things that usually we want, whether we are leaders, operators, entrepreneurs, even normal employees, to reduce maybe, um, stress levels, to increase leverage, um, and how much, you know, what we today call it, the human in the loop in all this is important. So keep the human judgment. What are the practical way actually to utilize AI to help us in reducing maybe the day to day stresses and increase our leverage?

Speaker B: So very quick wins. I mean, this is a quick win question with AI, uh, how do we gain leverage very fast just on day to day things? The first and foremost thing that stresses everybody out is the inbox, right? There are so many hundreds of tools at this point. There's some great ones out there. There's fixer AI, you can connect Claude directly to your inbox. Keeping human in the loop, I think is really Important, I don't have any of my agents responding on my behalf unless it is a, um, calendar invite where it's delegating calendar tasks and helping me reorganize my calendar. But as far as emails go, I have both my VA and an AI agent in my email and they will draft all the replies. The VA will also be in m my email and review the draft replies and send them out if they make sense, uh, or add color if needed. And likewise with my other businesses, um, it's always a draft. So it is saving me hundreds upon hundreds of hours of just, you know, getting back to people and getting back to people faster. So that's, that's an easy win right there.

Speaker A: Right, Jordan? Um, when we talk about companies, we talk about org charts usually and we talk about structures and you know, line of uh, reporting. Right. So are you seeing AI making organization actually flatter or it's increasing the um, importance of the role of leadership here? Because there uh, is, I'm asking you this question. We start to see all the major AI companies, CEOs talking about the one person company, or at least they talk about the smaller teams. So are we going away from, you know, this very complex, you know, leadership structure and making the organization flat or. No. Like this is something we're going to still need on the long term.

Speaker B: Is it making organizational structures flatter? That's an interesting question. Uh, you know, I'm on a lot of podcasts. I don't think I've ever had that question before. That's a very good question. It's an interesting question because I think organizations will become flatter, but I don't think leadership becomes less important, which is the key here. I think it actually becomes more important because AI can replace layers of coordination, reporting, administrative management, it can generate reports, track KPIs, summarize meetings. I mean there's a multitude of things that AI can do here. Historically, that's what a lot of middle management spent time doing now. Right. So leadership, but leadership isn't reporting. Leadership is setting the direction, leadership is setting the strategy, showing what good looks like. They're making decisions under uncertainty, building culture, developing people. So I don't believe in the, in the one person billion dollar company. We're hearing a lot about these unicorns coming out of Silicon Valley, um, just all over the world. But I don't personally do not believe in the one person billion dollar company narrative. For most businesses, could it happen, I guess. But most companies are still going to be built by teams where culture is developed. By people and strategy is developed by people. What changes though, like I mentioned earlier, is the leverage piece a really good example. 10 years ago, right. A company might need 100 people to achieve something in the future. It Maybe only needs 20 exceptional people supported by AI to achieve the exact same thing or same outcome. The org chart, yes, will get flatter, but the quality bar gets much higher because remember, it's great people surrounded by AI that are going to define these unicorns in these companies that skyrocket.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah, um, yeah, M. Makes a lot of sense. Um, and actually, you know, like, there are some type of business. You can't, you can't have them in one person, like, whatever. So what whatsoever, right? So whatever you're gonna do, you're gonna still have to have a team with you. And, and because at the end of the day, and this is something I noticed on myself, and I started to try to automate some of the things that I do using agents and you know, the other AI tools is that I can't handle. Right. I need people to still help me, you know, maybe in, in doing some stuff. And you just gave the perfect example, Jordan, about, you know, the inbox. So you still have the, your, your VA in your inbox, uh, to do some stuff because probably you're busy to go and check if the AI is generating right answers, right? So, so you need to delegate even that task to, to another human with you to, to take that test forward, which makes a lot of sense. Now I gotta ask a question. It's a little bit, kind of. I rarely get up with these kinds of questions, but I think based on the discussion that we had today, and I want to go back to the, um, um, to the founders who are overwhelmed and you're trying to help them. When you decide that you cannot work with certain executive or founders because you figured out that they are uncoachable, what are the signs that would tell you, hey, you know what, Jordan? I'm not doing this, man, because, you know, this guy is, you know, he. I would not be able to benefit out from him. He or she will not listen from me. When do you say this?

Speaker B: I just had one of these situations. Uh, this is a good one. This is a good one. Most of the time it's not about whether they agree with me. Uh, the founders I struggle to help are the ones they believe. Every problem is external to them. It's not my fault, it's everyone else's fault. It's the market, it's the team. M. It's the economy, it's the customers, it's the technology. It's out of my control. The founders who get the biggest results are the ones that are willing to look in the mirror and ask, what if it's me? I m tell clients all the time, you don't have to take my advice. You're paying me. But you don't have to take my advice if you really don't want to. But you do have to test your assumptions. I'm going to push you to do that. The biggest red flag for me though, is when someone asks for help, but they've already decided that they're right. At that point, they're not looking for coaching, they're looking for validation. So the founders I love working with are curious. They're willing to change beliefs, they're willing to document things. They can say, you might have a good idea here. They might say, show me another way. Mhm. They might admit they don't know everything and they're willing to level up their game. Those are the ones I love working with.

Speaker A: Nice. A lot of people exactly the way you described. Right.

Speaker B: I'm telling you, we call those red flags. Red flags, Red flags.

Speaker A: And I know, like, you know, even I hear it from investors sometimes also, they say, okay, we passed on these guys because exactly the same reason you just mentioned, you know, like, they're uncoachable. Everyone is, you know, like, you know, like it's, um, everyone is fighting against us, you know, you know, it's like, you know, you do, you do. Like, you. Everyone is the enemy and you are the one who's struggling, uh, to go out. And I think, Jordan, you know, of course we live in abundance of knowledge and information, books, podcasts and so on. And I think, you know, I want to have your opinion on this. So when people go and read about, like, entrepreneurship and the traits of an entrepreneur, so one of the things, or two of the things which are kind of related to each other's, like how you know you are on the right path. So the first thing is about persistence. Right. So, and people, I think, I think they misunderstand what persistence means and they converted to stubbornness, kind of. And, um, when you tell them, but hey, like, also you need to be flexible and to pivot, they tell you no. But I'm, um, moving away from my vision and why I want to start this company. Do you agree? Like, Jordan, like, this is where people mix between persistence and stubbornness.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, and I think that line can get blurred sometimes. A lot of the time actually Persistence and stubbornness. So I think the. I think persistence is probably committing to the outcome and stubbornness is committing to the method.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Okay. The best founders I met are incredibly persistent about where they're going, but they're flexible about how they get there. They're looking at the outcome. Uh, if customers keep telling you something, if the market keeps giving you feedback, if your team keeps bringing up the same issue over and over again and it feels repetitive and you refuse to listen to them. Because that's not my vision. That's not persistence, that's ego. You know, I tell my clients and other founders and CEOs constantly that the ones that say to me, nobody can do it the way I do it, um, I'm doing it in such a unique way. My business is a snowflake, right? The ones that, that say that to me, I say, I, I say go out there and find somebody that can do it 80% of the way that you do it. 80%, that's. It doesn't have to be perfect, right? You're not, you're not going to find perfect. Finding perfect every time doesn't scale. Go out there and find 80%. If somebody can do it 80% as good, if not better, then you do it. The 20% that's left over, that's your ego. And if you can put that aside, scaling will be easy.

Speaker A: Right. I gotta put a disclaimer here, Jordan, and this, especially if you interact a lot with some of the, um, you know, LLM tools, they're designed, not all of them, but some of them to actually, um, I would say amplify this ego. Especially ChatGPT. Especially ChatGPT. Because I've seen people, they go to ChatGPT. Okay. I'm not having any issues against OpenAI guys like, you know, it's a great product they have. I use codex, I use ChatGPT itself. But it's just a notice that I've seen and I've, you know, I've read a lot of, uh, articles about the same thing. It's designed actually to agree with you all the time unless you tell it, you know, in the memory that challenge me. So, for example, this is why Claude, by default, by the way, it always counter, uh, it try to find a counter argument, um, when I ask something. And this is where the AI also need to be, you know, used in the way where I, um, would say, careful to not fall into the trap of. I would call it being, um. Yeah, amplifying the ego. Let's put it this way. Right. Um.

Speaker B: Yeah, it does.

Speaker A: Anything you want to add on this,

Speaker B: AI tools do that. They make, they agree. You know, the, the craziest parts of what you're saying are, are the stories I hear of somebody saying to AI, hey, I have this idea. I want to go, um, buy a bunch of dogs from the dog pound and chop them up and serve them in a restaurant. Obviously that's a crazy idea, but AI goes, wow, you're really onto something there. You should really think about that. What a unique idea. Do you want me to help you plan it out? I think you're right. You need to have challenges in there. In fact, in all my AI models I have in the memory, including my AI agents, challenge me. Don't be a yes man. Always offer an alternative. You know, you don't want a yes man, especially when you're a founder building a business. Uh, if you want to be a yes man, you know, go, go work in a corporate job. But if you want to be a founder, if you want to be in a C suite, you don't want to be a yes man. You want to be challenged, you want to be pushed, you want to be dragged forward in your way of thinking.

Speaker A: Yeah. And this way, like, you know, all leaders, they go to, you know, try to work with coaches like yourself, Jordan, because they want to be challenged, right? Like the successful ones, always, they surround themselves with people who can challenge them. It's not like, because they are wrong all the time, but because they need this, you know, different point of views. Because when, when, when you look at things from, I would call it neutral perspective. It's other than if, if I'm your client, I would be like laser focus on certain outcome or a certain way I want to do it. But you might have different way to completely change my point of view on that. So, so this is where, you know, things get, uh, get better. And this is actually, you know, the right way to do it, I believe. And you know, I've known a lot of successful leaders, executives, founders, and the common trait is they are all open for people to tell them, like, what they're the hard truth. Let's call it this way. Right? Um, as we are coming close to an end, Jordan, very crucial question, like how people can get in touch, how and where they can start.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So if you just want to get entered into my world, uh, jordansolander.com you can find everything you need, uh, right from there. So it events, investing, uh, private equity, working with me as a coaching client. If you just want to work with me as a coaching client and you're interested in that. JordanSolander coaching. Com.

Speaker A: Great. I will make sure that the link is in the show notes. So, Jordan, thank you very much for being here with me today. I know like, you have still a busy day ahead, um, back in, in, in Washington D.C. so thank you for joining me, um, in your morning. And um, you know, I really enjoyed the discussion. I think we discussed a lot of things which are beneficial for executives, founders and everyone who's interested to know how they can make themselves, you know, better. I would say, like, always seek to, to, to speak with people who have done it before you. They can advise you and guide, uh, you. So thank you again, Jordan. And this is how I end my episodes for the audience. If you just discovered us, thank you for passing by. I give me a favor, subscribe, share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you are one of the people who keep coming again and again, thank you very much. We are seeing amazing results recently that we have seen spikes in the number of listenerships and downloads across multiple countries and we are making it again. So since 2025, every week we change countries actually. So we are on the Apple Top 200 podcast charts, although we changed the category recently to technology, from business and entrepreneurship to technology because recently we focus more on the AI topics. But still you followed and you made it, uh, happen. So thank you very much and as I say, always stay tuned for a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye bye.