Humans Are No Longer The Moat

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2:59scratch could realistically have zero employees. Look at OpenClaw, literal proof of concept. Nobody's going to be manually structured campaigns because it's going to be an interface where you approve creative angles, formats, and AI executes. For customer service, you'll spend 30 minutes approving high-risk tickets, the AI flag, and that's it. Influencer outreach will be an agent that contacts 20 creators, sends proposals, and handles responses. You will just approve. A$100 million company might just need one CMO, COO, and CTO who can handle what used to take an entire team. This sounds like doom, but there's actually opportunity here.

3:31So he said, look, talent is still the mode because it's a talent that's going to create the edge with these tools. There'll be no new roles we can't even predict. You just need to build from the foundation up and be prepared for whatever comes your way. So what do you think about this angle, this whole, I don't care about hiring for talent anymore. I'm just hiring AI people. I think that's really wrong. I think what you want to do is hire amazing talent and give them the AI capabilities. I think if you do that, you're going to have a much better output than if you just hire for AI. Because if you just hire for AI and they lack the other skills that are needed to be successful in that role, you're screwed.

4:04And I think it's easier to teach the AI part than it is to teach all the other stuff. So my opinion on this is I think talent is going to be the moat for the next couple of years, at least. I think if you, true talent is good at the AI stuff. That's my personal opinion. If you're really that damn good, you're pretty on top of this stuff for the most part, I think. and you will know how to commandeer and you also know how to bring other people with you. So I think you're very much going to need people. Now, the discussion around are companies going to be a lot smaller? I am a little more like, yeah, I think companies are going to be a lot smaller.

4:39So we'll see. I think this plays out in the next one, two years or so, Neil. So we'll see very quickly how it goes. But I think humans are still very much the moat. I think there's going to be more organizations, maybe smaller organizations. and I think that's how it'll play out. Yeah, and I agree organizations will be smaller, but nowhere near what the person on X is saying is gonna be smaller. I don't see$100 million companies being the norm with just a CEO, CMO, CFO, and very few people underneath. I'm not saying you need 1 ,000 people. I'm not saying you need 500. Maybe you're able to do it with half or a third or a fourth, but I don't see it being where you're building amazing companies with only a few people for the norm, right?

5:21Maybe you're going to see some outliers, but I don't think that's going to be the norm. And I think I disagree with Eric on that good people have AI skills. I know a lot of amazing salespeople, BD people, operating people, financial people that don't have AI skills, and they're amazing. And there's a lot of people in those sectors that are great at AI. And what I say is when you pair them with those amazing people that have been doing this for 10, 20, 30 years, those people end up becoming much better. And a lot of those senior people, they're not going to know AI as much as some of these young kids who are starting off with it.

6:04But their experience for doing it in one space for 20, 30 years, in my opinion, that's not easily replaced by AI. Yeah. So my take on it is, and we'll probably just agree to disagree here, but this is for everyone to think about here. My take on it is, you know, with the experience, experience definitely is valuable. You need to have that. There's a lot of context you have in those 10, 20, 30 years of doing things. but at the same time if you're not on if you're not on top of it and somebody else is they're just that damn they're they're that damn good they're like so much better than you because i'll look at people right i'm not gonna name names but i'll look at people maybe at people's companies and they'll talk about you know one of their sales people used to be like there used to be a killer really well like really well versed but the other person has the same amount of experience also enabled ai is crushing that person right and um you know i'm seeing that in multiple organizations.

6:58And I just, I, that, that's why I try to push all my friends around. Like, even when I was talking to Bernard today, we're like, we're trying to push all our founder friends. Some are resistant, but the ones that once they see it, they open their eyes up, it's game over. Right. Um, but there are a ton that resist right now, but once they see it, then they see it just like, Holy crap. Like, that's why I posted earlier this week to Twitter. I was like, I'm, I've never been more excited to work, but I've also never been more enraged. And the reason I'm enraged right now is because I'm trying to shake my friends.

7:26I'm trying to shake my team members to fucking wake up, right? Because the things I'm able to do now, like, I'm compounding so much faster every day. And I'm just like, good luck fucking catching up with me, right? And so I think that's where I'm coming from. And I don't want that to happen to people listening right now. I don't want that to happen to people's organizations. I want them to feel, that's why I'm like, you need both. You need both. Ideally, if you're new in your career, fine. But if you have experience, you've got to have the AI piece. I think that's non-negotiable in my mind. I'm so passionate that I cut twice on this podcast about it.

7:58Yeah. So what we found is the ideal structure is to go hire the people with a lot of experience. They may not have the AI capabilities. You go put people underneath them who understand the technology and can bring them new ways of doing things. Now we found that model to work better, but the key with the leadership there is the leadership has to be open to new ideas and change. Sometimes when you bring in people who are really experienced have been doing things for 20, 30 years, they're set in their ways. So when you're going through the interview process, if they're set in their ways and they're not going to adapt, I would not hire them.

8:31My philosophy is it's better to hire the experienced people. And most good experienced people are open to change. And then you put underneath them, the young kids who are just using this technology are moving so much faster and bringing to organization. And when you pair them together, we're seeing much better results. I'll use the mutual friend again. I was texting him a couple of days ago, right? I'm going to see him next week. So I was like, you know, sometimes I just look at people and I'm just like, it's like literally deer in the headlight syndrome where you try to tell them something where like you're trying to get them to understand.

9:04We're trying to train people on AI, right? And they just look at you like, right? And then I text him that. He's like, it's funny you say that because his CEO, who's a killer, you know, his CEO, right? Done really amazing for himself. But he's like, he keeps saying - Amazing biker. Amazing biker. Is he an amazing biker? I don't know. Peloton biker. Oh, yes. Amazing Peloton biker. Yes, yes, yes. Always number one. So, but the crazy thing is he literally said the same thing. He's like literally deer in the headlights across the board, right? So I think maybe the key takeaway before we move on to the next thing here, because I have another interesting topic, but I think Neil's right.

9:38You have to bring people with you. You have to enable some type of AI transformation in your company. That's why we're teaching everyone cloud code right now. We're doing these hackathons. But even then, I still don't think that's quite enough. I think our hiring process has got to change quite a bit and we've got to tighten that up quite a bit more. So we're going to do what we can internally, but hiring is going to get a lot tougher to join us at the very least. If you want to hire, if you want to see that test, by the way, go to singlegrain.com slash apply and then you'll see what it looks like.

10:05But Neil, so remember when the internet first came out? Before you go, two more things, okay? And I think the second one is a very important caveat. up. So the two things is, when you're going through this process, just be careful and really pay attention to who you're hiring. In big organizations, it is going to be hard to scale with a ton of AI forward talent because there's not a lot of good talent out there. Good talent, even in bad economy, they're not looking for a job. They have jobs. You have to go and poach them and to get really good people, it's going to take a lot of effort. You're going to have to convince them and you want to surround them with other amazing people that fill in the gaps, at least on the AI side.

10:52And you're going to have to go find them, right? So you may get some people applying or whatnot, but Eric and I don't wait for just people to apply. We go search and look for people that we think is amazing. The second thing, and this one's really important, I don't want anyone to forget this. When we hire the younger people or I interact with companies all over the world and I interact with these young kids who are hotshot AI kids and leveraging all this cool stuff and they show me some of the stuff they're doing, you have to make sure you're watching them, not in a creepy way, but you're putting some limitations on them.

11:24Because we see some of these kids willing to do things and it'll cause multi-multi-million dollar lawsuits and they're like, who cares if we don't do this, we're going to win. Like, screw it, let's just go. you have to be careful if you have a company generating 50 million 100 million and it's bootstrapped or you're publicly traded and you're generating 5 billion in revenue you can't let a kid do whatever they want even if you think it's the future and increase or cause it where you're most likely going to get a lawsuit for 100 200 million dollars like you need to be very careful and we see a lot of these kids tell us like one of the guys who left me for marketing he was telling He's like, I always wanted to do this stuff and you wouldn't let me.

12:07And I'm like, dude, my clients would get sued if you wanted me to do some of this stuff. And he's like, yeah, but because you're not doing it, your clients are going to fail. And I'm like, straight up, this is going to create some legal issues in certain European countries. I get what you're trying to do and I understand it, but you got to figure out a framework that works for both ends. And yes, that is harder and that's some more tapes, but that's reality in you. That is business. Yeah. And by the way, guys, that's why I don't teach my team OpenClaw because there's too many liabilities tied to it.

12:37Yeah. They're going to start connecting customer data sources and all these passwords and things like that. Then the device gets compromised and everything blows up, right? You've got to think about the second and third order consequences. And the good thing is when Neil and I took that personality test, Neil had 95 % practicality. Same for me too. So you've got to think about that. But the thing I want to call it, Neil, so interesting, in the last seven days or so, I've had a couple of agency owners reach out to me, right? One was a holding company agency, with smaller ones, PE-backed, around your size.

13:09I'll just call it that. And he's reaching out. And another one was like, dude, what do you think is going to happen to the agency model? I was like, what do you think is going to happen to the agency model? He's like, I think it's dead, right? He's like, I think the traditional model is dead. What are you doing right now? I'm like, he's like, what are you going to do? I'm like, I'm going to keep doing what we're doing right now. Mission control. I'm going to keep working 20, 30 years or so. And I think it's going to be four deployed marketers. I'm going to go down that route, right? Right. Now, the other one is like, oh, you know, I really want to talk about agentic transformation and all these things.

13:34I'm like, oh, a.k.a. you have no idea what to do right now. And so, yeah, he's been watching my content and all that. I'm like, oh, because we've hired some people from his company before. Right. And I talked to people on my team. They're like, oh, yeah, they have no idea what they're doing right now. Right. So I'm just like, dude, just I thought was interesting to bring up because there are I think this stuff all comes from the top. I think Neil's pushing his team on it. His co-founder, Mike's really on top of it too. And then the founders I talk to that are eating it up right now, we're texting each other every single day.

14:05So I think this has to come from the top in some way, shape, or form. And to Neil's point, it's not just AI YOLO and do whatever you want. You need to couple good experience and good judgment. By the way, that two by two again, good judgment plus AI win. And that all comes down to talent management. it. Yeah. And one thing that we've been doing internally that we found to work really well. So we had some of our executives who are just like, man, I want to go take a few weeks and just go learn more about this AI stuff. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't want you to take a few weeks or even weekends.

14:42And they're like, because some of them during the weekends, no joke, I have quite a few executives who literally just reach out and try to build up more pipe, even though they're not in sales. So I was like, we're going to hire, and we did this a while ago. I'm like, we're going to hire people underneath you who are going to explore all the AI stuff that can make your life better and more efficient. And just like the example you gave with OpenClaw, I don't need my executives to learn how to use it. I'd rather go put people underneath them that learn how to use it and then enable them to do their job better versus them wasting their time to learn how to use each and every single one of these things.

15:22And I'm not saying it's a bad use of time to learn AI, but when people are rainmakers and bring in a lot of revenue, like someone's bringing in eight figures a year, you have them focus on bringing in the money and you can put other talent in that's not that expensive that can fill in all the gaps. And the reason I want to bring out that example is every organization I meet, they all talk about how do we get everyone to learn AI and use it super efficient? And I agree, the majority of people in an organization better learn how to use it and get better. But it doesn't mean that everyone in an organization needs to be 100 % proficient at it.

16:02I think for some roles, you need to have them focus on what they're best at versus them learn every single new piece of technology. And the other reason we do this, just like you guys see OpenClaw or any of the new technology that comes out, Every month there's something new. It's too hard for us to take our, you know, A players and be like, cool, every time there's something new, drop everything and go and learn it. It's better to have people in an organization who are starting to test out new things and then bringing their learnings to other people. It's just, it's too hard to keep up with every single thing every day.

16:37Yeah. You know, actually what I'll bring up here that's related, and then I want to talk about the internet trend here in a second. So let me show you this. So we have a baseline level of proficiency that's required at single grain. So let's say it's for, you know, SEO, for example. OK, so I have a table pulled up over here and basically what I'm showing. Damn it. OK, so what I have highlighted over here, this is the SEO function. OK, so we have four levels of AI fluency at single grain. We have unacceptable, we have capable, we have adoptive and then we have transformative. Transformative is the highest level you can get to.

17:11Okay. Unacceptable would be AI use only for generic outlines, no SOPs. Capable would be uses AI for briefs, outlines and scripts. Right. I don't know why cloud code is in here, but it should say chat GPT. I'm not sure why it says cloud code. Adoptive would be implements two documented automation, SOP upgrades per month. They show AI-powered internal linking, automated meta description, whatever, right? It just shows that they're a little more sophisticated here. And then they're showing that they're saving time, like 20 % time or whatever it is. Grammarly thinks it's freaking annoying. And then transformative would be they run SEO production system.

17:47So internal linking, refresh, QA reporting, 30 % to 50 % output at same headcount or pipeline, SEO hour lift. So this is at least what our fluency table is right now. This is going to change probably every six months or so. But to Neil's point, we don't need everyone at transformative. We probably need everyone at least at capable or adoptive. And that's what we're getting them to. And we believe that on the cloud code side of things, we have to get people that at least baseline capable or else we're really going to be in trouble as an organization. And with some of this stuff, you can actually just build so you don't even need to learn.

18:21Eric's just using generic stuff, just as a general outline on what he's looking for for his team to help them out. But for example, with the internal linking, with that kind of stuff, a lot of organizations like ours, we've already automated at NPD. So we don't personally care if someone comes in with the AI understanding of how to do that because it's already done for them. So what we want to do internally is when you get people who learn stuff or who get good at things, we expect them to productize it So it adapts to the rest of the organization where the rest of the organization may need to understand what's happening, but they don't need to learn it because it's just being done for them.

19:01And then that way you can create efficiency. So then that way you don't need as many people. And hopefully you can get clients results faster. Yep. And I think this was created, this table was created quite some time ago. I'm looking at the date for it, but I'll try to dig it up. But to Neil's point, yes. Now, I'm going to go with your table created a few months ago or modified a few months ago because of the cloud code. Probably. No, Cloud Code's been out for a while. Your team's been using it heavily for a while or no? I don't know why Cloud Code's in there, but no. We've been using it since the year started, January 5th.

19:33That's when we mandated everyone has to learn Cloud Code. So I don't know how old this is, but Cloud Code itself, it's been around for over a year or something like that. All right. See you guys. Goodbye.

19:52Thank you.