The Biggest AI Problem Is Seeing What's Possible | Lazy Leverage #133

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ "Your company is so broken that if I gave you artificial general intelligence, you still could not make one more dollar." Jon means it, technology is necessary, not sufficient, and every half-built Replit tool you Slack to your ops manager spends goodwill your team doesn't have. Peter calls it the bank balance: every day you change nothing, it grows a little. Every new system is a withdrawal. In this one: the "this process has been deprecated" banner Peter put in size-72 red font on every old document until his team moved to Notion, why your senior leaders should hear about a change before your frontline does, why Peter says a founder gets to pull out the sword about once a year, and Jon's steps from Goldratt: pick the right part of the business, find the old rules you built around the limit, write the new rule, then hold the line. Plus Jon's grandpa, who sold the ad over the phone before he pitched the idea to his skeptical partner.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:49 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 04:11 - Why Change Is Harder in an Offline Business 09:53 - History Doesn't Repeat, It Rhymes 14:09 - "This Process Has Been Deprecated" 17:00 - Hiring Global Talent With Sagan Passport 18:15 - Your Team Has a Finite Change Budget 23:11 - How to Get Buy-In Before the Change 28:38 - When to Pull Out the Sword 34:13 - Technology Is Not a Strategy 36:39 - Step 1: Apply It to the Right Part of the Business 38:01 - Step 2: Find the Old Rules Built Around the Limit 45:24 - Step 3: Write the New Rule 46:46 - Step 4: Hold the Line on the New Rule 50:26 - Sell One Before You Pitch It 56:26 - Closing   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Goldratt, E. M., Schragenheim, E., & Ptak, C. A. (2000). Necessary but not sufficient: A theory of constraints business novel. North River Press. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0884271706 Alinsky, S. D. (1971). Rules for radicals: A pragmatic primer for realistic radicals. Random House. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679721134 Chesterton, G. K. (1929). The thing. (Chesterton's fence)   Quotes Referenced: "As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be." Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (1971)   People & Frameworks Cited: Eli Goldratt, Theory of Constraints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints Chesterton's fence: https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/ Swimlane diagrams: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimlane State machines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine NARPM: https://www.narpm.org/   Tools Mentioned: Notion: https://www.notion.com/ LeadSimple: https://www.leadsimple.com/ Process Street: https://www.process.st/ DocuSign: https://www.docusign.com/ Replit: https://replit.com/ Claude: https://claude.ai/ n8n: https://n8n.io/ Cursor: https://cursor.com/   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/   🌎 Jon built Sagan to bring Lazy Leverage to business owners, and Peter's businesses use it: https://saganpassport.com Let's identify where global talent and AI can increase your output and cut overhead. Book a free 30-minute call: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation   👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW Newsletter: https://lazyleverage.beehiiv.com/

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ Jon has heard owners say they can't use AI because their software doesn't have a good API. That's backwards! Your owner investor never hired you to upload work orders. They hired you so they always know where their maintenance request stands. Peter calls this the biggest problem with AI: owners can't SEE what's possible, because they know exactly how the work gets done today. Expertise blinds you. In this one: the luxury resort that runs everything over WhatsApp (so why do your owners still get a portal login?), the email every recruiter sends telling you to raise your budget, and what Sagan sends instead: three candidates below, at and above it. Peter's case: a good marketing agency will help you more with AI than a developer will. Jon is pessimistic anyway: you've got an $11,000-a-month SBA loan and an office manager who almost quit last time you rolled something out. Plus Jevons paradox, every email Sagan has ever received sorted with Jev for maybe six bucks, and yes, whether AI takes everyone's job. Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:39 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 01:47 - Last Week: Justin Roff-Marsh's "Pick One" and the F1 Pit Crew 07:40 - AI's Biggest Problem: Seeing What's Possible 09:34 - Sears in 1997: Email Isn't a Faster Catalog 12:05 - Expertise Blinds You (and the Sagan Budget Email) 15:16 - Hiring Global Talent With Sagan Passport 16:32 - Start From the Job to Be Done 19:19 - Paving Cow Paths: The Task Map Is a Trap 22:24 - Your Customers Don't Want a Portal 26:03 - Why Marketers Are Better AI Guides Than Developers 28:58 - Why Jon Is Pessimistic About AI Rollouts 35:40 - How Fast Will AI Hit Offline Businesses 40:12 - Jevons Paradox: Cheaper Means More Demand 43:15 - Will AI Take Everyone's Job 52:05 - Closing   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Seiffer, J. (2023). Output thinking: Scale faster, manage better, transform your company. https://www.amazon.com/Output-Thinking-Faster-Transform-Company/dp/1930417004 Miller, D. (2017). Building a StoryBrand: Clarify your message so customers will listen. HarperCollins Leadership. https://www.amazon.com/Building-StoryBrand-Clarify-Message-Customers/dp/0718033329 Herold, C. (2018). Vivid vision: A remarkable tool for aligning your business around a shared vision of the future. Lioncrest Publishing. https://www.amazon.com/Vivid-Vision-Remarkable-Aligning-Business/dp/1544508123 Jevons, W. S. (1865). The coal question. Macmillan.   People & Frameworks Cited: Justin Roff-Marsh, Ballistix: https://justinroffmarsh.substack.com/ Kevin Henderson, SMB Law Group: https://www.smblaw.group/ Jobs to Be Done (Clayton Christensen): https://www.christenseninstitute.org/theory/jobs-to-be-done/ Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox Porter's five forces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter%27s_five_forces_analysis   Related Reading: Hammer, M. (1990). Reengineering work: Don't automate, obliterate. Harvard Business Review, 68(4), 104-112. https://hbr.org/1990/07/reengineering-work-dont-automate-obliterate David, P. A. (1990). The dynamo and the computer: An historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox. American Economic Review, 80(2), 355-361.   Tools Mentioned: Claude: https://claude.ai/ AppFolio: https://www.appfolio.com/ Buildium: https://www.buildium.com/ WhatsApp: https://www.whatsapp.com/ Jev by TypeSafe AI: https://typesafe.ai/   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/   🌎 Jon built Sagan to bring Lazy Leverage to business owners, and Peter's businesses use it: https://saganpassport.com Let's identify where global talent and AI can increase your output and cut overhead. Book a free 30-minute call: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation   👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW Newsletter: https://lazyleverage.beehiiv.com/

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/   "Passive income is bullsh*t." Jon keeps getting versions of the same DM: someone with a W2 wants to buy a $650,000 moving company, keep the day job, and let the manager the broker promised run it. Recording in person for the first time, in San Diego, Jon and Peter take that DM apart line by line, from two operators who have bought, sold and started businesses from zero. In this one: why the broker never buys the deal he's selling you, what happens to your SDE the first day a new owner walks in and the manager asks for a raise, why Jon walked away from his franchise competitor after 30-plus sales when he could have sold 300, the one question to ask every time a business or a course is pitched to you ("why am I being presented with this opportunity?"), what full recourse on an SBA loan puts at risk, and the only real path to a semi-passive business: get really good first. If you're buying anyway, go intern for an owner before you write a check. That's how Peter and his partner bought their engineering business.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 02:34 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 03:27 - The DM: "I Want to Buy a Business for Passive Income" 07:58 - Passive Income Is BS (and Why That's Fine) 11:04 - The Moving Company on BizBuySell 15:42 - Who Is Really Selling These Opportunities 19:34 - Why Jon Walked Away From His Franchise Competitor 21:39 - Why Watching Deals Feels Like Progress 24:08 - Why $1-3M Businesses Are So Fragile 26:34 - "Why Am I Being Presented With This Opportunity" 28:01 - Buy the Problem Nobody Else Will Take 30:22 - It's a Seller's Market, So Go Intern 35:00 - Start Small Before You Sign Full Recourse 37:06 - The Secret to a Semi-Passive Business 41:27 - Hiring the Gaps Takes Five Years of Pain 44:18 - Closing   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Ferriss, T. (2007). The 4-hour workweek. Crown Publishers. Wickman, G. (2011). Traction: Get a grip on your business. BenBella Books. (EOS)   People & Frameworks Cited: Acquisitions Anonymous (Michael Girdley, Bill D'Alessandro, Heather Endresen, Mills Snell): https://www.acquanon.com/ Chris Koerner, The Koerner Office: https://www.thekoerneroffice.com/ Rich Jordan, Marine Corps veteran turned plumbing operator: https://www.linkedin.com/in/strongpointrich/ FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement Dr. Dre and Eminem's first studio session, The Defiant Ones (HBO, 2017): https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/watch-dr-dre-eminem-recall-first-meeting-making-my-name-is-202507/ SBA 7(a) loans: https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/7a-loans   Tools Mentioned: BizBuySell: https://www.bizbuysell.com/ Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/   🌎 Jon built Sagan to bring Lazy Leverage to business owners, and Peter's businesses use it: https://saganpassport.com   Let's identify where global talent and AI can increase your output and cut overhead. Book a free 30-minute call: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation   👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW Newsletter: https://lazyleverage.beehiiv.com/

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ Cameron Tope has a rule for his team: use AI all the time and he fires you, use it none of the time and he fires you. Jon has the reason it matters. Underperformers used to give themselves away by producing very little. With AI, they produce more. Cameron is the broker and owner of Emerson Property Management, about 300 single family homes in the Houston area, and he runs it from San Diego. In this one: why Cameron learned the job on the ground before he took it remote. The juggling monkey, and how easy it is to hide in the easy part of a project. Jon's pyramid of leverage, and why he thinks every business owner underhires. Justin Roff-Marsh's idea that you can only maximize one variable. Where TOC falls short. The $500 test Cameron ran with a Sagan hire to rule out a lead channel. And the barnacle hunt, where Cameron pays his team $200 to $300 for the best piece of old process they can find and kill.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:42 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 01:41 - 300 Doors in Houston, Run From San Diego 06:30 - Sell the Beach, Not the Plane 09:27 - The Juggling Monkey 10:24 - AI Makes Underperformers Produce More 13:05 - The Pyramid of Leverage 14:28 - Hiring Global Talent With Sagan Passport 16:08 - Everybody Underhires 17:36 - Maximize One Variable 21:59 - Where TOC Falls Short 27:31 - The Broken Plates on the Stairs 33:18 - A $500 Test to Kill a Lead Channel 42:30 - Be Yourself, and If That Fails, Be Someone Else 50:01 - How Cameron Thinks About AI 54:10 - The Barnacle Hunt   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Roff-Marsh, J. (2015). The Machine: A Radical Approach to the Design of the Sales Function. Greenleaf Book Group Press. Roff-Marsh, J. (2025). An Ode to Speed. Substack.   Quotes Referenced: "Never cross a river that is on average four feet deep." Nassim Nicholas Taleb.   People & Frameworks Cited: Justin Roff-Marsh on clock speed, pit crew behavior, and splitting business as usual from the growth business Eliyahu Goldratt and the theory of constraints Adam Smith and specialized labor Jon's pyramid of leverage: owner, expensive labor, lower cost labor, technology   Tools Mentioned: Buildium, AppFolio, HotPads, Indeed, Asana, Airtable, Trello, ChatGPT, Grok Bot   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Cameron: https://www.emersonpropertymanagement.com/ | https://www.linkedin.com/company/emerson-property-management-inc   🌎 Jon built Sagan to bring Lazy Leverage to business owners, and Cameron's business uses it: https://saganpassport.com   Let's identify where global talent and AI can increase your output and cut overhead. Book a free 30-minute call: https://sagan-passport.link/Free_consultation_book   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ Jon can hand a model 35,000 of his own tweets, 250 newsletters he wrote himself, 400 hours of podcast transcripts, and a swipe file of 5,000 hooks he bought for three dollars. Then he can ask it for 50 LinkedIn posts. If you charge him $5,000 a month to write those posts, that is what you are competing with now, and his argument is that you have to beat it noticeably, not narrowly. Peter has made about twelve short form videos. He started with a DSLR, a teleprompter and scripts written for him, and they were flat enough that Jon told him so. He switched to an iPhone, moved to a different corner of his office, swapped the teleprompter for bullet points on a sheet of paper, and stopped trying to sound like an expert. Now he just does the news. Those ones worked. In this one: the two advantages every business owner has over a full time creator, and why most of them use neither. Why there are fewer people who can make good plumbing content than there are plumbers who can replace a water heater. The barbell Jon thinks every business should run, and the middle most people land in instead. Why Peter sells the sponsorship before he writes the newsletter. And the person already on your payroll you should put in front of a camera full time.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:47 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 02:13 - Why Video Is a Superpower 04:16 - Proof of Human 07:06 - You Already Have the Content and the Customers 09:48 - Hiring Global Talent With Sagan Passport 11:03 - Plumbing Content Is Rarer Than Plumbers 12:33 - Why Talking to a Camera Alone Is So Hard 15:12 - Make the Format Your Own 17:54 - The Only Platform Left With Discovery 21:00 - Do the News 26:15 - Smile With Your Voice 27:55 - Promote the Person Who Likes Filming 30:05 - The Barbell, and the Middle Most People Land In 33:55 - Sell Sponsorships to Force Yourself 37:20 - Done For You Agencies Get Squeezed   References Mentioned in This Episode -   People & Frameworks Cited: Proof of human, Jon's memo to his team, becoming a newsletter Smile with your voice, the cold calling habit that fixes a flat take The camera flattens you by about twenty percent, so overdo it past the point that feels ridiculous Look through the lens, not at it Park on the downhill, Peter's habit of stopping mid task so tomorrow starts with momentum Ray Bradbury, David Ogilvy, Gino Wickman and EOS Level 10 meetings   Tools Mentioned: Loom, Remotion, RentVine, AppFolio, Zillow, Claude, Fable, ChatGPT voice mode, Grok Bot   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/   👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/   🌎 Jon built Sagan to bring Lazy Leverage to business owners, and Peter's businesses use it: https://saganpassport.com Let's identify where global talent and AI can increase your output and cut overhead. Book a free 30-minute call: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/   This conversation describes personal experience and is not medical advice. Several substances discussed are illegal in most of the United States. Christian Ruf says he did twenty two years of therapy in about two and a half hours. He flew for the 160th Night Stalkers, the most elite special operations helicopter unit in the world. Both he and Jon spent years being drug tested by the government. Now they sit in ceremonies guided by Hoot. Christian got out of the military and two years later he was going downhill fast. Medication was not working and therapy was not working. Hoot came out of television, had what he calls a dark night of the soul, and found his way here through meditation. In this one: why Jon hands over every decision the moment he enters the space, including his own dose. What set and setting mean, and why Hoot runs ceremonies outdoors. Why the music is the medicine, and what happens when whoever is choosing it gets it wrong. The night the clouds cleared over Colorado and a meteor shower arrived at eleven. And the part both of them say matters more than the ceremony itself, which is what you do with it the next morning.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:30 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 03:22 - Who Hoot Is 06:10 - Christian's Road to the First Ceremony 09:48 - Twenty Years of Anxiety and the Backpack 12:20 - Why This Is Not a Concert 15:06 - Harmony, Hoot's Partner 18:42 - Set and Setting 23:16 - The Music Is the Medicine 27:34 - Releasing Control 32:19 - Not the People You Would Expect 35:12 - They Should Have Sent a Poet 40:07 - The Ancestors Rooting for Me 46:01 - The Night the Clouds Cleared 49:37 - What Hoot Does During Ceremony 53:30 - Integration Is the Whole Point   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Sagan, C. (1985). Contact. Simon & Schuster.   Quotes Referenced: "They should have sent a poet," from the film adaptation of Contact, which Jon takes as the closest anyone has come to describing the experience.   People & Frameworks Cited: Chris Berg, whose post on X led Christian to his first ceremony Set and setting, as studied at Johns Hopkins and Imperial College London The backpack every man carries, and what it holds The ski tracks image for integration, and Hoot's answer that if you stare at the tree you hit the tree "The psychedelics are not the medicine. You are." Reality with a capital R, and remembering rather than learning   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Christian Ruf: https://uncommonelite.com | https://x.com/pinpulleddrmf Hoot keeps no public profile. To reach him, leave a comment on this episode or DM Jon.   🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com Schedule a free consulting session: https://sagan-passport.link/Free_consultation_book   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ Jon's Airtable had one job description copied 135 times, once for every row. Some of it was written by people and some by AI summaries feeding off other fields, because whenever somebody needed a new thing they added a column. Peter runs his Airtable with an iron fist and makes people justify every new field to him personally. Jon lets it sprawl and then goes in with a weed whacker. They land in the same place anyway. Jon tells his one remaining coaching client that he would not put a dime into an application layer right now, and would put all of it into the data underneath. In this one: why venture-backed companies build for scale first while everyone else builds for whatever answers today's question. The five terms that made this click for Jon, including ETL and reverse ETL. Why Peter's market rent lives in three systems that never update each other, and what an owner sees on the portal when they disagree. Why Jon turned down a real recruiting system a year and a half ago and says he would be in trouble now if he had not. Peter's three rules for a software stack. And the three grand a month hire he thinks non-technical companies are all about to make.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:51 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 03:00 - Why a Data Episode Pays 05:39 - Venture Builds for Scale, You Built for Profit 08:04 - The Same Job Description 135 Times 12:24 - Brought to You by Sagan Passport 13:42 - The Plain English Definitions 15:38 - The Market Rent That Lives in Three Places 19:21 - Do Not Spend 50 Grand on a Front End 22:47 - Why Jon Refused to Buy an ATS 28:11 - All Business Software Is Just a Database 33:35 - Put a Developer on Staff 35:43 - The Five Problems Behind One Good Search 38:06 - Peter's Three Rules for Your Stack 42:58 - Who Gets to Pick the Software   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Pollan, M. (2008). In defense of food: An eater's manifesto. Penguin.   Quotes Referenced: Michael Pollan, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Peter cites it as the shape he wants for his own three rules.   People & Frameworks Cited: Source of truth, system of record, and application layer ETL and reverse ETL Peter's three rules: limit where data lives, favor open and free APIs, permit no duplication Policy, process, tech, with tech last The walled garden Vectorizing a candidate database so keyword search stops missing people   Tools Mentioned in the Episode: Buildium, AppFolio, Rent Vine, Rent Engine, Airtable, Postgres, Zapier, n8n, Make, Stripe, QuickBooks, Xero, Slack, Monday.com, HubSpot, JotForm, LeadSimple, Indeed, Zillow, Homes.com, Claude Code, Grok Bot, Fable, Cloudflare Workers, Apify, Service Titan, Salesforce, MCP   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/   🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation 👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ A Formula One pit crew is twenty-two people who work for four seconds a race. Nobody has ever suggested firing most of them, because everybody already knows the crew is there to serve the car. Justin Roff-Marsh's question is why that stops being obvious the second you walk past a customer service desk and catch somebody doing nothing. Justin has been consulting for thirty years and wrote The Machine, the book Peter read years ago and still goes back to. For two decades he has been working inside Theory of Constraints on the part nobody else built, an application of it for a whole company rather than a factory floor. That work is a mini book now, called Ode to Speed, and Peter and Jon have been quoting it on the show since episode 93. His argument is that most people who read The Goal came away with the wrong lesson. In this one: why you pick your constraint rather than hunt for it, and why throwing a dart at one beats getting it right. The two numbers Justin says will run any company, throughput per constraint unit and on-time task completion. The black market for tasks that turns up inside every chaotic business. Why a salesperson takes two years to get good when an aircraft engineer takes two months. And Jon saying out loud for the first time that Sagan is pulling AI back to one centralized team, because a manager with a frontier model will optimize their own department at the whole company's expense. Justin's line for that: a three year old without a chainsaw pulls the cat's tail. Give them one and they dissect it.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:41 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 04:17 - Who He Is, and What The Machine Was 06:49 - Why Most People Misread The Goal 10:58 - The Pit Crew That Works Four Seconds 14:58 - Brought to You by Sagan Passport 16:14 - Free Cash Flow, Not Lap Time 18:51 - Every Business Has a Heartbeat 22:10 - Optimize Many Things, Maximize One 27:30 - The Two Numbers That Run a Company 33:38 - The Black Market for Tasks 40:15 - Pick a Constraint and Throw a Dart 47:54 - Pit Crew Behavior and Global Talent 51:25 - Your Salesperson Should Never Open the CRM 57:39 - Three Jobs Every Two Days 1:00:05 - AI Against the Constraint 1:06:49 - Where to Find Justin 1:08:36 - Clock Speed, and the Next Book   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Roff-Marsh, J. (2015). The machine: A radical approach to the design of the sales function. Greenleaf Book Group Press. Roff-Marsh, J. (2025). An ode to speed: Why a focus on cost makes organizations weaker, less profitable, and less competitive. Goldratt, E. M., & Cox, J. (1984). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement. North River Press.   People & Frameworks Cited: Theory of Constraints, and the enterprise-wide application Justin is building Throughput per constraint unit, subordination, and protective capacity Suboptimization, and why a local optimum costs the whole system The black market for tasks, and simmering low-level chaos as a default state System time versus natural time, which becomes his next book, Clock Speed Goldratt's rules for embracing a new technology Isaac Zimmerman and J. Blanton Plumbing in Chicago George Yamuni and Mender Bath in Melbourne Adam Smith on the division of labor The US Marine Corps, where every job is to support the infantry   Tools Mentioned in the Episode: Claude, Grok Bot, n8n, CRM, ERP   Related Reading: An Ode to Speed and the Field Guide, free: https://justinroffmarsh.substack.com/ The episodes that led here: #93, #108, #113, #115 and #123   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Justin Roff-Marsh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinroffmarsh/ | https://x.com/justinroffmarsh | https://ballistix.com/   🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Also on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-leverage/id1777098486

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: https://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ Jon put a $300 a month Grok Bot subscription on his card and blew through it in three days. The next time he looked he was at $1,300. He had four agents checking four email inboxes every fifteen minutes with a heavy model, feeding it the entire email history each time, which is work a webhook does for free. Grok Bot spins up its own virtual Linux machine for every agent, so when a tool has no API the agent just clicks around like a person would. That is what the money bought: proof the workflow runs at all. Cleaning it up comes after. Peter comes at the same problem from the other side, three weeks into running Hermes on a VPS wired to his WhatsApp, and opens with the least likely argument on an AI podcast, which is that if you run a real offline business you should be slow to adopt and skepticism is a feature. In this one: Matzner's Hierarchy of Leverage and the corollary Jon landed on this month, that the bottom rung has its own hierarchy inside it (powerful model with computer use, then cheaper model, then API call, then deterministic code), why the engineers building a direct mail tool used a free open source model to sort interior photos from exterior ones before anything expensive touched the job, why a human labeled test set is the whole ballgame, and why Jon would rather read your sent email than ask you what you do all day.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:55 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 01:38 - What Grok Bot Is, and What OpenClaw Was 04:32 - Be Slow to Adopt 06:31 - Brought to You by Sagan Passport 07:27 - A Virtual Linux Machine for Every Agent 11:53 - Stalin, the Chief of Staff Agent 16:12 - Pointing It at Your Own Models to Cut the Bill 24:12 - Weak Replacement vs Reinvention 31:49 - Everything Is Not an Agent 34:58 - The Hierarchy of Leverage Is Fractal 38:30 - How the $1,300 Actually Happened 41:27 - Cascading Models on a Postcard 46:31 - The Human Labeled Test Set 50:54 - Primary Sources Over Job Descriptions 54:42 - Books We're Reading   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Carreyrou, J. (2018). Bad blood: Secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup. Knopf. Grann, D. (2023). The wager: A tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder. Doubleday. O'Brian, P. (1969). Master and commander. Lippincott. Forester, C. S. (1937). The happy return. Michael Joseph. (First of the Horatio Hornblower series, published in the US as Beat to Quarters.)   Quotes Referenced: Bill Gates, on automation: "The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." Elon Musk, on the same trap: "The most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize a thing that should not exist."   People & Frameworks Cited: Matzner's Hierarchy of Leverage, and the corollary that the technology rung runs fractally inside itself Zaki, Sagan's President of AI, on training agents to check a live model ranking site before choosing a model Plato's allegory of the cave, on job descriptions as shapes on the wall Desire paths and emergent order, and emergent role design The Tiger tank and Sherman tank maintenance ratio Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos OpenRouter's acquisition by Stripe Peter's Twitter DM funnel, 75 a day parsed into Beehiiv for about $25 every three or four weeks   Tools Mentioned in the Episode: Grok, Grok Bot, Grok Heavy, Grok Flash, OpenClaw, Hermes, Claude, Claude Code, Cowork, Fable, Opus, Sonnet, Codex, ChatGPT, GPT-5.6 Luna, GPT-5.6 Sol, OpenRouter, AgentMail, AppFolio, Zillow, Slack, WhatsApp, Todoist, Google Calendar, 1Password, LastPass, Beehiiv, HubSpot, Notion, ClickUp, Zapier   Related Reading: Jon on what the money actually bought, and the hierarchy inside the hierarchy: https://lazyleverage.beehiiv.com/p/i-spent-1200-in-two-days-on-grokbot   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pslohmann/ | https://x.com/pslohmann | https://www.peterlohmann.com/   🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation   👷 Join Crane, Peter's community for property management operators: https://www.joincrane.co/   Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial

We mention a lot of books on this show and never write them down. Fixed that. 61 books, 39 essays, 88 episodes, free: http://lazy-leverage.saganpassport.com/ A recruiter at Sagan used to run a Boolean search that took four days to surface candidates. Jon built an internal help desk that does it in one pass, and then told the team his expectations went up with it. Nobody there gets to keep grading resumes. Michael Valenzano co-founded Perennial Management Group, the operating engine behind seven portfolio companies, and runs the whole thing with three developers. He and Jon are neighbors in Encinitas, and they landed on the same answer independently: centralize it. In this one: why Sagan's AI lives behind an internal help desk, the twelve Green Berets who took Afghanistan with air power, and why Jon would rather start an accounting firm from zero than buy one.   Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 01:20 - Welcome to Lazy Leverage 01:49 - The Sagan AI Event, and the Case for Centralizing 06:03 - Seven Companies, One Operating Engine 12:25 - Primary Source Data, and the Twelve Green Berets 18:00 - Why Most Companies Never Get There 21:04 - Greenfield Beats Acquisition 26:01 - What to Centralize and What to Leave Alone 32:27 - How the Help Desk Actually Works 35:02 - They Should Feel Threatened 39:26 - He Hired a GM Who Lives Overseas 43:38 - The Leverage Ladder 50:06 - Redefining How We Make Money   References Mentioned in This Episode -   Books: Stanton, D. (2009). Horse soldiers: The extraordinary story of a band of US soldiers who rode to victory in Afghanistan. Scribner.   People & Frameworks Cited: Perennial Management Group, and its seven portfolio companies Harold Geneen, who built ITT into a conglomerate as CEO, on centralizing accounting and leaving the GMs alone Zaki, Sagan's President of AI, on SaaS starting with scale and non-tech starting with profitability The Sagan AI event in San Diego onlinejobs.ph   Tools Mentioned in the Episode: Claude Code, Codex, Fable, Cloudflare Workers, Airtable, Make, Replit, Lovable, Supabase, Postgres, Front, Linear, JotForm, Monday.com, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack, OpenRouter   Related Reading: Jon on using AI everywhere and restricting who gets to build with it: https://lazyleverage.beehiiv.com/p/i-was-the-hypocrite-in-my-own-ai-policy   Follow Jon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmatzner/ | https://x.com/MatznerJon | https://jonmatzner.com/ Follow Michael Valenzano: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-valenzano/ | https://www.perennialmgt.com/   🌎 Brought to you by Sagan Passport: https://saganpassport.com Schedule a free consulting session: https://www.saganpassport.com/free-consultation   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyLeverageofficial Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/763FBQuzXqTqJ3mb837WbW