The $100M AI Founder Playbook Every Founder Needs

The companies that are doing mass layoffs right now are using AI as an excuse.

You came on as a co-founder to Finder and scaled it to over $100 million.

I think there's a 12 to 18 month window right now for companies that invest in directionally moving towards being AI native, really having such an edge over other companies that it'll be hard to keep up with them. Websites are gonna be used more by AI agents than by humans. How do you build the challenger to your own business? Because I think that's what it needs to stay ahead.

How do you get featured on ChatGPT, Claude? Jeremy, welcome to Built To Lead.

Thanks for having me.

You came on as a co-founder to Finder and scaled it to over $100 million. Now you help founders scale their startups as a growth advisor and have founded a few AI businesses, which I'm excited to talk to you about. I want to start back today at Finder and then talk about what founders need to do to scale their business to $100 million. If you want to go into like really specific details, that'd be helpful for me. So Finder is Obviously a comparison website. Everyone listening has probably used one or two in their life. Take me back to those early days. What was that like?

Yeah. Um, well, I often think about the flywheel of any company when it comes to getting it growing. So what are the basic kind of continuous things you need to do as a business to really get it moving and growing? So for me in the early days, I'd go into the office at a coworking space. Um, and yeah, just think about like, what's the content I'm putting live? What are the links I'm building and how can I make the website faster and convert better? So really basic, but ultimately for me, if you do that over and over again, I think, um, and you add a higher amount of content, a greater number of links, that ultimately does lead to growth. And that was pretty much an SEO flywheel in the beginning. Paid search has this flywheel. All these things have a flywheel that ultimately underpin the growth of the business. So yeah, early days were fun. Um, we had that coworking space, I think. Uh, we're paying for 2 people and had about 7 or 9.

Yeah.

On that actual membership.

Squeeze them in.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't, I don't think they were operating about 6 months later, but yeah. Yeah. It's fun times. And, um, yeah, back then I don't know why people agreed to work for us. It was such a rogue thing. We'd have these like 3 or 4 hour interviews doing things like IQ tests and I don't even know if that's legal.

Yeah.

It was just a crazy time. But, um, yeah, people were just placing a bet on us. I think they saw us as different and, um, ambitious and, um, yeah, certainly something they could talk to their mates about on the weekend.

So the, you've got 2 other co-founders.

Yeah. Fred and Frank.

Yeah. And they started the business and then you came in shortly after.

Yeah, that's right. So, um, there were 3 businesses. Yeah. 2 were sold into a listed group. And whilst they're in that earnout period, I came in and, um, took the, the ventures as part of the business and it was about 20-odd experiments and one was Credit Card Finder, which I took on and, and really started to grow it. And then, um, a little while later they, they came in full time and we, yeah, just the rest is history really. Yeah.

Amazing. How, how did you juggle the responsibilities with the 2 other co-founders?

Yeah, I think I was often the, the chameleon or the glue in between. So, you know, I think Frank, Frank was really steady and still is like steady, you know, reliable, focused. Fred was and still is an innovator. I think, uh, someone that thinks, you know, long range. And for me, at times the company needed a short-term tactical, tactical play, something that would work like right now to produce results. And then sometimes you'd have to take a leap. So I'd often, um, be like a translation layer between Fred and Frank. Um, and yeah, I think we, we each had our lane, which was really useful. Fred and I crossed over on some things, but yeah, I think, um, when it came to building out a foundational approach, something that was quite methodical and an operating system for the business, that's where I really took over and scaled things up.

And how big did the team get?

At its peak, it was around 600, just short of maybe. And, uh, yeah, it was pretty intense. Went on a bit of a hiring spree after we raised as well. So that was a lot to go through. Um, but yeah, I think for me, um, I don't know, it's, it's something that I always think about the first crew and like how they kind of came on and, and really, and I still think back to the $35 desk I had at home before even had an office. I was just sitting there working away on my own and just, you know, trying to figure things out. Um, and then quickly, you know, we just started making moves that were working.

Yeah.

And, um, the growth was pretty phenomenal in that kind of— I mean, over the entire journey, to be honest, we had some pretty incredible numbers. But, um, I think in the beginning when you kind of see the sparks working, that's the fun part.

Yeah, absolutely. What were some of those things that worked for you?

Yeah, I'd say, um, unique to Finder was we, we did things the hard way scalably.

Okay.

You know, what I mean about that is, um, you know, when we started the business, there was no such thing as you can just buy a product database of, you know, financial products and put it onto the website and have it maintained. It didn't exist.

Yeah.

So we had to go and manually, you know, effectively get this information from websites. So early on, um, I'd read 4-Hour Workweek from Tim Ferriss and, um, good book. Met him at some point as well. And, um, For us, we built out this fairly large offshore team, um, which we called our distributed crew. For me, you know, from a cultural perspective, I really wanted to see them as, you know, tightly integrated as possible. Um, so yeah, we had, you know, a couple hundred people, you know, helping build out this product database, maintain the website, which is pretty remarkable. And so that allowed us to expand beyond just the one vertical, like we were in credit cards and then we went into personal loans and insurances and telco and you know, into hundreds of categories over the years. And so that was that kind of first fundamental piece, like where you get multiple tabs in a browser, like all these websites with product data.

Yeah.

Consolidate them into a table. And it sounds simple, but nothing like that really existed at scale. Um, so that was the first challenge doing that. And then I think the second piece was like, how do you produce content at scale? And I remember there was a writer I had in Queensland who was really fast, understood SEO, and I asked her to effectively become an agency. I was like, hey, I only want to work with you. You're responsive 24/7. I'm pretty much not sleeping at this point. Um, if I can get, you know, brief, you know, keywords and pages I need to have produced over to you, uh, and you produce them quickly, I think we can really grow together. And it got to a point where she was producing something like 150 articles a day through a network of writers for us.

This is before AI as well. That's wild.

It is kind of absurd. Yeah. But that scale and, uh, you know, content production was just phenomenal. And we had a number of domains at the time and we chose a unique structure as well, like where everybody was a business manager. So they kind of had their total autonomy over domain and like exactly what to do with it and how to grow it. But we had this underpinning kind of resource of, you know, writers and, and, you know, administrators that help on the database and so on. Um, so that scaled out the content piece. Again, like that's not an easy thing to do. Um, and the third one was around links, you know, initially and still today, most SEOs are buying links, which for me is a short-term tactic and sometimes long-term consequences of that. So for me, it's like, how do we earn these links and how does the media work and how do you get, you know, the top websites in Australia and around the world linking to you? Um, we call it content marketing.

Um, Yeah.

I'm not even sure that's a term people use nowadays. Um, but essentially it's like, how do you get above the noise? How do you get the attention of a journalist, a website owner, you know, whoever had the, the power to put a blue link on the page for us and, um, and get them to link to us. So that, that for me looked like in the beginning, reverse engineering how the news worked. It was like seeing a website like, you know, news.com.au or SMH and studying the headlines, studying the format of these articles. And realizing that ultimately to have news, you need something new. So you need to construct this research or construct an angle that allows you to get in touch with these journalists and, and have them write a story that ultimately leads to them writing about you, um, as the solution to whatever problem you're highlighting with your research. And that became a pretty scaled out thing where Finder, you know, at its peak we had, I think, over 10 people in our in-house PR team.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, it was pretty massive.

Yeah.

We had, um, an award for the best in-house PR team in Australia. Um, but this PR, digital PR, um, really is what I think underpins, um, a key part of our SEO was, you know, just getting these links that nobody else had. And even more importantly, you couldn't buy them. That's the thing you had to know. Yeah. Wow. So to be a level above the entire industry was, um, was tough. And that, that, um, as I said, I think, you know, doing these hard things scalably is, you know, consistent with probably everything that we've done as a business. Like we just kind of lean into where it's difficult and just find ways to make it happen.

Can that whole strategy with the backlinks and everything, is that still relevant today?

It is actually in ways that probably are confusing and, um, very different. So ultimately, um, AI search is, you know, this thing that, you know, everybody's suddenly interested in. I was at this dinner, um, talking about, and I was like, you know, surely I'm going to talk for 20 minutes and we'll sit down and we'll be done with it. But no, I spoke for like about 30, 40 minutes and probably 90 minutes of Q&A.

Yeah.

Really? Like you guys are that interested in it? And for me, um, it makes sense. Like, I was surprised to see these executives all like, you know, trying to find out about it and how to make it work. Um, but why that's interesting now is that lots of random websites that you didn't have to care about before suddenly matter. You know, people are now having to care about Reddit and reviews on websites they probably never cared, you know, in the past. Um, there's also these domains that are getting cited in, you know, ChatGPT and Claude and so on. that literally have no traffic, uh, probably hyphenated random domains, like, you know, whatever, like, you know, finance-info-online. Yeah. Like, you know, and it's being included as a cited reference and it matters. And so now there's this huge surface area of websites that are important and the backlinks, or at least mentions of your brand across those websites are really critical in determining what's said about your brand. And, you know, that really matters. Like when people are using these tools for research, you know, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini.

Yeah.

If you don't have the right thing being said about your, your brand, it's like a bit of a repair mission. You have to go through, change what's, you know, on these sites, you know, correct any errors and then also start building more links and references online. So in a lot of ways it matters more than ever.

Wow. How do you get featured on ChatGPT, Claude? Like, is it? Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, there's a few things at play, but ultimately, um, one of the most important is You know, as I mentioned, um, there's lots more websites that are being considered now. If you're doing something like deep research, literally over 1,000 websites could be included in a reference and determining what's said about your brand and which brands turn up. But, you know, there's this concept of cited pages and sources. So when you say type in a prompt, like an example, when I'm teaching people about this is, you know, best electric cars for a family under, sorry, a family of 5 in New South Wales under $50,000. And, uh, when that, when you talk about that, you know, and you kind of break that down, you think about best.

Mm-hmm.

to be best is probably based on reviews. And you want best today, you don't want best, you know, 3 years ago.

Yeah.

So the reviews in the last kind of year, I think, matter. Um, any awards or research that's gone into, you know, third-party research or whatever that determines what a great vehicle is. Um, if you've got a family of 5, you probably care about, you know, cargo space and, you know, um, safety ratings and all these sorts of things.

Yeah.

So what happens when you type in these prompts is essentially There's a concept called query fanout. So you type in the first prompt, which still by behavior, most people are using ChatGPT like it's Google.

Google, for sure.

Type that in. And then what's happening under the hood is it breaks out into say 6 or 8 sub-prompts that run. Um, and they're targeted at all these various intents, you know, the reviews, the, um, the, the various things we spoke of. So, and as each of those run, they go and research the internet as well as using their training data. The large language models are able to come back with an answer, which is Based on consensus. So what are, what is consistent across this dataset, uh, when it comes to a recommendation around which electric vehicle to buy? Um, so that's how it's working. And then you sometimes get mentioned, even if you may not even get mentioned, even if you're, um, a website that you run was included in the kind of the research process. And even if your brand gets mentioned, it may not get linked. And if it's linked, it may not get prominently linked. So it's a tough game, but, um, Yeah. For me, I think it's still very, very important because what happens next is, you know, really our website's going to be used more by AI agents than by humans. And I think that's where the real change is coming.

Yeah, that's so interesting. I, I feel like I started my business 4 years ago and, you know, all you're worried about is where you're ranking on Google, doing some Google ads and things like that. And, you know, doing a bit of social media and now it's, you know, you've, you've really got to rethink. Everything because of AI. Like it's, yeah, it's wild.

Totally. And you know, just on the point of social media now, social media matters for your SEO more than ever. YouTube, um, for AI mode and Gemini is the most important source. So if you've got an informational, you know, bit of video like this podcast, say you put that online, every single time you put out another episode, you know, the large language models learn more about you, more about the guest, and that becomes a reference point for what turns up in the answers in their engines. So it's pretty powerful.

You have to, you really do have to be everywhere, don't you? Just going back to Finder for a moment. Sorry, we went off on a bit of an AI tangent there. I love it. Why not? Um, what was the hardest part of scaling a big team? You mentioned you've got an offshore team, which I love. I own an offshore agency. Um, so I love offshore. How big was that team?

Yeah, I think, um, about 230-ish people at its peak and we had staff in the Philippines. Um, Mexico, Poland, um, across the Middle East as well.

Like, yeah, wow.

Like 24/7, you know, operation, which was important because, you know, banks change their rates and we'd go live at midnight.

Yeah.

So we have a team kind of doing some work in the day in the Philippines and then other crew that would come through and triple check that at midnight the bank did the thing, the thing they say, said they would do.

Yeah.

Because often it wouldn't be the case. Um, and so that was massive. And, you know, for us, we, We built a really cool culture around it. I think it was, um, something that I, I find it was quite unique and quite special. I wish I actually could reference some of the people I was learning from back in the day because, I mean, it was such an early stage for some of this stuff. Like when, when we built this playbook out inside Finder for these large offshore teams, you know, we, team, team members of ours went on to Canva and Airtasker and other businesses where they replicated the same play.

Oh, wow.

I think it became part of the special sauce and the, you know, the, the way these companies were able to succeed at scale was just having such a large workforce that was, you know, just able to hit the volume needed to, to hit, you know, significant growth. So yeah, um, quite a, uh, a journey and a process. And, you know, for me, the skills in building out a team like that in the past are actually really useful. And, you know, when you think about AI nowadays, you've got to have really clear, you know, job descriptions.

Yeah.

Unitize your work and make it easy to delegate. So I think, um, businesses that have invested into this team are Well and truly set up, especially as offshore teams, you know, start skilling up with AI. I think it's a pretty exciting opportunity.

Yeah. How did you keep that culture? Like, how did you create it when you've got people all over the world?

Yeah.

How'd you do that?

Well, a lot of karaoke.

Really? I love it.

Yeah, I remember.

Filipinos love karaoke.

Yeah, going to the Philippines, a bit of karaoke over there was fun. Yeah. But yeah, I think for us, you know, It was important that they were a part of every single ritual in the business, that they, um, had the same values. And, and for us, we did a few things that I think were cool, like with our team in, say, Poland, we had a couple of people that initially were in Sydney for about 6 months and then they went and started the Polish office for us, but they had that kind of understanding of Australian business culture.

Yeah.

Um, so for me, I wouldn't say that in a general sense, but, you know, especially Finder's business culture, I think it's quite unique. Um, and yeah, so we, I think, had this seed or a nucleus in every single city that we ultimately kind of built a team around that really helped us. In New York, we had some, a couple of Aussies over there. You know, uh, our CEO in the UK had, um, worked with Fred and Frank previously, um, as the CEO of the group of agencies that ultimately came together when they sold theirs too. Um, and I think that matters. It's like, you know, a common way of thinking, you know, um, decision-making behaviors that you kind of reward and also what you disincentivize.

Yeah, absolutely. Just quickly, before we get back to the episode, I want to take a quick 20 seconds to let you know that every month we get our clients and their teams together to workshop and learn about installing AI into teams, improving operations, team culture, and leveraging offshore talent. And honestly, So much more. If you would like to join us for our upcoming workshop for free, all you need to do is message me the word workshop on Instagram and I'll send over everything you need in order to join us. You've stepped out of Finder now. Did something happen in the business for you to step out, or did you just get to a point where you wanted to work on other things?

Yeah, for me, I would say it was about 12 months out. I had this, um, unusual experience where I'd gone to a punk concert. Um, I was like, conference.

There you go. There's another— yeah, absolutely.

Um, so I went to this concert and, um, I just really reconnected with my younger self and I was like, wow, like this is something that I was in touch, you know, with kind of what mattered to me back then and like, you know, this energy and so on. And off the back of that, I just started networking and really I guess, you know, at the time, you know, AI, probably generative AI was probably about a year or so into, um, its kind of journey. Um, but for me, I felt like I really wanted to get to the nucleus and understand everything about it, meet everybody I could to try and stay ahead. When I had access to GPT-2, which was the model that pre— was prior to ChatGPT.

Oh, okay. How did you get access to that?

Well, I was on like a a beta or preview list or something like that. And I've always done that over the years, like try and get the early access. And unfortunately I didn't get to spend enough time using it. And for me, that really disappointed me. So I realized that in order to stay relevant and for me to feel fulfilled, I had to go back to what mattered to me throughout my career. Like, you know, from a really young age, I was early to using computers or having the— I was, I think, the first kid in my grade that had the internet.

Mm-hmm.

Just things like that where I was just first. And I think that for me, I've always benefited from creating space around those moments where I think I had the most personal growth. And so for me, that journey, though a tough decision to make ultimately to me, um, leaving the business and I'm still not, I'm not operationally involved, but I'm still in touch and we catch up every couple of weeks and have a bit of a view on strategy and so on. Um, so yeah, it's, um, do you miss it? I miss The relationships and the people. Like, I think for me, um, you know, we're having an OGs lunch. I think it's this Friday.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

Um, for me, I think it's the hard thing because you, you almost become like family with some of these individuals and, um, to not be around them each day and kind of contribute to their, I mean, help them solve the problems they're going through and so on. It's a bit hard. Um, but I'm thoroughly enjoying having the space to really do Yeah, I guess have the freedom to just go all in right now. I think that's, um, at one point I was managing, I think the org I was responsible for had nearly 250-ish people or 300 people, um, in total. Um, and so my calendar was stacked from 6:00 AM, my first meeting, sometimes a little bit earlier through till about midnight every single day. And I'd have 30 minutes to an hour free every day.

Um, that's a lot.

And sometimes it'd be like, you know, 7 minutes to eat dinner and like, you know, go back on the computer. So it was like a, At its extreme, it was tough, like, to do that. And I think, um, for me now, I'm just really thinking about, you know, what's next and how to, how to build a business that I think is about lifestyle.

Yeah.

And, um, really looking after myself and, and my family and, um, you know, taking the learnings and, and there's so many good things that came of, you know, building out Finder and also the things that I'm learning from other businesses too.

Yeah.

Um, in leaving the business, I had no idea there'd be so much interest from companies wanting to work with me. I put a LinkedIn post out that went pretty viral.

Yeah.

And had, I think it was 170-odd companies reach out in that week. And now it's probably closer to 400.

So, oh wow.

Yeah, it's been, um, wild. And so for me, I'm trying to think about scalable ways to help these businesses because for me, it's like, there were obviously people prior to me that could help people. And it's just the fact that maybe I'm available and maybe have a slightly different edge on things is maybe, maybe why people are reaching out. But, um, I'm really interested in trying to scalably help as many as possible.

Mm-hmm.

focused a bit more on content, which has been—

Yes, I've loved, loved watching it. It's so good.

Um, but yeah, uh, it's a bit cringe, so sorry.

No, no, no, don't worry. We've, we've all got to do it.

Um, but yeah, giving it a shot and, um, yeah, having fun in the process.

Yeah, love that. So how are you helping founders today?

Yeah, so, um, what it initially looked like was me like doing some startup mentorship. So there's, um, an incubator or accelerator called Startmate. And I helped the prior cohort on the tail end. And then I really enjoyed hanging out with those startups. So I kind of created a little WhatsApp group and we had some weekly calls and so on. Um, so that was cool.

Yeah.

Um, and then, you know, I realized that for me, I've also got experience in, you know, though I love that kind of early phase of a business, I think helping scale-ups is also important. And for me, you know, we, we bootstrapped over $100 million revenue. So that's a fairly unique thing to achieve. Um, and I think there's just ways of you know, growing a business that allow that to happen. And so I'm helping founders right now to, I guess, across the board as a fractional co-founder is a way to describe it.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah.

It's like, I'm not sure if that's a term I've coined.

It's yours now. Yeah.

Um, but yeah, at Finder I ran product, tech, growth, operations, international expansion, and a whole bunch of stuff in between. So, um, I've got this unique breadth of I guess, experience and knowledge. And, um, for me it looks like sometimes like a coaching session all the way through to implementation and AI application builds. So it's quite diverse.

Yeah. Is this something that you're actively running, growing now? Like you want founders to join?

Yeah. So, um, at the moment that's mostly one-on-one. Um, but for me, I think the solution is like a one-to-many where I've got a couple of ideas. So initially, you know, on that point of AI searched, I launched, um, It's called AI Search Leaders about 5 weeks ago. Um, about 170 people have joined that, which is, um, again, probably way more than I expected off a couple of LinkedIn posts. Um, but yeah, I had a pretty good network in the kind of SEO space and bringing those people together, having them speak each week has been, I think, a really great thing for the community.

Yeah.

Um, I'm looking to do the same with AI. So I'm about to launch something called Executive Arc, which is effectively a community for decision makers trying to figure out AI strategy, what should they do? What shouldn't they do? And who should they work with?

Yeah, I love that. So for a lot of founders that are listening to the podcast, just say they're at that $5 mil revenue and they want to get to $10 mil. How would you work with them to pinpoint what they need to do to get to $10 mil?

Yeah. My guess is if you're at $5 mil, you probably cracked one channel and you've got like one funnel that works. And I think it's probably about opening up the second channel or finding a way to cross-serve into another product you can sell. So that's kind of the pattern I've seen is like maybe they figured out Meta ads or they figured out, you know, Google search or, you know, whatever. Um, but for me, I would go to the fundamentals there. And I think people often talk about product market fit, but I'm very big on product channel fit.

Mm-hmm.

So you can have an excellent product or service, but you don't know how to market it. Like it's just not going to happen for you. So yeah, I look at their kind of marketing mix, you know, what are the key services they're selling? And sometimes the way to grow is not doing neither of those things, like not adding another channel or not, um, you know, uh, opening up another product online, you know, line, but maybe you just need to increase the pricing. It's like, it could be that simple.

Yeah.

Okay. So I kind of look at things across the board and, you know, imagine it was my business and go, what would I do? How would I approach it? Um, and how would I spend the capital if I'm on my own? So yeah, I really do have high empathy for founders and I'm trying to just make it easy for them to get to the goals they want.

Yeah. And let's talk about AI. What have you seen? I mean, it's, it's just changing so quickly and I feel like, and I guess this is a good reason why you're starting, you know, your, what are you calling it? Like a group, a community?

Uh, it's a community. Yeah.

Community. Yeah. So what have you seen the last 3 months that's working really well with AI?

Yeah, I would say the thing that's working really well is people are having a go. Like, I'm huge on people building their own capability in-house. Yeah, because I don't like the idea that people are kind of out there scamming companies, trying to sell them a business brain and all these sorts of things. It's like, honestly, get away with doing something in Claude and Claude Projects and, and you'll probably achieve most of what you need.

Yeah.

Um, so from my standpoint, I, I really like to see teams And get this done. So I think that's step one. Um, and I think beyond that, you need to bring in specialists, obviously.

Yeah.

Um, everybody's trying to vibe code everything, um, which I think is cool. I like the phase we're in right now where people are figuring out, you know, it's not too bad. It's pretty easy to do this stuff. But at some point you probably need to bring in someone that can help you scale it out, do it safely, and ensure that, you know, everything that everybody's building is talking to each other. You know, it's, it's not these disparate systems that are You know, I guess a bit of a mess and chaotic. So it does need some orchestration. It does need organization to make it, um, effective and efficient.

Yeah. Will those businesses that don't do anything with AI, will they be left behind?

I think there's a 12 to 18 month window right now for companies that invest in directionally moving towards being AI native, really having such an edge over other companies that it'll be hard to keep up with them.

Yeah.

I, I think that, yeah, it's, it's a time window right now that you need to kind of wake up to this opportunity, create the space. And it may look like just literally building out or carving out a small team in your company of 3 or 4 people, hopefully some of your best.

Yeah.

To think about how you reinvent your company. How do you build the challenger to your own business? Because I think that's what it needs to stay ahead. Because, you know, for me, it's crazy seeing these startups, like people, like teams of one, what they can achieve, uh, with Literally Claude code in their hands and a laptop is remarkable. So it's no longer about having to raise millions of dollars. It's not about, you know, having to have the wildest CTO that you can find that was ex this and that, like literally it's more about, in my view, like having a big goal and being persistent and really pushing the limits because I think that if you set the ambition now, it's possible.

You can get it done. Yeah.

Wow.

I'm in a few different networking groups and I see a lot of founders spending a lot of time learning AI and playing around with it, which I think is great. Like Um, at what point do you have to get someone in though? Because when you think of like your time and what it's worth, and they're just spending all day kind of playing around, whereas they could get a specialist in or someone in their team, like, I feel like we're going to see a lot more one-person companies. Yeah, which is great. But yeah, I, I just feel like, I don't know, that something's got to give at some point.

Yeah. So for me, um, It was a great book. I often reference it. It was, um, it was called, uh, Rework from, um, the founder of 37signals. And yeah, this company that's behind Basecamp and so on.

Okay. Yep.

Um, and he says something like, in order to delegate, you first must do the task yourself. And I think that for me, it doesn't mean you have to be completely, you know, coding and figuring this stuff out, but at least having a go. You know, there's a story I tell sometimes where I was trying to figure out data science. It's like, you know, everyone's talking about we needed a data scientist.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Right. You're like, I'm going to be the data scientist.

Figure this thing out. So I enrolled in a General Assembly course, um, like a 12-week immersion in data science. So you go there a couple of nights a week and, um, you know, sat there coding in R and whatever. And I remember trying to hire the teacher by the end of it because I was like, okay, I'm done with the learning. And then he was like, I'm not available for hire, but That ultimately led to this opportunity where I could speak to speak and I built this network and I felt confident in making that hire and ultimately delegating and having somebody drive that strategy for me. So I think the phase we're at is interesting because you got CEOs and founders coding absolutely everything, probably spending 12 hours a day in front of Claude Code. But I often think, what were they doing before all this?

Yeah, exactly.

Now, right? Um, so I do think people need to You know, zoom out a little bit and realize, you know what, um, they've done enough. Um, and they get, you know, they've got enough of an understanding that they can really hire somebody into the business and not be, I guess, um, you know, in a situation where they don't understand the complexity of what's being built. So I think it's very powerful when you have that knowledge to be able to assess what's being put in front of you and know if it's like truly, uh, you know, an easy thing to do or a difficult one. Because if you can't make that assessment, you're probably going to end up paying way too much money for something that is. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I agree. What are your thoughts around, there's been a lot of layoffs lately with, you know, big teams, Atlassian, for example. What are your thoughts around companies using AI and team working together? What are your thoughts around that?

Well, I would say the companies that are doing mass layoffs right now are using AI as an excuse. And I don't truly believe that it's AI is the reason they're making these layoffs. They kind of Quoting their AI strategy and the success of it and so on. And that's why they're letting these people go. From my perspective, I think it's more about these companies were bloated. They had way too many staff members. And I think that there's pressure from shareholders to make a quick move.

Yeah.

So they have to let people go. Um, my personal perspective in this stuff is it's time to raise the ambition, you know, push harder and really enable your team with the right skills. right capabilities and the runway to get things done because I can't think of a better time to be alive. Like truly anything you can imagine is possible to build.

Mm-hmm.

And you don't need, you know, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital to get it done.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah, so those things that were kind of on the strategy, you know, for years in a row, we never got it done. Pull those out because it's now possible. And I think for me it's really about, I think taking your crew on the journey with you. I think it's an easy, Yeah, totally. An easy and a lazy kind of approach, just let people go. I'd rather see businesses right now go, you know what, what can we do with the team that we have to really push harder? And maybe on the other side of it, it's either you're, you're achieving higher revenue with the same crew, or you're maybe even hiring because you go from a business that was focused on, you know, the local market to now global, or, you know, um, you just do things more efficiently than your competitors. And I think that's, that's the exciting opportunity.

What's, uh, I want to open people's minds up a little bit more into what they can actually build for their business with AI. What have you seen some founders build that's just kind of blown your mind a bit?

Yeah, I'd say, um, for me, what's most remarkable is when first and foremost, in my view, people freak out about AI and the security and like, you know, data loss and so on. I'm not saying be reckless, but I'd be freaking out more about not using AI right now than the fact that you might lose some data or whatever. I'm not saying, yeah, it's likely to happen, but in my view, that's the first thing. So giving as much context as possible for your AI to work with is really critical. And I think that what I'm, what I'm most excited by is when somebody leans into Claude Code, puts it in plan mode and says, you know, hopefully with voice typing, this is what I'd like to do. Here's my goal. Um, you know, what's the kind of MVP of this and let's get it going.

Mm-hmm.

I'm seeing companies build The software that's just perfect for them. Instead of having a SaaS that was kind of designed to be configurable, but, you know, built for tens of thousands of businesses, you can now literally build a software that's just for you.

Yeah.

Wow. That's really, really cool. It could be the dashboard that is like just what you need. It's the, the CRM that's built as a layer over another CRM potentially, but connects with workflows and various agents that get tasks done. So we're going into this era where companies will be able to build the software they need for just their business. And I think that's extremely exciting.

Yeah. Wow. If you were starting Finder again today with AI, how many team members do you think you'd need?

That's a good question. I think about, um, starting a company being about the balance of a team. Like for me, I've got, you know, good qualities and bad qualities, strengths and weaknesses. And I think that you need to surround yourself with people that are epic at things that you're not good at.

Right.

So First and foremost, it's about that and thinking about the mix of energy and capabilities and I guess characteristics of who you need to succeed in business. And assuming you have the, the kind of beginnings right, and you've got the right people that can support you, I think that you don't need an enormous amount of people. You probably need probably 2 or 3 roles to really crush it right now. I think the first is an architect, someone that goes.

Mm-hmm.

You know, here's what I think the world could look like. Here's the strategy, the vision, and so on. You need a creative thinker, someone that can think laterally and bring that to life and not just a, I guess, a logical and sequential way, but finding shortcuts and ways to get it done quicker, more cheaply, and so on. And I think you need really someone that's really solid at, um, QA, like the quality assurance, the testing.

Yeah.

To make sure that what you built actually meets the brief. Because if it doesn't, then it's all well and great to have these grand plans, but I think, um, you know, building those evaluations with AI, ensuring what you're doing is, is genuinely, you know, ticking the boxes is critical. Um, and so they're the kind of, that's the engine room in my view.

Yeah.

Um, and, you know, big believer in founder-led growth. Like if you have a founder that's, you know, great at, you know, building relationships, networking, content, and personal brand. Um, I think that's it. You've got like the, the fundamentals of a great business. And I think that same formula could genuinely apply to most categories, most industries. Um, so assuming you have that kind of team in play. I think, um, yeah, you're in a good spot.

Just quickly before we get back to the episode, I would love to ask you, did you find your way to this episode because you're growing a successful business but you're noticing that every milestone you grow to, whether it's a new revenue level, a new team member, or new initiative, seems to only add more work onto your plate? And instead of helping the company grow, It's almost slowing it down and making it feel heavier. Then I want to help you. Sometimes the team you need to support you, the skills you need in order to grow faster, easier, and lighter doesn't easily fit into a budget, especially at Australian wages. That's why we recruit and manage offshore talent for our clients so they can access onshore leverage skills, culture, and reliability, but at offshore prices. I've left all of the details below if you want to check it out. Now back to the show. I've seen you obviously lean into content recently. Do you feel it's paid off with the reach and people contacting you, you know, to join programs and things?

Yeah. Um, honestly, the goal initially was bring this flywheel to life. I had this like idea of how growth could look like in this kind of post-AI world.

Yeah.

And defensible growth that could be sticky and, and working for years ahead. And so for me, it started with going, okay, what is, what is my brand about? What do I know about? What journey am I going on? And how can I share this very openly and vulnerably?

Yeah.

Um, in an authentic way. So that was like the first kind of thing I agreed is like, I wanted to do this in that way. And I started just posting on LinkedIn and going for it. And I set a rule to post daily, which was a lot. But if you look at that platform, I think it's less than 2% of people post daily on LinkedIn. So post at all on LinkedIn. On Instagram, it's about 17% of users are posting regularly. So for me, it's a platform that's, you know, with probably a billion plus users and just not enough content on there.

Yeah.

So I started seeing my content or people started seeing my content, you know, from weeks ago appearing on their feed, which doesn't happen on Instagram. And the goal was trying to figure out this viral format. So how I went about it was I scraped over 1,000 LinkedIn posts and I started studying what was working, what was not. And I built formats that I guess played into the algorithm and how it's constantly changing, by the way, but how it was working at the time and how it's changed since. So that was kind of the LinkedIn piece. And then with Instagram, it was quite similar. Like I kind of take this approach where I study the outliers and What I mean by that is like, who's disproportionately performing and why? And figuring out the formats, their approach. Um, and I'm, you know, I like to be very time efficient. So I'm like, for me with my video content, I spend 2 hours a week on it and no more. I'm like, I go and film in a studio and, and that's it. But how do I do it in such a way that it's, you know, the most bang for buck?

And yeah.

And in studying these outliers, my, my first video Actually got, um, I had 800 followers and I was a private account and I made it public. And my first video after doing this whole process of, you know, outlier analysis and so on, actually got, uh, 350,000 views and 3,000 new followers.

Oh, wow.

So pretty remarkable.

Yeah.

And, um, yeah, I kind of had, had a few since that have done pretty well, but yeah, for me, the goal was like, how do I reverse engineer these algorithms? And then once you've gotten the traction and you've got the audience that you're building, like, where do you point it? Like, is it to an email list? Is it, you know, to a community somewhere else?

That's so true.

Yeah. Because once you've got that, you've got distribution, right? And so the goal was just proving out this, um, well, the algorithms and also the flywheels, um, that are required to achieve this sort of growth. I'm pretty obsessed with that sort of stuff. Um, kind of like a growth hacker, I guess. And, um, yeah, for me, it's been a heap of fun and it definitely has worked in the sense that, I mean, I'm having, you know, this opportunity to share my story, the opportunity to share what I'm learning. And I really go into this phase, it's about that for me. Like, you know, achieve some cool things at Finder, but for me it's like about democratizing that knowledge and I guess making it available to as many people as possible. I really want to share how.

That's my goal. I love that. Do you enjoy doing it?

I, I think that at first it was challenging. Yeah. Like, yeah, rip the bandaid situation off. I was like, oh man, this is—

It's painful. Yeah.

Yeah. Like the amount of, you know, times I'd have to say the same line like 20 times or something in video, like it was ridiculous. But I filmed on Sunday and I literally, something that would probably take 2 hours took me about 40 minutes and I just did most lines in the first go.

Yeah. So good.

Um, so yeah, I think it's, it's fun seeing how much you can progress in such a short time. I think it's been 3 months of doing this content. Um, so that's been cool. Um, and yeah, I just, I've lost my daily LinkedIn habit unfortunately, but, uh, I'm getting back on that train soon.

Yeah. Good.

It's been fun.

Good. Yeah. I've, I've enjoyed watching it and I feel like you've just got to put the reps in, don't you? Like, I, um, was with some friends last week and we We got dinner delivered and we decided to go back through our Instagram, like scroll right to the bottom. And it was like just the funniest, like watching. Yeah, it's so good. Like you just go, oh, so, so cringe. You raised money when you're at Finder. Can AI help people with funding?

Actually, I, I think it can because a lot of the steps in the process used to be so time consuming. Like when we had to prepare all our, you know, things for the data room and so on, that was insane. Like, so I think in pulling together data to be able to raise, it's important. I would say that in reach out and kind of positioning and all those things, you have a thought partner now that, you know, is kind of included in your pro plan on Claude or whatever.

Yeah.

Um, so I think it's far easier than it would have been before. Um, I do still think the world runs on relationships.

Yeah.

So you can't replace that fact. I think that, um, you know, it can grease the wheels and make it easier to get in contact with people, but there's no point raising money if you've got a business that's failing.

So, yeah, true.

I think that often that's the case with these companies is like, you know, it's an idea and they go straight to the idea of raising money. I'm more about make a dollar, figure it out online now today. And how can you, you know, spend a dollar to make 2? And if you do that over and over again, you've got a real business and it's going to be valued more by the time you go to raise money. Um, so yeah, it's not necessarily a conventional view, but I really like to see companies generating revenue, having a proven out flywheel before they go on that fundraising journey.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. What's the first thing you look to automate in a service-based business?

I would say, um, Once you've brought all the context in, so things like proposals you've developed, you know, your emails and your kind of voice and how you write, um, any documentation on kind of way, the way things are done. I look at the fundamentals of that company and it's like, okay, to grow a services-based business, you know, do you have any leads that are coming in right now? If not, let's go to content and let's get something moving and at least some outreach or something along those lines.

Yeah.

get an acquisition channel running. You don't want to have a situation where you've got a services business that's relying on, you know, one customer, like, you know, that's 50% of your revenue. So I think that's, you know, as a founder, I've spoken to founders that freak out about that. So that's the first piece. I'm like, you know, get some sort of acquisition channel so you could kind of be in the right headspace to, to, to focus on the rest. Um, the second piece for me is making it faster and easier to deliver quality.

Yeah.

So When it comes to say winning new business, I think that the quality of a pitch can be phenomenal right now. Most services businesses should really be bringing, bringing way more data into their proposals, way more analysis, and, and in some ways almost offering a taste of working with them without a full engagement. I think that's truly—

Oh, okay. Yeah.

It's like, hey, we've done a whole bunch of stuff for you. Here's a bit of a taste. If you want to, you know, kind of work with us, you know, you kind of, I think people get bought into the process and like, you know, that's really cool actually. Why don't you, instead of kind of looking at this proposal, proposals from afar and going, yeah, what's the best? Like deliver some value upfront. And I think that will separate you from the pack. So that's the second thing. Um, and then I think day to day, the key habit I think for any services business is starting to transcribe meetings with permission because it becomes this context layer that then underpins everything, you know, post-client meeting, you've got context. And if you really carefully transcribe, you know, the way you talk needs to change, but like you actually say, okay, after this amazing meeting, Here are my follow-up actions. Here are the things I'm going to send you. And you list them out. The transcript has that context. You can have it post-processed, pushed into a Notion database with tasks or however you want to do things. Write a follow-up email. The basis for the analysis and work you need to do could be auto-generating prompts from your transcript. So there's so much to do, but I think the fundamentals are, you know, the first is, you know, build that context layer. You know, get your acquisition, you know, solved for, and then start automating the deliverables, the things that, uh, you know, they're in a part of your every single week because you've got probably week 1, you could save at least 10 hours of work. Honestly, it's—

Yeah. Wow.

It's huge.

And I think I know the answer to this, but what would you never let AI touch?

I think that you can't expect AI to have taste.

Yeah.

You truly cannot let it make decisions for you. I think it's a great thinking partner. But if you just let AI make all of your decisions, we all converge and then I think we all become vanilla shops.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So I think to have that edge, to be different, you've got to know when to challenge it and when to kind of add the bumpiness, add the uniqueness. And from my standpoint, that looks like bringing in as much real-world context as possible with AI. Um, but also just again, like just realizing that if everybody's got the same tool, And they're all delivering the same kind of generic output with this tool. I need to now assume that's a 1 out of 10 output, despite it looking better than anything I've produced in the past. So what does 10 out of 10 suddenly look like? How do you then raise the bar and really push yourselves to go to a level that would just blow the customer's mind? They're literally just absolutely baffled at how you were able to produce the output. So that looks like, for me, you know, whether it be scraping data, you know, bringing in, um, unique and proprietary research, like just adding just a huge amount of effort into that upfront infrastructure to make the outputs just far better than what you were doing before.

I thought for sure you were going to say like that, that connection between people, because I know you do a lot of networking and you're in a lot of groups. And I just think that's something that AI just can't ever—

100% agree. Like one of my personal values, I've got 3: connection, growth, and helping people.

Love that.

I don't think that there's a world where you can replace that exactly as you're saying, because for me, even with, you know, the amount of things that AI can do, I think that you can't replace the fact that people need to trust the output.

Yeah.

And, you know, honestly, I think that it's just a situation where people are going to still have these relationships, working relationships. And yes, things might be cheaper and easier to produce and, you know, maybe higher output per per hour, I guess, but you still need to have trust in the person doing the work. And I think that really comes about, you know, through time and experience and working with somebody and knowing that they're looking after you and, um, and want the best for you and your business.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Let's finish on what you're building today and how people can get involved with that.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, still doing growth advisory, um, in a one-on-one capacity. But for me, um, the primary opportunity I see right now is to help executives better understand AI and how to implement it in their business.

Yeah.

So there's this layer in between, like something that doesn't yet exist. You've got everybody giving away these free guides and, you know, I'm guilty of that. Um, and then also, you know, AI automation agencies, you know, wanting you to engage with them. But I think that much like my growth advisory, there's a missing piece where how can you have almost a neutral third party that can be a thinking partner, you know, a sounding board to help you choose a strategy and direction. And aren't biased towards working with your business.

Yeah.

I still help companies with AI implementation, but I think that it's about bringing people together, um, bringing that knowledge and network that I have, um, making it available to, to business owners, founders, and executives. And, you know, getting a rhythm going where I think for me, it's like, to that point earlier on the 12 to 18 month window, I want to see companies win going through this. And I really want to take companies on the journey with me. So. What I'm launching is called Executive Arc. It's an online community, fortnightly sessions and office hours as well. And a group who would just all hang out. There's going to be some in-person events, but ultimately we have some really excellent speakers lined up that I think, you know, executives that I built relationships with through Finder and my time, time over there and also post-Finder, people that are on the forefront of AI. And I just want to make those connections I have available to the members of the community.

Yeah. I love that. That's so good. I'm excited. You'll have to give me some details to join. Um, one question we ask every guest on the podcast, and we kind of covered it, um, previously, but if you were to start a business, you spoke about starting Finder again and who you'd have in the team, but with this new business, starting it from scratch, what are the first 3 hires you'll make and why?

Yeah. Um, so interesting. I thought about this recently. So I think the type of person I like to work with is a chief of staff, someone that's not just assisting you, but actually can take work off your, you know, shoulders, right? I think that's, um, that's really important. And they may not have that title in the beginning, but that's what they evolve to. And I think it looks like giving that person total context, total access, and autonomy to work on things that I guess are across the board in your business.

Yeah.

So it allows you to go out there, build relationships, build, I guess, traction for your company. Yeah. But you know, you've got someone there behind you that's always working on the things you need to get done.

Yeah.

So that's a role, that's a dream role at Hire. And I learned about that, you know, in my journey at Finder. I had 2 chiefs of staff and I think that was remarkable. One was focused broadly on strategy and across the board and one was on strategic projects. Um, and that allowed me this kind of constant pulse on what was happening in the business, um, where I didn't have to be in the room to get the things I needed done.

Yeah.

So that's a really important role. I'd say, um, you know, for a community, it's interesting because I need time and space to do R&D. So it means, you know, meeting people, going to conferences, you know, doing work on my own to figure out, you know, this latest technology. And that's pretty intense. I've got a backlog sometimes of weeks of videos where I did the video, ready to release the guide, but I haven't spent enough time learning the tools. And yeah, finally cracked it. Yeah, I'm posting videos from 2 weeks ago, so it's a bit old, but In AI land, I guess that's old, but it's actually not that far back. Um, uh, so yeah, it's interesting because I think probably if you don't have an external content team, someone that can help you with content matters.

Yeah.

Because you need to solve for distribution and I think that's important. Um, and then, yeah, I mean, obviously you're in a business where, you know, virtual assistants, VAs, and so on are critical. I can't see a world where that's not one of your most important, important earlier hires. Like for me, it's like, there's so much work administratively that needs to happen. Like if you've got a community, like adding members, like getting back to people, sending them the invoices that didn't come through, configuring this and that. And there's just an endless list of these things that need to be done.

Yeah.

And so for me, it's like probably chief of staff's coordinating all of this. Um, you know, a VA or an admin person's You know, doing all that work that just needs to be done and the content person that's there helping me build more demand, which I hope then leads to me being able to hire more people. That's really, I guess, my early hires, I'd say.

Yeah. I love that. I love that you, you mentioned VAs in there because we find a lot of the conversations we're having at the moment is, oh, I don't know if I need one. I'm just going to automate everything. And I'm like, but you still need that one person making sure it's all being done, you know, handling the automations. Just, you can't just set up automations. Um, or, you know, add in some AI agents and expect it all to work.

I think to our point earlier, it's really interesting, right? Like all these founders, executives, CEOs, whoever are building out these automations themselves and not doing the work they should be doing. I really think it's about hiring a really capable VA, giving them training and knowledge, or maybe someone that's pre-trained on AI tools and how to do it.

That's what we're doing.

Oh, there you go.

That's right.

Because they should be the people influencing this stuff for you. Yeah. So from my standpoint, I think it's, yes, there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff that's automated, but it means that VA can suddenly do way more with the same amount of time. So that's my perspective. Um, and maybe it's different to what other people are saying, but, um, I'm very bullish on that.

Love that. Uh, where can people find you?

Yeah. Um, I'm pretty heavily active on LinkedIn. Uh, just search me there. Um, I've got my website, jeremycabral.com. Uh, Instagram as well. Um, but otherwise, yeah, that's me. Um, from my website, everything's linked, so yeah, check it out. And, uh, yeah.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been awesome.

No, thank you. Appreciate having me.

Thanks. Hey, it's Jess here. I hope you enjoyed that episode. Quickly, before you go, if you found your way to this episode because you're growing a successful business and you're noticing that every milestone you grow Whether it's a new revenue level, new team member, or new initiative seems to only add more and more work onto your plate. And instead of helping the company grow, it's almost slowing it down and making it feel heavier. Then I want to help you. Sometimes the team you need to grow, the support you need, the skills you need in order to grow faster, easier, and lighter doesn't easily fit into a budget, especially at Australian wages. That's why we recruit and manage offshore talent for our clients so they can access onshore leverage, skills, culture, and reliability, but at offshore prices. I've left all the details below if you want to check it out.