In this episode of Hustle & Flowchart, host Joe Fier sits down with entrepreneur and systems expert Brad Hart. Together, they explore how AI and robotics are transforming business and why now is the most exciting (and urgent) time for entrepreneurs to leverage these tools. Brad Hart shares his journey—what he’d do if starting over, how to build systems for true leverage, and why small businesses must lead the coming wave of technological change. From real-life success stories to actionable frameworks, this conversation is packed with forward-thinking strategies for building scalable, future-ready businesses.

Topics Discussed

1. A New Era of Abundance: Brad Hart discusses the potential for AI and robotics to solve age-old challenges and what a “utopia” could mean for business and society.
2. Why Small Businesses Matter: The gap between big tech’s focus and the real needs of small and medium businesses—and why SMBs can’t be left behind.
3. Building Leverage with AI: Steps to identifying processes you can automate, from onboarding to operations, and freeing up human potential.
4. Framework for Scaling: Brad Hart unveils his 4 Ps for system-building: Plan, Prompt, Produce, Polish (and a fifth: Platformatize).
5. Tribe Coding vs. Vibe Coding: The power of collective learning, why masterminds matter, and how “tribe coding” accelerates innovation.
6. Real-World Case Studies: How automating a medical onboarding process cut work from 120 hours to less than one—and what that means for scale.
7. Mindset Shift for the Future: Why every industry is about to be disrupted, how to lead change (not follow it), and the new rules for staying in business past 2030.
8. Introducing Optimus & the Mastermind: Brad Hart’s platform to connect, automate, and scale business operations without coding.
9. The Human Element: Why it’s not about replacing humans, but empowering them to be more creative, impactful, and fulfilled.

Resources Mentioned

1. See what Brad is building over at Optimus: https://buildwithoptimus.com/
2. Get some FREE Training from Brad: https://buildwithoptimus.com/trainings/

Connect with Joe Fier

1. 🤖 Chat with Joe's AI Clone: https://hustleandflowchart.com/aijoe
2. 📰 Newsletter: https://hustleandflowchart.com/subscribe
3. 🎙️ Podcast: https://hustleandflowchart.com/
4. 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joefier/
5. 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joefier/

Ready to future-proof your business? If you learned something new, share the episode with a fellow entrepreneur! And don’t miss upcoming game-changing conversations—subscribe to Hustle & Flowchart now and stay on the cutting edge.

The world could be a utopia.

And I'm not saying that hyperbolically, I, I truly believe there's a first

time in history where we could create our way out of this issue

and, and create so much abundance.

Every human being on the planet will have more than enough, even if they use a lot.

So it's not universal basic income.

It's like money doesn't have meaning anymore and everybody

has a very high quality of life.

all of the problems that you set out to solve are actually solvable,

but it's not gonna be with more people and more headcount and

more burnout and more late nights.

It's just not you gotta, you gotta up your game and start

thinking in scalable systems.

If you don't have an AI slash robotics enabled company in four years, you're

not gonna be in business anymore.

Full stop.

You're already here first.

Sorry.

All right, Brad, so I'm kind of curious when I look at you, you know,

you've been in all the masterminds, you've been basically in everything.

We'll talk 'em all through.

But if you were to and, and now you're teaching people how to build these

incredible systems that build leverage, that was never possible before.

If you were to start all over, all over again, what's the first

system you would focus on and why?

Well, it depends on what part of my career you're talking about.

I guess early on I didn't have all the really cool, uh, tools that we have

today, but now it's like every single problem is potentially solvable in our

time that humans have dealt with forever

So let's talk about

now

then.

and business owners specifically, like I, I really geek out on SMBs.

I was, I had a meeting with my team on Monday and we kind of mapped

out like some of the messaging for the new platform we're rolling out.

And, uh, one of the things that kept coming up is like, we're not really

the a hundred million person consumer app, and we're not really the a hundred

million dollar enterprise app, at least, you know, not in the current iteration.

But, uh, what we are really is, is we're serving the people who, uh,

you know, basically need us the most is like, they're not, you know, I,

I was in San Francisco recently.

And I got to meet the people who, who create the ai, right?

And the agentic SDKs and the MCP protocol and all this stuff.

And yeah, they create that stuff and they publish it, and then they donate

it to a foundation and people adopt it.

But it's mostly open source.

There's nobody really championing it for small business.

So like all this AI amazingness that that business owners desperately

need, they're still using chatbots that are built for consumers.

There's no real great business.

Use case.

you know, to answer your question, I think I would, I would focus on the thing

that works in the real world, the hard work, the smart work, the flow work.

Like what, what is an actual value adding process in the real world, um, whether

that be a sales process, a marketing process, an operational process, a

delivery process, and then finding a way to take humans outta the loop.

And that's not to say that humans aren't valuable.

They just shouldn't be doing repetitive crap that an AI can do.

They should be humans being, not humans doing.

Right?

Uh, so early in my career, it was like learning that it's a real problem

to cross over the 10 employee or contractor threshold in the business.

And people who solve it, they tend to solve it.

Uh, and then they get to 30 50 and they go from there.

But people who can't solve it, they keep getting beat back down, and it's

really hard to scale your business.

But now, not so much anymore because now we have like actual leverage tools that

can go from, you know, if you get an AI to do it, it might take you 25% more time

in the initial run, but then you can leverage at times a thousand,

times a million, theoretically.

Like it doesn't, it doesn't have a limit.

Whereas more humans equals more complexity with humans and more drag with humans

and more human beings doing human stuff.

actually like what you started with, with the whole San Francisco

trip and kinda seeing where, I guess the focus is with ai, right?

And

like most of where the money flows and also where the

attention

distracted 'cause my dog ran in and she was squeaking and

you can't really hear it.

But I, I kinda lost the thread of that story.

But the, the point of that story is somebody stood up during this and

it was mostly devs, so I understood about 70% what was going on.

I'm a self-taught full stack dev, but not like classically, I never

worked at a big company, so.

They're answering questions, and I was really curious.

This one guy stood up and he is like, Hey, if you could do X, Y, and Z, and he's

talking to the guy from CloudFlare, we'd give you a hundred million dollars of year

in business, and he says, can you do that?

He says, yeah, we'll get right on it.

They're like, is that easy?

He is like, yeah, that easy, a hundred million dollars.

We're gonna drop everything and do it.

It made me realize like, oh shit.

Like they're not actually incentivized to solve the problems in the middle market.

It's like this trickle down thing, but the innovator's dilemma, like

mandates that these big ass companies, it's hard to steer those big ships.

You know, they're, they're trying to solve billion dollar problems

and raise tons of money to build data centers and, and just really

go all in on their core prop, right?

So the, the reality is like somebody needs a champion who can cross the divide.

These small businesses need a champion who gets their pain,

who's been in it for 20 years.

He's talked to tens of thousands of different business owners and

seen what works and what doesn't.

'cause by the time a software solution shows up, it's no

longer a competitive advantage.

It's not ip, it's just now the, the new, you know, table stakes essentially.

You know, once, once somebody has go high level, everybody has go high level

and now it's not an advantage anymore.

So that's thing one.

And then thing two is like.

Um, the, the, the problem, the pro, the, the promise of SaaS was

software as a solution, but really we just introduced more friction.

So now you have 15 tabs open.

You can't find anything, nothing talks to anything.

It's a bitch to switch.

Everything's expensive.

It's a pain in the ass.

I'm just like, forget all that.

Let's be above your stack.

Let's

Yeah.

plug in to all the tools you already know and love, and just allow you

to use 'em all in one window and talk to it like an employee and run

complex workflows and automations.

With natural language commands as if you're just talking to

a person instead of forget it.

That's, that's the next level of compute.

That's the next level of operating your business, not just just working

in a job that you created for yourself.

we have so much, so many amazing opportunities right now.

But yeah.

Speaking to these small business owners, these ones that are kind of

caught in the middle, it sounds like,

Yeah.

I guess, what are the big, um, advantages right now?

Like, so knowing that okay, we have access to all the same tools and whatnot,

where is the, where's the switch for someone listening or watching right

now where they can feel like they can really carve out a competitive advantage?

Yeah, you build your own stuff.

Uh, that's the best way, right?

The, the gap between devs who understand open source and understand how to build

and code and, and, and business owners who have real problems that if they

could solve them, they, they could be billion dollar opportunities, but they

just don't have the, the technical chops like that, that's getting smaller.

I'm not saying tech is easy, but it's easier than it's ever been

to the point where it's like, you know, I've been telling people

stop writing nonfiction books.

AI's gonna ruin that market.

It's not gonna happen overnight.

But like, why would you read a, a nonfiction book to get two nuggets

maybe or five in a great one, and then 400 pages of fluff and stories

that don't actually add value.

And you could just ask the internet essentially, Hey,

what, this is what I wanna know.

Teach me how to do this.

And you multiply that times, you know, thousands of hours of.

Code it this way, use this tool.

It didn't quite work.

Okay, now let's learn why, and da, da, da and architecture and the like.

You just learn.

I've, I've shipped as you know, a relatively non-technical person.

80,000 lines of production code, working a full platform full stack

in, in less than six months by myself, mostly with, with just a few

advisors and team members to help bad ideas around, but basically having.

I'm doing it all myself, and I'm a lunatic.

I am absolutely a psychopath.

I do not recommend that I'm on the far end of the spectrum

in a lot of different ways.

Uh, but what that means is I can bring back what works and what doesn't

to my lesser technically inclined people, or people that just don't

have time to do that, even if they'd want to, um, and share like, okay.

You know, I'll give you a real example.

We have Dr. Anthony, uh, he is a dear friend.

Long time.

He's a client.

He had this process that was taking him three to four hours to onboard, get

blood work, get his, you know, results, and do labs and help the people and

like really actually be there for them.

And he was the only person who could do it in his whole organization.

Then he enrolled 30 clients at one time.

So you start doing the math, that's 120 hours of work.

He was gonna have to just eat it, you know, and just do it.

Um, but with ai, we broke it down into four steps.

We designed the prompts in the system and then I actually coded him an app

that essentially could get that result better than he could more consistently,

uh, in about five or six minutes.

And then he could just focus on the actual human part, which is

like, Hey, here's all your reports.

Everything that we do, I've double checked 'em.

Now let's just go through them.

Instead of me having to parse through every single stupid thing and 50 pages

of blood results, it's crazy, right?

And now any member of his team can prep that and send it to him

yeah, man, that's incredible because like, so someone's probably listening

right now, and I, I know I am.

It is like 120 hours.

You just condensed that by using

Into less than an hour of prep.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So, and anyone can do it

Well, and it took me about three hours total from end to end to like extract

all the knowledge, train the AI code, the thing, and now it's not gonna win

any design awards, but it's a functional app that anybody in his team can use.

And now that's IP that that can go along with that business

couple things I wanted, uh, like double click on here is like, yeah.

I think now we're in, in this world of just build it, like build it quickly.

We all have the tools to, to do the thing.

You know, you have, uh, I mean, we'll list out some of the tools, I guess, like

what are the no code tools that you would.

Typically

I don't believe in no code.

I don't think that's realistic.

I think I believe in code translation.

So this is what I believe in.

You could take high, you could take high school Spanish for four years, go

to Spain, not be able to order coffee, or you can go with a local guide.

And day one you say, Hey, I want a coffee.

They say, okay, great.

Come to the cafe.

Cafe cito, port Vo.

You get a coffee.

Mm-hmm.

Cool.

And now you're like, oh, that wasn't so hard.

I could do that.

Right?

'cause you, you take the mystification, you take the mystification out of it,

or I don't know what the right word is.

You mystify the process.

So with code or anything else, it's like you've been learning systems

and how they work your whole life.

Yeah.

Everything that you do in your life right now is a system you had to learn from

driving to going to the store, to paying your bills, to your mortgage, like all

this crap that you kind of didn't know.

And now, you know, and it's like once you know it, you kind of get it right and

you understand what questions to ask and what's right and what's wrong and what,

what makes sense and what what doesn't.

And you just get better and better at like asking questions.

And the more I do this, the more I see the whole world as a collection of systems

that were designed to quote Steve Jobs by people who are no smarter than you.

They just kind of defaults worked at the time and they haven't been redesigned

in a while, and now you get to come and redesign them if you so choose,

because there's, like I said, all the physical world is really made up of,

you know, physical and digital worlds really made up of problems to solve

Yep.

and stuff that kind of works, but not a hundred percent and not

as good as it possibly could be.

Especially when you consider we have new tools.

and and that's why you said like, we get to redefine this now and recreate

for the first time in history, it's like leaps and bounds of possibilities

and, and different, so like the, the, the world could be a utopia.

And I'm not saying that hyperbolically, I, I truly believe there's a first

time in history where we could create our way out of this issue

and, and create so much abundance.

Every human being on the planet will have more than enough, even if they use a lot.

So it's not universal basic income.

It's like money doesn't have meaning anymore and everybody

has a very high quality of life.

'cause there's just so much, it's like irrelevant

Break that down a little bit more because like your think

your thought pattern, because I feel

economic, every economic system that's ever existed.

'cause there's been a lot, we're currently in late stage capitalism, but there's

been, you know, feudalism and mercantilism and some guy invented the stock market

and some guy had the tulip bulb thing and like just, it was all systems that

kind of, at the time made sense and no longer do, like we don't use feudalism

anymore 'cause we have a better system.

I'm not saying capitalism is the last one that'll ever be invented, but they're all.

Every one of them to a T have been predicated on the notion of scarcity.

Every one of them, there's not enough for everybody.

Therefore, we have to find a way to distribute this based on power, based

on economics, based on value, based on a means of exchange, based on what?

Nepotism, whatever the F. Right?

And, and now like for the first time in human history, we actually have AI and

robotics that could potentially create.

More abundance, food, utility, shelter, education, whatever, to make

it as so abundant as to be near free.

Stuff that we just take for granted.

Like, you know, you plug the, the thing into the wall and the electricity works.

And the electric bills aren't crazy.

Like most people can afford them.

That's why most people have electricity and most countries, you know, I'm

not saying everybody everywhere.

I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that there is a world where we keep driving

this down and it only gets faster.

Mm-hmm.

It's, deceptive to people because they think linearly and they think locally.

They don't think globally and exponentially, and they don't

think how fast it's actually accelerating, especially as AI comes

online and becomes more capable and then robots right behind it.

Oh, that's coming up like this coming

Yeah.

I think we're two years out before robots are everywhere, like humanoid

robots that are really functional.

And I was in San Francisco, uh, like I said, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and

I went to a lot of meetings just to kind of get a state of affairs on, on this.

And I went to one where.

I was in a room with a robot that could move so fast.

It was this little dog robot that could move so fast I couldn't see it.

Wow.

Like it was, it was over there and it was over there and it was like,

it was a little flit in my vision.

Like if, if something flew past you and you just didn't quite recognize it, like

I didn't have a mental model for that.

And it moves like a dog, right?

It moves its legs and goes like it is like, and it can do handstands and

flips and all kinds of shit, and it's so fast you can't see the damn thing.

And I'm like, that's scary as shit.

I hope we, I really hope we use that for good because that changes the game.

I mean, we're, we're creating trillion dollar aircraft carriers

that won't be done for 10 years and already they're obsolete.

Oh, absolutely.

I'm

10,000 drones could be pumped out.

Any one of that, them could sink that thing.

Yep.

Well what's your take?

Because yeah, that's why I asked about like the economics and it's funny,

interesting you brought up robots.

'cause yeah, my 6-year-old daughter saw some robots recently and talked,

you know, and saw the humanoid stuff, what Elon was talking about,

and she was like, that's scary.

I'm like,

It, can be.

it

can be.

Yeah.

And that's why I'm like, obviously as a

that, that's kind of where I keep coming back to is like

we have this inflection point.

Correct.

You can put your head on the sand, you could do the ostrich thing.

You let other people decide based on their values, how this is gonna go.

You know, you can talk about it west versus east.

You can talk about China versus the us, but like I think there's a non-zero

chance that we could completely screw the world over and live in a terrible

place or just end it and there's a, a very good chance, actually,

it's a very highly likely chance.

Based on the distribution of what I would call positive sum values

across the world, that this ends up being a really positive thing.

But you need people who have wisdom to guide this.

They can't sit on the sidelines.

You can't be a business owner and say, I'm in for a penny and for a

pound just say, oh, I, I make a, I make my 200 grand a year and I'm good.

Mm-hmm.

like, why'd you get into business?

You didn't get into business till like.

Survive or just have another job that you gotta manage.

It's like, no, you get got into business to thrive and

solve problems and help people.

It's like all those things are more possible now than ever.

'cause you can train an AI or a robot to do something and then it can do

it times a thousand, times a million.

Whereas if you train a human, good luck.

Well, and then you're dealing with emotions.

You're dealing with egos and all this other stuff in the middle

that that muddy the waters,

Yeah.

Well I just, and I don't think, see it as replacing humans.

I see it as augmenting humans.

Let's give all the humans most of their time back and let them do more human

things and focus on the next version.

what's the shift?

Because yeah, it's a mental shift that we get to make for ourselves as humans

during this whole phase that most people have no clue it's even happening.

So I think there needs to be an awareness happen.

You know, hopefully this is part of it, but there's other podcasts

and shows starting to do that.

DI of A-C-E-O-I know was putting out a whole bunch of AI related episodes that.

Is getting more mainstream, which is great, but What's that?

Yeah.

What's that mental shift?

It almost sounds like more creation and

People think this is a topic and they think it's niche and therefore

they think they can ignore it or it's somebody else's problem.

This is, as Elon Musk put it, love 'em or hate 'em, don't bet against them.

This is a super sonic tsunami that affects every industry, top to bottom.

People say, oh, what industries you focus on.

All of them.

Mm-hmm.

' cause I'm industries are kind of a. A kind of acute relic of a bygone era.

It's like everything affects everything now and everything's being enabled by

tech and tech's only getting faster.

Yeah.

And I'm talking to guys who install garage doors and work on elevator contracts,

and I'm talking to high tech people and, and all these different people.

They have the same problems.

They all need an offer.

They all need to sell it.

They all need leads, they all need operations help, and they

all are gonna be affected by AI and robotics sooner or later.

It's

So they get to choose, right?

Hey, am I gonna lead this shift or am I gonna follow it?

And following it is, is a sure path to death.

You don't have, you have about four years.

2030 is the inflection point.

If you don't have an AI slash robotics enabled company in four years, you're

not gonna be in business anymore.

Full stop.

You're already here first.

Sorry.

So get on the train or don't,

it's the thing, yeah.

We have the choice to do this right now and yeah.

I kinda wanna go back to like what you said, start building your own stuff and

'cause so you do this with optimists and happy, you know, I'd love for you

to break that down 'cause it's, and then also, but I also wanna walk people

through, I guess the mental model of like how they start to do that.

Like, kinda like the doctor that you're working with, a hundred, 120 hours was

like looking, staring him in, in the face,

And there's a thousand other doctors that have that same problem that,

that just aren't my client yet.

So I could give them that playbook.

'cause we already did it for Dr. Anthony, why not for you?

And you'll have a million questions as to why and how do

we, you know, make sure it's good.

And yes, you can keep a human in the loop and HIPAA and all that crap.

We can work through that.

But the reality is like you can't ignore that.

He is now 99% more efficient and getting better results for his clients

and able to bring on 30 clients at one time without it being a nightmare.

So, yeah, like how do, how does someone.

If they're listening, watching, like how do they walk through that kind of

process, maybe for themselves or their

So

it's really four steps, and this is kind of going behind the curtain a

little bit, just to give you a sense.

But, uh, you know, I, I do this thing.

So there's, there's this thing called in around called vibe coding, where people

like, you know, go in a room and like put on some music and just like tell

the AI to build stuff and you'll get kind of diminishing returns on that.

I think after a while you need to get serious, but to build like a

single function, one purpose app.

That's, that's pretty fun and pretty cool, and I recommend you

do it or just stick up a website.

It won't be the best website, won't be the best app, but it's like

something cool that you could do then.

I was like hearing all this chatter about people who are like, I'm gonna

vibe code a billion dollar business.

I'm like, like, fuck, you are right.

Excuse my language, but like, you know, the likelihood that some dude in his

mom's basement with no distribution and no business sense is gonna go build the next

billion dollar thing is just laughable.

And even if it was true, it sounds lonely, boring, and shitty.

I'm like, well, I kind of wanna do it with all my friends so we could all get fed

better, faster and keep each other sharp.

Iron sharpens iron's kind of the point of a mastermind.

So I'm like, I'm gonna approach this from a new angle.

I call it tribe coding

Okay.

I like,

Trademark.

Tribe coding, right?

So, so now we're all building together, we're all learning from each other.

What's the best ways to do it?

We hit roadblocks.

We help each other work through them.

Like just recently, um, I was, uh, I was running the problem that

my project was getting too big.

hmm.

For AI to keep it in context.

And yeah, there's different AI at different size context windows, but

not all of them are good at code.

So like of the ones that I wanted to use, I could only really focus on like

a narrow subset of a particular app.

And then I had a breakthrough.

I'll just share one.

I've had many.

But, um, I was able to design a system by which AI diagrams the system as is

so that it could use less context to understand the different

components of the system before it went in and, and made changes.

So instead of having to start from scratch in every context window, which

is still a problem of ai, you know, you got 200 tokens, 200,000 tokens, and

you're done now in like 10,000 tokens.

It can get up to speed and know where all the components live

and not have to do any searches.

It could just look at the diagram and at the end of it it can update

that diagram if there's been changes.

So, like that one little thing, I'll just share, uh, my screen real quick to

give you a visual what that looks like.

If there's people who wanna see it, uh, changed everything.

It's, you know, you gotta look for these little.

Bits that, that make everything different.

And this is great for vibe coding, right?

For

any

kind of coating.

So like this is, hold on, let me share it right now.

Uh, can you see this screen here?

Yeah, it's

So most people won't know what the hell all this means, but this is like

a main function of my app that's like architecture and there's different phases

and it goes through different files and it's just basically like a decision tree

for the app to be able to be like, okay, here's what's what and where it all lives.

And then AI doesn't have to go through each time and figure it out.

And I can do that for main components.

Um, ba basically it's just like a, it's an innovation.

I'm working within the limits of a tool.

Obviously this is not day one stuff like I've been at this for

a while, but it's valuable for me.

And then anybody else I work with.

Because AI can't really read a mural board.

It can't really read a whiteboard the way that I could.

Like my handwriting's terrible.

So like I just found a way for it to design its own map.

That is also useful for me that now we're both on the same page and I can

just go to the specific part of the app that I'm working on and I got a map

and then we update the map over time.

'cause the map is not the territory, but it's a hell of a lot better than, you

know, if you have enough maps, you can approximate the territory, I guess is a

Right.

And, and, and if it's made in the way that the AI can read and, and of

course that it's you, you definitely need to organize all this information.

And my brain goes to like, what do you use to organize all of these

different files to make sure that it's referencing that in the most updated form.

right?

'cause you're, you're gonna burn well and then it gets it wrong and it fixes

a thing that's not actually the problem.

Correct.

And then you created another problem.

'cause now you gotta ghost, you gotta chase down later.

Because you don't know all the cascading effects, especially

when you get to a complex app.

Like if it's a single function app, fine, it either works or it doesn't.

But when you get into a platform level, like it's, it can be a nightmare.

So anyway, the, the reason I'm, I'm sharing that is it's a more

complex example that people are gonna be like, holy crap.

But I don't want you to get intimidated by that.

The reality is I show people very basic tools that all of a sudden now they're

putting up websites and apps in minutes.

That they vibe coded themselves, tribe coded themselves, and then

they can iterate, but it's a new paradigm that they didn't have before.

The old paradigm is I gotta wait for somebody who has technical

knowledge and expertise.

I gotta find the right person who I can trust, who isn't gonna cost a

fortune, who actually wants to work on my problem, and then finally,

uh, manage that person to success.

All of those things are break points that don't work.

And I have countless stories of business owners trying to hire

devs to build whatever, that it just never gets to fruition.

Or they spend a ton of money and, and then it's a pain in the

ass to maintain and more money.

And it's like you would be shocked at how many people I've talked to that have spent

half a million to a million dollars on an idea that's never seen the light of day.

Man it

It's like, why would you take a few hours and see what's possible by

yourself before you go hire anybody?

Because at the very least you build an MVP, you build a little prototype,

and then you bring it to the devs and say, make this nice, make this pretty,

make this scalable, make this whatever.

But here it is.

This is the way I want it.

And see that's a beautiful, like what's accessible to everybody right now, and

I feel like a, a big gap is this mental model of just start building stuff.

Like you don't have to wait for anybody.

Yeah, there's no

literally just use your voice and start.

and I'm here as a Sherpa to guide people 'cause I as, as unsexy as this is.

Everybody wants to know the prompt that's gonna make 'em a million dollars.

Like, we do that too.

Fine.

But you know, I think the, the fact that you can now build stuff in physical and

digital space and automate stuff and physical and digital space changes the

way that we're gonna approach business.

It's not gonna be who can.

Grind through and hustle harder.

And you know, there's just, that doesn't scale.

It's gonna be, or higher than most.

It's gonna be who can design a system that scales and then get AI to run the system.

So you have to find what AI can do and what it can't.

Yeah.

You have to figure out the right tools in the right order, in the right sequence.

And yeah, it's a little bit more work upfront, but you've already got a bunch

of processes in your business that already work or you wouldn't be in business.

Now it's taking those and updating them for 2025 with the new tools.

back to you, you were saying there's four steps where, um, you know,

it was kind of peeling it back.

I don't know if you went through this four.

I don't, I don't know if I caught 'em all, but, um, kind of like if you have.

A process in mind.

Something that's just bogging you down.

Totally.

So plan, prompt, produce, polish.

Ooh.

Okay.

Four piece.

So the planning is like, you know, whiteboarding, you choose your tech stack.

I help people guide through this.

It's basically just like, here's our best hypothesis about how this could work.

Cool.

And it's taking your actual SOP and it's, it's, it's mapping it to, what's

the new way it's gonna look then?

Okay, you're the expert, so you're gonna need to build the prompts.

But it's pretty easy 'cause AI can prompt itself.

So really it's a function of like, what are the inputs, what are the outputs?

How many examples do we have?

Let's say we have five.

I think five is a good number.

So I know what the input looks like and I know what the output looks

like of the system we're designing.

And then I can give that to AI and say, here's five examples

of, of before and after.

Go make prompts as many as possible or as few as possible that, that

allow us to transform A into B. And it goes off and does that.

And then you go and play with those prompts manually

and you say, okay, got it.

Or it didn't until you're really happy with the output.

That's what Dr. Anthony did.

He took it for a couple weeks.

He, he did it manually a bunch of times.

He's like, okay, this is bulletproof.

This works, these prompts.

Not this.

Not too many, not too few, right?

Because the more you give AI to do in one shot, the worse it does.

You have to break it into a number of chunks that it can do very reliably.

Consistently.

That one feeds into the next.

Into the next,

And hints that map, right?

Like so you have, yeah.

Okay.

So it's like every single one of those, and that was more

of a code specific example.

This is more of like a, we're still working with Claude,

we're still working with GPT.

This is all stuff that you're probably familiar with already.

Then we're gonna produce code, which actually runs that process.

So we're basically taking the training wheels off, we're getting

past the prompts, and we're saying, okay, now let's build that into a

process where it can't mess it up,

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

a prompt is probabilistic and code is deterministic.

Although you can have probabilistic elements, a prompt allows you to have

flexibility within the model and have intelligence pick the best thing, but it,

it can produce hallucinations and errors.

It can just decide not to do it.

And that can be a problem depending on what you're doing, but code, like

if I just give it A-J-S-O-N script for example, you have to execute it this way.

so that, that's the produce phase is like we're gonna actually turn that

transformational process that we just outlined, that we know works that AI can

do into code, that it can't mess it up.

Mm.

That could be a mix of code and prompts, and there's other ways to do

that, but then we're gonna polish it.

So like, okay, we've built the plan based on whatever was working already.

We've prompted it, we've produced it, and then we polish it based basically saying,

Hey, I want to have enough edge cases, thought through and figured out where.

You know, this is a working thing that'll get us 95% of the way there.

And we then we have a human in the loop just to make sure we have high quality.

But you basically took a multi-hour process and turned

it into a multi minute process.

You took something that one person on your team can do and

made it so anybody could do it.

And then you've, you've created a way for it to be, um, consistent and

scalable across your organization.

And then as you get more of these processes built into little apps, if you

will, then you can roll all that into one platform and that's your whole business.

I got you.

Cool.

So that would be like the fifth p if I was to just kind of extrapolate, like

you polish it now, you can platformat size it, so you take all of these and

you start to put 'em into platforms.

That's essentially what I did with Optimus.

I built 30 different workflows and systems and tools, one of which, uh,

added an additional 10 or 20 KA week to a business that I worked with.

Yeah.

In brand new revenue that just was slipping through the cracks

in about two hours work, right?

So these, these can make a massive difference, especially when you get

really good and you know what to look for.

You know, I've taken stuff like that.

So like the massive amount of money made, the massive amount of time saved.

And then this multiplies.

'cause now you're, you're getting more money and time.

You have more time to, to focus on what else could I do?

And you get excited and enlivened by this possibility and you're like, oh crap.

You know?

And it doesn't have to happen zero to one.

It can happen 40% better, 50% better.

Like it's all time and money that you're getting back or making more of.

That's

That's right, and, and I'm, I'm assuming there's this iterative

process based on feedback and all the new ideas that pop up.

You're like, well, shit,

But everybody's still in the old model of, okay, I gotta go hire X, Y, and Z, or let

me get this agency, or let me whatever.

It's like, no, start with the process.

That works.

That's the hardest part.

Find a process that works.

Find something that if you did it a hundred times, it would

have enough of a success rate.

And create enough of a profit or enough of a impact to, to wanna do that and then,

you know, get past the idea of, oh, I have to do that, or Pearson has to do that.

That's not the point.

You need to find something that works first.

That's

the hardest thing you're gonna do.

That's 80% of the work.

If it works, it can work at scale.

'cause even if you have a 50% success rate, but you can do it 250,000 times,

well it's gonna work 125,000 times.

So you gotta get outta your head of like, oh, this isn't perfect.

Like, good enough is good enough.

Then we can work on scaling it and getting it better.

The better you can get it beforehand, great.

But like I don't wanna slow anybody down because the reality is even if

you took a kind of piss poor process and just made it better by automating

it and leveraging it, it would be ultimately you'd get more out of it.

More consistent.

Yeah.

More things show up and, uh, having human in the loop, uh,

you know, talk about that.

Like are your thoughts on that because that's, especially in these

early processes, a human somehow still have an oversight over this,

or at least during parts of it.

If you think about it like a diagram, it would be input output.

So one side, then the other side in between is the transformation.

That's like the app or the, the code or the prompts or whatever it is that

we use to, to get from A to B. And then the, the thing that draws from,

um, output back to input is feedback.

And the human is the feedback

Got it.

the human is saying, yeah, this is like we're batting 30% or we're

batting 70%, or we're bat 95%.

Like how do we improve that?

Mm-hmm.

' cause every time you get feedback, it gives you new information to feed into

the system or, or tweak the prompt or tweak the code to make it better.

So you're just running this feedback loop until it's like acceptably

high where you're like, okay, we can move on to something else.

Like we're getting diminishing returns

on

whatever the process is.

So that's where the humans come in, is they, they just make the system better.

So, like, there's an old joke.

The factory of the future will have two employees, a man and a dog.

And the man's job is to feed the dog.

And the dog's job is to make sure the man doesn't touch the machine.

But that's eventually where you get through.

It's like, okay, this is just all running and it all works.

And that was kind of the idea for optimists is like, we

built 30 different things.

They all kind of do different things in businesses.

Let's start wrapping them together into a platform that allows you to

connect your entire stack of apps.

So we're not asking you to switch software, we're not

asking you to buy new software.

Take what you already know and love anything with an API.

We plug it into Optimus.

Then you talk to it like an employee and you can create complex

workflows and automations without ever touching a line of code.

So basically, yeah, you could speak through whatever the

hell this process is, right?

Like it's essentially what we're talking about here.

We're talking about the manual way, but you've already built Optimus.

This is, I've seen some of what you, you know, you've showed me some of this stuff,

and it's fricking mind blowing because.

It sounds like you've identified what the 30 main processes or things that

most small business owners would need to know or have, and you could just

speak with it and then hook in all these integrations without having

to get what innate in savvy and, uh,

No.

Yeah, it, it alleviates a need for N eight N Zeer, make any of that crap.

And, and not that, that's crap.

It's a great platform.

I'm just saying like, this is a new paradigm.

You don't need that anymore.

The, the, the idea is less menus, less things to log into,

less things to think about.

It's like one window through which you can run your business.

You hook it up once and now it's talking to everything and

it will only get more useful.

And what's crazy is like, I don't know anybody else who could do this,

who has like the small business.

Environment, understanding the actual technical chops and like the

vision and taste and experience and wisdom to like no, do less, right?

Just make it cleaner.

Make it simpler.

Like at the end of the day, we're gonna have like one main menu and

a couple of things like affiliate, ROI, you know, and, and automation.

And that's it.

Like, it's gonna be a really simple app, but massively powerful.

It's gonna be like unsuspectingly powerful.

And we're about three to four weeks out from beta launch.

that's what I wanted to ask about.

Yeah.

It's like, okay, so what's the timeline?

How's that look like for

So right now, currently all of what I just described is, is in the app.

I have some other features I'll probably keep in my back pocket that I wanna slow

roll and just make sure they really work.

Um, but yeah, we'll we already have it in Alpha on 45 of our client's machines.

Uh, they're getting crazy results with it and super happy with it.

And then we have, um, you know, 'cause I use the Mastermind as the way to

fund this and fund the development.

So I haven't taken any outside capital yet.

I'm open to that, but it has to be the right fit.

Um, and that's another problem is like VCs don't get it.

They're thinking, is this a hundred million person consumer app or is this

a hundred million dollar enterprise app?

And they don't really

care if it's in between.

big boys.

Yeah.

this is an a real opportunity for somebody who really gets the pain of like two

to 10 employees and you know, maybe up to 15, like that's hard to get past.

And if you get past it, you're not thinking about software anymore.

'cause you've already hired people that deal with that crap for you.

That's true.

Well, this is what's so cool is like you said, it funds with the Mastermind.

So I wanted to definitely highlight, uh, your Optimist Mastermind because, uh.

I think I'll be, well by the time this goes live we will have already

done some, some, uh, you know, I've gone out to Phoenix and hung out

with you and the, and the whole crew.

But describe what you're doing there, because you've been a part of basically

every mastermind that I know and way more, and, you know, there's a unique

thing that, that you bring together that's probably not, it isn't normal.

It seems like you're, you're doing a transformation in the moment

with people, but also doing big good stuff for the world, you know?

And these are the leaders that I described earlier.

It's like, I don't want to just, you know, react to AI or hope it doesn't affect me.

I'm like, I'm leading this.

I realize it's, it's me.

If it's, if it is to be, it's going to be me.

So we have 32 businesses represented, uh, about 250 million in revenue combined.

Um, these are typically business owners that have been in the

game for five plus years.

Some of them 25 plus years.

Like they're just all over the map.

Um, we have young folks, we have older folks.

I, my, my oldest client's 72 and he's still crushing it.

Um, yeah, my youngest people are like in their late twenties, right?

So it's kind of a, it's a mix.

Uh, but the goal that we all have is like, we wanna lead this, not follow it.

We want to own our time, own our future, own our freedom, and realize

like this is the first time in history.

We could go from a very small.

Portion of your tam to a very large portion of your TAM in almost no time.

Geez.

Right.

And, and really your only bottleneck is gonna end up being

distribution relationships.

So we're all gonna keep each other accountable to like get our tech outta

the way so we can focus on scale.

And, and it's beautiful because like distribution's, the issue, well, that's

kind of the power of masterminds, right?

So you're getting people together, networking, viewing the human thing,

You got a guy who's got 17 million emails sitting next to you in the

Mastermind, that's a legit person.

Like, you know, what can't you do with that?

It's tribe coding, tribe building, it's all that stuff at the tribe.

And it, it's fun.

It's like, it's it people, it's so hard to get them to be like, okay, I'll do it.

And it's like, it just feels harder than it is.

And then they start doing it.

They're like, oh, that wasn't so hard.

I'll literally be talking to people and doing trainings and

coding apps in the background.

Yeah, I believe it.

You know, it's like I've gotten so good at this stuff.

Like I got two windows open all the time.

Coding something, messing with something, researching something.

And, and reality is like, I measure twi, you know that old

saying, measure twice, cut once.

It's really like I measure four or five times and then I cut once.

Like, I'm so sure about the changes I wanna make before I make them because of

that cascading effect I told you about.

And by the time I actually make it, it's like, it so like it, it just

requires a different level of thinking.

But once you start thinking that way, it's like anything becomes possible.

That's what really I teach is the frameworks and thinking style around that

of like, okay, where's the puck going?

How can we skate there and how can we support each other in getting there?

And you know, us humans, we're always so, you know, stubborn

with the old way of doing things.

So as long as we can break outta that old minta model, that's my big takeaway

I tell everybody, listen, if you're capturing 1% of your

tam, I'll shut the fuck up.

If you got a billion dollar, I'll shut up.

Right.

And if you're not, well, maybe you should come talk to us

'cause we're on our way, man.

And this is like such a, it's such a perfect time for people

to jump in on this mindset.

Go over there, go, um, I'll just shout it out, build with optimist.com so you

can see everything that Brad's doing with the group and probably with Optimist

as well, once that goes, um, public.

But it is crazy.

Um, I, I guess to kind of wrap it up here, Brett, well, is there anything else you'd

wanna shout out or ways that they can

Yeah.

I wanna shout out to all the, the dreamers and the crazy people out there

that like got into business in the first place and, and maybe have been doing

it 5, 10, 15, 20 years, whatever it is.

I've been in business over 20 years myself.

Like it's the hardest and most rewarding thing I've ever done.

It's the most spiritually, uh, enlivening and growth oriented thing I've ever done.

The sense of contribution you get is insane.

Like, just remind yourself why you got into this.

This is the, the first time in human history that we're aware of.

That all of the problems that you set out to solve are actually

solvable, but it's not gonna be with more people and more headcount and

more burnout and more late nights.

It's just not you gotta, you gotta up your game and start

thinking in scalable systems.

And that's literally the only difference between you and

these Silicon Valley companies.

They're just thinking big.

That's it.

that's Tim Ferris has said this many, many times before, and I

might not say it perfectly, but it's like the, the reframe is what would

this look like if it were easy?

And not feel like it has to be a fricking grind to do all this shit.

'cause it doesn't

Well, and the first thing people, when I show them these kind of results,

they're like, well, then what do I do?

Like I don't, you work on something else.

I don't know.

Like you

don't have to

stop working.

I work more than ever, but I'm building different things, you know?

I'm excited about what I'm building.

And you're having fun.

I think that's a

big takeaway is like.

If you, yeah, once, and I urge everyone, it's like, if you haven't made a

graphic with ai, go to Nana Banana.

Like go to Gemini, go, go test some shit out.

You know, if you haven't coated something, whatever.

There's all these D. Just start getting some practice, some hands-on experience.

Do it yourself.

Don't touch, talk about it or delegate it.

Actually do it because then your brain starts to do this

whole rewire game, you know, and

Yeah.

Well, and I, I think, uh, Debs have had kind of the run of

the world for a long time.

'cause.

It's so mis, they're almost like wizards.

Like nobody understands how magic works, but code is not magic.

It's just, it's just characters on a screen.

And when you start learning what they do, and you don't even have to know

what every single stupid thing does.

When you start understanding how to think as a machine thinks you can build, as a

machine builds and design things, like literally anything becomes possible.

It's just can we figure it out or not?

It's so damn cool.

What, uh, I know you've already talked about a lot of exciting things, but I like

to ask this at the end, but it's like, what's one thing that's just lightened

you up for this, this year to come?

Starting it out fresh right now?

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm getting into the platform game.

You know, I think all the most successful companies in the world

are a platform of some sort.

Um, so that puts me in a possibility of creating that next platform

that changes the world and empowers SMBs to, to, to compete with the

biggest companies in the world.

Solid.

' cause you take that speed and, and creativity advantage and you multiply

at times millions and all of a sudden, like enterprises can't keep up with you.

Mm-hmm.

'cause they're too slow by, by their nature.

It's like the difference between a DAO and an enterprise.

You know, it's like that, that whole

right.

Well, you're, and it's literally changing lives, like people who will

feel it, you know, the entrepreneurs in both time, wealth creation,

their teams and families all beyond.

So

is the window and there's, there's gonna be a mess.

Messy middle.

So you better lead it 'cause

Yeah.

Well, I'm rooting for you brother.

So thank you very much.

And, uh, we'll do it again soon.

Looking forward to Phoenix.

But

sir.

the past.

Thank you everybody.