In this 2025 audit lesson, Ray reflects on something that’s no longer optional:

The mindset, skill level, and limiting beliefs of a founder get installed into the business.

And AI has made that reality impossible to ignore.

If you think small, the business thinks small.

If you chase shiny objects, the business chases shiny objects.

If you struggle to delegate, the business bottlenecks around you.

But here’s the shift:

AI is now a mirror — and a multiplier.

Used correctly, it challenges your assumptions, exposes weak thinking, sharpens strategy, and forces clarity. Used poorly, it amplifies confusion, bad decisions, and low standards.

In this episode, Ray unpacks why AI is no longer a novelty tool for marketers or operators. It is a core leadership skill. The leaders who upgrade their thinking — and use AI to stress-test it — will build fundamentally different businesses than those who don’t.

This isn’t about prompts.

It’s about paradigm.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Why a founder’s beliefs inevitably become the business’s ceiling
2. How unchallenged strengths and weaknesses get installed into your team
3. The hidden cost of insecurity, control, and lack of delegation
4. Why self-awareness is a strategic advantage — not personal development fluff
5. How top founders continuously upgrade their thinking
6. Why AI is becoming a forcing function for better executive judgment

Follow Ray on:

YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

This episode is part of the 2025 Audit series — lessons learned, relearned, and unlearned.

This podcast is where Ray thinks through hard decisions — especially when the usual playbooks stop working.

If that way of thinking is useful, that’s what continues here.

New to the show? Start with the “Start Here” playlist:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/a7577a6f-15da-4521-b214-35e4e47f320b

And lessons that I've unlearned, right?

Like, things that I thought were true and aren't, I've changed my mind on.

And this is one of them.

And it is around AI.

If you are.

If you were leading a team and you were leading a business, I think it is essential, I think it is critical that you have at least a good understanding of AI tools and capabilities, if not an advanced level of AI tools and capabilities.

And I'll share with you two quick stories that I may have shared in other pieces of content previously.

One is earlier this year, I asked my team for input on something and individually, like I said, hey, I want your input on a sales process and sequence and cadence that we're building, and I want to make it right.

And everybody on my team has sales experience, sales management experience, and it's part of why I hired them.

So I said, I want, independently, I want you to give this some thought and tell me what you think.

And I supplied a bunch of research.

I supplied a hypoth hypothesis of what I thought, even gave a whole bunch of AI stuff that I had done, like in, in getting there and thinking through this process and applying like my experience as well as, you know, some deep research or blah, blah.

I said, hey, I want to know what you, what you think.

I get answers back.

And one of the answers is just like a straight GPT answer.

I can like, it's.

I smell it from a mile away and it's a whole bunch of fluff.

It's a bunch of words that sound like a good answer but really don't have the substance underneath.

And you only know that if you have the experience, right?

And I immediately changed the rules in my, in my business and put rules around the use of AI and we went to like, closed systems.

I said I required, like, if it ANSWERS More than 20%, 25% AI, you've got to disclose it.

I don't ever want a fucking straight GPT answer.

I mean, frankly, I can, I can use GPT and all these other tools much better than most people.

So if you're just Giving me what AI is telling you, then I don't need you.

That was one example and triggered some changes in the business.

But had I not known AI capabilities and had my own skills, I would not have been able to spot that.

And for, for all intents and purposes, I may be taking input from my team without, without knowing how to do that or spot that.

And implementing that is straight GPT advice and may not be good.

That's not how you're going to propel the business forward, right?

It's like, hey, let me copy paste this, this question into GPT and you know, copy paste the answer back.

That is not how we're, how we're building a team.

And I don't think that's how you're going to get, move the business forward.

Another example, you know, I have a, I had a content ghostwriter, I guess, you know, somebody that was helping with content strategy and taking podcasts like these and, you know, maintaining my voice and my words and my message and helping me get some additional content out there, like repurposing it, recycling it, things like that.

I got a batch of content and I started reviewing it to approve it.

I still, I look at all of it and I said, and I had actually spent the weekend building some Claude skills of my own, like, you know, jacking around with AI and going, you know, hey, hey, what are these skills?

You know, could I create a, an AI skill that could write similar, like, take, take my own content, repurpose it?

I said, just for the fuck of it, I'm going to put it in.

So I took the transcript, put it into AI Actually, it's you not like it's, it's actually, it was really wild.

It surprised me.

I got what was almost a verbatim output, right?

Like, at that my content person had sent to me.

It was the same hook, it was the exact same structure, it was mostly the same words.

Like, fundamentally, it was the exact same thing.

Now, I don't mean same thing.

That was like massaged and improved this.

I mean the same thing.

And I realized, like, instantly I'm getting AI outputs podcast transcript to AI to content with, you know, with some, some, some thought behind it.

Like there was.

I used a Claude skill, so they had a bunch of my content to use and train on.

But the point was I could literally, in the push of a button, get the exact same output from what I was paying for a service.

We had a candid conversation and, you know, no hard feelings, all amicable and, you know, so friends, good relationship, but I.

The point is I could only spot that because of my experience with AI.

Now here's the interesting piece.

Once I realized that that was happening, I went back to AI and I said, hey, Claude, I built this skill.

But look at this post that you wrote me from my skill.

And look at this post that my ghostwriter, my content director sent me.

They're the same.

And that concerns me because that means anybody can scrape my content and sound like me.

We need to go back to the drawing board.

We need to make this thing better.

I want to start implementing anti patterns and I want my, my content and what we, what we create here to not be easy to replicate almost word for word.

So we went back, we made the skill better, and then I created a system that's using AI and automation that automatically literal push of a button, check a box in a Google Sheets that now automatically gets the podcast, gets the transcript, takes that transcript, runs it through a series of Claude skills and things that I built within Claude, writes drafts of everything, puts it into a Google Doc, takes that Google Doc, loads it into a drive, creates a task in Basecamp which we use like internally says, here's your, you know, here's your output to review.

And, and I like, for all intents and purposes, that was what I was getting before and I can now just like push a button.

And it's now even better because it's, it's incorporating this other stuff that, that I learned because I saw like, hey, these posts are identical.

We need, we need to make this better.

Now, I don't expect everybody to have that level of understanding when it comes to AI, but I do share this with you because I think it's critical.

Like, if you're running a business or you're running a team, how are you going to know when you're getting real inputs?

How are you going to know when you're getting real outputs?

How are you going to know when your team is actually thinking?

How are you going to know when they've outsourced their thinking?

How are you going to know when they're taking your stuff, maybe proprietary information, plugging it into personal stuff, and then coming back with like the exact same same thing?

How are you going to know when your service providers that you're paying are not just sending you something that you can literally recreate in a couple of hours on your own?

It is an important use of capital, is an important use of the, the margin, the headspace, the brain power that you have in your organization.

It is, it affects productivity, it affects Virtually everything.

The quality of the thought and the conversation that you're having within your business, I'm telling you, fucking AI is changing the landscape and it is making some people insanely more productive.

They are using it as a tool to amplify their thought, amplify their productivity, amplify their capabilities and their impact within a business.

And those, those are the game changers in your business.

Because now one person can literally do the work of what multiple people used to do, right?

But I don't think that's the majority of people.

I think the majority of people are using AI to get lazier, to get lazier in what they're thinking, what they're doing.

They're trying to continue doing the same thing that they've always been doing and simply making it easier to do without understanding that the tool that's making it easier to do is actually changing what they're expected to do.

You as a leader, in my mind, me as a leader.

We need to know what the capabilities are and who is feeding us what, where ROI is.

And all of that comes down to having a really solid understanding of AI and capabilities and its, its strengths and its weaknesses.

And that's going to enable us to, to go create clearer guidance with our team.

It's going to enable us to create filters that ensure we're getting the best of AI without the worst of AI.

It's going to help us craft kind of strategies and policies within the organization on how the tools are used and how your, how your own information is protected.

It's going to help you allocate your capital and your time far more efficiently.

It's going to help you ensure that you're not paying for, you know, full blown high tech services that are simply just being automated with the push of a button on the back end.

Without something super sophisticated like I'm, I'm pro AI.

Like use the out of AI.

Absolutely.

I do it all the time.

It's how you use it though, right?

And if people are telling you that work is being done and it's really not being done, kind of important to know.

And again, I think that that requires like a base level of knowledge and I would recommend an advanced level of knowledge.

And that means kind of rolling up your sleeve, getting in there, understanding what's on the market, how it's being used and that'll help, you know, you get more accountability with your team, clearer guidelines and better outputs.

So hope this has helped in, in some way and adios.