Brodie Kern 0:00
There are things coming that I don’t think people are prepared for. There are just so many industries who are gonna get torched. I think SEO, agencies and experts are on the chopping block. What do

Brad Weimert 0:09
you think the biggest mistake is that people are making with AI right now? I’ve

Brodie Kern 0:12
never used prompting an AI, and I have insane outputs for what I want. You just need to talk to the thing like a human being.

Brad Weimert 0:19
Drug addiction almost killed you multiple times early in life, I ended up

Brodie Kern 0:23
in the hospital three days in a row, blowing a point 457, BAC. The average person probably dies around point four. Wow. In just like, a brief moment of like, desperation and clarity, I was just like, like, maybe I’ll go see what rehab has to offer. The best advice for entrepreneurs that I have right now is,

Brad Weimert 0:39
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even 10 figures. I’m Brad weimert, and as the founder of easy pay direct I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million, eight, nine and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million. Brody, Karen, it was great to see you again. Man, super cool.

Brodie Kern 1:21
How we met. You know what I mean? Like I randomly showed up here to do another pod when Sean was writing it, and and then, you know, we talked, had a great conversation, and then mutual friend connects us again. And like, when we realized we, like, we scheduled, and then we’re like, wait, I remember, I remember that conversation, telling you that guy, that’s great. I’m super, super excited to be here and dig into it with you. And yeah, I was serendipitous for us to like, end back up like that. It

Brad Weimert 1:45
was awesome. So drug addiction almost killed you multiple times early in life. Yep, you launched a mindset coaching company called wake up, wake up wealthy that got to about 300 grand a month. They then drove back down to zero. Yep, today, you have a content creation studio in Austin, Texas, you have an AI automation company that has already served 1000s of people, competitive athlete. Wanna talk about that a little bit? Yeah, and now you’re also doing a blue service roll up gig. Lots of interesting shit going on with all of that on the AI side of things. What are the things that people are not ready for yet, that you see coming? I’m

Brodie Kern 2:19
a really curious person, and like that is like, that is like, the core thing that drives me is just like a sense of curiosity. And I also think that that’s like, a beautiful state for any entrepreneur to be in. It’s light, it’s fun, it’s it doesn’t pull you. And when you can, like, have that child, like, genuine sense of curiosity, like you can just absorb so much knowledge, and that’s how I’ve been able to really build a lot of meaningful context in so many different spaces. And AI has been eating up a lot of that, that research and curiosity time over the last 18 months. Because, you know, what was it? March of March of 23 when kind of open, AI came out, and like, we kind of hit the hit the bottom of the exponential growth curve, and things have started to get really crazy. But there are things coming that, yeah, I don’t think people are prepared for, and I also don’t think that people are doing a good job leveraging what’s currently on the table. Yeah, like, people right now are making the mistake of thinking that, you know, if they can’t do it all, like, if it can’t do it perfectly. They shouldn’t use it at all. And I’ve been talking about this, this idea of like, hey, like, AI needs to be used as a co pilot right now. Like, that is what it’s really tremendous. Where it can do 80% it can do 90% and then you need to tune it up. And that is still true right now, and it’s gotten a lot better. So many more tools have come out, but people just aren’t using it. And people also really over complicated. You know what? I mean, like, even for the last, like, for the first, kind of 12 months that, like, AI was really popular, like, a lot of people were talking about prompting and how to, like, structure it the right way, and all this stuff. I mean, I got hit with an ad yesterday for, like, someone selling like, 500 different prompts. And I was like, I posted on my story. I was like, Dude, this isn’t, this isn’t necessary. Like, you just need to talk to the thing like a fucking human being and, like, if you can’t talk to it normally, about what you’re doing and feed, inhabit, produce good outputs. Like, you probably aren’t doing a good job of talking about what it is that you do or the problems that you’re working on at all. You know what I mean? Like, I’ve never used prompting an AI, and I have insane outputs for what I want, because I just actually know how to talk about what’s going on and give it the proper context.

Brad Weimert 4:33
Yeah? So I think another way to say that is that if you don’t have clarity of outcome and clarity around what you’re doing, you’re gonna have a hard time getting to the outcome no matter what?

Brodie Kern 4:41
Yeah, yeah. 100% it’s like, people don’t do a good job articulating their problem, right? You know what I mean? And like, I coaching 1000s of guys. I’ve seen this a ton of times. It’s like, hey, what’s the bottleneck? What’s the constraint that we’re dealing with right? Right now? And they like, they tell me some really vague and ambiguous thing, or they tell me one thing. And. When we actually get to the bottom of it, it’s totally something else, you know, and it’s like, it’s one thing to like. Think that your problem in business is like leads or profit or, you know, just like top line sales, right? Like, there’s all these different things that they could be. But I don’t think that entrepreneurs, especially early stage entrepreneurs, do a great job of being able to actually break down, like, hey, where is this breaking you know, and there’s so many things happening inside of a business. Like, everything is a little equation, right? There’s X amount of variables that lead up to what it is that we’re trying to understand. And it’s one thing to like, not be able to get clear data, or, like, maybe you’re missing a variable, but to not know what the variables are that lead up to that is inexcusable, like, and that’s also incredibly common, incredibly common, you know?

Brad Weimert 5:47
Well, I think that, like, what, what you just said was that you can think it’s leads, you can think it’s sales, you think it’s marketing, but those are really broad, huge categories, right? And so there are 1000 things that go into, I’m not getting leads because or maybe you are, and you’re not converting very well, correct, right? But the question is, what is the actual bottleneck? I like the idea of clarity, the in general, in business, I mean in life, you’re completely right on that from an AI perspective. I wanted to ask you about it, because you’ve been pushing the AI agency, really from the inception of GPT three. And so when you say, when open, i ai came out. Like, obviously, they’ve been out for years, but GPT three is when that was

Brodie Kern 6:28
when, like, everything changed, yeah, in my opinion, like, that’s when it started. Yeah, you know what I mean, because leading up to that, obviously we had heard language for years around like, AI and machine learning and like these things that were happening behind the scenes, but it seemed like a really distant thing that was happening with, like engineers and academics and like stuff that didn’t exist to just the normal everyday business owner, like us, right? And like when GPT three came out, that it was literally just handed to us, like, here, right? And it was, like, it was insane. That was an insane change to the environment. And I don’t think that people truly appreciate what a change it was. I don’t think people truly appreciate how much it’s going to be able to do. And on the positive and negative side, you know what I mean? I don’t think that people are concerned enough about the consequences of AI, and I don’t think that people are aware enough around the opportunities of AI. And those are both, like big concerns that everybody needs to be considering.

Brad Weimert 7:33
What do you think the biggest mistake is that people are making with AI right now, not

Brodie Kern 7:37
using it like I think that that’s the biggest mistake. What’s

Brad Weimert 7:41
one quick thing that people should be doing with AI that they’re not something

Brodie Kern 7:45
that everyone should be doing is using it for research like I’m so bullish on this, it can absorb information faster than you can even imagine. And recently, their new deep research tool came out with on on GPT four, and so their deep research tool is wild, like it, depending on how much you need from it. It may take seven to 15 minutes to do the research that it needs, but it literally gives you a step by step all its thought processes as it does it, and then it will build you the most insane report on absolutely any topic there is. And it’s like, Dude, I am a guy who has spent so much time in research, and so like to give you an idea, like, how I run my days, like I have my normal stuff that I do, from family to running the businesses to being with my kids to whatever. But every single night, I spend two hours just seeing where my curiosity takes me, and like, seeing what topics I get pulled into, and being really organized with what I learn, and categorizing that and organizing that into my like bank of knowledge that I have. I have this like, ridiculous system built out on a notion that, like, I call my second brain, and I categorize research in there and how it ties to other research. And since AI came out, the amount of context I’ve been able to build has been amplified by probably 100x like, and that’s not even an exaggeration, just because of the speed and how it can summarize it and how it can tie it to the rest of the context and information that I’ve built, and so it’s like, Dude, I think that everyone should be using it to and like, this seems so like it seems like it, it almost isn’t the answer that like people want to hear. Yeah, you know what I mean, because, but it’s like, dude, like, you need to get smarter.

Brad Weimert 9:40
Yeah. Well, I think part of that is that it fucks up, right? So it so, like, you don’t get 100% success on accurate information when you’re using AI tools as of, you know, March of 2025, yeah, so how do you integrate that into the reality of you still should be using it? Yeah? Great. Great

Brodie Kern 9:58
question. And so I was. Just talking about this the other day, like, in probably 30 to 60 minutes of just like reading about each of the models on AI, on open AI’s site, you can get an understanding of when to use what model for what right. And so, like, some of their models are better for reasoning, but they’re going to take more time, and they’re going to take more processing power from open AI, like, if you just use straight GPT four, like, that’s going to be your best model to get accurate information. If you just need quick little hits, like, using four, oh, Turbo is. Like, completely fine if, like, I needed to do real reasoning on some sort of, like, topic or thing, because, like, also, like, one transition that I’m making in my 30s too, is, like, I’ve gotten a lot more involved in political commentary and just like being concerned with, like, what’s happening from a global discourse perspective, and I’ve, like, worked with a ton of agencies who like service different political parties and whatever, I bet like, hadn’t I’ve been, like, somewhat connected to what’s happening there. And so, for example, in a lot of like, political research that I do, or like, my one true passion is like philosophy, and specifically, like philosophy of ethics. And so if I’m using it for something like that, to research and like, kind of help me formulate cohesive opinions and arguments. Like, I’m going to need to use GPT four that has higher reasoning capability, right? If I’m just looking to access quick information, I’m going to use G I’m going to use, like, four, oh, Turbo. Or I’m going to use some of the other models. Like, when you build an understanding of what each little mini model is best tooled for you can get way better answers, and then you just have to accept that. Like, GPT right now, just isn’t great at doing math, which is crazy, but it just fucks up order of operations. And, like, I don’t really understand why they can’t solve that. Like, it can do so much crazy shit, but like, yeah, I just don’t use it for, like, heavy math, because, like, it’s just not gonna fucking get it right. You know, I’ve had to catch it a ton. But for the most part, when you’re like, looking for information, you’re looking for decent reasoning. In summary, it’s almost to the point where you’re like, not missing a lot.

Brad Weimert 12:16
They’re the core models. They’re the core platforms that you can use Claude or open AI or grok or whatever. Yeah. And then there are tools that people are building that are sort of specific, niche tools for specific things. When do you use just the core models and when do you look for a specific tool inside of a business framework? There

Brodie Kern 12:36
aren’t a ridiculous amount of tools that I am using at this point, there’s some I like, and I’ve been this way forever, like, I’m just totally, I’m totally, like, SASS hater. Like, like, I just think that so many SaaS companies, like, dude, just either over bill. Like, they over bill, well,

Brad Weimert 12:56
they fucking all over bill, well, and so, I mean, that is the fundamental of SaaS to over bill. Let’s

Brodie Kern 13:01
use GHL as an example, because high level, I’ve got major beef with them, and have for years, very publicly. So just for

Brad Weimert 13:09
context, one really doesn’t know Eye level is a all in one. Marketing Automation CRM that they market towards agencies, but they sell it as, hey, you can white label this tool and basically pretend it’s yours. Yep, that’s the fundamental. And in standalone people, we have lots of clients that love the platform from a marketing automation perspective, because it’s sort of a lightweight, simple CRM that allows you to do marketing automation. Yeah, it’s best in class for the price range, for the price range. Yep, they move quickly. They add new features, and their core of their model was to tell people to white label it and sell this their

Brodie Kern 13:45
own software. Look me being one of the biggest GHL haters in the world. I still use them at some companies when they’re in a lower revenue range and we’re starting up and, you know, we’re not going to drop the cash on HubSpot or whatever. But it’s like they’re a perfect example of like over innovate and like, don’t buckle down on good core features. Like, all the time they are literally launching new crazy shit, and most of the time it doesn’t work, and they still haven’t nailed their core features. Like I literally got I’ve gotten so frustrated with them so many times. I’ve ended up on a call with CEO many times and been like, Yo, this is fucking ridiculous. Like, I need you to fix this. And like, he told me, point blank, straight to my face, don’t use our email products. They don’t work. And I was like, that’s not a concern for you. And he was just like, nope. And so like, I have a fundamental disagreement with running a business that way. And also, most SaaS companies have terrible customer support. Yeah, terrible. Some companies have good customer support. There are companies out there that do, and those companies I’m so, like, appreciative of, because, dude, at one point I got, like, my old, like, one of my old partners, and I, like, we were just the king of, like, breaking, breaking software, like in just, like, trying to overuse it, or just like, you know, in our opinion, it was trying to. Get them to do what they say they can do. But my team, at one point got between, like, four of us who were, like, handling, you know, like tech development. We were spending a collective probably 20 hours a week on customer support calls. And, you know, they’re, you know, customer support. Mo, like, if you’re trying to connect and work with another software, they’re gonna be like, yo, it’s them, and then the other people are going to be like, yo, it’s them.

Brad Weimert 15:22
We have a internally easy pay direct. We have a operating protocol. Sop, that is, you are always facilitating the three way call for our clients, period. Yeah, never tell them it’s the other person’s fault, and even if it is the other software’s fault, right? Because we’re integrated to, like, 1000 shopping carts, right? So it’s like, our payment gateway integrates to 1000 shopping carts. And, of course, people think, Okay, well, it’s the processor, no, no, it’s the shopping cart. No, no, it’s the gateway. No, it’s the marketing automation platform. And so our team will call all parties, get everybody on the phone and facilitate the conversation, dude.

Brodie Kern 15:55
And that’s, that’s the way to do it, like, in like, I do. I respect you for that. Because, I mean, I’m sure you see on the other end, they’re like, not them. Well, here’s

Brad Weimert 16:02
the everybody says, No, it’s them. It’s not us, it’s them. And here’s the thing, it people do that because it feels like the fastest way to solve the problem is like, no, no, it’s not us, we we’ve talked to the person whose problem it is. But there’s a Stephen COVID quote, which is with people, slow is fast, and fast is slow. And the fact of the matter is, sometimes taking the extra energy to spend a little bit more time is the fastest way to solve the problem. It’s the most efficient path, yep. And not to mention it’s frustrating as all hell when somebody says no, no, talk to the other party, and then you sit in their phone queue for 15 minutes only to have them say no, no, it was the first person, Yep,

Brodie Kern 16:41
yeah. And, I mean, dude, like, so many software companies now too, don’t even have phone support, yeah, you know. I mean, it’s like, hey, submit a ticket, and like, I’ll get back to you in 48 hours. It’s like, dude, I’m trying to run a I’m trying to run a fucking business. Yeah, you know. I mean, like, we got issues, and so, you know, I’ve got big problems with that. But like, you know, to go back to the core, base of the question, it was like, what good tools are we using? And right now, like, one of the, like, most simple tools that I’m most impressed with that I can’t remember being, I maybe can’t remember ever being this happy with a tool, is Fathom note taker. Oh, yeah.

Brad Weimert 17:16
Have you used it? Yeah, well, I used it. You know, what’s interesting about Fathom is that it’s fathom.ai, I think. And I used Fathom 10 years ago, or something eight years ago, really, yeah, yeah. It was the, it was, like, a transcription service for, you know, plugged into zoom, or plugged into something back, yeah, back in the day, just straight transcription, just straight transcription, and so, but I haven’t used it recently. Dude,

Brodie Kern 17:36
they’re like, Okay, so when they, like, I only became aware of them, like, a year ago. And I would imagine, like when a lot of like good reasoning large language models came out, like they started plugging that in, because their summaries on calls are so spot on that it will blow you away. And the tool is cheap, cheap. Every single person who takes virtual meetings should be using them, because it’s not just it’s not just transcription anymore. It is legitimate summary. It catches, literally, the tone in the sentiment of everything. If you talk about action steps, it will list those action steps out. You have the recording, you have the transcription, you have the summary, you have the action steps. It is everything. I have completely stopped taking notes on meetings. I no longer have an assistant who has to be there to take notes on meetings. I don’t do anything in regards to, like, writing stuff down, logging it, or even putting action steps into anything else like it has literally taken so much little bullshit and time off my hands. It’s insane. And I’m, like, an attention to detail guy. I’m very, very detail oriented. And, like, I if I wouldn’t say that, if it wasn’t fucking perfect. So

Brad Weimert 18:55
first of all, I’m gonna clip this and then sign up as an affiliate of Fauci. Just drive ads to that shit, but if it’s cheap, I’m not gonna make any money anyway. No, what I was gonna say actually, is my problem with that is that I don’t actually look there is a huge use case for grabbing the summary, grabbing the notes, specifically in terms of operating a business at scale where you have to store that stuff for other people to be able to read it. Yep, ie adding a note to your CRM so that customer service can look at it later, read it. Know what happened? But for me, I don’t take notes so much for the future as I do for my own retention, right? So I’m bullied. I do want the notes for the future, right? But I’m bulleting things so that I can, I can in reinforce in myself, yep, and what I need to be able to focus on, what I need to think through, and it helps me think through in real time. I think

Brodie Kern 19:47
there’s merit to that, you know what I mean? And I think that like that comes a lot down to, like, self awareness, you know, I in

Brad Weimert 19:54
your own style. I think there’s also you’re really present. And if you’re a human that can be really present, and, listen, yep, that may. Be that’s the way you digest, yeah,

Brodie Kern 20:01
and I mean, I log, I haven’t seen much drop off in my retention. And it’s it’s so easy for me to go back to and not that I’m like, retain, not that I’m retaining everything, but the like, I also because I’m not writing, and because I’m not doing something else, I am way more present, and I know it’s being cleaned up. And so like, for me, it’s been advantageous to, like, not write, not take notes, be super present. I’ve been better focused on clients and whatever problems we’re solving, whether it be client focused or internal at the businesses. And then when I review, that’s when I kind of reinforce,

Brad Weimert 20:39
yeah, that’s super interesting. I think, like, that’s a that would be, that will be an interesting split test for me around, am I capable, yeah, of sitting and being fully present and absorbing, yeah, or will I get distracted while I’m doing that and, like, spaced out do something else. If somebody is really boring, then I’ll find myself getting spaced out. And that’s where taking notes is, like, all right, I’m keeping my own guidelines for focus here, yeah, but I don’t know. You know, I haven’t pushed myself on that either.

Brodie Kern 21:06
There’s definitely going to be a percentage people that, like, will still want to take notes, yeah, for that, yeah, reason,

Brad Weimert 21:11
yeah. Well, and I think you could, like, for me, maybe I’ll take notes and then also have the summary of something

Brodie Kern 21:15
else. It doesn’t have to be either or for sure, for sure, that should for sure, be done, because it can, like, like you said it’s like, whether you’re logging that for like, another customer service rep later, you know, regard like, no matter what, like, whatever client management system you’re running. And you know, if you’re a big enough team, someone else is going to have to pick that conversation up, and then being able to see exactly what chain of events has happened with that client forever is, I mean, inarguably, the preferred solution,

Brad Weimert 21:39
yeah, for sure. Well, look, my closing thought on that is that I don’t care who you are. You are going to have to have things written down in the future for your own reference. Don’t care how good your fucking memory is. No you run out like there is no world in which you’re gonna remember everything that happened in our conversation. You’re going to need a documented period in the future. So when somebody comes into my office and we’re talking, and there’s some action item for later, and they’re like, no, no, I got it. And I’m like, write that shit down.

Brodie Kern 22:06
Now, totally dude. Like, people, people, people, way overestimate their ability to do that. And like, Look, I’m a sharp guy. I can hold a lot of context. But like, I’ll tell you a story of when, like, I finally broke, and this will be valuable for everyone listening, because you guys all grow and continue. And continue to branch out into more things. But there was a period in probably 21 where it’s like, okay, my coaching company was cranking and things were really smooth. I was running it, and then I decided to acquire part of a credit repair company, and was scaling that up super hard. And I got to the point where I had a month where I basically just had, like, the most unproductive month of my life, and I felt like I was working a lot, like I felt every like everything was the same, or like I was super focused. But I got to the end of the month and I’m like, wow, like, it really seems like I kind of dropped the ball on like, both things that I was doing. And this is super uncharacteristic of me, you know. And so I had to really sit down and be like, what happened. And I determined that I underestimated how much of the nuance and context I was holding in my head for what it took to run the coaching company. You know, when you’re running one business that’s sub $15 million like, depending on industry, like, you were probably holding a lot of the context in your head as the CEO, you know, unless you were just wildly good with documentation. But if that was the first time you scaled the company there, you probably weren’t. You were probably still carrying a lot of that load, you know. Like, I just knew all the time what was happening with the bank account, with the accounting with, like, where marketing numbers were at, with what conversations had been had with the marketer, you know. And I was communicating that stuff to sales management, but sales management wasn’t in those conversations, you know what I mean. And so, like, there was just so much that I was holding my head as the CEO and running that business. And when I took on another one, things started to slip. And I was like, oh my god, I finally maxed out bandwidth. And now I’m going to have to fix this. Not only go back and fix this coaching company, but then fix this preemptively for everything that I ever do future. I

Brad Weimert 24:20
want to add a point of clarity there, which is, and you added the footnote, which was depending on industry, that I think my experience is that it’s far less relevant the revenue, number of the company, but the number of employees and or the number of customers.

Brodie Kern 24:36
Yeah, I think the other thing that goes in there too is like, how logistically complex is the business, right? Like running a credit repair company has an incredible amount of action items that are being taken to service any one client, right? Like you may send a dozen letters per month per client, yeah, and when you have like, hundreds of clients, that’s crazy. Where it’s like, let’s take a consult. Coaching business, or a coaching business, for example. So you may have two calls a month with the client. Like, those are two very, very different things, you know, I mean, our our production agency, our content studio and agency. Like, we’re editing probably close to 1000 reels a month, and it’s like every one of those has to go through, has to be shot, delivered, go to our team, be first draft edits, go through quality control, go back to editors to fix mistakes, then go to approval for the client. Like in like that is a logistically complex business, yeah, you know. And so that really changes how much can be handled and how system dependent you are, yeah,

Brad Weimert 25:39
yeah, I agree. At some point you’re gonna have a threshold where you just can’t be doing it yourself as the CEO, yeah. So you have to document. You have to get it down. Also, for people that don’t know the credit repair business, like fundamentally, what you’re doing is looking at people and looking at the derogatory things on their credit report. So the stuff that is negatively impacting your credit report, and really the recourse there is a credit repair company will go in and then just hit all of those people that have given you something negative on your credit report and try to get it taken off. So you’re just submitting a ton of documentation all these different parties to try to get it taken off. And one of the reasons so credit repair companies are in the quote, unquote, high risk space as far as payments go. That’s right, as you know. The reason for that is that people make claims and say, Oh yeah, we can make your credit better. And the fact is, all you can do is submit the fucking documentation and hope that your credit score gets better. Yeah.

Brodie Kern 26:27
And so some interesting context for everyone too, is, like, in the credit repair industry is it’s like, a highly, like, litigated industry for a reason. Like, there’s a lot of like, scamming and sketchy stuff happening out there. And like, there’s actually only one way to, like, legally do it, and that is, like, what’s called Pay Per Delete. And so, like, you can’t tech, you can’t legally charge someone until you’ve got items deleted and charging in per those but like, what you have happening in the online space a lot is people just charging three, $5,000 up front to get a bunch of get their credit report swept or cleaned or whatever, and it’s technically not, technically not legal, but it’s like, you know how it is, like, unless you, unless you do like, ten million through something like, you’re probably just gonna fly under the radar. Yeah,

Brad Weimert 27:14
for sure. Yeah. Well, that’s actually a good, good note for anybody that’s shopping services in general, yes, is people can make amazing claims, and they can even have a good track record, but if they’re small, it probably just means they haven’t hit the threshold where anybody gives a shit. Yeah, nobody’s

Brodie Kern 27:31
gonna give a shit. Like, it’s just, there’s so many of us entrepreneurs out there, yep, and there’s the vast majority of them flying to the

Brad Weimert 27:39
radar. All right, one more point on AI before we move into some other shit you’re doing. You have talked about what you refer to as the AI Apocalypse, and the importance of aligning your interests with AI. The reality is,

Brodie Kern 27:52
at some point in the future, a lot of stuff is just going to get wiped out. You know, when I first started thinking about AI. What was really interesting is that I thought it would be the more like technical operational task that we’re starting to see AI agents be able to execute. I thought that would be first, right? Like, I thought like, Okay, we could program this to just basically follow SOPs and protocols and like, it should be able to just crank stuff out. Turns out that ended up being a lot harder. One thing that you would have thought would be last to go was, like, creative work, you know? And what was the first stuff that we saw? Image generation, copy, video generation, like, like, all of the creative stuff came first, which I thought was, like, totally not intuitive. And like, maybe I’m wrong, but like, I didn’t think, no,

Brad Weimert 28:48
that seems to be the general sentiment, yes, that you were everybody was shocked at Creative Writing knocked out first, yeah.

Brodie Kern 28:56
And so, you know, that’s when I was like, Oh, I already miscalculated what this could do. And so then I started thinking about, like, all right, what are the things that I had calculated that it can do, and how much is there out there that I’m not realizing, you know? And so there are just so many industries who are going to get torched. Like, I think, like, I think the first, like, really big thing to just like, be completely obsolete is SEO. Like, I think, I think SEO agencies and experts are on the chopping block, right? And, like, I think that there’s an opportunity, there’s an opportunity for a period of time, potentially year, potentially even, like, five years, for people to just say, Hey, I run an agency where we leverage AI to do SEO, right? But it’s like SEO is going to be done really easily by AI. All right, so

Brad Weimert 29:47
let me push on that, because the I understand that perspective, and I don’t even disagree with it, Google makes a fuck ton of money on SEO, and that being the core of their business, they do not want that to go. Away. And in addition to that, all of the AI tools right now, when you ask them questions, functionally digest information based on SEO, so based on the rankings of where this thing is, how do you see that unfolding in the future?

Brodie Kern 30:14
At the foundational level, the question you have to ask is just like, okay, can ai do this task as well as human or better. And when it comes to building the content that needs to be distributed, yes, it can, in like it can do it better than most humans. There are probably some humans who can do better content distribution. It can do it faster, and it can do it better, categorically true. You know, it can just, it will just know how to do it better. Now, I think that the question of like it using AI to rank the information that it feeds on is like an interesting, like cyclical, like paradox, almost, but at the end of the day, I don’t think, I don’t think it matters, you know, like whether or not that ranking content came from AI or came from human, you know, like, it’s going to put the best content out there that is being categorized the best, and then it’s going to feed on that. It’s just going to understand the rules of the game. You know, regardless of who set up the rules or regardless of who set up the game, it’s going to continue to play it now. Like, does that make sense in the way that I’m thinking about that? Yeah,

Brad Weimert 31:19
it does. I think the delineation that I heard was SEO as a as an agency tool, meaning somebody selling an SEO service is going to get eradicated. Yes, that’s, that’s what I mean. Like, not SEO, obviously SEO, like, you’re gonna have some sort of, you still always have to, we need data utilization, like ranking of it, right order, the importance of certain

Brodie Kern 31:40
Yeah. And so maybe I wasn’t clear enough there, yeah. I just like, I think that guys right now who have maybe been doing SEO for the last 20 years running some agency, who aren’t evolving with what’s happening right now, and not saying, hey, like, we are now, like an AI enabled SEO agency. They’re dead. They’re dead because people are going to come back in like SEO will still pop right? SEO agencies can still go hard for a number of years. Eventually it’ll get so easy that business owners will just do it themselves, and it won’t even be that cumbersome, nor will it require a huge learning curve. But SEO agencies that are using AI for the content, the distribution, the ranking, the reporting, the all of the fulfillment there, they’re going all those guys that have been running SEO agencies since the 2000s like, they’re going to pummel them and quick, right? And so I think guys who are doing that and really being enabled there, not only are like, not only from like, a messaging and marketing perspective, are people going to be like, Oh, this is these guys are evolving with the times, but also their overhead, their spend, their efficiency, their speed to fulfillment, all of it’s going to be better and like that. Look like the best argument to make around why you need to use AI right now is efficiency. The idea of scaling business Lean is something that has been really consuming my mind for quite some time now. You know, like, the old way to scale, you’re you’re always thinking, like, okay, like, When can I hire this person? What’s the best hire and how do we get them in here? It’s like, like, this is a bit of an exaggeration. But like, hiring kind of needs to be a last resort right now. And that statement becomes less and less of an exaggeration every single day that goes on. And what I mean by that is, like, you need to be able to look at, hey, how automated can this be without huge quality loss, right? And there are some things that are always going to need to be human, you know what I mean. And there are things that, like, I refuse to automate. I refuse to automate sales reporting, right? Like, I want all sales people filling up manual EOD forms every single day. And I always will, like, how much can you automate, and how can you cut down on 80% like, the first thing that you asked me, I was like, yo. Like, it needs to be used as research to save time. Like it can just it, like, efficiency is the new thing to focus on, in my opinion. And like, yes, we have all, like, focused on being somewhat efficient, theoretically. But it’s like, what do we know businesses are bloated, overheads bloated. Like, there are team members who are being paid 60, $70,000 a year salaries, 80 100 200 500 exactly that are just fucking useless and well, let me unpack

Brad Weimert 34:30
that part of it, because I think that you know right now, if you look at the sort of the solopreneurs that are just leveraging AI to ramp a business, they just are clearing a huge margin. So that is not going to get compression right away. You’re going to you just have the ability now to create a business fast and just keep all the margin instead of paying other employees right now. Eventually, what will happen is those models will get really competitive, because the people that have big. Margins will be able to spend more on ads to grow

Brodie Kern 35:01
quicker. That’s the thing. Like they can out, like, if someone is way more efficient than you, right, they can outspend you, right?

Brad Weimert 35:07
So right now, the opportunity is to have a much more margin heavy business, and in the future, you won’t even have that choice, because the people that have that margin, it will immediately go back into growing the business in whatever mechanism you need to Yep, and so you’re not gonna have a choice. You’re gonna have to be efficient to do that. But that takes time too. Yeah, it

Brodie Kern 35:25
does take, it does take time to learn how to rope these tools. Yeah. And like, for some people who have been around longer, like, it’s gonna take time for them to unlearn some of their models. All

Brad Weimert 35:36
right, I wanna ask you about other business models, but I wanna hit on sort of what I think is probably the cornerstone of a lot of what you’ve done. You had a coaching company. Yep, and I have the dots connected in my head about this, but I could be totally wrong. Sure? What’s the best part about being a drug addict?

Unknown Speaker 35:54
So after during

Brad Weimert 36:02
both dudes,

Brodie Kern 36:04
like, okay, so like, I’m a really interesting character in the sense that, like, I’m just so whole in and, like, so intense and like, look, I came up in a pretty rough environment, but I was very, like, social, outgoing, like, I just, like, I love being around good people, and like being around good conversation, like I would prefer, like I was telling some of this yesterday, I would prefer just a good, intellectually stimulating conversation with any person in any random place over like, any trip in the world. You know what I mean? Like, I just genuinely enjoy talking to people who are smart and fun and good energy and like, I want to learn about them, you know. And like, whenever I was, like, really deep into my addiction, it was like, yeah, like, I was just, like, all over, meeting so many different types of people, and like, enhancing that experience with drugs and alcohol and so, like, I was, like, I was experiencing my peak version of life, like, like, total presence, all the good things enhanced to the max. Like, I really was just like, Dude, I didn’t even plan on living past like, 21 or 22 I was just like, dude, I’m just gonna, like, go, I’m just gonna be free and like, I’m just gonna do whatever I want. I’m gonna, like, truly max out the range of experience that I can have, and I’m just gonna blow the train right off the tracks and, like, I don’t give a fuck, you know, like, that was just how I wanted to live. And it was just like, so in the moment, I didn’t care about anything. I didn’t like, I literally didn’t care about anything other than just, like, maximizing experience. Now eventually things got worse in bed and like, I was going to die. And so when I got sober, like that happened on, just like, a whim, you know, I ended up in the hospital three days in a row. I had, like, overdosed on heroin once, and then, just like, ended up in the hospital from a collection of things. And then, like, the third day, I ended up in the hospital blowing a point 457, BAC, wow, which, like, for people don’t know, like, you know, like, the average person probably dies around point four. And I was just like, okay, like, this is, this is really bad. It’s been three days like they were trying to, they were going to 5150 me, but luckily, one of the like, involuntary, like, commitment to a facility for like, 72 hours, or whatever they luckily, I got out of doing that because one of the emergency room nurses went to nursing school with my mom, and they were like, we’re gonna, like, let you slide, but like You need to, like, you’re gonna die. You’re gonna die now and in just like, a brief moment of like, desperation and clarity, I was just like, fuck it. Like, maybe I’ll go see what rehab has to offer. And like, consider that there might be, like, another life than this. Now fast forward to after the fact. It’s like, Dude, I’ve been through so much hard shit as a result of my addiction and getting sober, as well as the fact that, like, there’s a level of intensity to me that almost only exists in, like, really, really, really gnarly addicts like me, you know. And there’s a spectrum of addiction and how severe someone is as an addict. And, like, I’m at the upper range of that spectrum, top 5% probably there’s something about that edge that has really served me well in a lot of ways, you know, and it’s hurt me in other ways too. But dude, when you’re just willing to be all in on anything suck, and when you have that drive to just go and do and and like, be willing to be crazy and delusional with anything like, there’s a real benefit, there’s a real edge and advantage there. And on top of that, it’s like, dude, at 21 years old, I had literally destroyed everything, all potential. Like, everybody wrote me off, like, whatever, and like, I carried a chip on my. Older for a little bit to, like, not be that guy, and, like, be successful. And so, like, after I got into rehab, I got my real estate license, because there was a low barrier to entry. It’s like, take your class, pass the test. You know, I was a college dropout, junkie, like nobody. I was completely unemployable. And so I got into real estate, and I, like, sold 46 homes my first year. It just smashed. And I was really just trying to stay busy. And so, like, I had a little bit of chip on my shoulder then. But like, the other thing about just, like, ending up at rock bottom and just, like, basically embarrassing yourself and everyone you ever knew is just that, like, I’ve already been judged to the max. Like, I just don’t care what anyone thinks at all. I genuinely and like, people say this. But like, if you watch me move for long enough, you’ll see like, I’m just so unapologetically myself, and like, genuinely do not give a fuck about anything else other than like, me and the mission that I’m on, and like, trying to help people. And like, I just literally 100,000 people could message me today and be like, fuck you. I think you’re a piece of shit. And I’d just be like, whatever you know, like, it would change nothing,

Brad Weimert 41:03
anything that’s rooted in addiction, I think, yeah, I think

Brodie Kern 41:07
that a lot of that is rooted in the fact, because, like, it wasn’t always like that, right? Like, when I fucking crashed out and I was in rehab and all my friends were graduating college and getting good jobs or going to grad school. Like I was like, God, I’m a fucking loser, you know what I mean? And I just had to deal with all of the judgment and, like, rejection and all of that shit. And then, you know, I just, like, I had to learn how to let it go.

Brad Weimert 41:41
Ultimately, shortly thereafter, you ended up spinning up, wake up, wealthy mindset, uh, coaching for men specifically.

Brodie Kern 41:49
Yeah. So what happened is I, like, was doing really well in real estate, but hated it. And so I was like, Okay, I’m gonna leave. I’m gonna figure something else out to do. And then one of my first sponsors, in AA, who ended up becoming like a mentor to me, was really involved in the call center space, and so I ended up, like, learning a ton from him, like building a couple centers, and also doing a bunch of like, BPO, like business process outsourcing stuff overseas for different companies. Like I would find contracts, then find labor, and then kind of put the two together and sit in the middle and, like, help facilitate. And I was doing really well there, also for about 18 months.

Brad Weimert 42:24
And what was the call center selling? We did a ton of different things

Brodie Kern 42:27
depending on what it was, but everything from like, appointment setting for solar, like live transfers for mortgage, like so many different things. Because obviously call centers, like, are connected to a lot of different businesses. Yeah. So

Brad Weimert 42:42
when you’re in this space, when you’re in any space, you know the lexicon for that space. You know you talk about it differently. You use acronyms quickly, which are helpful if you know the space, and if you don’t know the space, it’s just really fucking confusing. Yeah. So the call center space, there are kind of two sides of it that I know about, that I see all the time. One is kind of front end lead generation, yep. So somebody’s driving, they’re running ads, they’re whether online or radio or even paper, and they drive to somebody else’s call center who handles the initial call for that stuff and works on either booking an appointment or some small sale. On the front end, the other side of call centers are people that do high ticket sales, and they say, Hey, what we as a company, company, ABC, already knows how to drive leads. Our internal team converts those leads, but we don’t know what to do to close a $10,000 package, and so they’ll push that out to a high ticket call center. So when you’re working in a call center, this is good context for people, because when you’re working in a call center for 18 months, and you’re looking at process, and you’re looking at these things, you get to learn the inner working, inner workings of, usually, a variety of business models,

Brodie Kern 43:48
yeah. And that was that was such good, because I was like 23 when I started that, and so that was really good. It was really good context. Because, yes, to one, there were so many things happening in the call center industry on its own. I had to learn about the data. I had to learn about the hardware. Setup. I had to learn about building the dialers. I had to learn about, literally, how to train the people scripting, whether it be customer service, sales appointment setting, whatever. And then every single contract that we got connected to, well, then I had to understand the ins and outs of what was going on there in order to service it best. And so yeah, that was the first time that I was, like, getting exposed to a ton of different things, and being like, wow, I can actually learn a bunch about this stuff and figure out how to connect the dots. And that’s super interesting, which came up later with Wake Up wealthy. And so then what happened is, I was 24 about to turn 25 I got married, and my wife was pregnant with our first son, and I was like, most of my income at the time came down to these two clients who were like, neurotic as fuck, like drug addicts, just like, causing stress all the time. I was making great money, but I was just dealing with them day in day out. I was super stressed, and, like, because of the environment that I grew up in, I was like, I’m not gonna like, I. To start my son’s life like this. I had some money saved up, and I was just gonna walk away for a while and figure out what’s up. And he had the idea that, like, I was in rehab at 21 finally got sober at 22 and then at 2020 and 20, at 25 had like, enough money sitting around to just kind of like, take a little retirement for a while. It was, like, really interesting.

Brad Weimert 45:21
That’s also a choice, right? So the people’s opinions of the right way to live has changed so much in the last 20 years, and I think that there’s a lot more diversity in acceptable lifestyles today than there was 50 years ago, right? 50 years ago, it was, go to school, make sure you finish college, get a degree, get a good job, get a retirement plan, right? And that changed to, and I think you can credit what you just said. You can credit Tim Ferriss, to some extent, for because he wrote The Four Hour Work Week in 2007 and that was the beginning,

Brodie Kern 46:00
I think so crazy that he wrote that in 2007 that’s insane. And

Brad Weimert 46:05
I think that the that was the beginning of people of creating a social construct that was that made it acceptable for entrepreneurs to take many retirements, for them to leave for a year or two and explore some other thing in life, some other experience. And functionally, that’s what you functionally, that’s what you just said. Because I doubt that you had enough money at 25 to be like, I’m done forever for life. No, not enough. But you had enough to back out for a while, and you thought that that was okay to do. Yeah. I mean, look like

Brodie Kern 46:33
I had a few $100,000 cash in the bank. You know, taxes paid, clean money just there. Yeah, at the time, my life was inexpensive. It was maybe like, six seven grand a month. So I was like, Okay, I have some time to figure this out. And I it was funny, this was 2018 and I downloaded Instagram because I was basically unemployed. I was like, let’s see what’s going on here. And I downloaded Instagram and saw that people were like, speaking and coaching, and I knew that I was looking for something that, like, gave me a little more fulfillment, because I was like, Okay, I figured I figured out how to make, you know, three to 500 grand in two different spaces already, like, really quickly, really clearly, I know how to just, like, hustle and make some shit happen. But like, it’s not doing it for me. Like, I grew up in the Midwest, really poor, like, I thought $100,000 was gonna, like, make me really happy. Then I thought that like $200,000 would make me happy. Then I thought that like half a million dollars would make me happy. There’s not enough. You know, it’s just there isn’t dude, it’s like, there. There are definitely checkpoints where, like, you like, it makes it different. Breathing is a little bit easier, sleeping is a little bit easier, but like, it just doesn’t make you fucking happy, or it doesn’t. For me, I’m not that in love with it. And so I was, like, looking for more. And one of the interesting things that I had figured out is that, like, when I was, like, working with other guys in AA, I like, kind of felt what I was looking for. It like, gave me the experience I was looking for. And so when I saw what was happening online, I was like, Oh, that makes sense. I’ll do that. And like, honestly, that moment is, like, one of the like, what I just said is one of the like, best examples for how I think people should operate early on in their careers. Because, like, it’s funny to think back to that time, but it was honestly as simple as that, like, I was literally just, like, it makes sense that people do that. I think I could do that. I’m going to do that, and I’m going to do it right now, like I’m starting right now. And I did, and within a few years, scaled that up to $300,000 a month, 25 employees, literally changing just hundreds and hundreds of lives, and I just never even questioned, and this is what I was saying, like, Dude, where I grew up in Missouri, people don’t do what I did, you know? I mean, they take a traditional path. I lost. I had everybody around talking shit on me, like my parents, friends talking shit on me, like everybody just being like, Who the fuck does this guy think he is? And I just didn’t. None of it even registered.

Brad Weimert 49:15
Insert funny advertisement here, or just check out easy, pay direct. It’s epd.com, forward, slash, bam, and you can find out about credit card processing for your business. Lots of our guests use us for credit card processing, and this seemed like more fun than writing a scripted ad. Okay, so there are inside the world of coaching, consulting, creators. There are a metric fuck ton of coaches that have no business coaching in the first place and absolutely should not be and then there are people that have the capacity to provide tremendous value to other people. What do you think the difference is between those two? And which one are you

Brodie Kern 49:58
so. Yeah, and this one is, this one is such an interesting point of conversation because, like, look like, obviously you look at me right now, like you could build any competency test in business or mindset or psychology, or like, even like cognitive behavioral therapy and like, I’ll fucking ace those tests. You know, like I could, I can just, I could, very easily show competency and excellence and the ability to do this and

Brad Weimert 50:30
solve problems. Could you when you were 25 when you started? No, and that’s

Brodie Kern 50:35
the thing. And I, I just couldn’t, like, arguably, I shouldn’t have been doing it. Now, if we’re to, like, look at things in a vacuum and look at some stuff, here’s the thing in the way that I think about it, it’s all about it’s all about the offers that you’re making, or the claims that you’re making, too though, like, back then, I wasn’t saying, hey, I’ll scale you to $100,000 a month. I wasn’t saying, like, I’ll show you how to do multiple seven figures, or I’ll show you how to generate fucking 50 leads a week. Like, I wasn’t making any crazy claims. My thing back then was like, Hey, I built myself up from a really, really low point in a really short period of time. And one of the ways that I felt, or one of the main things that I felt, had led me to a high level of success, is I’d gotten really, really good at time and energy management because, and I didn’t do it for the sake of I was so busy that I was like a CEO, and I needed to do it. The reason that I did it is because I needed high levels of structure and organization. Otherwise my mind was gonna fucking go ballistic. And like, I was gonna drink, you know, I mean, like, I needed militant structure for my life. And in order to do that, I developed a lot of systems around how to manage your time and energy. And so, like, my like, the offer when I first started, was like, hey, I’ll show you how to get back like, 15 hours a week of your time, and you can, like, figure out what to do with that. You could, you know, take you could take it off, spend with loved ones. You could get more done, focus on higher, higher leverage tasks. You could literally just go harder and make more money. But, like, that was the claim that I was making, and I could do it, you know, and I think that’s okay. Like, I have a client right now who used to run, like, fitness coaching business, scale it up to maybe, like, $50,000 a month now he’s like, coaching other fitness guys on how to, like, make their first 10k a month online. And it’s like, okay, if we actually look at the ethics of the situation, like, I get that people, like, have issues with like, just like, this perpetual cycle of, like, coaches, coaching, other coaches and all this shit. But it’s like, look like, let’s actually break it down. If I’ve scaled a business in your industry to $100,000 a month, and I tell you, Hey, I know how to get you to $20,000 a month, like, pretty predictably. And like, I’m gonna help you do a lot faster than you would. Like, ethically, is there any issue with that?

Brad Weimert 53:12
I I don’t know. I don’t know that I believe in ethics, but, but the I think the fun of, the underpinning of that is there should be some responsibility of both sides around what the expectations are. And I think for me, that’s the that is really the point is, have expectations been set appropriately? Now in sales, you don’t vomit all the negative things on somebody usually. Now there is a strategy to doing that in sales, in fact, yeah, but in that situation, if I’m the person trying to learn how to get to 20 The first thing I’m doing is saying I’ve seen that this person is capable of getting to 100 grand a month in my industry. But the second thing that I should be thinking that isn’t said in that conversation is, how many times has this person done it, and what makes me believe that they actually have a clean system to do it more than once just because they’ve done it once? Yep.

Brodie Kern 54:03
And I think that’s a great argument, yeah, yeah. And

Brad Weimert 54:07
the problem is that the person that’s done it once isn’t going to offer that information up from a sales perspective, and the person that hasn’t done it before may or may not know to ask that question.

Brodie Kern 54:17
Well, I’ll push back on that a little bit like pretty much everything that I teach, I’ve also put out there for free, but it may be like, it may be less robust, right? And so, for example, I have, like, a content strategy that I developed last year, that I am, that I teach all my clients and helps them get their like, put systems behind their organic content, to actually get leads and nurture those leads automatically, and takes just, it just works so well and takes so much off their hands. Now I have put out free trainings in depth, trainings on, hey, here’s exactly how the mechanics of this work and what you need to do. Here’s the idea. Behind it. Here’s all the little points that make it function and flow as a cohesive system. And like you could watch this entire video and go build it right now. The difference maybe, for my clients is not maybe. The difference for my clients is they’re going to be able to copy over all the assets, all the automations, and just tweak their copy a little bit. They’re gonna have more in depth trainings on it. So, like, I’ll give it away for free for someone to go do if they’re look, if you’re fucking G and you want to just study the shit out of this and go build it all, dude, do it. I don’t need to charge you. I don’t fucking kill you. If you’re gonna work like that, you don’t need me anyways, right? But, or it’s like, if you even, my argument to that person is like, Hey, you want to do it 40% faster, right? And so then you can move on to the next thing, yeah? And like, so like, I’m personally not a big gatekeeper, yeah. Of shit. There are people who are like, a ton, yeah, a ton, look, there’s a right and a wrong way to do coaching, or for me, like, an ethical way. I would be curious to hear, like, what informs your statement? Of, like, I don’t know if there’s ethics?

Brad Weimert 56:00
Yeah, well, I’ll tell you. And I think that there are somebody that has grown up in sales, you made a comment just now of there’s a right way and a wrong way to do coaching, and then you backed out and said, there’s an ethical way. I fundamentally don’t believe in the construct of right and wrong. I think that there are in life. I think that there are actions and there are outcomes. And I don’t know that, I also have a hard time with absolutes. So I think there are very few absolute statements in the world, if any. The thing is, what led me to the absolute statement is that you can pick the most horrific things in life and say there is never a situation where that should happen. And we can uncover a situation where you might think, Oh, actually, it’s acceptable for this. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 56:45
I mean, I think, like, murder

Brad Weimert 56:46
is a good one, right? Murder is totally unacceptable. There’s never a situation where murder makes sense, except then you you immediately go to examples like Hitler, or, you know, whatever, insert dictator that’s going to take over the world and

Brodie Kern 56:59
run the world. Yeah. I mean, from a moral perspective, like the Holocaust is kind of one of the only responses to like, like, that’s like, one of the only things that like

Brad Weimert 57:08
in our era, it is, yeah, right. But there are a litany of examples throughout the course of life, so no, but, I

Brodie Kern 57:15
mean, that’s one of the only things that like I’ve just it’s really hard to give me, like, a subjective, uh, justification, yeah, but there should be more theoretically, there should be way more things that we can just say this is categorically wrong.

Brad Weimert 57:28
I love the simplicity of that and the to the to the point of coaching. I don’t know that, you know, I was poking a little bit on it because I think it’s fun to do so, especially in this forum, but I don’t know that anybody has a real responsibility to other people’s well being, or, you know, growth in business, or whatever. Now, when I say they don’t have a responsibility, it doesn’t mean that I think they should just be a shithead. It just means I don’t know what that responsibility is and people get to make a choice about what the outcome is that they’re after, and that dictates what actions they take to get to the outcome, however shitty I might think they are.

Brodie Kern 58:09
So I really see this a lot differently. I think that

Brad Weimert 58:17
one, there’s fiduciary responsibility, that’s the thing, yep.

Brodie Kern 58:20
But number two, like, I say this a lot like, my biggest, like, one of my biggest critiques of the coaching industry is just guys getting into it who are tremendous marketers and don’t give a fuck about fulfillment. And like, that’s because I came into coaching looking for purpose. I came into coaching looking to help. I look, I came into coaching I got it to find like to experience when someone texts me or tells me, dude, if it wasn’t for this, I would be in a really fucked up place right now.

Brad Weimert 58:50
Look, I love that, and I think that that’s, I don’t want to be confused for the pragmatic approach being in conflict with the idealist approach in terms of my own sentiments, but I believe that inevitably, the pragmatic approach is to do the thing that makes everybody happy. And it’s not because there’s a moral imperative to do so, it’s because it pragmatically helps me the most. So if you are going to oversell something and have shitty fulfillment, inevitably that will catch up with you. It will fuck your reputation. Yes, yeah, fuck your reputation, fuck your business, and then you’re out. And so that’s not actually how you serve yourself, but ultimately, what I’m after is how to make the business serve me, serve the staff, because that keeps it moving, and serve the client base, because that helps it grow. But it’s not because I think everybody is wonderful and amazing, and the world is butterflies and rainbows, and we should all be great to each other. Yeah,

Brodie Kern 59:44
I mean the conversation that we’re having, like, it sits below even, like, where business, where businesses get started. You know what I mean? And like this is, like, like I said, philosophy is, like, my number one passion, and specifically, philosophy, and I saw you crowd ethics. Like, I. I have thought about that so much. I’ve spent so much time in that in my life, like when I was in college, like, after, like, I’ve just literally spent so much time there. And I think that like, good, good, moral foundation matters, and I think it’s important, and I don’t think like I think it should be the first principle from which we think, act and operate.

Brad Weimert 1:00:26
And in my only my alternate approach to that view is that it’s not moral foundation is the most pragmatic approach. So the most pragmatic approach to an outcome is to try to get all parties to win from it. And you can look at that and say, I think that that is the the underpinning, there is moral framework. But I think that the starting principle is, how do we get everybody to win? Because it’s the only sustainable option. I’m

Brodie Kern 1:00:52
willing to sacrifice for certain things, you know, I mean, and so, like, let me give you an example. Like, let’s go. Let’s go through an exercise. I had a, I had a one on one client. A couple years ago, this guy came to me. He ran an Amazon automation business. He was like, Yo, I really need like, mindset, like leadership stuff, like, I want to work with you one on one. I was like, Cool. Like, all right, we’ll do, like, it’s 50 grand for six months. I’ll work with you every week, one on one. Like, we’ll completely redesign, like, how you think, how you show up, your leadership structure, whatever. And so we spent six months, like, really working together on that stuff. And it was always a little weird. Like, he, I couldn’t, like, crack him open all the way. He was always a little reserved. It was just like, a weird situation. But then when the six month term was up, we like, made progress, and he was super appreciative, and whatever, just, like, wasn’t my typical, like, blow the doors off experience. But then when we got done, he was like, Alright, I want to keep going. So you Sure? He was like, Yeah, and I want to start, like, looking at some of the business stuff. And I was like, Cool, okay, it’s gonna be like eight grand a month. And so we ran, like, another two months, and I looked inside his business, and I was like, Yo, there’s nothing here. I was like, bro, you like, you’ve got nothing here, like you’re literally just selling insanely high ticket packages and outsourcing this to fulfillment you have no control over and that is, like, kind of busted and like, this thing’s a mess. Like, I told him, I was like, You need to stop selling right now and fix this. I was like, this is extremely unethical. It’s like, I can’t believe we even worked with you this long. Was so mad at myself, at him. I was like, What the fuck? And he was like, Yeah, I kind of just don’t care. I was like, I was like, yeah. I was like, Yo, I gotta go. So, like, here’s a situation where, like, okay, we’re in a contractual arrangement. Theoretically, what would have benefited me the most was continuing collect my eight grand a month and helping him collect more money. But it would have been at the expense of a lot of people. He also ended up getting sued and like, is like, arguably running right now. Look, we’re

Brad Weimert 1:03:01
on the same page. We’re just saying it a different way, and we’re coming at it from a different place. I don’t think the best thing for you would be to continue to collect the eight grand. I think that it would chew you up internally. I think ultimately it would sacrifice your brand, sure. Ultimately it would hurt you.

Brodie Kern 1:03:16
If you want to look at like the whole, like holistic outcome, or like, all of the holistic variables. Yeah. I mean, I agree, I agree with that, but

Brad Weimert 1:03:25
I always do, and that’s the thing, is, I don’t believe that. Use that word always. I don’t do that very often. I just don’t think that altruism exists. I don’t think that there’s, like, this special thing that we ever do just for our own good, or just for somebody else’s good. I don’t think those things exist for other people’s good alone. I think that it always drives back to, how does it serve you in some capacity, even if it’s just making you feel good, like

Brodie Kern 1:03:53
even if it’s just making you feel good, sure there’s always some sort of bilateral thing happening.

Brad Weimert 1:03:59
That’s what that entire and the entire no altruism, no altruism argument leans on Have you

Unknown Speaker 1:04:04
ever spent much time looking at like the effect of the altruism

Brad Weimert 1:04:07
community? No, I think I’ve done some, like poking on it years ago, while cm

Brodie Kern 1:04:11
bankman Fried was like, a big part of it, and like, totally fucking ravaged, ravaged, a reputation there. Do I spend some time going down, like the utilitarianism rabbit hole, which is really interesting, and, like, a super interesting way to think, but like, it just breaks, you know, like, and you can have no quality of life living like a utilitarian but there is an, like, a valuable, like mental model, or at least filter to run things through. Of like, how can the most people benefit from an action or a budget, or whatever. I mean,

Brad Weimert 1:04:41
as far as you know, philosophy goes in the context of a business podcast, yeah, all of these things drive back to, for me, just drive back to the notion of, if everybody’s not winning, ultimately the system breaks well,

Brodie Kern 1:04:56
and so, like, here’s what it comes down to as well. Uh, like, whether I’m calling something ethical or unethical or right and wrong, like, if ethics existed, we could say that in your mind. We could say that wrong is unethical we get we could say that right is presumably ethical. And it’s like, if something breaks, that’s going to be wrong to you correct if something works well for all parties.

Brad Weimert 1:05:21
And I would, I think a better, better words in those contexts would be good and bad, sure, good and bad relative to the outcome. And so you use the term moral relativist, that’s great for me, because what that means is it’s contextual. Yeah, so morality is contextual to whatever reality you’re in. And I think that, to what you just said, if you have a given outcome you’re after any action in turn. Inside of that outcome that you’re after can be good or bad, because it gets you closer or further away to that outcome. And in simplest language, yeah, and I think we were very much on the same page from that perspective. So you can use different labels for that. Different labels for that idea, but the most helpful framework for me has been action, outcome orientation

Brodie Kern 1:06:09
to everybody’s perceived goals or benefits Exactly. Yeah, and I think that’s exactly. And

Brad Weimert 1:06:14
I think it’s more important in life to have a framework to run by than it is to try to have the best framework ever,

Brodie Kern 1:06:22
yeah, and, I mean, it’s like, look like absolutes, I might agree also don’t ever exist, you know, I mean, because there’s just an enormous amount of things in business and life, and a lot in business that is dichotomous and Dude, understanding business dichotomies is really important, really important, because people get so locked in on one thing, and it’s like, Dude, you have to understand that. Like, sometimes both things can be true at once when you’re talking about something. And like, you have to understand which sword to pick up.

Brad Weimert 1:06:52
Yeah, we had a the other day. I had a string of texts in this in a Slack channel. And the best, yeah, it was so many of those, and it was somebody vocalizing a specific FTC suit and using that as a judgment on the person who was being pursued by the FTC. And to your point, there are two sides to every story, and there’s, there are benefits and negatives to that approach. But if you, if you don’t have the full context, and if you don’t try to look at things from both sides, you are doing a disservice to yourself, first and foremost, and to other people you do business with, yep, and you might be, you might be on the right side of it, and you might be on the wrong side of it, or you might be on the accurate side or the inaccurate side. But you don’t know if you don’t make an effort to look at both sides, yeah,

Brodie Kern 1:07:50
yeah. And, I mean, it’s just like, dude, like, the thing that has gotten me really far in business is really sound like, like, I feel like one of my superpowers is, like, having really sound logic. And part of that has been how much I’ve studied philosophy and, like, really just thinking about things from like, level by level by level. But people don’t spend enough time, like, truly auditing the way that they’re thinking about shit. Well, I think part

Brad Weimert 1:08:19
of that too is what, what you’ve done a good job of just now is rationally responding as opposed to emotionally responding to something. And so in this conversation, you stopped and said, I see that incredibly differently. Yeah. And it was a very casual, introspective, thoughtful way to internalize the language I was using instead of being like, the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, you’re a fucking idiot. That’s not how this works at all, which is maybe not that aggressively, but how tons of conversations end

Brodie Kern 1:08:56
1,000% it’s like, God, people seem to understand too. Like, I just like, I have no preference around, like, being right, like, I just want to. And this is where I was going back to curiosity, like curiosity as an energy or as an ethos, like, doesn’t have a preference or a demand for outcome. It’s just like, Where does this go? And I’m so interested in that. And I think about that in the way that I have conversations, in the way that I manage relationships, like I try not to have a ton of expectation or judgment, because, dude, like, expectation sets you up hard for resentment, whether that be in your business with yourself, with other people, like, it’s just so nasty, you know, and it’s like, Dude, we just got to put stuff out there and see how it goes. And guess what? Maybe we’re fucking wrong, right? Or maybe, like, you know, we’re kind of talking about the same thing. We kind of disagree about it, right? But most of what we were like, I could have just eased because I was like, look like talking about ethics. And like, ethical freaking works is, like, one of my favorite things in the world. And. You were, like, I don’t even think that exists, you know, and like, that would be so easy to just, like, get pissed about or whatever. But like, the reality is we weren’t talking about things that were that different. Like, we just have definitional differences around what we’re talking about, which, if we were to continue that conversation further, and really wanted to, like, bridge the gap between how we think, like, there’s like, that would be all that we are talking there’s just different definitions for what we’re talking about. Likely, yeah, you know what I mean. And so it’s just like, dude, like, if you’re just not willing to see things through like that, like, you’re just not gonna get better, you’re not gonna in a business context, like, dude, good luck fucking managing people. Good luck fucking empowering people inside of your business to be better and to learn and to grow and to be able to lead themselves like you’re not going to create a fucking multiplier because you can’t get past your first fucking thought.

Brad Weimert 1:10:50
I love that. So I have one other question, because I know we’re coming up on time here. You just used the phrase expectations are a surefire way to so

Brodie Kern 1:11:02
what I always say is expectations are premeditated resentments. I love that that’s not actually the language you use. I don’t think, no, but it wasn’t. But that’s how I typically talk about, okay, that’s perfect. So how

Brad Weimert 1:11:11
do you reconcile the idea of expectations setting you up for resentment or failure and need or desire or power of a goal to drive towards, yep.

Brodie Kern 1:11:22
So with me, the way that I think about things is like, do I have goals and outcomes that I want? Yes, but how many times in our life do we nail that goal the first fucking time? Not a lot shit usually goes wrong. All that I actually care about. And this is the same with employees, right? Like, yes, do like KPIs and performance outcomes matter, yes. But what I really want to like, what I really care about is how much effort is there and how iterative Are you being, right? Are you like, literally a core, like, standard at every one of my companies, in every culture that I run in, every single employee that I talk to, don’t make the same mistake the same way. Like, like, you may fuck up the same thing multiple times. Don’t do it in the same fucking way. If your effort is all the way there, your focus was all the way there, and you’re being iterative. I’m good. I’m not pissed. Now, if you just fucking don’t ever figure it out, it’s like, yeah, maybe you’re in the wrong position, or you’re just the wrong fit. And I have timelines for things like that at different companies, for different problems, different positions, whatever. There’s a ramping period that should be expected. But it’s like, it isn’t just like, in, you know, this, like, it’s not like you just hire someone and you say, this is exactly how it needs to fucking be in like, if you don’t get this, you’re fucking kidding. This, you’re fucking canned. You know what I mean? Like, everybody would be so afraid because, like, employees or people that don’t start their own businesses don’t work like us, you know, like they need to be, they need to be loved on in a lot of ways, or they and sometimes they need to be pushed, and sometimes they need, they need the sword, like they need the full bag of tools based on where they’re at, but it’s like, Dude, it’s just like, if you, like, I just don’t think that me being like, Hey, this is everything I expect of you, and, like, not giving them the grace and the leeway to fuck up and get better on their own. You just don’t think it’s good way to manage and I don’t think it’s effective. I think you’re gonna spin out, and I think they’re gonna be scared and they can never even grow into their full potential. And like, service your guys’ shared interest.

Brad Weimert 1:13:25
I love it, man. What advice do you have for entrepreneurs starting out right now? The best

Brodie Kern 1:13:31
advice for entrepreneurs that I have right now is Stay curious and really wherever you’re at, but especially early on, because you have so much to learn. Like, if you’re starting out right now, even if you’re like like, if you’re doing under a million a year, or even under like 5 million a year, like, you just really don’t even understand how much more you need to learn, because there’s an infinite amount of stuff that you’re going to have to adopt and learn and understand in every single department of your business and how to manage relationships. And so it’s like, dude, for me, staying curious and like, focusing on, hey, how can I empower other people to get better in the same way that I am? Is the whole thing, dude, like, like, it getting good people who can autonomously handle shit inside of your company, as well as like, grow other people is the key to everything. Like, you know, and it’s like having a great hire who’s just like, on point and fucking killing it and bought into the mission, and like doing it all like that. It changes your life the first time you have it, versus like employees that you’re having to be like, hold accountable, and being like, why aren’t you getting this done in time? Like, it’s just such a difference. And so the only way to get there is to and to get there quickly is to be preemptively, just like, how do I become the best at what I’m doing right and not just the best at what I’m doing, but the best at, like, running my business, and so much of that you. Is going to require research and practice and knowledge and, like, in order to do the amount that you’re going to need to do, you need to fall in love with it, like, just fall in love with the process. Because, like, if you’re just super focused on outcome, I promise you’re always going to be let down, like we were talking about, like, number one, you’re probably going to have to fucking try things five to 10 more times than you think you are to get them number two, like, the carrot at the end of the stick is never that fucking good. Like, there’s just gonna be another one that’s 10x and, like, if you like, it seems like such cliche advice to just be like, fall in love with the process. But like, dude, if you don’t, you’ll fucking crash out. Businesses do not make it to five years. This place like entrepreneurship really will chew you up and spit you out. It’s great at times, but it’s also fucking hard, and it is, it is going to push you, and it is going to cause you to have to expand your capacity for everything so much. And like you need to be ready, and like you need to fall in love with the fact that it is an expander, or like, you’re just gonna crash up. Brody Kern, it’s

Brad Weimert 1:16:06
awesome talking to me. Man, it was good conversation. Have fun. Where do you wanna point people follow me

Brodie Kern 1:16:10
on Instagram? Man, at Brody Kern, like, I’m so responsive in my DMs because I got into the online space just saying, like, Yo, here’s my story. I’m gonna be super vulnerable about my addiction and where I was at and, like, one beautiful thing that has continued to happen throughout the course of like, me being online, is people just like, reaching out to me and being like, yo. Like, I’ve never told anyone this, and so it’s like, Dude, I don’t care what you’re going through, personal business, whatever. Like, if you need help, hit me up. I’ll help. If I can, I’ll find you help. If I can, like, you need to get into rehab. Fucking message me, like, I’ll get you into rehab today, right? Like, it’s just, like, I just want to be a resource for everyone out there who, like, needs, needs help and like, if I can do it, I

Brad Weimert 1:16:48
will. I love it, man, awesome. Until next time. That’s a wrap for today’s episode, please subscribe and most importantly, leave us a review. It takes, like, 30 seconds, and it makes such a big impact, it helps other people find us. Also. You might not know this, you can watch over 100 episodes of beyond a million with guests like Grant Cardone, Wes Watson and Neil Patel at beyond a million.com.