The True Cost of Speed

Chris Davis 0:10
And we’re back. We’re back with another episode. I’m inspired, or I should say this episode is inspired by a famous saying by the lyrical poet Snoop Dogg. And he would say, you have to pay the cost to be the boss.

Chris Davis 0:31
And the cost that you have to pay applies to every area of your life and is relative to what you’re trying to get. And for me, since I’m working with founders and a variety of capacities, the, the single language and the single thing that all founders want is speed. Speed. They want to move faster, they want to get there faster.

Chris Davis 0:59
And, and I’ll say this, it is. Speed is a hell of a drug. There, there is no. You get a hit and you’re like, okay, that was great.

Chris Davis 1:11
We did a really good job getting there fast. No, they want faster. They want to do it again. They want to keep improving.

Chris Davis 1:19
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Let me say what, what, what I would add to it is, is the speed safe? Not, not just safe in terms of the health of the founder, but the health of the people on the team, the health of the business, and even your audience, right? You, you can get so focused on growing that you get tone deaf to what your audience actually wants.

Chris Davis 1:50
I’ve seen this in a variety of startups that I’ve worked for. So I wanted to take the time today and talk about the cost, because I don’t think people often specify all of the costs. You know, you heard me say you have to pay the cost. Well, what cost am I paying?

Chris Davis 2:11
Am I paying with my time? Am I paying with my mind? Am I paying with my money? And I’ll start off with a story.

Chris Davis 2:19
I call these tech tales. I’ll start inter weaving these throughout the podcast more. But there was a particular founder that had reached out to me and they were doing amazing stuff. Already a Fortune 5000, I think, company.

Chris Davis 2:37
But they were trying to leverage AI. They were trying to build this extravagant AI system. And at the time of recording this, AI had not advanced to perhaps where it will be in the future. Well, right now, when, when I was on board, there were still, they were using a lot of GPTs to get stuff done.

Chris Davis 2:59
And there was a, there was a software engineer on there and on the team, and he was building out a custom dashboard. But there was so much work foundationally on the data side that needed to be done, that, that needed to be done. And for most of you, you have to Understand this now, this is going to be an evergreen statement. The, the best way to get the most out of AI is to better organize your data.

Chris Davis 3:31
So this particular company had data in Google sheets, they had spreadsheets. Well, Google sheets and spreadsheets, they had Canva, Miro, I mean, everywhere. You had content everywhere. So what I had to do is I had to.

Chris Davis 3:50
It took me about 30 days, everyone, it took me about 30 days to understand their entire ecosystem. Now, this is a business that’s over 10 years old. So you don’t come into a business that’s that mature and just start turning on switches and turning stuff off. It’s a very delicate process.

Chris Davis 4:08
And with the aid of AI, I was able to get up to speed very quickly. And once I got up to speed, I understood exactly what needed to be, what needed to take place. I understood the framework, I understood the foundation, I understood the architecture. And at that moment, as excited as I was and the developer I was working with, right, let me give him the credit.

Chris Davis 4:33
He was doing all of the building. I was just directing and of course, supporting and giving insight on how to structure Claude and OpenAI and ChatGPT for a team environment, which, by the way, if you are using, if you are attempting to use it in a team environment, it is quite a task, right? And just when we figured it out, everyone, the founder pulls out. Now, why, why would you do that?

Chris Davis 5:05
You’re, you’re on the precipice of creating an AI application that will dominate your industry. Why would they pull out? Well, this particular founder was addicted to speed. I mean, just go, go, go to the point I couldn’t even slow them down to read a contract, to go over the scope of work, to go over the roadmap.

Chris Davis 5:35
I mean, change just going slowed down just enough in the initial 30 to 60 days to, to understand at least what we should be doing, or I should say what they should be doing. And right after that, went right back up to speeding up. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And it just got to the point where the speed was too fast, the team was getting burned out, the focus was, was getting more blurry, and essentially, I hope I haven’t talked to them, but I hope they’re doing better.

Chris Davis 6:13
I reached out to the developer after that, and him and I just shared, shared appreciation for one another. Right. I love when I’m able to come into a team and give direction and see an immediate output greater than what was there prior to me. So that was a part that hurt the most.

Chris Davis 6:40
And then I Stepped back and I said, man, why would you pull out at such a critical time? And there were costs, there were costs that this founder just simply didn’t want to pay. So one of the costs that we may not be familiar with or pinpoint because they come in many forms, one of the costs is a cost of clarity. This is the greatest cost you’ll ever pay because you’re not used to paying for it, but you know, when you don’t have it, isn’t that a weird dynamic?

Chris Davis 7:15
And the more mature you get, the further along you get in business and in life. You understand the power of clarity. I just think oftentimes it’s not pinpointed as the thing that is needed before proceeding. And once you have clarity, everything downstream flows.

Chris Davis 7:41
And what I found is that the founders who are willing to pay for that, there are some founders that are so short sighted that all they can think of is, hey, you come in and do this thing that I’ve already prescribed needs to be done. Well, I don’t know if that’s the case. I would need to run my own assessment. I would need to get clear on your goals.

Chris Davis 8:02
I need to understand your team and then I need to understand the tech stack to give you a proper assessment of what this may or may not take. Right? If your idea of getting it done tomorrow is real or if it’s just fictitious in your mind. And not only that, if you don’t know what you’re doing, we’re talking about clarity.

Chris Davis 8:28
If you don’t have that at a high level, it’s going to be very hard for you to build anything from a team to a system. Right? You have to know what you’re doing. And a lot of times people think they know what they’re doing, when in reality they know what they want.

Chris Davis 8:48
They know what they want the thing to do, but they don’t necessarily know what the thing is. So it’s always pleasing when a founder is ready to slow down and say, okay, let’s just, what I’ve done has gotten me this far and I know I need to do something different to go further. Hey, what is it? What are my blind spots?

Chris Davis 9:13
What am I missing? Right, because once you have that clarity, the next cost, the cost of clarity, the next cost is the cost of technology. And you need clarity to determine the technology that you need. And again, clarity is tied to process.

Chris Davis 9:28
Clarity is tied to strategy. You just, you need to know what we’re doing and why. And when I say we, the entire team needs to know this because the cost of technology is going to creep up in redundancy, right? Where you’ve got three tools doing 80% the same thing.

Chris Davis 9:52
And the bad part about that is not just the cost, it’s the data. Now, your data’s in one tool over here and another tool over here, and before you know it, you replicate that three or four times. And there’s no way for you to centralize your data in a way where you can truly leverage AI. There’s a popular talk now about the brain.

Chris Davis 10:14
Everybody’s trying to build a brain, and everybody’s like, hey, if you do it this way, use. Use this model, and it will learn your whole business and think for you and point out all of the flaws. I get it. But your.

Chris Davis 10:30
Your data, one. You guys know me. If you. If you’re new to the podcast, know this.

Chris Davis 10:36
I am a proponent of owning your data. I’m all about. Listen, if you want to rent ownership on a platform for a time to get your data, to acquire some, fine. But don’t let that be the end.

Chris Davis 10:51
The end destination. You need to own your data always. So when you’re, when you’re. The cost that you pay for technologies isn’t just redundancy, but it’s data being spread out everywhere, right?

Chris Davis 11:06
And with those two in place, the last cost you’re going to pay is the cost of your team. Now. Now you’re burning your team out. Now they’re being put in a position where they can’t perform at the level that you truly need them to.

Chris Davis 11:24
Right? And here’s the thing. Here’s what I would say. It’s not even that bad if the founder would just understand that the speed that you want to move at, it has a cost.

Chris Davis 11:40
And if you don’t want to pay that cost, it’s fine. Just don’t expect the speed, right? It’s. It’s almost like watching a race car and you’re saying, I want that speed.

Chris Davis 11:55
How can I get it out of this Ford Fusion? And it’s like, yeah, the car can eventually get up to maybe 100 miles per hour, but if. Just buy the race car. Just.

Chris Davis 12:12
Just go ahead and put the money. If. If getting there is that important to you, pay the cost. And this is.

Chris Davis 12:23
I can’t say there’s a simple answer for this, because business is complex. And a lot of times, if a business owner doesn’t see the immediate roi, you’re now requiring them to trust in your advice, your approach, what, whatever reputation you had that preceded you, and it doesn’t matter if what you’re saying is the right thing. They most, in my experience, most founders have a finite amount of time that they’re willing to endure. Planning, restructuring, reorgang and all of the things required to get clear.

Chris Davis 13:08
There’s a finite time before they start really respecting some return on dollars. So the delicate balance that I’ve always had to play is how do I get conversions and clarity, right? And I’m not talking about conversions and sales and all of that. It could just be a conversion is going from one point to another.

Chris Davis 13:31
And a lot of times it’s identifying platforms that the data that the AI model needs is in, helping the engineer define the format and making sure they have the right integration to get the data into the proper data lake data warehouse in the format that the AI model can now read. Right. That takes time. It takes time.

Chris Davis 13:59
And if you want to do it at a high level, at a high speed, you’re just not going to find somebody on upwork. You’re not going to find somebody in the marketplace, even the staffing companies that say, hey, we vet them for you, it’s going to be very hard. Why? Because when you have a mature business, it takes time for that person to come in and understand your business.

Chris Davis 14:25
If you’re going to, if you’re gonna let somebody come into your business, understand it like somebody like myself. I don’t come in and understand your business at a very high level. Oh, you’ve got some landing pages. Oh, you run a few webinars.

Chris Davis 14:42
No, I’ve got to understand everything. And when I say everything, I have logins to sensitive information. I have logins to platforms that the founder may not even know they’re using. Right?

Chris Davis 14:58
So the question becomes why invest in bringing someone on that’s going to learn your business? Because another thing is everybody can’t learn your business. Do not for one second think that that is something that’s possible for every person. No.

Chris Davis 15:19
Some people are confused and will and will charge you for their confusion. But when you have somebody, just imagine your business has been running for 10, 15 years. You already know the tech debt, you already know the bolted on solutions, you already know all of the areas where you’re just scared to look and touch and just hoping nothing breaks down. For someone to come in and get up to speed within 30 days, mind blowing, right?

Chris Davis 15:48
I don’t want to minimize that. And when that happens, you want to leverage that individual because they’ve, they’ve actually proven themselves by getting up to speed with your business so fast. Right. So so yes, it may, it may take a little longer than you anticipated, but it’s slowing down to speed up.

Chris Davis 16:11
And my thing is that as long as you know the cost of moving at the speed that you desire, we’re all good. We’re all good. Because what I’ve seen most of the time, in order for these companies to move faster, you need of course, a higher level of understanding, right. A lot of times again, they know from a business perspective, they don’t understand the technological infrastructure and changes that need to be made to support the business, to move to the speed that they want to.

Chris Davis 16:49
And so oftentimes you need different technology, you need a different team. And I’m not saying you have to get rid of your team, it’s more of an addition, right? You may need to bring on other people. And good people are hard to find.

Chris Davis 17:04
Everyone, people who are worth their weight that you can hire, they’re self sufficient, they’re proactive, they have a level of expertise that can be demonstrated daily. They are very hard to find. But you know what goes along with that? When you find somebody who is good, they usually know other good people.

Chris Davis 17:29
So it would be in your best interest to use their resources to resource your business. But again, usually it’s not going to be free, right? So there’s cost involved and that’s just how it is. And if you’re honest with, if you’re honest right now, those of you who have tried the upworks, you’ve tried the VAs, you’ve tried the, all of the things, you know how hard it is to really say, you know what this person is doing really well.

Chris Davis 18:09
And the reason I say that is because every business that I’m coming into this, there’s usually a legacy person, somebody who has been there for years, not somebody’s not multiple. It’s like one person that knows everything, right? Because it’s very hard for, for, for people to one stick with something. We’re just, we’re just not in that day and age, it’s, it’s amazing how quick focus gets lost, but also actually be good, right?

Chris Davis 18:46
You can be mediocre and be a millionaire pretty quickly, especially with the way that technology and AI are really evolving. You can provide a business very surface level results, make a killing, get out of there and that business move forward marginally. Not, not much to make a difference, right? And that’s why a lot of companies are struggling with AI.

Chris Davis 19:14
They’re actually pulling back. I read an article about Microsoft and I think, I can’t remember, I Maybe it wasn’t Microsoft. Let me not name the company. I read an article about a company that had invested in Chad GBT and you know, for their employees and the token count ran up but the efficient output did not.

Chris Davis 19:35
Right. They could not justify continuing to invest at that level because they weren’t seeing results and they were seeing a big bill. And that’s where I go on the founder side and I say I understand it because to bring in an expert that can understand your business, give you the clarity, understand your tech stack, integrate with your team, you’re going to have to pay a pretty penny, right? You just don’t hire that offshore and train it up.

Chris Davis 20:08
Right? But when you have that, especially tech, technically, I’m usually the counterpart to the founder. The founder is usually non technical and you know, working on acquiring more funding or networking, growing the business, biz, dev, things like that. Well, they need a technical counterpart that understands all of those efforts, all, all of those activities and the importance of them and then translate it down to the team, to the tech team in milestones and a way that they can understand the importance and the impact of getting it done in a timely fashion.

Chris Davis 20:43
Without that, you’re, you’re shake. It’s Russian roulette in a good way, right? Not that you’ll die, but every year is, think about Russian roulette and you’re shooting at a target very close, right? You may have a one in six chance if that barrel might be empty depending on your team and your tech stack and your clarity, right?

Chris Davis 21:07
So I just want to say this to make you all aware that at some point to move faster, you’re going to have to pay, you’re just going to have to pay the cost, cost for new tech, new team, and a new level of clarity. These are, these are, this is what makes the difference. I’ve been to masterminds that cost tens of thousands of dollars. It, you may talk tactics in between time, but a lot of it is focused on hey, where do you want to go?

Chris Davis 21:43
Who are you? What, what do you want to do? Getting clear on, hey, where’s your business right now? Where do you want it to be?

Chris Davis 21:50
And what is, where are you stuck? Most people can’t even answer those questions. They’re just like, I need more leads and I need more sales. But if you have that and you have a target, if you have clarity and you have a target, the only thing keeping you between the two is your willingness to invest in the right people.

Chris Davis 22:14
Do not, I repeat, do not be one of those people. That gets a unique qualified unicorn in your business to help you speed up and then pull out prematurely because maybe you weren’t seeing the results as early. Maybe you’re addicted to speed, and any and any pace less than extremely fast makes you nervous. And maybe you just don’t understand the costs that are involved with moving faster.

Chris Davis 22:49
Right. So I guess this episode is kind of like a note to founders and a note to my builders. I see you, and I know, I know. Let me just say this.

Chris Davis 23:02
I know how frustrating it can be when a consultant, a new contractor consultant or whomever comes in and they’re actually good and then they leave. Because oftentimes you’re not told what happens. It’s like a revolving door. They showed up, they’re there for maybe three or four months, and then they’re gone.

Chris Davis 23:19
And you’re just like, man, I was getting used to this new world with them. Now I’ve got to revert back to what I was doing. It’s hard. It’s like, I’ll say the movies, so this is not a real person, but in the movies where you have the woman who has all these different partners coming in and out of the house, and the child is just looking for somebody.

Chris Davis 23:47
Are you my father? Are you the one? It gets to a point where you stop. You stop even expecting the hired help to be there long.

Chris Davis 24:00
So now you’re holding back. You don’t realize it. I’m talking to you builder on the team, the senior dev, the automation service provider, the digital marketer, whoever it is that’s building out the system. You know your hesitation, you know your trauma from really liking somebody that the founder brought in and then them being snatched away.

Chris Davis 24:24
Listen, you all this is. Man, this is kind of. It’s kind of therapeutic. But I’ve seen it.

Chris Davis 24:33
I’ve been a part of it, and I’ve hated it every single time. And usually it’s because they just won’t slow down. And if they don’t want to slow down and they want to keep moving at that speed, they. They’re not willing to pay the cost to move that fast.

Chris Davis 24:54
In. In closing, I’ll say this because I want this to be the. The thing that you hang on to. And the cost of clarity is essential for understanding all of your needs.

Chris Davis 25:10
Do not stop, everybody. Stop investing in technology and stop trying to hire people before you are clear on exactly what the business needs. Not from a business model standpoint, from a technological, operational standpoint that includes both automation and AI. You have to get clear and you have to be willing to pay for that clarity because again, it speeds up everything downstream.

Chris Davis 25:43
I promise you it does. It will directly affect your ability to execute continuously and efficiently in a positive way if you have it in a negative way if you don’t. So I hope that did not land on deaf ears and I hope that you, as a builder on many teams that you felt seen today and you felt heard, because at the end of the day, everybody loses. The founder doesn’t get there as fast as they want to.

Chris Davis 26:23
The team maybe stays motivated, but loses just a bit of motivation because they thought this was. This time was going to be different. Right? But just remember, you cannot expect to move fast while paying slow.

Chris Davis 26:41
It just doesn’t work, everyone. So hopefully you can. Hopefully your network and your searching can provide top talent. And when you get that top talent, please do not be the one that says, hey, can you do that for half that?

Chris Davis 27:04
Can we do all of that just in 30 days instead of 90? Respect the process and pay the cost to move at the speed that you desire. There is a cost to speed. Pay it and you will get there.

Chris Davis 27:21
I promise you. I promise you. So I hope, again, I hope something said in this episode was. Was helpful.

Chris Davis 27:31
Right? We’ve got, we’ve got a lot we. When I say we, I’m just talking about us in the, in. In.

Chris Davis 27:39
In the state of building businesses online. There’s a lot going on, everyone. AI makes my head spin every day. And you need somebody on your team that has a post to this stuff that understands your business so that they can be a guardrail of things that you try and things that you don’t.

Chris Davis 28:04
That’s kind of like my closing advice. If you’re not going to pay the full cost, at least pay the cost to have someone internal to your business, a trusted resource to help you navigate this space. All right, so with that being said, thank you all for listening and your continual support of the podcast. Listen, we have a community.

Chris Davis 28:27
We have a community of experienced builders. These are people who have been building successfully online for at least five years, right? None of the rookies here. And what we do is we share one, what we find as we’re exploring and trying different things.

Chris Davis 28:51
And I share a lot of my findings from my explorations and talking with various founders and experts in the space. And then they take that shared knowledge and they apply it, and then they come back and share what worked when they applied. And if that’s something that you want to be part of, I want to invite you. It’s free.

Chris Davis 29:14
It’s of no cost. This is for builders to be able to learn from successes. Not failures only, but successes of others, so that you don’t have to test and do all the experimenting yourself. The link is somewhere in the show notes you’ll be able to go ahead and put in an application.

Chris Davis 29:39
Again, it’s at no cost, but I need you all to be better faster. If these companies are going to move faster and pay the cost, I need you to be able to back it up. And a lot of times it’s too much for you to figure out on your own. So we’ve got a home for you.

Chris Davis 30:02
With that being said, I’m going to sign off. Until next time I see you all online. Automate responsibly, my friends.