I love people. And I love processes. I really do.

So don't take the fact that I run an AI agency the wrong way...I'm not trying to replace anyone.

But people are the lowest leverage in an organization of scale, followed by process.

And if you're not thinking about scale, this isn't for you.

Before we go further, we need to define something. Because most people use two words interchangeably that they shouldn't:

Growth and Scale are NOT the same thing.

Growth requires more input. It requires more humans to serve more customers. You want to serve twice as many? You hire twice as many people. You want to serve 5 new markets? You hire 5x the people. It's linear. More effort in, more output.

Scale is different.

Scale is getting 10x the output with the exact same input.

That's the game.

Inputs and Outputs.

Not just money - growth models can and do regularly make more than scale models.

But if you want scale, you have to look at your inputs.

And when you do, you'll see something clear:

People are the lowest leverage and the highest risk, followed by Process.

People provide (man)power. Process provides the path. Product produces.

That's the hierarchy. That's how it works for scale.

Product > Process > People

If your business is dependent on a specific person, your process is not rock solid. Because if it were—truly were—then anyone who can follow the process could perform the job. The outcome would always be the same. But it's not. You're not McDonald's.

So your process has gaps, it's fragile.

That's a problem.

Becoming a process-first organization removes dependency on people.

Most businesses with a strong operations team figure this out. They focus on being a process-based business. They build SOPs, frameworks, and playbooks. They document everything and try to make the business run like a machine in order to provide a path to success.

Every step mapped.
Every decision documented.
Every outcome predictable.

It works, but it's not the ceiling.

I urge you, strongly, to try the product side.

Because when product becomes the focus, all else becomes secondary.

Think about it...

You won't win because you build rapport. Not for long. Not anymore.

Loyalty falls by the wayside to superior products all the time. Don't count on it. Don't build your business on the assumption that people will stick with you because relationships. They won't. Not if, and when, something clearly better comes along.

If your product is good enough, you don't depend on process.
And you definitely aren't reliant on people.

ChatGPT doesn't need an onboarding process. You don't need a relationship with a rep. You open it. It works. That's it.

Netflix didn't need a demo call or a professional to come to your house. You didn't need someone to know the history of streaming. You signed up. You watched. Done.

Good products just work.

They solve the problem without friction. Without human intervention. Without the bottleneck of a person or a process standing between the customer and the outcome.

Look at Instagram: When they sold to Facebook for a billion dollars, they had 13 employees and 30 million users. 13 people. Millions of outcomes.

That's scale.

Now contrast that with a construction crew building new homes. Even the most efficient crew in the world, the one with the tightest processes, has to hire more people to build more houses in the same amount of time. You want to build 10x houses? You need 10x the crew. You want to build 100x? You need 100x the crew. Give-or-take.

That's a growth model business. And while there is nothing wrong with it, there is always a ceiling to people and process somewhere.

People are finite. Process doesn't run itself. Product scales infinitely.

The best thing you can do right now is double down on product. Reimagine it from the ground up. What if it didn't require an intense process to launch? What if you didn't need the best people in the world to operate it? What if it...just worked?

Don't just tweak things. Don't try to optimize what's already there. That's process-thinking. Rethink the whole thing...

Because products are built different now.

The game has changed.

Your product either reflects that, or no matter how good your people are - or how tight your process runs, you'll still be stuck in growth mode. You'll still be trading input for output. You'll still be dependent on the next hire, the next process improvement, the next relationship.

That's not scale. That's just a bigger version of what you already have.

Focus on your product above all else.

If you care about scale.