Build Your AI DNA: The Foundation That Makes AI Actually Know Your Business - Follow The Yellow Brick Road

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[00:00]
A
In today's world, we need to be capable of moving at a speed of AI output. The chaotic indecision behind not having documentation will be the thing that puts us
[00:12]
B
out of business now 100% without things being documented. If you lose a key employee and all that knowledge is locked inside somebody's head, it goes with them.
[00:19]
A
You're trying to build one agent to do 50 jobs. You have no DNA. And just like the people you've hired the past five years, they. They're failing because of your inability to be a leader. And then you're crying that things aren't working, but you're not building it right. Welcome to Follow the Yellow Brick Road, the show where online businesses learn how to turn clicks into customers and growth into real scale. I'm your co host, Emma Rainville, the wizard of ops, helping companies transform chaos into systems that actually run.
[00:52]
C
And I'm Mitch Barham, the wizard of ads, the guy who knows how to turn paid traffic into predictable revenue. Together, we break down what really drives profitable online businesses, from traffic and funnels to operations, scaling and everything behind the curtain. Because getting customers is only half the battle.
[01:07]
A
The real magic happens when ads and operations work together. So if you want smarter traffic, stronger systems, and a clear path to scaling your business, you're in the right place. Let's follow the Yellow Brick Road. On this episode of Follow the Yellow Brick Road, we're going to be talking about your AI DNA. Did you know that your company already has one? It's probably just not documented yet. Mitch and I are going to explore and explain today. However, if you haven't gone over to Follow the yellow brick road podcast.com and signed up for our control room, where we have loads of free courses and templates and checklists and all kinds of stuff for you. We never try and sell you there. It's just totally free all the time for our community. You should definitely run over there and get yourself a free membership login and start taking some of the courses and running through some of the free knowledge that we have. Match, come on. I am super excited about today. I know that we talk about Aidna all the time on here, but for someone who might be tuning in for the first time, quick overview. What's an AI DNA?
[02:21]
B
AI DNA is essentially, it's all the context that will turn a generic AI into something that actually knows your business. So it's like you would hand a new employee. It's your SOPs, it's your who you are, what you do, who you serve. It is literally the Backbone DNA of your entire business. Right. With that context, these AI agents and AI itself literally is able to operate as your business, as a new hire. When they walk in, you know, like your employee handbooks, your. All your SOPs, your tools that you guys use internally, it's everything it knows
[03:00]
A
what, where, when, how, who and why and why. And the most important reason. The why. Yeah. A lot of businesses function in this state of, I tell my employees everything, and they still don't know they can't keep up with me. Or projects just don't get done. It's generally because they don't understand a lot of those components. And with your AI DNA, it is not just the function agents. It absolutely helps function agents. It's not just to help you write better copy or produce better outputs. It's to run your entire business, both human and artificial intelligence. And hopefully soon robotics.
[03:42]
B
That'll be wild.
[03:43]
A
Yeah.
[03:43]
C
But.
[03:44]
A
Okay, so thank you for that. I want to talk about where the current. For most people who haven't gone through one of our programs, where the current AI DNA lives in most companies, in the founder's head. For my company, it's probably a little bit of my head, a lot of Richard's head, a little bit of Saka's head. At least that's how it was so interesting. And then, as time goes on, when you bring on an employee, they kind of learn these unwritten rules and workflows. And it's funny, the lies we tell ourselves is that, you know, there's so many nuances and it's so complicated. The amount of business owners that have decision logic documented in their companies is zero. I mean, we were talking to a rather large corporation yesterday.
[04:38]
B
Mm.
[04:38]
A
With between employees, contractors in three countries. They have over 300 people and no documented decision logic or workflows. So, I mean, you can run off of it.
[04:51]
B
Yeah, it's a little chaotic, but. Yeah, a little.
[04:54]
A
But here's the thing. In today's world, we need to be capable of moving at a speed of AI output. And in order to move at a speed of AI output, the chaotic indecision behind not having documentation will be the thing that puts us out of business now 100%.
[05:19]
B
And there's so much like tribal knowledge we tell our students and people all the time. It's like, without things being documented, if you lose a key employee or, heaven forbid, a bus jumps out and, you know, runs you over and all that knowledge is locked inside somebody's head, it goes with them. So one just for humans, like, you need to have it documented and then two. Especially for all the future.
[05:40]
A
Right.
[05:40]
B
It's not even like we're not talking 10 years from now.
[05:43]
A
No, not at all.
[05:44]
B
You were lucky if we're, if we have six months.
[05:47]
A
We were just in a room with some of, you know, 45 of some of the smartest entrepreneurs that we know. And we had a wonderful debate on whether or not we've actually hit AGI or not. And many people think different things. But now we've got the models writing the models, so things are moving far quicker. And here's what I'd like to say about that. Employees used to be able to observe years of company behavior through relationship with other employees and figure it out so that it's good enough.
[06:24]
B
Right.
[06:25]
A
I accelerates everything by a thousand. At least.
[06:30]
B
At least.
[06:31]
A
And that's at this time of this recording. By the time this gets edited and put out there, which does not take us long at all, it may change. But if it increases everything speed by a thousand, I can't learn company behavior to get it good enough. It needs to know company behavior so it can make an excellent. Because the people who are jumping ahead, the businesses that are in front, are the businesses that have AI tools powered by AI agents, deployed by an AI
[07:02]
B
DNA period on the AI DNA. I mean, that's like 80 off into a rabbit hole.
[07:08]
A
Do it, but do it.
[07:09]
B
How often do we hear that, like, the agents don't work? They're not doing.
[07:13]
A
All the time.
[07:14]
B
It's so bad.
[07:15]
A
All the time.
[07:15]
C
All the time.
[07:16]
A
The outputs, terrible.
[07:18]
B
Yeah.
[07:19]
A
You're trying to build one agent to do 50 jobs. You have no DNA. And just like the people you've hired the past five years, they're failing because of your inability to be a leader. You're operating the business and not leading the business. You're stuck doing the deliverables. And then you're crying that things aren't working, but you're not building it. Right.
[07:45]
B
It's so cute how people will complain about the AI, like AI sucks. It's like, no, I bet you say the same thing about your human being employees.
[07:52]
A
Because 100% we know that.
[07:53]
B
Give them the context.
[07:54]
A
We know that every time. We know that every time. My favorite is that like the new, like real favorite thing for people to say is this whole generation doesn't want to work. There's a whole generation of people that refuse to work. No, they refuse to work for slave wages.
[08:13]
B
Yeah.
[08:13]
A
They refuse to work on company loyalty because we're not loyal to them that way. We expect them to be die on the sword, loyal for the company, but the first time they make a $10,000 mistake, they don't have a job.
[08:26]
B
Right?
[08:26]
A
Right. So they're refusing to deal with that anymore. And on top of that, the market, the way that things are, the forward thinking companies that are feeding the people who are hungry have siloed them off, held them, retain them, etc. Etc. I could talk about this for hours, but okay.
[08:46]
C
Interrupt this podcast to ask you to do a huge favor for us.
[08:50]
B
Huge.
[08:50]
C
We drop so much knowledge to help
[08:52]
B
you guys, but you're not going to
[08:54]
C
be notified unless you hit that subscribe and the notification bell to be notified the minute we drop a new episode to help you grow and scale your business.
[09:02]
A
Because you never know when we're going to be taken off YouTube.
[09:05]
C
You have no idea. Like I could all of a sudden be like Liam Neeson with a particular set of skills.
[09:09]
A
Also, we read every single comment.
[09:11]
C
So leave a question or comment, we will reply to it and maybe we'll even talk about it in a upcoming episode.
[09:17]
A
Probably. If you troll us, we will definitely talk about you in an upcoming episode. Thanks Y so back to the point, Aidna Yep. So important for your business if you haven't built a foundation of what your core things in your company are. Identity, execution, security, decision, workflows, judgments, judgments. Who, what, when, where, how and who. If you can't answer those questions. And by the way, we sit with companies all the time. We have as part of our boot camp, we have them make their first draft of this and people come back and I know instantly the business owners who have taken time to document things and think through things and the business owners that figured out how to sell something and just went into business. And the way that I know is I spent six hours on the first gene because our DNA is composed of chromosomes and those chromosomes are genes. Essentially it's 15 genes that take the 15 aspects of your company. And so when I did our company AI Workforce Lab, it took me the longest. That was the one that took me the longest. Took me three hours. It's a brand new company. When I did Shockwave, it took me 40 minutes.
[10:27]
C
Right?
[10:28]
A
It's a business that I've had in business for six years and everything is decently documented. It's now very well documented. I would have said it was very well. But then when I went through it still took me it, I still gave it everything and it still said here are the holes. And it still took me 45 minutes to go through its Questions to find the hole. So what Mitch and I created is one of our boot camps. Is a way that you get like you put all your stuff together, you give it to AI and then AI asks you questions. So it's completely built out, but people will come on and they'll be like, it was six hours just to get through identity. You don't know who the fuck you are, bro. That's what happened. You don't know what your business is because again, you found something, you sold it well. And instead of like really painting a future and what that business is going to provide, your goals have been around making money or selling more or more. More product delivery and not impact purpose or cause. I'll let you wrap this up though. I went on my soapbox enough.
[11:30]
B
No, I love it. I mean you're 100%. Words are hard. Spot on. In this day and age. Things are moving so freaking fast. Like the AI. Any AI, any platform has to understand everything. And yeah, building your AI DNA might be a bit of an eye opener. And I like to say that, you know, even as just a person, if you look at like self awareness, like doing this exercise will be eye opening and it will be a form of self awareness on your business and it's going to hurt. But like you have to do it if you want to succeed in the future.
[12:07]
A
The thing that I'll say is will it be time consuming and hurt? Yes. The ROI on your time is enormous.
[12:15]
B
Thousand percent.
[12:15]
A
We had a few hundred people go through our most recent bootcamp and I want to say at least 60 of them posted between Facebook and Instagram and to our customer support channel that the clarity that came behind that already had freed up their time the first week, like not a month in, not six weeks in, not after they built their entire workforce the first week. They built it because the decision making process, when you're responding rather than reacting because you've thought through things. And a guy. Back when I started doing like this for businesses as a service, Shockwave Solutions, that is when I started doing this, I would sit down with an owner, I'm not kidding, for three days, for eight to 10 hours a day, for three days I would fly out to where they were, we would get in a conference room. Some people we'd get in their kitchen. It just depend like Perry Belcher and Stephen Georgia. We were in the kitchen. But for, you know, a lot of people we did, you know, a conference room in their office, but for three days. And I'm not kidding, I'm talking eight to 10, sometimes 12 hours. And we would go through their entire business in every aspect, in every department, and their vision for the business and their values and what they were trying to achieve in 10 years, three years, one year, it took so much. And then it would take me three weeks to go through and make version one and then would take me another two months to go through and create all the SOPs and all the workflows. I was doing it all by hand. This was way pre AI. Yeah. Like every single thing was typed right here by me or my team. And now we're doing that in hours. The whole thing. Not weeks, not months, the entire thing, we're doing in hours. And if your business is very fragile, awful foundation. No thought. We're talking eight to 12 hours total out the door with every SOP documented, every workflow documented, every decision logic documented, first set of agents planned employee roles understood, identified, and clarified in hours and hours. That's wild. But the roi, that's what I'm saying.
[14:34]
B
Yeah. Even that time, there's a time roi, six hours versus several months. And let's be honest.
[14:40]
A
But that's not even. That's not even the money. That's not even the money. The money is when your people don't need to send you 15 Slack messages because the decision logic is documented. When something goes wrong and they can look up what to do, instead of throwing a fire at you after it's turned into a barn fire, they're putting it out at Kindling because it's understood and documented what to do.
[15:05]
B
Yep.
[15:06]
A
So, I mean, it's just a different world now. And like we were on. Not to go on another, but we were on a call with a guy today and he was like, I don't, by the way. So at the time of recording, it's July 23rd. We were on a call with the guy today.
[15:22]
B
I don't have the time. Or there's not enough time.
[15:24]
A
What, there's not enough time to get a store open for Halloween stuff? It's July 23rd. I said, when do you need the store open by? Like, when do you need a functioning by? He said, September 1st?
[15:39]
B
Something like that. Yeah.
[15:40]
A
I can't get everything figured out by September 1st. I can get a page up, I can get a store up, I can get products, I can get product descriptions all using AI in minutes. We told them how to source the products for a version one to see what he was going to sell and he could resource them the next year at a higher margin. But we told him how to do it at a still a great margin this year now and be up and running in five days. And he's like, the world doesn't work the same. I remember it was like 30 days for an offer. And that's not like custom formulas and stuff like that, but just like 30 days for an offer build, if you had it 10 days for upsell downsell changes, three days for split test changes. Now it's like everything can be done in 24, 48 or 72 hours. Everything in our company is 24, 48 or 72 hours. Most things only take an hour. But I mean the, the, the buckets are those.
[16:40]
B
Yeah.
[16:40]
A
If we can't get an entire product line out in 72 hours. And again, custom formulas have to go through. Manufacturing are going to be different, but for the most part you can test anything.
[16:50]
B
Yep.
[16:51]
A
And you should be testing in 72 hours.
[16:54]
B
100%. Anyway, moral of the story, hurry up for tomorrow. You need to have an AI DNA for your business. If you want to keep up, keep up and still be here in 24 hours. That's how fast it feels like it's moving.
[17:11]
A
I mean, that is how fast it feels.
[17:13]
B
I don't know that it's not a true number. It's just what it feels like, you know?
[17:16]
A
But no.
[17:17]
B
And we'll talk about the aid DNA stuff more in detail soon.
[17:21]
A
We have tons of. As a matter of fact, we filmed a few pieces of content today, so I'm pretty sure the aid DNA like the overview is on our YouTube already. So go find it and learn more. We've got tons. Yeah, we've got tons and more coming out. So like and subscribe so you get a notification whenever we put new stuff out. And again, follow the yellow brick road podcast.com Sign up for a bunch of our free stuff. And if you're interested in checking out the AI Workforce Lab, it's the aiworkforcelab.com super simple links in the description. Thanks, guys. That's it for today's episode of Follow the Yellow Brick Road, where the wizard of Ads and the wizard of Ops break down what it really takes to build and scale a profitable online business.
[18:04]
C
If you found this episode useful, make sure to go to Follow the Yellow Brick to check out the hidden control chamber for all kinds of awesome freebies, guides, checklists, everything that we do to grow businesses.
[18:18]
A
So hop over there and grab all those free resources in the hidden control chamber. And remember, getting traffic is one thing. Turning it into customers that build the systems to support real growth. That's where the real magic happens. Until next time.
[18:35]
C
Stay.
[18:36]
A
Keep following the yellow brick road.

Summary6 min read

Follow The Yellow Brick Road

Episode Summary: Build Your AI DNA: The Foundation That Makes AI Actually Know Your Business

Hosts: Emma Rainville (Wizard of Ops) & Mitch Barham (Wizard of Ads)
Date: August 11, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the concept of "AI DNA” for businesses, exploring what it is, why it matters, and how documenting the true ‘DNA’ of your company is essential to futureproofing your operations in the era of AI agents. Emma and Mitch emphasize that scale, systems, and AI-readiness all hinge on extracting the knowledge, decision logic, and cultural essence from founders’ heads and making it accessible, actionable, and AI-operational.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Documentation is Non-Negotiable in the Age of AI

Speed of AI output demands structure:
“In today’s world, we need to be capable of moving at a speed of AI output. The chaotic indecision behind not having documentation will be the thing that puts us out of business now." – Emma (00:00)
Risk of knowledge in silos:
“If you lose a key employee and all that knowledge is locked inside somebody’s head, it goes with them.” – Mitch (00:12)

2. What is AI DNA?

Core Definition:
“AI DNA is essentially... all the context that will turn a generic AI into something that actually knows your business. It’s like you would hand a new employee. It’s your SOPs, it’s your who you are, what you do, who you serve. It is literally the Backbone DNA of your entire business.” – Mitch (02:21)
Goes beyond just SOPs:
“With your AI DNA, it’s not just to help you write better copy or produce better outputs. It’s to run your entire business, both human and artificial intelligence. And hopefully soon, robotics.” – Emma (03:00)

3. Where Does Most Company DNA Live?

Founders’ and long-timers’ heads:
“Where the current AI DNA lives in most companies [is] in the founder’s head...as time goes on, when you bring on an employee, they kind of learn these unwritten rules and workflows.” – Emma (03:43)
The ‘Lies We Tell Ourselves’:
“There’s so many nuances and it’s so complicated. The amount of business owners that have decision logic documented in their companies is zero.” – Emma (04:13)

4. The Consequences of Skipping Documentation

Business fragility:
“You’re trying to build one agent to do 50 jobs. You have no DNA. And just like the people you’ve hired the past five years, they’re failing because of your inability to be a leader.” – Emma (07:19)
AI (and employees) can’t perform without context:
“It’s so cute how people will complain about the AI, like ‘AI sucks.’ It’s like, no, I bet you say the same thing about your human being employees...Give them the context.” – Mitch (07:44)

5. Building Your AI DNA: Core Elements

Must-have categories:
“If you haven’t built a foundation of what your core things in your company are—Identity, execution, security, decision, workflows, judgments, who, what, when, where, how and who—if you can’t answer those questions...” – Emma (09:17)
AI DNA Framework:
“Our DNA is composed of chromosomes and those chromosomes are genes. Essentially it’s 15 genes that take the 15 aspects of your company.” – Emma (09:54)

6. Building Process & Common Struggles

Time commitment as a self-awareness exercise:
“Building your AI DNA might be a bit of an eye opener....It will be a form of self-awareness on your business and it’s going to hurt. But you have to do it if you want to succeed in the future.” – Mitch (11:29)
ROI is immediate and significant:
“Will it be time consuming and hurt? Yes. The ROI on your time is enormous.” – Emma (12:07)
“The clarity that came behind that already had freed up their time the first week...not a month in, not six weeks.” – Emma (12:15)

7. The Power of Modern Tools vs. Old School Approaches

Old way:
“Back when I started doing this for businesses...I would sit down with an owner for three days, eight to ten hours a day...then it would take me three weeks to...make version one, then another two months for SOPs and workflows.” – Emma (13:05)
Now with AI:
“Now we’re doing that in hours. The whole thing...If your business is very fragile, awful foundation...we’re talking eight to twelve hours total out the door with every SOP documented, every workflow documented, every decision logic documented, first set of agents planned, employee roles understood...” – Emma (13:59)
Time and money savings:
“The money is when your people don’t need to send you 15 Slack messages because the decision logic is documented.” – Emma (14:40)

8. Speed and Market Expectations Have Changed—Forever

Faster everything:
“Everything can be done in 24, 48 or 72 hours. Everything in our company is 24, 48 or 72 hours. Most things only take an hour.” – Emma (16:28)
Adapt or get left behind:
“You need to have an AI DNA for your business if you want to keep up, keep up and still be here in 24 hours. That’s how fast it feels like it’s moving.” – Mitch (16:53)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the AI documentation wake-up call:

“It’s generally because they don’t understand a lot of those components. And with your AI DNA...it’s to run your entire business, both human and artificial intelligence.”
— Emma (03:00)
On context-less agents (or staff):

“You’re trying to build one agent to do 50 jobs. You have no DNA. And just like the people you’ve hired…the past five years, they’re failing because of your inability to be a leader.”
— Emma (07:19)
On the generational shift in work:

“No, they refuse to work for slave wages. They refuse to work on company loyalty because we’re not loyal to them that way.”
— Emma (07:54)
On the stark difference made by clarity:

“The clarity that came behind that already had freed up their time the first week...”
— Emma (12:15)
On the speed of business:

“If we can’t get an entire product line out in 72 hours...for the most part, you can test anything. And you should be testing in 72 hours.”
— Emma (16:40)
Encouragement for founders:

“Moral of the story, hurry up for tomorrow. You need to have an AI DNA for your business if you want to keep up, keep up and still be here in 24 hours.”
— Mitch (16:53)

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:00 – 01:07: Introduction and stakes of failing to document knowledge
02:21 – 03:00: Definition and purpose of AI DNA
03:43 – 04:51: Reality of undocumented knowledge in even large companies
07:09 – 08:25: Why agents/employees fail and the myth of context-free performance
09:17 – 10:27: What’s included in your company’s DNA; overview of the gene/chromosome framework
12:07 – 13:59: ROI of building your AI DNA; prior vs. current approaches
16:28 – 16:53: Radical shifts in execution speed and why founders must adapt

Final Takeaways

If your business’s operational DNA isn’t documented, both people and AI will fail to perform.
The process of building your AI DNA is challenging but yields immediate benefits—from clarity and time savings to true scalability.
The speed of change is exponential: what once took weeks or months now takes hours—but only if the groundwork is in place.
Context, decision logic, and the ‘why’ behind every process must be made explicit for AI (and new hires) to deliver results.
Founders must see documentation and systemization not as a chore, but as the highest-impact leadership move they can make as AI reshapes the business landscape.

Additional Resources Mentioned

Free resources, courses, and templates for building your AI DNA:
FollowTheYellowBrickRoadPodcast.com
For more on operationalizing AI:
AIWorkforceLab.com

Loading summary

Transcript81 lines

[00:00]
A
In today's world, we need to be capable of moving at a speed of AI output. The chaotic indecision behind not having documentation will be the thing that puts us
[00:12]
B
out of business now 100% without things being documented. If you lose a key employee and all that knowledge is locked inside somebody's head, it goes with them.
[00:19]
A
You're trying to build one agent to do 50 jobs. You have no DNA. And just like the people you've hired the past five years, they. They're failing because of your inability to be a leader. And then you're crying that things aren't working, but you're not building it right. Welcome to Follow the Yellow Brick Road, the show where online businesses learn how to turn clicks into customers and growth into real scale. I'm your co host, Emma Rainville, the wizard of ops, helping companies transform chaos into systems that actually run.
[00:52]
C
And I'm Mitch Barham, the wizard of ads, the guy who knows how to turn paid traffic into predictable revenue. Together, we break down what really drives profitable online businesses, from traffic and funnels to operations, scaling and everything behind the curtain. Because getting customers is only half the battle.
[01:07]
A
The real magic happens when ads and operations work together. So if you want smarter traffic, stronger systems, and a clear path to scaling your business, you're in the right place. Let's follow the Yellow Brick Road. On this episode of Follow the Yellow Brick Road, we're going to be talking about your AI DNA. Did you know that your company already has one? It's probably just not documented yet. Mitch and I are going to explore and explain today. However, if you haven't gone over to Follow the yellow brick road podcast.com and signed up for our control room, where we have loads of free courses and templates and checklists and all kinds of stuff for you. We never try and sell you there. It's just totally free all the time for our community. You should definitely run over there and get yourself a free membership login and start taking some of the courses and running through some of the free knowledge that we have. Match, come on. I am super excited about today. I know that we talk about Aidna all the time on here, but for someone who might be tuning in for the first time, quick overview. What's an AI DNA?
[02:21]
B
AI DNA is essentially, it's all the context that will turn a generic AI into something that actually knows your business. So it's like you would hand a new employee. It's your SOPs, it's your who you are, what you do, who you serve. It is literally the Backbone DNA of your entire business. Right. With that context, these AI agents and AI itself literally is able to operate as your business, as a new hire. When they walk in, you know, like your employee handbooks, your. All your SOPs, your tools that you guys use internally, it's everything it knows
[03:00]
A
what, where, when, how, who and why and why. And the most important reason. The why. Yeah. A lot of businesses function in this state of, I tell my employees everything, and they still don't know they can't keep up with me. Or projects just don't get done. It's generally because they don't understand a lot of those components. And with your AI DNA, it is not just the function agents. It absolutely helps function agents. It's not just to help you write better copy or produce better outputs. It's to run your entire business, both human and artificial intelligence. And hopefully soon robotics.
[03:42]
B
That'll be wild.
[03:43]
A
Yeah.
[03:43]
C
But.
[03:44]
A
Okay, so thank you for that. I want to talk about where the current. For most people who haven't gone through one of our programs, where the current AI DNA lives in most companies, in the founder's head. For my company, it's probably a little bit of my head, a lot of Richard's head, a little bit of Saka's head. At least that's how it was so interesting. And then, as time goes on, when you bring on an employee, they kind of learn these unwritten rules and workflows. And it's funny, the lies we tell ourselves is that, you know, there's so many nuances and it's so complicated. The amount of business owners that have decision logic documented in their companies is zero. I mean, we were talking to a rather large corporation yesterday.
[04:38]
B
Mm.
[04:38]
A
With between employees, contractors in three countries. They have over 300 people and no documented decision logic or workflows. So, I mean, you can run off of it.
[04:51]
B
Yeah, it's a little chaotic, but. Yeah, a little.
[04:54]
A
But here's the thing. In today's world, we need to be capable of moving at a speed of AI output. And in order to move at a speed of AI output, the chaotic indecision behind not having documentation will be the thing that puts us out of business now 100%.
[05:19]
B
And there's so much like tribal knowledge we tell our students and people all the time. It's like, without things being documented, if you lose a key employee or, heaven forbid, a bus jumps out and, you know, runs you over and all that knowledge is locked inside somebody's head, it goes with them. So one just for humans, like, you need to have it documented and then two. Especially for all the future.
[05:40]
A
Right.
[05:40]
B
It's not even like we're not talking 10 years from now.
[05:43]
A
No, not at all.
[05:44]
B
You were lucky if we're, if we have six months.
[05:47]
A
We were just in a room with some of, you know, 45 of some of the smartest entrepreneurs that we know. And we had a wonderful debate on whether or not we've actually hit AGI or not. And many people think different things. But now we've got the models writing the models, so things are moving far quicker. And here's what I'd like to say about that. Employees used to be able to observe years of company behavior through relationship with other employees and figure it out so that it's good enough.
[06:24]
B
Right.
[06:25]
A
I accelerates everything by a thousand. At least.
[06:30]
B
At least.
[06:31]
A
And that's at this time of this recording. By the time this gets edited and put out there, which does not take us long at all, it may change. But if it increases everything speed by a thousand, I can't learn company behavior to get it good enough. It needs to know company behavior so it can make an excellent. Because the people who are jumping ahead, the businesses that are in front, are the businesses that have AI tools powered by AI agents, deployed by an AI
[07:02]
B
DNA period on the AI DNA. I mean, that's like 80 off into a rabbit hole.
[07:08]
A
Do it, but do it.
[07:09]
B
How often do we hear that, like, the agents don't work? They're not doing.
[07:13]
A
All the time.
[07:14]
B
It's so bad.
[07:15]
A
All the time.
[07:15]
C
All the time.
[07:16]
A
The outputs, terrible.
[07:18]
B
Yeah.
[07:19]
A
You're trying to build one agent to do 50 jobs. You have no DNA. And just like the people you've hired the past five years, they're failing because of your inability to be a leader. You're operating the business and not leading the business. You're stuck doing the deliverables. And then you're crying that things aren't working, but you're not building it. Right.
[07:45]
B
It's so cute how people will complain about the AI, like AI sucks. It's like, no, I bet you say the same thing about your human being employees.
[07:52]
A
Because 100% we know that.
[07:53]
B
Give them the context.
[07:54]
A
We know that every time. We know that every time. My favorite is that like the new, like real favorite thing for people to say is this whole generation doesn't want to work. There's a whole generation of people that refuse to work. No, they refuse to work for slave wages.
[08:13]
B
Yeah.
[08:13]
A
They refuse to work on company loyalty because we're not loyal to them that way. We expect them to be die on the sword, loyal for the company, but the first time they make a $10,000 mistake, they don't have a job.
[08:26]
B
Right?
[08:26]
A
Right. So they're refusing to deal with that anymore. And on top of that, the market, the way that things are, the forward thinking companies that are feeding the people who are hungry have siloed them off, held them, retain them, etc. Etc. I could talk about this for hours, but okay.
[08:46]
C
Interrupt this podcast to ask you to do a huge favor for us.
[08:50]
B
Huge.
[08:50]
C
We drop so much knowledge to help
[08:52]
B
you guys, but you're not going to
[08:54]
C
be notified unless you hit that subscribe and the notification bell to be notified the minute we drop a new episode to help you grow and scale your business.
[09:02]
A
Because you never know when we're going to be taken off YouTube.
[09:05]
C
You have no idea. Like I could all of a sudden be like Liam Neeson with a particular set of skills.
[09:09]
A
Also, we read every single comment.
[09:11]
C
So leave a question or comment, we will reply to it and maybe we'll even talk about it in a upcoming episode.
[09:17]
A
Probably. If you troll us, we will definitely talk about you in an upcoming episode. Thanks Y so back to the point, Aidna Yep. So important for your business if you haven't built a foundation of what your core things in your company are. Identity, execution, security, decision, workflows, judgments, judgments. Who, what, when, where, how and who. If you can't answer those questions. And by the way, we sit with companies all the time. We have as part of our boot camp, we have them make their first draft of this and people come back and I know instantly the business owners who have taken time to document things and think through things and the business owners that figured out how to sell something and just went into business. And the way that I know is I spent six hours on the first gene because our DNA is composed of chromosomes and those chromosomes are genes. Essentially it's 15 genes that take the 15 aspects of your company. And so when I did our company AI Workforce Lab, it took me the longest. That was the one that took me the longest. Took me three hours. It's a brand new company. When I did Shockwave, it took me 40 minutes.
[10:27]
C
Right?
[10:28]
A
It's a business that I've had in business for six years and everything is decently documented. It's now very well documented. I would have said it was very well. But then when I went through it still took me it, I still gave it everything and it still said here are the holes. And it still took me 45 minutes to go through its Questions to find the hole. So what Mitch and I created is one of our boot camps. Is a way that you get like you put all your stuff together, you give it to AI and then AI asks you questions. So it's completely built out, but people will come on and they'll be like, it was six hours just to get through identity. You don't know who the fuck you are, bro. That's what happened. You don't know what your business is because again, you found something, you sold it well. And instead of like really painting a future and what that business is going to provide, your goals have been around making money or selling more or more. More product delivery and not impact purpose or cause. I'll let you wrap this up though. I went on my soapbox enough.
[11:30]
B
No, I love it. I mean you're 100%. Words are hard. Spot on. In this day and age. Things are moving so freaking fast. Like the AI. Any AI, any platform has to understand everything. And yeah, building your AI DNA might be a bit of an eye opener. And I like to say that, you know, even as just a person, if you look at like self awareness, like doing this exercise will be eye opening and it will be a form of self awareness on your business and it's going to hurt. But like you have to do it if you want to succeed in the future.
[12:07]
A
The thing that I'll say is will it be time consuming and hurt? Yes. The ROI on your time is enormous.
[12:15]
B
Thousand percent.
[12:15]
A
We had a few hundred people go through our most recent bootcamp and I want to say at least 60 of them posted between Facebook and Instagram and to our customer support channel that the clarity that came behind that already had freed up their time the first week, like not a month in, not six weeks in, not after they built their entire workforce the first week. They built it because the decision making process, when you're responding rather than reacting because you've thought through things. And a guy. Back when I started doing like this for businesses as a service, Shockwave Solutions, that is when I started doing this, I would sit down with an owner, I'm not kidding, for three days, for eight to 10 hours a day, for three days I would fly out to where they were, we would get in a conference room. Some people we'd get in their kitchen. It just depend like Perry Belcher and Stephen Georgia. We were in the kitchen. But for, you know, a lot of people we did, you know, a conference room in their office, but for three days. And I'm not kidding, I'm talking eight to 10, sometimes 12 hours. And we would go through their entire business in every aspect, in every department, and their vision for the business and their values and what they were trying to achieve in 10 years, three years, one year, it took so much. And then it would take me three weeks to go through and make version one and then would take me another two months to go through and create all the SOPs and all the workflows. I was doing it all by hand. This was way pre AI. Yeah. Like every single thing was typed right here by me or my team. And now we're doing that in hours. The whole thing. Not weeks, not months, the entire thing, we're doing in hours. And if your business is very fragile, awful foundation. No thought. We're talking eight to 12 hours total out the door with every SOP documented, every workflow documented, every decision logic documented, first set of agents planned employee roles understood, identified, and clarified in hours and hours. That's wild. But the roi, that's what I'm saying.
[14:34]
B
Yeah. Even that time, there's a time roi, six hours versus several months. And let's be honest.
[14:40]
A
But that's not even. That's not even the money. That's not even the money. The money is when your people don't need to send you 15 Slack messages because the decision logic is documented. When something goes wrong and they can look up what to do, instead of throwing a fire at you after it's turned into a barn fire, they're putting it out at Kindling because it's understood and documented what to do.
[15:05]
B
Yep.
[15:06]
A
So, I mean, it's just a different world now. And like we were on. Not to go on another, but we were on a call with a guy today and he was like, I don't, by the way. So at the time of recording, it's July 23rd. We were on a call with the guy today.
[15:22]
B
I don't have the time. Or there's not enough time.
[15:24]
A
What, there's not enough time to get a store open for Halloween stuff? It's July 23rd. I said, when do you need the store open by? Like, when do you need a functioning by? He said, September 1st?
[15:39]
B
Something like that. Yeah.
[15:40]
A
I can't get everything figured out by September 1st. I can get a page up, I can get a store up, I can get products, I can get product descriptions all using AI in minutes. We told them how to source the products for a version one to see what he was going to sell and he could resource them the next year at a higher margin. But we told him how to do it at a still a great margin this year now and be up and running in five days. And he's like, the world doesn't work the same. I remember it was like 30 days for an offer. And that's not like custom formulas and stuff like that, but just like 30 days for an offer build, if you had it 10 days for upsell downsell changes, three days for split test changes. Now it's like everything can be done in 24, 48 or 72 hours. Everything in our company is 24, 48 or 72 hours. Most things only take an hour. But I mean the, the, the buckets are those.
[16:40]
B
Yeah.
[16:40]
A
If we can't get an entire product line out in 72 hours. And again, custom formulas have to go through. Manufacturing are going to be different, but for the most part you can test anything.
[16:50]
B
Yep.
[16:51]
A
And you should be testing in 72 hours.
[16:54]
B
100%. Anyway, moral of the story, hurry up for tomorrow. You need to have an AI DNA for your business. If you want to keep up, keep up and still be here in 24 hours. That's how fast it feels like it's moving.
[17:11]
A
I mean, that is how fast it feels.
[17:13]
B
I don't know that it's not a true number. It's just what it feels like, you know?
[17:16]
A
But no.
[17:17]
B
And we'll talk about the aid DNA stuff more in detail soon.
[17:21]
A
We have tons of. As a matter of fact, we filmed a few pieces of content today, so I'm pretty sure the aid DNA like the overview is on our YouTube already. So go find it and learn more. We've got tons. Yeah, we've got tons and more coming out. So like and subscribe so you get a notification whenever we put new stuff out. And again, follow the yellow brick road podcast.com Sign up for a bunch of our free stuff. And if you're interested in checking out the AI Workforce Lab, it's the aiworkforcelab.com super simple links in the description. Thanks, guys. That's it for today's episode of Follow the Yellow Brick Road, where the wizard of Ads and the wizard of Ops break down what it really takes to build and scale a profitable online business.
[18:04]
C
If you found this episode useful, make sure to go to Follow the Yellow Brick to check out the hidden control chamber for all kinds of awesome freebies, guides, checklists, everything that we do to grow businesses.
[18:18]
A
So hop over there and grab all those free resources in the hidden control chamber. And remember, getting traffic is one thing. Turning it into customers that build the systems to support real growth. That's where the real magic happens. Until next time.
[18:35]
C
Stay.
[18:36]
A
Keep following the yellow brick road.