The AI Agent Scam Marketers Don’t Want You to See

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The AI Agent Scam Marketers Don’t Want You to See"

Follow The Yellow Brick Road — Episode released May 26, 2026
Hosts: Emma Rainville (Wizard of Ops, Founder of Shockwave Solutions) & Mitch Barham (Wizard of Ads, Founder of Barham Marketing)

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Emma and Mitch tackle the hype and misinformation sweeping through online business circles about building AI agent “workforces.” They pull back the curtain on why most AI-driven systems pitched by marketers are recipes for disaster without true operational thinking—and warn founders that blindly following these trends can cripple their businesses. Blending real-world stories with actionable advice, Emma and Mitch draw a sharp line between visionary marketing and actual business scale, showing listeners the pitfalls and potential of AI agents when managed right.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. AI’s Disruption of the Agency Model

• [00:00-02:15] Both hosts agree the traditional agency world is “dying because of AI,” and there’s a gold rush to teach “AI army” tactics.
• Quote (Emma, 00:18):

  “When you replace problems with AI and autonomous agents that needed a system first, you’re creating a web that’s going to hit ceilings far faster.”

• Warning: Over-automation, without a real operational scaffold in place, just multiplies chaos instead of solving it.

---

2. Why Marketers Make Bad AI System Designers

• [02:49-04:02] Marketers, according to Mitch, are often “the worst managers of people”—they’re idea people, not process people.
• Quote (Mitch, 03:03):

  “Marketers traditionally are the worst managers of people. They’re creatives where they’re like, ‘oh, I had this idea, I want to sell this. Great, let’s throw it up.’”

• [04:05-05:19] Emma relays experiences with companies where marketers built teams by “throwing a person at every problem instead of a system,” turning simple problems into tangled workloads.

---

3. Growing Pains: Operational Ceilings at Scale

• [05:19-07:47] Through stories of companies ballooning from $15M to $100M, Emma details scaling complications in customer service, deliverability, merchant accounts, and tech stack.
• Quote (Emma, 06:02):

  “Even on info products… when you’re getting 3,000 sales an hour… there are systems that you have to have in place… these problems don’t just magically go away.”

• Key Learning: Massive growth exposes every broken system; AI isn’t a silver bullet for foundational business processes.

---

4. AI Agents: The Double-Edged Sword

• [07:48-10:28]
  • If you build AI teams on broken or misunderstood workflows, you end up with “a second full-time job” managing prompts and failures.
  • Marketers often automate what they don’t fully understand, scaling dysfunction instead of eliminating it.

---

5. SOPs, Checks, and the Human Factor

• [10:28-15:08]
  • Written SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) are often AI-generated and lack context, reason (“the why”), and detailed checks.
  • Emma’s story (13:36-15:08):
    Her operational team repeatedly failed at QA (broken links in critical email sequences), leading to a “ninja pan” meltdown—a colorful illustration that even ops-focused founders aren’t immune to process failures!
  • Memorable Quote (Emma, 15:08):

    “Does an agent have eyes?… What do you need to do for an agent to QA? To give very specific instructions of screenshots, of how to review screenshots? Do you think that these marketers are thinking through that?”

---

6. The Myth of the $1B, No-Employee Business

• [15:10-16:40]
  • The idea of a “founder with a bunch of agents” is technically possible, but only for those who are deeply skilled operators.
  • Founders tempted by this vision, without foundational ops knowledge, are at huge risk.

---

7. Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Training (Human or AI) Matters

• [16:40-18:10]
  • AI is only as good as the instructions/training it’s given—badly trained agents are as useless as badly trained people.
  • Most marketers “would never hire a marketer to manage your HR… Why would you hire them to build an agent?” (Emma, 21:24)

---

8. The Operator-Visionary Divide

• [22:11-26:08]

  • Debate sparks over whether top “AI marketers” truly build scalable businesses or just provide vision.

  • Emma: Draws clear lines between visionary marketers and integrator/operators.

  • Mitch: Acknowledges that blending both is rare, which is why their partnership works.

  • Notable analogy (Emma, 24:33-25:45):
    She compares operational and visionary roles to Walt and Roy Disney, and the McDonald's brothers—“without both, it would have flopped.”

---

9. Buyer Beware: Selecting Real AI Builders

• [26:08-27:18]
  • Before you buy into any “AI agent system,” ask: “Are we connecting them? Can I see it connected before I give them a dollar?”
  • Many agents are actually disconnected automations that can’t scale, forcing the founder to micro-manage.

---

10. Workflows: The Real Foundation for Automation

• [27:18-27:58]
  • Every real business has “hundreds of thousands of workflows”—if founders can’t articulate them, they’re not ready to automate.

---

11. Closing Advice

• [27:33-27:58]
  • Mitch: “You just build yourself another 40 hour a week job or more. Don’t do it.”
  • Emma: Know your workflows—skills before tools. Don’t let marketers sell you “a thousand little doers” if you don’t even have basic processes mapped.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Emma (00:18):

  “When you replace problems with AI and autonomous agents that needed a system first, you’re creating a web that’s going to hit ceilings far faster.”

• Mitch (03:03):

  “Marketers traditionally are the worst managers of people. They’re creatives… let’s throw it up.”

• Emma (06:02):

  “Even on info products… these problems don’t just magically go away.”

• Emma (15:08):

  “Does an agent have eyes?”

• Emma (21:24):

  “You would never hire a marketer to manage your HR ever, ever, ever, full stop, ever. Why would you hire them to build an agent?”

• Emma (25:45):

  “Without both [visionary and operator], it would have flopped.”

• Mitch (27:33):

  “You just build yourself another 40 hour a week job or more. Don’t do it.”

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00-02:15 — State of agencies in the AI era and the “AI agent” sales pitch
• 03:03-04:48 — Why marketers fail at scaling teams & ops
• 05:19-07:47 — Scaling pains: Broken systems at high growth
• 10:28-15:08 — QA horror stories & the limits of SOPs
• 16:40-18:10 — Garbage in, garbage out: Why AI failures are training failures
• 21:24-22:49 — You wouldn’t hire a marketer for HR; don’t do it for agents either
• 24:33-25:45 — Visionaries vs Operators (Disney, McDonald’s analogy)
• 26:08-27:18 — “Show me it works!” before buying any AI system
• 27:18-27:58 — Workflows as the real automation foundation

---

Tone & Style Notes

The conversation is fast, candid, and colored with real-world war stories and playful bickering. Emma and Mitch are direct, often irreverent, and deeply grounded in operational reality. They stress the dangers of following marketing “gurus” who don’t actually know how scalable businesses work — all while remaining encouraging about the real potential of AI when built on a foundation of process and operational skill.

---

Useful Takeaway for Founders:
AI agents are powerful—if, and only if, they’re layered on robust business systems and workflows. Don’t buy the dream of effortless AI automation from people who can’t show you connected, operational examples. Master your operations first—tools come second.

---

Transcript

[A]

The agency world is dying because of AI. You have every marketer out there talking about how they're going to teach you how to build workforces, armies, using AI agents. Tell me why that's a bad idea.

[B]

Because they're not real operators, they're creatives.

[A]

When you replace problems with AI and autonomous agents that needed a system first, you're creating a web that's going to hit ceilings far faster. What you're building is a thousand little doers that you're going to need to prompt.

[B]

You. Just build yourself another 40 hour job or more. Don't do it.

[A]

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.

[B]

And I'm Mitch Barham, the wizard of ads, the guy who knows us 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.

[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. We've actually had this conversation a couple times, you and I. It's an interesting conversation, I think, to have. You and I teach AI agent creation, connection management. We have a workshop, a boot camp, several things we call AI Workforce Lab. For those of you that don't know that best on the market. And the reason it's the best on the market is because it's built by operators who understand managing teams across multiple departments, communication channels across multiple departments that understand building projects, understand project management, understand workflows, sops, not just in one small department or on one small subject, but on a whole business infrastructure and at scale.

[B]

Right?

[A]

The agency world is dying because of AI.

[B]

It is.

[A]

We both know that. We both own agents, we both seen it. Yes, in our own businesses. And it's true. Nobody wants to admit that. Everybody wants to talk about how great they're doing, but we know that it's true. Mm. And because of that, you have every marketer out there talking about how they're going to teach you how to build workforces, armies, whatever you want to call it, using autonomous agents. Agents, whatever you want to say. Tell me why that's a bad idea.

[B]

Because they're not real operators. Marketing and marketers most likely never had to Actually onboard tons of people at

[A]

one time or they did and create a complete mess.

[B]

Oh, absolutely.

[A]

That's why I get paid.

[B]

Marketers traditionally are the worst managers of people. They're creatives where they're like, oh, I had this idea, I want to sell this. Great, let's throw it up.

[A]

Yay.

[B]

Everything's hunky dory when it comes to operations and stitching things together. And like, you know, even in an agency you have different departments. You have like, traditionally you had your graphic design department, your copywriters, or, you know, landing page copy, like every. You didn't, you didn't want one person to really. I mean, finding somebody that could do one thing was like a unit, like all of it in one was absolute unicorn. But just stitching together communications and the entire process of how everything needs to go, you know, copy to graphics, to scripts, to videos, story, like storyboarding out of video. Like there was a whole, whole process. Marketers in general, in my opinion, don't have that full blown capability to think in those kinds of steps. It's just throw at the wall, hey, that spaghetti stuck.

[A]

Yay, 100%.

[B]

I like my spaghetti analogy.

[A]

I find that the best clients for me, because of my brain and how much I like to charge, are marketers who know how to sell a product, who know how to absolutely go out there and get customers acquired.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And at a fast and pathetically high quantity. And I say pathetically high quantity because oftentimes they are not capable of profitability because of the web that they built. Additionally, they love to throw a person at every problem instead of a system.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I've gone into companies that had 15 million in revenue, 23 employees that were all their local bartender, waitress, masseuse that this owner liked, brought them all into a company and I had to untangle it. We grew 50 million the first year, 100 million the second year, 20. And in 24 months we were at 100 million. And it took that long. I've talked to you about this company before. It took that long because of how much I had to untangle what was already there.

[B]

Which is funny to me that you say it took that long because still, that is some insane, amazing growth that you were managing that scale. Like 15 to 50 is huge. 50 to 100 is huge.

[A]

I think the hardest is once you hit 10, 15 to get to 25, because you're clawing at that point. It's actually not that hard. If you can get to 2, it's not that hard to get to 10 to 15 depending on the product.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then once, once you get there, it's, it's actually gets really hard.

[B]

No, for sure. But even going that trajectory, I guess my point was like to keep up with that trajectory and implement this on the back.

[A]

On the back, on the back side you have merchant account issues, you have customer service issues, you have deliverability issues. Even on info products. Well, it's an info product so we won't have a problem delivering. Except you can only be watching VSLs. Only so many people can watch a VSL at the same time. People don't understand that when you're getting 3,000 sales an hour on average, 12 hours a day, and then 1,000 sales on average the other 12 hours, there are systems that you have to have in place that your VSL will run because believe it or not, they don't just magically happen no matter how many people. Additionally, when you have a members area, you have to have the appropriate middleware because if you have member mouse kajabi, ghl, doesn't matter what it is, if you don't have the proper middleware, when you start compounding people at that rate and you have 100,000 users trying to get on at once or a million users trying to get on at once, yeah, it breaks your members area. People don't understand these problems. Your merchant accounts, when you go from 2 million to 5 million a month, when you go from 5 million to 8 million the next month, your merchant accounts will start holding 30% of your money. If you didn't scale that properly and let them know properly and make sure that you are sending them bank statements and pre warning them, not they find out about it. And what is your profit margin usually at scale at that pace? Almost nothing, if anything at all. Sometimes you're actually in the negative because you're running to increase on what you're bringing in. And it's okay to be upside down actually at those points as long as you have a plan to recover. You have to watch attrition, you have to watch traffic source, you have to watch affiliates, you have to watch everything.

[B]

It's a lot.

[A]

And I don't want to get off topic, but when you are a marketer replacing systems with AI agents and you don't understand those systems right, you're creating a web that's going to hit ceilings far faster than the human system does. And the manual human system hit ceilings way faster than agents do. But agents that are built wrong, that aren't connected quickly create a second full time job for you. If not a third.

[B]

So quickly.

[A]

And by the time you realize that you scaled bad AI and you're in trouble, you are probably going to be too far gone to come back in all frankness and honesty, depending on what you have for resources. If you've got four businesses and three are doing well and one starts tanking, you know, you rob Peter to pay Paul and it'll be just fine. But for most business owners, that's not the case. And so they're sitting down with these marketers who have no idea how systems work and they're like, look at the AI agent that, that I got to run emails for me. Look at the AI agent that I got to post for me on Facebook. Look at Perplexity computer that's running my tasks on attrition and making sure that my retention rate is great. But they didn't actually understand retention rate at scale. They didn't actually understand how to retain customers and make sure that your merchant accounts stay healthy. They didn't understand how to watch the merchant accounts. They didn't understand those things. So again, it's like if you're replacing problems with people that should have been replaced with systems, when you replace problems with AI and autonomous agents that needed a system first and then needed that agent plugged into that system and actually multiple agents trained together, My God, I feel like I'm preaching. Let's go to preach.

[B]

Let's go to operations church.

[A]

Hell yeah, preach woman gospel.

[B]

No, you're spot on. Like it you 100% like, oh yeah, you did something that can complete a task that still has to be prompted to do it. Yay it. You like it unravels very quickly, muddies the water and then the hours and days and weeks it takes to fix that. And marketers are the worst of that because just like humans, we need steps how to do things. What does the output look like, what is complete look like, what is done? What's the, the SOP? I don't think many marketers have actual SOPs. That's like a swear word in art in the marketing industry.

[A]

Well, here's the thing is a lot of marketers actually that I've met recently do have SOPs.

[B]

Where are you finding these people?

[A]

Because, well, here's the thing is AI is writing their sop.

[B]

Oh, well, yeah, that's true, I guess.

[A]

And so a lot of them, a lot of them did like scribe or train you all and they were like, oh, that's a really good idea. And they actually, I have seen recently a lot of not so much in the media buying realm, but more in like the copy realm and the like, social media realm. And I believe that they're doing it because they're outsourcing a lot of like the work to the Philippines or India, Pakistan, whatever have you, Bangladesh and so. Or they're writing it for tech purposes or split tests. But when you look at these SOPs, they don't have the simplified information, right? So they don't have the micro and they don't have the macro, they have the steps, so they don't have the nuance, they don't have the why, they don't have the if it's, you know, if it's not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. One usually starts at step six in this, for instance, because they don't have. Go to this link, log in under this, right click here. It's like it starts at. Now that you've clicked. Now that you clicked here, it starts here and then it gives you the task to run, but doesn't give you, like the checks and balances. To make sure that, you know our affiliate portal. To go into our affiliate portal and make sure the links are working right? To go into the email and make sure that the CTA are working on the email and what the email leads to. The amount of times those are broken, by the way, is nuts. Nuts. I actually broke the stove in my last house because for the third time, we're supposed to be Operational excellence, right? Richard was probably with me about a year at the time and we were doing really well. We had like five clients and we were crushing it. And we had just hired two guys and one was at my house in Leander and I was onboarding him and the other one was coming like a week later. Long story short, this is. I just want you to set the scene. And so Richard was like floating a lot because I'm trying to train them and onboard them. So he's trying to like keep the clients happy while I'm trying to do that. Because, like everybody, I brought on more clients and then hired people after. And so I'm training this guy. And day one, my welcome email sequence goes out to an event I had just gone to and the and effing links are broken. I'm operational excellence, I'm qa, I'm checks and balances. I'm the person that makes sure. Day two links are broken. I lose my mind. Day three, seven o', clock, I get the email two hours late. It's supposed to go out at five. Our open rate was the Best at five CSD on Thursdays. I remember it was a Thursday I'll never forget as long as I live. I get it. The links are broken. I took a ninja pan and smashed the top of my brand new gas stove about six or seven times as massive. Done. Anyway, so, yes, I have anger issues.

[B]

Interrupt this podcast to ask you to do a huge favor for us.

[A]

Huge.

[B]

We drop so much knowledge to help you guys, but you're not going to be notified unless you hit that subscribe and the notification bell to to be notified the minute we drop a new episode to help you grow and scale your business.

[A]

Because you never know when we're going to be taken off YouTube.

[B]

You have no idea. Like, I could all of a sudden be like Liam Neeson with a particular set of skills.

[A]

Also, we read every single comment.

[B]

So leave a question or comment, we will reply to it and maybe we'll even talk about it in a upcoming episode.

[A]

Probably. If you troll us, we will definitely talk about you in an upcoming episode. Thanks. But the point is, is, you know what I built was an SOP that said when you log in, you log in to the esp. You send a test email to a second person. The second person then goes in and tests the links that it goes to the page and then test. Because the day one, the links didn't work in the email. Day two, the links didn't work in the email. Day three, the links didn't work on the page that the email brought it to. So then you go into the page and then you make sure that you can go all the way to whatever the final CTA is.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But then in addition, you also have to put in nuances. Like when you click on the page, does the page look right? Does the email look like. Right. So you don't have to. You shouldn't have to tell a human that, but you do. Can you imagine if you don't tell an agent that?

[B]

No. It just goes rogue.

[A]

Right. Does an agent have eyes?

[B]

No. No eyeballs.

[A]

No eyeballs. So what do you need to do for an agent to QA to give very specific instructions of screenshots, of how to. How to review screenshots? Do you think that these marketers are thinking through that? I tell these long stories because these are just small little things. But if you're like, they're 100% true, that you can have a $1 billion business with no employees. 1% true. A founder with a bunch of agents. That's absolutely true. I think we just hit that.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

A marketer didn't build that, right? Not a chance. A highly skilled operator founder built that.

[B]

Well, I love the eyeballs. You have to give it examples how you're saying that. Because literally so much of what I have built, agent wise, I've shoved tons of examples into it. Even video editing. This is what it's like a done looks like. This is, you know, tons and tons and tons of examples. So it actually knows you can use certain kinds of like plugins and stuff. But all it's going to do is go out and scrape a page. It doesn't know what good Instagram carousels look like, what a good landing page looks like. Even copy. It doesn't know people will take the first iteration of copy of that.

[A]

How many marketers do you think are building ftc, fda, fsc, whatever it is, compliance manuals for their agents?

[B]

Oh, I mean facetiously, 100 of them. None.

[A]

Right, that's.

[B]

What are those three letters mean?

[A]

Right.

[B]

In the marketing world we just. Yeah, right. 100. Nobody. Nobody. It's build me. I. I want you to be able to do X and it's going to go, okay, cool, here you go. I can do that now. But then you get garbage out and then AI. AI doesn't work. No, it, it actually works. Just garbage in equals garbage out. Training. Just like if you were to train a human being, you train somebody shittily, they're going to do their job crappy.

[A]

Even if they're a really, really, really hard worker.

[B]

100.

[A]

At Shockwave, I have this thing that we do. We often have to onboard ourselves to companies. I can't go into a company and say give me your SOPs. We do, but they don't have them or they have terrible SOPs. Give me your SOPs. Give me all of the guidelines for the business. Give me the vision, give me the goals, give me, give me all the things and then train me. I don't get to do that. I literally have to figure it out. So at Shockwave, our onboarding process is. Here is a Google Drive. Figure out how to onboard yourself if they can't figure it out. With shockwaves, well written SOPs, if they can't organize them, we actually have like an unorganized whole system that they have to organize before they ever get onboarded to a client.

[B]

Oh, makes sense. Okay.

[A]

And then they have to reorganize it all for the next person.

[B]

That's funny. I'd hide stuff in weird places.

[A]

I absolutely. 100. 100%. Because if you can't do that you're not going to be able to work over here. But the unicorn, the unicorn that that person is is so difficult to find. It's been the ceiling in my whole business because, yes, I can train them. You can't teach that drive motivation. You can teach the skill behind it, but you can't teach that kind of hunger. Because 99.9% of people that you onboard are going to fail if you don't onboard them correctly because they are not going to take the time because it's your fault, because you didn't tell me. How many times have. The next step is so freaking obvious. And they finish the step and you say, hey, so and so. Why didn't you do the next step? I wasn't told to.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

You knew the next step. Was that right? Yeah, but nobody told me to.

[B]

Right.

[A]

How many times?

[B]

Oh, it's too many.

[A]

How many times?

[B]

Too many.

[A]

I could bash my own head up against the wall when people say that to me. But that's why it's so hard to hire for Shockwave, because my people are proactive problem solvers and they would never in a million years say, you're fired pretty much within 30 days. If you say that to me at Shockwave and you're not like a really low support role.

[B]

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

[A]

But back to our whole thing is you've got all of these marketers out there now. Don't get me wrong, marketers have found brilliant uses for AI. Some of the people I actually really do enjoy following. And I won't say whether they're good people or not, good marketers or not.

[B]

I will.

[A]

I know. I'm just. I'm just saying. I won't say that either way because I, you know, I don't. I don't think it matters. But people that I really, really like following when it comes to AI is Austin Armstrong, Jonathan Mast, Chris Winfield, obviously, like Perry Belcher is at the very, very top. He's taught me every single thing that I know. The things that I figured out on my own all came from the foundation that he gave me. So Perry Belcher, number one. Number one. Number one. Number one, number one by far. He was talking about AI, automations and robotics in 2017 when I met him. Like, 2017, like, Jasper was a complete show. It didn't work for crap. And Perry was like, no, you don't understand. Learn how to build this now. Learn how to mess with this now. Learn how to automate now. It's not here yet. You need to know now. You don't want to be figuring this out when they figure it out. You want to know how it works. Now, now, now. But those people are the people that I really, really enjoy following when it comes to AI. And there are quite a few marketers actually. And I'm definitely not going to name names because I'm going to be very specific. That I think are horrible business owners that are terrible in the business realm, that have found some phenomenal use cases for AI, for one thing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But they're not teaching how to use AI for that one thing. They're teaching how to build work armies and workforces and your AI systems and your whole HR framework. You would never hire a marketer to manage your HR ever, ever, ever, full stop, ever. Why would you hire them to build an agent? You know, it just doesn't make sense.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Anyway, so I kind of want to go on that tangent.

[B]

I liked it. Yeah, it was good.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

That, yeah, you're spot on. There's. And even those people you named, I don't. Just like me the names you said. I wouldn't look at them as just marketers.

[A]

I wouldn't look at them as just market.

[B]

Like they're in the traditional sense of like, you know, like they're, they're marketers.

[A]

I would absolutely think of them as marketers. Well, I mean, Austin Armstrong. Austin Armstrong is a social media marketer like no other.

[B]

Okay, but let me back up what I'm saying. Like, yes, they're marketers, just like I'm a marketer, but they've also built legitimate businesses on the back end. They've had.

[A]

I wouldn't say that. I would not say that. I would not say that. I'm not saying that they have or they have not. I would not say. That is not something I would say.

[B]

I'm saying it.

[A]

I would not say that.

[B]

All right, great. And disagree.

[A]

I'm. I'm just saying. I would not say that. I. I wouldn't say either way,

[B]

she's a politician now.

[A]

I'm not a politician. I'm not a politician. I just. Again, I think they're really, really good at marketing. I think they're really, really good at vision. I think that they're all really, really forward thinkers, thought leaders. I would not say. Say that any of those people I would consider team. They could build a team, manage a team, run a team. I think that they would be really great at inspiring a team, at setting a vision for a team, at creating products that a team could plug in. I think that there is a massive difference between a visionary and an integrator, an operator and a marketing founder. And I think that they fall in the marketing founder visionary category. There's nothing wrong with that. That's fair. Here's what I also know. Some of the things that I have heard some of those people say. You would never, ever, ever in a million years have an operator that would be capable of coming up with that. And this is one of the reasons why you and I teamed up so well together is you have an operator mindset, but you also have a marketing mindset. You're able to do marketing operations. And so I believe that the way that I was running agents was absolutely brilliant. And I think you believe that the way you were running agents was absolutely brilliant.

[B]

The only way.

[A]

And when we sat down and we talked about what we were doing, I think a light bulb went off for both of us, because, oh, my goodness, when you take the two, it's very much like a visionary and an integrator as well. Like the Disney brothers.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Walt Disney would have been nothing without Roy. Roy would have been nothing without Walt Disney. 100% the McDonald's brothers. Have you ever seen the movie Founders on Netflix? Perry got me to screwed. Perry got. Well, I. Yeah, Perry, not the point. But Perry got me to watch the movie. I don't watch tv. For those of you that know me. I do not. I do not. I watch fireplaces on TVs. I have TVs in my house, and it's for YouTube. Fireplaces with some light jazz. Yeah, I do. I have a thing for it. But. But anyway, I digress. Those two brothers. One was operationally brilliant in how he created the entire infrastructure of how McDonald's would work and how you would get a minute hamburger out the door that tasted phenomenal. The other one had vision like no other that brought the system together and the vision together. And again, without the other, you know, without the both of them, it would have flopped. And so I. No shade to those people at all. I literally. I love following them. I love watching them. But I wouldn't call them. I wouldn't call them the dream team. I wouldn't leave Perry with eight people to manage over the course of a month and expect anything to happen other than a lot of hopes and dreams. They would build a ton of things and nothing would get finished because Perry would have another idea in the morning. You know what I mean? And they would start on the next thing, and then he would come in and be like, emma, why isn't all this Done. I think you did that, man. So, yeah, no shade to any of them, but I wouldn't. I think that there's a massive difference anyway. Any final thoughts?

[B]

No, I don't think so. Outside of just. I want to throw. Be careful who you buy agents from and take advice from them, building those, like look for the right people.

[A]

My question would be, are we connecting them? Can I see it connected before I give them a dollar? Are we connecting them? And can I see it connected?

[B]

Right.

[A]

A lot of that's not happening 100%. It's very difficult to show too, because your agents, it isn't like, you know, you can see an agent, but if you check out our long form content, just our regular content, you can see we've demoed some of our agents and we'll continue to do that. We'll continue to build on YouTube and continue to show how we're doing it and we'll continue to sell you stuff, helping you build real workflows. And here's what a workflow is, by the way, because again, every time we get a marketer in one of our. We can tell the difference immediately because we'll ask what are your workflows? And all of the integrators, all of the ops people, all of the operators will send us workflows. All of the visionaries will say, I don't understand. We have hundreds of thousands of workflows in our business. What does that mean?

[B]

What's a workflow?

[A]

Right? Right, bro, right. And if you don't understand workflows, you can't, you have to. That's like step one is understanding workflows. Otherwise what you're building is a thousand little doers that you're going to need to prompt.

[B]

You. Just build yourself another 40 hour a week job or more. Don't do it.

[A]

I've actually seen people that are literally not doing their job anymore and they're just sitting, prompting agents and they're not get. They're so close. I'm on the brink of it. I'm on the brink of it. I'm on the brink of it. I'm on the brink of it. The amount of times I've heard that is just insane. 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 get to build and scale a profitable online business.

[B]

If you found this episode useful, make sure to go to follow the yellow brickroad podcast.com to check out the hidden control chamber for all kinds of awesome freebies, guides, checklists, everything that we do to grow businesses.

[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, keep following the yellow brick road.