Why your business gets heavier as it grows, and the three-move fix. For SMB founders tired of working harder for the same result.
GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A practical framework for spotting hidden friction, tracking the five costs most owners ignore, and using AI without losing control.
Most founders think growth means freedom. It doesn't. Until you fix the friction underneath, every new client just adds more weight to carry.
Jeff Borschowa is the founder of Pharos Business and host of the Lighthouse Sessions Podcast. He has worked with hundreds of tech founders navigating the gap between relentless hustle and real, scalable leadership. In this episode of Knack 4 Business, Jeff breaks down why businesses get harder to run as they grow — and what to do about it.
He introduces the Pharos Effect — eliminate the drag, automate the repetition, delegate the rest. He walks through the TEAM model: five hidden costs most owners never measure: Time, Energy, Attention, Money, and Risk. And he explains why your best growth opportunity is probably already inside your existing client base.
From daily KPI habits to AI implementation done right, this is a practical conversation for founders who are working hard but suspect they're pushing in the wrong direction.
Key topics covered:
Connect with Jeff Borschowa:
Pharos Business | Jeff on LinkedIn | The Lighthouse Sessions Podcast | Lighthouse Sessions on YouTube
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Bernie (00:21)
So, question to the audience. Why does your business feel heavier the more it grows?
That's the question our guest will tackle in this episode.
He'll unpack why growth often creates friction, how founders accidentally become the bottleneck, and what practical shifts turn hustle into clarity. If you're scaling but feel stretched, this conversation is for you. Tune in, lean in, and see where your growth might be, working harder than it should. Our guest today is Jeff Borschowa from Pharos Business
He's the founder of that business and the kind of strategist who helps visionary founders move from constant hustle into clear, steady leadership. A lifelong educator and author of more than over 100 books, Jeff Blyn's practical business strategy with augmented intelligence to help entrepreneurs grow without losing themselves in the process. Through this signature framework, The Pharaoh's Effect, and his show, the Lighthouse Sessions Podcast.
He guides leaders to soul aligned, sustainable companies rooted in authentic leadership and long term impact. Influenced by thinkers like Bob Burke, John David Mann, and Chet Holmes, Jeff believes
Businesses should not just scale. should remember who we are while we build it. Jeff, absolute pleasure having you here again. great seeing you and enjoy the smile. any quotes in taglines or insights you want to share with us today, sir.
Jeff (01:40)
Absolutely. And Bernie, thanks for having me back. It's always a pleasure to chat. my favorite quote, I attribute it to Sun Tzu, and it might be a modification, but it feels like something Sun would say. my favorite quote is strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. And I think, honest to God, we're in an age where
strategy has been put on the back burner. People say I'll get to that later. And the irony is we're really busy, but does what we're doing actually matter? And the answer is almost always no, if we don't have a strategy first.
Bernie (02:20)
So who knew growth would cause friction? When did you first realize that would happen? It's almost it's almost like you're a teenager, right? The clothes aren't fitting anymore, right? You just like why doesn't this jacket close in front?
Jeff (02:31)
Yeah. Oops, the zipper went, right?
Bernie (02:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeff (02:34)
And I think, you know, it's funny because your your Freudian slip at the beginning, it does cause fiction because a lot of people say everything's fine. And it's like, is it really? But that's the reality. a friend of mine, one of my mentors, once told me that Formula One cars can go fast because they have good brakes. If the brakes are weak, the car won't go fast because the driver's hesitant. And I think a lot of people underestimate that.
We need the safety, the brakes, before we build the engine, the speed.
Bernie (03:04)
So having looked at other businesses and other other colleagues around you, is there do you have examples where founders are like, man, just push harder, push harder, push harder and you're looking going, dude, you're pushing a rock up the hill and you y you know, there's a better way to do this. do you have instances where this is like, my gosh?
Jeff (03:25)
Yes, and and by the way, I I love Greek mythology and I can r never remember the poor guy's name, but there is a guy who's sentenced to eternity pushing a rock up a hill. honest to God, that's every day in the life of most startups or founders. the reality is, and and this was my aha moment. We as founders, we figure stuff out and we go, okay, that makes sense.
What we don't realize is that we figured out the 10 things before. So when we try to hand off today's thing to somebody, it immediately breaks because they don't have the foundation of the other 10 things we built it on. so one of the things I would say a very real example, a lot of founders are doing things that don't drive the needle, they don't bring in revenue. you know, I've seen
The worst example I'll give you is one founder. I was out, we were, we were at a social event together, and she got a call from her team. She had to leave and go buy toilet paper because they'd run out of toilet paper in the in the public restrooms. And for some reason, nobody else knew how to go buy toilet paper. And I was like, wow, you are busy. And I think that's the thing. We feel important because we're needed, but
Sometimes we're the one that are lighting the fires that we then need to fight. So maybe we need to put the matches down.
Bernie (04:48)
Wow. I'm trying to re recollect the last time I was called for bringing in toilet paper or TP as as it's been called as r to rescue, usually in the house. And that's only for the fact that I forgot to stock it. It was my responsibility. So you created something called the Pharaoh's effect. What's that all about?
Jeff (05:05)
Well, the Pharos effect is I'm gonna be honest, it's one of those early iterations and I'm I'm refining it always. but basically the the premise of the Pharos effect is we're looking for the friction points and we're looking at how we can either eliminate them, automate them, or delegate them. And again, one of the the big risks of most founders.
Is they know everything about the company and it's all in their head. So if they go on vacation, they get sick, whatever happens, all of this institutional knowledge gets bedridden with them. and it also happens with rock star employees. so what we're doing is we have so we start with something I call it the heaven or hell assessment. And basically we're looking at the weight of things. So there are things in your life, in my life.
that feel heavy and drag me down. Those are not judgmentally called hell, but they are from an energy point of view hell. So they drain me. And then there are things that are are heavenly that that give me energy and uplift me. my goal is in a business, let's eliminate as much of the hell that drags the business down so that we can focus on the heaven that lifts it up.
Bernie (06:20)
Five hidden costs stalling growth. What would they be?
Jeff (06:24)
Well, the big ones, so most people think that if I'm growing, the only option is who do I hire to help me? we need to overcome the inertia of status quo, and we need to overcome, I'll figure it out myself. But really truly, there are five costs that are involved in everything. And number one, it's time. So every option we look at is either
Going to give us time or consume our time. And so we want to look for what leverages and gives us time versus what takes our time. So time is a is the number one thing. Honestly, most entrepreneurs don't even consider it, they undervalue it. the next thing is energy. And again, this is where the heaven or hell comes in. everything we do takes energy, however.
Some of it feels like it gives us energy because we enjoy it. So it it just drains our battery slower. but there is other tasks and activities that drain us quickly. there are certain things you can't make me do if you try. so we want to identify the energy leaks because if things are draining us and our team, we're slowing down needlessly. It's it's excess drag on the business.
the next one is attention, and that I think is the least recognized currency today. everybody has a finite amount of attention. And switching between, you know, the the load of switching from one task to another, that alone will burn you out. And it is amazing. I see people who they're doing things outside of their workflow and they're performing exceptions. Everything we do.
that doesn't flow smoothly in our workflow drains energy at some point. And oddly, not always energy we expect. You know, sometimes it sneaks up on us, sometimes it's it's quiet leak, but it it is like cholesterol. If you don't watch it, eventually it causes problems. now, fourth is money. So I call this teamwork by the way, because the acronym is time, energy, attention, money.
Money is obvious. There's money we spend. There's money we get back. But the less obvious is the opportunity cost because if we're doing things we don't like, we're not getting things we love to do done. We're not doing the leveraged work. and by the way, most businesses get into the tactics. They don't focus on the strategy. doing tactics over strategy will cost you money whether you know it or not. Now, the problem is it's not always
You write a check today and you feel it leave your bank account. Sometimes it's a slow bleed over time. And then the final thing, and I call risk a currency. somebody might debate me on that one, but risk affects the currency. So, either way, what's the risk? And this is the biggest one, I think, that we're underestimating the other four currencies. Because if we're not
Conscious of how much time, energy, attention, money we spend on something, we're going off course at an exponentially greater rate. It increases over time. velocity works going upwards and downwards. So those are the five.
Bernie (09:28)
Yeah. Downward velocity doesn't sound like healthy growth.
Jeff (09:33)
No.
Bernie (09:33)
So is that one is that one of the signals that you're yeah things are starting to come up unraveled? So I mean it's almost like scope creep. How how can you tell that you know, a year from now, you know, hmm, that was a bad choice.
Jeff (09:46)
Yeah. And and I think that's the the key thing I I point out to a lot of my clients. A lot of people have this belief that status quo is a straight line. You know, we start here, we don't make any changes, and at the end of the year, we're gonna end up exactly where we started. The problem is decay comes in, and if you're not growing to offset the decay, you're gonna slowly and and once it gets to a certain point, it starts to accelerate faster.
The signal is you're a lot of cases, you might be working as hard as you've always worked, but you're making less. I've seen a couple recently where people didn't make any changes. you know, they didn't change their fees, they didn't change their business model, but they didn't also realize that their employees have been there a year longer, they've given them raises, you know, and they said, it's only five percent cost of living adjustment.
But if you think about your status quo and you've now carved off 5%, you're 5% worse off if you don't adjust your your revenues. so the biggest one is you're working as hard as you used to and you're making less money. The other one is you're working harder than you used to and you're making the same money. Either one, that's a sign that you're missing.
Something is leaking and you don't know what it is. And it is always those quiet little leaks that kill you, you know, not not the big dramatic ones, but it's the ones you don't see coming that cause the problems.
Bernie (11:11)
Now how do you how do you sort that out? How do you figure how do you do a pulse check to make sure that you're optimized, for lack of better words? Or you know, or you know, continuously tweaking. Like what would you do? Like is that a weekly, monthly, quarterly?
Jeff (11:27)
Yes, yes, and yes. So it it really truly it it sounds like a a s snippet flippant answer, but the reality is so I actually have a daily. So every day I'm looking at certain things and the way I put it, we have key performance indicators. Everybody in your organization should have one, two, or three that they're responsible for.
So as the founder, I'm gonna have the three that mean the most to me and my business. I should be checking those daily. Now my employees should each have one to three numbers they're responsible for. And it's kind of like a pressure gauge. If things are going well, I don't need to hear about it. But the minute things shift, I need to hear about it today, not later. so I have daily, you know, everybody's got some daily numbers they have to check.
and again, this is five seconds a day. It's not, you know, big deep onerous. but that's the first part is do I know what numbers matter in my business? Do I know what makes sense to track? if you don't know of all the things, honestly, most of them, if you start with where's the cash today, is it coming in? Do I have it going out? that's a bare minimum.
Then when it comes to weekly, I'm gonna talk to my team and I'm gonna look at maybe something over here is sort of off, but not terribly off. Something over here is off. Maybe there's a correlation between those. So I'm looking at that. And then monthly, it's more of a deeper dive just to see, you know, I am a recovering accountant. So what was our profitability?
You know, I look at unit cost, unit profits. I'm very interested in what's going on. And then every 90 days, I do a recalibration, and we we do this with our clients too. we're gonna look at all of the KPIs across the board and we're gonna say, okay, and this is where I think most people don't do it. I look at is there something that doesn't belong here that we shouldn't be tracking?
And is there something that's missing? so every 90 days we're planning for the next 90 days, saying, okay, what's one thing we're going to improve? and I aim for really, really modest. My goal is to be 1% better every day. And that accumulates over the year. Whereas most people, 1% drift, who cares? We'll make it up next quarter. so I'm watching that baseline because if we're not
You know, I don't want to ever maintain. To me, that just feels like I'm I'm just surviving, but we definitely don't want to flatten or start to decrease. So it's always how can we increase?
Bernie (14:03)
As you describe that, I'm I'm thinking of of a business, you know, when it's running and nothing is changing other than time and expense. Yeah. And that's not always gonna be true because sometimes events can be coming up, competition, new pressures, new products, you know, even having you having your own new new version of or iteration of a product, right? Rev two, rev three.
How do you handle like you've got your you get your routine elements and now all of a sudden you're gonna add in you're gonna compound things. Now you're gonna toss into something that it's never been there before. Now it is. And you know, now you got two things jostling.
Jeff (14:43)
Well, I'll I'll tell you something I do that's very strange. And everything I do is about eliminating and reducing friction. one of the things I've noticed is that a lot of people and I blame social media, there is this obsession with we gotta get new clients, new clients, new clients. Everybody talks about new clients. I'm in favor of innovation.
And there's actually all kinds of models out there, but if you look at it, attracting new clients has a level of risk because you've got marketing effort, again, the four currencies, you've got sales effort, there's a lag time. one of the things I look at is the lowest risk, highest reward is finding new solutions to problems your existing clients have.
So it's actually lower risk because your clients already know like and trust you. but the key is, and and I think this is where you know having multiple SKUs can be a problem. I see it as okay, we solve this baseline problem. What's the next order problem that that they want us to solve? And if we stack them, it becomes something that.
one team can deliver. And and by the way, I always focus on especially service-based businesses. What products could we create to support our existing customers so that they get the service value we deliver? And I'll give you an example because that starts to sound a little mythical. Let's say I'm a marketing firm and I have clients, the number one thing in my opinion
A marketing firm can and should do is teach their clients the importance of understanding their target audience. Who do you serve? So I can spend my time as a professional and I can sit down with everybody and I can explain it one on one. Or I can create a nice little digital course that sells for $19.95 on Amazon or wherever. And it scales solving their first problem.
Now, once they understand who their market is, then the next question is what kind of problems does your market want you to solve? So again, I can create a little product that, you know, maybe it's a book, maybe it's a course, whatever it is. so that when they come to me, they already know who they serve and they have product market fit sorted. Now we can talk about what kind of marketing do you need? But I always look first of all
In my onboarding, where are people tripping? Where are they falling out? Where are they getting hurt? and I turn those into products. And then once I've got somebody who knows product market fit and they know, you know, let's say, for example, the only way their business grows is by running let's say Google Ads, then we're optimizing the Google Ads. Well, the next
Course I can create is how do you track the Google dashboard? How do you monitor? So basically, I'm looking at the pain points my clients have, and I'm not eliminating myself. I'm just taking the little annoying things that it's like, God, I hate having to describe this. and you turn it into products. And by the way, if you do that, your products become little referral engines because your clients will share them with their friends.
And again, back to digital agencies and marketing. If your marketer gives you a little workbook and says, here's how we come up with your avatar, put some thoughts down before you work with us, people will share that with their friends. And then their friends will go to their marketing people and say, Hey, why didn't you do this? And so by creating little complementary products, you're solving friction points for you.
And you're making it easier for your clients to refer their friends, family, colleagues, et cetera. So you're attracting new clients, but by adding more value to your existing clients first.
Bernie (18:37)
So we've talked about when you're running your own business. Then you have the people that are I wanna run my own business. I'm in corporate.
What's the first thing that most ex-corporate types run into or you know, where where do they get themselves hung up?
Jeff (18:51)
Bernie, you just opened a rant box. I love I love my corporate people, but I'm gonna say this clearly the very first thing they need to do is learn to drop corporate speak and use English. I was at a meeting with somebody who she'd spent her entire career in Fortune 500s, and she used this long explanation.
To explain something to me about who she works with. And I'm a smart guy. I was guessing. I said, I don't understand what you just said. And by the end of it, it was a big fancy corporate way for saying we're terminating somebody's contract. And I said, could we agree to say terminating someone's contract? So legitimately, I'm not kidding. And and this ties into the the other piece.
Most corporate speakers, they come out thinking that they should use the same strategies that worked for their big corporate entity. so they're focusing on branding and messaging and blah, blah, blah. the reality is, and and this is I see them struggle with this and it makes me giggle because I'm twisted. I tell them you're allowed one audience, one problem.
And you can provide one solution. And they keep defaulting. I'm not kidding, it fascinates me. They will default every time to we're for everyone. And it's like, no, unless you're Apple, Microsoft, Google, Harley, you know, and even them, they're not for everyone. You know, the the Apple people are not Google people, or you know, Samsung people are not Apple people.
You gotta pick an audience. And so I think that's their number one is that they're so smart, they can't communicate simply what they do or who they do it for. And clever will kick your butt every time. Clear will help you win clients.
Bernie (20:47)
I c I concur with that assessment. I was talking with somebody who dealt with a provincial entity and they're describing something and I'm sitting there and I'm going, you know, at minute two, I've already lost interest in in my own life, let alone the life of what's being discussed. And I'm going and I'm I'm I'm trying to paraphrase ever and that's what I do. data comes across, I I chunk it down and do okay, this is what's happening. And yeah.
That's that's that's scary. So a person from corporate comes out and you know, there's a readjustment period. And and I get that, you know, been there, done that. you know, if you're not an accountant, you find the person to be the accountant. If you're not the marketing specialist, you know, you may not be able to afford everything. AI has also been another another utility tool coming along. like even for me in the in the knack from business podcast.
There's one person I ran into, he has a little chatbot called W Web Indexer. I've just started using Ghost.io. And today, and today for the first time, I managed to integrate it between the website, Ghost.io, and Web Indexer. So that, you know, and if you're not familiar with Ghost.io, folks, it's it's kind of like a content management system, blogging, right? And so I've now tied it in. So if someone goes on my website, they can type it in.
That to me is a massive win. And the strategy is I don't have to do as much labor and lifting, right? And get the SEO. Now, that little exercise that I went through, I used AI to, you know, what can I do? Okay, now I've got this. What can I do? And I kind of tweak it. Do you find that a first off AI is going to help people resolve not all the issues, but some of the issues? One.
Give them that feedback going, yeah, you know, you're doing this, but everybody else is doing that. And then lastly, this is how you're going to leverage that AI component. Maybe not the Chat GPT, but you know, this there's another service. How do you see that flow working for people, you know, in the business space to keep them not bottlenecked?
Jeff (22:42)
That that's actually a great question and one that I spend many hours a day answering and and I'll I'll say this clearly. I do things a little differently. I tell people to start with the stuff you know. The stuff because here's the thing right now we're seeing this world where people are vibe coding and they're getting, you know, they're using AI to code stuff, but they don't understand the the
the dynamics or the security, and all of a sudden you're seeing these things about all these data breaches and leaks. so my advice is start with what you know. So what I always do, and I always start with systems because that's where my biggest time savings are. I will type in, for example, in specific, I will say I'm using, so for my website, I say I'm using WordPress version, whatever it is today.
I'm using this theme, this plugin, this add-in. I give it the details. And then I'll say, okay, here's what I'm attempting to do. Here's how I'm currently doing it. What could I do better, faster, et cetera? And so because I've been very specific, and by the way, don't take the first answer you get, ask questions and follow-up. but basically what I do, and this is where I tell people to start, pick.
The things that annoy you and drive you nuts, and you go, I hate doing this, and ask AI, whatever your AI of choice is, mine is Chat GPT. ask it to help you speed it up. And I have a Pareto filter in there. So I'll say what's the 80% that doesn't matter, and what's the 20% that is most important? so I prioritize the most important first.
And then if I don't get the rest done, I don't get it done. And that's okay. But the key is I know the output I want. And I can look at it and go, good, bad, indifferent. Let's tweak it. but that's the key with any tool you're using, is to build that confidence that you are using it as a tool. I call it the difference between delegating and abdicating.
If you abdicate and you don't know what to do, you're hoping you get a good result back. I don't live in that kind of hope world. I want to know I'm getting a good result. So I delegate and I test and I test. And then once I've freed up time, then I'll start looking at other things I can use it for. but I've yet to meet a client where we couldn't squeeze 10 hours out of their week that AI did very well.
And again, it was because it was 10 hours a week that they wanted to get rid of. They were happy to use AI to, you know, and again, editing blog posts, things like that. you know, you put a little time in to get the voice and the tone and stuff right. the other thing I use it for a lot is troubleshooting problems with technology. I'm a smart guy. I can push a few buttons and I can break things and I can go, okay, maybe this is what I need to do.
But now I just put it and say, I'm working in, you know, last week I taught myself how to use something called OBS Studio. And I'm like, okay, I'm getting feedback in the microphone. What's going on? And it gave me a couple troubleshooting things. but the key was I said, here's the version I'm using, here's my computer I'm using it on. if you're specific.
It saves. I never use tech support ever again. I will not. I hate going through their systems. one thing I will say is for cloud software, sometimes Chat GPT in particular, and I think all of them are like this, it's got last week, last month's support notes. And it's like, no, no, no, today is this date. And it goes, you've got this update. so sometimes it'll point you to somewhere that you didn't need to go, but
generally I find that trial and error, getting it to use to help me use it, and once I've figured out the problem, the final thing I always say is create a standard operating procedure so that future Jeff never has to solve this problem again.
Bernie (26:40)
Future Deaf, thanks you.
Jeff (26:42)
Yep. Future Jeff loves past Jeff. And and I think that's the biggest thing. smart people, especially entrepreneurs, we think that that systems are restraining or restrictive, but we also think nothing of, I'm gonna figure this out if it kills me. once you figure it out, document it and leave notes. And I don't just document what I did, I also document why I did it so that I look at it and go, yeah, that's right.
So that's another tool. I've I've started building a library of of standard operating procedures and every one of them has a purpose. This is why you did this. And let me tell you, future Jeff smiles and says, Thank you, Jeff, every time.
Bernie (27:27)
Diary of a mad scientist, here we go.
Jeff (27:29)
Yes indeed.
Bernie (27:30)
So when you're the the use of AI, I and I just gave an example earlier about how I I leveraged AI to get something. But AI is much like having a a small team, right? And you're you're you're now starting to grow. How do you avoid the chaos then? How do you how do you cause, you know, it'd be like over inflating one tire in the car to 200 pounds PSI as opposed to you know.
standard 32 to 36 depending on what you're driving. So your car's not like leaning like this and always want to go naturally in circles. How how do you how do you avoid the chaos? And when you start, you know, bringing in resources going, okay, your tactical move is to do this to get this result. The strategy is to make this happen. And assuming no one changes their price plans from the from the three players I'm working with to make this happen, because that happens too, in which case I have to start adjusting.
How do you avoid chaos? is it documentation I think is part of it, like the the the reason you did something, but what else do you avoid if like be chaotic for you at the end of the day? Well
Jeff (28:33)
For what it's worth, I am a huge, huge fan of Chet Holmes. I love his book, The Ultimate Sales Machine. And a lot of people dismiss it and say, Well, I'm not in sales, why would I read it? but in the book, he gave words to stuff I've done my entire life. And I'm like, my God, there's a a word for that. but one of the things I do, and this is critical if you have a team, first things first.
You've got to agree on what's acceptable use. And in this day and age, we're seeing a lot of they call it shadow technology, where people bring their own things. if we don't have policies, we as an organization put our data at risk. And I'm not gonna get into the the the the finer points, but most people, you know, they'll lock the front door, they have access cards, passwords, everything's protected.
And then they've got employees who are up uploading internal documents to Chat GPT. And I'm not saying that OpenAI cares and that they're they're accessing your private data, but the reality is they can. So as an example, I worked with a a a research and development company. I would say any AI they use, and we've got them, they built a private version.
it's separated from the internet. It cannot call out, it cannot share data. It's internal only for analyzing research results. So that's a an extreme example. But again, as far as I'm concerned, I use Chat GPT, the public model, to create standard operating procedures. If somebody wants to steal my podcast procedure, great. Go ahead, have at it.
But the key is we agree what's acceptable use, what do we share, what don't we share. And then the next thing I do, which is very, very old school, is as a group, we're going to sit down and we're going to map out and agree what AI implementation looks like. So I'll give you an example of good and bad. So I've seen digital marketing companies that lost a LinkedIn expert.
And so maybe they have a TikTok, a Facebook, a YouTube expert. instead of hiring a new LinkedIn expert, they get their other people to use AI to fill in the LinkedIn gap. Now, without somebody with LinkedIn experience, you're gonna get some good or bad results and you won't know the difference. You know, again, nothing against the Facebook person, but if their entire life is Facebook and they know everything about Facebook, you don't want them
Evaluating LinkedIn content because two different platforms. so that's a bad implementation. A good implementation would be if all of your social media experts sat down and said, okay, here's my process for creating a Facebook ad. Here's my process for creating Facebook posts, whatever it is, and then using AI to follow that process to get it done faster.
So the first option where you're getting people who don't know how to judge good and bad output is chaos. Whereas if you're showing your your best people how to do what they do well better, that becomes organized. And again, document as you go because future you will be very grateful if somebody leaves. Then you're bringing in a new person to fill the role. And they've got the learning.
They've got I call it the artifact, the organizational artifact. they've got standard operating procedures and they've got the AI trained so that they know they're getting good results.
Bernie (32:08)
Last question. If a business were a boat, is it better to be rowing or steering?
Jeff (32:12)
I would say steering. and and it kind of goes back to my quote from the beginning you need both, but I see a lot of boats, and honest God, this sounds mean. Everybody's on the right side rowing and wondering why they're spinning in circles. And I used to think that was a joke, but I actually saw a summer camp where they were teaching kids to canoe, and nobody taught them that they had to balance. So these kids were all spinning in circles.
And I've looked at the instructor. I'm like, are you gonna tell them? And he's like, eventually. So you need steering, steering's first. You're charting the course actually. and then you need steering, and then you need rowing. That's my opinion.
Bernie (32:51)
Jeff, I love it. So someone wants to reach out to you. Who should reach out to you? Where should they be from? And how do they reach out to you?
Jeff (32:59)
Awesome. Well, first and foremost, my people are limited to North America. So I love all my friends overseas. I don't have the bandwidth to deal with Australian time zones anymore. So hard-coded to North America. And my people are tech founders who are growing. They've got, you know, five million in revenue and they're tired of being tired.
And the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn or they can go to my website, pharosbusiness.com.
Bernie (33:29)
Podcasts, yes, yes. Let's talk about podcasts. Yes. Someone's playing with podcasts. Yes, yes. Possible podcaster.
Jeff (33:36)
All right. So at pharosbusiness.com, there is a podcast link. It's on the main page. my podcast is called The Lighthouse Sessions. And there I interview a very special audience. I call them visionary entrepreneurs. And most normal people, they're less than 10% of the population. The average person doesn't know they exist, which is fascinating.
But if you've met one, you know it, because they are this embodiment of chaos and energy. we tend to be exhausting because we're always thinking about the next big thing. but my people, my guests and my audience, we take perfectly good things, tear it apart to see how it works, and then we rebuild it and go, better. And you know.
We're not looking for that 1% incremental improvement that most people look at. we're looking for the next thing that changes the universe, breaks the internet, whatever it is. we fail a lot, we fall down, but we collect feedback, we get up, and usually we end up building a new category or defining an industry. all innovation comes from visionary entrepreneurs.
Bernie (34:47)
You know what, Jeff? Thank you so much for a really, really great conversation today. Enjoyed it immensely. And you the Knack 4 Business listeners for coming into this show and taking gander. All right. And reach out to Jeff. If you're if you fit the profile of what he's looking for, he's there to help you. You know, and if stress is not what you want to have in your life, and unless of course you're a masochist.
then you you know you should get out of that. I say that with pun, and and if you're providing the stress to somebody else, then that's a different podcast altogether. so hidden frictions, overwhelms. keeping things clear and making things repeatable so you can grow and have success and enjoy your time.