What’s Keeping You Up at Night?
Ami Kassar thinks how you’re sleeping is the real measure of a business’s health (and the owner’s health).
Good morning!
Here are today’s highlights:
Not sure how to get started with AI? Hire a fractional chief AI officer.
You can now place a Starbucks order through ChatGPT.
Facing pushback from sellers, Amazon is delaying a change to its advertising system.
More college students are starting businesses rather than trying to enter the job market.
FINANCE
Ami Kassar thinks how you’re sleeping is the real measure of a business’s health (and the owner’s health): “I’ve joked that in my next life, I want to create a Sleep 5000 list to replace the Inc. 5000—a ranking of the entrepreneurs who sleep the best. The ones who have built something sustainable, not just something fast. Because I’ve seen too many successful entrepreneurs who are anything but healthy. A few weeks ago, I had dinner with a friend who runs a large manufacturing business. By most traditional measures, he’s doing very well. But he told me he’d been in and out of the ER several times in recent months. I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, so I asked him a question I often use when talking to business owners: ‘What’s keeping you up at night?’ He didn’t hesitate: ‘Cash.’”
“As we dug in, the situation became clearer—and more troubling. He had access to a line of credit, exactly the kind of tool designed to smooth out the ups and downs of a manufacturing business. But he wasn’t using it. Instead, he had chosen to manage everything with operating cash, putting enormous pressure on himself. In other words, he was torturing himself unnecessarily.”
“That moment stuck with me—not just because of his situation, but because of the question. ‘What’s keeping you up at night?’ cuts through a lot of noise. It gets past the surface-level answers we tend to give—things are good, we’re growing, no major issues—and goes straight to the real pressure points. It can reveal what’s actually going on.” READ MORE
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Gene Marks says there’s a new way for small businesses to get started with AI—by hiring a fractional AI officer: Fractional CMOs, CFOs and CROs are becoming more common in smaller organizations, where they can be used to provide a high level of expertise but on a part time basis. The expertise provided by FAOs like [Dmytro] Negodiuk is now quickly being recognized for similar reasons as more business owners need someone that can help implement solutions that bridge the gap between AI hype and practical implementation. Because they’re part-time their cost is much lower and ROI can be more easily determined.”
“Since emigrating from Ukraine less than five years ago Negodiuk has used AI to run content, pricing, reviews and customer service across four e-commerce platforms, and, for another company, created a voice agent that handles more than one hundred daily outbound cold calls and lead qualifications in three different languages without a sales rep.”
“The key isn’t coding. It’s defining where AI can help your business. And to do this Negodiuk recommends an AI Readiness ‘audit,’ a service that he routinely performs and which involves discovery calls, detailed questionnaires, and oftentimes onsite visits. ‘An audit identifies high-impact opportunities,’ he says. ‘It’s a strategic roadmap that outlines potential AI implementations and return-on-investment.’”
“Where to focus first? Negodiuk has found success in using AI to improve invoicing and payment processing (‘everything connected with money in your company can be automated’), enable quicker financial reporting, complementing customer service humans with better information (‘everyone wants to change customer support, but in the future, speaking with a real person who’s augmented by AI will be a huge benefit’), sales outreach using AI voice agents, and notifying businesses of news and events that specifically impact them.” READ MORE
