#611 You Are Probably the Bottleneck And AI Won’t Change That | Jordan Solender

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Mehmet: Hello, and welcome back to a new episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased, joining me from Washington DC in the US, Jordan Solender. He is an investor, an entrepreneur, and a technology leader. He'd done a lot of things in, in his career. But usually, as I always tell my audience at the beginning, I don't like to steal, you know, the lights from my guests.

I keep that intro and, you know, the journey and the background to them to tell us. So Jordan, thank you again for being on the show here today. Traditional, I know, but you know, for people who might not know you, little bit about your background, your journey, and what you're currently up to, and then we will dive directly into what we're gonna talk about today, which is all related to entrepreneurship, it's related to startups, uh, it's related also to, to AI, of course, and decision making.

So the floor is yours. 

Jordan: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me, first off. Um, my background is really as an entrepreneur and operator, [00:01:00] right? Uh, so I, I, I like to make sure people know I am still an operator. I like being an operator. But entrepreneur and operator, investor. I've built and scaled businesses, I've made plenty of mistakes, and today I spend most of my time helping founders remove themselves as the bottleneck in their own business.

Uh, a lot of my work sits at the intersection of AI, delegation, and systems. Uh, I'm fascinated by one question: how do we build companies that can grow without requiring the founder to be involved in every decision? That's the problem I've been solving for myself, and now for other entrepreneurs for, uh, just under two years now, and I am absolutely enjoying it, and it sounds like, uh, the audience that you have really resonates with that.

Mehmet: Yeah, I'm an operator myself as well. I consider myself this way. Love to speak about, you know, uh, startups, about business, and of course, coming from technology background, this all-- this is what the whole show is about. Now, looking back, Jordan, on, on, you know, the things that you have done, so you've [00:02:00] built multiple companies, you did successful exits, you invested in startups.

So, um, where have-- And, but you said at the end, like, you, you see yourself as an operator. But looking at these experiences, like, what do you think is the m- experience that the most shaped the way how you think about building businesses?

Jordan: Without question, the biggest lesson I have learned was realizing that I was the bottleneck, right? To kind of bring this question full circle. Early in my career, I thought that great founders had to be involved in everything, and just like I'm sure you do, and most entrepreneurs do, right? When you're involved with everything, you wear it as almost a badge of honor.

And what I learned the hard way is that businesses really don't scale when the founder works harder. The scale, right, the business actually scales when the founder builds systems, delegates effectively, and creates repeatable process. So today with AI, that lesson is even more powerful and it's even easier to do.

There's no [00:03:00] excuse to not have, uh, delegation done correctly and systems built for you. The founders who win aren't necessarily the smartest in the room. They're just the ones who can leverage AI and document, delegate, and automate. They essentially are building an organization that performs without them being involved in every single decision.

So I learned this very early on, and as AI became more and more relevant, I leveraged that, and that's really helped shape who I am and how I operate today. 

Mehmet: Right. Jordan, as a follow-up question, and it's a question that I prepared, but I, I, I like the flow and how we, we're gonna deep dive more into this.

Now, you call yourself the bottleneck breaker, right? So now- It's a common thing we see sometimes where, as you just described about becoming the bottleneck, right? So why this keep happening, and why do you think, you know, [00:04:00] founders, they don't notice that they are s- actually slowing down their own companies and the whole business?

So why that happen in the first place? 

Jordan: Because the behaviors that made you successful early on are often the exact same behaviors that you limit later. When you start out in being in a business, it's normal to be involved in everything. It's, it's, it's very natural, right? The company is built on your back.

Your superhero power is the delivery and the idea. Being involved in everything is the superpower in the beginning. You're the salesperson, you're the operator, the problem solver. But as the company grows, that same behavior actually becomes the bottleneck. And the tricky part is founders usually don't notice it because the business is still growing and they think, "Look, everything is working."

What they don't realize is the company is growing despite them, not because of them. Does, does that make sense? And I always [00:05:00] tell- Yeah ... founders, if, if every important decision, approval, customer issue, or hire has to flow through them, they have built a job, not a company, and that's why I'm obsessed with operational knowledge in SOPs and now AI.

The goal isn't to make yourself more productive. The goal is to make the business less dependent on you, and that's when the real scale starts to happen because it's not dependent on you and it can just grow naturally. 

Mehmet: Right. Jordan, what are like kind of some early signs, you know, we, we can tell that these founders are trapped in the day-to-day rather than leading the business?

And you know, I know it, it would be like little bit loaded question, and does it happen mainly to first time founders or it might happen also to second and third time founders? 

Jordan: Early signs. So it, it happens to all founders of any company size. So first time, second time, even [00:06:00] founders who've had successful exits.

I mean, I get myself caught every once in a while, and I have to take a step back and go, "I'm inserting myself here, and I'm making the business rely on me when I shouldn't." So the issue isn't experience. The issue, I think, is identity with these CEOs. A lot of founders get rewarded for being the person with all the answers, and then one day the company grows to a point where that becomes the constraint.

And I think that's where a lot of founders find themselves, and the early warning signs are actually pretty obvious. So you might have experienced this at some point. You're an operator, but decisions pile up waiting for the founder. Your inbox gets a little larger, and, you know, you roll over to the next day saying, "All right.

I'm gonna handle these first thing in the morning." But that right there, right? They're-- the team's waiting for an approval. A customer's waiting for an answer. The team is constantly waiting for an approval. Vacations become impossible for you. Growth starts slowing down despite you working harder and everybody else working founder-- harder.

And the founder, you, starts feeling busy all day. [00:07:00] But you're not spending time on, going back to what I said earlier, your superpower, the thing that got you here, the strategy piece. Mm-hmm. So the less time-- That might be the clearest indicator, leading indicator that you're bottlenecked, is that the time you're actually spending on strategy around the business, how to grow the business, not running in the business, gets less and less every single week.

So my f- one of my favorite questions I ask people is: If you disappeared for 30 days, what breaks? 

Mehmet: Hmm. 

Jordan: And the answer usually reveals that bottleneck immediately. 

Mehmet: Right. Now, I know, like, also you, you, you talk about, you know, saying pick one thing and remove yourself, right? Yep. Uh, it's-- it looks like super powerful, but- The question that might, you know, get asked as a counter, uh, idea is, "Hey, yeah, but to who?"

You know, like, [00:08:00] "I'm still, um, you know, having, uh, scarcity on the resources. I don't have big team." Mm-hmm. "I need to be involved in everything. How sh- how can I, you know, choose," you know? Like, and how I can delegate this, because, you know... Again, I, actually I was planning to put that into two questions, but I think it's related to each other.

So delegation sounds simple, Jordan, but actually many people, like regardless if it's for business or not business, right? Even as employee sometime, you know, delegation feels hard, right? So- 

Jordan: Yeah ... 

Mehmet: how we c- how, how we can, you know, apply this philosophy of picking the one thing and removing ourselves and removing the excuses, I would say, that we don't have resources, we don't have enough team people to take care of that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

So what's your point of view on this? 

Jordan: So my thought process for any founder is if you can document it, you can delegate it. Mm-hmm. But this is [00:09:00] actually where most founders get stuck. They think that delegation starts with hiring, and it, it doesn't. Delegation starts with documentation, okay? Before I hire somebody, anybody, I wanna have an SOP, a standard operating procedure.

Before I build an SOP, I want clarity on the outcome, though. So what do I want to happen in this project or role or task or repetitive thing that I'm doing on a daily basis? What should the outcome be? Now, today, AI can help you document a process in, in hours that used to take weeks, you know, in minutes that used to take hours.

And the big mindset shift for CEOs thinking about that and asking that exact question is don't remove yourself from everything. Remove yourself from one thing. Pick the task you do repeatedly that creates the least value, document it, systematize it in an SOP, right? Then you delegate it, and then repeat, and just keep going with all the things in your day that you're [00:10:00] repeatedly doing.

And most founders aren't resource constrained. They're clarity constrained. Most founders have a VA. Most founders have somebody on their team, whether it be a virtual assistant or a project manager, that they can delegate things off to. So- 

Mehmet: Right ... 

Jordan: recently actually, uh, I asked a, you know, one of my, one of my clients that I'm, I'm coaching right now in JSC, Jordan Sallander Coaching, "What are, what are five things only you can do?"

Mm-hmm. Most can't answer that question. Wow. Because once you know that, everything else becomes a candidate for delegation, automation, or elimination. And that's why my philosophy here is very simple. It's every quarter, remove yourself from one thing. Do that for three years, and you've transformed your entire business.

It's a totally different business 

Mehmet: Right. Now you kept talking about SOPs, right, Jordan? So Now, if, [00:11:00] if we want to apply this and, you know, make ourself first accountable and again track if we are on the right path of, of dividing and conquering basically, um, how do you measure, like when you are working with your clients, like as, as coach, like what do you tell, you know, a founder that comes to you on, on how they can track if they are doing...

If they have, first they have chosen, you know, the right things to, to do this, and the second performance-wise, like how we can make sure that we are on the right track and not, you know, we have to now pivot to, to, to something else maybe and try to delegate few other items and get back the control of, of these items that we delegated before, right?

So h- how we track this and put kind of KPI if you want, or like reporting on, on, on the enhancement that we had so far. 

Jordan: I, I think [00:12:00] you-- I think the question might over- almost overcomplicate the process here because I personally, I only care about three things. Okay. Is the work getting done? Mm-hmm. Is the quality acceptable?

And is the founder spending less time on it? 

Mehmet: Okay. 

Jordan: If all three are true, delegation worked. The mistake is they delegate a task, but they keep all the decisions. 

Mehmet: Mm. 

Jordan: For ex- for example, if you're delegating lead generation, but you, and you don't measure how many hours somebody worked, right? You, if you, if you're delegating lead generation, you don't measure how many hours somebody worked.

You measure meetings booked, correct? Right. Right? So if you're, if you're saying to somebody, "Go book meetings for me, you're my, you're my business generator," you don't care that they worked 40 hours. You care how many meetings they booked in those 40 hours. So if they booked 50 meetings in a week, do you care if they only worked two hours or three hours?

You, you, you care [00:13:00] about the outcome, correct? 

Mehmet: 100%. 

Jordan: So, yeah. So if you're delegating customer success, you, you measure retention and an expansion. If you're delegating operations, right, you're measuring cycle time and, and error rates. And the secret here that most people don't know that I teach constantly, if a delegated task fails, it's usually not a people problem.

It's a systems problem. So either the SOP wasn't clear, or the KPI wasn't defined, or the owner wasn't empowered to make the decisions themselves. 

Mehmet: Hmm. Makes sense. 100%. Yep. You talk about a rule which I know, but I think, you know, we need, we need you to explain that to us, which is the 10/80/10 rule, right? So tell us more about this rule.

The 10/80/10 

Jordan: you're talking about, right? 

Mehmet: 10/80/10, yeah. So tell us a bit about it and how it can be used to create accountability without pretty much not going into the micromanaging. Because by [00:14:00] the way, I've seen people who does, you know, the mistake of, you know, becoming over, um, exaggerating on the micromanaging part.

Jordan: Yeah. It's, it's tough not to micromanage. I understand the, the need, or sorry, the instinct, not the need, to, to want to do that. But with the 10/80/10 rule, it's, it's one of the simplest ways I've found to avoid micromanagement with while maintaining accountability. So just to, for anybody out there, listeners, that don't understand what the 10/80/10 rule is, the first-- This is the secret sauce right here, so open up your ears, pay attention, drop your pencils.

This, the first 10% of the 10/80/10 is alignment. We define the outcome, the KPI, the SOP. What does success look like? What does good look like? 80% is execution, and this is where the most founders make the mistake. This is the most common place they make the mistake. They keep jumping into the middle and managing every single decision.

And if you've hired the right [00:15:00] person and built the right system, get out of the way and let them execute on this. Now, the final 10% is review. This is where found- Mm-hmm ... a lot of founders don't even make it to. So this final 10%, we look at the results, we see what worked, we see what didn't, and how we improve the process.

What founders instinctively want is control, but what they actually need is visibility, and they don't understand the difference between the two a lot of the time, and that's where micromanagement comes back in, unfortunately. Micromanagement happens when a founder confuses being informed with being involved.

Mehmet: Right. Um, let's talk about AI, because you mentioned a couple of times, Jordan, and I know, like, um, y- you, you have IT Select, which is the arm of, of, uh, focusing on, on the AI. Um, so tell me how, if you can give me a use case probably or an example, uh, of [00:16:00] how AI is changing the way, you know, we are operating and, uh, leading currently, and w- how this is shaping also, you know, the way the business itself, it's done, and, you know, what you, you expect this to, to, to go to in the future.

Jordan: I mean, AI is changing the way business owners should be operating. The ones that will win will be the ones that learn how to leverage, insert, uh, AI across their entire, I will say, five pillars of their business. Those pillars being lead acquisition, lead nurture, sales execution, fulfillment and delivery, and finally, um, retention.

Mm-hmm. That being said, the, the AI- the ones that, you know, leverage AI will be the ones that win very easily. And I think most business owners still are dramatically underestimating AI, even with, you know, the, the [00:17:00] major increases in people using Claude Code or Home- Hermes or Open Claw today, just on a daily basis, the increase in those numbers.

Right now, most founders are using it as a, as a tool. They're using it to write emails and summarize meetings and create content. That's useful, but it's the equivalent of using the internet in 1998 just to send an email. What excites me is AI as a digital workforce. So when I'm working with founders, a lot of the time I'm coaching them on building AI into SOPs, reporting, customer follow-up, KPI tracking, things like project management and decision support.

Instead of hiring another person for every repetitive task, we're asking, "Can an AI agent handle 80% of the process in the 10/80/10?" 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Jordan: So the biggest shift isn't that p- AI is replacing people, it's that it's allowing small teams to perform much, like much larger organizations. Right. The teams that are succeeding and the [00:18:00] operators that are expanding rapidly and fast, they're leveraging AI to do 10X the output, 20X the output.

They're thinking at a higher level. The biggest shift isn't that AI is replacing people, it's that it's allowing teams to act like larger organizations. And, and in five years ago, if you wanted to scale, the m- the simple quarter-in, quarter-out math was you hired more people. 

Mehmet: Right. 

Jordan: Today, you scale by combining great people with great systems and AI You know, and that, that's why I'm so focused on helping founders document, build SOPs, and remove themselves from this day-to-day.

AI becomes this incredibly powerful tool and agentic workforce for you once the business is systematized. Chaos can't be automated. If your listeners take anything away from this podcast, it-- I hope it's that. Chaos can't be automated, but a great system can be scaled [00:19:00] almost infinitely. 

Mehmet: I love this. I love this.

Yeah, e-e-e-exactly. This is, you know what we, uh, we've been saying it with, with my guests in different ways, like, you know, uh, when, when the AI hype started with the generative AI, we're saying like garbage in, garbage out, right? And well, now with the agentic, like if you put cows in, you will get cows out, right?

So, um, a-and you need to, to make sure that you're, you're doing it the right way. Yeah. Now, talking about, you know, the hype, um, where do you see people are doing the mistakes the most? And I can't blame them, Jordan. I tell you-- I will tell you why. Because even myself, as someone who have technology background and I've been an operator, as I told you.

So when I look up on the amount of information we're getting and the speed of the information that is popping out, I might get like, you know, confused on which system I should choose or [00:20:00] like, uh, you know, getting dragged into the models or like when people start to talk about a specific agent framework and let's go and use this.

Even I start to see like these funny reels about, you know, the, you know, they call them the Jarvis bro. Like they go download something from the internet and they make like fake videos showing like, "Oh, I have this agent is doing everything for me." But-- which is-- I'm not saying it's, it's not real, but I mean, still you need to do some jo- some, some tasks before this.

So where are people getting it wrong and how you're helping executives, founders to go back on track when, when they decide to get the right AI systems in place?

Jordan: There was a lot, there was a few questions in that question. Um, Yeah. Yeah, there were a few ones in there, so let me, let me try to take one at a time here. So- 

Mehmet: Sure ... 

Jordan: y- or around the question around, like, which, which model should I use, which tool, which agent or framework should I use, um, I think the [00:21:00] real question they need to be asking is what's the bottleneck in the business?

Right? Like I said earlier, we, we, we don't wanna automate chaos. So before you build an agent or pick a framework or a model or a tool, you need a process. Before you need the process, you need an outcome. So if you don't have the outcome clearly defined, a KPI or a clear owner, AI is just gonna help make mistakes faster.

And I think a lot of people don't re- truly understand that. So the founders getting the biggest wins aren't chasing every new model release. They're identifying one repetitive process, documenting, and then asking, "How can I leverage one of the AI tools to make this better or cheaper?" Now, if the, the question very black and white is which AI do I use?

It's, it really just depends on the task. For- Mm-hmm ... for creative writing and, you know, I'm using Claude. For research, I'm using GPT. For coding, uh, truly I've gone back and forth between [00:22:00] Claude Code and Codex. It's, it's been great. For, for agents and agentic stuff, I'm using Hermes. Um, it, it truly all depends just on what the task is.

Is, is it an ongoing task? Is it a one-off thing? Um, you know, for image generation, I'm using Gemini. 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Jordan: For logic and thinking, I'm using Groq. So I'm, I'm using all of them. So it's, it, it truly just depends on the task. 

Mehmet: It depends on the use case, but I'm happy you, you, you gave this example, Jordan. And I think, you know, a- as humans, I believe, this is my own theory, we have like a short memory span, right?

Um, if people go and watch, there's a famous clip that always pop up, you know, when, when someone asks Steve Jobs about Java thing, you know, and he st- he gave the best answer to this. He said like, "It's not like, you know, forcing the technology into where we, we, we, we, we gonna place it," right? Or like try to, to [00:23:00] imagine, you know, how, how we will utilize this technology if actually there's no need for it.

So I, I'm of course rephrasing a lot. He said, he said like you start with what the customer want, like the outcome, right? What outcome you want to achieve, and then you move backward, and you, you start to see like what technology I need to, to, to put in so I can give the customer what they want. And I think, you know, this is happening a lot with AI, uh, again, but at, at scale and at speed because of course, you know, things are coming v- very, very fast.

And this is where I believe, you know, my own opinion, uh, like feel free to correct me, Jordan, like I think what, what is, uh, you know, differentiating people who are, um, utilizing AI is the m- people who, to your point, start with a use case at the beginning and then, you know, reverse engineer that into choosing which models, tools, agents, uh, versus the people who just like put the system and then, "Oh, where should I start?"

Right? And you know, [00:24:00] we always make this joke like, right, like so- We can bring the, the most intelligent system in the world, but if you don't know how to ask it the right question, it's, it gonna s- stay quiet, silent, right? It will not, it will not tell you anything.

So Jordan, like also one of the things we, we might think about on, on how we utilize the AI, are you seeing a, you know, leaders being able to use it somehow to do the things that usually we want? You know, whether we are leaders, operators, entrepreneurs, you know, even normal employees to reduce like maybe, um, stress levels to increase leverage, um, and how much, you know, what we today call it, the human in the loop in all this is important.

So keep the human judgment. What are like the practical way actually to utilize AI to, to help us, you know, in, in, in reducing maybe the day-to-day stresses and increase our leverage? [00:25:00] 

Jordan: So very quick wins. I mean, this is a quick win question with AI. How do we, how do we gain leverage very fast just on day-to-day things?

The first and foremost thing that stresses everybody out is the inbox, right? 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Jordan: There are so many hundreds of tools at this point. There's, there's some great ones out there. There's fixer.ai. You can, you can connect Claude directly to your inbox. Keeping human in the loop I think is really important. I don't have any of my agents responding on my behalf unless it is a, um, calendar invite- Mm-hmm

where it's delegating calendar tasks and helping me reorganize my calendar. But as far as emails go, I have both my VA and an AI agent in my email, and they will draft all the replies. The VA will also be in my email and re- review the draft replies and send them out if they make sense, uh, or add color if needed, and likewise with my other businesses, um, it's always a draft, so it is [00:26:00] saving me hundreds upon hundreds of hours of just, you know, getting back to people and getting back to people faster.

So that's, that's an easy win right there. 

Mehmet: Right. Jordan, um, when we talk about companies, we talk about org charts usually, and we talk about structures and, and, you know, line of, of, uh, reportings, right? So are you seeing AI making organization actually flatter, or it's increasing the importance of, of, you know, the role of leadership here?

Like w- w- with... Because, you know, uh, the reason I'm asking you this question, we start to see, you know, all the major, you know, AI company CEOs talking about the one person company, you know, or at least they talk about the smaller teams. So are we, are we going away from, you know, this very complex, you know, leadership structure and making the organization flat?

Or no, like this is, this something we're gonna still [00:27:00] need on, on the long term? 

Jordan: Is it making organizat- organizational structures flatter?

That's an interesting question. Uh, y- you know, I'm on a lot of podcasts. I don't think I've ever had that question before. That's a very good question. It's an interesting question because I think organizations will become flatter, but I don't think leadership becomes less important, which is the key here. I think it actually becomes more important because AI can replace layers of coordination, reporting, administrative management. It can generate reports, track KPIs, summarize meetings.

I mean, th- there's a multitude of things that AI can do here. Historically, that's what a lot of middle management spent time doing though, right? So leadership... But leadership isn't reporting. Leadership is setting the direction. Leadership is setting the strategy, showing what good looks like. They're making decisions under uncertainty, building culture, developing people.

So I don't believe in the, in the one [00:28:00] person billion-dollar company. I- We're hearing a lot about these unicorns coming out of- Right ... Silicon Valley, um, just all over the, all over the world. But I don't, I don't personally do not believe in the, in the one person billion-dollar company narrative for most businesses.

Could it happen? I, I guess, but most companies are still gonna be built by teams, where culture is developed by people and strategy is developed by people. What changes though, like I mentioned earlier, is the leverage piece. For a really good example, 10 ex- 10 years ago, right? A company might need 100 people to achieve something.

You know, in the future, it maybe only needs 20 exceptional people supported by AI to achieve the exact same thing or same outcome. The org chart, yes, will get flatter, but the quality bar gets much higher 'cause remember it's, it's great people surrounded by AI that are gonna define these unicorns in these companies that skyrocket.[00:29:00] 

So... 

Mehmet: Right. Yeah. Um, yeah, yeah. Ma- makes a lot of sense. Um, and actually, you know, like there are some type of business you can't, you can't have them in one person, like whatever, so what- whatsoever, right? So whatever you gonna do, you're gonna still have to have a team with you and, and because at, at the end of the day, and that's something I noticed on myself when I started to try to automate some of the things that I do using agents and, you know, the other AI tools, is that I can't handle, right?

I need people to still help me, you know, maybe in, in, in doing some stuff. And you just gave the perfect example, Jordan, about, you know, the inbox. So you still have the, your, your VA in your inbox, uh, to do some stuff because probably you're busy to go and check if the AI is generating the right answers, right?

So, so you need to delegate even that task to, to another human with you, um, to, to take that task forward, which makes a lot of sense. Now, I gotta ask you a question. It's a little bit- Kind of, I'm, I really get up [00:30:00] with these kinds of question, but I think, uh, based on the discussion that we had today, and I want to go back to the, um, uh, to, to the founders who, who are overwhelmed and you're trying to help them.

When you decide that you cannot work with certain executive or founders because you figured out that they are uncoachable, what are the signs that would tell you, "Hey, you know what, Jordan? I'm not doing this man because, you know, this guy is, you know, he, he-- I would not be able to benefit out from him. He or she will not listen from me."

When do you say this? 

Jordan: Ooh, I just had one of these situations. This, uh this is a good one. This is a good one Most of the time it's not about whether they agree with me. Uh, the founders I [00:31:00] struggle to help are the ones they believe every problem is external to them. It's not my fault, it's everyone else's fault.

Oh. It's the market, it's the team, it's the economy, it's the customers, it's the technology, it's out of my control. The, the founders who get the biggest results are the ones that are willing to look in the mirror and ask, "What if it's me?" Mm. I tell clients all the time, "You don't have to take my advice.

You're, you're paying me, right? But you don't have to take my advice if you really don't want to, but you do have to test your assumptions. I'm gonna push you to do that." The biggest red flag for me though, is when someone asks for help, but they've already decided that they're right. At that point, they're not looking for coaching, they're looking for validation.

So the founders I love working with are curious. They're willing to change beliefs, they're willing to document things. They can say, "You might have a good idea [00:32:00] here." They might say, "Show me another way." 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Jordan: They might admit they don't know everything, and they're willing to, to level up their game. Those, those are the ones I love working with.

Mehmet: Nice. I know a lot of people exactly the way you, you described, right? And then 

Jordan: but- We, we call those red flags. Red flags ... 

Mehmet: red flags. And I know like, you know, even s- I hear it from investors sometimes also, they, they say, "Okay, we passed on, on, on these guys," because exactly the same reason you just mentioned, you know?

Like, they're uncoachable, everyone is, you know, like, you know, like it's, uh, uh, everyone is fighting against us, you know? You know, it's, it's like, you know, you do, you do like you... Everyone is the enemy and you are the one who's, uh, struggling to go out. And I think, Jordan, you know, of course, we live in abundance of knowledge and information, books, podcasts, and so on.[00:33:00] 

And I think, you know, I, I want to, to, to have your opinion on this. So when people go and read about, like, entrepreneurship and the traits of an entrepreneur, so one of the things or two of the things which are kind of related to each others, like, how you know you are on the right path. So the first thing is about persistence, right?

So, and people, I th- they, I think they misunderstand what persistence means, and they convert it to stubbornness kind of. And when you tell them, "But hey, like, also you need to be flexible and to pivot," they tell you, "No, but I'm moving away from my vision and why I want to start this company." Do you a- do you agree, like, Jordan, like, this is where people f- mix between persistence and stubbornness?

Jordan: Yeah. Uh, and I think that line can get blurred sometimes- Mm-hmm ... a lot of the time actually. Persistence and [00:34:00] stubbornness. So I think the-- I think persistence is probably committing to the outcome, and stubbornness is committing to the method. 

Mehmet: Right. 

Jordan: Okay? The best founders I met are, are incredibly persistent about where they're going, but they're flexible about how they get there.

They're looking at the outcome. Uh, if customers keep telling you something, if the market keeps giving you feedback, if your team keeps bringing up the same issue over and over again, and it, it feels repetitive, and you refuse to listen to them because, "That's not my vision," that's not persistence, that's ego.

You know, I tell my clients and other founders and CEOs constantly that the ones that say to me, "Nobody can do it the way I do it. I'm, I'm doing it in such a unique way. My business is a snowflake," right? The ones that, that say that to me, I say, I, I say, "Go out there and find somebody that can do it 80% of the [00:35:00] way that you do it."

80%. Mm-hmm. That's it. Doesn't have to be perfect, right? You're not gon- you're not gonna find perfect. Finding perfect every time doesn't scale. Go out there and find 80%. If somebody can do it 80% as good, if not better than you do it, the 20% that's left over, that's your ego, and if you can put that aside, scaling will be easy 

Mehmet: Right.

I gotta put a disclaimer here, Jordan, and this is especially if you interact a lot with some of the, you know, LLM tools. They're designed, not all of them, but some of them, to actually, um, I would say amplify this ego, especially ChatGPT. Yeah. Especially ChatGPT, because I've seen people, they go to ChatGPT.

I, I, I... Okay, I'm not having any issues ab- against OpenAI guys. Like, you know, it's, it's, it's great product they have. I use Codex, I use ChatGPT itself, but it's just a, a notice that I've seen, and I've, I've, you know, I, [00:36:00] I've read a lot of, uh, articles about the same thing. It's designed actually to agree with you all the time unless you tell it, you know, in the memory that challenge me.

So for example, this is why Claude, by default, by the way, it always counter, uh, you know, try to find a counter, uh, argument when- Yeah ... when I ask something. And this is where the AI also need to be, you know, used in the way where, um, I would say careful, so to not fall into the trap of, of, uh, how do you call it?

Uh, I would call it being, um, yeah, amplifying the ego. Let's put it this way, right? Um- 

Jordan: It d- yeah, it does that. 

Mehmet: Anything you want to add on this? 

Jordan: AI tools do that. Uh, they make-- They agree. You know, the, the craziest parts of what you're saying are, are the stories I hear [00:37:00] of somebody saying to AI, "Hey, I have this idea.

I wanna go, uh, buy a bunch of dogs from the dog pound and, and chop them up and serve them in a restaurant," right? And obviously that's a crazy idea, but AI goes, "Wow, you're really onto something there. You should really think about that. That, what a unique idea. Let- do you want me to help you plan it out?"

So- Right ... I, I think you're right. You need to have, you need to have challenges in there. In fact, in all my AI models I have in the memory, including my AI agents, challenge me, don't be a yes man, always offer an alternative You know, you don't want a yes man, especially when you're a founder building a business.

Uh, if you wanna be a yes man, you know, go, go work in a corporate job. But if you wanna be a founder, if you wanna be in the C-suite, you don't wanna be a yes man. You wanna be challenged. You wanna be pushed. You wanna be dragged forward in your way of thinking. 

Mehmet: Yeah. And this is why, like, you know, all leaders, they go to, you know, try to, to work with coaches like yourself, Jordan, because- Yeah

they want to be challenged, [00:38:00] right? Like, the successful ones always, they surround them- themselves with people who can challenge them. It's not like because they are wrong all the time, but because they need this, you know, different point of views. Because when, when, when you look at things from, I would call it neutral perspective, it's other than if, if I'm your client, I would be, like, laser focused on certain outcome or a certain way I want to do it, but you might have different way to completely change my point of view on that.

So, so this is where, you know, things get, uh, get better, and this is actually, you know, the right way to do it, I believe. And that, you know, I, I've, I've known a lot of successful leaders, executives, founders, and the common trait is they are all open for people to tell them, like, what they're... What-- The hard truth, let's call it this way, right?

Jordan: Sure. 

Mehmet: Um, as we are coming close to an end, Jordan, very traditional question, like, how people can get in touch, and where they can start? 

Jordan: Absolutely. So if you just wanna get entered into my world, uh, [00:39:00] jordansolander.com. You can find everything you need, uh, right from there, so IT, events, investing, uh, private equity, working with me as a coaching client.

If you just wanna work with me as a coaching client, and you're interested in that, jordansolandercoaching.com. 

Mehmet: Great. I will make sure that the links is in the show notes. So Jordan, thank you very much for being here with me today. I know, like, you have still a busy day ahead, uh, back in, in, in Washington, DC, so thank you for joining me, um, in your morning.

And, uh, you know, I really enjoyed the discussion. I think we discussed a lot of things which are beneficial for executives, founders, and everyone who's interested to know how they can make themself, you know, better, I would say. Like, always seek to, to, to speak with people who have done it before you. They can advise you and, uh, guide you.

So thank you again, Jordan. And this is how I end my episodes. This is for the audience. If you just discovered us, thank you for passing by. Uh, give me a favor. Subscribe, share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you are one of the people who keep coming again and [00:40:00] again, thank you very much. We are seeing amazing results recently, like, we have seen spikes in the number of listenerships and downloads across multiple countries, and we are making it again since 2025.

Every week we change countries, actually, so we are on the Apple Top 200 Podcast Charts, although we changed the category recently to technology from, uh, business and entrepreneurship to technology because recently we focus more on the AI topics. But still, you followed, and you made it, uh, happen, so thank you very much.

Absolutely. And as I say always, stay tuned for a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.