June 30, 2026

00:33:18

Why Your AI Is Costing You Sales (Not Saving Them) | Travis McGregor

Why Your AI Is Costing You Sales (Not Saving Them) | Travis McGregor
The Growth Focus Podcast
Why Your AI Is Costing You Sales (Not Saving Them) | Travis McGregor

Jun 30 2026 | 00:33:18

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Show Notes

Every founder I talk to is using AI to grow faster. Almost none of them are asking what AI is quietly costing them. This week I sat down with Travis McGregor, CEO of SLC Digital, who's built and exited one company already and is now building a second around mobile SIM security.

Travis put his finger on something I see constantly working with MSP owners and B2B tech founders: AI isn't the problem. Treating AI like the source of your thinking is. Travis was at an event in San Francisco recently with forty AI companies in the room, and they all sounded the same. Same pitch, same language, same positioning. That's not a coincidence — it's what happens when everyone feeds the same prompts into the same models and lets the output do the talking.

The companies who actually grow revenue are the ones who use AI as what Travis calls a clerk, an assistant for the repeatable work, while the founder keeps total ownership of the thing that actually closes deals: understanding the customer well enough to speak their language back to them.

We get into why AI can only hand you probability while a human in the room can hand you certainty, why funding can quietly erode the thing that made your business different in the first place, and the one growth lever Travis says still works no matter what the market is doing.

If you've ever wondered whether your AI-assisted growth is actually working, or just making you sound like everyone else, this one's for you.

00:00 — Why AI changes how founders hire, not who gets replaced

01:14 — AI as a clerk, not the source of ideas

02:25 — Good data in, good data out: the discipline most founders skip

04:14 — Where tech founders waste the most time and money

07:01 — Forty AI companies, one identical pitch: the sameness problem

08:23 — Why polish matters more once everyone has the same tools

12:19 — The 2018 mindset still running modern companies

13:52 — A hard lesson on scaling most founders learn too late

18:42 — What Travis would do differently in the first 12 months

19:11 — Funding, KPIs, and the slow erosion of founder passion

23:48 — The one action every founder should take after this episode

26:28 — Quick-fire round: stop doing, double down, the AI myth, the most dangerous scaling habit, and the growth lever that never stops working

Guest Contact

Travis McGregor, CEO, SLC Digital (Sovereign Line Communication)

Website: slc.digital

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-mcgregor-33a41219/

Gary Contact

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/growthfocus

Website: growthfocus.io

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Chapters

  • (00:00:00) - Growth Focus: AI and the Startup Process
  • (00:01:16) - Meet the CEO of SLC Digital
  • (00:01:48) - How to Build a Business With AI
  • (00:03:42) - WSJDLive: The Uses of AI in Business
  • (00:05:30) - What Do Tech Founders Need to Do To Win?
  • (00:07:04) - How to Get Your Message Heard in a noisy Marketplace
  • (00:12:24) - Creating your own stories in tech
  • (00:13:35) - What Businesses Need to Do to Survive in the Next 5 Years
  • (00:15:07) - Tim Ferriss on Personal Growth
  • (00:17:16) - Have You Reached a Point in Your Business That Nearly Broke You
  • (00:19:22) - What Would You Have Done Different in Your First 12 Months?
  • (00:20:26) - Have We Lost the Passion of VCs?
  • (00:24:51) - 5 Tips for Growing Your Business
  • (00:27:43) - What is the one thing founders should stop doing
  • (00:30:08) - The One Growth Lever We Still Believe in
  • (00:30:44) - Travis McDaniel on Tech Entrepreneurs
  • (00:31:27) - Growth Focus: Revenue Leak Audit
View Full Transcript

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome back. My name is Gary Lafty, host of the Growth Focus podcast and founder of Growth Focused Partnerships, where we help MSP owners and B2B tech founders build revenue systems that turn inconsistent pipelines into predictable growth. Today I'm joined by Travis McGregor, CEO and co founder of SLC Digital. And this is a guy who has built, exited and rebuilt multiple times across telecom, mobile, analytics, biometrics and blockchain. He is not short of hard won perspective. What we get in today is something I think a lot of tech founders are quietly wrestling with right now. AI is everywhere, everyone's using it, and somehow everyone is starting to sound exactly the same. Travis has a sharp take on why that's happening, why it's a problem, and what the founders who actually stand out are doing differently, as per usual. No fluff. Let's get into it. Travis, it's great to have you on the show today. Why don't we just kick off straight away? Why don't you introduce yourself? Why don't you tell us who you are and what is it that you actually do? [00:01:26] Speaker A: I'm Travis McGregor. I'm the CEO of SLC Digital, SLC Sovereign Line Communication. And our company uses mobile sims, the chips in these phones, for security and the future access to everything. [00:01:43] Speaker B: Well, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into that a little bit later on in the actual episode. But yeah, you've already, Travis, you already built and exited a business before this one, you know, so this is, you know, second time around, third time. This is what it's like when we come to building a business. What do you see is different in building a company today? In today's environment, rather than five, six, ten years ago, I, you know, I [00:02:08] Speaker A: must say, AI, right? It's on everyone's minds, you know. You know, 15, 20 years ago, AI wasn't the subject. All this machine learning and so on. So we hired people. So one of the biggest things everyone asked me is in the modern company, how does AI affect who I hire and the outcome of my business? It's a big topic these days. [00:02:29] Speaker B: Do you know, that's a really interesting, you know, you and I haven't discussed before, you know, that AI has been almost pushed out there as the replacer of people. But you've immediately come in and say, you know what? This isn't a replacer of people. AI is there to help us choose the right people. Could you go a little bit more [00:02:52] Speaker A: from my perspective is that when someone decides that, hey, I want to go start something, I Want to start a business that immediate, that inception, that geniusness is human inception. AI can never do that. And I would say to anyone, starting something is use that as a methodology and as a plan all the way through and use AI as almost like a clerk, an assistant. So everything unique comes on the human side of things and you, you push and you focus on that material contribution. And AI is more of, like I said, an assistant or a clerk because only, you know, and that's where I, I, I, I, when I talk to a lot of people who start things, it's, you know, and they say, well, AI can never give you inception and never give you good ideas. Use it for what is worth. [00:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, well, and before we go any further, that's a good time to talk about, you know, what you put in is what you're going to put out. You know, you're putting, it's never going to be the perf, never going to be a thing that is actually thinking by itself to a degree because it's only taking a combination of everything that's been told, a combination of everything that's been put in there. So good data in, good data out, bad data in, then bad data out. So not to with, with people looking to start a business because there's plenty of people here with very successful businesses who are watching this and listening to this. But, you know, when it comes down to the uses of AI in a business today, in an established business, not a startup, what are the key insights that you would be sharing with people that you could share today for what they need to be looking out for? [00:04:31] Speaker A: Well, I, I, I think there's some universal truths out there. I mean, you know, I focused on technology businesses, but really, at the end of the day is any business that someone wants to go after and again is really organic and that inception of thought and continuing to do that, only then that unique attributes is, is will grow a business and continue to pivot that business in whatever decision you make. I have found a lot recently that people will look to AI for that type of work. It'll never happen. It's like going to a restaurant and saying okay to the chef. Today we're no, you don't ask AI what, you know, flavor of, you know, how much basil to put in the sauce and everything else. And that's really what this comes down to is, you know, even the small, hey, I want to be, I want to start my own restaurant. The unique ingredients and the recipes come from that chef. And maybe some of the, you know, the other Attributes I can do, like maybe print the menu once I figure out what is going to be on it. Things of that nature. [00:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, you know that, you know, that is such a good point, Travis, because there's, you know, there's founders who are listening out there today. You know, they've been in business now some five years, some 10, some 20 years. And I now is this big noise. There's a massive noise out there forum today. When you look at tech founders, you've been in tech for, for many, many years now. When you look at tech founders today, where do you think most are wasting their money and time when it comes to trying to grow their business? [00:05:59] Speaker A: In technology. You say in software technology. [00:06:02] Speaker B: Mainly in any type of technology companies. [00:06:06] Speaker A: So in any type of company, this, this developing technology for a price and so on for value. At the end of the day, it's literally creating inventory. You know what inventory goes directly to the product or the technology that I make money from. Everything else you need to separate. I find too much in companies. Leaders out there forget what they do being very. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm serious. Like they'll listen to AI. Maybe you should do this and do this. And all of a sudden one day you wake up and you're like, what? Why am I in business? What am I doing? And it really comes back to that spot of like, you know, focusing. Why did I get in business? What's our product? What's our, you know, our unique attributes that makes us competitive in the rest of it. AI can never do that. I keep going back to it and also is that human expression is much faster and much more comprehensive than any of these machines. [00:07:04] Speaker B: You just got me thinking on this because one thing I hear, and we hear here at Growth Partnerships is growth focus is very much the case of. I'm finding it really hard to get heard out there. My message just seems to be diluted, you know, right. We're in tech. Whether they're VARs, whether they're MSPs, whether they're SaaS, founders, everyone's saying they're an expert, everyone's being noisy out there. But ultimately it's almost that they seem to forget that if we, if they're using AI, like you said, you know, they're depending too much on AI. AI is a combination of what gets put in there. So if everyone's putting the same stuff in, no wonder everyone is sounding exactly the same. Yes, yes, relied upon AI. They're forgetting, as you say, who they actually are, what they bring to the table and the solutions and outcomes that they can provide all go back to the reasons of why they actually started their business in the first place. What kind of insights would you give people to say, hey, whether we like or not, AI is here. But getting back to who you are, what kind of things should they be thinking about and then really focusing on when it comes to try to stand out in such a noisy marketplace? [00:08:16] Speaker A: That's, that's, it's, it's, it's. You're absolutely right. I, you know, I'll glean from my experiences over the last couple months a lot of the, you know, events that I've been asked to go to. And in the sea of audience of all these new companies, like, literally it was, I was in San Francisco, there was 40 new companies, all AI, and they were all saying the same thing. To your point. So to break out is this, once again, is to start to manually define your product and service. Don't let AI do that. So what I found in a lot of these events, and here's some insights that I'm telling our marketing people and operations at the company, is if you look like everybody else, no one's going to pay attention. You're not going to be that breakout. So one insight is everyone is writing all their marketing proof, their product specs using AI. Take a moment and separate. Because if you manually take the time to write some of the finishing polish on either a product spec or a press announcement or something that, trust me, you will be separated from the herd. Oh, I like that. You know, because it's different, you know, it's not just a norm, you know, I would say that. So insights. Spend the time to do the critique, to do the final. You put in an AI, do the final critique to make it yours. [00:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah, this is such a key element, isn't it? It's like, because I could do so much of the heavy lifting, there's this big trend, this big movement to, you know, it's been so good. Let's I handle it all. But I can never tell your own story the way you want to tell it. Can never tell the passion, can never have the passion that you had when you first started the business, when you first had that idea to create this product or this service. So I really enjoy what you just said there about, you know, putting those finishing touches on it. I can do a majority of it, but not just the ending. I'll push a little bit further, Travis, on that. And not just the ending of it, but even the beginning of the beginning and all the way through the story of what you're trying to say, the message you're trying to say is just bring more elements of you into those conversations, into and saying, yeah, John, this, this is what makes me different to everybody else because, because tech is tech, expertise is expertise. Everyone's seeing exactly the same thing, but we might think we're the best, we might know we're the best, but the, the market doesn't. The market just hears the same conversation 20 times a day. [00:10:46] Speaker A: It's interesting. You're touching upon something that my father taught me, right? So he taught me how to raise money and really in the art of selling and going out there. And at the end of the day, you nailed it. When you have all the right, the same technology, the experts, everything up, it's you, it's the personal attributes of you that will win the cell, right? So, you know, when, when I think of, you know, write stories about, you know, what, you know, I always talk to founders and, you know, do have those inception stories, do have those fireside chats to let people know what got in your mind to start the company. What is your here it is purpose. What AI can never do, ever, ever, ever, is purpose. So when you're looking at 20 companies or even 10 companies, and you're shortlisting it down and you're looking at it, the ones that you're going to set aside that you're going to really pay attention is the human side of it and understanding the purpose and the individuals running that company. I really can't stress that enough. And I, when I pick companies, I'm looking for those people. I don't want to go and pick the robots you got to fit. At the end of the day, it's [00:12:01] Speaker B: people that's such a key element, isn't it A robot, you know, like you said, a robot is a robot. A robot is just a commodity. A robot is just doing what it's been, what it's been programmed to do, irrespective of how you see that particular robot. You know, whether it be AI or whether it be a physical robot or a mechanical robot, it's just functioning at the point that you told it to function, right? It's only doing what you told it to. But the actual personalized side of that and, you know, I just, just want to unpack a couple of things. You said that because you dropped a couple of great nuggets in there, which is, you know, it's creating your own stories. People in tech generally, from my experience aren't really good at or feel comfortable under the camera talking about themselves and rather they can talk all day about their products, they can talk all day about, you know, what they've created, but when it comes down to talking about them, they tend to suffer a little bit, they tend to choke a little bit because they don't believe they're, they're important enough for it or their story isn't, isn't interesting enough. But you know, you and I would totally disagree with that, wouldn't we? [00:13:01] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely know it. You know, I, I always say people, they get enamored by AI and everything else. I said, really, at the end of the day, it's only two dimensional binary processing. The human mind can see millions and trillions of different variations of color and chemical reactions and the rest of it. So like, you know, I said, it's the human side of it, but it's also the human genius of it. Right. And continually come up with those unique areas of where you can make product and services better. That's what's going to drive business and profitability. [00:13:34] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, in our previous conversations, Travis, you mentioned that many businesses are still building. Yeah, they're still building like it's 2018. We've moved on a lot further since just in these last few years. What mindset shift do founders need to make now, would you say, if they want to survive in the next five years? [00:13:56] Speaker A: Well, you flipped it right on its head. Right, because on one sense I'm saying you need the humans to have that unique purpose, to have that unique attributes of the product and continue to pivot on strategy and the rest of it. But you know, the big argument in technology development, you know, the new modern company is, is that you have experts, 40 employees, and the rest of it is AI talk to a lot of companies. You go to Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, VCs and you talk to them. Even at C level investments, they are saying this is the future. So it is a process of taking inventory to figure out what resources fall into the AI development and what that is very critical. If any advice I can give is, you know, a current business, you're starting a new business and you have to figure the AI is going to be that wonderful assistant, need to take the inventory and figure out what that assistant does for you. And if you mix match out and you don't get the right plan together, you're gonna have all kinds of problems. So that would be the advice and the insights. [00:15:07] Speaker B: Well, let's move on to your personal growth A little bit. Because ultimately, irrespective of any size of a business, and I said, you've had a great career to date. What's a hard lesson you've learned? Building and scaling companies that most founders in your experience tend to learn a little bit too late. [00:15:30] Speaker A: It's it, you know, I. You can't surround your. Let me back up a second. Surrounding yourself with the best people. I can't. You know, there's been times where it's like, I can do that best, I can do that best. And sometimes take a step back and really, really surround yourself by the best people. And also different selection of skill sets is really, really important. Right. In looking at that. So I would say that is for all teams is to really have that level of understanding and bring the best. [00:16:06] Speaker B: I'll agree with you there, Travis. We always see. Very, very rarely do we see a company, a founder or a leader have people in place as they grow into that company. It's almost the afterthought. They've grown, pressurizing the side walls. You know, there's too much pressure and then they think, I can't cope. Let's get the team in as opposed to. Let's put the team in now so we can grow into that company the way we want it to as opposed to this. Grow, stop, fall, grow, stop, fall. [00:16:41] Speaker A: There's so much logic to that. The old way is, is that when I need someone, the job wreck, the scope of work will come and then I'll fill it out and go find that person. The new modern with AI and everything else is let's get the best team in advance. Boom. And then go at it. Yeah, for sure. [00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's such a good, valid point on there. And talking about that, talking about growth and expansion and hitting those walls and putting the pressure on there. You and I both know that growing a business is never going to be a straight linear line, you know, and everyone listening here, watching here, will be nodding their heads as well. They go, yeah, totally understand that. Where was. Was there a point in your business? I'm sure there was because it wasn't my one. A point in your journey where growth nearly broke you or really broke you as a business or nearly broke you personally because you hadn't foreseen what needed to be done early enough. [00:17:36] Speaker A: That's an expansive question. So in my line of work, I'm heavily involved in intellectual property. Right. And what I didn't anticipate in the beginning, that the intellectual property, it's a very rare company would actually be in three different areas, which is unlike pretty much any other company prior to mine. And so I didn't plan out all the intellectual property resources I needed. So our company's different that we have for profit intellectual property. We have intellectual property that goes into the standards to better the industry and all companies within that. And then we're a self sovereign ID company. And so we have patents that actually are for everyone to protect the sovereignty, if you will, of the human race. So when I started, I didn't think that we'd have these three very interesting and different categories. So the expertise that I need to hire, you know, I'm running from behind basically. Now I'm trying to find all the experts like we talked about, [00:18:38] Speaker B: Travis, because it never changes, does it? Even though we learn from it and we look at hindsight second time around, third turn around, fourth turn around, you know, and I've, I've got some really good friends and people I've interviewed here who are fifth time founders. You know, I've exited four or five times. And we're still learning from the stuff [00:18:55] Speaker A: that we should have learned. [00:18:58] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no. [00:18:59] Speaker A: I don't care. Is it. The more that we know, the more that we do not know that that is absolutely true. And then, you know, at humility, that's another one I would say is as soon as you know something, you're going to turn to the corner and you're, oh my God, I don't know anything. Right? You really, really [00:19:18] Speaker B: find someone who knows a little bit more about you. Okay, maybe I don't know that. That's a good point. That's a really good segue into another question actually. Things move so fast in business, it's almost like, especially in growth when it comes to lead generation, sales techniques, products of productizing service orientations, everything changes so much. It's because of AI. But taking AI out of it and just assume AI is part and parcel of growing a business. If you were to start a business from scratch today, you know, what would you have done differently in your first 12 months? [00:19:57] Speaker A: I would immediately looked at the funding. I know it's wild, I know this is a wild comment, but I would look at the funding strategy. As soon as I had the concept of what I wanted to do, I would immediately looked at the fund because it's so bad out there, it's very difficult right now. So a lot of times you get going, you put the team together, you get some ideas, you file some patents and the rest of it. But Immediately I'd look at how much money is it gonna take and you know, and, and start to map that out almost immediately. Is that. [00:20:26] Speaker B: I'm glad you mentioned something, Travis. I'm glad you mentioned it because I have plenty conversations, as you can imagine, with PE backed, VC backed tech companies. We hear it every single day. And one of the kind of softly spoken, it's not unspoken, but it's kind of softly spoken in the right circles, is that they've kind of sold their soul to a degree, you know, because they needed the funding and now it's kind of run fast, run faster. Yeah, they're going to their tune, which understandably, to a degree, that's why you get them in, because they understand probably business better than, you know, most of the other people. But it's almost like your passion or their passion slowly gets eroded away because it's been taken over by the, by the whims and the demands of the VCs and the PEs and things like that. What, what advice would you give to people who are going, doing some more founding, you know, some, some raising more money, going through different rounds, etc when it comes to maintaining their passion in lieu of what the VCs and PEs want? [00:21:41] Speaker A: It's a very, very important question. So you know, private equity, even though private equity, their PE guys are coming in more early with their models in traditional late stage and venture capital and so on. So they're somewhat on par right now, is that, you know, when you bring their money in, except for like very, very early stage, you better be ready with a product to sell because that's what they care about. It's all about that now. So there's two types of investors. There's extremely early, it says you have a wonderful idea and I believe in it and I'm going to put some money in. I don't care about revenue, I don't care about customers, nothing commercial because I believe in you, the team, whatever and all that. That's the angel, if you will. That's the reason they came up with the angel. So angels are many forms. You can get VCs that are early stage, angel type. They're really investing into the vision, if you will. When you take money from vcpe, most likely it's gonna be a clock's gonna start and you're on that clock and you better be real ready to hit the performance of what those KPIs are. So it's all forecast, hitting your quota, hitting your numbers. And the advice is, is that when you get to that stage. A lot of the product development should be behind you because it's all focused on going and selling to customers and scaling the business. From a revenue perspective, I would say in my business, it's been four and a half years, no revenue. Right. So if I didn't get this in my mind, right, my life would be very difficult because I'd be going against the grain. And every day I wake up versus I have certain investors that know they're, you know, it's investing in the dream, investing in the vision, get the product together. Right. And it's sacrifice. It's never easy and it's a lot of sacrifice, meaning that it's tough. Be prepared. [00:23:40] Speaker B: Is there a way to have this you would look at or if you're having a chat with, you know, a leader who has obviously started the business because of their passion. They saw a hole in the marketplace, they saw a gap and wanted to fill it, or whatever. The personal experience is their story going back to their story of why they started. But they're beginning to feel more and more eroded from that initial message because of the funding they've done. What would you be saying to them? [00:24:14] Speaker A: Yeah, the vision, the purpose, it changes over time. Right. And that, that, that, that original spark, right, is it's always going to be there, but it changes over time. Right. You're going to get more people and it will get diluted a bit. That's just par for the course, unfortunately. [00:24:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Feeling bad about it. It is part of it. They're seeing stuff that you might not be able to see at the moment. They probably see a bigger picture than you might be able to see, you know, because you're looking in as opposed to them looking after the wider vision. You know, there could be so many other things. [00:24:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:51] Speaker B: Well, Travis, before we get into the quick fire round, I've got five questions for you and I just fire them at you. You're not the only one, you know, we put under the pressure. I've got one last question before we actually go into that. For any founder or leader listening today, if, if you wanted them to take one action after this particular episode, when it comes to growing their business, what would. What would that piece of advice be and why [00:25:16] Speaker A: growing their business? Growing the business is always walking in the shoes of your customers. I always tell everyone that, you know, you have a good product, you get to a certain point to grow. The growth pattern is understanding the wants, the needs and the roi what makes their business better. Right. There's two, I think, flavors to It. And that's really what it is. Growth is about really getting in there and articulating the roi, listening to what features they might not have conveyed before that you didn't think about and everything. It's all customer driven. Listen to your customers more growth is understanding your customers, and from that, you grow into other customer verticals, maybe as incremental areas of business, that growth is all about endings. If you don't understand your customers, you're [00:26:09] Speaker B: not gonna be able to grow, you know, and I think that's such a. That's bigger than most people think because it's one of those throwaway comments, unfortunately. It is. [00:26:17] Speaker A: It is. [00:26:19] Speaker B: Everyone knows it. Everybody really knows it. No one's sitting there listening to this going, oh, I never knew that before. Everyone knows that's what they should be doing, but they're probably. If they struggle, if you're struggling to grow or you're finding difficulty in getting your message out, the chances are you haven't. You don't know your customer enough. [00:26:41] Speaker A: The message is not being received. They turn. They want something different. Yeah, always. [00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're just not. Yeah. You're just not on. On post with them. So that's. That's a huge message. So I said. So I. I love these messages because, you know, when we. When we have people like you, you know, leaders come on like you, Travis, and we. You say the most obvious thing sometimes, and people go, yeah, I know that. But they should be doing it, and they're not doing it. [00:27:05] Speaker A: For example, is it. Okay, so if you're growing, when's the last time you had, like, a hackathon for a whole day talking about your product, you know, spending the times, reinventing yourself, things of that nature. Yeah, yeah. [00:27:18] Speaker B: Or being brave enough to reinvent yourself, you know, because that's the key thing. You've probably got so invested into it, you think, oh, I can't change now. And now you're on track, just putting [00:27:26] Speaker A: the blinders on, you know? [00:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. You're just refusing to hear it, aren't you? That's what it is. Great, Great point, guys. That's. That's. That's a great one. Action. Take. Start thinking about knowing your customer more, touching base with your customer, and that's when you start seeing your message land more. So let's go into for the quick fire round five questions. First thing that comes to your head, Travis, because it can't be a right or wrong. It's just the way you see things in life. All right? Just the way you See things. What is the. What is the one thing founders should stop doing immediately? [00:28:00] Speaker A: Doubting themselves. [00:28:03] Speaker B: Brilliant. Yeah. Stop downing yourself and just go, okay, next one. One thing they should double down on today in growing their business. [00:28:11] Speaker A: Double down. I can't say enough of interviewing the customers more and more. Double down. Right. We're talking about growth here. How to get out, how to break out. Absolutely. Interview things. Find more ways to get in ahead of your customer. [00:28:27] Speaker B: Love that. Find more ways. Don't just do it. Find more extra. Find more ways. Yeah, yeah. Because if you didn't work before or did to a degree now, find better ways. More ways of doing it. Dan Dublin. Love that. [00:28:40] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:28:40] Speaker B: We've talked about this before, but the biggest myth about AI and, and business growth, [00:28:46] Speaker A: the biggest myth of AI is it's the information that it uses. About 4% of what's on public websites, which are valuable, reputable companies, and it doesn't have any intelligence in it at all. It is parallel processing with nesting and producing a high probability of a result. Human can determine everything. Again, AI can only give you a general probabilistic information output. A human can give you the granular, deterministic view of everything. So what we're talking about through all that's very, very important to know the difference. [00:29:29] Speaker B: Brilliant. Brilliant. The most dangerous habit you've seen, people scaling their companies. [00:29:36] Speaker A: Ooh. Throwing bodies at it. No, I mean, I'm serious. One of the biggest problems I talked to the VCs and everything is you got a great company, you got a great team and the rest of it, and then they slap a lot of money on it and it's a bunch of confusion and the rest of it. Get the plan together. Be very laser focused at your plan. More people, or in this regard, more robots are not going to solve your problem. [00:30:07] Speaker B: So true. So true. Okay, the final one. What is the one growth lever you still believe works no matter what market is out there? [00:30:20] Speaker A: It's wild. The art of sales and the magic of the immediate rapport people get at conferences, even in the first interaction when you get someone's attention. AI, none of this can do it. That is the marketing, that commercial aspect of it, that is so unique. Absolutely. That would be it. [00:30:42] Speaker B: Brilliant. [00:30:43] Speaker A: Brilliant. [00:30:43] Speaker B: Love it. So, Travis, thank you very much for joining us today. I can't believe when the time has gone already, if people want to get hold of you, get in touch with you, what is the best way they can do that? [00:30:52] Speaker A: Yeah, my email address is travislc Digital. Please send me any questions, inquiry, and so on. Happy to help and add any information I can have or just life lessons about entrepreneurs that are getting out there and doing things. [00:31:08] Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, I'll make sure the team put that into the show notes so they can click straight into it and get hold of you. And all that leads me to say is, Travis, thank you again. Thank you very much for your time, for your expertise and your insights today in sharing it and giving us your time today. Thank you. [00:31:24] Speaker A: Thank you, Gary. Take care, everyone. [00:31:27] Speaker B: Thank you. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us for yet another episode of the Growth Focus podcast. And as per usual, if you have found something that Travis said that's useful that you enjoy doing and you thought that's really good, make sure you share it, make sure you like it, and make sure that you subscribe so you can listen to all the other episodes. So until the next time, my thoughts are coming up later. Until the next time. We'll see you on the next episode. Bye. Bye. There was a line in that conversation I keep coming back to. Travis said AI can never give you purpose. And I think that's the thing most founders in tech are missing right now. They're outsourcing the one thing that actually differentiates themselves. Their story, their reason for starting, the specific insight that made them build what they built. And when that gets added to a machine, you end up sounding like everyone else in the room. And there are a lot of people in that room. So if your message isn't landing the way it should, if you're finding it hard to get heard, if your pipeline feels inconsistent even though you know your product is good, that's worth looking at properly. Not in a general sense. Specifically, where's the gap between what you offer and what the market is actually hearing from you? That's exactly what the revenue leak audit is for. 30 minutes. No fluff, just a clear eyed look at where revenue is quietly slipping away and what to do about it. The link is in the show notes, as usual. So until next time, work hard, be profitable, and we'll see you soon. Bye Bye.

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