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Hey Ala,
Most founders think scale means more people.
Revenue hits $100K/month. Hire 3 people.
Revenue hits $300K/month. Hire 5 more.
I get it, I used to think the same way.
9 years ago, Herb was doubling year-over-year (by the way, Herb is the other company I run, an audience of 14 million people, 8-figures in revenue).
Revenue was up and I was hiring people to try to scale faster.
Then, one day around the same time, I was in Denver hanging out with another high-level founder, Auren Hoffman.
Auren is an entrepreneur, Peter Thiel’s first Chief of Staff, now an angel investor, and CEO of location data company, SafeGraph. He’s also the co-founder of the billion-dollar data connectivity platform LiveRamp.
Basically, he’s smart as hell.
What Auren taught me in Denver changed how I think about hiring completely.
Auren said, “Most people think hiring is a badge of honor. It’s not. You should think about hiring as a failure. Because you failed to find a way to automate that role.”
That hit hard.
Here's what actually happens when you try to scale with headcount alone…
You don't scale. You just multiply complexity.
More meetings. More coordination. More communication breakdowns.
You go from being trapped by tasks... to being trapped by people management.
So how do you scale without adding 10 more people?
Auren put it this way…
“What you want is a small team of really high level people who take pride in doing the work of three or four people.”
In other words, hire A-players ONLY and build AI systems that multiply their capacity.
When it comes to scaling, you have a choice…
Scale with headcount alone. More complexity. More overhead.
Or scale with systems. Lean team. AI leverage.
This is Phase 3 of the Founder Journey: Scaling the Model.
After Auren gave me that reality check, I reduced headcount at Herb from 40 to 20 people.
And revenue actually GREW even more...
Now I’m not promising you that if you slash headcount, your revenue will triple.
Every business is different.
But when you leverage AI you might be surprised at what you can achieve with a lean, mean A+ team.
Here’s how I did it…
How To 10X Your Current Team Instead of Hiring More
First, I built AI systems trained on my voice, my frameworks, and my strategic thinking.
I call it my 10X Founder Clone.
And it answers questions the way I would. Makes decisions using my criteria.
Thinks through problems using my process.
Then I gave my entire team access to these AI systems.
Now, instead of constantly coming to me with questions, they ask my 10X Founder Clone first.
My Head of Content can ask: "How would Matt position this YouTube video? What hook would he use?"
My Head of Operations can ask: "What systems does Matt want in place for our onboarding process?"
My Chief of Staff can ask: "How should we prioritize these 12 competing projects based on Matt's goals?"
They get answers immediately.
Answers that sound like me. Think like me. Align with our brand and strategy.
Without my having to answer every single question.
And the wild part is, if you unlock an extra 40% productivity at each step, those gains can compound significantly over time.
The Math That Changes Everything
Too many founders are focused on using AI to replace their team.
They think it’s an all or nothing choice between whether to hire people or use AI.
It’s not.
The real magic is hiring high level “weapons” and then integrating AI into your existing workflows.
When you implement AI across your entire organization...
When you upload documents, instructions, and prompts for all your core systems...
And you give your team access to every single one of those Founder Clones...
Your team operates at an insane level of productivity.
Your 8-person team operates like a 40-person company.
Without additional cost. Or chaos.
Just pure leverage.
If you’re interested in learning more, book a call with my Velocity team here.
The Real Numbers
Let me give you an example…
Creating one Instagram carousel used to take my content team 1 hour per week.
Now, they use a simple AI prompt that takes my voice recordings and formats them into perfectly optimized Instagram carousels (with no AI slop, because it’s my actual voice).
There's something even more powerful than giving your existing team AI tools.
It's giving them the AI tools that I use to run a $15M brand with a lean team of 12.
That's what Founder OS Velocity does.
Inside Velocity, you get the Founder AI Systems… not one chatbot, a team of specialist AI skills trained on 48,000 pieces of my content and the data from 17,500 founder-led brands we've served.
Here's what they do:
My content team of 2 publishes the volume of a 15-person operation by running this exact system.
And we publish:
A traditional content team producing this volume?
You'd need 8 people minimum.
We do it with 2.
Not because we work harder. But because we have an operating system that multiplies leverage.
When you understand how to clone yourself with AI…
And you know how to put it to work in your business…
The time leverage is insane.
According to a new study by McKinsey and MIT…
Founders who integrate AI effectively, significantly outperform those who don’t.
Inside Founder OS, we help you install systems that multiply your capacity without adding headcount.
You get 180+ plug-and-play systems that power my entire portfolio.
Content systems for YouTube, X, LinkedIn, email. Offer frameworks and pricing templates. Org charts and delegation SOPs. Hiring scripts so you stop hiring blind.
You stop duct-taping your business together.
Instead of "too many buttons in the cockpit," you get the next right system for you and an actual path forward.
If you're ready to scale without multiplying headcount, book a call with my team.
Tomorrow, I'm showing you how to systemize your content. This is Phase 4 of the Founder Journey.
The Content GPS that transforms your content team into a conversion machine.
Platform-specific systems. Distribution strategy. Content-to-conversion flow.
Content that compounds. Not content that exhausts.
And it's where everything clicks.
Let’s win together,
P.S. The founders winning right now aren't hiring armies of B-players. They're hiring fewer A-players and giving them AI superpowers. That's exactly what we help you build inside Founder OS. Book a call with my team and we’ll do a complete AI Systems audit and figure out if Founder OS is a fit for you.
IMPORTANT: Earnings and Income Disclaimer
While all testimonials on this page are from real clients, the results you see on this page are not typical. Their experiences do not guarantee similar results for you. Your results may vary based on your skills, experience, motivation, as well as other unforeseen factors. Founder OS has yet to perform studies of the results of its typical clients.
Some customer stories are illustrative composites based on real client experiences. These are used for educational purposes only and do not represent actual individuals.
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Statements and depictions are the opinions, findings, or experiences of individuals who generally have purchased education and training. Results vary, are not typical, and rely on individual effort, time, and skill, as well as unknown conditions and other factors. We do not measure earnings or financial performance. Instead, we track completed transactions and satisfaction of services by voluntary surveys. Further, many customers do not continue with the program, do not apply what they learn, or do attempt to apply what they learn but nonetheless have difficulty in making sales successful for them.
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