When you’ve had hundreds of conversations advising tech companies over twenty years, you recognize patterns.

Almost everyone I’ve ever worked with has 1–3 competitors that they really want to be like.

But that obsession can become a problematic north star.

Meticulously copying someone else’s work will guarantee that you never surpass them.

The advice I give most often?

Lead, don’t follow. Forget what others are doing. Don’t think about what you “should” be doing. Take chances. Focus on things that inspire you. As legendary music producer Quincy Jones said, “Leave space for God to walk into the room.”

Get comfortable with the idea that others will soon start copying you.

Because when you lead? It will happen. Expect it.

You can only push people so far.

Today is very nearly the 10-year mark of me running my design and branding agency, Aloa.agency.

And I’ve had to manage many people along the way, with a team as large as 14 at times (and now at about 9).

When we judge companies, we judge them by their work quality—by their output.

But every business owner knows about the very real human side of running a company.

People get sick, family issues come up. And also? People get bored, frustrated, and tired of beating their head against the wall.

Human beings are not machines. There’s only so far you can push them. You can’t keep grinding people into the ground and expect them to be happy and productive.

You can’t be negative or overly demanding and expect them to deliver great work. Yes, as a business owner, you are helping people out by providing a livelihood. But they are helping you out just as much by building your company.

They don’t owe you anything. And quite possibly, you owe them more than you think you do.

If you are paying someone millions of dollars with stock options, you have every right to expect the world of them. But if you are paying someone at or below market rate for their services, you should expect them to do what you’ve paid them to do, no more and no less.

If you don’t heed this advice? People will quit. Or worse, quiet quit.

Always keep the dignity and financial situation of your team in mind. And gratitude goes much farther than condemnation.

Your Slack is already open all day. Why not use it for AI?

Every organization needs its own AI-powered Slackbot.

I set one up that has dozens of functions. It’s the same bot, but it can be configured to do different things in each channel I put it in.

In one channel, It’s a universal translator.

In another, It’s a dedicated task ingest.

In another, It’s where we can submit bugs for any product/software.

Another? Send invoices for automatic processing, renaming, and logging.

…and so on.

But coupled with each Slackbot functionality, you should have a corresponding email webhook so emails work in the same way. I like using a service called Resend for all of this.

For example, you could send an invoice to either the invoice Slack bot or to invoices@yourcompany.com.

This way, you have double coverage for the actions that take up the majority of your day.

These two things combined allow you to get more powerful and efficient by the day.

I'll go first:

In large companies, a shocking number of processes are done in a surprisingly unsophisticated way.

For example: an executive from a major corporation was telling me that a tried-and-true process involved someone writing down notes by hand, using their phone to take a picture of those notes, emailing the picture of the handwritten notes to someone, who then wrote something down by hand on another piece of paper to file it away.

In 2026, that is insane.

Companies large and small are aware of hundreds of these inefficiencies—inefficiencies that could all be solved by AI, software, and modern tools.

But here’s the problem: Large companies have so much bureaucracy, inertia, and so many regulations that making these kinds of obvious improvements becomes impossible.

This is the perpetual advantage start-ups and more nimble operations have.

Large companies have the luxury of being able to print money via an entrenched position, so there’s no incentive to improve when you’re already drowning in profit.

But any small company or start-up that relies on what I just described in this day and age is missing tremendous opportunity for growth.

…is probably underpaid, overlooked, and one bad manager away from quitting. Here's what you can do about it today.

Have you ever seen a great company full of dumb/mean/undeserving people?

Are there people in your network that you think are smart/kind/underappreciated?

When’s the last time you helped a smart/kind/generous person get better or more meaningful work?

When’s the last time you advocated for someone else’s salary?

Top-tier professionals (or “A players”, as Steve Jobs called them) only want to work with other top-tier professionals. And they won’t accept being abused, mistreated, or taken advantage of.

They know their worth.

So today, you help someone deserving get a job in your company. And tomorrow? That person might very well be your next lifeline.